Chapter 494 - Car ride (Patreon)

Within my mind, we appear in my school this time.

Whitey is wearing the same clothes my physical education teacher used to wear. He’s got the classic look—plain gray tee, loose mesh shorts hanging to the knee, white socks pulled up mid-calf, and basic sneakers.

The damned demon still manages to look cool wearing that, even though these clothes reveal his not-as-bulky body and taut but compact muscles under his pale skin.

“Surprisingly comfortable,” he notes and stretches a bit in these clothes.

I let him live in his delusion, and we sit on top of the wall nearby, watching a group of four boys surrounding another one. That boy is currently on his knees and patiently waits while the biggest boy pours a bottle of sweetened drink over his head. That causes black hair to stick to the boy's face, and even then, his gray and brown eyes don’t show any rage.

“He creeps me out,” one of the boys laughs and reaches to his friend, squeezing the bottle to make more drink pour out. That redirects the stream, some even hitting the face.

The kneeling boy keeps the same expression as the others laugh even more.

When the bottle is empty, it gets thrown at his face.

“It’s not fun when he just kneels there,” the oldest boy complains and, just in case, kicks his belly. “Let’s go.”

The moment they get out of sight, the boy swiftly jumps to his feet and takes off his wet shirt, revealing a thin, bruised body. He squeezes as much water as he can from the shirt before putting it back on, relying on the hot summer day to dry it up before he gets home.

“What happened to these four?” Whitey asks curiously.

“What do you think?”

Whitey smiles, his eyes having that demonic look. “Good.”

“I wonder if I should look for them again, after I get out of the tutorial. You know, for old times' sake.”

“I would tear them to shreds, for old times' sake.”

“Yeah, demons like to do that.”

“Limb after limb, I would tear it off. I would hold them with kinetic energy to stop them from breathing, only to stop doing it when they are on the brink of passing out, and I would repeat that. I would send pulses through their bodies and break only their bones while leaving the rest untouched so they would slowly die from that.”

“Sure. Want to try something?”

Whitey, curious as often he is, nods and follows me out of the school where the city becomes empty, reconstructed from my memories but without any humans. There, cars stand parked, and I break a window on one and get inside.

As if it’s in a movie, I find the key behind the sun visor and put it into the starter.

After watching me sit down, Whitey does it similarly, sits by my side, and closes the door, but too strongly, causing it to buckle.

“All the dad car owners would curse you for smashing doors so hard. You likely destroyed the varnish or something.”

Unsurprisingly, he tries to open the door to do it again, but he is unable to figure out how it’s done, so he just pierces them using Needle Point while looking at me.

“So very mature,” I note, and I throw the car into gear and press the gas.

The car roars and doesn’t move.

Under the confused expression Whitey gives me, I take off the handbrake, and the car finally moves, only to cough out and die off.

“Is this what you wanted to show me?”

“Look, it’s not like I had too many opportunities to drive a car.”

I repeat the process, and the car, throwing and jumping, moves again. We even scratch against another car before we get away from the parking place and onto the main road. There, I shift the gears and add the speed, moving on the totally empty roads. There are no other cars, no buses, nothing.

“When will we lift off?” Whitey asks after a minute.

“It can’t fly.”

“What a terrible way of transportation.” Even so, he sticks his slim pale hand out of the window and cups it in the air as we move at higher and higher speed.

Through the broken window, air gets into the car, making his long white hair move as if in the wind.

“I always wanted to try to drive around just like that.” I note.

“Is it as good as you imagined?”

“It is far off.”

“It always is,” Whitey confirms.

Both of us reach towards kinetic energy at the same time. Whitey for the one inside of him, while I absorb it from the moving car that slows down nearly on the spot.

A blast from Whitey sends the door on his side flying off, and he jumps out of the car. I do the same, only to watch the entire side of the car crumple under Whitey’s punch. The car flies into the air, making me do dodge it and smashing against the building nearly, the sound of broken glass filling the otherwise quiet city.

Wraith Dance takes me close to him after I avoid his Needle Point attacks, and both of us switch to Breaker Style, a shockwave sent from us after our hits collide, no one absorbing it. Instead, he uses Wraith Dance, and I do as well, following him. Whitey enters the shopping mall, and while I follow him, we exchange blasts of kinetic energy, exploding the place around us.

The entire time I track the movement and frequency of his heartbeat, predicting the stance he might try to use. Even so, I know he is tricky and often likes to fake it out, creating fake vibrations to cover the ones below them.

I stop at the place as Whitey unexpectedly switches to attack in Pulser Stance.

As always, when that happens, I give up trying to predict his movement. It’s just that impossible. There is no logic in it, no inertia you could use to predict movement. You can absorb it, you can redirect it. You can stop mid-air, you can halt your movement and change it at a spot to any direction you want.

My instincts, created by hundreds of clashes we had, take over, and I deploy the same methods, while still making sure not to fall into my habit and use only the moves I’m the most comfortable with. Whitey is very good at predicting my movement based on how I fought before.

Our clash gradually speeds up, and the flooring keeps exploding under my feet as my imperfections show where my control is lacking, and I release kinetic energy at times.

