With a hum Galileo searched through the mailbox, finding only a single advertisement leaflet. He was living in a large apartment complex, so he did not wait around the rows of letterboxes and returned to his current dwelling. Along his way he encountered two of his neighbours talking near his porch, however, Galileo ignored them.

Despite the poor amount of mail, he was not angry, in fact, Galileo had been jolly since he has woken up in the morning. The reason for that was rather simple: He had arranged a meeting with Quinn the following morning, promising another long match of chess. It was not the first one, in fact, in the past month since the tournament or so they had played many times, either online or in person.

Since Galileo quit his retail job he had more than enough free time, his predicament with vocation had been solved when he found out that having a 100% win-rate, barring his matches with Quinn, allowed him to earn more than enough cash through online chess to be socially acceptable as a profession. Matches against anyone else than the woman he could not beat quickly lost their novelty, however, they were not yet completely boring. He was constantly improving, and though he could see further and further, he could still not defeat or even draw Quinn. That only fed his morbid curiosity about the woman.

Galileo picked up the advertisement leaflet and began to read through it. It was something about a real estate offers and similar bogus, but that wouldn't warrant Galileo's close examination. On the surface, it was just a common advertisement spam mail, delivered to everyone in the neighbourhood, even the company who sent it was legitimate. Yet if one possessed the right key it would reveal a secret message from the Covenant. Quickly Galileo scoured the pages and found a code name which contained all combat-capable personnel. This week it was red tile floor. Since he knew the key by heart, it did not take long for him to decipher the Covenant's message.

'All combatants, we have uncovered intelligence suggesting a large scale attack on one of our most important hideouts organized by the Foundation. Emergency priority 3 rendezvous at areas under the jurisdiction of Delta 3 and 15 points has been issued.'

That made Galileo quite happy. Priority 3 meant: Gather at the cost of suspicion being brought upon your identity, in other words, both the hideout and the forces of Foundation would be worth interrogating. Galileo maintained his ties with the Covenant for two main reasons. First, he did not think that it was the kind of organisation one could just cut ties with, and being hunted down could result in anything between minor annoyance to the loss of his current identity. On the other hand, his missions were not all that bad thanks to a simple fact. Galileo required some information, not common knowledge that he could find over the internet but the deeply guarded secrets of both the Covenant and the Foundation. The higher-level personnel he found the more he could learn by taking their memories for his own.

Slowly but surely he could perhaps figure out what had caused the cataclysm, or at least gather some hints, perhaps he could even find a survivor who had witnessed it as he knew of a couple of creatures known for being particularly tough to kill. Although it was not the most pressing of tasks he was still curious what could’ve happened. Galileo scoured through the leaflet once more, searching for his specific code name, and to his surprise, there was actually a message meant specifically for him:

‘Agent, there is someone snooping around your background. Based on the traces we found it appears like the work of an amateurish private detective. The chances of the truth being found are negligible, however, you should be wary of being followed or bugged.’

That surprised Galileo, his interactions with other people were minimal and probably didn’t warrant someone looking into his past. All things considered, he concluded it had to be either Quinn or the CEO from his previous retail job, the latter being far more likely considering he was wealthy and unlike the curious woman couldn’t just ask Galileo. Galileo could easily watch out for people tracking him, and his new trick of detecting electric currents within devices around him gave him confidence that his flat was not bugged, so he was not particularly worried. The Covenant was pretty good at forging identities after all.

Putting away the leaflet Galileo decided to leave. If he arrived early he might be able to snatch a few extra takedowns as a scout and with that his chances of finding out something relevant increased. He looked at his phone for a moment, still quite glad he finally got one after much struggle in deciding which model to take, however, he decided that taking it with him was a bad idea. Although Galileo did not expect anyone outside the Covenant to see him and live, getting rid of any identification was not a bad idea.

For that reason he took off his current clothes, a comfortable tracksuit he wore at home, revealing his heavily tattooed chest. Intricate patterns were layered over one another, creating a fascinating mosaic of seemingly haphazard yet symmetrical shapes and curves. With a pulse one of the many lines began to distinctly shine and slowly but surely something was pushed out of it, appearing as though the item left through a strangely shaped hole in Galileo’s chest. But no blood gushed out, nor was the items crimson or dirty. It’s ocean blue fabric and golden embroidery clearly identified it as Galileo’s regalia.

