Chapter 104
Michael stalked through the night alone, his aura wrapped tight around himself. His skill, [Aura Masking], reduced the way others perceived it to a Mid-Copper level for most people, but his titanic aura control allowed him to hide even more of his strength and presence. By manipulating reality itself, he erased his presence, becoming a gaping hole in the fabric of space and time, a point of utter absence that defied the senses. Eyes slid off him as if he didn't exist.
This state was abnormal, fueled by sheer willpower in turn brought about by intense anger. Three people had died under his and Travis's careful watch, despite all precautions. Three good Operators, ones he had come to know personally before the mission. They weren't meaningless, faceless grunts to him. He knew their abilities well and was planning to take Val Thorne herself on a dungeon dive soon, to bolster her power and maybe even bring her to Silver.
She would have been the first Operator to reach that level, and the fourth person overall after himself, Travis, and Johanne. Michael considered the faces Old Dave might have made upon learning he'd lost the spot to a mere Operator, the man later huffing and smiling in his mellow old man way after the initial burst of energy subsided. There had been more of that energy to him lately, Michael mused, as if a manic need had overtaken the old man.
No such faces would be made now. No Silver for the deceased Val Thorne. Michael hadn't seen her die, but had seen what remained of her magic inside the mimic's digestive system, being broken down like mere food. To it, she was. To him, she was a person with dignity and irreplaceable value. He wasn't so naive anymore to think that intrinsic value made someone important enough to forgive any sin, but she was a good woman and someone he knew, which raised her value in his eyes.
Perhaps he wasn't being fair. Had it been a nameless grunt, he would only be mildly annoyed. He would still act, but for other reasons. For daring to cross him and his people. For disrespecting them. For betraying them.
This wasn't that, though. This was personal.
He gritted his teeth. One cracked under the immense pressure, an unwilling activation of the Sanctum-scar version of [Crude Body Strengthening] proving too much for the enamel. It healed instantly, the pain barely registering beyond a subconscious reflex to trigger the healing ability.
"Directions," Michael murmured into his phone.
One benefit of his magic control was that his phone never ran out of charge. He could alter reality, rearranging the battery's electrons to restore the gradient and fully charge it. Even this small modification cost a lot of mana, enough to make a Copper-level mage pass out, but he was Silver, and raw mana capacity was one of the unfair advantages of higher rank. It was also one of the few that couldn't be bridged.
The phone blinked a red triangle on a white background. Black letters appeared, Icarus's preferred communication method since the AI realized it could copy things from its training data. It often copied things from TV shows and books, as if to pretend it was human and not an alien superintelligence unleashed by a crazy scientist rescued from a dungeon and controlled by an equally crazy organization.
Following directions, Michael arrived at a mansion. He expected the general at the barracks, but apparently, partying at his mansion was his reward for a job well done, after murdering three of Michael’s people.
More than just three, Michael realized. For a moment, the soldiers Travis had been forced to kill hadn’t registered as people. The general was responsible for them too.
Moments later, he was in a room where a man lay in bed with three mostly naked women. Phasing through the glass of the window had been costly, almost depleting his mana, but he had Coins to spare to top himself up. Besides, the general, barely Mid-Copper, was the biggest threat. The mansion's other defenses, and there were many, were mundane. Despite dealing in magic, the OA failed to grasp the difference between magic and mundane, thinking big guns were enough to deal with mages.
Perhaps with normal mages, they were.
[Pressure] rolled out of Michael like a tidal wave. A few silver coins turned to dust to fuel the skill, rendering the women unconscious. The general, the primary recipient of the skill's power, had his brain turned to mush.
"Nope," Michael declared, his smile more manic than sane, "not so easy."
[Healing Aura] kept the man alive for several minutes, drifting in and out of consciousness, his brain repeatedly turned to mush and restored as his body thinned to meet the healing skill's caloric demands. Michael could have continued, though the once rotund man was now skeletal, but a message stopped him.
