Chương 168: Absolute mandate

Amica had just finished dropping the last of her many dimensional satchels on the floor of the cave when she felt the approaching auras; one silver and six bronzes. All of them reeked of cores, and the silver even had the volatile feel to it indicating Destruction's divine presence within the person's soul.

"And the meeting place was inside a cave behind a waterfall," she thought, looking out the curtain of water streaming down outside, its roar echoing between the stone walls. The water was soon divided like the metaphorical curtain she had likened it to in her mind while said silver-ranker, a surprisingly ordinary-looking human man with black hair and light stubble walked through the descending mass of water like it was nothing, heat shimmering around him as he was dried in an instant.

The bronzes, either being smarter or just lacking their leader's flair for the theatrical, instead chose to walk up the narrow ledge which served as an entrance. The silver-ranker tried to speak, but Amica barely heard a sound even with her silver-ranked hearing, so she activated her privacy screen by feeding a not insubstantial trickle of mana as the ambient one wasn't strong enough to power the device all by itself when widened to include the whole group.

At least it got the job done, as the roar of the waterfall was abruptly cut off.

"You're late," the man noted with dissatisfaction, his tone curt.

"It was within the given time. Had some adventurers sniffing around a while ago, and we had to make sure that they lost our trail before moving on. Or would you rather that we led them straight to you?" It was easy to fall into the bored drawl Amica had practiced to play her role in this little charade, her strong aura making her the prime candidate to lie to a fellow silver's face.

"True enough," the man said, conceding the point.

"For what we're paying you, I trust that you could manage discretion. The advance payment enough should-""Geez, don't sweat it. Gods know it is in my best interest to keep them away too, you know. I'm not taking on armed maniacs bearing down on me, and neither will my bosses." She then gestured to the stack of satchels upon which she was still resting one foot.

"It's all here. Feel free to check, but the satchels aren't leaving this cave before I have the rest of the payment."

"Don't worry, smuggler, you'll have your payment," the silver-ranker said, gesturing to the bronzes.

"Go check on our goods." As the lower-rankers went forward, the silver-ranked man gestured off to the side, and Amica joined him in leaning against the wall, although careful to not stand too close. Not that she personally was worried, but she at least tried to lean into the part of a skittish smuggler.

"But please, take your time," she thought as the bronze-rankers started going through the crates, counting the essences, awakening stones and other magical contraband. Or rather, the counterfeits provided by the Adventure Society. The faux essences and stones wouldn't hold up to any more in-depth scrutiny and would dissolve in a few more days, but it should be enough for their purposes.

Contrary to the potential ambush Amica had suspected, the other silver instead struck up some conversation, awkwardly flexing what he no doubt thought as achievements in an attempt to impress her. She could feel his general boredom and current attraction well enough from his aura, even if it was only surface-level, which made it easy to play just coy enough to keep him talking.

"It's all here, master!" One of the bronzes called after a while. The man nodded in satisfaction while Amica felt a twinge of disappointment in that the bronzes had been surprisingly efficient in their tallying.

"Oh well, the first plan rarely works anyway. Time for the backup to-" She had barely finished the thought when Emilio suddenly appeared next to her, joining the other two silvers in leaning back against the wall.

"Found it. Their concealing formations weren't much. We can move as planned," the elf said casually. To his credit, the other silver-ranker reacted quickly. While Amica could sense the sudden spike of alarm, he acted directly instead of asking meaningless questions. Fist surrounded by the head of a viper made of flames, the man swung as the strike was clearly empowered further by his own life force.

"Classic Destruction," Amica thought, having faced enough of the mad deity's followers to recognize it by now. But the man's blow never found its mark as Amica spiked his frail aura with hers, using his lapse in control to grab him in a telekinetic hold and swing him like a bludgeon into his own bronze-rankers before letting him go to pass back out through the waterfall.

Two of the lower-rankers were quickly picked off while still airborne as Emilio's wands appeared in his hands, blasting them with a torrent of shots with deadly accuracy. Two more were shoved out through the waterfall along with their leader, while the final two…" Wall." The cave wall opened up as Kite and Christine emerged from the stone-shaped pocket in which they had been waiting, the former conjuring a series of force walls around the remaining pair of bronze-rankers.

