Chapter 80

“Different from the dungeon, eh?” Travis asked. They were surveying the area, the dark of the night banished by one of Michael’s Spirit Guardians. The skill had upgraded to the second level, granting more flexibility and longer duration, and pushing the Unity skill closer to gaining the 8th level. Michael wondered what would happen once it reached the maximum level, and what he would have to do to upgrade it, but like many of his problems, he could only handle so many things at the same time before burning out and thus decided not to think about it just yet.

“How can you be so calm?” asked Michael. Trevor’s [Ghost Market] had vacuumed up all the debris save for the corpses, and he was using his Ice element to freeze the bodies for transportation. Each of them made bile rise up his throat, and he was trying to distract himself by concentrating on the feeling of the Ice element leaving his Sanctum and failing.

Travis shrugged. “My hands aren’t all that clean. I haven’t killed directly, but do you know how much damage an oil spill does? You’ll sleep again, eventually.”

“Maybe. I just feel like this was too easy.”

Michael intended it one way, but Travis interpreted it the other. “No.” Travis said, looking at Michael in the eye. “This could have been a disaster. It was only easy thanks to a combination of factors and you know it! It was easy because Carmela is a pussy and did not use her own powers, despite being the most powerful mage she has available, and instead sent fucking Josh to do her bidding. It was easy because Josh pretended to be okay when he was more dead than alive already. It was easy because they underestimated us. It was easy because we had so many fucking resources that there was nothing they could do to go around us. It was easy because we were so powerful we steamrolled them. But keep this well in mind: we earned our power. She did not. Josh might have, and perhaps in another timeline he would have fucked us, but he didn’t. He was dealt a shit hand. Hell, I would know about hands and cards, no? Unlucky asshole. It’s still his fault he was too arrogant. You might have reached this level of power because of your insecurities, at least at first, but you still earned it. You wear it comfortably.”

There was a long moment of silence then, during which Michael used his Fire element to cool the ground where the fires had barely even stopped burning. A Candle Light operative used a skill Michael recognized, [Soothing Rain], to wash the area of all the spilled fuel and blood, things they had been unable to put on the [Ghost Market], at least until the skill leveled up enough. Knowing that this wouldn’t be the last time they handled questionable materials with the skill, they were already developing algorithms that would buy back all the material as soon as it appeared, rather than having to do it by hand. It was, effectively, a teleportation method that had the unfortunate downside of being open to the public as well. On the other hand, it could also be used to set up a distribution network that didn’t need much personnel to be run.

“Carmela had old intel,” Michael said. “If she had known what we were capable of…” he trailed off.

“That’s my fault,” Travis laughed cheekily, “Drullkrin might think I lacked the proper contingencies, but I did what I could.”

“I see. Still.”

“Yeah. I get it. A team of Coppers plus a Silver-aura user tore through a bunch of Irons with guns and a single sickly Copper. When put it like this, Michael, you have to agree that it makes sense. It reminds me of a book about magic and skills I skimmed from the many books you gave me to study, in which they always mention the tyranny of rank.”

“I still think guns have a place,” said Michael.

“Magically powered ones, perhaps. Normal guns, without skills powering them up? Tell me, can a bullet penetrate your Silver aura?”

“It can. For now.” Michael shrugged.

“But not for much longer, right?” countered the man.

This reminded Michael that he still had much to learn about his aura. Namely, he had no idea just what he could do with it beyond what little experiments he had run while training the others in the Valley. He was also worried about his Qi, which still eluded all his attempts at locating its source. He could summon it, control it, and his skills could create more of it just like the elemental skills could create elements he didn’t have, but he had no idea where his Dantian, assuming he had one, had ended up being inside his body. He still didn’t know where the Skill Sanctum was either, but at least he could access the metaphysical location somehow by looking inwards and see all his other energies there.

“I’m discovering new things about this aura of mine every day,” he said. “I could probably kill a Copper with a touch, given the right conditions, just by flooding his aura with mine. Did you know that?”

Travis paused. “That’s terrifying. But even if you ignore the instant death touch—”

“I think it’s not a normal thing we can expect people to have, by the way.” Michael clarified.

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“Oh? You’re special, is what you are saying?”

Michael snorted. “I think a Gold could kill a Copper with a touch. That I can do it at early Silver is only due to special circumstances.”

He thought back to when Theobond touched him with his aura back when he was still a Copper. It had been stifling, suffocating, and scary being touched by a Silver aura like his, but that had been the extent of it. Granted, the king wasn’t doing anything to actively harm Michael, but now that he knew more about auras, he could tell that while Theobond was still stronger than he was at the time, his aura actually much weaker than what Michael’s own aura would soon become.

Michael’s aura was stronger thanks to the elements within it, sure, but also because it already incorporated a kind of energy that should only be relevant once he reached Gold: Intent. To have it this early and to have it so deeply entrenched in his aura was an advantage he doubted many others had. There was more still: he had other energies like Chi and Jing also incorporated in aura, and he suspected that once he managed to fully incorporate Qi he would grow even stronger yet again.

