Canvas Town, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Sixthmonth, 1634 PTS
After his long confinement, Juen had finally been forced to leave the hospital ward due to his need to prepare for the upcoming mission. He would have preferred to stay longer, as he was aware that his recovery was not complete. It would never be complete, not unless he came up with a treatment method.
He had repeatedly turned down offers to let one of the clan’s spiritual doctors treat him. They would be able to assist with his condition, but Juen was well aware that he could command the total loyalty of any of them. If one of the doctors were to find out about the true nature of his condition, Juen’s position in the clan would rapidly decline.
Juen decided that he was fortunate, though. The affliction was dangerous, incredibly so, but it was not crippling. So long as he split part of his attention to manage the cycling of his meridians, the sanguine miasma could be kept in check, restricted to only the area of his head and neck. The pain was immeasurable, but Juen was able to operate semi-normally with the use of painkillers. His consumption of the drugs was high, but as a genesis practitioner, Juen was resistant to the side effects.
If anyone asked, he could pretend to have developed an addiction to the drugs from his time in the hospital. It was a flimsy excuse, but also the most likely explanation for his behavior. Unless someone were to inspect his meridians, nobody would be able to tell what his true state was, and Juen intended to keep it that way.
The first thing that Juen had done after leaving his room was to inspect the clan’s archives, curious to discover whether there was any sort of purification method hidden inside. Unfortunately for him, his luck was poor. Meridian purification, and other similar methods, were relegated to the domain of myths and science fiction.
If only, he thought, there had been a race which excelled in sanguine technology the way the Celans did with flickering. Had that been the case, his prospects for restoring his path would have been far brighter.
He was beginning to face the unhappy future that most likely awaited him at this point. Not only would he be trapped in an unorthodox path for life, he would also have to suffer through the trials of an unorthodox existence- living on the edge of the blade, one’s life span measured in but a fraction of the one he had anticipated. He was only thirty-eight: still quite young for a spirit refiner.
Juen could still feel his powerful vitality, enough for perhaps another two centuries if all went well. Plenty of time to reach the immortal level, if fate and the gods smiled upon him.
But if he remained on the unorthodox path, none of this bright future would await him. His health would dull and weaken, the conflicting energies within tearing him apart from the inside out.
It was the end facing every orthodox practitioner, aside from those who ascended or died in battle. They were cursed, afflicted by abilities which had been denied by god.
Juen sighed, his headache intensifying due to the brightness of the domelight. He had returned to his home, a nice place adjacent to the sect that he had been gifted by his father when he came of age. It had been modified decades ago, when the headquarters was installed, and had something that was very rare for Tseludia: an outward facing window with a view that showed across to the next stack, rather than simply a street immediately past the glass pane.
On any other day, he might have appreciated the view, but today, Juen simply rubbed his aching forehead.
During the time he had been in recovery, Juen had determined the extent to which his cerebral technique had been warped from to the infusion of the sanguine miasma. The technique, which enhanced his body’s senses, now only had limited effects on his physical body. Instead, it enhanced the senses of his soul. By performing the technique, he could scale up the sense to a ludicrous extent, and sense even the slightest details of the exterior of the souls around him.
It was disconcerting to have this least developed sense enhanced in such a way, but Juen could see how it might be useful for certain purposes. It would allow him to immediately sense the location of those around him, even with his eyes closed, and determine whether anyone he met was in the spirit refinement realm or not.
However, he still much preferred his own ability, of course. There was a limit to the usefulness of soul senses. No matter their strength, they became less precise over long distances, and at a short distance he would rather just use his eyes.
He had chosen his own cerebral technique because he had felt it was both useful and suitable for himself, and this new ability, while unique and interesting, was not worth the pain and danger its acquisition had brought to him.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Thinking of danger brought Juen’s mind back to his most pressing issue, the upcoming attack he would lead. He reached for the nearby table, where his terminal had been perched precariously, and opened up the file which contained the mission’s exact details.
The orders were simple. The three factories in question were all suspected to either be owned by the Heirs or to have ties with them, and it did not particularly matter which of the two it was. His forces were to thoroughly destroy them, such that it would actually be cheaper to build a new factory in a different area than to rebuild. This part of the mission was an easy task, as he was simply able to request for explosives for this purpose. Simply making it in and out was the larger issue, as all three sites were located firmly within Little Celah, and were not particularly close to one another.
