Chapter 441 - That's what I want (Patreon)

I send some mana into the defenses to continue to power the field, and through the hallway on the crashed Deathtrap, I reach the deck that is now the side of the ship.

(Stay inside,) is the message I send through the link Group 4 has.

As I reach them, they are all still inside and further back, watching other people who stare into the darkness.

Someone uses an item, and it flies through the door and lights up the area, throwing moving shadows on what appears to be a rocky wall. A cave leading to a vast, deep tunnel.

As a few more skills or items follow it, the place lights up even more with powerful lights. Multiple colors - yellow, white, blue, red - illuminate the area.

The old rusty ship crashed against the rocky surface of the place. It’s eerily quiet with the engines turned off and the sound of the storm totally blocked off.

I want to examine what we passed through before we entered, but I can't see it from where I am.

Dravos also watches the other passengers, and I notice that he smiles widely when some of them start exiting the ship.

There doesn't seem to be any white sand, and some probably don’t even know about its nature. I can understand their sense of security and curiosity, but there is a reason why I still kept the defenses running.

As around two dozen of them exit, they reach the rocky ground.

Then they die.

The small amount of white sand that landed on Deathtrap and was brought inside this place reacts to their mana. These tiny white grains move and swirl as they step on them. Just small amounts of it. Something you could even miss in the low light.

As the screams fill the pitch-black darkness of this place, Dravos smiles even wider and turns to me, “Isn't it amusing to watch, crazy human? These people who until now were hiding and cowering inside of the SDAT, now crawling out in a spurt of bravery or curiosity. Feeling safe because of the change in the environment and the quietude of this place.”

His brother is the same, and both of them, I’m sure, are 2nd stage of their subclass: Adept of Pride, the same as me. It’s something I can feel, the same as they can feel my Pride. The second stage allows us to sense each other.

I've already met a few people like that, either in passing or saw some in Last Rest. Yet, this duo in front of me seem to be the most special out of all of them.

They have that same confidence in their own abilities I find in myself as well.

Another person to reach our group is the last surviving guide called Kallus, someone who took care of navigation. He seems tired, dead on his feet, and unlike before where his eyes kept flitting all over the place, anticipating danger, it seems like he gave up.

There is someone else, someone who killed the second guide to force us to seek help from the Champion. Knowing that three guides are needed to properly control Deathtrap and that we could wait for the storm to disappear before attempting to leave without making contact.

The mystery continues just like that. Do Dravos and Drekar know who it is? Is that person cooperating with them even as the two of them tried to run away before and leave that person behind? Or maybe they just don’t know, and it’s something entirely else. Someone who can avoid my detection and Sophie’s web. Someone who can kill people protecting the guide effortlessly.

I already have my suspicion who is behind it all, but for now I decide to let it be. Let's see where this all will take us.

“How did that guide die?” I ask Kallus.

Sitting on the ground, his back resting on what used to be the floor, he looks at me, “Different from before. Blunt weapon or just body most likely, everyone dead from a single hit.”

“Stay near me,” I tell him, and he just nods.

Even though it's probably not needed, I share the information through the link and then also head towards the hatch that used to lead up to the deck. Now that Deathtrap lies on its side, it is almost like a normal door.

The field reaches a bit ahead, so there is enough space.

Down below, I can see the bodies of the naive ones who decided to leave. I then take another step and make myself float, waves of kinetic energy constantly pushing me in the air with short bursts that I have learned to control and make as smooth as possible.

Scanning the area for white sand, I pass through the field and look around, sending my senses like a wave crashing against the walls.

A massive, long tunnel, heading deeper and pointing downwards. Even as far as my senses reach, I can't sense its end.

The system people really like their massive structures, isn’t there even a phobia for that? Megalophobia or something?

Creating a few thermal orbs and making them as bright as possible, I place them around the ship and the tunnel, the yellow light lighting up the place. As expected, it’s rock that seems to be carved out roughly. There are no smooth edges, no inscriptions, no signs it was done by a skill.

And as expected, there is no white sand other than what we brought inside, small piles of it that slide from the field and land down on the rocky surface.

