Weapons of Mass Destruction

Chapter 879: I totally forgot about

"If you think about it seriously, who else could she even try to hit on? Everyone hates mind mages, and dating someone weaker than her would always feel just wrong. That doesn’t leave her much choice if she wants someone from Earth," Dennis declares.

"But Savant?" Lily asks with wide eyes as she slurps on some sort of ramen-like soup.

"Who else?" Dennis asks. "You’ve already got dibs on Nat, and I don’t think she sees him that way. Maybe Jean? I heard from Tess that he’s gotten pretty strong, and there are all kinds of maniacs who’d love that sort of enemies-to-lovers relationship."

"That’s true," Lily nods excitedly.

"Derick already has a wife, and Baek is weird, aside from them, she’s already stronger than the rest of the kings," Min-Jae wonders, sipping on the soupy liquid before chomping on the noodles.

(That’s only if you’re just pairing her up with the men! How about the girls?) Aaron joins.

"I don’t think she swings that way," Lily shrugs.

(But imagine her with Victoria, Tacita, Leticia, or Klara! And I think Gloria’s plenty strong!)

"And why not you?" Lily asks, causing multiple heads to turn to her.

(What?)

"I mean, you’re a Beyonder, and your mental defenses are high. You probably wouldn’t have to worry about that."

"Lily, my dear, stop teasing," Dennis slurps longer than he probably should and pompously addresses the petite healer. "I know I’m handsome, and Sophie is pretty, but… nope, she’s just not my type!"

"So that only leaves Savant?" Min-Jae asks.

"Probably?" Dennis gestures wildly. "I think if she truly wanted to be sure she isn’t subconsciously manipulating anyone, her only options are Nat, Savant, and probably Jean. And if we include the girls, Tacita, Victoria, Tess, and maybe you, Lily?"

Lily shakes her head. "I don’t think my mental defenses are actually that good."

"So that settles it, Nat, you aren’t interested, right?" Dennis asks.

I just shake my head and quietly eat my noodles.

(Savi it is,) Aaron says excitedly. And I can hear the innocent joy he takes in spreading more gossip. (He is powerful. He’s handsome too and patient. If you think about it, he is just a step below Channeler and a better looker than Nat!)

"But I think Nat’s handsome," our healer complains, coming to my defense.

(Better looking than both of them?)

She hesitates. "I don’t think so? Channeler’s just too ridiculously handsome, and Savant has a nice face, but it’s not just about the looks either. It’s more about a general vibe created by a combination of looks and personality? And Nat has a really kind smile."

Dennis, likely Aaron, Min-Jae, and Lily look at me while I do my best to continue eating at least somewhat gracefully so as not to ruin my vibe.

"Nathaniel's eyes are cool," Min-Jae says with a nod.

"But he has that vibe where you can’t be sure if he’s going to push you down the stairs or if he’s just this quiet, nerdy guy with a troubled past," Dennis sighs. "But yeah, unfortunately, too many girls fall for the bad boy type, and his face, combined with his resting expression, looks great on posters and photos. Like, you know, that cool guy you just don’t want to mess with."

"Yes! That!" Lily confirms.

(What about us? Do you think we are handsome, Lily?)

"Huh? I think so. You can’t go wrong with blonde hair and blue eyes, and you do have a nice face."

(Give it a few years, and we’ll leave Channeler in the dust. What about Kim?)

The moment she turns to him, Min-Jae turns a bit shy, even blushing slightly, and after a second under her intent gaze, he looks away.

"Plenty of girls during the tournament told me he is cute. And now that he has grown so tall, there’s likely to be many more. And yes, I think he’s good-looking too. All of us are!"

Hearing that, the Korean boy twists his head back to her in surprise, showing he hadn’t ever realized this.

I am already almost out of food, even though I’ve been eating as slowly as possible to keep myself busy and avoid questions. Even now, with just scraps at the bottom of the bowl, I pretend it is a magical, infinite sustenance replicator bowl, full of food as I continue to chew the air in my mouth.

