Cypher's laughter soon filled the area, and the nobles looked on in confusion. Of course, soon, Cypher wiped away the tears of amusement and took a deep breath. "If that is your grand plan, then I hate to be the one to break it to you but that isn’t going to go well for you at all. Do you honestly think that my companion is just some regular old man? You're sorely mistaken if you believe that. Of course, I can't blame you. I thought the same thing too at first."
Fayaldin staggered a bit but then recomposed himself. He had had enough of this and drew his golden sword. "All of you!" he roared, directing his voice towards the assembled troops the nobles had brought with them. "Attack these thieves and destroy them! Leave none alive! Today we reclaim my estate for the glory of Farnor!"
The troops were clearly under the influence of his mind-altering spells. Their view of the situation was clearly distorted, so these revelations likely went undetected among their ranks. Soon after Fayaldin gave his order, all of them began to charge forward. Cypher scowled again. He didn't want to have to kill innocent people, and they were too far away at the moment for him to be able to free them of their enchantments.
Getting closer was no good either since his plan required him to stay where he was if Gastor and the other members of Mother's Grace wanted to escape. Currently, they were heading out the back way. Cypher hadn't been idle during the downtime after discovering the truth of the vault. Firstly, he had taken the goods in Fayaldin's chests for himself.
Most of those items had been somewhat useless to him, such as the low-tier healing pills, items for those with minds below the first rank, and body enhancement pills up to the second rank. Those he had given to the members of Mother's Grace in order to help them recover enough to escape.
However, there were more than just those low-tier items in those chests. There had also been many Rank-Two and Three items as well. All of the Rank-Three goods had been quickly pulled into Cypher's dimensional pocket. However, those for the second rank were quickly consumed.
Cypher had devoured all the pills he needed to advance his mind and Orrium. The medicines for his mind had been part of his original deal with Fayaldin. He felt pleased that at least that had been true. However, there were also some medicines dedicated to the Orrium as well as the body. He had devoured those almost instantly. His body had already reached the second rank, but now it had broken through into the middle tier.
His Orrium was already at the plasma stage, and after consuming those pills, it now lingered just below advancing to the liquid stage of the second rank. He would have pushed it further, but he ran out of pills and was forced to leave his Orrium at its current level of power. Still, it was enough given his peculiar Orrium.
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His power had increased quite a lot between these two advances, but he still received other gains. His mind now neared the breakthrough to the second rank in full. This was how he was able to easily break the mental enchantments on Lent and his men. As it currently was, he only needed to stare at the diagram in the Architect's Draft once more for it to reach a new plateau.
For now, he held off on that. The process would be quite painful, and he needed to be in a safe place before he allowed himself to become so vulnerable. That said, his mind should be more than powerful enough to handle the tasks yet to come today.
He needed to buy some time. Gastor had said he needed no more than twenty minutes to evacuate everyone from the vault. With that in mind, Cypher opted to buy some time. He raised his hands and conjured a large barrier between the Nobles and Lent and Gastor's forces.
The noble's army crashed into the barrier and began pounding upon it with all their might. For Cypher, this wouldn't have been hard to maintain if it were only a few people. However, several dozen soldiers were attacking the barrier all at once. He could only be glad that the front gates of the estate weren’t much larger or he wouldn’t have been able to block the area off as effectively. Despite all of them being so weak compared to a complete Rank-One Conductor, it was still difficult for him.
Still, the barrier held firm, and Fayaldin slammed his closed fist against his knee as he looked on in rage. Cypher stood with his arms outstretched, his armor shining in the light of the barrier as it flickered and flashed under a constant stream of weak attacks. It would hold, but it was much more taxing than his ultimate barrier.
However, now was not the time to use the Duality shield. It surely would have been able to hold under such weak opponents no matter how many of them attacked. Yet, he still couldn't expand it more than a few meters away from his body, and it also seemed like overkill in this situation. His goal was to act as a distraction, not to hold out indefinitely. Fayaldin was too blinded by anger to see the truth of what was happening.
This, of course, played into Cypher's plan. Having been raised around nobles most of his young life, Cypher was quite capable when it came to recognizing the true face that all nobles usually kept hidden just beneath the surface. Of course, he had been optimistic in his initial outlook. He had hoped that Lord Fayaldin would be different. After all, he had spoken quite highly of Cypher's father.
Yet, that was only another facade manipulated to gain his trust. How many nobles would attempt to manipulate him? Ten? Twenty? Cypher was beginning to understand why Conductors were given such a long leash. It wasn't because they needed the freedom to explore their passions and paths to the higher ranks.
It was to keep them from rising up against oppressive nobles. Keeping them too restrained would only result in angry Conductors in the future. However, letting them roam free would at least in part ensure that they would hold some loyalty to the ruling class of each nation.
As these and other thoughts ran through Cypher's mind, the members of Mother's Grace finished escaping through the estate's rear exit. Fayaldin in his eagerness to reclaim his estate had neglected to station a force in the rear, and as such nobody on his side noticed a thing.