The Path of Ascension

Chapter 233

Matt and Liz picked through the packets Luna had provided them, absorbing the information therein.

They started with data regarding a guild that was suspected to be using low Tier transients that were moving through the Tier 9 world as test subjects for a suspected mutation and domination effect. Matt also noted the bit that said if they didn’t move to handle this event within a month, it would be passed on to other teams.

The second was a packet of information that pointed at a Tier 15 guild, suggesting that it was either a plant from, or was infiltrated by another Great Power. Supposedly, it was actively feeding information back to their handlers. This was marked as a low priority target, and instead of just smashing their way through the front door and killing those responsible, the Empire wanted information on who and what they were sending out.

Matt suspected that this mission was more of a test. Most likely, they already had that information, and wanted to see how Quill and Torch would handle such a situation.

The third assignment was downright odd.

A Tier 3 charity construction company was about to go under due to an unexpected find of a gold mine where they didn’t have mineral rights as it was a man made planet and shouldn't have substantial mineral veins, tying up most of their assets. That put them in a precarious position, as their previously liquid assets became frozen, preventing new work to pay off their loans. Quill and Torch were expected to solve the issue without anyone realizing they were even there, and without overtly changing the situation.

Matt frankly had no idea why this was an issue that two possible Ascenders needed to take care of, or needed to know how to take care of. While he knew Ascenders were sometimes used as the rulers of occupied planets in a war, it was both rare and not something he suspected that he or Liz would be chosen for.

Still, it was an assignment, and he gave it the proper consideration it deserved.

Once Matt and Liz finished looking over the packets of information, they looked to Luna, who immediately shook her head.

“No help from me with this. I’m only here to act as your chaperone, not your manager. Decide on your own how you want to handle these missions, which order you want to complete them in, or if you want to do them at all.”

Matt chewed on the inside of his cheek as he mulled over the situation.

The first mission had an obvious answer, both of them go investigate and then capture or kill everyone involved. The other two had more wiggle room in their execution and time frame.

Liz spoke before he could. “Hit the first one together and split up to handle the other two?”

Matt nodded slowly. “Agreed, but how do we split the other two?”

Liz pulled the third document to herself and pushed the second to him. “I’m better with the legal stuff, so I can take this one.”

Hearing that offer, he wanted to agree, but knew that wasn’t what was expected of him. He also knew that Liz knew the same thing and just didn’t care, and wanted to do the thing he was worse at.

“I think I should take it. It is outside my comfort zone, and I think that's a good thing. These are meant to be training missions, and so if I fuck up and just start punching people, it’s not the end of the world.”

Liz gave him a flat look when he talked about punching people. “Don’t turn into Rusty. Please, no.”

Matt grinned and shot her his best exaggerated, saucy wink. “Mage. Punch. Face. Good.” At her flat look, he continued, “Ok, seriously. I think I need to push myself, and this is a good opportunity to do that. And honestly, it sounds kinda… fun? Gold on a planet where there shouldn't be? I bet someone is doing something illegal.”

His questioning tone didn’t go unmissed, but it did go unquestioned, as Liz didn’t call him on the obvious lie.

They chatted about the logistics of their travels before settling on a plan of action, and turning to their manager.

Luna nodded in approval and vanished their booklets in a flash of void. Behind her, the ship’s engines hummed into action, bringing them to their first mission. Afterwards, they’d need to take care of their own transports, but Matt would be lying if he said he wasn’t excited to put his new chaotic spaceship to good use.

Theirs may have been slower, but it was theirs.

True freedom of movement was now in their grasp, untethered from the schedules of trains and teleporters, and enabling even their low-tier models to traverse the Empire at speeds most people could only dream of. Even if they were mostly tied to following the teleportation lines, it was still an enormous step forward.

Three weeks of cramps and itching later, courtesy of their muscle modifications, they arrived at Galvos. While only a Tier 9 planet, it was ancient, and had a population of seven hundred and fifty million as a result despite being otherwise uninteresting.

When they landed and kicked off Luna’s ship, they were in masks, yes, but they were in civilian masks, which made them appear both as a lower Tier and a bit more out of shape.

They might have gone with a different disguise, but they weren't trying to act as bait themselves. No, they were simply trying to blend in and remain anonymous while scouting out the guild in question.

Utrecht’s Utopia was, at least on the surface, a perfectly ordinary Tier 10 guild, operating in a more remote region of the second largest continent. From all outward appearances and records, they were a bog standard guild just focused on trying to get enough members to Tier 15, where they could push for a higher Tier guild base and advance further as a whole.