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He couldn’t exactly wear his trusty robe in public, nor did he want the power contained within to accidentally leak and attract unwanted attention to his house if he stored it in a closet. Because of that, he hid it in the one place where he was confident no one could find it. The ink of his tattoos was heavily enchanted, to the point that the magic within would almost instantly self combust had it not been fused into Galileo’s flesh. That amount of mana allowed it to fold space to the thousandth of its size, in fact, each line of his tattoo could contain up to a thousand times its volume as long as the item could fit through its mouth. That amount of folded space, volatile mana and concentrated mass created a very significant amount of gravitational shenanigans, probably enough to tear a human body to pieces, or at the very least cause fatal damage. That strain was thankfully hardly even felt by Galileo's unreasonably durable body, moreover, the tattoos also contained some lines specifically designed to suppress any leaks that would otherwise cause haphazard shifts of local gravity in Galileo’s immediate vicinity. Together they created a masterpiece carved into Galileo’s chest.

With a smile, Galileo wore his robe. He could just make a perfect illusion of a robe with magic, however, there was just a certain degree of comfort in wearing his trusty regalia. It had been with him throughout millennia, through every crisis and brush with death he had encountered back when he was not quite powerful enough to challenge Gods on equal standing. It had definitely been worth the effort he spent in order to instigate an all-out holy war between two particularly powerful devils just for the raw materials. The crafting process was another hassle altogether, but the result was beyond his anticipation. After so many years of soaking in his power from day to day use, the regalia was still the most powerful item in Galileo’s possession, and for a good reason. The cloth had once even withstood a surprise attack from an Arch-deity, sparing Galileo from years of recovery and a pathetic desperate retreat.

Adorning his robe with satisfaction, Galileo still had to do something about his visage. Transmuting his facial expression was a long and unnecessary process, instead, the ocean blue fabric of his garment wiggled, slowly extending to form a hood and an ornamental golden mask which perfectly covered his head. This way, not even most Gods could see through, much less the people of the new era. During his first missions, he had even adjusted his vocal cords to transform his voice, but soon enough he realised that he rarely ever spoke, both during the missions and during his actual daily life, making the dragged out process obsolete.

With everything in order he walked to his front door and locked it, making sure to suppress the sound just in case that some of his neighbours overheard that he had just sealed himself in. Now came the most difficult part of the missions: The transit. He couldn’t exactly walk like this through the city, and Galileo just happened to possess the perfect way of moving long distances in moments and without being followed.

Walking into his small kitchen he willed for his wrist to be cut and blood poured down to the floor. Quickly it formed into an interwoven formation of circles, squares and hexagons. Galileo was forming a new anchor, unlike when had tried to connect to an existing one back when he was attempting to contact some Gods, thus the shape was not particularly important. It would have served the same purpose had Galileo made it asymmetric; all that mattered were the size and that the whole thing was connected. Galileo nodded as his wrist no longer bled and took a deep breath.

Next came the tricky part of this transportation: Galileo had to make the universe bend to his will without levelling the entire city. In fact, he was attempting to completely suppress the leaking mana with the help of the formation he had just drawn. Essentially what he planning to do was similar to bending a piece of paper in half and then punching a hole through it. The two points where the hole was punched through became connected with a path that could be travelled instantly, no matter how far away from each they were otherwise. Galileo was just stepping from the 3rd to the 4th dimension of space instead of from the 2nd to the 3rd.

Of course, even Galileo could not possibly come anywhere close to the power necessary to move the entire universe. What he did was more akin to tugging at a very small part of the sheet, allowing him to connect two relatively nearby points. That much he could do. The problem was that the power he needed to do that increased exponentially with precision, so he needed to find a compromise between near enough to his destination and manageable power-wise. It took a couple of minute of constant focus but Galileo finally found what he had been looking for. With slow pulsing reality rippled in front of the immortal, right above the blood drawings on the floor. Slowly the gush grew larger and larger, from the original size of a tennis ball, it soon became an ellipsoid with the rough diameter of a bit over one metre, more than enough for Galileo to leap through.

There was imagery being transmitted from the other side, however, it was only a distorted mess of merged shapes and colours, shifting and with occasional spots of pitch black. It was incomprehensible to even Galileo. The light could just not handle the amount of abuse happening when space was bent to the limit. Galileo did not hesitate long enough for the unstable gateway to close. Satisfied with the lack of escaped mana rampaging through the air he took a step back, and jumped headfirst into the ellipsoid, vanishing from the room. Mere moments after his disappearance the chaotic portal collapsed, the magic it released was instantly consumed by the blood drawing on the ground. For a moment the vermillion anchor shone with brilliant crimson before it quickly dimmed, becoming vague and in a few minutes completely invisible.

Soon enough there was not even a trace of the grand casting that just took place.