Chapter 102: Showcase (2/2)

"I'm not really sure if I should…"

For the first time ever since we started working together, Pavlo hesitated before fulfilling my order. But frankly speaking, I couldn't really blame him for it. From his perspective, it most likely looked as if I was just standing there defiantly with nothing to protect myself, while asking him to shoot me. In such a situation, it actually made me pretty happy to see him not reaching for the gun on the table.

"Trust me. Do I look like someone who has a death wish? And to be frank, I can't really shoot myself here, as the barrier is just slightly longer than my hands. It has to be someone else."

Looking calmly into Pavlo's eyes, for a moment I thought about manipulating his emotions a bit to just make him do what I wanted, but ultimately I gave up on the idea. Even if he wouldn't feel like there was something wrong with his decision-making process, even if he wouldn't regret this decision later on… I just wanted that man to actually trust me, not because of my witchcraft shenanigans, but because of his own decision to put his trust in me.

"Eh…"

Still clearly hesitating, Pavlo battled with himself within the confinement of his thoughts. Suddenly, his face changed, relaxed. It seemed as if all his facial muscles lost their tension, leaving him with the most neutral expression possible for humans.

"Since you insist, let's just get this over with."

With a newfound determination, Pavlo's eyes turned into slits as he reached for the gun. Raising it from the table, he pointed loosely in my direction before pulling the finger that he rested on the trigger.

Bootsssszzz…

The initial sound of the gun firing was quickly replaced by a strange sizzling, before a small cloud of smoke raised from the place where the bullet crashed against the magical barrier. Recalling Huskarl's explanation about how did the barrier work, I breathed a sigh of relief within my own mind, while putting a smug smile on my face in reality.

"See? I'm all good. But put the gun down now, as I'm not really sure how much more it could sustain."

Sending a quick wink to Pavlo, I pulled out my finger from the artefact's trigger. Just like before, after a short moment during which the mana surrounding me returned to its natural state, the reality around me turned back to its usual state. Raising the artefact to my eyes, I could see how the light of the small stone hidden in its very core slightly dimmed, turning from a bright, dark blue almost reaching the border of violet, to a colour that was similar to one of the basic colours one would find in any graphic editing software.

"Oh God... This is…"

Looking up, I finally realised that I almost missed quite a show. The tense still faces of the people gathered in the room served for the best possible gauge of how much I managed to impress everyone with the stones. Gently raising the left corner of my mouth in a slightly ironic smile, I immersed myself in the atmosphere of awe.

"According to the promise I just uttered, here you go."

This time, I wasn't careless. Returning to my seat, I placed the barrier stone in its original package before closing the small box and passing it to Pavlo's hands.

"As for the rest of the artefacts that I brought today, we have a fireball, two more barriers, magic breaking spear, two listening devices and one scanner. The first one is fairly simple, it creates a ball of fire from the energy contained within the system before launching it in a specific direction relative to the position and angle of the stone. All three barriers that I brought with myself today use their stored energy to artificially increase the air resistance against anything travelling at a dangerous velocity. It also stops all the magic from penetrating it. The magic breaking spear is launched in a fairly similar way to the fireball, but although it cannot harm humans, it can destroy barriers, formations and all other kinds of stuff. But as useful as those stones are, I already revealed a huge fact about the reality surrounding us. Did anyone pick it up?"

In order to speak openly about the stones, I had to make sure that everyone was thinking along the same lines in regards to the methods and rules they operated at. And it wasn't something that I could achieve with people that still believed that the only thing that apocalypse brought was damned cultivation and some religious miracles.

"Is it magic?"

Not even asking for the right to speak, Jeff tightened his fists as he guessed what I had in mind.

"Exactly. Magic. The force that we all know from the novels, movies and other forms of an artistical form of expression. The force that we all would love to control, yet always took for nothing more but a blabbering not worth the attention. But you guys need to understand an important thing."

Standing from my seat, I placed my hands on the table in front of me, leaning forward as if I was about to let everyone on a huge secret.

"I can tell that some of you cultivate, Senior Baskar for example, already reached the second tier of cultivation, making him one of the strongest humans that we know of. Would you mind revealing your true cultivation to everyone here?"

One's real strength was a secret that should not be revealed, even to the allies. But with all the means that I had at my disposal, seeing through Jeff's power was a piece of cake for me. Yet, I didn't just betray him. Me revealing his most guarded secret had a strict reason.

"So you knew…"

Shaking his head in a slight disappointment, the older Baskar didn't even attempt to hide how I managed to nail his cultivation strength.

"Wait, second-tier? Don't you need to break through all seven initial stages to reach it? I thought only the veteran soldiers that kept polishing their skills could ever achieve it, as blood rite passage seemed to be one of the major…"

With one of the officials that were invited to the meeting suddenly going on a rant caused by his disbelief, all I needed to do was to look sternly at him to make the man shut his crap.

"Yes, while it's still nothing more but a guess, one needs to kill a cultivator of the same strength as himself in order to break through the first tier of cultivation and enter the second one. And as someone who did it, I think I know what you want to tell everyone by revealing my strength just like that…"

Only for a moment, a slight sense of annoyance could be heard in Jeff's tone, before all those hints disappeared. By the time he finished speaking, Jeff was back to his usual, calm self. 

"Yeah. Cultivation is nothing else but just a single way of utilizing the magic power that surrounds us. Even though it sounds like a huge discovery, I do believe that other major powers in other cities, not to speak about the remnants of central governments and huge corporations… I'm quite positive that they all know about it already."

Moving away from the desk, I approached the window before turning back towards the desk. Extending my hand towards the furniture, I invoked my attraction just by recalling the image of Ayda's lustful face whenever she was climaxing. And just like that, one of the boxes containing the stones flew right towards my extended hand.

"This is one kind of magic that I'm capable of using. While not perfect and it has pretty heavy drawbacks, it allows me to utilize the same energy that others use to cultivate, in a much more useful way."

Returning back to my seat, I placed the box with the artefact back in the line, before cupping my hands together and taking a moment to raise the tension in the room a bit.

"I'm going to reveal a lot of stuff today, so you better prepare yourself mentally for that. And I will start with why I'm so focused on those stones and artefacts right now."

Leaning back on my chair, I had to stop myself from placing my feet on the table. As comfortable as it was and as much I could project my own power and confidence with it, this wasn't the time to appear arrogant like that.

"I'm in possession of an extensive list of runes that can be used to carve the stones. Each of those runes has its own, special use. In order to turn a magical stone into an artefact, a craftsman responsible for it needs to carve several runes in a circuit-like manner. But what I want to implement in the lands that we recently secured, is not a group of craftsmen meticulously carving the stones."

Openly putting a wide smile on my face, I took a moment to raise the expectations of the people gathered in the room again, before dropping a bomb far more devastating than what nukes could achieve.

"I want those stones to be all carved by machines, with only a small team of IT worker, jewellers and architects working on the design that the machines would implement. But with how quickly we will be able to produce those artefacts, I need someone to swallow the sour pill and invest in something completely and utterly pointless."

With my smile disappearing from my face, I looked at the faces of the men gathered in the room before revealing what I had in mind.

"I'm in a capability of turning simple gems like rubies, diamonds, emeralds or sapphires into magic stones. But this is the one piece of information that cannot leave this room. Meaning, someone has to create a huge organisation that will openly aim to obtain as many magic stones from dungeons as possible, in order to conceal the fact that we do not need to do it at all."