Within a moment, they had each grabbed a flailing captive and were shoving them against the barriers while Kite's additional arms were sending out what mana-draining attacks he could to hasten the process. Seeing that things were well under control, Amica floated up and through the waterfall in pursuit of the silver-ranker, the water parting around her telekinetic barrier without letting as much as a drop through.

Having sensed the pain flaring through her quarry's aura, she already knew that she probably wasn't needed here either, but might as well make things as quick as possible. It turned out that she was too late even for that. The silver-ranker's aura winked out just as the mists of the waterfall let her see clearly, and Amica only had the time to see a body bristling with arrows dissolve beneath Sztyka's terrifying attention while firmly held by Ryker's arms of animated cloth.

Poor guy didn't even have time to detonate himself in the last blaze of glory of which Destruction's followers seemed to love so much, even though knowing what deity the man served and what he had done in said deity's name erased even such passing sympathies. Emilio appeared along the rest just as Amica reached them.

"Things went well. Kite has two of the bronzes captured, so we can see what numbers you can get out of them. I'll go scout the hideout some more in the meantime."

"Go, but be quick. We need to move within fifteen minutes before they start wondering where these ones have disappeared to," Ryker said, turning to Amica as the elf scout disappeared once more.

"Fish out what's left of him from the stream and see what you can find in his belongings. Sztyka, go help Kite and Christine with the questioning. Gray Sky, you and me keep watch. If all goes well, we'll soon be kicking in plenty more doors."

"The others are gathering, master."

"Yes, I can feel it. We should get there as well to be ready to claim some of the goods. They may not know our true allegiances, but we still have a faction to look out for. Too much imbalance between us all will risk the planted seeds of our god," Split Shard of Mirrors said as he adjusted the final part of his outfit in his personal quarters of their hidden compound along with checking that the aura mask remained in place.

Not that he had any reason to complain in that last regard though; the veil over his spirit remained as pristine as ever. Shard was still deeply curious of how his superiors had gotten such splendid methods of masking one's aura, even capable of hiding the touch of the divine.

"A question for a time when I have risen to their ranks," he thought, leading his acolyte as well as two other bronze-rankers towards the common area of their home which also served as the meeting place to discuss the day-to-day running of their ambitious undertaking. As for now, Shard needed to prepare. If the smugglers hadn't lied about their capabilities, they would receive enough materials to have sixty new iron rankers soon. Each of them would need to be trained, most raised up through cores.

But in a year or two, their little cabal would have the power to threaten most nearby sects and settlements.

"And thus may we continue to make sure that Discord's seeds land in fertile soil. And speaking of such," Shard thought as he drew near, the tense voices easy to pick out even from afar.

"It seems like my fellows are at it again." Entering the common area, an underground garden beneath a domed stone roof with cultivated moss and several small streams and tiled paths to bring some sense of life into the cavernous compound, Shard saw the standoff. One of the women, her features gaunt and claws extended, were squaring off against another whose flesh seemed to bubble and writhe.

Of the six silver-rankers in the compound, the two were the ones you could count on would butt head in just about any situation.

"You are already hogging more and more space with that filth you are spreading," the ghoulish woman accused, pointing a long claw reeking with paralytic toxins in accusation.

"There simply isn't enough room for more of you."

"That is quite rich coming from the ones who can actively convert minions out of the rejects. Your allotment should be even smaller," the mutating woman countered, her followers giving their shouts of agreement. While it was in part music to Shard's ears, he couldn't let it stand for too long. The adherents of Destruction were all remaining silent, just watching with anticipatory glances as the tensions kept rising.

"Honored mistresses, please hold your ire. We are all united here, are we not? In purpose and plan both, where we have all long been in agreement that moving too quickly will just cause us to fall prey to the fools outside before we can actually make a difference," Shard said as he entered the conversation. Even uttering the word 'united' felt like tasting something most bitter, but one had to endure plenty of unpleasant things while playing a role such as his.

There were several protests, of course, but over the years studying and meditating on the concept of his deity, Shard had ironically enough become rather proficient in disarming tensions as well. As he did at least one time every day, he broke into the conversations every so often to ask the right questions or make the correct statements, guiding the conflict back to a sustainable, simmering level.

