The Path of Ascension

Chapter 238

Quill looked around at the empty space and admitted that Hardy’s little smuggling operation was surprisingly well put together. The piece of empty space in front of him seemed perfectly normal, and he would have passed it by without a second thought if he hadn’t personally watched one of Hardy’s assistants, helpers, goons, or whatever he called them, drop a train car-sized asteroid in orbit around the sun near a lagrange point.

It was far enough away from the inhabited inner system that no one would easily travel to this location, and far enough away from the military outpost in the outer system that its patrols wouldn't stumble upon it.

Not that Matt trusted the local branch of the military. He had no proof or anything even hinting that anyone on the base was complicit in either the kidnapping of Justinian Miller or the smuggling operation, but he simply couldn’t write off the possibility. People would sell their morals for surprisingly little if they thought they could get away with it, or it had little risk to themselves.

After confirming the drop did have the cloaked asteroid, Matt sent off his infopacket to a mercenary company in the neighboring system, pushing enough mana into his transmitter to handle the transmission distance back to the planet.

While the Empire didn’t have the robust, formalized system of mercenaries that the Corporations had cultivated, there were more than a few teams of delvers who were willing to do extra work on the side to increase their income. One such team had been hired by the neighboring baron with the express purpose of cracking down on smuggling, particularly drug running.

They’d nearly managed to catch Hardy in the act a couple of times before, but he’d burned the relevant caches before anything came of it.

The team had still found evidence of his misdeeds, but not anything close enough to prove he was connected to the smuggling operation. That hardly pleased the Baron, nor the mercenary team, as that was the first imperfection on an otherwise stellar record of service. They had caught most of the smugglers, which proved they were competent. Letting even one of the major players go, even if they weren't suspected to be in the drug trade, didn’t look good.

Wanting to rectify that blemish, they put out word they would pay generously for anyone who could give them even a hint of actionable evidence on Hardy.

Quill knew the recording of one of Hardy’s known associates bringing a stealth asteroid into a lagrange point would bring them running.

And that meant he wouldn’t have to fight the Gerble house directly, while still tying up their assets.

Returning to the Cysora, Matt changed into his delivery uniform pants and laid down on the plastic sheeting Liz had put down.

“You ready?”

Sighing, he answered truthfully. “I said I welcome you into my heart, but I never thought it would be so literal one day.”

Liz grinned as she waggled her eyebrows and knife in counterpoint. “Oh, don't be a big baby. I promise, I won't wiggle too much.”

Matt stopped his heart and breathing, allowing essence to compensate for each. It would be highly uncomfortable, but for a few hours, he could manage.

With a quick cut, Liz sliced into his chest, just under his bottom rib. His ribs were too strong for her to easily break, so she utilized her blood to reach past them and into his organs. He didn’t resist which helped things along but it still felt incredibly uncomfortable to feel Liz controlling the blood inside his body.

The organs were still a bit of a mess at the moment, as he was still working on remaking them, but that didn’t matter for this. A bit of impromptu surgery later, Liz was pulling his [Blood Storage]d organs out of his chest and feeding them into a medical stasis chest where she reformed them.

Liberal use of [Bandage] patched up Matt’s insides, keeping the severed tissue alive and in good shape for when his organs were returned. Sure, he could regrow them, but at their Tier, that would mean several weeks of discomfort until his heart was back in place. Far easier to just return them when they were done.

The initial idea had come from Liz wanting to hide in his veins using [Blood Body], but there were a few problems with that. The first was simply volume- Liz’s entire body was larger than Matt’s circulatory system, so she wouldn’t fit. There were ways around that, but they were inaccessible at their present Tier.

The second problem was that all skills would be stripped away in a dispelling pulse as part of standard security checks. Even if they resisted the pulse, which they weren't sure they could do, it would still set off an alarm as the spell met unexpected resistance where it shouldn't. And of course, the final problem was that two spiritual signatures in the same body would be detected almost immediately.

Thus, it was a complete non-starter. But, from that they’d eventually come up with something workable.

Kill Liz.

She’d get better.

If they poisoned Liz with a toxin that drastically weakened the spirit, then had her hide in his chest cavity in bird form, they could bypass the skill dispersal. The [Bandage]s on his chest would be dispelled, but Matt could survive that, and Liz could recast it from the inside. Most importantly Liz’s spiritual presence would, with just a bit of work, look like a part of Matt’s and trick the security scanners.

Once inside, she would find a quiet corner of the estate to drink a potion that would offset some of the symptoms and buy her about an extra twelve hours of life, while Matt walked out of the estate with nobody the wiser.

It was the best option, and he could at least say with certainty he wasn’t the worse off of the two of them. He wasn’t the one dying after all.

It was still damn unpleasant having his organs removed.