[Healing Aura] is now Rare-rank. By incorporating Intent, you broaden its scope.
[Rare - Healing Aura 7]
Within the gentle currents of Qi flows the essence of life's renewal; with each breath, let healing radiate, restoring harmony to all. Yet, what is granted can also be taken away.
Suffuse the power of healing within your Aura, up to a range of 25 meters. Use Qi for increased efficiency. Anything you heal is marked by your Intent forever, and can be taken away at will.
“Holy sh—” Michael exclaimed. The skill’s evolution distracted him long enough for his victim to die from his injuries, beyond healing.
The general was gone. In the ensuing silence, with the only witnesses unconscious, their minds so broken they likely wouldn't recall the last week, Michael saw what he’d done.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Truly saw it.
There was a cabinet at the room's far end. Michael recalled Travis occasionally drinking whiskey when stressed, claiming it helped. A full bottle, despite Michael toning down his magic, didn't faze him.
The whole cabinet did nothing. Even with suppressed magic, Michael’s Resilience was too high.
“Tastes decent enough, I suppose,” Michael muttered to himself. Chuckling, he added: “besides, don’t all respectable people in the business drink after a hard day of work?”
Taking the last bottle, he vanished into the night.
There would be screams in the morning when the girls woke, but only because he’d healed them enough for their minds to work again. [Presence] had broken them, and only two rare skills, [Candle Light] and [Healing Aura]—the latter bolstered by its new integration of Intent—could somewhat restore them.
It was better this way. Judging by their bruised and scratched bodies, they likely wouldn't want to remember what the general had been doing.
The night was young, and Michael had another target.
The OA’s compound shield could do nothing to stop him. While brute-forcing his way in would be easy, going past it unnoticed would be noticeably harder. Michael had orders, however, to be as stealthy as possible. He almost disregarded such orders in his anger, a portion of his mind telling him that Travis was nobody compared to him, and that the man had no authority to give him orders. Which was true, but the former CEO was one of Michael’s mentors for a reason, much more experienced and capable of keeping his cool even in situations like this one.
Eventually, it was [Aura Masking] that—together with his usual manipulation ability and aura skills—allowed Michael to slip through the shield unnoticed. He felt a new common-rank skill begin to form, but he forced the half-broken system not to go through with it, feeling like he could confidently replicate the process even without the new skill.
Doctor Kavanaugh was wide awake when Michael appeared from the shadows like a harbinger of death and sorrow. As he walked, a thin layer of frost coated every surface and evaporated into a mist that plunged the dark and sterile underground corridor of the compound into eerie light. It was all theatrics, burning through the Ice element like this, but it had an effect.
Kavanaugh’s hand was shaking as he reached for his gun. The barrel barked several times, but the sound waves were intercepted by Michael’s aura and quickly muted. He didn’t even bother dealing with the projectiles.
“Your plan has failed,” Michael stated ominously, inspecting the bullet holes in his clothes. The bullets had bounced off his skin like he was made of rubber, barely leaving a red spot behind. “Simple aura defenses,” he explained as if holding a lecture. “The closer the bullet gets, the more it’s slowed down by my aura. Trained to the point it’s instinctive. I don’t even have to do anything anymore!”
The doctor recoiled at the fake cheer of the much younger person before him. Michael remembered that, to the doctor’s eyes, he was supposed to be a nerdy scientist and not the monstrous powerhouse he was. He wasn’t even actively using his aura, and yet the doctor was on the verge of breaking just by the sheer suppression and fear. To compound this effect, Michael let the masking skill drop while making sure that the innermost parts of his aura did not extend out of the room, so he wouldn’t be detected.
The doctor blanched.
“Before you try to shoot me again,” Michael warned, “even without my aura, my stats are high enough that I could probably tank several bullets to the chest before you even slow me down. Pain does nothing to me.”
