Chapter 161: Chaos
161:
Once again, Tom found himself on the battlefield.
His gaze swept across the landscape in what had become a practiced motion. Tom was stranger to Nexus Quests no longer, having successfully completed seven in the past two months.
While he hadn’t completely perfected his new fighting style, the foreign battlefields that Nexus Quests kept frisking him off to had proven to be the greatest of teachers. Even though it had been two months, Tom felt like he had accumulated a year’s practice. There had been a few close calls, narrow brushes that would’ve left him with grievous injuries because he pushed too deep into the enemies lines or got carried away in testing out his new combinations with his deck. His raw stat advantage ended up being the main factor in him reducing injury to a light wound or avoiding it entirely by the skin of his teeth.
Even that didn’t feel like enough, reminding him once again of Zeth’s philosophy. If you truly tried to master a combat style, gain true proficiency in it, then the depth that could be found was frankly overwhelming. There were branching paths that let to their own sets of permutations and combinations, each that required practice to pull off in real battle, where a single mistake could cost more than anyone was willing to pay.
There had been interesting developments on the Neem Guild’s end as well. Tom didn’t show it, but his guard was up and it wasn’t just the beast threats he was looking out for.
They had accepted Myris’ invitation the very next day after Tom had slain the Nether Shaman and they had walked out fairly cordially, even if they had turned down the quite frankly generous offer the Neem Guild had been willing to offer them.
Tom had known that the Neem Guild was an established one, of course, but to see them so nonchalantly offer up to four uncommon artifacts per person and one uncommon card per person as a six month loan was quite surprising. For all Myris knew, they could flee to the nearest Nexus City and knock off their remaining quests there. A Nexus City was a safe zone, irrespective of who it was owned by.
As long as Tom and his party had enough resources to finance their stay, the Neem Guild would be able to do nothing. But they didn’t even have to steal any of it to hurt the Neem Guild’s finances. Tom didn’t have any intentions of dying anytime soon, but the fact was that if any member of their party fell, the loaned gear and card would be lost to some far flung Nexus City or some random stretch of land days and days away from the Nexus City: Bulwark.
It would certainly be claimed by someone else before they got to it and the first floor was simply vast, so there was not even any guarantee of that happening.
Uncommon rarity artifacts and cards were still valuable to Tom, but it seemed like they were merely investment to the Neem Guild, one that they could afford to lose.
Tom had offered to collaborate with the Neem Guild, an option he knew to exist thanks to his use of Maya on other independent climbers. Myris chose not to reveal the true face of the Neem Guild to Tom’s party, choosing to instead reply with a non-committal offer to let them know if the need arose.
It had made sense to Tom back then. Telling a party that had newly arrived in town that the ruling guild actively worked to limit and suppress knowledge, artifacts and cards from newcomers in an effort to stifle their growth and leave them with no option but to join the Neem Guild would send any sane party running for the next city.
Still, Tom had hoped the situation would be resolved then and there and for a month, it looked like it had.
During that time, they had dealt with what Tom saw as medium-risk Nexus Quests, without any interference from the Neem Guild.
Tom was starting to believe that they were done with the raven-haired recruiter and his guild, only to find him looking around for their party in the Nexus City’s plaza.
In their second meeting, there had been an edge to Myris’ tone, a chink in his usual composure that had convinced Tom to follow him.
Myris had mentioned a second offer and once Tom arrived at the Neem Guild, he had followed him into the same entrance hall as the last time. It had been quite fascinating to see battle trophies that appeared to come from a variety of nether beasts lining the wall on wooden box shelves that adhered to a triangular shape, with five evenly spaced compartments at the bottom row and one to the top.
A wide hearth kept the entrance hall warm and welcoming, the seating area an arrangement of leaf-shaped tables that had stacks of books placed on the lower rung with low sofas and plush armchairs orbiting around them.
Myris had invited them in to let them know that the Neem Guild had upped their offer, having thrown in free stay in any of the local inns for a year, ten uncommon side-fragments and an uncommon artifact as a signing bonus instead of the loan.
Though Myris still didn’t let his overly kind persona crack, his desperation was palpable.
Something was clearly up and Tom had wanted to find out.
Thankfully for him, the SP required to cast Maya on Myris was a manageable sixty and it didn’t take long for Tom to figure out why.
Myris didn’t have a single astral gold star, which Tom found surprising until he realized that there were almost three dozen Lunar Silver stars twinkling in the void. The Neem Guild might not share it’s core secrets with Myris, but that only made sense given that he wasn’t related to any of the Neem Guild’s prominent members or displayed anywhere near the combat acumen required to join their ranks.
But Myris was a recruiter and the people he invited to join the Neem Guild were people who had shown the potential or determination, perhaps both, to be worthy of the ruling guild’s investment.