It was even more unpleasant when Liz transformed first into a bird in a burst of ash, then into an amorphous blob of blood, flowing between his ribs and into his chest. There she returned to bird form, and healed his chest from the inside. The flames cascading off of her body were a bit warm on his insides, but she wasn’t actively trying to burn him, so they were nothing he couldn’t handle.

He cleared his throat, which felt weird without his lungs, and prompted his [AI] to start mimicking his lung with [Air Manipulation]. With Liz sitting in his chest, he could smell a touch of cinnamon with every exhalation.

“Testing, one, two, three, five, seven. I hate this. Test, test, test.”

He also had a speaker shoved up his throat that he could activate with his [AI] in case he needed to speak while unable to cast skills. Technically, his [AI] would be dispelled as well if the security did a thorough anti-skill formation, but those were rare, specifically to avoid interfering with [AI] and oaths kept track of through it. Still, he could use the now-merged skill unless specifically countered.

He felt Liz peck at one of his ribs as he twisted to crack his back and grimaced. He could even feel her feathers touching the inside of his chest when she braced herself during his twist.

It was not pleasant.

He would most certainly be having nightmares about this part of the mission, he was sure.

Not letting any discomfort show, Matt went to work like normal, and acted surprised when he was told he was filling in for the regular to deliver a package to the Gerble estate. Mark, the normal delivery man, had won a sweepstake for a trip with his family to a resort planet for two weeks, and would be gone for the rest of the month. Matt would be filling in for the secondary, as the normal second took over the primary responsibilities and he took over theirs thanks to a few well placed suggestions to the shift manager.

Said shift manager had warned him that this was an important client, and to not fuck anything up, which reminded him of working for Benny all those years ago before he joined the Path. His younger self would have never guessed he'd be walking around with his organs removed and with a bird in their place but it all seemed so normal now.

He was loading a box when he tried to scream as what felt like a red-hot coal landed inside his pelvis, but with no lungs, he was able to pass it off as just a cough.

Torch immediately apologized. “Sorry! You moved unexpectedly and my tail brushed your tailbone. I’m sorry! I’m sorry.”

Thankfully, there were no other hiccups, and they made their rounds without any issues until the last stop of the day, which was the Gerble estate.

Together he and the primary delivery man got out of the van and were scanned while the van itself underwent a thorough inspection.

Quill made small talk with the guards, pretending to be nervous and asking all the inane questions a normal new person would ask, which put them at ease. The skill disruption worked as they’d expected, stripping away his internal [Bandage]s and prompting Liz to reapply them all.

Once they got the all-clear, Quill let out an internal sigh of relief while he felt Torch actually sigh if the puff of hot air that hit his inner chest was any indication.

After driving up to the front of the manor, they unloaded the boxes, and being the last one inside the van, Quill made a small cut below his sternum, allowing Torch to spill out of his torso in blood form, and into the grass. She was barely visible in all honesty, as she used a suite of skills to be as unobtrusive as possible.

Knowing he had done everything he could for her, and that he had his own role to play, Quill returned to the hub and checked out while joking around with the others while they swept the floor free of any debris before going home.

Instead of actually going home, Quill went to the army’s hidden base, where there was a surgery room prepared and waiting for him. Once inside they quickly returned his organs to where they should be.

Feeling his heartbeat through his chest had never felt so good before, but he wasn’t able to enjoy it for long. They got news that the teleporter had just activated and the mercenary team had entered the planet before immediately flying into space.

Knowing he needed to trail them, Quill also took to space and kept a few thousand miles away from the group, and well outside of their spiritual range, but close enough that he could intervene if it was necessary.

Settling in, he waited.

Now it was up to Torch to locate and free Justinian Miller before Linda noticed something was amiss.

He sent a ping that he was in position to the headquarters of the battalion they had brought in from nearby systems, and told them that they should be ready to react to Torch’s movements while he waited for the team to capture Hardy.

If everything went to plan, nothing would be complicated and they could end this without a fight.

***

Torch felt awful.

The poison they’d chosen was the least painful of all spirit-dampening, moderately fast-acting poisons, but being the least painful was only a small consolation right now. Her blood felt sluggish and slow, her inner flame was down to embers, and she had a headache as bad as any from Concept overuse. If she wasn’t in her [Blood Body], she was sure it would be even worse.

She was far enough underground now, and she pulled herself together, blood flowing through permeable soil until she was all in one piece. Then, she released her [Blood Body]. The Tier 4 soil around her easily gave way as she returned first to bird form, then to human form. Her body felt even worse than she’d expected, but with the secondary potion she drank, the poison wouldn’t kill her for another few days yet. That meant she got to agonize for the next few hours until she completed her mission.

Oh joy.

It took her some time, as the official plans were indeed woefully outdated, but after finding a servant's bathroom that didn’t seem used often, Torch burbled out of the sink and then spilled out onto the floor. Once her entire body was out of the sink, she reformed into her real body and locked the door.

