Ch 7

“What to do today, what to do...” I mumbled to myself. “Let’s see, it is day four already, and last night, I dropped my new Armour off with Gerty and had my measurements taken for the resizing, which can be done by one of her apprentices and should be ready by tomorrow. What do I want to achieve by the time I leave here? Hmmm. I need to at least begin to resolve this region’s Golden Tiger Company problem, whether I personally remove them or give Tenku or The Lost Company enough information to deal with it themselves. Though with my actions yesterday, they may bring that trouble to my doorstep before that happens.”
“I no longer have the need to purchase a good spatial ring. So, I could see if the alchemist in this area is good enough in order to make me the potions useful in tempering my body; I know they will be down the line, but are they yet? The price of materials from the shop would be costly, plus hiring the alchemist... I could get some of the materials from rarer aberrants; I could do that to save some on the costs. However, I should probably just wait and go to one of the experts in the main region, so I know the elixir is made properly. As for the Golden Tiger company, if they don’t come after me today, they definitely will tomorrow when I wear that weasel’s armor. They definitely have weapons and several higher-grade people; now I’ve got some throwing knives from yesterday’s activities, but should I wait to try and take them down until I’m armored, too?”
——-
Walking out of the city’s southern district, going down several levels toward the central zone and then to the city’s exit, I overheard someone saying.
“Is that him?” I heard someone say.

“I think so. They say he has been bringing some high-quality chimeras into that weapon smiths shop recently. In order to do that, he must be pretty high grade.” Another man said.

“Go ask him,” the first man said.

“No, you.”

“I said it fir-“

Making it fifty feet to the pair in the time they were talking about me, I cut them off. “Can I help you, gentleman?”

“H-hello, yes, I’m Steven McAdams, and my friend here, Horrah Lucas. We are members of the organization Tenku, and we were wondering if you’d be interested in joining.” Steven started out, clearly intent on continuing his pitch of the organization, only to be interrupted by the fledgling warrior next to him.

“We get a bonus if we bring in promising recruits.” Horrah squeezed in. Which earned the man an elbow to the side.

“Ah, well, let’s see if we can talk to your regional leaders and see what happens from there. If I remember correctly, their office was on the corner of Kowalski and Dorban Street; come on, let’s go.” I told them.

“Really? Sweet!” Horrah said.

“U-um, I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. That’s- that’s not where new recruits go. That is the main branch headquarters. We have never even been there. We just joined within the last year. You’re an A-Typ, right? How do you even know of that place? You know you won’t be able to see them. I get it, really, I understand you’re powerful A-Typ to take out those rhilons, but there are people worlds above us newbies. We can’t just march in there and see them.”

“It won’t be bad, trust me on this,” I told him.

Weaving his way through the burgeoning city, which he knew like the back of his hand, the trio quickly reached their destination.
I walked into the 3 story building that had been made from concrete blocks cut from nearby fallen skyscrapers. They walked into a lobby reminiscent of time back on earth, perhaps barebones with no windows, but reminiscent all the same.

“Hello, how can I help you?” A short and petite woman smiled at them; she had light blue eyes and long dark hair that flowed past her pale shoulders. Despite playing the part of a secretary, Emilia Robertson was actually somebody I remember from my past life. At this point in time, she was probably only a solid mid-B grade, but when I left for the central region last time, she was one of the leading powerhouses for this region in the Tenku group, edging past mid-A grade. Eventually, he took the second-highest position in the largest organization in the entire region.

Not expecting to see Emilia here because I didn’t remember ever hearing about her for several years, I was slightly startled.
Acting like nothing happened, I started, “Yes, I’d like to speak to Tywin. Tell him I have critical information on the Golden Tiger Company that he wants to hear.”

“I will pass it along, though I cannot promise anything or how soon he would be willing to speak. I believe he would be interested to hear your information on them. They have been a pain for us in this region and for Tywin personally lately.” The petite woman said, then walked through the door to the left of her desk.
While waiting for Emilia to return from talking with Tywin, Steven asked, “Y-you’re not talking about us, right? We have nothing to do with them.”

“What? No. I just hadn’t made up my mind about whether or not to go to an organization with the information; you two just helped me make a decision.” I explained to them. “So what’s you guys’ plan for the future? Got any ideas for the direction of your builds?”

“Builds?” Horrah asked.

“You know, what abilities you plan on getting for the future and all that,” I explained.

“Oh, I plan on keeping on my path of a pure strength and endurance warrior,” Horrah said. “Right now, I’m wielding this big double-bearded axe like a big fantasy Viking. My first purchase was Expanded Musculature. It allows me to expend my stamina more rapidly in order to increase my strength by a good amount.”

“Yeah, the stronger his muscles are, the higher his strength grows when he uses it. The freak of nature that he is, he turns into the Hulk when he fights. Muscles pumping up and everything, somehow, he has been able to break the supernatural limitation on his natural strength since we got here a while back. He had to buy some special armor that grows with him so he didn’t ruin another set. That alone cost him all his leftover points from the initialization and several months of hunting with our last group.” Steven added while leaning back in his chair, trying to find a comfortable position.