It was in the middle of one of his more lengthy interjections that Shard could feel the formation on the main gates start to fade, a sign that the keystone had been used. It would seem that the smugglers had indeed made their delivery. The others noticed a few seconds later, and the bronzes and irons present soon followed the gazes of their leaders as the hidden stone gate to their compound started shifting to the side with a soft grating.

To keep the process as silent as possible, those constructing the place had chosen to trade speed for subtlety, meaning that it would take around twenty seconds for the gate to open completely. And it was during that time that Shard started getting the nagging feeling that something was wrong. It wasn't anything wrong with the gate itself, but rather the formations of the walls around them, where Shard started sensing a slight dissonance.

Nothing major, but his senses were very keen in regards to anything disharmonious. He was still trying to pinpoint it when the opening gates crossed the halfway mark, revealing a lone figure standing in the semi-open doorway; a young silver-ranker clad in silvery plate armor, his tattooed face a mask of politeness as he gave a shallow bow in greeting to those inside. Even before he spoke, it was obvious beyond all doubt that this was no smuggler.

"Greetings. May the clashing of our paths bring great tempering to me and mine." While the lower-rankers needed a moment more to process, only just beginning to form their shouts of alarm or other responses, the silver-rankers acted. All except Shard, that is, who chose to trust his instincts and instead start retreating further back into the common area to either be in a better position to bring his own powers to bear or make his escape.

This still left four silver-rankers charging towards the door, already preparing attacks or spells as they readied to strike down the unexpected invader while protecting their lower-ranked underlings. And that was when Shard saw it. In a ripple, the defensive formations of the domed outer wall and ceiling flickered before fading, the dissonance from before causing the magical system to fail. And then, like a clap of thunder, the whole outer part of the dome around the gate cracked and shattered inward.

The now loose and falling boulders, pieces of rocks and other debris halted for a moment in the air before a floating woman with a potent aura thrust her hand forward, the motion seeming to carry great strain. Like an extension of her will, all the debris suddenly shot downward again with much greater speed and momentum than the pull of the earth could manage.

Most of the largest pieces converged on the charging silvers, burying them beneath the sudden rock slide while the rest of the smaller pieces of debris - smaller being a very, very relative word in this case - shot out into the common area. Many of the lower-ranked members of the cabal were ripped apart by wildly ricocheting stones the size of a person's head that covered the room like shrapnel, the placid garden that was the chamber faring even worse.

Shard managed to protect his acolyte and a few others of his faction close to him by conjuring a wind wall and using several wind blades to cut off the bigger pieces into smaller ones that his defensive measure could deal with. Seeing more of what could only be adventurers, one man with sharp streamers of cloth whipping out around him even riding one of the larger flung boulders to get closer to his foes, Shard instantly made the decision that retreat was indeed the wiser option here.

He turned and ran, all but dragging his acolyte with him while turning for one of the passages leading deeper into the mountain, only to quickly swerve and aim for another path when an elf in combat robes teleported to stand in that tunnel opening and started blasting into the crowds that was still reeling from the initial onslaught after the breach. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"They don't look like locals either," the priest of Discord noted with increasing concern. There were eight of the adventurers as far as he could tell, but given the number of bronze-rankers present they should at least have needed to be a bit wary. The telekineticist was good though. Very good. She constantly sent debris churning around the battlefield, especially into any location where some of the fifty-odd bronze-rankers were gathering any semblance of order.

While there were still attacks and spells directed their way, they were too few and too scattered to do any significant difference for their own silver-rankers, outnumbered and outclassed as they were.

"So much work, now shredded. I need to report this to the archpriestess. The news of adventurers striking here might be useful seeds for her to plant elsewhere." With his aura mask, Shard was at least confident to fall low on the list of priorities for the adventurer. All those others touched by gods like Undeath or Destruction tended to garner a lot more attention, one of the reasons why his fellow clergy tried to collaborate with the other 'dark gods' as often as possible.

Keeping his aura as retracted as possible, Shard dove into the side tunnel, his acolyte still dragged behind him. He needed to get as far away as possible from this sudden disaster. As he stood in the midst of battle, conjuring barriers and dispelling magical effects wherever he could, Kite was wondering if this could even be called a proper battle. Sure, the enemies were many, but there were fewer silvers than they had, and none seemed to match the elites of the task group.