Tom was under no illusion, it was certain that most climbers that had been recruited by Myris would feel some gratefulness to him. The equipment and the uncommon card that they were willing to loan so easily could be the difference between life and death and even if they were resentful of being unable to leave easily in the future, there was no guarantee they would’ve even reached as far as they had without the Neem Guild’s resources.
An information network that let him tap into the pulse of the Neem Guild— that was the framework Myris had earned himself in his line of work.
Zeroing in on the silver star that contained information on him wasn’t challenging in the slightest, given that he just had to focus on his own appearance, personality and fighting style to feel the resonance from what turned out to be a lunar silver star.
After exiting the realm of Yul, Tom had to fight to keep his expression neutral as the truth was made clear to him. He had seized the Lunar Silver star only to be confronted by a projection of himself on the battlefield, experimenting with his Rare Deckholder, Quickdraw Quickshuffle, even as he used Warrior’s Shardsong to defend himself.
The Neem Guild had sent a spy after him, one that used a card that let him record both audio and visual elements of the battlefield from afar. Perhaps the spy had entered with a team that took care of the kills required to complete the nexus quest to return, but regardless of how he’d done it, a good chunk of his abilities were out of the bag.
Tom pivoted on his right foot’s heel to land a brutal left hook directly on the Spectral Swarm clone with such force that it’s visage crumpled into itself before shattering entirely.
He winced at the pain that strike had caused him, even after Quickdraw Quickstrike insulated him from some of the force behind his strike.
Earth’s Vitality activated. As Tom had discovered in one of his earlier battles, as long as he was using Earth’s vitality to heal himself from a wound of any manner inflicted by or as a consequence of the enemy, it counted and rewarded him the kinetic energy gain from Quick-drawing the card.
The pain in hand ebbed and Tom didn’t hesitate to activate Frost Bind’s Imbue Frost ability, watching his blade was coated in a layer of frost that would jump over to any matter that made contact with it.
It wasn’t as powerful as sounded, being an uncommon card and Tom had to repeatedly strike a Spectral Swarm clone in quick succession to completely encase the creature in a layer frost before shattering it with a brutal kick.
Tom unleashed a jet of water to push away a spectral swarm clone that was trying to creep up on him. Of course, it didn’t work and the damned creature pushed through anyway, but Tom was faster as he used Aura Shift’s decrease mass to push his speed, before committing to a slide that let him both evade the creature’s claws and take out both it’s legs with Warrior’s Shardsong at the same time.
A few moments later, Tom got back up onto his feet and finished off the creature with a swipe of Warrior’s Shardsong.
He was just about to move to the final chain, when his senses began to scream danger. Had Tom not had 50 Proprioception, he would have died in that moment.
The attack was perfectly timed. He just finished using multiple card abilities in quick succession at a blazing speed, which wasn’t just exhausting, it was a constant and continuous drain on his focus.
And the method of attack, a thin, translucent needle whose both ends were tipped in a light green fluid.
It was, or atleast, it should’ve been too fast to perceive something that insignificant in the sheer chaos of the battlefield.
And, it was too fast to dodge.
Tom shattered the chain and summoned mirror world. If the attack somehow went through his card’s ability, he was dead.
Thankfully, it winked out of existence the moment it made contact with his mirror.
He was sprinting before he’d even known it, his gaze turning to the direction the attack had come from.
There were dozens of climbers crowded in that small strip of land, fighting tooth and nail against the Spectral Swarmlord clones. Tom keen eyesight couldn’t tell guilt any more or less from the next person, but he scanned through each visage anyway.
If anyone tried to run, they would obviously give themselves away, but his failed assassin appeared to be a professional.
Through gritted teeth, Tom continued scanning through the crowd even as he ran.
Only to realize that he recognized one of them.
It wasn’t his own memories that he was drawing upon, but rather, Lorcan’s. Few among the younger generation knew the man that had tried to assassinate Tom and even he didn’t know his name. But Lorcan lived with Vulturi, the leader of the guild’s enforcers and that man, with his coarse gray hair, the jagged scar on his forehead and and his nondescript features, was his right hand man.
Tom’s fury reached his zenith as he wrested control over the man’s shadow, which was just within his upgraded range.
He made sure not to focus on him for too long, noting how the assassin acted out his role perfectly. He was thoroughly unimpressive as he slashed with his sword only to leave a narrow cut on the Spectral Swarm clone before he hurriedly pulled back and scrambled to dodge a clawed swipe.
No one would suspect him of launching an attack that could kill in a single blow, absolutely no one.
Except Tom.
He raised his blade above his head and before the assassin could suspect anything, he activated Shadow Shift.
His blade came down in a diagonal slash that separated the assassin’s upper half from the rest.
Tom didn’t stop to check if the assassin was truly dead, or loot him. He simply shifted away the moment the strike was done, because there was no way such a skilled assassin had come on his own and he wanted plausible deniability until he figured out his next move against the Neem Guild.
He had only wanted peace, yet the Neem Guild had come for his head regardless.
For that, he would make them pay.