Taking a deep breath, she pulled some blood through her skin and drew a number of runes in the air.

While unstructured magic was fiendishly hard, she’d gotten a lot better at what she was calling Blood Seeking over the past two decades. Those improvements were mostly on the reliability and time fronts, as unstructured magic was affected by everything. What time of day it was, what the weather was, what Tier of planet she was on, when she’d last eaten, the cadence her heart was beating at, even how full her mana pool was. She had to make a thousand tiny adjustments on the fly to make the magic do what she wanted it to do, and by now, she could reliably do it in less than a minute and on her first try. She could even cast a few minor skill-less-spells, but they weren’t useful here, which was good, as she wasn’t nearly as proficient with them.

Her blood resonated, and the blood in her surroundings resonated back. The resonance wasn’t strong enough yet for her to use magic through the connection, but that was fine. All Torch cared about at the moment was that she’d just gotten a very firm idea as to where everyone in the compound was, and where they were moving. It could even pierce a number of basic or lower-Tier privacy wards, but it wasn’t foolproof.

She’d tried a few times to get a skill version of Blood Seeking, but to no avail. [Tracking], [Farsight], and [Seek] just broke. [Earthsense] just became [Bloodsense] and let her extend tactile sensation through blood, which wasn’t what she wanted. [Mark] became [Smell Blood], a strict downgrade from the original because it required her to injure someone as she cast it, and if they healed themselves, the magical scent would go away.

So, she made do. As people moved about the estate, Liz relayed the information to her AI to slowly build out a three dimensional map of the compound. After three hours, she had a few points of interest.

The first was where they suspected the vault to be. She couldn’t sense anything inside of it, naturally, but she had felt some level of interference from its wards when people passed nearby, and there were as expected two guards stationed near there at all times. Or rather, she suspected there were two, as there had been what she figured was a shift change, and two connections of blood had entered the vault's disruptive range while two different ones had left.

The second was Linda’s room. There was someone who hadn’t moved from that general area at all in the same amount of time, despite a number of others coming and going. It could possibly be a lover, but it could also be that Linda wanted to keep Justinian close, and had boxed him somewhere nearby her person.

The third possible location was an otherwise blank location on her map; she just couldn’t figure out what it was. Her magic told her there were two people there, but literally nothing else, not even foot traffic.

That was odd to say the least.

The only thing Torch could think of was that Justinian was being kept with someone for company. Maybe a fellow captive or planted lover to keep him placated? It was under one of the gardens, which would be an unusual place to keep him, but perhaps that was the idea. She would never think to look there without the resonance of her blood.

Wanting to hit the easiest to check places first, Torch cast [Water Body], as the original skill was less obvious when moving through water pipes, once more and slithered her way through the pipes until she reached the kitchens, and then through a sprinkler and into the garden.

Seeping through the soil, she eventually found a cellar packed with foodstuffs and a pair of workers using the out-of-the-way location to take a nap from a long day's work. Silently commending them on their ability to vanish for over three hours without being noticed, she left them to their devices and noted that she could alert the staff to their presence if she needed to create a distraction, as neither seemed like they would be awake any time soon.

She resolidified on the far end of the gardens, making herself a tiny cavern to hole up in, and recast her tracking magic, following the routine for another hour to see if anything had changed.

The couple had finally finished their nap, but she could only guess based on the fact that they had been joined by a third and fourth person, having presumably caught them snoozing.

Now, all that was left was for Hardy to be captured by the mercenaries, and Linda to be called out to space. She needed to move three more times between various locations to ensure she stayed well out of range of any of the guards, but in time, Hardy left with a few of his men.

A few hours later, a powerful presence flared to life, then rocketed into the sky.

Knowing Linda was gone, Torch slipped into her bathroom through the shower drain and carefully scanned the area to find a fit-looking man lounging on the bed, eating a snack while watching the screen on the far wall. That at least explained the blood connection that didn’t move all day.

She wasn’t surprised to see Linda had a consort. It was fairly common among rulers, and for an unmarried ruler, she was almost surprised Linda had just the one.

That left just one location left.

The vault.

Knowing she needed to hurry, Liz recast [Water Body] once more to quickly reach the final area that was the suspected vault.

This, unlike the other locations, wasn’t something that she could sneak into, which meant she needed to go in loud.

That would, in turn, bring Linda back quickly, so she needed to only act once the Tier 19 had enough time to reach the outer system. Even then, she would have far less time than she would have liked. Her problem was that areas leading to the vault were completely isolated from the main water systems, and she needed to carefully navigate the intervening space without triggering any alarms, or her entire rescue operation would be spoiled before she even started.

Getting as close as possible, Torch checked the area with her blood magic. There were two guards present, just as she suspected.

