The Alliance's Possible Desperation

A few hours later, the place that was once a major source of pride for the Self-Mutilating Honores Sect, was now empty with only a few working places here and to reconstruct everything. In the morning.

After arriving around here in the Little Lake, right from where it began, using the Rychly Transporting Formation Array, the alliance's whole entourage was already 'tired' of seeing the invents from the alliance's Craftspeople and had finally managed to go through it all without showing a twisted image of their faces. Those products no matter how good of a new invention they could be when placed together with the 'erroneous and failed product' that Ciemnosc made, their products were still much worse!

It was a good thing that they no longer had to endure such blatant mistakes from the alliance, the subordinate Obsidiafying realm cultivators were glad that they didn’t have to suck up to these Craftspeople ‘masters’ since they did it at the beginning, and the tiger - they had to ride it all the way even if they were too shy to do it.

But at least they managed to experience what it is like to travel with the use of the legendary Rychly Transporting Formation Array, able to go from the center of the Region to the Little Lake at the west, it was worthwhile to humiliate themselves without even having needed to in the first place.

Now that they were for the first time seeing the Little Lake, and they had been warned of never crossing over to the other side no matter what, for the time being, the subordinates hid their disappointment but still looked around while making their way with the alliance’s entourage.

They could see rubble all around, and tall, very tall buildings being built already without anything surrounding them and the cultivators who were entering it were only those seemingly working in cleaning and finishing up those very tall buildings in the middle of nothing.

Unlike from what they’d heard, there wasn’t a huge, gigantic crater. but there was indeed a large patched up area with light steel colored cement. it was so huge that the Obsidiafying realm subordinate could so easily do the 1 plus 1 and find the truth to what has been going on here for the past few weeks without melting their brains.

When they arrived at the Little Lake’s shore on their side, ‘fearfully’ looking towards the other side and looking at the few other cultivators below the Conflagrate realm working on starting the port that was once there, and those others on their side ‘repairing’ the port as well. The subordinate Obsidiafying realm cultivators could see how ships were already sailing around the water, and some were standing still close to the shore and right in front of them.

The shallowest waters of the Little Lake were incredibly deep, but that wasn’t important since not a single living being was ever found to exist within the Little Lake. This was normal since it already had such notorious changes from time to time, like how it now seems to be warm during the day and really cold during the night, nobody nor thing should be able to live there under any circumstances as even Obsidiafying realm cultivators were hurt with the cold of not even at the coldest hours.

Arriving at such a spot with a good view to the shallowest waters of the Little Lake and the sailing ships, the few floating ships in front of them were being seemingly supervised by a very old Craftsman with folly, gone messy gray hair and that had a face supposedly naturally stern. But the old Craftsman showed signs of being… eccentric.

Walking up to the old Craftsman, the alliance’s entourage actually had to wait for 2 seconds to see if the old Craftsman would speak up to them in apology, only to end up waiting for almost half a minute before the old Craftsman finally sent the other Craftspeople back to the floating ships nearby and faced them.

“Ah, sect master? Pastor?!” The old Craftsman directly shouted with surprise, “Why didn’t you say it was you guys? I thought you were just some other person trying to have me become their master. All these rotten-brained disciples had been further destroyed mentally by that delusional kid, telling everyone to start accepting disciples and even killing those who just wanted to prank him! Those days are over now. I’m hoping that whatever academy is already investigating their brain, maybe they’ll somehow become infected and die from stupidness.”

“Hm hm,” sect master Holoriu responded, his face dead cold but still restrained with his hands together in front of his body with his arms all down in front of his torso. Seeing the sect master’s enduring figure, the old Craftsman decided not to say another thing to waste even more time, despite it feeling so good and being truthful to them himself.

“Sect master, please ask, whatever you want to know. This humble old Craftsman that is the only one capable enough is willing to show you even my secrets.” The old Craftsman spoke, patting his chest very lightly before nodding twice at the sect master in silence.

“Tell me about the things around the entire stronghold area and the Little Lake.” Sect master Holoriu said after giving the old Craftsman that, despite the old geezer Xing Kei no longer being around to pressure him even with his position as the sect master, it still seemed as if his hands had not been extended enough for people like just this Craftsman to think they can take advantage from the sect’s situation.

“Of course, why not.” The old Craftsman nodded and said, his face at ease, calm, relaxed, and even lazy to say the least about the last one. He continued on with his body turning around rudely, his right arm projecting towards certain angles as he spoke and he pointed at them with his index finger. “The armored cars are upgraded, but it is unknown how. We only know that the criminal little kid managed to find some materials and placed them all together, refined them or processed them or something, and then installed them into the armored cars.”

“We can only reinforce the currently existing ones with arrays, but the creation of new armored cars as good as poorly improved without consistent nor stable foundation; we would then need another few more batches to test it.” The old Craftsman said and then thought for a moment before pointing at another place and beginning to speak.

“There are way too few disciples and believers, who are working on the port and buildings. Before, even as there were about a hundred thousand, it didn’t take more than several days for outposts to be built. And the stronghold only took some more days. It wasn’t that long of a time, and the survivors from the treacherous explosion can testify to how grand the stronghold was to even be called a stronghold.”