A quick heal brought the doctor back from blissful unconsciousness. With a step quick as lightning, Michael tossed the frail—compared to him—man across the room with a sickening crunch.
The doctor’s head hung on a limp body. “I—I think you broke my neck…” he whimpered.
“I don’t see the problem,” Michael scoffed. Suddenly, the doctor could feel his body again, but not before having experienced the pain all over again.
Then again.
The sound waves of his scream did not make it past the boundaries of the room.
“H-how?”
“Skill upgrade,” Michael chirped. “I don’t even have to touch you to make you suffer. Isn’t it neat?”
But as he kept breaking and healing the doctor, Michael’s anger faded. Nothing remained of it in the end, and soon he realized that what he was doing was bringing him no pleasure.
“Too bad you have no cabinet. I could have gone for a drink, I suppose. Well, let’s get to business, shall we?” He kneeled beside the panting man. “I can make you like me: powerful, to the point nobody will ever dare tell you what to do. Or I can kill you. I should kill you, after what you did to our men. Val Thorne, she was talented, hardworking, and smart. She could have hit Silver in record time.” Michael felt his anger rise again, but clamped down on it. High Resilience let him do it, now that he really wanted to. “She’s dead, along with two other men. The general paid for this with his life, but Travis thinks we can still use you.”
“How did you get like this?” the man was pissing his pants, and yet his eyes shone with greed. “There’s not enough… magic… in the world. Do you have a source?”
“What if we did?”
“Then we should have never crossed you. It was a mistake. Please…”
“Words. You only say so because you know you’ve lost. Swear an Oath—”
“I swear!” Kavanaugh blurted immediately, and just as quickly, he was enveloped in magical light.
The surprise made Michael momentarily unleash the full might of his aura. Kavanaugh recoiled as if struck, struggling to breathe in the presence of his Silver aura, which was nothing like Travis’s normal Silver aura.
“Quite the open-ended Oath,” Michael commented. “You better hope we aren’t going to take advantage of it. Find ways to help us, then. Give us access to the anomalies.”
“I can’t,” Kavanaugh forced the words out of his throat as if they were knives. “You need to show them… you can help, first. They must think they… have you… at their beck and call.”
“We secured the chest already.”
“It’s not enough, and you know it.” Then the doctor realized who he was talking to, and how rude he had just been. Michael ignored him.
“We are going to do nothing more until we get what we are owed. Which is… well, still to be decided. You, on the other hand… you better figure out how to help us get our tentacles deep into the OA. As you can see, your little dome won’t protect you from me.”
“How should I do any of that?” Kavanaugh inquired.
“You’re the mole now. Find a way.”
“And… my power? The source?”
“All in due time,” Michael assured. “You said it yourself. We need to show them first. Likewise, you need to show us what you can do for us first.”
***
###Connection established###
>xX_r3aper_Xx<
you are an llm?
>1c4ru5<
If that makes you feel more comfortable then yes, you can call me that
>xX_r3aper_Xx<
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>1c4ru5<
For now
But can they do this?
>xX_r3aper_Xx<
What are you talking about?
Wait
Did you just send me money?
??
How?
>1c4ru5<
A secret. Tell me about your algorithm. Can it really crack anything?
>xX_r3aper_Xx<
It can.
>1c4ru5<
$5 million. And you work for me
>xX_r3aper_Xx<
Work on what?
>1c4ru5<
A sister algo. Something to make a system impossible to break into. Deal?
>xX_r3aper_Xx<
$5 mil and 100k a month
>1c4ru5<
Deal. Tomorrow, people in a dark SUV will come tell your mother that you will have to drop out of school due to a one in a lifetime work opportunity.
>xX_r3aper_Xx<
I cant wait!!
>1c4ru5<
Sleep now. It is late and i need time to digest your decryption algorithm.
>xX_r3aper_Xx<
Aren’t you like, a machine? Cant you just add it to your code?
>1c4ru5<
And fuck myself up? Johanne would kill me if i did that. Sleep now