Madrick

Outside a Broken Tower, Several Thousand km From Adrasmiith Warcamp, Hesvāra

Staring up at the tower which had clearly been constructed specifically to give off the impression of a ruin, Madrick found that he was feeling positively well-disposed toward whoever he found within. He’d slain and re-slain hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of spirits on his search for the source of the ‘spirits’ on this planet. It was clear that whoever was throwing the soldiers at him was not familiar with his path of True Domination. Every time he defeated an opponent, it fueled his growth. At first, he’d been curious whether he’d have trouble converting the defeat potentia from wraiths which never truly died. He’d have no such trouble. Although they might not have died, they were certainly defeated. That was the only factor of true import so far as he was concerned. Defeat through any means, be it: destruction, capture, surrender, or subversion. The end result was his domination.

He continued to stare up at the tower, waiting. The occupant of the tower surely knew he was here. The last twelve hours had been a constant advancing battle as he pressed through hoards of spirits. It appeared, however, that his opponent may have run out of fodder for him to battle. The most power spirits were rank fourteen, two higher than his own current rank. Unfortunately, they still hardly gave him a fight. Unlike him, they didn’t have a few millennia at much much higher ranks to refer to. While he may have lost almost all of his power upon death, he’d retained all of his experience and, of course, his UAs.

Reforming his first and strongest insight had taken less than an hour. Forming the proceeding fifty had taken a year in total. Combining the insights into their greater variants had been similarly easy, compared to the first time. The only reason was taking him as long as it was to advance back to his former power was, quite simply, soul nexuses and bodies had a limit to how quickly they could be improved. Press too hard for too long and he might permanently damage one or the other, requiring yet another death to try again. In the end, it wasn’t worth it.

He began tapping his foot and crossed his arms over his chest. He knew the master of the tower was observing him. He didn’t know because he could sense it, or had any magical artifact that warned him he was being spied on, he hadn’t even spotted anyone looking out of one of the craggy windows. The powerful enchantments were, as far as Madrick knew, were cast directly into each brick of the ‘crumbling’ tower’s construction. Those enchantments had resisted his domain’s passive ability to claim ownership of an area and while he could have pressed against the enchantments and likely broken through them, it simply wasn’t worth the effort. So, due to the interference of enchantments Madrick wasn’t able to actually sense where his opponent was or what they were doing.

No, the knowledge that he was being watched came purely from the fact that he had to be under observation of some kind. He’d been hounded by spirits the entire way here, why would they all just disappear? Unless… A slight frown creased his brow as he realized a possibility that had somehow not even crossed his mind until now. The tower’s master might have abandoned it… Shit.

Deciding he’d given enough time for any occupants to greet him, Madrick strode forward through the open door. His domain locked the entire tower down as soon as he entered.

Now that he was within, he could sense that no one else was within. There was a study at the very top of the tower which appeared to have been hastily ransacked. Desk drawers were ajar, the shelves were mostly cleared off with smudged dust suggesting objects which hadn’t been disturbed in a long time had been hastily swiped off. He could even sense the remnants of some strange mana aspect he hadn’t encountered before.

Irritated, Madrick made his way to the center of the staircase and leapt to the top, landing on the final platform with a soft ‘thunk’. While he could sense everything within his domain perfectly, it was still not a perfect substitute for his own direct senses. He was no scout archetype, able to watch a pair of gnats fornicate from a million kilometers away. Of course, had he wanted to walk such a path he certainly could have. Putting aside thoughts of annoying paths walked by old acquaintances, Madrick took in the room. It was exactly as he had sensed, except he’d missed a small detail with his domain’s sense. The floor had a formation carved into it, each line was less than a micrometer wide and maybe a milometer in depth. For anyone without tempered sight, it might as well not exist.

The enchanting profession wasn’t something Madrick had ever been interested in. However, he’d picked up plenty simply by living for as long as he had. The formation he was looking at was clearly for teleportation. It was actually quite similar to the trinket he’d used to drop his disciple into trouble on a doomed planet. That particular party trick of his was courtesy of a ring with a decoration reminiscent of a beast’s open jaws sitting on his left middle finger.

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Rolling his eyes, Madrick sent a mix of his mana aspects - A mix he thought of as his because I said so mana aspect. This particular mix of mana allowed him to activate pretty much any magical device, regardless of the device’s mana aspect requirements or any security measures put in place to prevent unauthorized individuals from using them. The only downside was that it was expensive for him to use. Activating the portal took about half of most of the mana aspects he cultivated.