One of the factories had recently developed ties to the Sikreis Queendom, which the analysts saw as strong evidence that the company running it was likely a subordinate organization to the Heirs. If not, then they were simply business partners. Either way, it would benefit the clan to destroy it. The longer the war went on, the greater the Celan’s advantage grew, and the weaker the clan became. Whatever was being constructed there, the analysts firmly believed it had something to do with the war effort, so it would have to go.
The second was more nebulous, a factory whose production had substantially decreased over the past two weeks, while their importation of materials had only grown, a matter which was so specific that Juen questioned how the informants had even uncovered it. They claimed that the dip in production was likely them producing products to sell directly to the Celans. While the evidence was certainly suspicious, Juen found it quite lacking in terms of actionable intel. Perhaps, he thought, it was because they were growing desperate due to the stalemate. The Celans seemed happy to continue this current state, but only, he suspected, because the odds were that it would eventually be overturned in their favor if enough time passed. No matter what, if the war was to carry on over time, the clan needed to hit their enemy’s industrial capabilities.
The final factory’s complicitness was the most clear. Akher Industrial Solutions had, according to the information, been rumored for years to have ties to the Heirs. According to a recent tip, it seemed that their partnership had grown closer in recent years. This third factory was one of Akher’s smaller locations, and according to the tip-off it was currently manufacturing munitions for the Celans.
The three factories, to varying extents, were all likely important to the Celans, and Juen had no doubt that they would be guarded, perhaps even by the Heirs themselves and their machines of war.
He wondered whether he could force Sulno, or perhaps Keitel to assist him. Juen was wary of attacking deep inside Celan territory without another spirit refiner backing him up. Even backed up by such a large allied force, Wei had died to one of the organization’s oversized machines.
It was not that Juen lacked confidence in handling one of the machines on his own. However, he did have concerns about his ability to face off against multiple at the same time. That was the thing about enforcers- because anyone could pilot one of the machines, the Celans were able to train them as career soldiers, and ensure they had far greater group tactics than the clan’s forces could hope for, at the higher levels. A spirit refiner was an important figure, too important to spend all their time training on combat.
Because of this concern, as well as to reduce the risks of acquiring further injuries and worsening his condition, Juen had decided that he would take another spirit refiner with him for the mission, if possible.
The Supreme Elder, the Matriarch, and Karie were all not legitimate choices, which left only Laoin, Keitel, Sulno, and finally Heina, who was also out of the question, as one of Lorelei’s firmest supporters. Sulno would likely be busy with his medicines, and would certainly refuse. Despite his claimed support for Juen’s candidacy, the man was a coward, and always refused to go into combat unless it was an order by his superiors. This was a position that Juen had yet to achieve.
Keitel was the sort of man who had become strong due to his intense fear of those who were stronger than him. Currently, he believed that was only the Matriarch and the Supreme Elder, and the palpable intimidation that occurred between him and the Matriarch at every council meeting was palpable. More importantly, however, was the fact that Keitel was a devout Ceirran, and thus someone who Juen was capable of manipulating.
Laoin, on the other hand, had killed many on the battlefield, but his pride made him likely to refuse, if Juen were to ask him to assist at this time, he would likely say that he was busy, and blow him off. For all Juen knew, it might be true that the man simply was busy.
In the end, he thought, there was nothing he could do but request their presence, and accept that his odds of success were low.
Juen sighed, standing up and ambling his way to his small kitchen, one hand still resting on his forehead. He opened the fridge and grabbed an ale out, before swiftly returning to his seat by the desk.
He quietly chuckled to himself as he sat, and pulled another pill from a pocket before swallowing it with a mouthful of booze.
Akher Industrial Solutions: [One of the largest corporations of Tseludia owned and operated entirely by Celans, AIS is ultimately a machine company. Their main businesses are the construction of assembly line mechanical technology, as well as their contract to supply the government with the cleaning robots that can be found all across the city. The company is quite successful, in part due to the assistance it had continually received from its largest ‘Investor’, over the course of its operation. Between its ties to both the government and organized crime, AIS is widely believed to be a contender for the 'next generation of major Tseludian companies in the tech industry. For an alien organization like Akher, this status is extremely uncommon.]