Cyril Sarnath
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Chapter 215: Is this the end of an era? (Interlude)
🕑 Added 2024-05-17 19:59:59 +0000 UTCFirst of all, the chapter got a little out of hand and I had to end it in a weird place. The next chapter will continue the conversation between Vivena and her mother as this is quite crucial (that is why I didn't want to rush it just to finish). If I have enough time I will try to get bonus chapter around Monday/Tuesday.
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“Is this the end of an era?”
Harter read the title of the news article and had to double check the name of the news outlet. It wasn’t the White Truth, a banned remnant of the White Masks, but the Ascender News, the World Government-sanctioned news outlet.
“Hunter, the first rift essence Level 10 and strongest ascender in the solar system clashed against Esopp Earl, by some known as the King of Winters, a co-founder of enigmatic Untainted Paradise.
There would be nothing odd about it if it wasn’t their third clash and this time Esopp Earl held his ground, pushing Hunter away from his territory.
Is this the end of Hunter’s hegemony? Is this the end of an era?”
“I can’t believe they published it,” Klaus muttered, sitting on the other side of the table. The rest of their group were inside the city of Arshem, trying to learn about dungeons recently opened to the public. Unlike Harter, Maegan and Klaus the other three had gone through with the Umbrella’s requirement to get a chip. If not for his stupid brother, Harter would have gotten a chip as well as he actually believed the Umbrella scheme to be healthy for everyone. He didn’t know why Maegan or Klaus were antagonistic to it other than that they didn’t trust the World Government.
“Yeah, someone’s going to lose their job today,” Maegan said.
“More like their heads,” Klaus added. “Whoever gave permission to get it published would be killed, mark my words. The World Government doesn’t like truth, that’s why they hunted down the White Masks and destroyed the White Truth.”
“The White Masks were a terrorist organisation, Klaus,” Maegan said without looking up. “The White Truth tried to incite rebellion.”
“Good,” Klaus said with conviction. Harter glanced at Maegan. She looked indifferent to Klaus’s comment but Harter sensed she was disturbed because of her spiritual aura rippled in a very distinct way. “And it's a shame they didn’t succeed.”
Maegan sighed, putting the tablet down.
“Did you forget the Old Blood rebellion already? Did you forget how much death and misery it caused?”
Klaus laughed.
“The World Government has killed a thousand more people with the outbreaks they started.”
Harter stiffened. He had never told them the truth about the outbreaks or even his brother. By the way, Klaus annoyingly reminded Harter about Keynes. Both had a penchant for conspiracy theories.
“We don’t know if the World Government is behind the outbreaks.”
Klaus turned to Harter.
“Carter, tell her.”
The last thing Harter wanted right now was to argue with Maegan.
“I will sit that one out,” he said, raising his hands.
“Pussy,” Klaus said, baiting him. Both men knew that Klaus stood no chance against Harter who not only was the only Level 5 in their group but also had developed a technique of lesser physicality. A very odd thing but helping him immensely. On the other hand, Klaus was more of a brain of their group, theory-crafting with Maegan.
“Remember who’s cooking today,” Harter reminded Klaus with a smile, changing the subject.
This luckily ended the conversation. Harter returned to the kitchen where he resumed cooking the dinner and letting his thoughts drift.
As he tuned out the conversation between Klaus and Maegan in the other room, the first thing he thought of was meeting and teaming up with Maegan over three years ago, shortly after he had left Untainted Paradise, it had been out of necessity to survive in this new, dangerous world. Harter had a good time with them but recently their team was being pulled in all different directions. A part of the team wanted to officially register with the city of Arshem, while Klaus, Maegan and to some extent Harter mulled over an idea to leave for Australia, the only place on Earth where the World Government or the Solar Council didn’t have any power.
“You okay?” Maegan brought Harter out of his thoughts.
“Yep,” he replied, frowning. He didn’t sense her approach. “What’s up?”
“I was going to ask you that. You were very quiet the last couple of weeks.”
He put the meat and vegetables into the oven and set the timer, then he turned to Maegan. Despite being short and fragile, Maegan projected an aura of command quite well. She gave Harter an askance look.
He didn’t know what to say so he only shrugged. The last thing he needed right now was him breaking the team apart. They weren’t thriving yet but no longer they struggled like in the past. If they split, it would be rough with so much competition out there.
“Must be a time of a year,” Harter said, giving Maegan his best smile that had worked like a charm in the school.
“You’re a bad liar,” Maegan said and most likely would press the issue if Kava, Laura and Asaki didn’t return.
Silently, Harter thanked them for their timing.
“The city. Is. Buzzing!” Laura said excitedly.
“ As they should,” Klaus added. “ Two years ago, Hunter sent Freeman scurrying and scared. Soon he will get the same treatment.”
“Don’t get too excited, Klaus,” Asaki cautioned. “It was only a draw.”
“Pff,” Laura snorted. “Only a draw? Don’t listen to him, Klaus. Hunter is the strongest ascender in the world… or was.”
“Yes! And we can expect more ascenders in coming months reaching Level 10. For all I know, we may do it.”
That was not going to happen. Levelling outside of rifts was painfully slow. The hunting areas were always overpopulated and there were two types of essence penalties making the matter worse. The highest rift monsters out there were of Level 4 so Harter only earned 50% of the essence and there was an unknown essence penalty for all monsters outside the rifts. It left hunting dominion monsters but as it was profitable it was equally deadly.