It isn't even touching the ship, nor is it close to it because of the angle, just maybe a few small grains. It seems like it should be possible to easily avoid it if we use a different place to exit and check if there isn’t any sand.

What comes to mind is the hole made by the explosion of the main core. It’s patched up, but it should be possible to open it fairly simply.

With that checked, I from a distance turn off the backup core, and the mana it supplies to the field disappears, making the field flicker and dissipate to a few screams from inside of the ship.

All of it I share with Tess through the link, and she likely passes it along. To Dravos, Drekar, to the black chainmail guy Famir, and to the remaining guide Kallus.

I spend a bit longer flying around the ship, carefully on the watch against the white sand, and when I'm done, I return back.

Just in time to see the tired guide in the same spot, face buried in his hands.

Against him stands Biscuit and keeps shouting, (Food! Food!)

Landing down, I reach down and gently smack Biscuit on his back, “I told you already, that’s not it.”

Biscuit looks at me and then at the guide before gracefully wobbling away, probably to bully someone else for some snacks.

I rejoin others in one of the bigger rooms where most of the people are, still close to two hundred passengers remaining.

Seeing that many of them, most of them talking over each other, I decide to leave, to be caught up by Min-Jae.

I slow down until we walk side by side.

“Everyone has theirown food, most people have enough to last a week or two. The water is the bigger problem, most only have enough for a week and they are already starting to fight over the reserves Deathtrap has,” he starts explaining.

I gesture to him, and both of us sit with a view open on the giant tunnel lit by my orbs that look so tiny in comparison even though they let out so much light.

“People are mostly tame, and everyone hesitates to use mana, so even if they fight, they fight by punching each other. I think they are also scared of you,” Min-Jae smiles, and he seems to be happy about that fact, “No one knows how much mana you have stored, and someone even spread a rumor that you were storing it for months before heading here.”

“Months…” I repeat.

Just how much mana would I be able to store in that much time?

With it comes an intriguing thought. What if I stored mana for years? Maybe even decades? Even as I am now, I should be able to live over 100 years easily with a body and capabilities not that different from what I have now.

So would my crown be able to store years' worth of mana? I’m inclined to say yes.

“Show me your eye,” I interrupt him when he continues to talk about what happened and the plans.

Somewhat awkwardly, he moves a bit closer and turns his head to the side so I can see the yellow eye he has.

I think it’s Gravity Wavelength Iris or something with a similar name. Seeing it now from up close reminds me how disappointed I was back then when we opened that damned back chest after weeks of trying. The eye reacted to him only.

Carefully, I reach out and touch the skin just under the corner of that eye and send my senses towards it, which he allows to happen.

It’s something I have done a few times already. Out of curiosity and in case the eye rejects him.

There are some things I have learned from the mana stone Savant traded with Lily, things about body modification, transplanting body parts, and similar. It’s the information both me and Lily still work on, and even Sophie showed some interest in. All three of us have a skillset that would allow us to get some use out of that information.

“Will the eye start bleeding and pop up out of my head?” Min-Jae asks with a bright smile, “Maybe it will activate and start constantly siphoning my mana until I die.”

“The twins?”

“The twins,” he confirms. “We often joke like that, but sometimes I think about it, you know? It’s a powerful eye, and I’m still getting used to it and growing into it.”

“You should be thankful, it’s like a free half trait.”

“I am,” he nods seriously. “But I don’t want to rely on it too much. I need to work on my basics first before relying on this kind of power.”

For a while, I study him.

Yeah, sometimes, Min-Jae might be smarter than me. The amount of resilience it would take to not use that power and instead take the boring route... something I needed Lissandra to beat out of me, and he grasped so effortlessly.

For some reason, I want to bully him a little, but then there are also things where he is lacking as well. His envious nature, constantly putting himself down, and occasional overdependency.

I point down at the ground, “Try grabbing a few grains of sand and lift them up, use your eye.”

“Sure,” he agrees and tries to do so right away, and I watch him move his mana to activate the skill and the eye.

I move one of the orbs a bit closer so he has more light.

The moment his skill touches the few grains of sand, they start moving erratically, as they do every time mana touches them. They become charged and deadly.

I gesture him to stop, and he does so.

