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1018 Words
He paused as his Power brushed against someone else, stalking the first person, dagger drawn.
It happened so fast, they didn’t even notice him steal their perception, but it was more than enough for him to learn all about them.
They could somehow smell through Minkalla’s restrictions and were using their own Power to hunt other cultivators down.
Claude had smelled the three sets of blood on the man’s armor.
Claude was a Hero. He wouldn’t hunt down those weaker than himself in cold blood, nor would he allow someone else to abuse their Powers for murder and assassination.
Running through the forest was easy, as Claude stole the senses of monsters and bugs alike using them to see his path. With his Power, it only took him seconds to reach the stalking assassin.
The assassin reacted quickly and spun to s***h out with a dagger that a nearby slug sensed was infused with mana.
Claude stepped to the side as he unleashed his full Power at the assassin. The man tried to resist it, but his spirit wasn’t strong enough to block the swap of senses, and he wasn’t kind or gentle in his application. Instead of just swapping the assassin’s senses with his own, he swapped the man’s senses with a nearby beetle.
The assassin stumbled as his body and senses were no longer in sync, and Claude grabbed the hand holding the dagger and twisted. Bone broke, but before the man could fully react and pull away, Claude kicked the man in the knee, shattering the limb and causing the assassin to fall.
Kicking out his boot took the killer in the temple, crushing armor and skull.
When he felt the rush of Genesis Energy and felt how great it was, Claude shook his head. The assassin had more Genesis Energy than was appropriate for this part of the floor. With this influx, he already had enough of the mystical energy to get the exit reward for this level.
After looting the man, he checked on the previous target of the assassin, and after seeing that he was still creeping along, he turned to leave.
Claude strolled through Minkalla’s first floor like it was home.
The darkness was exactly that.
Home.
The Pack was strong. They would not fail.
Xicual flew overhead, as while his gaze was impeded by this challenge of Eternal Darkness, his senses remained the sharpest of them all. All that was beneath him was included in his spiritual senses, and Minkalla dared not, or could not suppress the power that was his by birthright.
Thus, it was trivial to notice the hidden, false lion about to pounce upon Vol Kiar. He sent his warning and unleashed a mighty thunderbolt upon the intruder, wounding it. Teria and Asloc finished off the lion, savaging it with fang and spell.
He unleashed a triumphant cry despite there being no one able to hear its majesty and continued scanning the terrain around his Packmates. With him watching out for them, nothing would fell them, and they would emerge victorious.
Then, two things passed through his mind very quickly. The first was recognition of a brief flicker of movement from above him. The second was a pair of hardened talons.
The feeling of flying, not under his own power, was the last thing he felt as he heard his pack’s questions of where he was through their [Mana Mind]s.
Axel took deep, deliberate breaths as his team fell around him.
They were exhausted from a brutal fight with the boss of the ruin, and while biologically oblivious to the exertion, they needed to rest.
Not wanting to be caught off guard, he pulled out a few of his rechargeable mana stones and used them to partially refill his mana pool.
Through AI, as that was the only way to communicate, he asked his team leader, “What did we get?”
Hallie was the only one standing and able to move. As a melee fighter, she had come out of the fight in better shape than the rest of them, who had to expend most of their mana to take the giant down.
Dispelling the ruin reward, she jerked but said nothing.
As they were all focusing on their spiritual perception, they all saw the crystalline orb fall to the ground.
Axel almost didn’t recognize the orb, but Hallie’s reaction was enough to tell him everything they needed to know.
“Module core.”
Module cores, like spell modules, enabled anyone who cycled essence through it to copy the module to their spirit. Where they differed was that they were reusable. Not forever, but enough. Even better, it was possible for higher Tier cultivators to modify the module’s formula while it was still in the core. At its most basic use, it could save literal centuries of work spent adjusting the skill in question for anyone lucky enough to get access to the module core.
Jacqueline, their sniper, asked as she sat up, “What module?”
And that was the million-credit question.
If it was something cheap like [Targeted Cleaning HY8-RV], or rather [Cleanse], the module core would be useful and sell well, but if it was a combat module, the price would multiply beyond their belief.
Hallie looked at the orb and didn’t say anything, giving everyone else time to crowd around her.
Their leader tapped her finger on the orb in a well-known thinking habit.
Axel could feel the nervous energy and had to ask, “Anything yet?”
Despite not being able to see her do it, he could hear from his leader’s voice she was rolling her eyes. “Nothing yet. Now shush for a minute.” All four of them waited with bated breath, but finally, after what felt like an hour, Hallie said, “It’s not in my normal database. I need to actually scan it to check what it does.”
Axel clenched his fist. That was a good sign. It not being in the databases they purchased meant that it was rare, and rare always meant valuable.
- Writer