From the looks of it, Ryker was ripping some kind of ghoulish essence user limb from limb while Mtanga and Gray Sky were teaming up to pin some wildly mutating warrior in place while the thing thrashed beneath the encroaching petrification.

Had not Emilio already snuck into the place to peek around and reported back of the numerous restricted essence users being trained there, Kite might have felt more reticent in the one-sided beatdown that would end with most of the enemies dead now and some dead after thorough interrogations. But he also knew enough of what these people had probably already done to people in the region. The steady stream of zombies and revenants which had started emerging from a side tunnel was evidence enough.

"Kite!" Amica called to get his attention as she floated closer while directing her concerto of carnage throughout the cave.

"There is an odd one among them. See the guy sneaking towards the northern tunnel?" Kite nodded in confirmation while he projected another few attacks to aid his teammates who were taking on the enemy leadership.

"What of him? Seems unremarkable enough."

"That's the thing. A bit too unremarkable. I think he's wearing an aura mask, and you did ask me to keep a spiritual eye out for that." Her comment made Kite turn his full attention towards Amica, bringing up barriers to shield them both from stray attacks. He had indeed asked her to look for that, but had honestly not expected her to actually find any. But someone with an aura mask he hadn't even felt a trace of in a place like this... Could it really be?

"Was that where he exited? Anything else you can tell me?" Kite asked Amica, who seemed to get even more curious as she noticed the tension in his voice.

"And even more importantly, I need you to toss me over there." If, if, this was like that time at the fall of the Descending Star sect, Kite needed to act as soon as possible.

"I can, but-" Amica confirmed, glancing over towards Ryker as if to ask for permission. Seeing that the stern man was wrist-deep in the chest cavity of a death-essence user, she turned back to Kite with a shrug.

"Eh, he seems busy. Things are going well here, so I say go for it. Ready?"

"Thank you," Kite said, shooting her a grateful smile before he ran and leapt. Submitting to Amica's telekinesis had been rather unsettling in the beginning, but these days it felt easy. Even surprisingly natural. Boosted by the power of his teammate, Kite sailed through the air as he crossed the former cavern.

By now, different kinds of projectiles and debris from the many essence-users fighting below had started to properly fill the air, and Kite brought up the twin barriers of Heaven-and-Void Warding for the final stretch. With one of the curved discs close on either side, he barreled through a sheath of fire trailing the teleporting Emilio around the room as well as plowed through what looked to be a cloud of whirling, spinning daggers.

Finally landing in front of the tunnel where Amica had indicated, he idly shifted the barriers to point behind him and struck both of them with his staff to send ripples of resonating force to spread outward into the room behind him and further hamper the clumps of bronze-rankers. Turning a corner, Kite retracted his aura as best as he could while moving forward as fast as he dared, cognizant of the risk of heading off alone.

While this left his spiritual senses all but blind, his silver-ranked hearing was still enough to hear the thumping of a heartbeat around one corner as well as the shallow breathing of someone terrified. Turning said corner at speed and coming face to face with a startled iron-ranker brandishing a conjured, wicked-looking dagger, Kite just continued on even as a strike of his staff sent the woman unconscious to the ground, the echoed mana-drain more than enough to empty her mana pool.

As he continued through a series of corridors which looked to be leading to living quarters, Kite was just starting to wonder how to best find his quarry without spending too much time combing through all of the rooms when he heard a door slam shut in the distance after a harsh whisper.

"Keep watch and call if someone is coming, no matter who they are. I will prepare for our departure."

"Of course, master:" Trusting his instinct in that this was indeed his prey, Kite charged down a side corridor which he believed led him closer to the hidden compound's outer walls, passing through the rather nondescript stone-shaped tunnels before once more turning a corner. At the end was a pair of doors much like those he had passed, but their secluded location hinted at the living space beyond being something out of the ordinary.

The bronze-ranker standing ready and alert in front of it did give it away as well." Brambles of verdant bounty!" Kite had already begun his charge as the other man cast his spell and thorny vines burst from every surface between him and the bronze-ranker, but to the other man's chagrin the grasping plants only slid off Kite's armor as he plowed through them, his spectral arms already sending projected attacks towards the cornered man.