Except, they wouldn’t be there if the guild was only what it seemed on the surface.

Quill wasn’t entirely sure the provided information was accurate, but had nothing to base the suspicion off of besides his gut feeling. While he was sure the information provided was what the Empire's information sources had seen and found, both he and Torch felt the situation was more convoluted. Something about the sloppiness of the abductions and mutilated bodies just… didn’t sit right.

Following a time honored tradition, they went to a bar and just listened to the surrounding gossip. They didn’t need to wait long, as everyone in the bar seemed to be talking about the guild. Utrecht’s Utopia had had a good reputation in the past, but apparently all of their staff started acting standoffish in the last few years, and more recently, they had been shutting themselves off completely.

While this was a local bar, the fact that it was the gossip of the town sent both of them on edge, and they left once the topics started to repeat, wanting to see things for themselves.

Once they paid their tab and left the bar, they separated and started walking around the town, making circles around the guild compound.

From the attitude of the civilians, they were either unaware of the kidnapped people or uncaring about the losses. Considering the report said that no locals had been found missing, Quill found that plausible, but strange. Any kind of alleged murders or found corpses should have alarmed people.

With his AI still merging with the proper [AI] skill, he needed to spend a bit more mana than usual, but he was able to quickly peruse and sort the information he had recorded and locate everyone who had a large amount of contact with the guild.

Thankfully, after his recent Tier up and doubling of his mana, it was the one thing he never needed to worry about any more. He had officially blown normal mages out of the water with 40,960 mana maximum in his pool. But a mana pool two and a half times larger than most mages his Tier was nothing in comparison to the fact he could spend that every single second. Leaving aside the fact that he could spam any skill with a 400 initial mana cost without having to tap into the rechargeable mana stone array on the inside of his armor, he had 40,960 MPS to use across all of his skills in any fight.

His non-combat utility had also increased to an absurd level. Now that he didn’t need to sleep, he could fully utilize his mana generation, and if he decided to spend an entire day making mana, he could make three and a half billion mana a day. Comparing that to a Tier 29 mana stone, which only had a measly two and a half billion mana stored inside, it really put things into perspective.

It only was even more mind boggling when he considered that when he was a Tier 10, he would have only made one hundred and ten million mana in a full day, and as a Tier 20, he would generate one hundred thirteen billion mana in a single day.

Even still, his current 40,960 MPS was absurd and gave him power few could hope to compete with. It even made his half-functional AI better than it had been before he Tiered up and started absorbing [AI].

Within a minute, he had found the people he wanted to, and damn near everything else about them, including everything it could pull off the Planet and CityNets. Seconds later, he had their public history, which included their other jobs, where they lived, and all recent news about them presented to him in a nice packet of information.

Scanning the list manually, he found what he felt to be the best first target. A middle aged man who lived with his daughter and worked as an assistant in the guild’s city recruitment building. The notes also indicated that he sometimes filled in as a janitor when the cleaning bot was down or missed something, which was a position that Quill knew from working at Benny’s could make you invisible, making him the perfect person to gather information.

Best of all, he hadn’t been to work in the last week, but had been seen out and about.

After a few quick pings to the CityNet and then verifications of his identity as Quill, clearance, authorization, and a request form, he had a pinpoint location of one Zane Ballard.

When his location came back at a cafe, Quill didn’t rush over. Instead, he simply followed the low Tier crowds of people as they walked through the city until he reached the cafe in question, then used his spiritual sense to scan for Zane.

Seeing the man in person almost made Quill pause, and it was only Luna’s training that let him keep walking with the crowd as if nothing happened. The Zane in his record looked to be middle aged but in good shape, while the Zane sitting in the cafe looked like an entirely different person with sunken eyes, more gray hairs at his temples, and a skittish demeanor that had him flinching whenever someone moved too close to him. He also watched everyone in the crowds as if someone was specifically out to get him.

That was interesting for a number of reasons, but Quill kept moving to his next targets.

What he found was less than ideal. About a third of his targets were skittish in the same way, while the rest seemed to be going about their normal lives. When he shared his findings with Torch, he learned that she had observed a few people entering and leaving the guild, but all seemed perfectly normal, which changed Quill’s focus from those acting skittish to those acting normal. But despite following three of them with his spiritual sense, he couldn’t find anything obviously out of the norm.

There were no additional unusual behaviors he could identify after the first day of observing, so he traded with Torch while she tracked down some of their suspicious individuals.

Watching the guild, Quill found, was far more interesting than he thought it would be, mostly because everything seemed perfectly normal. But the more he watched, the more he felt creeped out.

He couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but something seemed wrong.

