[MA] 152. Latest Fashion (Patreon)

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[A/N: 3/3 chapters this week. Next one on Tuesday.

An important note: I'll make a trip on Thursday and return the following Tuesday. That's three days' worth of chapters. I plan on keeping the schedule, but if I fail, I'll release them later. They shall not be skipped.] 

"I still can't believe you spent four hundred thousand AP on this," a middle-aged dark-skinned woman in gray rags said on the passenger seat. "Imagine all the good you could do to so many more people instead..."

The hovercar was the exact copy of a luxury beige SUV Sai had seen in a YouTube video, tires and all. The only minor thing, a detail really, that denounced its even more special nature was the fact that it was hovering twenty meters above the ground as it sped up to 300 kilometers per hour.

"I still can't believe you gave the armor I got you to the neighbor," Sai countered from the driver's seat.

After his hair had gotten him spotted and almost killed, he had started shaving his head and wearing a dark E- cloak. Together with his E+ black leather armor with some extra metallic plating, it made him all but invisible in the dark.

The woman smiled. "She doesn't have a kind and strong son like I do, does she? She'll need it more."

Sai didn't argue because he knew it would only end up with him listening to a tirade about how he should've brought the whole neighborhood with them. A competent assassin knew which opponent to engage, and his mother wasn't someone he could beat.

Sai looked at the seven-year-old in the back mirror and confirmed for the thousandth time that she, at least, still wore the E- leather armor he had gotten her. Together with the vehicle that let them leave so quickly, that armor was one of the best investments he had made with the blood money—or AP—he had earned.

His sister was sound asleep. Like her mother and Sai himself—at least before he had started shaving his head—she had black hair that showed signs of exposure to the sun for too long without adequate care. Their skin was no different.

Sai promised himself he would take care of that as soon as they reached Shen.

Below them, abandoned and broken cars were quickly left behind. Sai had chosen to fly over roads instead of taking a straight path to Shen. On the one hand, bandits usually ambushed people on the road instead of in the countryside. On the other hand, he knew from experience that entering the wrong person's property was much more dangerous for his vehicle and family than whoever was desperate enough to pray on even more desperate travelers.

In the three times he had been forced to make highwaymen rethink their greed, he had had no problem with them. He would keep going on that plan—even if his mother had become much more reserved after she had witnessed how he dealt with the last group.

He checked the driving APP on his smartphone. They would arrive in less than five hours.

"Are you sure about that Chinese boy?" his mother asked, not for the first time. "Vanya said he's crazy and a murderer."

"Yes, mother," he replied, annoyed. Vanya, their former neighbor, had a mouth the size of the sun. "Absolutely sure."

To be honest, Sai wasn't really sure about Shen, no. If he were alone, he would live his xianxia dream to the end. Team up with the strongest guy along, become a top assassin, and live a fabulous life of darkness and danger.

However, his family's lives depended on him. He didn't like the idea of bringing them close to what might be a maniac psychopath, yet what choice did he have? After pleading his alliance to Shen, he was confident deserting would be much more dangerous for everyone he loved than whatever horrors the cultivator might have in store for them when they came willingly. Sai believed he could run away and hide even from a D-rank, but his family couldn't.

On the bright side, from everything Sai had observed of the cultivator, the man was alright. His explanations about what had happened made sense and were backed by other Pioneers. Sai was at least 70% convinced things would be alright.

And on the even brighter side, if Shen wasn't a crazy murderhobo, Sai's family would be safer beside the strongest human alive than anywhere else on the planet.

Or so Sai kept telling himself as he drove forth.

It didn't take long for him to see a stream of people moving toward the rift in Armenia. He didn't expect people from too far to heed Shen's call, but those around had much more to lose and a much easier time helping.

The roads were almost completely blocked, but people on motorbikes or bikes could still find ways forward. Regardless, the vast majority of people traveled on foot. Even weak Guardians could go on for hours at fast speed with their stamina. Ordinary people didn't have as easy a time, but not requiring water or food made things more convenient.