"Glint, if you please!" Kite called as the man staggered under his stunning, mana-draining barrage only to be swallowed by a restraining sphere of water and dragged to one side as he tried to claw his way out of the ball of liquid. As Kite reached the door, he just continued straight through without slowing down in the slightest, the normal wood splintering before Implacable Motion while he let his aura unfold. Another man inside, the silver-ranker from before, looked at Kite with clear alarm.

He looked to be a Hua-Xian native, with black hair bordering on blue fastened in a loose ponytail and clad in robes reinforced with metal in certain key areas. And while he did indeed look most alarmed at the development, he had also already turned to launch a wind blade toward Kite while dropping a dimensional bag into which he had apparently been busy stowing his belongings. One of Kite's spectral arms flicked a strike with a descendant of Matra, Pattern-shattering Counter, readily shattering the projectile.

But it turned out that it had only been a distraction." Flow of the world, show thy dissonance!" An icy pain started tingling through Kite's body as what was no doubt a curse took hold. It felt like someone was actively injecting pain into Kite through some unseen means, and as Kite felt the pain connect to his three vortices in particular he realized its effect; his mana recovery had started to damage him.

"Sage!" he thought with more fear in his inner voice than he would have liked to admit. Kite leaned a lot on his constant stream of mana after all, be it from his vortices or his other mana-draining attacks. And if that constant stream became a stream of pain, he would be in trouble. But Sage came to his rescue, Fortune be praised, a charge from the familiar removing the curse even as Kite struck with blows of his own.

Even though he aimed to damage the opponent's mana, he could feel each of his attacks landing returning just a bit of retributive damage. It was annoying but manageable, and Kite responded in turn by catching another of the wind blades on his chitinous shield resulting in a storm of small projectiles seeking vengeance.

A wider burst of wind meant to throw Kite back out into the corridor washed ineffectually over him as the stone beneath cracked instead, and Kite managed to stun the man more thoroughly with a strike of Immutable Echo. While the room's faux-windows made it seem surprisingly spacious, the close confines actually favored Kite greatly. Combined with the man seeming to have only middling fighting experience, Kite was able to systematically disassemble his defenses and counterattacks.

When the man stepped, one of Kite's strikes was already targeting his legs. When he started sweeping his arm or leg to fire more wind blades, one of Kite's weapons was already intercepting. Three sets of limbs against one and the practice to bring them properly to bear let Kite lay down an onslaught which he believed should have made mistress Dew proud. With the outer defensive formations of the complex failing, the brawl in the fleeing man's quarters also did quite the number on the interior.

One hurricane punch delivered by Kite's foe was sidestepped, blowing out most of the outer wall as stone was sent flying out towards the surrounding wilderness in a spectacular cascade, and Kite was actually grateful that there didn't seem to be anything dug out just beneath the place as the deeply cracked and scoured stone floor would have otherwise given in by now.

As his foe grew more and more frantic, Kite also thought that he started to sense something in the man's aura; the faintest whispers of cracks, something other leaking through. He remembered that Dancer on the Broken River had done something to shatter the mask of the target of their temporary, uneasy alliance back at bronze rank, and that the man had possessed a similar feeling now that he knew what to look for.

But whatever it was the adherent of Pain had done, Kite had to resign himself to the method being unavailable to him. The proper strain of combat would have to do. Apparently sensing the same as his spells were disassembled and his curses cleansed, the other man chose flight, when fight proved ineffective. With another hurricane punch and a series of windblades which forced Kite to dedicate all of his arms to defense for a moment, the man shot off and out of the fresh hole he'd recently punched in the outer wall.

Already expecting a wind essence user to have a flight power, Kite tried bringing up his force walls to stop him, but the initial burst of speed was simply too fast as the man crossed the threshold a mere moment before his barrier had manifested.

"Curse of the heavens- Glint!" Kite swore as he ran towards the opening in the wall, passing through the barrier he had immediately dispelled when it failed to do its purpose. He had only taken a few steps out into the air in pursuit when his familiar caught up to him and scooped him onto her back with a flick of her snout.

"Thanks, little beauty!" Kite said as he bent down to brace for the acceleration as Glint's more draconic form started speeding up in the air in hot pursuit of the flying man. One who Kite was now quite sure was another adherent of Discord. And this time, he would make sure to catch his quarry alive. In the highest reaches of Heavenward, capital of Hua-Xi, a celestine woman with hair shimmering like bismuth had her meditations interrupted.