The vault was well designed to prevent exactly what she wanted to do. The guards were stationed at the end of a long corridor with no protrusions or the like to break up sightlines or give an enemy a place to hide. Their positions were also fortified with high Tier enchanted glass made up of a plethora of runes she couldn't see, but were standard for the position and would protect them from most ranged attacks. She was also sure their AIs were connected to the estate's AI to watch for dips in their mental activities or heartbeats.

While she would be able to take out the Tier 10 guards before they could so much as blink, there would definitely be some kind of alarm that would result from her going in skills blazing. That would start the timer, which she didn’t want. Ideally, the first warning would be the guards collapsing.

That would earn her precious seconds, which might mean the difference between Justinian’s life, death, or successful rescue.

If she’d just been better at her freeform magic, she could do all sorts of things. Immersing the guards in a hallucination of an empty hallway would be a good tactic, but it just wasn’t an option. Looking through her stash of talismans, she mentally cursed. The few ones she had for harmlessly transfixing guards were too strong to use here. Quill was great at making talismans, but that largely resulted in very strong ones, and rendering the Tier 10 guards near-unconscious was nearly as good as killing them as far as setting off an alarm went.

Instead, she decided to go with a riskier potion idea.

There was an even chance this tripped the alarms as well, but Quill and she had concocted this potion to hopefully not trip any of the sensors that the hallway would be fitted with.

According to Quill, most defensive measures looked for things like an increase in humidity to notice phenomena like a gas being blown in to knock out the guards, but that wasn’t even close to foolproof. They had decided to go with a powder to hopefully slip through the detection wards. While it wasn’t a new idea, powders were harder to detect in small quantities, and she was hoping to use that fact to hit the guards with a very fine, high Tier powder.

It was a hallucinogenic that would make them see things that weren't there, which risked them sounding the alarms, but in a low dose, Torch just hoped to dull their reactions for a few brief seconds. They might be complicit in the capture and holding of Justinian, but that was for the courts to decide, not her.

A small gust from [Air Manipulation] carried a small handful of the powder down the hall. She gave it to the count of five, and took off from a standing sprint.

She crossed the thirty yards in less than a second, to find the two guards wobbling on their feet.

Grabbing both of them, Torch threw them behind her and down the hall even as she slapped a circle of talismans on the vault door.

With a small expenditure of mana, she activated the formation and watched as the runes started to glow. This was the make-or-break-it moment. If she couldn’t get inside the vault, she was screwed, they would have to call off their portion of the operation, and Luna and the army would have to step in.

Torch just wondered how Quill was doing.

***

Quill looked on the scene unfolding before him in bewilderment that slowly turned to well controlled rage. The mercenary company had arrived just on schedule, but instead of fighting the Gerbles, they were just standing around joking with each other.

Their righteous anger about being outsmarted seemed to be nothing more than a joke. Or possibly a way to ferret out who was trying to go against the Gerble family, but frankly, he didn’t really care.

He was, however, slightly irritated that he had effectively brought five more combatants into the fight when he didn’t need to. He could have just waited here and captured the noble son himself, and saved a little effort.

With a thought and the purely theatrical pushing of a button on his sleeve, Quill activated the first talisman he had placed, and a glowing barrier of mana appeared around the asteroid with the smuggled goods. He had initially set the barrier of talismans up to contain Linda and her armor-piercing Domain, but he had expected to be simply watching as the two sides fought it out.

Knowing there was nothing he could do at this point, Quill sent a message to Linda, showing a brief recording of her son picking up the asteroid and attached a brief message. “If you don’t give me one thousand Tier 19 mana stones in an hour, I’m going to start killing them, but not before sending the information that your son is a smuggler to every noble in the sector.”

He didn’t get a reply, so he pulled out a [Mana Spear] talisman and cast it through the barrier the group was still trying to futilely break through. Dozens of Tier 15s combined didn’t have a chance to break it, let alone a measly eleven of them.

His shot hit two of them, severing limbs and causing their blood to spray in the vacuum. Quill sent along another message to Linda with that particular update. He still didn’t strictly hear back, but he was informed by the army watchers that the Tier 19 had taken off from her estate at top speed.

Quill wished he could message Torch about the situation, but any and all communications going into the estate would be monitored, and he wasn’t sure about her situation and couldn’t risk blowing her cover if she was still in the process of going slow. He trusted her to be able to adapt, and that was all that mattered.

Three more [Mana Spear] talismans and three more messages later, Quill could finally see Linda Gerble.

She was riding a flying sword clearly designed for pure speed, and while her physical presence wasn’t nearly so imposing as his, Quill knew her Tier made her the strongest person here by a substantial margin.

She slowed to a stop right outside what a Tier 15’s normal range would have covered, looking at him in confusion. Presumably, she was trying to figure out what his deal was, a sole Tier 15 standing unflinching and unafraid against someone four Tiers above him.

