Weapons of Mass Destruction

Chapter 881: That's truly illogical

My first reaction to seeing Zant is happiness, followed immediately by a great deal of concern.

“Am I in trouble?” I ask him.

“When are you not, Sir Gwyn?” he asks, not seeming bothered by the extreme heat even dressed in his usual suit. Next to him stands a human man with cold eyes that sweep the area with a gaze that makes it seem as if he can see even further than Tess. And something about his presence worries me. He feels powerful.

“Who’s your friend, Zant?” I ask the tiny guy.

“This is Aant,” Zant says with a short nod.

A quick telepathic communication is exchanged between them, and Aant launches toward the sky at speeds I can barely track.

“Aant seems busy,” I note.

“Yes, Sir Gwyn, he takes his role seriously. Before you ask, he has been called here to assist the First One.”

“I see,” I say, and reaching into my pocket, I pull out a tab of chocolate which I immediately hand to Zant. As he lets his guard down to swiftly unpack it, I create a manabloc chair, grab him, and set him on my knee while he, unbothered, starts nibbling on it.

“How strong is Aant?” I ask.

He gives it a thought for a moment. “He is by far the most powerful out of all of us. He’s almost at the level of a Ruler, and with a few items, he might even be comparable to one.”

“That powerful?” I ask, replaying the cold face of a man in his forties with short brown hair and a fit physique.

“Yes,” Zant nods.

“So what are you doing here?”

“I am supposed to observe and learn and keep an eye on you in case the imitation of Lissandra Hawthorne returns, or the wyverns show any intent of communicating with you.”

“So things have gotten that bad?”

He bites into the chocolate and shakes his head. “It’s not that bad, as neither side seems inclined to cause any unnecessary deaths. I think both parties are simply trying to get the most out of this situation while the other side is preventing them from doing so.”

“Hmm, so the one winged wyvern is calling the other wyverns to free it and possibly Lissandra on one side. Meanwhile, Diligence and Ruby are fighting to keep them both tied to the tutorial since they don’t want them messing with things on the outside?”

“That doesn’t really apply anymore, Sir Gwyn.”

“Can you tell me why?”

He pauses, giving it deep thought. “I think I can.”

Zant snaps his fingers, and the sounds from the area around us drop into silence. All wavelengths, all signatures, all of it disappears while the air around us grows hazy, turning us and everyone around us into a confusing blur of colors.

"You can share some of this with your friends, though I’ll leave that decision to you. Outside the spatial separation field, five wyverns are currently circling Xyphos. The Aurate Consortium has arrived in force and brought some of their highest ranked battleships and a full unit of Arbitrators. They’ve even hired The Magi and The Slayer, both of whom are already on-site. The other corporations have mobilized as well, and one has even gone so far as to deploy the Meridian Unit. Then, to make matters worse, Felix Maro is up there, prepared to manifest the Ruler of Temperance, while the Ruler of Greed and the First One have also made their presence known."

“That seems like a nice mess. Are they worried about the possibility of Starless Sky appearing here?”

“Yes. The corporations have joined in because their contracts require them to defend Xyphos in such situations and because they have an interest in holding their ground. The Rulers want to stop the tutorial from further breaking so they can go back to a normal state, and the wyvern and the imitation probably want to escape the tutorial.”

“Zant, you’re hiding something from me.”

The tiny vyssari jumps a bit and looks at me with big eyes.

That causes me to smile. “You know what I would do if I were Dili? I know the guy, so I’m pretty confident in my thinking,” I say, grabbing the chocolate from him. I break off one piece to eat before returning the rest to him. “I think Diligence wants to strike a deal with the wyvern. He might even let it go if it makes the right deal or promise. But I think he wants to hurry this up before Lissandra exits the Labyrinth. He wants to sort it out before then and somehow ensure that when she exits, she finds herself still locked on the 12th floor of beyond.”

“That is an interesting theory, Sir Gwyn.”

"Did Dili get a system quest? Is that why he's putting so much effort into this?"

The tiny vyssari stays quiet, and I almost feel like the bad guy as I pat his back.

“It won’t work," I tell him.

“Hypothetically speaking, why wouldn’t it work?” He asks.