Most normies—the most common name for non-Guardians on the internet—carried guns of all sizes. Rifles were the most common armament, but Sai saw plenty of people with concealed guns. They couldn't hide from him though. The experience he had gotten in the past month let him notice the slight dent on their clothes and accurately estimate what they were hiding.

As he got closer, the thin streams became thick rivers of people moving forward. It was a unique experience to see so many people amassing to protect the world. It gave him hope in humankind after seeing so much shit happening.

In the air, above Sai's head, helicopter traffic had become the norm. Many of them were military vehicles coming and going, right beside the flying vehicles that had come straight out of a sci-fi book.

At Sai's altitude, hovercars were the standard. He had to decrease his speed when he was two hours away from his goal, and he found a traffic jam 20 minutes away from Shen. The air was packed with hovercars from a few meters above ground to the maximum of twenty he could fly at.

An hour of traveling very, very slow later, things simply stopped. Sai was tempted to leave and scout ahead, but neither his mother nor sister knew how to use mana, so they couldn't fuel the car to keep it in the air. Leaving was also not an option. He was trapped in a traffic jam in the air.

He elected to stay at max altitude, which he saw as the safest place. If he needed to escape, he could, and there was no risk of getting crushed by cars above him if a magic EMP or something made all vehicles stop working.

It took hours for Sai to see movement ahead. When he did, it was in the form of a flying woman in a foreign police uniform getting close to a car, talking to the driver, and soon, the car descended. There was no sound of metal crushing metal, so he didn't think people were just leaving their cars on top of each other.

The police officer directly in front of him was a beautiful middle-aged white brunette. She flew both vertically and horizontally. She started below, moved up, then forth on the "line"—if the unorganized mess of a traffic jam could be called that. Other officers ran on the lines to both sides of her.

Sometimes, after a talk with the driver, the latter would leave their hovercars, and the cars would disappear. When that happened, they kept hovering in the air and were slowly brought down. Sai guessed the officers assisted with that, but he couldn't guess if the magic came from them or some magic item.

The brunette was getting closer without incident until she was a few cars ahead of Sai. She approached the driver and talked to him, but he was having none of whatever she was saying.

The hovercar, a Pickup Truck, suddenly accelerated. The officer just watched it go, sighed, shook her head, and moved to the next car.

Sai wondered if they would just let the guy go when a fearful wall of metal spikes rose from the ground right in front of his car.

The Alliance hovercars could stop instantly if needed, but it was up to the people inside to deal with their own inertia. The driver forgot about that. He hit a full stop and flew out of his windshield into the spikes wall.

To Sai's surprise, the man didn't die. He managed to angle himself feet-first and got his legs mangled, but that was all. He wore a thick overcoat and took a healing potion from a pocket, but that was as far as he got.

Some of the spikes he hadn't hit moved through his arms and legs. Then the pinned body and metal were taken away, and Sai saw nothing else.

When the car in front and directly below him finally descended, Sai saw the hovercars stored on oversized shelves. There was no indication as to how the vehicles not on the top shelf could leave. As to how they had gotten there, it became clear soon enough.

Some hovercars he could see landed on the topmost shelves, and mages on lab coats grew metallic frames and new shelves on top to receive new cars. Metal just appeared seemingly from nowhere. It looked a lot like the mages were breaking the laws of physics, but Sai bet there was a perfect magic explanation for that.

The man in front of Sai elected to buy the item that made the car disappear and soon landed on the ground in the middle of an absolutely enormous and absurdly packed crowd.

People were everywhere. The first shelf stood about two meters high, and everything below it was people packed together like ants on an anthill.

The officer finally reached Sai's car. She looked bored and tired.

"Good night, sir," she said in a foreign language that the system automatically translated for him. "Welcome to the Rift War."

Sai had to look at the sky to see the stars and confirm it was indeed night. Like all Guardians, he could see in the dark and seldom differentiated between light and darkness.

"Good night, ma'am," he replied.

She didn't even seem to hear him as she kept talking, "We are organizing people up ahead. The current average waiting time is two hours."

He looked down and was surprised to see that, yes, people were moving, and it wasn't too slow. If he had been on foot, he might've already reached his destination.

