Reed Stevens
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Chapter Three Hundred and Twenty: Troubles in Tallgate (Part Two)
🕑 Added 2022-04-29 01:50:55 +0000 UTCNolan was caught off guard by her candidness. He had figured that someone like the White Rogue wouldn’t have had a desirable upbringing, as tended to be the case with renowned killers, though he also knew that he couldn’t judge the situation by Earth’s standards. Venara was a world where most tavern fights ended in murder and where the act of killing held a different connotation in society. All of the civilizations that Nolan had encountered thus far had been dominated by a martial mentality that mimicked the law of the jungle, and Delia was simply a product of that mentality.
“Sounds like that guy was a snake. I’m glad you got your revenge.”
“All the good it did me.”
“It’s better than not having done it, though.” Nolan was quiet for a moment, thoughtful. “You know, I used to have a brother and a sister. When I was sixteen, me and my brother got into an argument after I helped him deal with some people that had robbed him. I decided to go for a walk to cool my head, but the next thing I knew I was waking up in a forest that I’d never been in before and everything that I ran into was trying to kill me.
“Well,” he sighed, lost in bitter reminiscence. “Not everything. I ran into some other people, some dead, some alive. Of the ones that I ended tagging along with, none of us spoke the same languages. It was pretty scary when we realized that we were all from different countries, and that somehow we’d all ended up in a completely different world.”
A shock swept across Delia’s face, a show of emotion that was rarely seen. “It’s not possible that…you’re an Otherworlder?” When he nodded, she turned to face him directly and stared at him with unmasked interest, as if he were an entirely different person. “How can that be, though? I heard that Otherworlders didn’t have the slightest bit of cultivation.” Hearing her own words, she suddenly lost her enthusiasm.
“I got lucky and found an old inheritance that only Otherworlders can learn. Man, it was scary as hell. Come to think of it I almost got eaten by a giant fox back then, didn’t I?”
“How old are you now?” she said a bit suspiciously. “You said that you were sent here when you were sixteen, and you can’t be much older than that now. Even without the absurdness of your cultivation base’s overreach in abilities, how could you reach the sixth level of Integration in a matter of months? Even though I was just a girl back then, it still took me several years to do so.”
Hearing the sudden skepticism that replaced her initial interest, Nolan let out a sharp laugh. “I might look sixteen, but I’m actually in my early twenties. You’ll understand once I take you to where my master lives, but basically while I was over there my body didn’t age.”
None of the people below could see them as they floated above the street in plain sight, their words also smothered within a certain distance.
“That…it’s like that with me, too. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that I’m in my 40s, but my body still looks so young.” Delia stared at her sandaled feet, contemplative.
“That’s not on purpose?” It was Nolan’s turn to be shocked. “I thought you were doing the same thing that May does, you know, opposite aging or whatever.”
Delia gave her head a slight shake. “I fell into a trap while exploring a Vespasian tomb when I was your age—if you’re actually in your early twenties, that is. Who would have thought that it would end up sealing my consciousness for decades? If the arrayment hadn’t run out of power, then there’s a chance I might still be down there, sleeping within that dreaded room.”
“Wait, so aren’t you in your twenties then? I don’t think those extra years count if your mind and body didn’t age, do they?”
“It doesn’t change the fact that I was born almost fifty years ago.”
“It kind of does though. Think about it. If you seal some little boy away and unseal him eighty years later, is he an old man? Does that make any sense?”
He thought he heard her laugh, but the sound had been so fleeting that it was lost in within a breeze that happened to brush past.
“You know,” he said as he urged his flying sword to resume its movement, “this is the most I’ve ever heard you speak at one time. It’s a nice change of pace.”
Hearing this, Delia frowned and increased her speed, though he didn’t sense any malice or malcontent in her actions. Thinking about the different faces she had shown in recent weeks, Nolan had a sudden thought. Maybe her attitude towards other people was usually so poor because she was antisocial and had no idea how to interact with other people? From what he’d seen, she didn’t lower herself to talking with anybody that wasn’t in the Genesis stage if she didn’t absolutely have to, such as in the previous crises that the group had suffered where she had been forced by the circumstances to converse with the others. Other than that, she only ever opened her mouth to ridicule or talk poorly with others, as she did whenever the master of the Falling Rain Sect was brought up.
Maybe there’s hope for her to be a normal person after all. Nolan happened to pass over a street brawl in the coming moments where he saw two teenaged boys lying dead in the street. At least Venara normal.
When Nolan arrived back at the suite, it was to find that Delia had immediately isolated herself in one of the many rooms, just as everyone else had done. The only people that came out to greet him were Alicia and Aine, who had been taking a break from cultivation after over ten hours of ceaseless meditation.
“Nolan, I broke through again!” The younger girl’s face was full of pride. “I can’t believe I’m almost at the peak of the Integration stage!”
Aine seemed a bit prettier than Nolan remembered her being, most noticeably in the cleanliness of her complexion and the fitness of her body.
“Good for you,” he said sincerely, giving her a thumb’s up.
“For some reason, that made me feel worse…”
Alicia was also giving off the aura of somebody at the ninth level of the Integration stage. “If only we had been this strong when the Red Mountain King sent his men to raid our homeland.” Wide eyes wishful, a tear threatened to spill down her pretty, narrow face, though she blinked it away at the last moment. “I suppose it’s best not to think of such things.” Pretending to fuss with her auburn hair, she dabbed at her eyes with a finger to make sure that the moisture was gone.
Still excited and full of anticipation, Aine gave her friend a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder, “If things keep going like this, then it won’t be long before we can get revenge for everyone. Don’t worry, Alicia. We’ll make that Red Mountain King regret that he ever gave his men the order to do what they did.”
Alicia shook her head, now a portrait of melancholy. “If your sister were to hear you say that, it would make her sad, Aine. We should just be grateful with this second chance that we’ve been given, and live our lives to the fullest out of respect for everyone else that isn’t here to walk along with us.”
“Alicia…”
While Nolan didn’t want to interrupt the sensitive moment, he couldn’t help but speak up. “Alicia’s right, Aine. You shouldn’t think about revenge, or before you know it it’ll be the only thing on your mind. That being said, we’re still going to have to kill that mountain king guy later on down the line. That bastard is one of my main targets, and now that I’m almost strong enough to deal with him I won’t be putting it off for long.”
Seeing the girls’ surprise, he promised to explain the reason at another time. For now, he was eager to return to his room and continue cultivating within one of his countless crates of heavenly dew. Once he had successfully stripped naked and climbed into the crate, he found himself smiling at the thought of Welson or Connick learning that he basically used the priceless liquid as his bathwater. He still couldn’t believe that Welson had spent 150,000 spirit stones on such a small vial of it—basically a juice box’s worth—let alone the 250,000 that he’d been willing to pay. This told Nolan that a single crate was worth well over a hundred million spirit stones, around 150 million if his math was correct.
And that’s at a discounted rate! If he charged what Welson had initially offered, a crate would be worth 250 million ordinary spirit stones or two and a half million cards of star gold. With well over a hundred crates and barrels full of heavenly dew, Nolan and his friends were now extremely wealthy, to the extent that he and his friends wouldn't have to worry about money for the foreseeable future.