“Because I think he’s going to need Greed’s help to make that happen, and I don’t think she really has her heart in it.”

“That is an interesting observation. From what I am aware, Lady Greed doesn’t exactly have a good relationship with the imitation, and they’ve threatened to kill each other multiple times.”

“Yes, and I think those feelings are real, and they will leap for each other’s throats one day. Ruby because she hates seeing an imitation walking around with her master’s face, and Liss because Ruby allowed her memory to be used in this way and turned her into an endlessly replicating, lobotomized shadow of herself in the tutorial. And yet, Zant, I still think I’m right.”

“Emotions are confusing sometimes.”

“I know, right?” I smile and tap his back while looking at the sky, which is still blurry from the field around us.

“Sir Gwyn.”

“Yes?”

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“I have been observing the situation down here for a while, and I’ve noticed that you and Lady Lily have been experimenting with the help of some of the vyssari, and purifying blood carrying the wyverns’ lineage.”

“Yes.”

“I wonder. You have not asked me for a sample.”

“Zant,” I say, serious, “from all I’ve seen, you’re still young, almost a child, correct?”

“Yes, Sir Gwyn. I was born recently, and I am still considered a child.”

“Asking you for your blood would feel disgusting to me. I don’t mind observing its effects as I did with Izzy, that much is okay. And I realize it’s illogical, after all, given that you’re already so powerful that something like that wouldn’t be likely to hurt you. But even if it’s just a passing whim or my own illogical feelings, I have to say no.”

"That's truly illogical."

“Right?” I say, carefully setting him on the ground. “But I’m still arrogant enough to think that I’m the one in the right, so you can work with that. If anyone asks you for your blood, or tries to make you hurt yourself for them, just tell them no and call your older brothers and sisters to beat them up.”

“I think I might just do that.” He nods seriously.

Later that day...well, there isn’t any day or night here given that we’re on the sunny side of a tidally locked planet, even if I have to wonder how that actually works with this spatial quasi-lock around the planet. Does it let the light in, or did they recreate it somehow? It’s all kinds of weird.

Regardless, according to my calculations, I have another twelve hours before it is time to evolve my trait, and we’ve already begun our preparations.

Of course, most of it’s already planned out, and the others here are just helping me. My head is already shaven, and using the mirror Lily’s holding up for me, I watch as I draw the inscriptions over the surface of my skull.

This set of inscriptions is being inscribed with my own blood, and some of them mimic, to a low degree, what Liss did to force me into thought acceleration. I’ve been given warnings about that, but for now, I’ve decided to ignore them, putting my trust in my mind to handle it.

It takes me a few hours, first to draw the main inscriptions, and then I move on to the smaller nets. Sophie helps in a few places as well. The whole time, Lily patiently holds the mirror without any words to distract me. Somewhere in the distance, Maya is fighting the demons trying to get in here and talk to me, while the rest of the members of group 4 move in between, checking in on the process with curiosity or doing their own things, like training or participating in the unofficial quest.

When the inscriptions on my head are done, I’m about to take off my shirt, but I realize pulling it over my head might, even if the chances are low, since they’ve already been fixed, mess with the inscriptions. So, instead, I tear the shirt off. No one says anything, but I notice some suppressed gasps and weird twitches in the movements of group 4’s members, so I look down at my chest.

Sure, I’m slimmer than usual, and there are plenty of scars, but it isn't that bad. There’s still an emblem over my heart that I still use to train sometimes. A fragment rests on the back of my pale left hand, and the key to the 6th floor of Beyond is on my right forearm. One new addition is the big burn scar on the right side of my chest over where my Ignition heart is, and radiating outward from it is what one might call a web of scars, burned into my skin. Using it so often at such a high level takes a heavy toll on my body, even if I can control most of its force.

When I twist my right arm and observe it, I have to conclude that I have indeed become slimmer, though there’s no difference in the power I can exert.

“So?” I ask Sophie.

The mind mage just shakes her head and takes a few bottles and a brush. Both of these bottles are filled with a mix of my blood and the most expensive and best mana-conductive paint we could find. During testing, I found out that sometimes such blends are better, and some inscriptions even require different percentages. Mostly when an inscription isn’t as powerful as it should be, and the blood overwhelms it, weakening its function.