If you think about it, shouldn’t something like that be possible with the help of a little bit of spatial cache magic?

I’ll have to talk to Dili about a business opportunity for the two of us.

An hour later, my training is being interrupted by shouting and some flares of mana. Curious and done with my most recent segment of mana shaping, I open my eyes and glance towards where five corporate ships are parked and where most of the Hell difficulty attendees from many planets have gathered to cooperate with our efforts to build a base to shelter the lower difficulty attendees.

It goes on for a minute, so as a guy who would totally stand near the river and watch it rise during a storm if it took out a few corporate offices, I stand up and head there.

As I get closer, I stop by one of the Hell difficulty thylarin who’s also been watching and ask, “What happened?”

Without even turning to me, he snorts angrily, “Some of the guys from a lumoran Hell difficulty tutorial discovered what seems like a hidden cache while digging. It contained a store of talnium. One of the corporations immediately jumped in and said it was their hideout.”

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He spits on the ground, “As if anyone would believe such bullshit. Now they want to fuck off and store it on their mothership before any of the other corporations present get interested.”

“It must be a decent amount if they are acting like that,” I nod with understanding.

“Yeah,” the thylarin nods.

“And why is no one attacking them to take it back?”

“It is a powerful corporation. We don’t know how they’ll react.”

“Questionable Assets Group?”

“No, Meridian Alliance.”

“I mean, wouldn’t Diligence jump in in that case?”

“Who knows what someone like the Ruler of Diligence would do. Surely he doesn’t have time for this kind of stuff.”

“I see.” I nod and take a step forward, passing by him and stepping up onto the landing platform.

The Meridian Alliance guys are already getting on a ship, and their leader is shouting at the lumoran attendees, but I can see that barely hidden smirk. He peacocks himself, pretending to be important, like he is the Meridian Alliance, just because he uses their name. Yet he is just one of their many groups, hell, maybe even a subcontractor.

As the doors of the ship close, I watch it, curious, as it lights up and its weird-ass engines, using a proprietary mix of gravitational energy, some arrays, and crystals, lift up.

I let it fly a bit into the air before my vessel manifests behind my back.

It grows in size, creating just a half-figure manifesting from the waist up, similar to the one Adrian likes to use. Unlike his, mine mirrors all my scars, and instead of a smooth face, it has two eyes replicating my Preeminence Eyes.

The vessel turns dark blue nearly instantly, and with a speed reinforced by the kinetic energy I send rushing through it, it reaches into the air as it expands. Its hand grabs the corporate ship trying to fly away and holds it there.

As the engines increase the effort, my vessel starts to turn tricolored even as the ship fights back with EMP-like pulses aimed to disrupt mana, some corrosive defenses, and other trifling stuff I swiftly deal with. Some attacks pass through and slam against me, only to disintegrate into shiny particles that bounce off the defensive layers covering my skin. Another one hits my face, but the same layer causes it to bounce into the distance.

A stream of concentrated heat surrounds me as it reaches out in an unrestrained stream from the ship, increasing the temperature to the point that the sand around me turns to glass, but I just stand within it.

At my order, my vessel squeezes harder, making the metal of the ship groan as I pull it down even as the engines fight against me and the ship sways in my hold, trying to get out.

This time, I use a pulse of disruption sent through the arm of my vessel and into the ship, whose engines blink and turn off before kickstarting again.

A bit surprised, I watch it and send a few more disruption waves, these ones more concentrated as I peer through my eyes.

More with brute force than mastery, my vessel pulls the ship back, causing the engines to cough like they are about to explode, and I slam it back into the sand, halfway burying it there.

While the ship is still held there, I move closer, letting blood drip from the freshly made gash I’ve opened in my palm and form it into the shape of a long sword with a slim blade. [Empyrean Lance] flickers nearby only to be broken instantly, and its remains surround that sword, almost without having to do anything, as if it were being pulled into my ichor. I stab the sword through the doors of the cargo hold and carve a long cut through them.

