Chapter 125

Chapter 125

The following day Luna and Kurt interrupted breakfast to debrief them.

Luna hovered while laying horizontally and addressed the room. What do you think you could have done better?

Matt rapped on the table to interrupt the older woman's question. Cindys fate had been bugging him all night.

What happened to Cindy? Whens the trial? Do we need to be there?

Luna stretched slightly before saying, Shes safe in custody. But I think the real question you want to ask is why she wasn't just killed on the spot. Am I right?

Matt peeked at Liz and Aster, and with small shrugs, they confirmed that it was close enough for them. He nodded.

Luna took that as enough of an answer. The short version is, shes going to be publicly tried, and then executed to help restore public confidence in the local government. Kurt and I recorded everything she did for the last month. We have recordings of her admitting the past killings and planning this most recent setup. It will be a good lesson to the populace that the Empire's laws are not to be trifled with, and that no one is above the law.

Luna's indifferent expression hardened as she looked at Matt. Speaking of which, you pushed a fine line with that stunt with the fence.

Matt went to open his mouth, but Kurt held up his hand and wrote, No one is saying you didnt get the job done. And in the end, thats what matters. But you pushed a line, and pushed it hard. You punched down a Tier and tortured the man. That's not acceptable as anything short of a last desperate resort, and you were far from that point. You had information that normal teams never get, and our assurance that no one would die for weeks. If he hadnt been such a deplorable character, I would have brought you up on charges myself. Not that you even knew about the true extent of his criminal activities at the time.

Luna nodded along as Kurt wrote that out.

A chill ran down Matts spine. In its wake, all of his hairs stood on end. Not trusting himself to speak, he only nodded.

Liz had no such problem verbalizing. We all can agree that it wasn't perfect, but he was our only lead at the time. People's lives were on the line.

Luna raised an eyebrow and snarked, So harsh. You didnt think that wed step in to save the day if you failed?Ñøv€lRapture marked the initial hosting of this chapter on Ñôv€lß¡n.

Liz shook her head. Honestly? No. None of us were sure if you would step in or not. You never said that you would stop the killer. Only prevent deaths. We both half expected this to be another gambit to boot us off The Path.

Kurt looked surprised and slightly hurt, but Luna just looked tired. Glancing to Matt and Aster, she must have read something on their faces that deflated her.

I'm a hard woman. I push you to the edge. But have I ever been anything but fair? Or honest? She must have meant the question as a rhetorical one, because she answered it herself. No. Ive explained everything we do, and give you a fair warning of when Im pushing you. I clearly told you when I was trying to shove you off The Path with that special Tier 9 rift. And if that were my goal here, I would have told you beforehand.

Luna sighed. True, this was a real mission that we had no right getting you three involved in. However, Kurt and I were here, so there was no harm in taking the opportunity to get you some real life experience. We would have stopped the sacrifices anyway; we could have wrapped it up ourselves in the first five minutes. Believe me, if you had not solved the case, I would have intervened. If any of the hostages were in danger of dying before the deadline, I would have intervened. If youd gotten yourselves into a fight you couldn't win, I would have intervened. In all three cases, I wouldn't have pushed you off The Path either. It would have been unfair in the extreme to punish you for something you shouldnt have been involved in to begin with. Especially without any prior warnings about the consequences.

Matt felt sheepish. Luna seemed honestly hurt that they thought she was that callous.

I want you to be the strongest you can be, yes. But I won't push you into being rabid beasts.

She pointed at Matt. Beating the shit out of that guy should have been the last step after everything else failed. There are laws for a reason. I know you spend most of your time fighting and training, but you need to remember that the world isn't just a rift. If might makes right, you are way too low on the power scale to be throwing your weight around. Sometimes, you need to pressure people. Occasionally, more brutal methods cant be avoided, but theyre supposed to be the final escalation. Not your first resort. Were going to chalk this up to you thinking this was your only chance, but understand that it can't happen again. Forget about simply falling off the Path, Ill throw you in prison myself before I let you become some sadistic little tyrant.

Matt opened his mouth to apologize, but Luna cut him off. No. Keep it in your head. It's done and over with. You don't need to apologize to me, or even the idiot you beat. You need to ask yourself under what circumstances will you do it again. That's a conversation that only you can have with yourself.

While Luna moved on to pulling apart how Liz performed, one thing stood out. They could have used [Lesser Sacrifice] to prevent Cindy from absorbing her followers power. It would have given them a power boost, and would have weakened her as well. They were so used to shunting essence from people that none of the three had even thought about it.

As he half-listened to the rest of her critiques, Matt thought over what she had said.

