TRIGGER: Mentions of sexual assault, ie rape.
“So they have, what? Nearly a hundred guys stationed out in the middle of nowhere and we’re supposed to handle all of them without backup? And even worse, they know we’re coming. Hells, they could be back today with a force of fifty. We did a good job handling a dozen or so of them, but I don’t like our chances beyond that.” Jazz asked.
Quietly, I agreed with him. Against a limited number of them, we could deal with that all day. But even the three of us working together wouldn’t be able to take out 40 or 50 of them.
“We’ll just need to be careful then,” Lea said, perhaps a little too optimistically.
“Careful? Being careful would mean tactically withdrawing at this point in time and coming back with a larger force. Aiming to tackle this by ourselves is the opposite of being careful,” Jazz was starting to have a hard time controlling his temper going by the way his eye was starting to twitch.
“Regardless of what we’d like to do, we’re going to have to figure it out on our own. The NSA doesn’t have any extra members to throw at this problem, even if it is an international bandit group.”
Jazz scowled. I was feeling indecisive about this. Jazz was right in that the safe option would be to try and get reinforcements. But I also wanted to use their bodies for human experimentation and also for class levels.
Speaking of which, I hadn’t properly looked at the class levels I had gotten. I pushed off the task onto one of my many minds and allowed them to look through it.
‘Ping’ [Mage of the Storm] Has leveled 1 > 3
‘Ping’ [Blade of Lightning] Has leveled 1 > 3
‘Ping’ [Nature’s Enforcer] Has leveled 1 > 2
‘Ping’ [Identify] Has leveled 41 > 42
‘Ping’ [Rest] Has leveled 30 > 31
‘Ping’ [Mana Sense] Has leveled 7 > 12
‘Ping’ [Electric Sense] Has leveled 10 > 15
‘Ping’ [Sword Expert] Has leveled 13 > 16
‘Ping’ [Martial Technique] Has leveled 2 > 4
‘Ping’ [Wood Manipulation] Has leveled 13 > 18
‘Ping’ [Electric Manipulation] Has leveled 9 > 13
‘Ping’ [Accelerated Thoughts] Has leveled 11 > 14
‘Ping’ [Parallel Minds] Has leveled 47 > 49
I was surprised to see that [Martial Technique] had leveled as well. Normally that only leveled up when I was doing punches and kicks. I hadn’t done a whole lot of that during the fight. Maybe it passively collected experience from my sword technique skill? Technically that was a martial skill, so it would fall into a similar category.
Well, I certainly wasn’t complaining.
I also had a couple of ability points to spend now! Well, actually I had 25 that I could spend once to level a single enhancement. But it was something. Every increase in power was helpful.
Name: Alexander King
Ability Points: 37
Tier 3 Class - [Mage of the Storm] - Level 3
Ability - [Storm Call]
Ability - [Storm Explosion]
Ability - [As Fast As Lighting - Passive]
Ability - [Storm Aura]
Ability - [Web of Lightning]
Ability - [Storm Points]
Tier 3 Class - [Blade of Lightning] - Level 3
Ability - [Forged by the Storm - Passive]
Ability - [Lightning Strikes]
Ability - [Lightning Blade’s Guidance - Hybrid]
Ability - [Lightning Stream]
Ability - [Ride the Lightning]
Ability - [Lightning Defense]
Tier 3 Class - [Nature’s Enforcer] - Level 2
Ability - [Wood-Infused Armor]
Ability - [Healing Lily]
Ability - [Elements of Nature - Passive]
Ability - [Bind]
Ability - [Nature’s Embrace]
Ability - [Nature’s Rampart]
Ability - [One With Nature]
Skill Combinations -
Ability - [Web of Lightning / Ride the Lightning] > [Wings of Lightning]
Ability -
Ability -
Enhancements -
Tier 1 [Point Blank] (Level 25)
Tier 1 [Weapon Proficiency] (Level 25)
Tier 1 [Quickness] (Level 25)
Tier 2 - [Close Quarters Casting] (Level 50)
Tier 2 - [Dodge] (Level 50)
Tier 2 - [Feint Proficiency] (Level 50)
Tier 3 - [Improved Weapon Proficiency] (Level 40)
Tier 3 - [Matter Creation Proficiency] (Level 1)
Tier 3 - [Team Flanking] (Level 1)
General Skills -
Tier 3 [Identify] - Level 42
Tier 2 [Rest] - Level 31
Tier 3 [Mana Sense] - Level 12
Tier 3 [Electric Sense] - Level 15
Tier 3 [Sword Expert] - Level 16
Tier 3 [Martial Technique] - Level 4
Tier 3 [Dagger Apprentice] - Level 2
Tier 3 [Wood Manipulation] - Level 18
Tier 3 [Electric Manipulation] - Level 13
Tier 3 [Accelerated Thoughts] - Level 14
Tier 2 [Parallel Minds] - Level 49 (29.5 (30.5 total) additional minds)