Sophie then begins to draw on my back, following the blueprints I made and had checked by her, Savi, and Maya. Out of everyone here, she has the most experience with it and can improvise, though I would say Maya probably still has the steadiest hand, so she’ll be drawing some of the more important parts while Sophie observes.

The whole time, I continue to gather mana, careful not to disrupt any of them. There’s a huge halo floating high in the air above us that I’ve connected to with my [Weave], and I make it spin faster and faster, pulling in as much mana as I can while supporting it with my Ignition heart.

When the inscriptions are done and drying, I’ll use black mana to pull in even more before breaking it apart to extract normal mana. This process is intended to make my Mana Vessel stronger, and the black mana will be used to enhance my Empyrean Ichor.

I will do what I did before. The pressure from my ichor, the Empyrean blood the last elf used, and the purified wyvern blood will force my Mana Vessel to fight back. That’s the only function the blood has here: to put that much more pressure on my vessel.

The possibility of my ichor evolving or strengthening isn’t even a secondary concern. Honestly, I don’t expect it to evolve into anything. At most, it would purify what I already have.

I’ve had to explain it to Dennis a few times. Simply put, I just want to put pressure on myself and on the process, and that pressure will come from the Empyrean and wyvern blood. They shouldn’t affect me in any way other than picking a fight with my Mana Vessel.

My blueprints are very detailed, so it takes a long time, but I patiently sit there like a statue, even halting all my kinetic movement so I don’t disrupt their efforts. Though at some point, I do have to stand so they can paint my legs too.

I get a few pokes at the fact that I had to shave my legs, along with everything else. Being as young as they are, Dennis and Min-Jae find it amusing, and I think I appreciate their attempts to lighten the mood.

Once it’s all done, almost twelve hours later, I reach toward the sky, and the halo that’s been spinning up high begins to float down, finding itself just above my head. There’s a decent amount of mana in it as I reach in and compress it further until it blinks and turns black.

Even though I purposely avoid using black mana or relying on it, it doesn’t feel like I’ve gotten out of practice. It fights me for control of all the gathered mana, and I fight to keep it for myself.

I guide it to expand, and though it is not all that obvious to normal vision, I can see it with my enhanced eyes. I watch how it begins to devour all the surrounding mana, drawing it under its control with ease.

Not once have I found it weird that it can do so, not even as I learned more about the Black Mana God. It was just his energy, a force that just happened to be extremely rare and left him one of the weaker gods for it.

At least until the system took it, used it as inspiration, and after the contract with the Black Mana God, made a lesser version of it, using that to spread by gifting people mana hearts and awakening their planets. It makes sense that this original version would carry such complete dominion over all mana. Yet, in the end, even that wasn’t enough, even as the Black Mana God became a godking, presumably one of the most powerful among them, growing stronger the more the system spread mana.

That is why I don’t want to rely on it. I’ll use it when needed for a simple reason: because I can. But I think I’ll make my own way by taking control of normal mana without relying on the fragments of a dead god.

The longer that black halo spins, the more mana it gathers from further away. It pulls mana from the members of group 4 other than Lily and Dennis, as I refuse to let it touch them. It pulls mana from the attendees around us, and some of them start getting scared. A few even try to attack, but they get pummeled down by the members of group 4 surrounding me.

The halo pulls even more mana from the corporations nearby, totally draining some of the ships' batteries. Of course, there are some attendees and some ships that do manage to defend themselves and keep their mana, but I don’t push them.

When it feels like I have the right amount, the black halo stops spinning, but within, an immense force is fighting against me, wrestling to stop me from taking over, but I just continue to push. It shrinks back a little to its usual size and begins to blink between black and dark blue a few times until it stabilizes.

Then, it floats lower and lands on top of my head, exactly in between the sets of inscriptions we’ve drawn there. From there, all my inscriptions begin to light up, and mana floods into my body.

At that point, Lily steps ahead and stabs my left arm with two syringes: one with the purified wyvern blood and the other with the Empyrean ichor.

I slide into thought acceleration at the same moment as I use the token to strengthen my Mana Vessel to the second stage.