He had been quick to resort to violence. Almost eagerly so.

There had been a potential source of information that the fence hadnt given up, and he had immediately used his power to extract it by any means necessary. Only for the lead to become a dead end anyway.

The excuse that he had limited time was just that an excuse.

He didnt know exactly when, but he had started becoming someone that he would have hated as a kid.

Lives were on the line, yes, but they had known the timeline. There was no rush at that moment.

Kurt seemed to understand what he was thinking and wrote, It's hard to not use the easy solution. Overwhelming violence is our answer for so many things, it easily becomes a habit. We have to remember to only use our power for good. The laws preventing attacking down Tiers are so ironclad because abuse can easily become rampant, even if it's not overt. What happens if a Tier 9 can beat a Tier 8 without consequences? What happens when the Tier 8 is a produce seller? If the Tier 9 can physically overwhelm him, then how can he not be afraid of that implied threat anytime he sells his food? Will he be strong-armed into lowering his prices to the point that he cant make a living?

Kurt shrugged while shaking his head. It's not all perfect, but the no punching down rule is strictly enforced below Tier 15. After that, things are a little less concrete, if only because its much harder to catch and enforce. If it's not in a city, no ones going to look into it. And after Tier 35 Well, at that point, there are too many monsters whove grown up with the old rules for punch down laws to ever be enforced. It might help if you remember that you can't save everyone. Sometimes, I believe that following the laws as much as we can is all that keeps us from becoming like the people you hunted down. More people might die because we dont start breaking kneecaps at the first question, but eventually, the general population would be just as scared of us as murderers like Cindy. Lawful restraint is a price we have to pay as a civilized society.

The older man smirked. Plus, if you're going to do that to someone, dont start with their knees. How are they supposed to get to a healer when they can't walk? Start with the hands and ribs.

Matt tried to take comfort from Kurt's joke, but his thoughts started spinning in circles.

He had been wrong in how he handled things, but he couldnt change that. He could only be better going forward.

Matt just had to remind himself of that.

***

A whirlwind of activity consumed the next three days. Cindys trial was swift and brutal. Kurt and Luna had damning evidence of her misdeeds, and from more than just the latest kidnappings. All of that information rapidly came to light in the following days. The citizens were nearly sent into a riot after learning what kind of monster had been living in their midst.

Viscountess Alara came out of the whole thing, if not looking like the hero, then at least with most people's support. She took the initiative to apologize to the guild in a blanket statement with no caveats, but Matt didnt miss that the location of the hidden world was leaked, and most news reporters were quick to point out the hidden space's location next to the guild headquarters.

Nigels Delvers was given remuneration that went undisclosed, but there seemed to be no bad blood left between the guild leader and the Viscountess.

The minute both the judge and jury handed down the guilty verdict, Viscountess Alara placed her hand on Cindy's head, and the woman instantly turned into a pile of ash that fell to the ground.

Kurt later spilled the beans that she hadn't actually incinerated the criminal instantly. She had used her Concept to squish the woman's brain, and then brought her body into her spatial ring. She swapped the body with ash to give the appearance of its instant destruction.

He said that not having a physical remains helped hasten the mourning process for the victims and prevented martyrs.

Matt figured that it was just cleaner that way.

That afternoon, they departed the planet to return to their normal training.

Luna informed them that she had a few things to set up, and dropped the trio off with Kurt, April, and another tactics trainer in the meantime.

The training was low intensity, which was needed after the mission they went through. None of them complained about being allowed to decompress.

A few months later, Luna arrived and kicked off another round of espionage training and missions.

Matt took special note to avoid any serious physical altercation whenever possible. No exceptions. It got to the point that Luna had to pull him aside and remind him that a last resort was still a resort, and was not to be completely avoided altogether.

Their thirtieth birthdays were approaching when Luna finally instructed them to break through to Tier 9.

For Matt, they explored new ways to concentrate his mana pool, which involved them using Erwin and his laboratory. For the last few years, the scientist had been working on potential answers to Matt's mana concentration problem. While he had ideas, nothing was confirmed.

Since they had a margin of error for the lower Tiers, they wanted to attempt a few simpler methods based on some of Edwins hypotheses.

For Tier 8, they made Matt a faux mana crystal with no capacity but incredible throughput.

Erwin's idea was for Matt to continuously fill his mana pool as the potion took effect. If the potion worked on the incoming mana too, they could get more out of the potion, effectively giving him a larger mana pool to concentrate.

It didnt work, but they didnt really expect it to. That method had been a long shot at best, but was low-hanging fruit in terms of how cheap and easy it was to test.