In my mind, I count down the time until the sand becomes inert and stops looking for mana while also trying to estimate the amount of mana Min-Jae used.

With a bit more testing, I should be able to estimate it much better.

“Still no primordial gravitational energy?” I ask him while I watch the sand.

He shakes his head, “Still nothing.”

I nod in acknowledgment, and when the grains of sand stop moving, I lift into the air and lower myself closer. Then I blast a bigger pile of the sand with kinetic energy, which makes it fly into the air but then land back on the ground.

As before, the sand doesn’t react to primordial energies.

I find a few tiny, separated pieces and send a whiff of my mana towards them, causing them to immediately charge and fly towards me. I send a blast of kinetic energy at them, but this time they ignore it and pass through as if I didn’t do anything.

Three small grains circle around me a few times, piercing through my leg, and my belly, burrowing tiny tunnels clearly through no matter how I try to defend against them.

Body strengthening using mana? Nope. Kinetic strengthening? Nope. Disrupting mana? Nope. Resonating mana? Nope.

Having enough tiny holes pierced through me, I fly away from them much faster than they can follow, nearly a few lengths of Deathtrap before they start swirling confusedly. It takes them longer to lose charge and land on the ground as they charged even from my body when they pierced it.

I activate my passive to heal myself and fly back only to meet the others near where I left Min-Jae.

Some of the passengers are around here, ready to leave Deathtrap. Far away from the white sand, I also see some larger groups already heading deeper into the tunnel.

Group 4 is there with the remaining guide, two thylarin, a few groups we teamed up with, and Heryd, the vyssari who “guarded” me with his group while I worked in the backup core room.

“Tess is dealing with some last-minute stuff, but she’ll be back soon. We’ve decided to join with only a few smaller groups. There’s no need to take care of a bunch of assholes who just want to hide behind us,” Sophie informs me, and I nod and pull my manabloc chair closer and sit on it.

It’s the same one I created a few days ago, still holding strong, just this time with a few more bite marks on its legs.

***

POV Famir

“Do you want me to kill the other guide as well?” I ask the woman in front of me.

“There is no need to,” she shakes her head.

Even though [Suppression] blocks my emotions, I feel a hint of curiosity, so I ask, “So why did you want him dead?”

She doesn’t seem to mind it, “For my group.”

That’s confusing, “But doesn’t doing this put them in more danger?”

She nods. “Yes, it will. But it will also allow them to shine more brilliantly.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s fine, you don’t have to. Just follow my orders, and when we reach the central region, we will continue our little alliance.”

“Understood. I have another question, won’t he get angry if he finds out?”

“Nat? I’m sure he already knows.”

The level of my consternation grows even bigger. This woman, that man, their group, these two animals. I fail to grasp them at all.

She seems to notice it even through the mask I keep up, “Aren’t you happy you didn’t join the thylarin twins? If you did or attacked us before, he would have killed you by now.”

There’s that small smile on her face, making me question if I made the right choice in following her. From the moment I first saw her, I’ve felt this unshakable pull to stay close, even if I’m not sure why.

It’s not romantic interest or sexual attraction, both those things are something I’m not capable of anymore. It's just an admiration towards her decisiveness and strength.

I didn’t know I could feel that way, but she’s someone I’ve chosen to stick with, placing my bets on her to get me off this moon.

About to leave, she turns to me partially. “I don’t want to simply stay here and then find a way to just leave. Adventure is what I want. A desperate, life-threatening adventure where everyone has to do their best and overcome their limits. Where my group will have to rely on each other and strengthen our bonds through the dangers we face together. And then, once it’s over, we will sit side by side around Nat’s thermal orbs. We might be a bit hurt because of the dangers we overcame, but we will be happy to have gone through it all together and survived it. Maya will make lame jokes to lift the spirit. Sophie will caress Izzy’s head. The twins will quietly sit together, sharing their feelings. Nat will pet Biscuit on his lap and train with his orbs while Kim and Lily try to show off in front of him. Meanwhile, Noodle will keep trying to secretly nibble on one of Nat’s chairs. And I will watch it all, happy I’m part of it. That's what I want.”

With a mysterious smile on her face, she then leaves, lightning of her crown lighting up the hallway.

***

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