26 – Powerful figures

Three figures walked along the grassy plain at the foot of a majestically beautiful hill, painted by the midday sun. Although, at a closer look, one might say that they were moving rather than walking, their jerky motions betraying a hint as to what was happening to them. Their brains had been hijacked without much finesse by nanomachines remotely controlled from somewhere via radio. That somewhere just so happened to be with them: a strange person, a man paler than night who was leisurely walking right behind the three.

His face was smooth and his skin silk, and the shapes of his body were of neither man or woman.

“It’s all about perspective,” he said to the elf walking beside him. He was not big of stature and certainly not large, but somehow the elf still looked thin and frail next to him. “Last time, or maybe two times ago – I can’t quite remember – I forgot to think about what Praetor said in quotation marks. It was quite a mess I assure you, his thoughts getting mixed up with mine.”

“Rich men problems.” The elf said.

“Now now Vyt,” Edmund waved him away. “As if you weren’t one of those, of the elite, back in the day.”

“I’ve changed.”

Edmund stared at him. The elf shrank. “Come on, swear now and forever that you wouldn’t go back to your old ways right now, if you could.”

The elf said nothing. His eyes were unfocused, staring into the distance.

Edmund looked at the empty plains. “We’re here.” He said.

Praetor, send Bucky to pick these three up. Add them to project living battery.

“Understood, sir.”

Don’t make them dream, they don’t deserve it. Wipe them. Use their brains as processors.

“Okay, I understand.”

Projections?

“1000H per hour each. Sir.”

Edmund whistled. Add that to his current reserve of over 7k Humes, he was almost ready to roll. Before going back, he ordered the AI to scour the brains of the captives before wiping them, in search of information about what happened to the girls. He was sure they had something to do with it, he only needed the proof and the information. It irked him that no matter how far into C-rank they were, he could only extract exactly 1k Humes from any single person at that rank, but free money was free money.

They strolled back towards the city, and Edmund moved with the same leisurely pace he had going out, as if there were no worries in his mind. The grass below his feet was sharp and long, but he barely paid it any mind. Each blade of grass parted before his foot ever touched the ground, stones disappeared and depressions and little obstacles were smoothed out before he encountered them. However, as much pleasant this journey was on the outside, inside he was feeling quite different. His mind was laser focused on one thing and one thing only.

He returned to the city. The guards at the gate had only nodded at him when he passed through, as if all the killing he had done was just a dream that never quite happened. He passed through the main street, but he didn’t bother to take the sight in, nor did he mind the shops, the smells, the strange people. A boy with fluffy cat ears passed by and was ignored.

The only stuff that registered in his mind was the bothersome stuff. Behind him, someone was yelling in a high voice and pushing people to the side to pass ahead of them, and the street was quite crowded so when it came to him Edmund was pushed too; his response was to shove the offending man to the side with his mind, against a wall so hard that he slumped to the ground unconscious.

He kept going despite the various looks of the people around them.

“Come on!”

Vytryat struggled to weave through the crowd. He was panting and struggling.

Edmund sighed audibly. He turned around, hands on his hips, and waited.

“Sorry!” Said the elf.

Edmund shook his head. “No, it’s my fault.” He rolled his eyes. He was, unconsciously, using his power to make the people around him subtly move out of the way.

With a snap of his fingers, the sea of people populating the main road split apart creating a large corridor in the middle. Only a few people remained, who at first stopped to look at what had happened, but then resumed walking towards the adventurers guild like nothing had happened.

“There.”

“Thanks…”

They made their way to the sandy field before the entrance to the guild. Some of the people who were also going there took a good look at them, especially those who were on the street in front and immediately behind them. He nodded to them, putting on a smile. Some nodded back, others scoffed, others just turned around and vanished in the dark passage and into the guild. Edmund excused himself and went in, telling Vytryat that he would be coming back for him once he was done.

“They died.” Edmund approached the young woman at the counter, the very same one he had bullied earlier. “Inexplicably, inescapably dead. Nothing I could do.”

She stared at him. He wondered, for a moment, if the fear he could so clearly read in her low C-rank aura was due to the mysterious tripling of the power of his own aura. Still very much a a low C-rank one, but still also strangely three times stronger. He calculated, and Praetor seemed to confirm, that every rank was a thousand times stronger than the previous, meaning that he was now 0.4% on the way to B-rank.

 

Sure, he could dump all his stored dream particles into the pipeline and grow exponentially but… what if someone jumped him while he was most vulnerable? He had around 30k in storage right now, meaning that a weak B-ranker could still step on him like he was a weak ant. In fact, he noticed, he could be killed with just a whiff of aura if one such monster wanted him dead. Granted, he had trump cards but… in a world like this, there had to be something or someone making sure high rankers didn’t go around on a rampage. Or that those who did didn’t last long and made for a good example.