Matt learned how to be a standard mage, which he found to be far too fun. At Tier 9, he had 640 total mana at his fingertips. With his one percent mana being 6 mana, he was finally able to endlessly cast his modified [Fireball]. Despite having a hamstrung skill as his go to, apart from talismans, he was able to blast through or wear down all of their opposition with little effort.

It was some of the most fun he had had in years, as he stood and cackled like a villain in a bad movie while he leveled a small hill inside the rift.

His exuberance was enough for Aster to push past her hatred of fire spells and yip around his legs in excitement.

Their delving eventually devolved into the three of them starting a contest of who could come up with the best monologue line that fit with an endless stream of [Fireball]s.

Aster insisted that she won with I just beat you with the worst elemental type. Imagine what would happen if I used a real spell.

After that, they moved back to normal training, but it felt like the start of a turning point for Matt. Despite not fighting with his sword, his melee fighting skills were still of great use, as they let him control the battle during the rare instances that a monster got around Liz.

His blood mage partner turned out to have a knack for melee combat that was only outshone by her control of fire spells. Despite her Talent changing her affinity to blood, she had spent her earliest years with an innate ability to create and control flames, and it all came back to her in short order.

Liz bought and mainly used [Fireball], [Fire Manipulation], and the Tier 14 [Fire Weapon], to give her weapon a little more damage. Considering they were limited in their funds, the last skill was all they could afford for her. It tweaked Matts pride that Liz, with the skills in her outer spirit so her Talent wouldnt affect them, had better control than he had with them in his inner spirit.

Aster sulked with all the fire skills being used, which was one of the reasons why Matt purchased [Jolt] for his cover identity. The Tier 8 lightning skill was rare enough that they wanted it on public record that he had it.

After using it a few times, he understood why Emily had adored the skill. At 20 mana, the initial cost was higher than [Fireball] or [Mana Bolt], but the damage was correspondingly greater too.

Still, Matt mainly used inscribed scrolls for combat against all but the weakest forms of monsters. Most talisman masters werent willing to waste even the smallest talisman on a weak monster; the relative costs simply did not justify it. As he discovered, the role of a talisman master was to hang back for most of the delve, and then kill the bosses and sub-bosses in quick, massive bursts.

With the proper two or three scrolls, Matt could usually obliterate the bosses in under a minute.

They settled into a new routine, living their lives where little happened between delving the rift and their activities of training and other hobbies. Eventually, while they were delving the Tier 11 rift, the monotony was broken up when they met someone special.

Samuel Barker was a solo Tier 10 delver on The Path. He was only a few years older than them, and intended to participate in the same tournament they were going to.

For a normal Pather team, delving up a single Tier wasn't unusual. Samuel was a solo delver though, which made things more interesting.

He and Matt met by chance at a tactics class, and they learned that they had quite a few similarities. A friendship quickly blossomed. Both were tragically orphaned by rift breaks, though Samuels planet managed to handle the situation after the first break. The local noble also stepped up to ensure that the orphaned survivors were well taken care of.

Unlike Matt, he had been scouted for his Talent, which let him turn most skills into variant summons.

Both he and Liz were fascinated by the man's Talent once they saw it in action. Samuel was in turn intrigued by Matts powerful talisman-making Talent.

Upon learning that they were going to the tournament as well, Samuel was happy to train with them.

His Talent turned most non-channelled skills into miniature humanoid forms that had a great deal of independence, but were loyal to Samuel. The only downside of the summons was their need to have commands communicated verbally.

It was amazing to watch as a [Jolt] skill turned into a three-foot-tall stick figure made of lighting. It would rush the opponent and punch them, inflicting the normal [Jolt]'s damage with every hit. The Talent was amazing, as the summons didnt run out of power and dissipate, needing to be physically destroyed in order to be stopped.

[Earth Wall] turned into a stocky pile of rocks, half the size of a normal human, that regenerated from any non-mortal damage, creating a fantastic front-line fighter.

[Fireball] turned into a teardrop of flame that shot out its own [Fireball]s, but it was positively adorable looking, and more like a mascot than something dangerous.

Or so, everyone but Aster thought. She kept freezing the summon while acting innocent.

Matt believed that it was because [Ice Spike] wasnt nearly as cute in comparison, and just looked like a crystal with arms.

They even delved together more than once, and Samuel was a wrecking ball of damage with his variety of skills.

The other Pather was clearly holding back some of his abilities or skills; while he was holding his own in the rift, he didnt seem to be at the level of soloing the Tier 12 rift.

None of them could blame him, as they were also hiding portions of their own abilities, though they were showing the true capabilities of their cover identities.