While everyone seemed to go about their daily lives, he noticed that everyone inside the guild’s compound seemed ready for an attack at all times. It might be indicative of the guild doing something illegal, but could also be a sign of someone who was worried they were being framed.

Using his AI and his access to the CityNet, he had each and every person who entered or left the compound tagged and tracked. It made a fuss with the CityNet, which needed three levels of overrides to do that, but Quill was one hundred percent certain that something strange was happening inside the guild compound.

Except, even with their surveillance, everyone seemed to be going along their normal days in a very set routine, which led them to their first actionable evidence.

An apple cart had hit a grain truck and through an unlucky coincidence of bad timing, a weak seam, and a swerve into a wall, causing a massive mess that forced the road to be closed right when most people were walking to work. Ninety nine percent of people simply bypassed the closed road, but some either tried to walk through the barriers set up, or simply waited at the barriers, staring off into space. While that could have been chalked up to either impatient people or those with too much time, the trackers they had placed told a different story.

Those who tried to push through were all Utrecht’s Utopia guild members with combat roles, and those that waited were guild members who were logistics personnel or the like.

Every.

Single.

One.

Seeing that Quill had to clamp down on his panic response. The symptoms were too close to countless horror movies, and what he’d seen training under Kurt, for it to be anything but mind control. That was so far beyond what he was qualified for. They’d need specialized seekers and mind mages of their own in order to sort through everything, to say nothing of the danger inherent to them falling under sway of whatever effect was infecting the city.

Just as he prepared to send the entire city into lockdown and call for reinforcements, Luna materialized next to him. “No need to sound the alarm. I already did so when we first arrived. but you are right, this isn’t an invasion or rift break of some kind. Continue on as normal, Quill and Torch can handle this on their own.”

She was gone before he let out his breath, and he updated Torch with his discovery.

Even through their comms, Quill could feel Torch pausing as she went over the implications.

“Do we still value the mission? If not, we can just burst in there and start subduing people. You made the restraining talismans, right?”

Quill thought that over but shook his head, even as he confirmed what Torch said. “I have them, yes, but if Luna wanted us to go in loud, she wouldn't have stopped me from calling in reinforcements.” Thinking that over once more, he corrected himself. “Ok, maybe not, but she said we can handle this ourselves, and to me, that implies that this won't spread or become anything sinister. It’s probably best to take whatever this is out quietly, to prevent the populace from going into a panic.”

Torch took a moment before replying, “I generally agree, but I also think we should move in tonight. Scout the area and see if we see anything obvious. We still have transformed bodies appearing after all, which isn't really explained by mind control.”

Quill didn’t have an answer there, and after ensuring Torch had initiated their anti-mind control measures, he did the same.

The procedures were not simple.

Their masks deafened them, closed off their airways, and projected an illusion of eyes while blocking external light, negating the most common avenues of control. They would need to rely on their more magical senses, but compared to their first month in Minkalla, it was barely an afterthought. He also diverted a good half of his mana regeneration to [Sharp Mind], with the upgrade increasing his resistance to mental attacks of any kind just in case.

Without knowing exactly how the mind control happened, they needed to take every precaution, which was annoying. At least they were Tier 15, and as such, didn’t need to deal with the hassle of rebreather masks allowing them to keep breathing recycled air. It was much simpler, and more pleasant, to just not breathe.

As Torch went to thoroughly inspect people on their list, Quill went underground and got as close as he could to the guild’s compound walls before inspecting them for their runic formations.

The formations were sadly Tier 15, which he was still learning, but in the travel time to Galvos, he had been able to familiarize himself with some of the more common Tier 15 runes and their twisting, four dimensional shapes. So, while he needed to spend a few hundred million mana for his AI to brute force a path into the formation, he was done before nightfall, which was when he and Torch prepared to search the compound.

The first thing they did was to fully don their Quill and Torch regalia before entering into the guild by disrupting an improperly set rune in the corner of the wall. Once inside, Quill used [Shadow Manipulation] to help cover their passage by blinding any cameras and keeping them hidden from the Tier 5 patrolling guards.

While killing might have been on the table if the guild was full of evil psychopaths, they were expected to minimize casualties as much as possible, even if it was just so those guilty could face a trial. If they were in any danger, they would, of course, not hesitate to defend themselves. But with the utterly insurmountable Tier gap between them, it would be all but impossible for them to be so much as scratched. With mind control in the mix, any deaths would be even worse, as they were dealing with little more than meat puppets controlled by someone else.