Or, it could have been the chair. But there was no better way to convey impatience than to be sitting with legs crossed and fingers steepled while sitting on a chair. That there was no ground beneath him was no obstacle to the theatrics.

Despite his carefree demeanor, he was seething under his illusory face. This was a woman who had destroyed the life of an adolescent, taken so much from him, purely for her own greed.

It went against what the Empire stood for, and it went against what he stood for. If he didn’t have the military and Liz helping him with this mission, he would have tried to do it on his own, even if it might have taken far longer and been much riskier and possibly exposed his own unique Talent. [Cracked Mana Spear] hadn’t just languished in his innate spell slot for years after all and he was pretty sure he could kill even a Tier 19 given a few minutes by relying on the skill.

But that didn’t mean the current risk wasn’t substantial. He had fought plenty of Tier 19 monsters, but monsters were, on the whole, predictable. Their power fell within a narrow band based on their Tier and biology. They were dangerous, yes but they rarely did anything truly surprising. Even the most cunning of rift monsters were far less intelligent than a human, and didn’t prepare their abilities for different scenarios. A person, especially one with significant training and wealth, was always far scarier.

Despite that, Quill wasn’t afraid. He couldn’t be afraid when he was this angry. The only things he had on his mind were battle plans, anger, and a dash of theatrics.

Fear had no place in a fight or it would get you killed.

There was still risk though.

Failure here would get him kicked off the Path, devastate his plans for the future, but it would still be worth it. For Justinian, and all the people like him, this fight was worth the risk. It was the job he had signed up for.

If he had to stand before a thousand people like Linda, he would still choose to do it. If it meant that the powerless could live without fear of exploitation, he would stand dauntless against the weight of a world crashing down on him.

He could take it.

If the sky fell he’d do his best to shoulder it. For his friends, for his family, for the people who he’d never meet but would be able to use their gifts without fear.

“Now, aren’t you a greedy bastard. Trying to frame my family and make a power play at the same time? Overconfident, too. Well, you’ll regret that.”

Quill smiled as she tried to take control of the narrative, but clearly had no clue what story was being told.

“Overconfidence is only for people who lose. I’m precisely as confident as I need to be, and not an iota more. If it’s just me, I thought you’d have a sporting chance, which is all I’m willing to give you.”

She rushed forward, and Quill used that moment to trigger his talismans, all of his physical buffs, and his [AI] with the rudimentary combat model it had built around Linda. They wouldn’t last forever, of course, but they should last long enough for Torch to rescue Justinian Miller.

Then, and only then could they bring in the army to subdue the situation.

To buy her time, he just needed to fight someone four Tiers higher than himself.

Easy.

Except, not at all.

While he had reviewed all the information about Linda Gerble and prepared counters, her significant effort spent hiding her abilities was paying dividends. She was faster than expected, more efficient with her Concept boosted flight, and her [Shadow Armor] looked far sturdier than in any recording he had access to. That was all before she even truly started fighting, and Quill was sure she had some surprises up her sleeve.

While Linda tried to close the distance, Quill threw out a series of seemingly uncoordinated talismans meant to test her and her skills. [Fireball], [Fire Bolt], [Earth Spear], [Ice Spear], [Bolt], [Wind Blade], and more as he probed her defenses, buying him fractions of moments at a time as she dodged or tanked the hits.

Linda shrugged aside the first barrage with no effort, and attempted to do the same with the second barrage. Unfortunately, the second barrage consisted of pseudo Tier 19 talismans, with millions of mana powering them apiece. From all the recordings Quill couldn’t say Linda was arrogant but she was incredibly self confident and the first barrage of skills would have shown him as a simple Tier 15 talismans fighter.

That assumption was a mistake.

The first [Ice Lance] knocked her back, the first [Fireball] disoriented her, the second [Earth Spear] nearly knocked her sword out of her hand. The first two [Bolt]s struck her head simultaneously, only to be blocked by a reactive shield that flared from her helmet.

Good. That meant his attacks were lethal, or at least debilitating.

Linda realized that as well, and ignited a silver and gold aura, turning aside the rest of his bombardment. His [AI] raced as it tried to identify the spell but came up with no good matches throwing a massive question mark into their fight. If Quill wasn’t used to fighting up Tiers her increased speed and defenses would have caught him off guard but he was better than that.

Linda started throwing out [Mana Slash]es at a speed that reminded him of his own fighting. From his mana sight, he could tell that each was impeccably crafted, directed with fantastic mana control, and more than likely enhanced with her Concept. It was really no wonder that she rarely ever needed more than this in her recordings. Not many people would have the experience to dodge or block such an attack.

Only those who spent all their time fighting.