The only aspects which were untouched were rage and his newest, blood drenched permafrost. It wasn’t that the because I said so aspect required the same amount of each of his mana aspects, so much as he happened to have ratios of each which roughly translated to requiring half of each.

The portal activated with a ‘SNAP’ as a bolt of lightning-like energy surged out of nowhere and struck him. The energy wrapped around Madrick in less than a millisecond and whisked him away. It was with great annoyance that he found himself standing within a public portal reception bay. A quick query to his UICI told him he’d arrived on the Thomas’ Planet. His lips twisted in scorn at the name of the planet, it was one of the worst named in the multiverse as far as he was concerned. Yet it was also a class one planet, barely behind Motrendi.

What was worse was the domain suppression he immediately felt. His domain was squeezed until it was pressed tightly against his skin. Unlike most of his recent destinations, Thomas’ Planet was populated by ranks far above his own current rank. A few thousand gods called the disgusting metropolis home. Retracting his domain to avoid the discomfort of it being suppressed, Madrick turned in a quick circle; scanning for anyone who looked like they may have been cooped up in a crumbling tower for a decade or two. Unsurprisingly, he found nothing.

“Fuuuuck” he let out in a furious groan. This had just gone from a fun romp across a barren planet trying to kill him, into a tedious investigation. He was going to have to go talk to whoever owned this reception bay and convince them to let him review their security footage of this bay for the last day or so… What an incredible waste of his time.

Getting on with it, Madrick strode out of the bay into a hallway which was simultaneously packed and rapidly moving. He joined the press of bodies seamlessly, he was sure most didn’t even notice someone had been added to the press of bodies. The transit tunnel the bay had lead into was a monstrosity of rusted chrome and LED lights flashing in neon colors. While he was mentally patting himself down every other second to ensure no one had been brazen enough to try and pickpocket him, Madrick did his best to ignore the annoying environment.

The sound, the lights, the motion, it was all awful. He hated planets like this. So called ‘techno planets’ were always bright, loud, smelly beehives just like this one. Each of his steps along the transit tunnel was matched to the speed of every other being’s pace as the expansive magi-tech ensured a standardized movement speed to avoid traffic. As a result, he barely put any effort into moving. Each step was more or less a slight shuffle. The transit tunnel interpreted it as a step and therefore moved him forward the appropriate amount to maintain his speed within the crowd.

Doing his absolute best to ignore the gratuitous advertisement which flashed in front of his eyes with literally every ‘step’, he entered his destination into his UICI. He simply continued taking shuffling steps until his stop came out, at which point he turned on his heel and stepped out of the transit tunnel. Although he had walked directly into a group of people, the transit system ensured everything moved just so, so that he was able to step onto the exit platform without colliding with anyone. Even if he had tried, the most he could have done was reach out and touch someone. The only real way to cause any kind of traffic within the transit tunnels was to physically restrain someone, even then it would only stop himself and the restrained party. Everyone else would be entirely unaffected.

The platform he stopped at had several advertisements for foods he hadn’t had in a long time, so he walked to one of the few vendors which was actually manned. A menu appeared within his UICI and placed his order. A creature with a disturbing number of tentacles prepared a dish which was reminiscent of a fusion between curry and beef n’ oats. He took the disposable container and spoon and went on his way, continuing to follow his UICI guidance system.

Now that had entered a concourse, he was able to see some of the dizzying infrastructure and architecture. He briefly glanced through the windows at the endless lines of packed buildings connected by transit tunnels, concourses, and thoroughfares. Although he’d never seen the planet from above, Madrick would hazard a guess that it looked something like a magi-tech circuit from above. Millions of lines, most of which connected a few huge junctions together, with any other connections appearing to be consequential rather than intentional.

It was to one of these huge junctions which Madrick headed. The first start of his this investigation would be to figure out who the portal reception bay he had arrived in was owned by and where they were based. He’d probably have to make some threats and perform a little old fashioned strong arming to actually get that information, rather than references to UICI virtual spaces and mailboxes.

Entering the infamous ‘plaza of insight’, which was essentially a misnamed and overinflated warehouse filled with information brokers, Madrick let his shoulders slump. He was good at everything but that didn’t mean he liked everything. Investigation was one of those things he didn’t like.