“So, I am expecting about half a million disciples to come here to help speed up the process a little, then another 2 million when things are settled. That would be okay, I think.” The old Craftsman scratched his head a little before pointing at a slightly distanced place from just now. “And the training grounds are still going on, but without anyone from the criminal kid’s army, it’s basically impossible to train them how they were trained before. None of the spies from back then are capable of remembering anything!”

“They are useless. I want to kill them all! How can they just not figure out how to remember something so simple? They trained like humans, like mortals!! How can they not remember something so simple?”

The old Craftsman shook his head, his first few words sounding as if acted, denouncing how much mirror time he has had before the alliance’s entourage before he finally arrived. And he even added, “Because of that, I ended up implementing some of my own thoughts to their training regimen, now I’m sure that they will have exactly what they need to riv- no! To become better, much better than that ignorant little criminal! I will surpass him~!”

“And over there,” without taking notice of the sect master’s facial expression, he pointed to yet another place. “The Craftspeople under me, now, though I do still will miss our old disgraced leader Justin, oh how cruel that little criminal was until he got what he deserved!”

“Ahem, they are already making the tools that are used for bombardment, and the melee ones, though we made them a bit bigger in case they aren’t powerful enough.” The old Craftsman nodded to himself, really so satisfied with his speech. He then nudged his head upwards towards the floating ships behind him preparing to sail, taking over quite a few more minutes than Ciemnosc’s army's newest sailors ever did…

“These ships, sect master, we’ve made an incredible discovery…” The old Craftsman shut up and made an ever so unsettling pause for the rest who had to hear him all this long. Only when the all smiley old Craftsman noticed nobody had faced elation and wanted to suck his cock right away did he continue with his smile disappearing faster than the stars 11 years ago.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“There are more than 7 different arrays in each ship! And- an- a an- and that is everywhere! We didn’t manage to build it all ourselves since those were Com- Ciemnosc’s orders but I’m sure we will know it all in a few more ye- weeks, haha, weeks.” The old Craftsman, noticing he was getting this high up and excited, took two large, hurtful gulps of his own saliva down his throat before continuing.

“But that little criminal won’t be able to hide anything from us, real Craftsmen and Craftswomen, sect master. We will give you an army and water army with the best possibilities and weapons!” The old Craftsman even shook his head from the emotion. He was so into it that he failed to see sect master Holoriu’s bulky and really muscular right hand coming right towards his own neck.

“Glruaarrhk!” A dragged-out bemoan sounded as the old Craftsman could respond like that for 2 seconds straight before the grip slightly lightened its grip, naturally, it was to let the old man breathe and to then speak. But the old Craftsman instead just looked at the sect master with his head upwards and tried to struggle away from those big, bulky fingers. “Clrghaaagghh~...”

“... huff! Huff-ah! Huff, please forgive me, sect maa- aaksteer!” The old Craftsman begged after being choked, then not, and then choked over and over again over several minutes. The sect master didn’t say a word, silently closing his face over to the old Craftsman and once he was close enough to make the old Craftsman feel as if the sect master’s head was the size of his own torso to finally start spitting some shit.

“You want millions of my disciples to come and work like rats for you?! We are even short of having enough disciples and believers in each of our major organizations and you say you - want - more?!”

“Training, training, and training. You call just shooting some tools with actual resources towards target training?! Do you think it is of any use to the systems you make for targeting?! Can they use their Spirit Sense for hundreds of meters, then?! Can I even go that far?! I CAN’T! So since not even, I can make use of such ‘aiming’ What are the targeting systems for, you dumb animal?!?!”

“You think I can’t notice the missing amount of tools around when the reports say otherwise?! I would just kill you for trying to fool the sect, to fool its people… to fool me!” Up to this point, the sect master’s face was too terrifying and so close to the old Craftsman that his shrunk neck by the torture of just now was now nothing compared to his own mentality crumbling.

“More resources to fail to do the same as a little kid did? THE SAME!!” The sect master was so close to simply imploding in wrath that the old Craftsman just didn’t know how many bad ‘buttons’ he had pushed. The sect master’s following words were even more fear-inducing to this old Craftsman though. “Each ‘batch’ takes about 1,000 armored cars to be made. How can you be SO useless!?!?!”

Practically already spitting on the old Craftsman’s face, the sect master held the neck even tighter and still hadn’t finished yet. “You don’t even know what the ships your people built are made with?! You can’t distinguish any more arrays that were present before in those ships. You are useless to me!!”

“Y-y- you can’t- can’t- ca- c-ca- can’t kill… me…” The old Craftsman needed a really huge amount of balls to be able of saying just this and in this situation, but the sect master’s wrath had to be put down, as the sect master himself knew how valuable this idiotic and moronic old man was the only one capable of rivaling elder Apegos who couldn’t protect even himself, let alone Enaro.

“...” Besides that, this was the only remaining living Craftsperson in the entire 4 major organizations who had the chance of deciphering the secrets behind all of what Ciemnosc has been capable of. But now, he really seemed useless! “Urrghh.”

…thud, splash.

