Lander
Lander Haxor was feeling more fear than he ever had in his life. The Violet Mountain Lord had killed jinn able to advance to C rank in the Carium Galaxy Cluster for hundreds of thousands of years without trouble. But this time he’d messed up, killing the ancestor of an A rank’s personal apprentice and the teacher of an A rank force’s prince.
According to Sarra Lin’Talic, the Violet Mountain Lord was going to die. And, honestly, Lander didn’t care about that much. The old man’s death would greatly weaken the sect, but Lander himself wouldn’t lose much even if the entire sect were to fall apart.
The problem was the Violet Mountain Lord had made him a potential target as well. The A rank force’s prince might decide to personally see to the end of the Violet Mountain Sect, and, in that case, his own power and status wouldn’t matter at all. He’d just be one of the main targets.
It didn’t even matter which A rank force it was. Even the Forest Cauldron, a peaceful mercantile organization, would respond with extreme prejudice if a B rank force’s head killed one of their D ranks for no reason, let alone the ancestor of one of their core members and the teacher of another.
That was the difference between A rank and B rank forces.
The Violet Mountain Sect only existed because the five nearest A rank forces didn’t see the materials generated by the Violet Mountain Blessed Land as important enough to fight each other over, so they allowed the Violet Mountain Sect to control the ancient artifact and keep 4.16% of the wealth it generated, the five forces splitting the rest.
Were the Violet Mountain Sect to be completely annihilated by another A rank force, so long as the blessed land wasn’t touched, none of the five would really care, likely just creating a new force to replace them and only being mildly annoyed with the perpetrator.
“And you’re sure Ka’Dravone’s descendant is the apprentice of an A rank?” The Violet Mountain Lord was projected as a hologram into the meeting room where 17 elders of the Violet Mountain Sect were gathered, and he couldn’t seem to decide whether to be afraid or angry.
“Almost certainly.” Lander nodded. “She also seems absolutely certain that you are going to die.”
“Which force?” The Violet Mountain Lord almost growled out the words.
“I’m not sure. And, given your actions, the girl has no reason to tell us.”
“Yet she’s threatening us!” The Violet Mountain Lord glared at him, but Lander didn’t allow the man’s rage to phase him.
Instead, he took a deep breath. “No, sir.” Lander looked directly into the eyes of the Violet Mountain Lord. “She made a statement of fact. And, in her mind, you are already dead.”
“Just wait a day.” The Violet Mountain Lord’s eyes moved from Lander to the other C ranks and then back to Lander. “In under 24 hours, the teleportation platform here will be fixed and I’ll return to the sect, protected by our formations. Let’s see who kills me then.”
“Sir.” One of the other elders, Weselin Vara, a lightning mage and the strongest combatant in the sect after the Violet Mountain Lord, cleared his throat slightly. “Please don’t.”
“What?” This time the Violet Mountain Lord definitely did growl.
“By coming back, you’d be dragging the entire sect into your personal—”
All the mana in the Violet Mountain Blessed Land shook slightly at that moment and the holographic projection of the Violet Mountain Lord immediately dissipated, like the connection had been cut off.
“What just happened?” Eminar Kelmin asked for all of them.
But Lander wasn’t focused on the surge of mana, but on the fact his connection to the universal soul net had just been cut off. As the sect’s lawyer, he was always at least partially connected to the soul net in case any urgent messages were sent, but now that connection was severed.
The Violet Mountain Sect’s capital planet, as the center of the Carium Galaxy Cluster, held the main soul net hub for about a third of their entire Territory, located right next to the planet’s teleportation platform, and in Lander’s entire life he’d never lost connection to it. While on the capital planet, or in the blessed land, it was basically impossible unless the hub stopped working for some reason or someone was blocking it from functioning.
But damaging the hub would take a full force C rank blast from right next to it, something impossible with all the sect’s C ranks in the room with him other than Kalin Hewin, who they’d locked up in chains a couple days ago. And blocking its function wasn’t something even a C rank could do.
Several of the elders jumped up from their seats to investigate, but Lander just sat there.
If an A rank force had really arrived to deal with them, there was nothing he could do, nothing any of them could do. And, the more he acknowledged that, the less likely he was to die.
“Elders! Elders!” About half a minute later, one of the sect’s human D ranks—Lander didn’t remember his name—ran in. “The teleportation platform and the soul net hub. They’re gone. Someone blew them up!”
“What?” Eminar Kelmin and most of the remaining elders left the room to go see the destruction themselves, and Lander, realizing the man had said nothing about an external force invading, followed them, leaving the blessed land through its always open portal.