“We won’t.” Asaki shook his head. “Even our beloved Carter only managed it because he is actually proficient at killing monsters while you always run from them.”
“Oh, really,” Klaus said with a fake indignation. “You want to go there?”
“I don’t,” Asaki immediately said. “But none of us is going to hit Level 10 in years. Rifts excursions are expensive and there hasn't been an outbreak in over two years.”
“Okay, enough chit-chat.” Maegan stepped in. “What did you learn about dungeons?”
***
Vivena grimaced as she failed for the thousandth time. She was yet to isolate and remove the effect of Doctor’s Talent. She had found it over a year ago but since then she had made very little progress. The odd spiritual structure was located around her Vitality core and it seemed to almost be a part of it, which couldn’t be right. Nothing from outside could modify the spiritual structure of her cores. Especially not when their Levels were the same.
She circled the poison essence away from the Vitality core to the spiritual core. Level 9 was coming slowly. Even upgrading one of her rifts to Level 6 made the progression drag. Rifts or Low-Level monsters couldn’t take the whole blame though. Vivena had been wasting an astronomical amount of essence at trying to rebuild her cores, getting rid of Doctor’s shit and gaining the spiritual stage. Most ascenders didn’t understand how important the spiritual side of their power toolkit was.
Her eyes snapped open as she sensed Bill enter the rift. Despite the rift being sixteen kilometres square, Vivena remained near the exit to be able to react if necessary. Her dominion got a lot of attention. Waves of dominion monsters periodically attacked it, which was welcome. Less welcome was aggression from other ascenders or Sandman’s grunts. That idiot couldn’t see the reason. The government should have gotten rid of him a long time ago.
“I’m sorry to bother you but there is a situation,” Bill said.
Vivena stood up, abandoning the lotus position she was using to manipulate the essence.
“What kind of situation?” She turned to him. Most of her people had some sort of poison affinity through their Talent or spells. Bill had neither and so he disliked using rifts within her dominion as each of them acquired poison affinity.
“A flying vehicle.”
“You haven’t shot it, which means there is more.”
“It has the World Government insignia.”
Mother’s here. Okay. Let’s focus.
They hadn’t seen each other since Vivena’s father died.
“I’m coming.”
Vivena exited the rift a minute later into the tree-shaded courtyard where she kept all her ten rifts. Those who saw her emerge, immediately bowed, paying their respects. She didn’t ask or require bowing or any other show of submission or respect. At the same time she wasn’t going to stop them.
She joined Bill and Zendar at the edge of the courtyard. From there she could see the vehicle in the sky. Sleek, black and predatory. It moved a few hundred metres outside her dominion. If not for hundreds of crashed vehicles, both land and air-borne, on the edge of her dominion, Vivena would have thought they might have ways to detect dominion with exceptional accuracy. There had been many ‘dominion hunters’ after her dominion, too blind to see what was waiting for them.
“What’s the play?” Zendar asked.
“I’ll handle it,” Vivena said.
Vivena jumped into the sky, activating [Flight] then shot toward the edge of her dominion, which was around two kilometres in diameter. The flying vehicle immediately made for the ground. Vivena had never seen anything like this. There was no sign of propellers or engines. Clearly, this was post-outbreak technology as everyone called technology with exclusive use of formations and runes. Only when she got within fifty metres from the vehicle, she sensed spiritual energy emitted by it. So it was stealthy as well.
Vivena slowed down, eventually coming to a stop barely ten metres from the now grounded vehicle. She waited.
Her mother was the first and the only person to emerge from the vehicle. There was something iconic about her mother’s image. Scarlet red hair, a black dress suit with an exceptional cut that was comically out of place in the middle of the World Reserve.
“Viv,” her mother said. “You can get down, there is no danger, mom’s here.”
Very funny, mom. But she had to admit that the words put her at ease. Not because Vivena was afraid of anything on the ground, but because she wasn’t sure who would show up.
Vivena landed and her mother immediately embraced her.
“How are you holding?”
For a split second, Vivena thought about resisting but something in her broke and she melted in her mother’s arms.
“I miss him.”
“I know,” her mother muttered. “I miss him too.”
The moment lasted a couple of minutes before Vivena gathered herself.
“Shall we?”
Her mother nodded.
“Should we fly?”
“A walk is fine.”
They made it to the dominion. Her mother let out a relaxed sigh when she entered the dominion. The dominion benefited any ally as long as they had Talent or spell with poison affinity. However the only benefit of the buff was serenity.
“I like what you have done to this place,” her mother complimented her. Most of the houses were done by her people with construction-related Talents and spells. They weren’t world class but Vivena didn’t want world class, she just wanted the dominion to feel like home, which it did.
Vivena led her mother to her house. It was built out of wooden logs but had a good share of formations and glyphs that made it as cosy as possible.
Without asking, Vivena brought the best liquor and elixirs she had. Most of them came from her rifts.
Her mother’s brows climbed as she read a system message. All these items were Level 6.
“You’re Level 6, you can handle them,” Vivena said playfully as she took a seat on the opposite side.
Her mother’s brows climbed even higher.
“How do you know?”
“I can tell. Congratulations.”
Her mother waved her hand as if it was not a big deal.
“It was part of a signing package. A single Level up. Nothing major.”
They spent a couple of minutes on small talk but Vivena knew her mother didn’t come all the way here to just discuss the weather or colour of hair.
“So what’s bringing you here?”
“A proposal.”