“He must be especially receptive towards the energy of the layer for him to do that naturally. Everyone increases their stats naturally through training, especially when fighting in intense situations. However, there are massive bottlenecks; going from the human limit of 20 to the supernatural is one of those bottlenecks it is pretty damn impressive and shows dedication. Though it’s just the first step on a long road. With how receptive you are to the nascent energy of the layer, being able to naturally pass the threshold so quickly, I could not recommend anything else besides the Qui cultivation ability, probably earth or stone aspected because of your strength focus. Gonna be honest, though I recommend it to everyone. It is one of the abilities you can purchase once at the base ability, which is called the Spirit Seed realm; then, you can progress its power through training and actively absorbing that same nascent energy that allowed you to break through the human limit bottleneck. Another ability choice you should look into is one called Enlarge, a semi-transformation type ability that does exactly what it says. You gain mass swelling size. You could easily double in size as you learn how to control the ability. I imagine it would be synergistic with Expanded Musculature, too, which would make you a brutal up-front fighter to face if you got all three of those abilities working together.”

“Damn, I’ve heard about cultivation but not in much detail. But just thinking about that other ability, Enlarge, gets me all kinds of pumped up,” exclaimed Horrah

“So as the authority on abilities, what would go well with my telekinetic-focused, what did you call it? build?” Steven started excitedly, only to be interrupted by the petite B grade secretary walking from the back offices.

“You, in the mask, can come back with me.”

“I guess I will see you guys later. It was nice meeting both of you.” I said, calling back over my shoulder as I walked through the doorway.
I was led into an office with several clearly shop-purchased items, an excellently crafted dark wooden desk, chairs, and a rug to cover the concrete flooring. Behind the desk was a man who would look more at home in a body-building competition than working to sign papers like he was, with dark tanned skin, bulging muscles on a six-foot-seven-inch frame, a squared jaw, and short dark brown hair. His massive size was caused by the limited Titan bloodline ability, costing 165k in the shop. The man I recognized as Tywin, the leader of Tenku for this region and an A grade warrior, inspected me as I walked through the door to his office.

“So, Emilia here tells me that you have some important information about a specific pain in the ass for our region? Tell me what you got.”

“This will take a while; got some paper to write it all down? Oh, and all of this information is contingent on you taking a shop oath that I can be a major player in the takedown of the Golden Tigers... and that it happens before the end of the week.” I finished in a deadpan tone.

“You’re demanding a Shop oath from me? You know who you’ve come to, right? You know what the shop takes from you if you fail to follow through with an oath?” Tywin quizzed me skeptically.

“This information is worth the cost of an oath, but fine, I will trust that you will see its value when I have explained it all. I know your reputation, and you should be much more amenable after everything is unpacked for you.”

“We will see. But if you have done all of this and are just yanking my chain, know that you will be blacklisted from everything to do with Tenku, from the shop swap markets to joining the organization and everything in between.”

“We have a deal then,” I told him and sat down in the chair in front of his desk in preparation to write down everything I remembered about the Golden Tiger Company and their takedown in my previous life.

“So, let’s start with the basics on Nate the Great and the captain of his company, Korath. Both Nate and Korath are A grade threats. Nate is the same grade as you, Tywin, and is slightly past mid A grade, and Korath is an early A grade. He is a bulky man who wears thick, heavy armor and a helmet; he has an ability to conserve momentum once he gets going. He wields a heavy mace and has the ability to increase its density while following through on the swing. The ability is synergistic with the previously mentioned Momentum Catalyst ability. Any hit by his ability is absolutely crushing. He should also have the Qui cultivation at peak spirit seed rank aspected in density.” I started out.

“Nate the Great, on the other hand, focuses on elemental attacks. His favorite is ice, and he focuses on its slowing and debilitating long-range attacks. However, just because he focuses on long-range attacks does not mean the answer is automatically get into hand-to-hand combat. If he gets his hands on you, that Elemental ice ability combined with his Jotun bloodline can freeze off limbs in seconds unless you have a resistance like your Titan Bloodline... No one else should face Nate but you because of the required resistances to his freezing effects. Having extra ranged attackers popping shots at him could be beneficial. Though only if they are out of his ranged attacks by a large margin, that extra margin because his 1st rank Qui cultivation ability would allow him to close the on any ranged opponents quickly enough to freeze them with his own elemental attacks from range.”

“Korath’s main man Immeth is no longer a threat, he was taken down yesterday. That leaves the majority of the enemies we will have to face as mid b grade and below. There should be a few more B grades and a plethora of C grade fighters. An organization as large as Tenku in this region should be able to easily muster the men to match the Company man for man.”

“If you get me a map of the region, I can Pinpoint the exact location of these murder’s hideout so we can start making the plan to take these guys down.” I finished.