A [Bulwark] appeared in front of Quill’s body just before the incoming wave of attacks landed, and he reinforced it with his Concept as much as he could, throwing out a [Diffusion Shield] in front for good measure. If the latter spell had any effect, he couldn’t tell, as her strikes landed on [Bulwark] undisturbed. Each one felt like a goliath hammering down on his shield, coming close to breaking at a few points, but he held firm unharmed beneath the onslaught thanks to him reinforcing the spell with his Concept.

Quill attempted to [Snare] her, but her Domain flared and broke it like it was made of wet paper before the spell could take hold and really slow her down.

She cast [Blink], which he responded to with [Lock Down]. Linda then tried to cast [Blade Flurry], a spell which shot out a dozen light blades in a fan, but he had been expecting that having watched some of her delving, and had a [Dark Wall] talisman ready to intercept the attack.

The fact that she was revealing so much this early was both gratifying and dangerous. She took him as a real threat, yes, but it also meant she was committed to leaving no witnesses.

Noticing that he was well prepared for fighting a melee fighter at range, Linda decided to forgo most of her usual tactics and charged directly at him, wanting to use her Tier 19 strength to batter him down.

It was her best play and one he hoped she wouldn’t use so quickly.

Even as his [AI] started throwing up counter measures he kept retreating and while doing so he threw out two more formations that would hopefully stall her. One was an overcharged [Arcane Powershot] and the second was a combined [Create Water] and [Sheer Cold] charged with over five hundred thousand mana.

The resulting explosion filled the intervening space with ice fragments, but Linda seemed unaffected beyond her slightly wispy [Shadow Armor] which returned to its former stability after only a few seconds. She only paused in her charge to spin and block the [Arcane Powershot] that nearly caught her in the side.

Manually casting [Shatter Shot] at a rapid pace, he aimed to get some shrapnel behind her shield and through the gaps in her armor. Every second spell was enhanced with [Double Tap], which Linda quickly picked up on as she began throwing out small and fast [Mana Slash]es to intercept and prematurely detonate his own projectiles, scoring a few small wounds on Quill’s side. As she neared, the streaks of blood on her armor told him he had scored some hits on her, even as she bashed and smashed any of the stone grenades which got near her. Quill tried to throw up a [Hypersonic Edge] [Wind Cutter] array, but Linda was too close, and responded with a [Mana Slash] of her own sent to hit him but also tearing through the array before it could fully unleash its power.

The spell moved so quickly that even despite his dodge and all of his buffs, Quill wasn’t able to completely avoid the crescent of mana, and lost the lower portion of his left leg to the strike. [Barbarian's Hide], even buffed by his Concept and after Manny's training, did little more than slow the attack down. However, it had mitigated the resulting injury, which he counted as a success. Losing his leg was better than having his entire lower body get blown off.

Pulling out his talisman robe, Quill noticed the moment Linda realized she was dealing with someone prepared for her every move, and not just someone ready to fight a normal melee fighter. If he wasn’t hiding his Quill mask, he was sure she would have already cut her losses and tried to escape to another region of the Empire, where she could take a new name and pretend to be someone else. She just hadn’t realized how deep the conspiracy went yet which was what they were counting on.

It was something he had already predicted and planned for, which was why they had brought the army in to surround this world. There were already three platoons surrounding the world in chaotic space, and the moment Linda left her estate, they had secured the teleporters to prevent anyone from escaping using that method.

Linda closed the gap, and Quill used two talismans on his cloak to cast [Earth Armor], hoping to block the next blow. Wanting to be extra careful, he also cast [Bulwark] while triggering a false talisman from his cloak.

[Bulwark] shattered under the strike, but absorbed enough of her attack to allow for [Earth Armor] to block the rest of the blow, and he slipped out from melee range with only a shallow cut on his hip.

Linda on the other hand was sent careening backwards from the momentum of her own strike, and Quill snapped his fingers to activate his prepared talisman field.

The section of space he had just been transformed into a ball of pale blue light as upwards of a million mana detonated in unison.

He still cast a set of [Cracked Mana Trap]s, disguising them as talisman byproducts just in case she came out of that trap in fighting condition.

Linda ran right through them, ignoring the resulting explosions of various mana types to close the distance once more. He wanted to curse the woman but saw she wasn’t nearly as damaged by the double traps as he had hoped.

Quill readied a counter, knowing he wasn’t going to be able to slip through the gaps once more, and the moment she struck out at him with her [Light Blade], he punched forward, activating two talismans to respond with [Piercing Punch]. The attack wasn’t his strongest option, but it was fast enough and carried enough armor penetration that even Linda would at least need to be wary of it.

His own years of experience told him what she was trying to do and his [AI] model backed his assumptions up with the raw data. Her initial blow aimed for his chest, very nearly a feint, just one that would still do damage, but it set her up to decapitate him on the backswing which would catch someone less versed in melee fights unaware. He avoided it with a small sidewards teleport and flying towards her, pushing her to retreat.

