Chương 147: 60 - CHEAP TRICKS

Mitas Corlander sat contemplating on a bench. The destruction of Graceland was commencing behind him. There were explosions, gunfire, and Emil's beast summons were running amok. Yet he paid it no mind. There were only a handful of times in his illustrious career that he had been stumped. It frustrated him to no end that he was being outplayed by a 25-year-old. He had no way to deny whether any of what T'balt had said was true about the Redeemer power.

But that lingering doubt was all that stopped him from flying straight to the Bestower statue, where his ultimate prize hung, and wringing it from Uriel Grace's neck. The golden armor on his body disappeared, another loot he had collected. He stood up, pacing.

"German, I imagine you're partly to blame for my enemy being so prepared against me." He knew his former subordinate was listening to his thoughts. What better way to take hold of a negotiation than by being in the mind of an opponent?

"Why is it that you decided to betray me? You could've come to me. I've always made a point of hearing you out. I could've given you a better offer if you had. Does this city really concern you so much ot is it… mhmm… you left your purpose for love." German continued not to respond.

"There was one point in my life when I wished I could do the same. But my father drilled into me an ideology that was much stronger to me. Goodness requires sacrifice. Greatness requires great sacrifice. If I must go through each citizen here one by one, killing all who don't have the Redeemer coin, then that is what I'll do to get the Bestower… even if it includes Tyene."

"You've answered your own question." German finally thought to him.

"I betrayed you because I realized your greatness only includes Mitas Corlander. There was no room for me there. How long would it have been before I was the next to be sacrificed for your goals?"

"I won't deny it. But it would've hurt me to do it. You were like a son to me. But by definition, a throne seats only 1."

"Then please accept my formal resignation. I've received a better offer. All that's left between us now is just business."

"I agree. What happens now…" The golden armor reformed over his suit, and a golden broadsword formed in Corlander's hand.

"Is strictly business." He ascended above Graceland with a gold and smoky aura around him. He stared deep into the vacant eyes of the Bestower, who stared back at him.

"Your time will come," Corlander muttered. His senses told him where the closest set of fighting Gracelandians was. He appeared above them as a wavering ball of black smoke. When they saw him, most tried to run. Some tried to fight. They were all brought to their stomachs by the weight of increased gravity. One by one, he shone his glowing red eyes on them. No Redeemers. And so he would do exactly as he said he would, hoping that boy was watching.

The men screamed for their lives as Corlander reared his sword to decapitate one of them with a single blow.

"NOW!" German commanded. T'balt reappeared right above Corlander, but the old man saw something like this coming. The reflex loot inside him made his forcefield appear, blocking T'balt's attack on him. But Corlander couldn't sense the play. T'balt didn't have the Loot Thief equipped, so any normal attack would've been worthless. Corlander swung his sword only for T'balt to meet it with a mirrored one. Then from his own arm, a blade made of Corlander's own bones burst through his skin.

It horrifically cracked and stretched to wrap around T'balt's body. The young man squirmed and struggled, falling into Corlander's trap.

"Now give me the Loot Thief. Or else I'll feed you the insides of your people until you do." This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. T'balt raised his eyes at the visceral nature of the threat.

"That sounds like a bad time… But I choose neither." With Corlander having a direct hold of T'balt, that meant there was a direct connection between their two bodies. That was all the Wanderer needed to teleport them both far away. Thunder cracked, and they appeared on an abandoned city street. Corlander fought to regain himself after suddenly being shifted into a new environment.

"What is this? Where have you taken me?" T'balt mirrored the bone loot and grimaced as his ribcage pierced through his skin to break the hold of Corlander's arm bone. He then dropped to his knee as his ribs retracted back into him. As visceral as it felt, he was surprised that there was no blood that came out of him at all during the process. Corlander was quick to attack again, this time with a wave of some sort of green energy that blew a hole in a car when it missed T'balt.

He had teleported away, sounding the thunder two more times.

"Answer me!" Corlander commanded.

"Well, if you give me a moment…" T'balt was sitting on top of a black truck, a Corlander truck that just happened to notice.

"I'd tell you to look up." Several balls of angelic light appeared above them like flashbangs. The next second, the lights formed in a perfect circle around them and the forms shifted into giant angel wings. They were in the Loot Thief's city, where, when it was still alive, it was protected by a small army of Seraphs. Those Seraphs, attracted to T'balt by the sound of the Wanderer and his very essence as a Redeemer, held a bloodthirsty look in their stone eyes.

Corlander grimaced, looking at the young man's sly smile on one of his trucks.

"You cocky little shit."

"What can I say?" T'balt shrugged.

"This time I was the most prepared person in the room." As the Seraphs raised their glowing fingers to attack, T'balt's figure snapped away, leaving Corlander to face their wrath on his own. They seemed to recognize him, or at least the loot he carried. It did not make them happy. T'balt appeared back in Graceland, where all the men were held down by Corlander's gravity. They were all still catching their breaths when he arrived.

"Oh, Redeemer," One of them said as if he'd just caught them slacking off.

"No worries. Are you hurt?"

"We can keep fighting."

"Good. I don't think this fight is over yet." They nodded and got up to run to the front lines where the rest of the fighting was taking place. Tyene emerged from behind one of the buildings when she saw him appear.

"Did that really just work?" T'balt nodded.

"He's hundreds of miles away from here, dealing with a Seraph horde and out of our hair."

"That's some quick thinking there, T'bag."

"Thanks to the thinkers' loot, I basically had hours to come up with it. Now we just have to deal with the rest of the hunters." She twisted the ends of her mouth.

"Feels a bit anti-climactic though."

"What did you want? If we fought him directly, we lost."

"But he's still alive… As long as he is, he'll be a threat."

"He's taking care of… Even if he somehow manages to survive the Seraphs, he'll have wasted all his resources here, and we'll have even more time to prepare for him." She was unsatisfied by his answer.

"We had a deal, ya know."

"Killing him wasn't the goal. Survival was."

"And what does survival mean to someone like me?" T'balt could only stare at her with some contempt. He couldn't possibly understand the personal satisfaction Tyene planned to get out of killing Corlander herself. It felt like all she cared about when there was so much more in the world for them than revenge. But he couldn't worry about keeping her happy. He had a child to worry about. He had a city to worry about. Dealing with Tyene about this felt like dealing with something childish.

"You two," German sounded off.

"The battle is still happening. No time to stand around." T'balt nodded.

"I'm going." He glanced at Tyene, who just tossed a lazy wave. He shook his head and teleported to a vantage point above the city. The best one just happened to be right next to Uriel on the Bestower's open book.

"That was quite the trick." Uriel weakly spoke up behind him.

"It won't work for long." T'balt ignored him.

"One thing at a time." He looked around to get a view of where all the enemies were. Her could teleport to each location, but if he didn't know where anyone was, he might as well have been teleporting at random. Most of the fighting was happening on the east side. The chaos of it was starting to spill into the middle of the city. But he could also hear several gunshots from the north side, where German had mentioned some Razorwind helicopters had dropped soldiers.

Then there was the biggest concern: a near fifty-foot ice bear stopping around towards the center of the city. And someone on the ground around it, a green-flamed skull creature, had been lighting everything on fire in its path. This still wasn't going to be easy. He stopped in his mind to make a plan, to figure out what those creatures were, and their biggest threats.

"Slow down," German said.

"I can't process as fast as you to understand your questions."

"Sorry," he thought.

"I can't control the speed of my thoughts with this thing in." German still couldn't understand it.

"Just say it out loud. I can use the hypersensitivity to roughly make out what you're saying if I pinpoint your location."

"Ok," T'balt said.

"Tell me what I need to know."