TF Chapter 90 Moving Out
***Alistair***
Night had finally fallen and we were in the middle of preparing ourselves. I must say that I had been a bit selfish in wanting to go back and meet that statue, but everyone here too, wanted the same thing. My heart had pounded with fear when I had thought that we were going to have to blaze our way into the city. Imagine my surprise and elation when we discovered that the natives were caught up in a war themselves.
I was curious about why they were even fighting, but that was something unimportant right now. Currently, there was no sound of battle, so this was our chance.
Besides, the whole reason I had chosen to take such an impulsive course of action was Danny and Nathaniel. I didn't have a full grasp of Danny's abilities, but I had heard rumors that his ability to detect fortune far surpassed that of any member of his clan. And the fact that he had chosen Nathaniel, meant that the guy was special.
When I had first seen the guy on Musana continent, I had wondered what had truly made him special, but now, I could see it. After all, who awakened an intent that was related to a star? I know our intents were special, but my instincts were telling me that he was going to have a smoother path than any of us in the future.
The grass masked our approach as we made our way to the battlefield. I and the others had activated our spiritual domains, using them to scan for anything that might produce a higher than normal sound if we stepped upon them, like small dried twigs and what not.
Even as Nathaniel took point, I wondered how we were going to cross the plain land surrounding the fortress. It was a shame that the grassland hadn't taken over the entire land...or maybe it had at one point, but had been cut down to make way for the battle.
A stench like no other assaulted my nostrils, alerting my mind to the fact that I had forgotten...no, I hadn't thought about certain things. A battle wasn't like a computer game where everything simply dissapeared. No, they lingered. The rotting bodies, the trash that accumulated because of the consumed resources on the battlefield, the excrement of the lifeforms. All that had led to this nauseating stench that caused my face to become filled with wrinkles.
"If this was how our ancestors had managed their business during that age, then we have truly come a long way. People! Make sure you try to sense excrement or rotting corpses! Don't step on the damn things!" Whispered Carol who appeared to be holding a hand to her nose.
"You do know that you could simply isolate the particles of the rot and decay from entering within your spiritual domain, right?"
Nathaniel's idea was a good one. It looks like it was going to take sometime before we managed to be capable of passively treating our spiritual powers like we had been born with them. I had been sensing the particles that were tinged with the scent of rot, but that idea hadn't even registered within my mind...that I could isolate the damn things!
I, Alistair prided myself on the fact that I had a good head resting upon my shoulders, but I knew that no matter how much money I inherited back on our planet, I wouldn't reach the same level as forgers, people who could simply rearrange molecular particles into a new meta material...and then, billions of currency would drop into their account.
Most people hadn't yet woken up to that fact that forgers were going to be the future. It was like when AI and the quantum age had been upon us. Now, it was an era where forgers were going to become more important than technology.
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Besides, another reason why I had chosen to embark upon this path was simply because of the mysteries of Musana continent.
There was absolutely no way that Musana continent was a natural construct. I also didn't believe it to be technological in nature. My belief was that it had been created by a sufficiently powerful forger, and I wanted to see whether I could reach the same level.
Finally, the grass gave way to soil, though, all of us simply stopped at the demarcation, making sure that there was some grass between us and whoever would take a look in our direction.
"It looks like this battle has been going on for weeks...maybe months." Danny spoke while his gaze was directed towards a particular area. A black skeletal frame entered my vision when I followed his gaze, with the flesh having fallen off and some plants sprouting just within it.
"Or, it could be that decomposition is faster on this planet."
I too, had reached the same conclusion as Bora.
Skeletons, flesh and dried blood weren't the only things that filled the battlefield. There were also craters, grooves, destroyed siege weaponry that had been constructed from wood, beast pelts(probably attire), and a few other odd things here and there.
"So, how do we cross this wide open space. The sentries will most probably spot us the moment we try, not to mention the fact that we are just a small distance away from the camps of the invaders." Bora's question caused all of us to ruminate.
It was a moonless night and the only light that fell onto the planet came from the dots in the sky, the distant stars. It was dark enough, but for the natives, it might have been as clear as day, so simply walking or running towards the city wasn't an option.
"The problem could probably solved with our intents." Once again, Nathaniel made a valid point.
The man appeared to either be clever, or considered multiple angles. Though, I had the feeling that the man simply liked experimenting with intent a little bit too much. He was like a child who had been given a new toy.
"We could distort lights round ourselves."
"A good idea. If we could actually manage to capture individual photons, we could have been able to even create illusions. Too bad that even with our intent infused spiritual powers, we can't really capture them. We can only influence their direction." I lamented. Though, if we could even take control of photons at our level, we would be too overpowered.
We were going to have to be fast! So fast that we had to reach the wall of the fortress within mere seconds as any discrepancy in the alien natives' vision might trigger an investigation.
Intent was a godly power that had given me the illusion of omnipotence the moment it had awakened within me. Imagine being capable of doing literally anything! Reality could be warped into your own image! The laws of physics as I knew them became pointless when intent took control. For a whole damn day, I had gotten drunk on that power, until a memory from when I had awoken my spiritual powers as a forger had hit me, causing me to come back down to reality.
It hadn't been something overly complicated, just the image of the electrostatic field that held every particle in the universe. That had been true omnipotence, yet it had also been scary enough to the point that you would start doubting your very existence!
Nathaniel took the lead as always agile we followed just behind him, with just enough space between us to prevent the clashing of our intent domains.
My face warped at what my spiritual domain was sensing along the ground as we sprinted towards the city. Most of what I could sense were rotting corpses of the aliens that were so infested with maggots, or whatever the dark mass was, that I had the urge to puke. I made sure to try and make sure that my feet chose the few small patches of pure soil, the only islands devoid of taint, to step upon.
The rotting bodies weren't the only ones as there were also weapons, spears, shields and many other weapons that made me wonder whether the choice to create similar weapons was a disease of the universe. There had been no particularly large deviations, as the weapons were almost the same as those that had been used during the medieval part of our history.
They had black stains, probably dried native blood...and many were embedded within the corpses themselves, though, none of us particularly needed any as intent was enough to get us along.
"It looks like the gates had opened at some point in time." Nathaniel suggested. And he was right, as the clothes on the corpses suggested that the rotting bodies here had been of two different camps, with some having even died with each having their weapon embedded within the other.