Meanwhile, Whitey is perfect. No waste of kinetic energy can be felt from him. His movement feels like it wouldn’t even move a falling feather, and he jumps over the railings, using glass windows as footholds without damaging them. He then switches to Steelroot and stops, a clear challenge as his heartbeat now resounds loudly like a huge bell.

Once again, I swap into Breaker Style, and my movement halts right in front of his. I twist my body, my feet burrow into the ground, and kinetic energy explodes through my body as I throw an open fist at him.

With all the force I can muster, I strike his unguarded chest. He doesn’t even use Counter Flow to absorb or redirect the impact. Instead, he relies on Steelroot’s defense, causing the kinetic energy aimed at his body to detonate outward, tearing apart everything around us.

A shockwave follows, shattering the glass from the floors above. It cascades down in a shimmering rain, drifting slowly like falling feathers.

Whitey stands there with his shirt torn and a big, blue-growing bruise on his chest.

He glances down at it.

“Not bad.” Whitey says simply.

Knowing what will follow I immediately switch to a higher gear and prepare to use Counter Flow, I’m more comfortable with it than Steelroot. My heart beats, pumping out kinetic energy through my body at the amount much higher than before.

My eyes snap wide open, tracking his every subtle movement and the faintest trace of kinetic energy.

"Not bad," Whitey says again, that maniacal grin spreading across his face, his red eyes locked onto me. "My turn."

***

Dead once again I open my eyes, now out of my mind space.

As a few times before I hope that my minion doesn’t end up being like Whitey. Vega is perfect the way she is currently.

Then I start replaying our entire fight in my mind. Every mistake I made, every move Whitey did. Things I could improve and habits I should start working on removing. This process takes twice as long as our fight did, and only then do I get out of the armchair.

My room is now even more different. The invisible Ley Lines I made connect to the inscriptions on the floor around the ax and shield, but also to the wall that has marks as I clawed the stone off and replaced it with metal alloy I made out of two highly conductive metals, molten and cooled off in the wall.

I also check the escape routes I have prepared, there being three of them and two more the group doesn’t know about. Each is capable of taking all of us away.

There is also a powerful [Ley Line] connecting me to each member of the group, straining the skill to the fullest and making it nearly impossible for me to create more lines if I don’t want the previous ones to dissolve.

A part of my mind, separated by [Focus], keeps them in check constantly, ready to pull on them and get us all out.

Then there is also Tess with her own escape routes, and even the twins prepared something with Min-jae. Sophie is excluded from these, even now going through her mind, trying to find any signs of influence on her.

Framework ignition is set for tomorrow. Whether it will remove the spatial locks is a question for later. Constructing the array to transport us away is another matter entirely.

There is also a chance reinforcements or prison guards will come after noticing it to relock them, but there should be enough time. At least according to the mind mages—at least a week if it works—to escape, giving us enough time to visit the vyssari Champion prisoner Tess and others met. Mind mages even have some plans to escape the moon after breaking the spatial locks and we are currently trying to steal them.

But I’m almost sure of one thing. The Framework ignition would fail if not for me and Sophie.

During the maintenance, Sophie noticed some stuff and came up with improvements. From my room, I also made some small changes unnoticeable even to the owner of the Framework, likely the Archon.

That mostly confirms to me that this should be one of the ways out if the tutorial attendee is capable of escaping.

I sense Sophie’s [Ley Line] shift as she nears the tower. Though she rarely leaves now and always does so with Tess and Maya, no one in the city seems to mind when she does. I suppose having high-speed railways terminating directly at the heart of their towers has that effect on people.And hell, if I wouldn’t use them if they tried some nasty stuff, the bomb crown guy or not, or the Archon’s powerful bodyguards I have yet to see.

Getting a knock on my door, I let them open, and Sophie enters, followed by Aaron and Dennis, who are here to help as we have planned.

"I swear, this room gets more wrecked by the hour," she says, inspecting the wall I created.

“Can you get me more Amberlace?” I ask her instead.

“I tried. There isn’t more of it in the city.”

“This city sucks.”

“Nat, I spent nearly all the wealth I have to get you as much Arcanadium, Amberlace, Voidsteel, Endurium, Heartwood, and more.”

“It’s you who said you owe me, not me.”

“Usually, people are less… shameless.”

“Don’t you consider your freedom more valuable than…”

“I got it! I will try to get you more, damn it.”

“Thank you, Sophie.” I then turn to the twins. “Did you practice? And where is Lily?”

“We did, and she should be here soon,” Dennis confirms.

His brother smiles. “It was nice to do something we are better at than you.”

I let them bask in the glow, and meanwhile, I put Fracture on the table made entirely out of valuable metals I made alloys from and densely inscribed. Just that table took me days to fully prepare, but it was fun, and I came up with interesting applications of my skills, which is always the main goal.

“That table is worth more than some towers here,” Sophie notes.

“Not in the system shop. I think the system considers it too specialized, and it only serves to help with Fracture and the Logic Core.”

“Sorry I’m late!” Lily rushes in after I open the door for her.

"Let’s begin, then."

It’s time to create and connect Logic Core for this evil weapon—something I can study and refine later with Sophie’s guidance. Connecting it to Fracture will provide the perfect foundation for my future experiments.

My vision for the Logic Core extends far and wide.

***

Next Chapter