If that were true then he better watch his actions, try not to overstep too much. His power set was strange, granted, but power was power and he didn’t have all that much yet.

“They… died?” Asked the girl, echoing him.

He nodded. “Right before my eyes.”

She gulped. “Was it… monsters?”

“Nu-hu. They just dropped dead on the spot. I took the liberty of dealing with the bodies, no need to thank me.” He said, all serious, and nodded.

“I… see. Thank you for your… help.”

“No worries! I came in juuuust to report that. Now, if you allow me, I’m off. Please do tell the master that I was, of course, right. But no ill sentiments, in fact all the opposite, I look forward to working with him. Tell him that whatever he needs done, my team and I are all in for it.”

She looked around and behind him, but saw nobody. “I see. I will tell him that.”

Edmund leaned in. “Also tell him that I need an adventurer card or token or whatever issued, thank you.” He whispered.

He turned around, then spun on his heel and leaned in. He playfully picked up a small square of yellowing paper that was on her desk with a twirl of his fingers without touching it and began to shred it into little parallel strips. She stared at it, sweating.

“Also, how much longer is that S-ranker going to follow me with his aura? It’s getting rather annoying.”

Her eyes widened. “An S-ranker here, in Torchback?” She stammered.

He nodded. “Yes, I first sensed him yesterday when I came here and was led upstairs by— oh, here he is.”

The guild master appeared, as if summoned, at the top of the stairway leading up to his office. He led Edmund up the stairs, but then instead of taking the turn to his office he kept going down the corridor and through several weird turns that didn’t match what Edmund thought the geometry of this place was supposed to be. The guild building was large from the outside, even more so if space was warped as it seemed to be, however most of it was not accessible to the public. No amount of Humes revealed what was in there, which meant that the towers and many rooms visible from the sea of sand outside were hiding secrets. Eventually they came to a small dusty room atop a tower, wooden beams and bricks walls adorning a lit fireplace.

The master sat on a chair, and sighed. He brought up the matter of the S-rank, revealing that he had been eavesdropping ever since Edmund had approached the clerk downstairs.

“Are you sure about that?”

Edmund nodded.

“Here. In Torchback.” His stare was piercing, behind the glasses. His A rank pressed on Edmund.

“Yes,” Edmund said to the repetition of the same words the clerk had said. “Here, in Torchback.”

“Couldn’t you be wrong? You have never seen an S-ranker.”

He shook his head. “No. Trust me, I am not wrong. I asked is that guy an S-rank? And I was told yes by the very fabric of reality.”

The guild master nodded. “I see.”

“I must say, he was not as impressive as I thought an S-ranker would be. Or I would say that, if not for the fact that he was a thousand thousand thousand times as strong as me right now, give or take.”

The master grunted. “I didn’t even feel the slightest disturbance. How did you…”

“Trade secret.” He leaned on the table. “Quite deserving of that adventurer token, am I not?”

“Yes,” the man adjusted his gold rimmed glasses. “You are. And I can see why you didn’t have any, with your strange aura. Very strange aura.”

Edmund looked out the small window for a moment. “He left.”

The guild master tilted his head. “The S-ranker?”

“Yes,” Edmund said. From here, the master looked like Santa Claus.

***

Edmund rested his head against the wall, eyeing the people walking in and out of the café, while sipping at his hot drink. It was some sort of cocoa coffee, quite strange, but not too bad after he corrected its taste with his magic just a little bit. With a sleigh of hand, several iron coins materialized hidden in the palm of his hand, and he left them in a small stack on the table. The bartender nodded.

Those should be enough.

“They are,” said Praetor, “I took the liberty of analyzing the currency system after you asked me to come up with a way to replicate the coins.”

Man, to think I am down to using literal god-like reality bending powers to perform a little money duping glitch. Sorry, go on.

“Iron coins are the base currency. From there, every other coin is a thousand times more valuable than the previous. So far, I have seen iron, copper, silver and gold.”

Perfect.

He gathered some Humes in the palm of his hand, then frowned as they dissipated in the air. For a moment, there was a void of magic around him that was quickly replenished by the surrounding environment.

It didn’t work.

“I’m sorry sir. It appears that gold coins are slightly magical. You cannot make them.”

Strolling down the main road,

Edmund walked slower and slower, until he was standing still and holding his head with his hands. “Fuuuuuuck, what a day!” Then he looked around briefly and his eyes went wide. “I forgot to pick up Vyt!”

“Excuse me sir!” A voice said from behind. When he turned, he saw that there were several soldiers in a row several meters away, and a single person standing next to him. The person was not armored, but didn’t need to be. Edmund acknowledged the composed and quite ordered mid C-rank aura with a mental sigh. “If you could come with me please.”