Even as a core-user, her aura was as controlled as they came, the result of untold hours of intense practice. It was required for a woman in her position after all, as putting blind faith in the aura masks gifted by their 'allies' among the clergy of Disguise would be beyond foolish however wonderful they may be. As for the interruption, the people who would dare to do so within the bounds of the capital could be counted on her fingers. But likening this particular speaker to a mere person would be foolish.

Even heresy." Gardener, your intervention is needed. The northwestern cabal is under attack." As Discord's voice echoed in her mind, an androgynous mix of myriad words sprung from conflict, the priestess - or gardener, as her deity often called those of her station - sprung to her feet at once. The outward languid persona of haughty superiority was nowhere to be seen as she used her gold-ranked speed to snatch up her long, slender pipe and enchanted jewelry from an adjacent chamber in her suite.

"Lord, how can I spread your seeds or cull the weeds that threaten your garden?" she mentally responded even as she blew smoke from her pipe. The ring of hazy, shimmering vapor expanded gradually until her portal would finish forming in a few seconds. But with the mind of a gold-ranker, the rest of the mental conversation passed in an instant." Adventurers are purging the hidden cabal. Eight silver-rankers." While she didn't question her deity, the priestess still inwardly frowned at the words of the god.

Calling her to handle silvers was a risky proposition, but her deity brooked no argument." Without intervention, Split Shard of Mirrors will soon be taken alive." And thus, she understood, a spark of urgency tinged with fear rippling through her being. Some of their hidden priests died every now and then, weakness purged from the garden as they apparently couldn't thrive in the tumultuous domain that was their god's. But one being taken alive was a threat to their great undertaking.

Donning a blank porcelain mask, the priestess stepped through the portal in a blur the very moment it became stable enough. She had each and every one of their hidden cells, cabals and other congregations well memorized. The one which she was currently heading to should have been well hidden within the western mountains, but it would also have received a substantial delivery recently.

"Every interaction with the other forces is a chink in our masks. But the garden of Discord grows among the mingling of people, and thus it is inevitable," she thought, quelling her frustration as she exited into the fresh mountain air, the afternoon sun glittering on the frosty mountains even though they rarely saw any proper snow this far south except upon the highest peaks.

Immediately, her senses stretched across the surroundings from the distinct mountain peak on which her portal had appeared, and she took it all in; the wrecked outer wall of the cabal's little sanctuary, battle still raging inside even though the conclusion was already obvious; the adventures were no mere locals stumbling into things. They were elites, and not from these lands.

"Meddling outsiders," she noted, filing the piece of information away as she had found plenty of trails to follow just at a glance. But that wasn't important right now. What was important was the smaller conflict - more of a duel, really - taking place in up in the air to the north of the compound where Split Shard of Mirrors was doing his utmost to escape an adventurer hot on his heels, riding what was admittedly one of the most beautiful creatures the priestess had ever seen.

Tattoos aglow, aura firm and weapons trailing deadly arcs as their strikes somehow carried across the distance in mere heartbeats. She could see Shard's mana fading even as his body was almost in top condition, and quickly realized the danger that young man posed. And perhaps even more surprising, the priestess recognized him.

"I have seen him. He was still a child then, an iron-ranked local fighting our little failed project up north," she realized. Oh if she had known that he would cause such trouble now, she would have arranged for his death long before. But as things stood, she would need to do it personally this day, while being careful to leave as few traces as possible and affecting as little of the surrounding conflict as she could.

Her even being there gave the other gods a mandate to act accordingly, and for killing a silver-ranker, their cause would suffer setbacks of their own.

"But as it is the will of Discord, this little weed shall be scythed down." Her shimmering cloud was already forming beneath her feet, ready to carry her through the air to her quarry in a flash, but just as her aura and will had sharpened to a point and readied themselves for violence, another presence unfolded at her side. It was firm and unyielding; a monolith whose pressure equaled, if not exceeded, her own.

And their words, spoken in a ghostly, eerie voice reached her even before she had the time to turn around and face the interloper.

"Stay your hand, Gardener, or let Justice carry out her absolute mandate."