FS ch28

Billions of dollars in research, tens of thousands of mage lives, and the favor of a wizard king flushed down the drain because some warlock pulled a prank. No, it was worse than that; this had the looks of an expert who knew Tishomingo’s defenses. They knew the watch schedule for energy spikes and what they could get away with. Also, there were no reports of a rank 5 demons emerging, so the warlock escaped before the ritual popped off.

Wizard King Augustus sat on his throne in his empty workshop, looking over monitors newly installed. There were other facilities, but none with quite so little oversight. He sent the talented young prodigies; the succubi drained every one of them dry. There wasn’t enough left of them to extract information from their mana signatures. No temporal mages could wayback their brains and extract the steps to build the Apotheosis named Trans AM.

Burnt remains of books slowly regenerated on his shelves from his earlier tantrum. Dragon slaying lightning had done a number on his private shelves. Still, the Saturn rune slowly restored even the damage he dealt. It was a throwback from his predecessor.

Wizard Kings can embody the runes they used, and Marcus was obsessed with Saturn. The true believer in the stoic devoured his first 5 disciples when they reached the rank of archmage. With each devoured, he grew closer to truly embodying the Titan Saturn himself. Augustus’s victory had been a close thing, requiring the ghost of his senior disciples to pull off.

Since those early days, Augustus had taken multiple wives, never proved himself faithful, and mastered every lightning spell imaginable. Going further beyond required something more than his prodigious talents could grant him. He needed to go through Apotheosis to truly assume the mantle of Zeus and stop Saturn from ever returning.

Only his shelf continued to repair itself. Saturn seemed much stronger in the end. He seemed pleased that Augustus had managed to best him.

“Your Majesty Isis is calling.” His secretary homunculus said.

“It's alright, Hermes bring her on screen.” He put on his public face and smiled like a fool who hadn’t just lost the most promising attempt at Apotheosis he’d seen in decades. “Isis, what a pleasure,” Augustus said.

“Save it; we both know the demon incursion is a disaster, and World Gov is enjoying it,” Isis said.

Not for the first time, he wondered if World Gov was behind the attack. His pet terrorists certainly weren’t happy. Then again, they wanted to call an asteroid to Earth to increase the mana supply.

“It's only a southern city; we haven’t lost much.”

“Only our legitimacy,” Isis said.

He narrowed his eyes. Of course, Isis knew something, but she always knew more than she was telling. Maybe he could get her to let it slip. If whoever was responsible was nearby, they might find the sky raining lightning bolts. Augustus wanted to smoke them.

“We haven’t enjoyed that since the days of my predecessor. If anything, this move forced World Gov to expend more resources. I have a report claiming 8 of their mage killers have gone missing. Then there was that lovely video of a land Yacht Cadillac; if I remember, my land Yachts had a shiny Mythril bumper it used to drive through a penal barricade. Tell me, Isis, is that positive PR for World Gov. It looks like one of our mage engineers survived the initial outbreak and took advantage of the cleanup. I had my people edit the video and played it through the Megacities.” Augustus said.

Isis smirked enough to let her mask slip. He picked up what he needed from the brief crack in her defenses. There was a reason they used Facetime.

A member of Isekai was behind the attack. That was news indeed. From there, he only needed to narrow down the possible perpetrators to Alexander. Reports stated that the Archmage Warlock had remained in Tower Isekai during the attack, narrowing it down to a disciple. Few warlocks could handle the man’s teaching methods, narrowing his choice to a single elf. Then, the question was whether to attack the master or the disciple.

“Thank that will be all Isis.” The video call cut out.

…

September 1st Training Room

Atom PL 4699

Jason PL 1904

Sweat poured down my face in a red-tinted room where gravity held at 20Gs, and my sweat hit the ground like bullets. Every swing of my arm was pain as my power threatened to leave my control. 1000 swings sounds easy in theory after gaining lots of PL, but creating my energy blade each time took a lot of stamina out of me. My swing had to be perfect each time before a set was complete, and my body shook. It was completely exhilarating.

All the while, I was forced to use my stolen healing technique to keep up with the strain on my body. That second layer of difficulty also helped me get used to the other technique. While my PL wasn’t skyrocketing, getting the techniques I needed to survive down would only benefit me in the long run. I needed to get these basics down to survive beyond the upcoming fight.

The weights on my arms would have been too much for my joints if I didn’t regenerate continuously. The words to stop the torture were always on the tip of my tongue, but I never spoke them. I could feel my strength climb constantly, still with my black halo and my energy perpetually refilled as I used it. This, too, was a type of training to get my body used to using massive amounts of energy.

