Chapter 83As he y ft on the ground, feeling the stones embedded in the soft earth beneath the yellowing moss poke at him in uncomfortable ways, Michael thought back to the chain of events leading up to this moment. Travis was beside him, scouting the compound with his binocurs. They were on a vantage point atop one of the gentle hills this side of Kentucky, overlooking a hollow several miles away. At its center, Carme was currently holed up, thinking she was safe. She would have been safe, in fact—the distance too great to affect her with mundane weapons—had it not been for the duo’s magic rendering the point moot. It was exactly what Travis was counting on, and the reason why he had carefully maniputed information flowing back to Carme to make sure she would be at the right pce at the right time.

  “Fuck it,” Michael muttered. “No use overthinking this.”

  Instead, he took aim with his sniper rifle, a ghostly creation made by Travis’ magic that could shoot through walls. Carme was barely visible at the center of the scope, clearly too far away for a normal weapon to be able to accurately hit her. Even more so when not in the hands of an experienced marksman, but in Michael’s. Although, this had to be said, he had experience doing this exact sort of thing. He had done it back when he sniped the Swamp King to death back when the Misty Valley was still a challenge floor, and he didn’t feel like this would be too different. Already he could feel his [Marksman] skill begging to be used, a nice overcharge of mana more than enough to overcome the range limitations of the weapon and ignore nuisances such as bullet drop and wind drift.

  He knew he could squeeze the trigger right now and set things in motion he could not undo. But, was it not what he had been doing all this time? It felt different, however, more deliberate. He wasn’t in a life and death battle, or a struggle to save his kidnapped family. If he did this, then he would turn into a cold-blooded killer.

  “What are you waiting for?” asked Travis.

  “Are we sure about this?” Michael said. “We don’t get another chance if we fuck up.”

  “Then don’t fuck it up,” Travis replied, misunderstanding Michael’s point. “You have [Marksman]. A skill made just for this. Line the shot, and kill the bitch. I got everything else covered.”

  Michael nodded, steeling himself. He was about to shoot, but something held him back, “I know, but what if she can detect us?”

  “Does she look suspicious right now?”

  “She’s clearly agitated.”

  “Suspicious of us,” crified Travis.

  Michael shook his head. “She has no idea.”

  “And what are the chances of her having a skill or spell or card or whatever that can trigger without her knowing she’s being attacked and stop a bullet from that rifle enhanced with your skill?” Travis said patiently.

  “Next to none.”

  “Then do it.”

  Michael took a deep breath. He let the skill guide him, and since he didn’t want to risk nasty surprises, he pumped the skill chock full of mana, nearly a full Silver going into making the shot as deadly as possible. He then ced the bullet with Ice and Fire elemental energy, set in a way that would detonate upon impact, fsh freezing and burning the target at the same time. This was only possible thanks to his ability to manipute mana and elemental energies without the need for a spell, directly influencing the outside world. It was an aspect he gained when he raised his [Magic Manipution] to level 6 but barely ever used, a thing he intended to rectify soon.

  A skill window appeared in his vision, the system trying to push a new skill onto him, but he could not accept it. Overburdened by skills as he was, he could not add another to their number if he wanted to keep using magic. He dismissed it before he could overthink it, and a fractal failed to manifest in his Skill Sanctum.

  “Alright,” he said, taking another deep breath. The skill thrummed with energy, and his aim was steady thanks to his inhuman stats and the skill’s help.

  With a stiff motion, he finally pulled the trigger.

  The bullet was hypersonic. Michael watched it travel true, describing a straight line through the air. It hit Carme in the head barely a fraction of a second after Michael had pulled the trigger, the sound of the shot never even reaching his ears. This was not a normal weapon, but a ghostly implement made by Travis’ silver Card.

  Michael’s eyes stared at the scene. He could not, would not, close them even though what he was seeing was gruesome. Carme’s head exploded in a shower of gore, fire and ice. The whole room was a mess in mere moments. Fire began to spread outwards, dozens of Copper units of elemental energy more than enough to melt concrete and steel in a small radius and set fire to anything fmmable in the vicinity.

  Unity level up!