Tier 3 [Fruit Production] - Level 1
Tier 3 [Plant Production] - Level 2
Tier 3 [Vegetable Production] - Level 1
Tier 3 [Fatigue Resistance] - Level 35
Tier 2 [Erotic Arts] - Level 2
[Mining] - Level 3
Tier 1 [Calligraphy] - Level 6
Tier 1 [Mathematic Calculation] - Level 4
Status -
Vig - [4346] (8289.99)
End - [4124] (7866.53)
Str - [3857]
Dex - [4079] (8068.66) [12425.73] {12425.73}
Agi - [4131] (11869.54) |13036.79| {17804.31/18971.56}
Int - [4669]
Wis - [4769]
Health - 82899/82899
Stamina - 78665/78665
Mana - 47690/47690
(number represents passives provided by classes) |number represents CQC enhancement bonus| {Number represents 1 second spike when dodging/with CQC active} [number for weapon dexterity]
My stats were starting to look pretty good. It was going to be slow going from here, but it was going to be nice gaining levels again for the first time in a while. Given that I was used to gaining levels almost daily from my time with Lurks up until my solitary confinement as her personal sex slave and torture buddy, it had felt strange piddling around in the NSA compound doing something as mundane as just taking a class.
“I’m not saying we should storm their base of operations,” Lea said, her voice bringing back to the conversation at hand, “But we do have to do something. It’s quite literally why we are here. This is our job, you knew that coming into this that it wasn’t always going to be safe or easy.”
“It’s not that it’s dangerous, it’s that it’s borderline impossible by ourselves. One fuck up is all they need in order to kill us.”
“We need to come up with a plan,” I interjected, pulling both of their gazes to me, “Whether that’s retreating or fighting we need to come up with an idea. Just to spitball something, I say we do to them what they did to us.”
“What, ambush them?” Lea asked curiously.
“Pretty much, none of us are super stealthy, although Jazz does have his invisibility. But I say we use my surveillance and catch them as they’re going out on missions. As they do so, we intercept them, kill them, and then retreat. They’ll eventually have to do something to upset that status quo.”
Jazz just scoffed, “Easier said than done. The whole point of the fact that we’re not a stealthy group is the fact that it’s going to be hard to sneak up on people that are.”
“I never said we were going to sneak up on them. But in that regard, there’s been something I’ve been working on. It still needs a bit more work but…”
I held up a hand and pushed some of my minds onto the task at hand.
Pun intended.
Reflecting and bending some of the lightwaves using my [Electric Manipulation] I managed to partially make my hand disappear.
Lea’s eyes widened slightly and Jazz looked practically shocked. Pun intended again.
“How are you doing that?” Lea asked.
I just smirked, “See that’s the thing about science,” I said, enunciating the word with a slight flourish, “There’s a lot more to the way the world works than what you see beyond the surface level.”
“Bullshit,” Jazz interrupted, “You’ve just got some shitty magic item you’re using.”
I just cocked my head, frowning at him.
“What would I gain from lying about this? If I can’t do what I’m saying then I’m literally just putting out a false hope that can’t be reached and then you’ll call me out on that. And if I had a magic item that could turn us invisible and I wasn’t using it then I’d still be hurting the group.”
“Fine,” He said mockingly, “Make me disappear as well.”
I raised an eyebrow, was it really going to be that easy? I certainly hoped so.
“If it’s something you can actually do and it’s not just an item then,” He mistook me pausing for panic I assumed.
“Well, as I said I won’t be able to do your whole body 'cause I haven’t quite got the skill mastered yet. Go ahead and stick out your hand.”
He did so, a confident look on his face like he’d caught me in some trap. I just sighed and shook my head as I focused my minds on performing the task at hand. Bending light around people further away from me took more mana and was a lot harder to do. Not impossible, just harder to accomplish.
Slowly his hand started to fade out from view until it was nearly transparent. I gave him enough time to comprehend what just happened before releasing the strain I could feel building in my minds.