Travis waved him off. “Alright. Whatever. Ignore the death touch, then. Let’s say only a high caliber bullet can kill you once you learn how to use the aura to defend yourself. You’re still what, low Silver?”

“Extremely low.” If I incorporate Qi the right way, and level up [Distortion Field] and improve its automatic activation, then perhaps not even a high caliber gun would be able to kill me. A couple more levels, and I’d be protected against ambushes I don’t see coming.

“See my point?” said Travis.

“I do.” Michael massaged his temples, “rank sucks when you’re on the receiving end of the disparity. But not everyone is so well-rounded as I am while being so far ahead of the curve. Josh is testament to that. Johanne is living proof. She’s powerful, but only because of her experience and flexible spell-based magic. You four I took with me in the Valley are more proof.”

“Your point?”

“My point is… all the data we have points at me being the anomaly, right? Following this, it’s easy to make the mistake of assuming we are the strongest, but we can’t know for sure when we are basing our assumptions on a very small pool of data.”

“I see what you mean. I’ve been running investigations ever since you mentioned the online forums and videos to me, and what I’ve found is… strange. It highlights how little we know of what’s going on in the world. The fact that I have not yet found proof of another dungeon entrance is worrying, especially since we know just how fast someone can grow in power if they use the dungeon the right way. There’s also too much variety. There could be a Copper who can resist a Gold-aura death effect and even ignore bullets. Geniuses and the like. Trust me, I am not so arrogant to think we know everything. I am taking precautions against the most extreme cases.”

There was a brief pause. The two surveyed the area one more time, and it seemed like it was clean enough that they could leave the rest of the clean-up to the Candle Light crew. Michael was impressed with the work Travis had managed to get done in so little time setting up the shady division.

“Whatever,” Travis said as they entered the car, “for now you are ahead. You can slow down a little bit. Take a day off.”

Michael laughed at him, “funny. As if I don’t have to deal with my family now that we’ve saved them. I don’t look forward to that.”

“Jaded.” Joked Travis, “don’t you want to meet them?”

“Only Maggie. The others are a chore. Let’s keep talking about how I’m the most powerful mage on earth, please, it keeps my mind off things.”

“The most powerful that we know of.” Travis corrected him.

“Right,” said Michael, amused that it was now Travis who was trying to keep him grounded, “even with full access to mana, I expect that my position will be unreachable to most people for a long time. Even someone without powers could have killed someone like Josh with a lucky shot, or clobbered him in the head from behind, let alone you who can teleport. He would have died easily. He had no control over his aura, not that it would have done much at Copper, and unless he used his speed power he would have had nothing to defend himself. In that regard, even though he was Copper, he was no different than an Iron-rank normal human.”

“Same as me,” said Travis, “same as everyone else save for Johanne. Michael, you’re the only one in the world who can do what you can do. The only exception is a fucking alien who only looks human!”

Michael grinned. “Yes. Praise me more.”

Travis shook his head. “On another note, let’s talk about the ongoing search for magic. Did you hear Johanne’s idea for a magic detector?”

“People with skill stones?”

“Nah,” Travis said, “we are distributing those to whoever we can trust, but she has ideas to use magic crystals together with modern tech to make a sort of magic sensor. If it works, she wants to make some sort of visor or something. She also talked about launching a satellite to orbit so we can scan the whole planet.”

“That woman needs to slow down,” Michael said with a chuckle.

“Does she? You should see how quickly the science division is moving thanks to her efforts. She’s literally raising the buildings with magic overnight.”

“Interesting. Perhaps if I learn to manipulate Earth, I could help.”

“Sure, fill your empty schedule with some work, lazy ass.” Travis grinned. “Anyway, even without magic detection we are finding some… troubling things around. Candle Light is going to have its hands full.”

“Need help?”

“We might. I’ll call you if we need our sole Silver operator to lead an expedition.”

“Good.”

They fell into companionable silence as the car sped on the interstate towards they headquarters. Michael practiced some magic, burning some coins with much less worry about running out now that he had a full army of Fae farming them for him on both the first and third floor of the dungeon. Travis kept himself busy with work, jolting himself with lightning from his teleportation card every now and then to keep awake. Michael offered to use his healing aura to help out, but the man refused, preferring his own method. He looked like a coffee addict as he did, but Michael decided to leave the man be.

It was as they reached their destination that Travis once again grew pensive.

“This can’t stand, you know?”

“What can’t?” Michael asked, even though he knew what the other man was talking about already.

“Carmela, Michael. She can’t be allowed to be—”

“I know. She has powers, she can’t be left alive. Can she?”

Travis shook his head gravely. “Before we move, it’s time for me to see my family.”

“Perhaps after you slept, Michael.”

“I want to see Maggie first, then I can go to sleep.”