He didn’t stop his attack like he was sure she would have predicted and hoped that would be enough to force her to change the trajectory of her attack. If she didn’t dodge he would most certainly hit her head directly which could very well be lethal without some additional mitigation.

Instead of dodging, Linda just took the attack on her helmeted head and cut through his lower waist in one clean blow. He could feel her Concept as it sheared through his armor, and while not the most sophisticated Domain she had the raw power to compensate. That his magical and physical armor had both been devastated didn’t matter, it was an expected loss.

His [Piercing Punch] had landed, and even through her helmet, carved a furrow through her skin, exposing her skull. But sadly, he wasn’t able to expose her brain to the vacuum of space like he had intended. A sudden drop in pressure like that would render most people unconscious, if they weren’t prepared.

Growling, Quill reached out, flared [Mage’s Retreat] and anchored both of them in space with his Concept as he grabbed her shield and twisted. Bone cracked, and he saw her good eye go wide at his surprising strength. Even with nearly 30,000 mana fueling the spell, it wasn’t enough for him to directly match a Tier 19 warrior in strength. But it was certainly enough to catch her by surprise, for an apparent Tier 15 mage to even be a fraction of his current strength.

She seemed to realize something was wrong right as half a dozen talismans on his cloak flared to life, trapping her in melee range for a [Bolt] array.

He was ready for it, using [Barbarian’s Hide] and [Lightning Manipulation] to blunt the worst of it for himself, but Linda seized as the mana ripped through her armor and into her body.

Quill's left hand was blown off, which destroyed a few dummy rings and cracked his teleport ring. Unfortunate, as he would be out of teleports for the rest of the fight, but easily recoverable in the near future when he got his hand back.

Linda’s mangled shield arm glowed with magical healing, and Quill retreated to begin casting more spells. He couldn't get far enough to escape the Tier 19, and endured a few more blows before Linda’s head snapped to the side.

She fled planetward, with Torch clearly having succeeded in the first part of her mission. Of course, Quill couldn’t just let her leave. Some optimizations had gone through with his [AI]s model of Linda and he used that to his advantage as he activated a three talisman force array that was aimed for her neck and would cover her three most likely places to dodge.

The blow would have cut right through her if she didn’t turn and block it with her shield which was good enough.

Another volley of spells forced her back into the fight properly.

He didn’t need to kill her. Just keep her from returning to the planet.

She couldn’t fly away at maximum speed without opening herself up to attack. She couldn’t fight someone who nearly matched her while also trying to flee.

He knew it.

She knew it.

Now backed into a corner, she turned towards him with determination, and murder in her eyes.

Quill was sure he was about to find out what other spells she had been keeping in reserve the hard way.

He just hoped Torch would finish her part quickly.

***

Torch counted down the seconds as the vault door, oh so slowly, deformed. Their preferred method of getting into a vault was to blast or melt through a door, but that idea was impossible when they needed to rescue someone who would have no skills to protect themselves from the blast. They didn’t know how close Justinian would be to the vault door, and they couldn't risk killing him but that cost her time.

So, they needed to rip the door apart in a way with as little damage to the inside as possible, which was where Quill's talismans came into play. They were designed after [Filter] and [Ore Separator], which could, in their own ways, separate items at a minute level. And nearly all vault doors were metallic mixtures meant to give the door strength and keep spiritual perception out, which meant at least two metals.

The talisman just separated those metals.

In theory a very easy task.

In practice a very, very hard one.

Most vault makers included specific countermeasures for metal-separation attacks, but the nice thing was that they couldn’t completely block it so long as the door was actually made of metal. It just meant the attack needed to be that much more powerful and mana was never something they lacked.

Seymour, the head of security, rushed at her back with his mace raised high and glowing a sickly green. Torch barely even needed to turn, blocking the attack with her shield and attacking his thigh in turn with her spear.

Her blade didn’t pierce the armor, but the Tier 18 was forced backward, and Torch used that opportunity to activate her strength boosting potions and spells, throwing her spear at him hard enough to tear some of her muscles. He threw his glowing mace with [Crescent Sweep], but Torch flared her shield’s mana shield into a full bubble, blocking Seymour’s attack before he was expecting it and enabling her to land her throw on his chest that dented his armor and pushed him back.

From there, she swept out his legs from underneath him, utilizing her Concept to reinforce the action. Once he was falling, she locked some [Gravity Manacle] talismans onto his limbs, pinning him to the ground.

She only needed to delay him for a few seconds longer, with the hole in the door nearly large enough for her to pass through, and it seemed as though Seymour wouldn’t free himself in time. She did activate a set of fire talismans to flood the hallway with flames helped along with her bloodline to blast back the onrushing guards. At only Tier 15 and 16, she barely even needed to pay them any mind but she didn’t want to kill them if she didn’t have to.

