Chapter 892 - I can explain

“Nathaniel,” Lily says very carefully.

As she does so, my eyes move from the girl to our petite, black-haired healer, but I stay quiet.

“I can explain,” she says.

“Go on,” I challenge her.

Lily looks at the girl and then at me before smiling, “It’s our-”

Before she can complete the sentence, I turn around, open the door, and close it quickly behind me. All of this is aided by my movement speed being boosted by Lissandra brand body reinforcement.

Wraith Dance brings me through the hallway, and then I open another door to find myself in a room filled with the sound of industrial work, where adult kindred and a few elders work on replacement parts for the train.

For now, I ignore them, passing through with another Wraith Dance and entering a new hallway. This one is lined with mirrors placed on one side, while the other side is open to the outside without even a railing.

The flooring of this part is made of patches of bright yellow, brown, and white wood, creating a nice pattern. Of course, even here, big parts of it were painted by the kindred children. It is rarely used, though, as children aren't allowed into workshops and adults use different hallways, so I sit down there and rest my back against one of the mirrors while looking outward.

What Lily did should not be possible. I checked the arm, Sophie did, and Lily did as well to confirm it two weeks ago. Even the objective logic says that it should not be possible. The Corporation just wouldn't want anyone to have their own clone of Kindness, no matter how much weaker it is compared to the real thing. A corporation as big and powerful as theirs should have the best of the best to make it impossible.

Sure, the fact we are inside the tutorial and cut off from the outside world might cut off their possible connection and their long-range manually triggered self destruction signal. Yet, you would think things like these are straight up built in.

Just what is that black haired lunatic doing?

That is when I decide I need some emotional support minion time and use the second out of my five communication tokens, the first one having been used a week or so ago.

“Use minion communication token,” I say out loud.

And nothing happens. Again.

With disappointment, I say it differently. “Okay then, use ten minute Disciple Communication token.”

Only then does the token disappear from my status.

This time, I have to wait only a minute or so until Vega accepts the invitation, and I find myself in the shared mental space.

With my experience, I quickly change the surrounding area, turning it into the city I grew up in. Actually, I turn it into one of the nicer parks near my place. Well… the only nice park nearby, though not recommended to be visited after dusk.

My very first minion appears on the bench next to me, and the first thing she does is look around with big eyes and scan the area for dangers. Only then does she turn to me and give me a big, big smile. Her tiny pointy horns stab the bottom of my chin as she throws herself into a hug, and I put my arm around her.

It is very unfortunate to say, but she also suffers from an incurable condition. Hers causes her body to physically expand and grow in size, meaning she is just that little bit larger than the last time I saw her. We can only hope that one day we might find a cure for that, as well as for my mana deficiency.

Just like a week ago, she is wearing black pants with a white shirt and no armor at all. There is a dagger at her waist, and her hair is now reaching her shoulders, tied into a ponytail so it doesn't block her view during a fight. She even wears a ring, a bracelet, and a necklace. All are items, and from the looks of it, quite decent ones, though we don't talk about where she got them from.

For a while longer, she listens to my heartbeats and continues to smile relaxedly before tapping on my chest and pulling back. Right after, she jumps off the bench.

I stand up as well, and we start walking through the park towards the city.

“So, what happened since the last time?” I ask her curiously.

“I went to check that church just as you told me, and you were right, it was the priests poisoning the well, making people in the village sick, and then making money by healing them!”

“Classic.”

“Classic? Must be a regional insult, master! We also looked into their healing just as you said and found they couldn't heal at all; they instead used some potion to heal people!”

“They aren't even trying to be original.”

“I don't understand, but for sure, master! They destroyed all the potions and threatened to let people die if we didn't let them go.”

“How evil.”

“So I threw them all into the poisoned well after beating them and forced them to drink a ton of that water. That rude dagger said it never saw people making a potion as quickly as them. One of them was smart too, he made a different potion and tried to throw it at us, but Tykka killed him. She seemed to expect that. I did not think they would be so cowardly!”

“Minion, you should always expect people to be cowardly and shrewd. Do you know why?”

“Because we are cowardly and shrewd too if needed! Especially if it's to piss someone off or beat up some asshole!”

“Very good. Treasury?”

“As you said, master! We used Mini to find their hiding places where they put all the payments from the villagers and the things they stole or owned previously. There was also a second, smaller secret vault Mini tried to hide from us and to keep for herself, but I noticed her nervousness through my amazing kinetic senses and got it all, though I let her keep that pretty coin she thought I hadn't seen her pocketing.”

“Great job,” I say as we stop on the sidewalk.

The city is entirely empty, there is not a single being, and it is eerily quiet. The sky looks like it is about to rain, and the wind is picking up. City lights still work, glowing inside the rooms of the buildings and on the semaphores and crosswalks too.

Though there are no cars here, I wait, and Vega waits with me, curiously taking it all in, the same as the first time. She also learned when to cross the crosswalk, so when the green light blinks, she begins to walk quickly, just as I told her, and I follow behind her, though more lazily.

When I rejoin her on the other side, we continue past the closed shops and empty streets.

“How about Alby Phen-Toast Corinto-Vassal en the Bald Asteroids?” I ask.

“The emergency food still continues to follow us and sometimes joins our camp late at night. Master, he seems to be very smart. He always runs away when we set up to cook something for dinner.”