  Level 8. He had gained a level by killing someone in the real world for the first time. Josh had not been enough to push his level up, it seemed, but Carme had been. Whatever mechanism was at the base of the flows of Unity had deemed her important enough.

  Even after Michael was sure she was dead, and that his work was done, he could not take his eyes off the magnifying scope of the rifle.

  “It’s over, man,” Travis said, putting a hand on his shoulder.

  “She’s dead,” Michael said mechanically, “just like that.”

  “Just like that.”

  Fmes sprung to life from Michael’s hands. They did not burn. Instead, they healed the mind. For the first time, he used [Candle Light] on himself.

  He got up after a few more minutes, during which Travis had said nothing. The man had not been idle, of course, coordinating with the Candle Light forces waiting to blitz the building now that the sole mage defending it was gone.

  “You know,” Michael said as he got up and shook the dust and dead moss from his clothes. Behind him, men were swarming the building. “This was a bit anticlimactic.” Perhaps he had overdone it with [Candle Light], because right now he felt nothing, his interest more piqued by the fact that even moss was dying out in this dry heat after many days without rain rather than focusing on what had just happened.

  “A bit anticlimactic,” Travis echoed his words. “But that’s how it goes when you have superior means. Let this be a lesson.”

  “Yeah. I think I learned much.” Michael said.

  Travis nodded. “It will be a right mess now. I’m doing all I can to keep the federal agencies off our backs. And doing a good job of it, if I say so myself. But…” he trailed off.

  “But?” asked Michael. He was following the unfolding blitz on the building both with his sight, magnified by the rifle’s scope, and through a live feed being broadcasted to his phone from one of the operators’ helmets. Jennifer was there too, he noticed, ready to use her spell tome to remove all incriminating evidence.

  “There are other agencies, even more powerful and insidious than the 3-lettered.” Travis said, “A bit more secretive than what you’d normally be used to, they aren’t as bound by the w and the normal flows of money and power as the others. Guess what I learned after some digging? Now that I know magic is real, it wasn’t too hard to differentiate bogus conspiracy theories from the real deal. Turns out the feds knew about magic all along, it just wasn’t relevant until recently. They never managed to do more than party tricks with it, after all, until a few months ago.”

  “You think they got access to a dungeon?”

  Travis shrugged. “Hard to say, to be honest.”

  “Then why tell me about it now?”

  “Because, after this mess? They will be looking in our direction, Michael. It's a matter of time before they find some interesting stuff and come knocking at our doorstep. With the power they might have? Forget appealing to the w, they can disappear us.”

  “Can they, though?” asked Michael.

  Travis smirked. “That’s what I want to know. Can we afford to strong-hand them, or do we want to py it safe and gather up strength? Jennifer says she’s almost ready to send the first batch of SKILL-outfitted operators in the dungeon to power-level them, followed by a wave of volunteers who will go in as Iron-ranked humans to see what the dungeon gives them… if they survive, that is. But we need time to set all of it up and we might not have it. So, I thought… Instead of being reactive, let’s be proactive.”

  “What do you have in mind?” asked Michael. The blitz at the compound was almost over, with nothing but weak Iron-rank humans against their trained operators with better gear and a handful of Copper operators with offensive skill stones.

  “Are you free three days from now?” Travis had put his phone away now that the operation had concluded, and his expression was colored by a grim awareness of the future. “I want to schedule a meeting with a certain Dr. Kavanaugh of an organization called Occult Affairs. It’s federally funded, but they don’t respond to any form of control that I know of. This means I can’t influence them, which in turn makes the OA potentially more dangerous than any three-letter agency. Now, this Kavanaugh. He may not be the head of the OA, but he’s high enough up the food chain to give us a clear picture once we speak to him.”

  “Are you sure it’s wise?”

  “I’d rather go to them than have them come to us. If we py this right, we might even walk away with a new ally.” Travis paused, “Well, perhaps not an ally per se, but we can leverage some internal strife between agencies once we know more. We need to know where we stand, Michael. Can we fight them, or do we need to y low and build our strength? Jennifer’s working on getting our people into the dungeon-ready, but that takes time, time we might not have. This… this changes everything."