They arrived on the outskirts of where the main city of the planet was located. But all they could see was destruction.
Flying up into the air and looking down, it was pretty obvious what had happened. An explosion had occurred right near the teleportation platform—given the exact center of the destruction, probably from inside the hotel the Violet Mountain Lord owned—one with the power of a full strength C rank attack.
“We’re isolated.” Lander looked up at the sky as he and the others flew back to the ground. “Just like the Violet Mountain Lord, we’ve been trapped.”
For several minutes, he just stood there, looking up at the sky. But then he realized something. The destruction in the city was perfectly circular, meaning it likely came from a bomb, not an attack. And it was incredibly unlikely a C rank or higher could have arrived on the planet in the last four days without their defenses triggering.
Looking closer at the destruction, it also quickly became obvious there was no mana signature in the air, something he’d expect if a C rank actually attacked, and there was no radiation either.
“Someone used an antimatter bomb against us?”
It didn’t make sense. Something like an antimatter bomb couldn’t be brought through the teleportation platform, as the antimatter would have reacted to the teleportation and blown up on the other side.
“Find out if anything odd happened in the city in the days before the explosion.” He turned to look at the gathered elders and D rank disciples. “Also check over everyone who teleported in during the last four days.”
Having given his orders, Lander then brought Weselin with him and headed to where Sarra Lin’Talic had been politely detained.
When they arrived, however, the three D ranks assigned to watch over her were nowhere to be found and Sarra Lin’Talic was gone.
Then it took them several minutes and quite a few orders to find one of the three D ranks outside the sect looking through the destruction.
“Why did you abandon your post, Camal?” Weselin asked the man, far more imposing than when he’d been talking to the Violet Mountain Lord.
“Abandon my post?” The D rank looked at Weselin and Lander with a look of sorrow on his face, which was also matched by his aura. “What do you mean?”
“You were ordered to guard Ms. Lin’Talic.” Lander spoke calmly, aware the man was in an emotional state and getting angry would only slow the conversation down. “Now she’s missing.”
“Elder Nivali came to talk to her right after the explosion and dismissed us.” The man looked at the two of them with a confused expression. “Were we not supposed to follow the elder’s orders?”
Lander and Weselin looked at each other. Nari Nivali, the sect’s death mage elder, had been with them at the time, so something else was going on.
“Ms. Lin’Talic has a Violet Mountain Mark,” Lander was quick to point out. “Let’s find her location through that.”
With the soul net down, the automatic tracking of the mountain marks was broken, so he and Weselin instead headed to the large ornate hall on the top floor of one of the Violet Mountain Blessed Land’s many skyscrapers where the Bond Holding Orb was usually stored.
The orb was a special C rank artifact with two main purposes. One, it could create marks on a cultivator’s soul which would allow for tracking, health monitoring, and other features when integrated with the soul net. And, two, when bonded to a cultivator, in this case Lander, it could allow the cultivator to set up a set of contracts which could then automatically be created between a cultivator and the artifact’s owner while also enabling more contracts than its owner’s soul would normally allow.
This was how Lander was able to maintain contracts with the more than 37 billion members of the Violet Mountain Sect.
But, when they arrived in the hall, the Bond Holding Orb was gone. And, when they asked the three guards who were still in the room where it was, they answered with confusion that Elder Nivali had taken it.
Then, over the next few hours, Lander had it confirmed no foreign C ranks had teleported to the planet. But a seemingly G rank individual with an E rank monster companion had arrived the same day the Violet Mountain Lord had killed Epecteos Ka’Dravone, almost certainly the Heavenly Spark Soul King and his companion. And they had rented a room in the hotel where the explosion had emanated from, a hotel which had been draining a massive amount of energy from the planet’s network before the explosion.
Worst of all, however, Sarra Lin’Talic—who he was now pretty sure had the ability to change her appearance and aura to match even a sect elder—had declared war against the Violet Mountain Sect with her force only a matter of seconds after the two had arrived.
“Are we effectively losing a war against three E ranks?” Weselin asked when they learned the timing.
“They only blew up one of our cities,” Lander almost growled out. “Even if they’re from an A rank force, it’s not like three E ranks could truly damage our foundation.”
That was what he thought as the entire sect moved into motion to search for the three, the process difficult as tracking the Bond Holding Orb was impossible while it was held in a spatial storage device, but then the reports of the plagues started and, checking his own body, Lander realized he’d been infected by over seven different varieties of magical diseases without even noticing.
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