That forced them to move slowly through the outer perimeter until they located an unlatched and unguarded window, which they were able to use to get into the building without bypassing any more security. Once inside, they quietly crept through the halls until they found the guild leader's office, where they wanted to get information about their recent activity, but what they saw made them pause.

The entire office was covered in a thick layer of dust.

Quill cocked his head at Torch and flashed her a hand sign questioning the oddity, but she grabbed his hand and used the touch connection to send a brief AI message. “No one has seen the Tier 15 guild leader or her husband since shortly after things got weird.”

Inspecting the dust once more, Quill sent, “It seems like they haven't been here either.”

Separating, they started inspecting the room while not touching anything that might trigger an alarm or trap. Still, they didn’t find anything of note, even after half an hour of looking through the desk. They gave up after going through a few other guild officers' rooms that had also seemingly vanished from public sight in the last year.

The only useful information they discovered was that anyone Tier 10 and above had vanished, seemingly at the same time. Probably captured, but they couldn’t discount the fact they might be dead.

Spending another two hours walking through the mostly quiet guild house, they inspected everything from the luscious garden to the armory, where the crafters’ work was stored before being given out.

In that entire time, the only hint of the method of mind control was the thick dust, but they weren’t equipped to analyze it with any depth. For all they knew, someone had dropped an unrelated potion ingredient then never cleaned it up.

The only place they didn’t go was the guild vault, as it was guarded by two Tier 9 cultivators, and they had no reliable methods of getting past them without a confrontation. The two of them could easily subdue the guards, but that would undoubtedly alert the guild’s local AI through the AI noticing they were no longer conscious. After all, guards weren't very useful if you could just knock the humans out before they reported in.

That didn’t mean they didn’t have options.

They couldn't sense inside the vault due to the shielding, but Quill was able to sense the formations that were meant to protect the vault from being accessed by a competent earth mage, and while there was no obvious fatal flaw, he had another way.

Sometimes, breaking a formation was much easier than bypassing one.

Sinking into the wall, he moved right to the edge of the formation and dumped his entire mana generation into the formation all at once.

It was a Tier 15 formation meant to block attacks and alert the central AI to anyone touching it, but it was not built to handle 40,000 MPS hitting it all at once and then not stopping. Mana surges were a rare, but known method of attack, and though most runes could handle a few seconds of massive mana fluctuations, few were built to handle a constant stream of that much mana.

After three seconds, the formation started to flicker. After eleven seconds, the formation nearest him started to glow on the visible spectrum, due to the waste energy being shed as light. Twenty seconds later, the runes started to fizzle out, as they could no longer handle the mana throughput and they had their entrance.

While this would be reported to the compound’s AI, it generally wouldn’t trigger the same alerts that a forceful breach would. A non mind controlled human would immediately notice the secondary alert, but as they had seen earlier that day, the mind controlled people seemed to be running on autopilot, and Quill hoped that meant they would be slow to react to such an event.

With Torch holding onto his free hand, Quill burrowed through the vault floor with his best control of [Metal Manipulation], creating a tiny hole in the floor which would let their spiritual perception through.

Blinking, Quill froze for an instant before continuing to widen the hole.

The good news was he had found the missing guild leaders.

They were inside a shoddily made cell at the far side of the vault, and while the immortal couple seemed perfectly fine, the mortals looked ragged. Their cells were a mess with feces and urine caked on the ground.

When they entered through the floor, they roused everyone, but Quill sent a quick burst of information to everyone through his AI.

It did not work, and they called out for help while others wept.

Quill then noticed the cultivation suppression bands on their wrists, which explained why they weren’t using their AI.

“Sitrep.”

His request for information was quick and sharp while he and Torch inspected the rest of the vault for any traps or guards. There were none, which was the first good news of the night.

The guild leader, Frankie, was the first to speak.

“Captured by my guild members. Probable mind control. Source unknown, but suspected tree. Condition, a little malnutrition in the mortals, but alive.”

Quill nodded before he tossed out a light talisman, which hovered in the air and gave some warm, comforting light to the room and was met with sighs and thanks from everyone.

Torch moved forward, and with a few chops of her spear, cut through the cultivation suppression manacles, freeing their prisoners. With their cultivation returned, the two Tier 15s easily bent the metal bars and freed themselves and their guildmates from the confinement, where Quill started inspecting the feet of the mortals.

They had been standing in waste for the better part of a year and a half at least, and that was a situation ripe for infection, but their higher Tier physiques had resisted being cut and allowing a method of entry for any bacteria.

Torch asked the pertinent question. “What happened?”

Frankie’s husband Ennis spoke up as she used [Create Water] to help wash the wounded.