"Hovercar owners can choose between parking on the provided space below or magically storing it away," she continued. "The Guardian Store has spatial storage items, but they are all at least C- rank and cost forty million AP. We have security personnel in the area, but we're understaffed and can't guarantee your property will be here when you come back to it. What would you prefer, sir?" She only truly looked at Sai after she finished talking.

Sai didn't have the AP for that, and he didn't even consider taking his family to such an insecure area. There were too many strangers with guns and magic down there. It was a powder keg that could explode at any time; it would only take someone to take the first shot.

His family was too precious to risk, and if he had to act like a pompous ass for that, so be it.

"I'm Feng Shen's guard, ma'am," he said. "Is there any way for me to talk to him?"

She made an obvious effort not to roll her eyes—and succeeded. "I can't do anything, sir, not even talk to my superiors. You'll need to join the crowd and talk to the people ahead of you when it's your turn. I'm sure they'll find a way to reach Feng Shen for you."

"Ma'am, you can Inspect me and see my name," he insisted. "I'm Sai Mallik, and I'm a Pioneer. Any other Pioneer could tell you that I'm Shen's guard."

Her eyes focused more on him. She whispered, "Inspect," and then they widened.

She stood up straighter—on thin air. "All Pioneers are welcome to move ahead. Just give me a second, sir." She turned her back to him, and, from her arms movement, he guessed she made some hand gestures. Then she faced him again and said, "Go on ahead, sir."

"Thank you, ma'am," he said and hit the gas.

He moved at twenty kilometers per hour to avoid any incidents. The ground was genuinely packed, but it eventually hit a wall of cars, sandbags, and concrete blocks.

Military men and women—and heavily armored and armed vehicles—were on the other side, watching over the openings on the barrier and letting some people through. A few dozen yards away from the barricade, other people in uniforms ranging from military to health workers sat by small tables with laptops and tablets. They talked to the people who were let through and took notes in what was obviously a triage.

There was a vast "clearing" after the tables, then an area with uncountable rectangular tents. Even as Sai watched, more tents were being erected. The people who were let through moved ahead, helped by many other uninformed people.

It was such a grand display of logistics that it made Sai legitimately impressed.

He kept going straight ahead until he hit the tents. Once there, a man in military fatigue flew from the ground, stopped in front of him, and gestured for him to stop. He obeyed.

"Inspect," the man said as he approached the driver's seat, then checked something on his tablet. "Straight ahead. Park by the first blue tent you see." He hadn't even finished talking when he went back to the ground.

Sai complied. The tent complex was organized in blocks that gained a lot more space between tents the further he went. Soon, he saw many people training in different groups. Some shot fixed targets, others cast spells or fought physically, and many received speeches from what could only be drill sergeants.

The more Sai saw, the better he felt. Even if Shen was just amassing victims before going on another rampage, that many bodies might hold him for long enough to Sai help his family escape.

He saw the first blue tent about ten kilometers away from the big blackened portal in the distance. It was also just one kilometer away from a host of military weaponry like missile batteries, tanks, and helicopters. Even some jets were flying high up, now that Sai looked for it.

From his guesses, all that was there both to protect the operation from hostile Earth forces and to be used on the incoming Rift War.

The blue tent was huge, at least the size of a mansion, and squared. There was an enormous parking lot beside it with at least a thousand vehicles and space for three times as many. Even as he landed, another lady in military fatigues came to him.

"This way, sir," she said and looked at the car. "You can bring the two ladies with you."

Sai disembarked right on time to see a blur coming from the portal's direction and stopping beside the soldier.

Feng Shen, wearing a poor monk's clothes, smiled brightly as he looked at Sai.

"Guard Sai, it's so good to see you alive and well," he said. "I see you have adhered to the latest fashion." He patted his bald head.

Sai hated himself for it, but when he saw the man's warm smile and heard his words, he believed everything Shen had said.

And, more importantly than anything, he believed Earth—and his family—would be alright.

[A/N: A small time skip and the return of a character I really like. Let's go, Rift War!]

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