‘Ping’ [Parallel Thoughts] Has leveled 49 > 50
Jazz looked at his hand in shock as it slowly came back into view. He stared at it for a moment before a frown took his face and he opened his mouth to say something.
I cut him off before he could get a word out, “I swear to everything that is holy, Jazz. If you try to refute that I have a capability that your peon brain can’t comprehend, you will be the next person I use for a brain experiment.”
His mouth clicked shut. He thought for a minute, then he opened his mouth to say something again, only to be interrupted by Lea this time.
“Jazzosaur,” She said chidingly, “You asked for proof, and he gave it to you. Don’t tell me you plan to call him a liar after all of that.”
His mouth clicked shut again, I could practically see the anger radiating in his brain as it lit up with activity. It took everything I had in me not to smirk, I think Lea noticed my dilemma because she flashed me a warning look, telling me not to push things any further.
Fair enough, the last thing we wanted right now was to have a falling out.
Although I was semi-serious about using him for brain experiments if he continued pissing me off. There was a limit to my mercy.
Lea sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose before straightening up and clearing the expression off her face.
“Alright, so the current idea is to try and find out where they’re situated and perhaps start taking out their operatives as they leave. The main problem is that we currently don’t have any stealth to try and sneak up on them.”
Jazz and I both straightened up as she began speaking, the tone of the caring, kind team leader was gone. Right now her voice was completely neutral in tone to the point of sounding a little cold.
“Regardless of what we plan to do about them, there’s still the fact that we need to find out where exactly they’re stationed. We have a general area, but we need to know what the surrounding area looks like before we can truly decide on a course of action. None of us are designed for recon, but we’ll make it work.”
“The first thing I’d like to do is spend some time talking to the villagers in the area, maybe they know something. Unlikely that they’ll know more than the prisoners we acquired, but maybe they’ll know something that could be useful. They’ve been living in this area for generations anyway. The second thing is that once I feel satisfied with talking to the locals we’ll move south and try to uncover their base.”
“Once we do that we’ll plan out our next course of action. Questions?”
Lea looked between both of us as she laid out her course of action. Both of us shook our heads, Lea nodded in response to our gestures.
“Good. Alex… There’s no delicate way to say this, it’d be better if you remained here for the time being.”
I cocked my head in confusion, gears turning as I tried to uncover what she meant. It took a second for it to click.
“Ah, it’s a human village and an unknown ‘demi’ coming into the area is likely to make them clam up. Honestly, if you had just told me to stay here and hadn’t indicated why, I wouldn’t have questioned it.”
She smiled gently, “I think honesty works better with my subordinates in the long run.”
Well, I couldn’t fault her for that. Honesty definitely went a long way with me.
I saluted her, “Well, orders received. I’ll stay here, and keep an eye out while I play wi- uhh I mean keep watch over the prisoner.”
Jazz just shook his head and turned to start walking towards the village, Lea looked caught between the idea of possibly laughing or being exasperated. She instead just settled on her trademark smile and turned to follow after Jazz.
She did have a nice smile.
***
While my two compatriots were in the village interr- I mean, questioning the civilians. I spent more time doing science!
I idly gave the prisoner in front of me electroshock therapy in an effort to try and fix the brain damage that I had inadvertently given him. It wasn’t going particularly well.
I was still increasing my fundamental understanding of how the brain works which was always a plus in my book.
As I was doing so I ended up acquiring a skill.
‘Ping’ A new skill [Anatomy] has been acquired.
Oh, this was perfect. The exact kind of skill I needed. I was struggling to understand how his brain functioned but with this, I would be able to gain more information faster and compartmentalize it better. What’s nice, is that the skill would more than likely transfer over between species.
I wouldn’t be limited to just humans, or possibly even humanoids. After all, humans were just another type of animal after all. So being able to understand animal brains and possibly derive information from being able to understand their thoughts? That would be an amazing ability to have.
Now I just needed to spend time leveling it up. Thankfully, I had a friend willing to help with that.
***
Lea and Jazz had been gone nearly five hours when they finally started making their way back to our little camp. I had kept track of their progress as they talked with the different villagers, what was being said, who actually bothered to hold a conversation with them, and who told them to go away, albeit not in such kind words.
If we weren’t supposed to be protecting them I’d be having some choice words with them in the middle of the night for the things they called Lea. But given that I doubt she’d approve of my actions I’d just have to live with fantasizing about it.