“He is a noble lady's pet after all.”

“The gray lizards I hunted for food used to be more noble than him.”

“That's the spirit.”

“But he lets me pet him sometimes in exchange for some leftover food, and I think he sometimes kills the stronger monsters near our camp. Once, he brought one monster corpse to our camp, and I think he wanted us to cook it for him, but it tasted too good, and we ate it all. He kept barking all night then.”

“Minion… maybe leave him a piece or two the next time.”

“Are you sure?”

“It won't hurt.”

“I will do it then! And what about you, master?” Vega asks excitedly, turning to look at me as she spins and dances in the middle of the road with a huge smile.

I join her there, and we continue this way, in between the empty skyscrapers and the buildings, blinking lights, and no cars or humans at all. Part of me takes in this weird feeling. I thought it would feel somewhat normal and expected. Yet walking through the middle of the empty road is surprisingly alien and weird. It looks and feels much different, like looking at the city in an entirely new light.

It is a surprisingly interesting feeling that I take my time to sink into.

“Me,” I mutter, “not much changed from the last time. [Selective Adaptation] is a really nice skill the more I test it, and I think I finally decided on another low pristine I got to combine with Cognitive Vector. Hmm, what else? I think I fully fully recovered from the thought acceleration training, and with Sophie and Maya, we will set up some of our own. We can use my mind as a core that will be more accelerated than the others, and I can kick them out according to how they handle it.”

“Master, you are doing it wrong.”

“Am I?”

“You just need to make your heart stronger and-” she spreads her hands wide, “Kaboom!”

As she says so, a pulse of kinetic energy explodes from her, shattering all the windows in the area. I watch as they ripple, buckle, and then break into pieces that begin to rain down.

Vega expands her reach further, causing the falling pieces to slow down, yet they still continue to fall.

Seeing her happy smile, I snicker too, so I grab her and boost both of us just enough into the air to land on the tallest building nearby. From there, I can see the rest of the city, the taller buildings, smaller patches of greenery, the old dirty river, and such.

“We don't have buildings and cities like these,” Vega mutters, watching it all with that childlike curiosity.

Yes, she is a child. I mean, she will stay a child forever. Everyone knows minions do not grow, so they stay as they are, forever dependent on their masters. Yup. Exactly as the system intended. No, actually, it is an ancient rule from before the system. Something the godkings themselves knitted into reality itself.

I allow thermal energy to gather in front of me just for a second before I shoot it out in a single, laser-like stream.

It sweeps and cleanly cuts through multiple skyscrapers half a mile away in a clean slice of heated up metal, glass, and concrete. I gather a bit more mana and do a 360, cutting through the city multiple times, cutting dozens of buildings that now start sliding and falling down in clouds of dust and the sound of shattering glass and groaning metal.

The dust annoys me, so I generate and send a pulse of kinetic energy through the city. It is not enough to break anything, but it pushes away all the dust and dirt, clearing the view of the destruction.

“More!” my minion shouts excitedly.

So I oblige.

The finger-thin stream of thermal energy widens, growing to the thickness of my body, and then further until it is as wide as a car. To increase the destruction, I up the output. Where I previously gathered enough behind the valve to cut like a laser, now, because of how thick the flame is, it gathers much more like water behind a dam, and that flame shoots out with the speed of pressure forcing it forward.

The flames scream like a jet engine, reaching a mile long and sweeping through the city as I draw lines with it.

I watch as glass and metal drip onto the streets, roads evaporate, and pools of lava form. Flames catch fire across entire streets when I pull the flames back, and the roaring of the jet engine stops.

Hot air waves ripple over the city from all the heat when the mana I have been gathering releases. Not in a raw mana blast of Fuck Everything In That Direction Specifically, but through the mental image I form in my head.

This time, it isn't just falling sheets of paper sliding against each other. Instead, it is just one sheet of paper that sways and slowly falls down until it lands with the entirety of its flat side at once.

Like a giant hammer smashing down, an entire city block disappears into a rectangle. Everything around and outside of that rectangle remains standing, but everything inside is deeply pressed into the ground, creating a near-perfectly smooth zone.

More of my mana floods out, and that sheet of paper quadruples in size and falls down.

Multiple other blocks disappear, and with them a few skyscrapers entirely, and then more. I channel my mana faster, firing this attack in quick succession without having any trouble at all gathering required mana quickly enough.

It is probably as efficient as the government, but I was never one to care for efficiency, and it is only my reserves that slow me down rather than my ability to channel.

This is my mental space, so I could push more and make my mana restore, but I like to keep it all as close to reality as possible, so I allow myself to stop. Outside, I could pull on ambient mana, use black mana to gather more if needed, or rely on my Ignition Heart.

Even so, this causes my minion to jump in excitement like some sort of evil imp, surrounded by the light of burning parts of the city and the destruction all around.

For the remaining few minutes, I show her a few tricks so she can do the exact same thing I did, and at the exact same scale, to the next group of those annoying flesh eating horses she and her group meet.

I, as her master, of course, cannot support something like that. So I scold her a few times until she understands.

“In a few years, I will do twice as much damage as master did now! I apologise for having such lowly goals unfit for me being your disciple!” she corrects herself.

“Well said,” I nod, messing up her hair and poking her horns despite her trying to kick me. “It’d be a sad day if my disciple didn't dream of wiping the floor with me.”