And then, a hole in the vault opened. It was only a finger's width wide but that was all she needed. Torch instantly turned into water and flooded through the gap, rematerializing on the other side.

Once inside, she ignored all the precious items and instead spread her spiritual perception out, looking for anywhere that might hold a captive and, to her horror, found nothing immediately obvious.

Dragging her focus back on track, Torch analyzed what she felt and noticed one wall was significantly shorter than the other. Seeing that and hoping it was what she thought it was she immediately ran to the wall and drove her spear into it.

Thankfully, the metal was chosen and reinforced to block spiritual perceptions, not for structural strength, so after only a few moments of work, she had created a crack in the wall. Digging her fingers inside, she pulled with a burst of potion-enhanced strength and sighed, seeing a thin, dirty, scared man in one corner of a room too small for him.

She analyzed the room and shook her head even as she kept ripping the wall apart. The section he was locked in was cramped enough to prevent him from laying down properly but beyond the glass partition which made his room so small was a luxurious room that put to shame her room she had growing up.

Not caring about being noticed, she commanded her AI to call in the army, but then noticed that the entire estate was locked down and blocking AI signals both in and out.

Using her spiritual sense to look out to the guards now rushing down the hall, she mentally shrugged.

If that was how they wanted to play it, she would oblige them.

“I’m here to save you, Mr. Miller.”

She saw him sob at the confirmation and unsuccessfully tried to help her widen the hole so he could scrabble out just a little faster. He cut himself a few times, but even as a Tier 14 mage, he wouldn’t be in danger from those wounds, so she ignored them in favor of watching the guards get closer.

“Stay behind me, and I'll get you out of here.”

He stared at her in bewilderment, and Torch repeated her statement at a speed even a Tier 5 could follow.

This time he responded with fervor. “Ok, ok, ok, ok, ok.”

Hearing that Justinian was babbling, she ignored him and summoned her spear back to her hands and created a dense wall of fire like an umbrella in front of her.

“If anyone survives breaching these flames I will kill them without hesitation. House Gerble has been found to be holding captive a civilian against their will to exploit their Talent. Surrender to Imperial investigators or suffer the consequences of trying to stop me.”

Seymour immediately called out, “She’s lying and planting evidence! Kill her!”

Torch considered that acceptance.

Still boosted by her skills and potions, Torch ran forward and let her flames unkindly scorch Seymour, but made sure not to actually kill the wounded man. After that little comment, she was sure he knew what was going on, and wanted him to stand trial for his crimes.

It was the average security she’d rather not kill, but from the way they were throwing spells at her, she was rather limited in her options. She wasn’t worried about her safety, but if a stray spell hit Justinian…

She unleashed her full spiritual perception, assessing the area, and promptly flooded the area with fire to obscure her next actions.

There were almost twenty feet of reinforced concrete above her, but she had dealt with worse. Her Tier 3 talent still reduced the cost of her blood skills, even if they ended up controlling stone, and great chunks of stone began crumbling from the ceiling above as she bored a hole large enough for the two of them to fit through.

A tendril of water formed a harness around Justinian, and Liz rode her spear up through the still-widening hole until they burst into the main floor of the estate. As the majority of the structure was only Tier 4, she didn’t even slow down as she crashed through floors and walls on her way to the sky.

Target acquired.

Her message had barely left her AI when a spaceship thudded into existence smashing through the defensive barriers around the estate like they were made of wet tissue paper. The in-atmosphere change from chaotic space into realspace displacing enough air to let her feel it like a punch to the gut, and Tier 15 soldiers swarmed out to secure the estate.

She was about to take Justinian away when Luna appeared next to her. “Well done, but this isn't over yet. Let’s g—”

Torch was about to say something else when Luna’s eyes narrowed. The next moment, the cat vanished with only an angry hiss marking her passage.

***

Quill was missing his entire lower half, the remainder of his left arm along with his growth ring which was floating around somewhere in the debris of their fight, his chest was trailing his cut-up organs, but he had managed to keep away from Linda for the last five minutes, and even inflicted a few more wounds on her. Some were even serious enough to hamper her in the fight which was how he had been able to keep his cover so long.

Biologically, he was dying, but one of the perks of immortality was that he could replace the need for biology with fury and determination. It worked nearly as well for a short time. Still, he was wondering if he was going to need to use [Cracked Mana Spear] or [Cracked Phantom Armor] to protect his life when warships arrived on the scene, disgorging two dozen Tier 15s and a single Tier 19 soldier.

Torch had succeeded.

Quill began applying [Bandage]s to himself, running [Lesser Regeneration] with most of his mana, when three figures suddenly appeared. The first was an unfamiliar man with one hand locked in place inches from the back of Linda’s head and the other hand already dissolved into purple motes of void mana. The second was Luna, holding back the man from his attack.

The third figure was Frederic, floating next to Luna with a scowl writ large on his face.

It seemed things had become complicated.