Vol. 3 Chap. 9 Not Good With Jokes

Vol. 3 Chap. 9 Not Good With Jokes

> The System kept its tone conversational, as though it was discussing the inevitably of ants at a picnic.

Hippopotami is not a real word.

>

Truth was looking over at the guarded double door. It was kind of creeping him out. On the one hand, they had to set up hundreds of these enrolment centers all over Jeon. There was, realistically, a limit to how secure they could make them. There was also a limit to how secure they would feel the need to make them. He got sworn in at a stadium. It was the most common place for it to happen. Not like the process was a secret, exactly, just the results.

Truth didn’t trust it. Two guards? They weren’t even Starbrite security. They hung a sign threatening to call the cops. That was just embarrassing. Truth wouldn’t have stood behind a sign like that.

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Shut up and let me lie to myself.

So, presumably, there was more security- he just wasn’t seeing it. And as a Level Four with really good body cultivation, his senses were very sharp. He walked over. The security guards were Level One. Their eyes never flickered as he walked in front of him.

The unnoticibilty effect from the Silent Forest was starting to get a little creepy. It still had that cool factor, but it was starting to dawn on him that, for the rest of his life, ordinary folk would only be able to see him with his explicit permission. He was, in every sense except the literal, above them. No longer one of the teeming slumrats of Harban. Which is what he had always wanted, of course, but... not like this. He had dreamed of their fear and worship, not being ignored.

Funny that. The one time he went back to the slums after his enlistment, he turned around without really talking to anyone. Well, Prentiss, but nobody he was interested in intimidating or showing off to. He despised everyone and everything he saw. Even then, he thought they were beneath him. He... didn’t really like acknowledging that. He shook the idea away and focused on the job.

There was a talisman lock on the door that Truth could have cracked when he was Level Zero and studying for the SAT. He lifted the amulet from the guard’s belt and opened the door. A recording talisman was aimed straight at the door and more on either end of the hallway. He checked carefully. None of those creepy, camouflaged, eyeless things around.

Truth held the door open long enough to return the amulet and started walking down the hall. The recording talismans couldn’t see him anymore than the guards did.

No ghosts patrolling the hallway, of course. Not in Jeon. Same reason they didn’t post imps instead of using talismans. Imps and ghosts were old-fashioned. Unreliable and inefficient. Strictly speaking, this was true. It was vastly cheaper and safer to use recording talismans rather than contracting dozens of imps to glare at nothing for months on end. And yes, vastly safer too. A talisman wouldn’t turn on you. You needed specialized training to make a talisman, but that’s what schools and factories were for. The original appearance of this chapter can be found at Ñøv€lß1n.

That was the hook- Starbrite might demand a lot, but look at all you got. Look at all the great stuff they sold. Your quality of life was unquestionably better. Even if you thought about the rope every day. As you worked longer hours for less money in worse housing. Terrified of getting sick or hurt or too old to work. Your back hunched more and more, and you made yourself smaller and smaller to avoid being noticed and made an example of. It cost all that, but this year’s clothes were damn sexy, and you would really be something in your brand new chariot.

If you could afford a chariot. Which you couldn’t.

Cinderblock walls painted white and high gloss. Cement floor painted grey, less glossy, but still had a shine on it. And that was it. Twenty meters one way, the hallway turned right. Five meters the other way, there was a door. Truth walked over to the door. Locked. A few seconds later, Truth opened the unlocked door. In his opinion, there was no reason to slap a magical lock on a door if you can shim the damn mechanism. He became an invisible operative for this?

Truth got very still when he finally got inside the room. It was stacked with identical plastic crates, each about a meter long and half that high and deep. Incisive wastickling the back of his neck. Danger was near.

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Truth swore but grabbed the lid and started nudging the plate off to the side. It was decently heavy for its size. Perhaps a touch more than steel. He tried to push the plate over onto another box with middling success. At least it didn’t drop on the floor.

The plate below was pretty similar to the first, though he did note a few subtle changes here and there. Pieces moved around, reordered, that kind of thing.

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You figured out what it is? Or does?

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So, why is it not good? Because it’s so smart?

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Well, for a given amount of-

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Truth started nodding, then stopped. His smile was downright angelic. Vindictive and terrifying.

No, he doesn’t need the info. He needs the plates. All these boxes. We load them onto a truck and ship ‘em out. We want to hurt Starbrite, right? Well, I’m sure they can manufacture these plates in bulk. They aren’t scared of the talisman arrays getting damaged. But letting them get stolen and reverse-engineered? They don’t want that. Not until it’s too late to do anything about them. And I’d say Siphios, land of demon binders, can do a lot in a hurry.

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No idea yet. Maybe they are holding a magical charge or something?

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Oh? Why?

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