Each time I formed my energy sword, it was at full capacity. Keeping such energy blades under control was an experience forcing my concealment to the very edge. Still, I needed to go further before resting for the next few days. 20Gs was too much, but I went for it anyway. Thanks to my regeneration, I felt like the risk was reasonable.

Another reason was that I was putting off my responsibilities. My rest was about to include building sealed fencing to cross miles of land. I was about to begin an undertaking that would utterly change my home, hopefully for the better.

My expansion would be inhuman at the best of times. The increased land would force me to hunt down the hidden 4th and 5th-rank mutants in the woods between farms. Energy would need to saturate the farmland and the animals. Some would mutate wildly and would need to be put down. Others would become stable mutants, which, while tasty, might develop sapience, which had many moral issues. I wouldn’t eat anything that could have a conversation with me.

Ember’s morals were not mine. I loved my vampire, so I planned to build a blood farm since I had some downtown between working myself to death training and extending our farm.

While we had plenty of girls for her larder, we soon wouldn’t need their blood. I planned to induct them into my culture no matter what Jason said. We needed to build our culture even if we had to divide women and use turkey basters. Name or not, this was something I felt was right.

The more members of a culture, the more their particular source was in the air. Mages were everywhere in the West, so mana was plentiful. My personal culture didn’t care energy was energy with my black halo; that fact was even more so.

To that end, I would have to talk to the escorts and let them know they had become breeding stock. It was only the polite thing to do, and Mother would approve.

Another slash of my sword brought my count to 899. I had to maintain my perfect stance, or this pain would be for nothing.

My thought fell back on one of my immediate problems. Jason was better than me at transforming and trapping energy on a large scale. No, it's more like with Jason around; I never had to get good at the art. With the Trans AM, I brought Jason into my research, and we’ve been journeying into the artifact's secrets. There was far more to it than we thought surprising since mages were known for their blatancy.

The gravity slowly dialed back as the door opened, and Jason walked in. He gave me an envious look and began meditating on his power. Jason was there; he only needed a day to fully grasp concealment, and then we would both swing for the fences to borrow a baseball term.

“You’re thinking about our findings instead of training that is dangerous,” Jason said.

He wanted to talk to me about danger. I sucked in a breath and let it go. It was the heightened testosterone from heavy training. Jason’s voice didn’t really grate on my every nerve.

“Runic arrays for organelles and complex rune orangs. I thought they had simply stacked runes on top of each other. Half those aren’t Greek, Roman, Egyptian, or even Sumerian. I think they made them up, but then we have an English A, and nothing makes sense.” Gravity returned to 20Gs, and I swung again. 920 swings, and my body didn’t want to go on even with the regeneration and my power level. The room was torture, but the results were so worth it. I wanted to crumble the drones like Father’s old beer cans. “Did I mention it converts every type of source we can come up with into mana? That shouldn’t be possible, except we have no idea how it does it. This isn’t creating a pseudo-demon and filtering its power into energy. Compared to this thing, my black halo is a toy.” I said.

“Of course, it makes sense. It uses rules we haven’t learned yet, but I’m sure Father knew them and forgot to teach us. We don’t know half of what is in his lab.” Jason said.

My brother’s respect for Father returned out of nowhere. I haven’t told him about the werewolf; it was probably still tied up and shitting itself. Maybe something finally got to the man-eater. That would make me happy.

“Perhaps we should prioritize plundering that place,” I said.

“You’re trying to get out of work. Growing our land was what you wanted to enjoy. Miles of ungovernable land. How long until a convoy from World Gov knocks on your door?” Jason asked.

“You talk like you won’t be here,” I said.

“After we rescue Emily’s sisters, we will leave for Egypt’s Mage College. I would rather avoid the massive number of pregnant women you will unleash upon our home.” Jason said.

He wasn’t thrilled by my plans to create a foundation. Early attempts at building a blood farm were mostly successful. My escorts, while money-hungry, were destitute with little prospects. There were seals to ensure their loyalty, and my children would be raised in our culture through them. They would be where we are or even further in less than two decades. All it would take was a little time, and our little farm would become a town.

“Like with building anything, the hardest part is the foundation. Once we have something solid, building the rest will be easy.” That wasn’t one-to-one with relationships. Harems were bloody affairs, and Ember seemed ready to enjoy the show. She smirked at me when I started bringing my plan together.

Perhaps I needed to use some fancy seals and subdue a few mutants and bandits to help keep the order. Really, all I had to do was break a bandit of everything they knew and rebuild them as members of the culture.

“I’m certain your plan will last until your first son is born. Like Father, you’ll muck everything up and run out when they are fifteen.” Jason said.

“Do you think that’s what happened?” I asked.

Jason shook his head and smiled. I sighed and let my brother have his little smirk. My brother needed a little happiness after I heard his fight with Emily last night.