  “I feel like it’s quite a big gamble,” said Michael, looking at the burning compound in the distance. “Perhaps, though, the time for me to say such things has passed. Can I really advocate caution after caution itself led us to this?”

  “Don’t worry,” Travis’ tone was cordial, almost as if it was Old Dave here speaking with Michael, “I am taking precautions so that they cannot abduct us. But again, it’s better we go to them than the opposite and they catch wind of what we are doing at Site 00. Hard to hide entire buildings once they enter someone’s radar. If that happens, there’s no good ending.”

  “What’s my role in this?”

  “You are there to talk, officially, but what I think you should be doing most is watch. Using your special senses I want you to scout how powerful they are, if they are limited to only ancestral magic, or if they have access to a dungeon. Once we know that then we can pn our next move. Suppose we have the upper hand in power? Imagine what we can do then.”

  “All right, I want to talk to Old Dave about this first.”

  “Of course. Just be quick.”

  “I’ll do it today. You prepare the meeting. One way or another, I do think it’s the right thing to do, sending at least someone. I don’t like it, but I know it has to be done.”

  ***

  The first thing Michael did once back at Site 00 was find Old Dave. The man was skeptical about their pn at first, but after much sighing and worrying about Michael, he eventually agreed to proceed. Old Dave advocated going in full strength at first, assuming that in the case the enemy had a way to detect mana then they would show their strength, and if not that they would be safer that way. Then, he had a change of heart, and tentatively agreed with Travis’ pn. Going in guns bzing wasn’t a great idea.

  He agreed that Travis should go with Michael. The man was a must, if only because it had been him who had set up the meeting and he knew how all the parties moved within the web of contacts and power dynamics. Michael was the other obvious choice, as they needed someone with mana sight, and currently they only had two people capable of accurate mana readings. One of them was Johanne, who was as delicate as a sledgehammer when it came to these things and would probably blow the whole thing before the talks could even start. The other was Michael, who had to go even though he was the centerpiece of Unity, Candle Light and everything else, loathe as Old Dave was to admit it.

  “Besides,” said Michael, “I fully intend to go in prepared. I know there’s a way to mask auras, to make them look weaker than they actually are. Johanne once mentioned it to me in passing. I’ll spend some time with her in the Valley and try to develop a skill for it.”

  Candle Light: CL-003, "Infinite Water Bottle"

  Magic Css: N/A

  Danger Rating: Iron

  Containment: CL-003 is to be kept in the utility storage area at Site-00 when not in use. Access is restricted to Level-2 personnel and above. Any modifications or use of CL-003 for new projects require approval from Level-1 Operator "Fleeting Man" (Travis Tyrell) and must be documented thoroughly.

  Description: CL-003 is a seemingly ordinary pstic water bottle with a capacity of approximately 500ml. The bottle's exterior shows signs of wear and tear, suggesting prior use. However, when tilted downward, CL-003 continuously produces a stream of clean, potable water, seemingly without limit. The water's flow rate can be adjusted by varying the angle of the bottle.

  Analysis has revealed no traces of mana, elemental energy, or any other anomalous signature within CL-003. The mechanism behind its infinite water generation remains unexpined. The water produced is chemically identical to standard drinking water and poses no known health risks.

  Future Research Pns:

  Investigate the potential for replicating or mass-producing CL-003's water generation capabilities.Explore the possibility of adapting the technology for other liquids or resources.Conduct long-term studies to assess the bottle's durability and potential for degradation.Assignment Pns:

  CL-003 will remain a shared resource at Site-00, with potential for broader distribution if additional simir items are discovered or if the bottle's properties can be replicated. The immediate priority is to ensure that the water supply meets the needs of Site-00 and any expansion projects.

  Addendum CL-003.01: The bottle has been modified by Unity Corporation engineers to increase its flow rate and facilitate easier water collection. CL-003 is currently being utilized to provide a sustainable source of drinking water for Site-00 personnel. Future pns include expanding its use for irrigation and agricultural purposes on the surrounding nds.

  Addendum CL-003.02: Recent observations suggest that the water produced by CL-003 may have subtle positive effects on pnt growth and vitality. Controlled experiments are underway to confirm these findings and explore potential applications in agriculture and horticulture.