“We woke up one day last year being handcuffed by our fellow guildmates, before being marched here, where they had built this prison. If we resisted immediately, we might have been able to free ourselves, but we were so confused, and didn’t want to kill our own people. Once we were locked in here, we only had the food they brought us once a week. We do have a suspect, however.”

Seeing both masked faces turn to him, Ennis sighed. “We suspect the Tier 6 Adryian Flesious tree we were raising in the garden has gained sentience, and is on the way to sapience. They have the ability to emit pollen that is incredibly relaxing in small doses. In larger ones, it can be mind numbing and—”

Quill finished for him, “A common dryad Talent for it is the ability to adjust what emotion it affects. It’s conceivable that it received a Talent for mind control rather than emotional control, I suppose. The two effects are fairly closely related. A Tier 6 being able to control Tier 9s is about the limit as well, which tracks as to why all of you were dumped down here.”

Frankie, who had finished cleaning up her people, summoned a mace and went to stand and walk to the door, but Torch stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

Frankie did not take that well. “I’m going to smash that fucking tree into toothpicks, and you can’t stop me.”

Torch’s armored hand didn’t move, but as Frankie tried to shake free, her grip tightened. “No.”

Quill smiled under his mask but kept it out of his voice. “A pre-sapient isn’t responsible for their actions in cases like this. While it's unfortunate a few people have died at Tier 6, a tree would barely understand what is going on and is running off instinct. Empire policy states individuals in those situations are to be captured and moved to a location where they can’t harm others, until they understand what they did was wrong, where they will be reintegrated into society. You can not simply kill the tree. I get why you might want to, but we can't allow it.”

Frankie growled, and magical armor flared around her for a brief instant, but Torch’s gauntlet-covered fist was already driving forward like a piston, and both cracked the armor and sent the guild leader to her knees as the air was driven out of her lungs. She might not need to breathe anymore but without practiced control over your body but a gut punch could still be disorientating.

“Stay.”

Quill smirked at the single line from Torch, but backed her up. “As Torch said. Stay down. This is outside your jurisdiction. We will have the situation handled in the next few minutes.”

Not that Quill was sure he would have the situation handled, but he was sure Luna had the appropriate teams on standby for just this moment where they identified the problem.

With a touch of the internal release, the vault door opened, and Quill tossed out two talismans that wrapped the Tier 9s on guard with tendrils of water, even as Torch was running down the hall, flames lingering in her wake.

Together, they quickly moved through the already awakening compound to the tree in question.

Its dark purple leaves made a nice contrast to the small white flowers on its branches, but Quill didn’t stand around and appreciate its beauty. Instead, he tossed out an [Earth Barrier] talisman which promptly sealed the tree and any dangerous pollen it might be giving off.

Right when he was about to cast a much larger bubble to encircle the compound to prevent any further possible contamination, a mana shield appeared to do the job for him.

Luna also appeared next to them, nodding.

“Well done. This was an unusual case, but you two handled it well and in a timely manner. Dryads are hard to spot in the Tier 5 through Tier 7 range, as they are more sentient than sapient; it can be hard to notice if you aren't specifically looking for it.”

Quill shook his head. “That still doesn't explain the hybrid monster bodies they found.”

Luna sighed. “An unfortunate young woman who took the commands of ‘protect the tree’ and ‘don't get found out’ to mean using her Talent of merging rift monsters together and started using random passersby. The Talent actually worked on the physical transformation which is surprising, but the mix of human and monster, or human and human, minds made them unstable, and they quickly died.”

Sighing, Quill hoped the type of mind control would repress such memories, but he doubted it. Not because he had any proof, but because things were rarely that nice, and some extra trauma to someone seemed in line with how life worked.

With his spiritual sense, Quill watched as Empire healers moved in and asked, “How will they cover this up?”

Luna shrugged one shoulder even as she turned. “Thankfully, I don’t have to deal with this directly, but there are procedures in place. Psychiatrists will come to visit for a year or two to ensure recovery, and in time, people will move on. Many of the civilians will be reassured simply by knowing they weren’t, in fact, overly paranoid.”

Torch sighed. “What could they have done differently? I don’t really know anything about dryads, but could they have known?”

Luna shook her head. “Not at their Tier. Try and feel the tree. Its spirit isn't active enough to really stand out from every other tree. Combine that with the changes being gradual, and they never had a chance. Not even the Empire can check every tree on every planet for burgeoning sapience. Just bad luck for all involved.”

Turning, Luna opened a [Portal] in the air and added, “Well done though. I frankly expected it to take you two a little longer to figure this out due to the rarity of the event. Now we have to see how you two handle the next missions.”