Luna even made an appearance as Matts hired mage trainer, and spent an afternoon with the man, giving him some pointers and suggestions. She believed the other Pather had an interesting enough Talent, so she said that she was making a few calls for him and his future trainer.

If Lunas friends were anything like Kurt and Luna herself, Matt pitied the other man.

They spent four years undercover and establishing their identities, when they got word that Amelia Galley was going to hold an expo, with her tailor abilities as the focus of the attraction. The rumor mill had spread the unofficial word that she was close to her Tier 22 inspiration. It would be her nineteenth one, which showed her dominance in the crafting field.

Her clothes, both armor and casual, sold for Tier 30 values because they were head and shoulders above what most others could make. Her light armor had the same defensive ratings as full metal pate that was three Tiers higher than self.

The rumor was given more credibility with her personally inviting crafters from all over, scheduling more than one demonstration, and even setting up question and answering platforms for herself and other crafting legends under Tier 30.

Both Matt and Liz wanted to go for their respective hobbies crafters that would show up. For Liz, her alchemy, and for Matt, his cooking and enchanting. The expo was becoming the gathering place for every crafter in the nearest three kingdoms and Matt wanted to see what other enchanters had to offer.

They, along with millions of others, swarmed towards the planet that was housing the event. Or, more accurately, the moon that was housing the event. Amelia had gotten the local Duke to let her fully occupy one of the moons surrounding the planet that had been terraformed, but not heavily settled yet.

By the time they were nine jumps away, places were already overflowing, and the planets were forced to run hourly jumps as the demand only increased. Matt, Liz, and Aster reverted to their original identities, and used their greater wealth to ensure that they weren't left behind. Even with the two years warning, they only arrived three months before the actual event.

Even the planet below was so packed, finding a place to sleep was more a matter of chance than money. Buildings were being constructed as fast as the inspectors could go through them, but it was still too slow for the influx of people.

The three of them ended up getting a position in a building that was little more than stone walls and doors for privacy. They had to live out of their tents, but it was a place to sleep, which was all they needed.

In the intervening time, while everyone waited for the moon to open its metaphorical doors, Matt used Luna as a mana launderer, and was selling eight hours of his mana generation to the planet for exorbitant prices. And with his current regeneration at 640 MPS, he produced over eighteen million mana in that time frame.

He was making a little less than two Tier 31 mana stones a day, which put his personal contribution second to only the local Tier 35 Duke.

A full eighth of the buildings were created using Matt's second-hand mana. He was smug enough that Liz and Aster stopped talking to him when he started guessing if each building they saw was created from his mana.

It was just too good to see the direct impact his contributions had on the planet. He wasnt single-handedly changing things, but he was making a large portion of the work possible. That feeling made him warm in a way that building rifts and other indirect uses of his mana never had.

There was a housing problem, and he helped to solve it.

It also served as a reminder as to why people were so keen on his Talent, but Matt tried to keep that voice quiet and in the corner of his mind.

The rest of the time they spent going around to the various impromptu marketplaces that turned up. There, they browsed various goods from crafters or merchants.

One man was selling metal rings enchanted to conjure various mundane drinks, which Matt just found pointless. It took more mana to use the device than simply buying the drinks would cost. Who would waste money on a ring that created coffee?

The answer was a whole lot of people. He didnt understand the desire, but added it to his list of profitable items to create once he reached Tier 15, and could make the more complicated runes needed for the enchantment.

Most of the best crafters spent their time meeting together behind closed doors, which meant Matt and Liz had no chance at meeting them. But they enjoyed seeing the others near their own Tiers work, and learned quite a bit from their peers.

When the moon and full event opened up, they were some of the first people to arrive. As Luna said, they were a part of her party, and as one of the people who had given the most mana, she was given one of the earliest spots.

She would have gotten one for her Tier on her own, but Matt was proud of the special treatment, even if it was second-hand.

He was impressed when Luna and the other highest Tiers worked together to bring up everyone who couldn't traverse the intervening vacuum of space themselves. As the world was Tier 27, the space was so firm that Matt was only able to fly with great difficulty. But even that was a struggle, to the point of it being useless, and even dangerous to leave the ground higher than a few feet.

Lunas display of moving millions of people over the course of a few hours was a direct reminder of her overwhelming power. Luna was, at least according to April, the strongest person there, and was doing most of the work herself. Even she didnt know the woman's true Tier, just that it was at least Tier 40.

Seconds after Matt arrived, he noticed something was wrong with the surrounding essence and mana of the moon. Before he could look into it, he got a message from Kelley, the crafter he had met and befriended in the vassal kingdoms.