While they were gone I decided to make an assortment of fruits and veggies to eat. Grapes, sliced apples, pre-peeled oranges, the whole nine yards.
When they walked into the camp I smiled at them from where I was sitting, “Welcome back.”
Lea just gave me a slightly exhausted smile, and Jazz just ignored me as usual. Nothing surprising there.
Both of them noticed the assortment of foods I had laid out and I gestured to it, “I’m sure you’re tired, take a break and we can discuss what you’ve found out. Or rather the lack of what you found during your time in the village.”
Lea raised an eyebrow, “How do you know what we did or didn’t find?”
I raised an eyebrow back in imitation of her, “You know that I have localized omniscience in a near-mile radius. I was practically standing next to you the entire time for every conversation you had. I can hear everything going on in that village, including the swears of the blacksmith apprentice who just smashed his finger, and the fact that a man and his wife are… vigorously attempting to break their bed. At least I hope that’s his wife. Also, the fact that the butcher’s daughter seems to be skimming a couple of coins from the box whenever she thinks her father isn’t looking.”
Jazz snorted at the innuendo, “Voyeuring on people now are you?”
“Try not to sound too jealous,” I quickly retorted with a smirk.
Jazz started spluttering and tried to say something before Lea just laid a hand on his shoulder and shook her head.
“Anyway, as I said I’m sure you’re tired. Take a break, eat something, and let’s figure out our next move.”
***
They spent roughly half an hour just quietly enjoying the meal I had laid out. They even broke out some of the rations we had brought with us that included dried meats. I helped myself to some. It wasn’t amazing, but it certainly wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever had either.
When they were finally finished eating, Lea sat forward while clearing her throat, “ Okay, so let’s go over what we know. The Sons are located somewhere about 20 miles south of here and have been hitting nearly every village in a 100-mile radius for the past six months, at least.
“They supposedly haven’t hit this village in the past four months. The last time they did they hit the butcher’s shop and a couple of other of the wealthier places, made off with the meager money they could along with some of the women from the village.”
My lips curled in distaste. If either of them noticed my rising distress they ignored it as Lea continued.
“What we’ve managed to hear from some of the people that did talk to us is that this is what some of the other villages have been reporting, at least for what little contact they’ve had with each other. Rather than going down to every single village and getting the same story a bunch of different times in slightly differing ways, I say we just try to uncover their base of operations and do one of two things.
“Stage a siege in which we slowly choke them out by killing their operatives whenever they try to leave their base, or retreat and try to gather reinforcements so that we can take them out in one fell swoop. I’m advocating for the first currently because the longer we take to address this situation the longer we leave the women and girls to be raped.”
“I agree with Lea on this front. Normally I wouldn’t mind retreating and going back to gather more forces to guarantee a complete takeover, but that would take too much time and has no guarantee that they’d even allocate forces for us to do that. I don’t know that I could live with the distaste of leaving them to deal with this for even a moment longer than they have to,” I practically whispered the last part, I felt the light brush of a tendril running over my mind and the sultry whisper of a voice saying my name.
I wanted to vomit.
“What, you feeling a personal connection with them or something?” He snarked in my direction.
“Yes.”
“Hah, I’m not surprised you-”
My wooden arm snapped out and grabbed him by the neck squeezing tightly causing him to choke.
“I dare you. Finish that sentence. And I will make everything that she did to me look like heaven compared to what I will do to you.”
Lea didn’t step in to stop me this time.
“Am I understood, Jazz?”
He barely managed to nod, I gave his neck a slight squeeze before I released him.
I looked at him before scoffing, “You wouldn’t have lasted ten seconds against her mind control, even if you were twice your current level.”
Lea’s eyes widened slightly at the idea of a mind controller before they settled into a narrow stare.
“Where were you held?” She asked, she spoke as if she were confirming a suspicion.
“Alixia, the salt mines just to the west of Verdanst. It was a woman named Lurks, I believe she has a twin named Larks.”
She nodded, “I’ve heard of them. The Meldmere Twins are what they’re known as, they had a vicious criminal streak in Alixia. Serial rapings, tortures, and murder sprees. They were never caught, officially. But their appearances dropped off almost immediately, there was a lot of speculation, but your words confirm that they were hired by the government it seems.”
She looked me over, “You came out surprisingly well considering her reputation.”
I just looked at her, my face impassive.
“That’s because you can’t see what she did on the inside.”
She didn’t have a response to that.