Right away, my vessel moves again, shrinking and compressing as its fingers stab into that cut and widen the hole.

Pouring from within, multiple attacks shoot at me, but I either disrupt or tank them with my defenses as my vessel reaches in, searching for the crate I’ve already located. There’s just nothing else with a presence that compares, so I pull it out.

That crate sits at half the height of my waist and is made from some sort of weird yellow wood, but what I feel from inside must be talnium, I recognize the spatial component of the material.

While I disperse my vessel and pull its mana back into me, I jump up and comfortably sit on the crate, setting the sword across my lap while I wait.

Stepping from the ragged hole, an angry human from the Meridian Alliance pulls himself out with two more men in full battle armor, and behind them, more of the same.

Before he can say anything, I start to speak, “Thanks for taking care of my crate of talnium. I hid there and totally forgot about it.”

“What kind of bullshit is this? Do you even realize-” he begins to shout angrily.

That instantly leads me to write him off as some random goon, someone who’s totally not an important or powerful member of any corporation. For a bit, I listen to his curses, and the more he talks and shouts, the better my mood gets.

I just watch him and feel my lips slowly rise up. When a vein starts to bulge in his temple, I even smile a little and nod seriously in response to his complaints and explanations.

Yet, as much as he barks, he doesn’t do anything. After Diligence’s message, he wouldn’t dare to put a hand on an attendee. He probably could have attacked me before, if only on the pretense that he feared for his life after I caught the ship, but now that I’m sitting here peacefully? After he’s spouted this much bullshit? I truly do not understand how an average Hell difficulty attendee could have fallen for this.

“Got it,” I nod seriously.

The man breathes out, his arms shaking in anger. He tries to hide it, but I can sense the kinetic waves being caused by his movements. His heartbeat, the twitching of his muscles, the changes in his body temperature, it's all so amusing to watch.

“I will overlook what just happened, so return the Meridian Alliance’s property to me,” he pushes through his teeth.

"Why?" I ask, confused. "There must be some confusion. I told you it’s mine. I just forgot that I’d hidden it there."

"HOW DOES THAT MAKE ANY SENSE!?" he shouts in anger as he finally snaps, "THIS IS THE REAL PLANET OF XYPHOS, NOT THE TUTORIAL!"

"I don’t know." I scratch my cheek and look to my left.

There’s already a bunch of attendees gathering around, mostly just listening out of curiosity. And if only to prove that people from Hell aren't normal, some have already started betting and making fun of the corpos. Some even seem to be getting ready for a fight. One of these, of course, is a demon standing to my left.

"Guildmaster Gwyn," he says with a smile and a short bow.

"Hey," I greet him in return, though I have no idea who he is. I don't think he would be lying to imply he is a member of the Primordial Knights.

Curious, because it just doesn’t fit with the demons' personality, I ask, "You let them take it?"

"The lumoran that found it didn't want to share, so we stayed back and laughed as the corpos took it," he says with that same smile. There are a few other demons standing around, likely from his group, and more nearby, likely from different planets.

"Well, that makes more sense," I say.

"Are we going to fight them?" he asks.

"I don’t think they have the balls to attack us."

"I am worried about that as well," he says, disappointed, his expression as if he is looking at trash. "I could attack them first."

"No."

"Just a small attack to provoke them and-"

"I said no," I repeat.

With his words cut off, he looks back at me, eyes wide and heart beating in excitement, but all of it halts the moment he meets my gaze.

"Maybe next time," he says a bit sadly after that.

The Meridian Alliance human begins to shout again, and I listen to him for a few more minutes. I find myself really impressed by the bullshit he spews and the creative mind he must have. That talnium must be really valuable.

Then, as they leave without even trying to attack us, I jump off the crate. My vessel manifests behind me again, this time with legs standing as tall as an average velnar. It then grabs the crate, carrying it as I head back to our corner to find Sophie and Savi to find out what’s so interesting about talnium.