After letting out a groan, the sect master was already walking away with the old Craftsman finally having his neck and body left alone to fall on the floor along with all of the shit and piss on the ground that slowly slid around, some of it sliding into the Little Lake down the steep small slope.

“Sect master, don’t worry, our combined efforts will make a good work out of the Rocaloi Academy. They can’t compare to us, and even less to that‘s attempts at Ciemnosc faking his ‘products’.” - “Sect master, fret not for this is only the beginning. We can fight in many ways that those barbarians of the west can’. We…”

And while the Eagerburning Flames Sect’s grand elder and ancestor, along with the Moribund Yearning Cult’s elder enforcers and the Preferential Light Justice Sec’s elders, try to calm the actually scary and powerful sect master Holoriu. The old Craftsman touched his neck with hopelessness leaving his eyes as he felt his neck shrinking about 4 sizes as a whole.

Now, how the heck would he end up getting a cure? All the best alchemists in the Self-Mutilating Honores Sect had practically died or betrayed the sect, and those from the other major organizations are either not good enough or they just ask for too much in return…

***

A few days later even more… Several hundreds of kilometers away from the Rocaloi Academy in the ‘true west’, on a single plain with very short grass and yellow-brown colored dirt on the surface.

Ciemnosc was sitting with his bum on the ground, his elbows against his knees and he was all alone as he covered his face with his hands, his little finger, ring finger, and middle finger were placed together to cover his eyes, somewhat rubbing his face from time to time with them while some strands of his pitchest darkest hair stroke his facial skin. His index fingers and thumbs separated from the rest and in the air, sometimes tapping at his forehead.

As the skies were turning to the always coming awfully dark, deep blue sky, he slowly began moving his body. His neck twisted and his head tilted towards any angle, cracking noises coming from his body as part of his body cracked those incredible bones. His organs even made vibrating sounds as if they were forming part of a symmetrical action with the rest of his body.

Additionally, without any practical reasoning or explanation plausible enough for… whatever - Ciemnosc’s blood boiled and boiled in his veins, in his body. His skin breathed even darkness itself in, nothing coming out of it though, and even the hair at his head, face and arms, and legs were moving on their own unnaturally by their surrounding environment such as a gust of air or the fabric against them.

‘Ah, okay that’s enough.’ Ciemnosc placed his hands away and opened his eyes, the darkest that could ever be in all that there is and exists, bottomless pool-like irises and pupils that only he could differentiate gazing at the sky for the umpteenth time.

His right hand was lifted up towards the sky and relaxed, his palm opened fully once his arm was fully stretched upwards, slowly and gently as if touching the gentlest, warmest, and ‘aquatic’ thumb of love.

Swoop, tap tap rustle tap tap.

‘...’ Ciemnosc stood up in a single movement, patting his knees and bum, the back of his thighs, and part of his crotch all around, clearing the dirt away; partially. Then, looking at the few houses of a village far away in the distance, to the point that it should’ve been already impossible to visualize how far it is, even for the Ciemnosc of just several weeks ago - the boy began walking towards the village without using a tiny bit of his Spirit Sense.

Of course, it wasn’t as if his eyes were working like Spirit Sense, he could only see that far, and even if it was some basic illusory array formations, he could still manage to see through them when ‘exerting’ such unique ability. The idea, however for this lusty boy was to be able to get his eyes to be like this forever like with his Spirit Sense…

And something tells him that the reason they aren’t already like that as it is and has been with his Spirit Sense is because of the exerted out ‘something’ which he still can’t figure out that he instinctively ‘lent’ at his very firsts of everything in his— so far —short life.

… Ciemnosc had already gone through the map that the Rocaloi Academy gifted him, compared to gramma Jing Zhu’s map, and ended up discovering that, even then, gramma Jing Zhu’s map was still more detailed and deep than the Rocaloi Academy’s. Though that seemed to foreshadow for Ciemnosc, all he could really care about right now was to… kill this last hiding little rat.

‘My body has changed a lot with the second level of the All-Devouring Force Chronicles, not only in eating but also in me deciding my power… hmm.’ Ciemnosc though was already used to hiding his strength, but that seemed to not be any fun at all, he really didn’t like to even fake it anymore. But there was no reason to just let anybody know that the boy, who is capable of fighting a whole realm above his own now fighting 2 realms above his own when everyone who witnessed or believed it already had a hard time processing it authentically.

So, he was stuck with these 3 dumb assassinations, but might as well as he had already begun a little show, then he might as well finish the show with a good show of his ‘full strength’. All he needed now was to wait for darkness, even if it was blue ah. But while he walked towards the unsuspecting village of unsuspecting passing travelers left and right - from cultivators of any stage below the Conflagrate realm to ordinary hunters, merchants, and the worse kind of people; Ciemnosc thought to himself as if finding a piece of marvelousness inside his head.

‘Why can I only feel the full capabilities of a cultivator’s Spirit Sense only when they take it out to play? Why can’t I do it when it is resting? So weird, I gotta make something about this, and I just happen to have a few targets up ahead too.’ Ciemnosc thought, not knowing this was a by law train of thought that doesn’t even need to resurface in the mind of those even outside of this damned planet of a little rock.

…