Alex was done playing nice. His entire life he had watched as people he knew, people he cared about got stomped on. No more. His friends had just been taken by what appeared to be a very corrupt council and he was not going to just let that go lightly.

Yas had tried to talk him out of his plan, calling it stupid, and a risk they didn’t need to take. But their only way to follow the trucks containing their friends was to retrieve the transport currently sat in the guarded base. So Alex was going in. He would ask nicely first, but that one chance was all they were getting. Otherwise he was going in by force. He stomped down the hill they had been sheltering behind, no longer worried because the majority of the troops had left with the main force and only a token amount were left guarding.

He had toyed with the idea of breaking in, and trying to approach the whole thing stealthily. But in the end, the council apparently already knew who he was and were now just waiting to capture him. So he brazenly walked straight up to the front door, where there were 2 guards, one on either side of the entrance.

“Hi there! I just need to pop in real quick and grab my things. I know you’ve been tasked with capturing me, or whatever, but honestly, that really won't work well for you. So how about you just pretend I was never here, and carry on cashing your paychecks? If you try to stop me, I will defend myself.” Alex stood with his hands on hips as he said this, and flashed both guards a dazzling smile as he finished his request. Both guards drew their weapons. One speaking to Alex whilst the other spoke into what Alex assumed was a radio.

“Back up Outsider. We don’t want to hurt you and your assertions of hurting us are laughable. You have been here for less than a week, there is no way you could match us, so just stand quietly whilst the rest of our forces stationed here come and we can all leave peacefully.” The one closest to Alex said condescendingly.

“Yeah, see that doesn’t work for me I’m afraid. Check my level and you’ll see that I’m probably closer to you than you realise.” Alex replied politely, now taking his own advice to check both of the guards levels.

Fridigian Infantry lvl 41

Fridigian Infantry lvl 44

Alex smiled as he saw that both of these numskulls were only just ahead of him in terms of levels, but nothing major compared to what he had already dealt with in the last day. They had both only just got each of their classes past the basic 10 that Whittaker had spoken about the other day.

“Why are you smiling? You are hopelessly ou..” The lower leveled guard trailed off as he finally bothered to actually Inspect Alex. “How are… You came from Nexus! There is no way you gained this much power so quickly?!”

“My friends said the same thing. You know, the friends you tortured for a little while earlier, before you carted them off to wherever? So, can I PLEASE just get in and grab some of my gear before they get too far ahead?” Alex took a step forward, causing both guards to assume an even more hostile stance. “No? Okay then.”

Alex activated all of his passive abilities and stood loosely, ready to intercept whatever they tried to throw at him, Whittaker’s teachings forefront in his mind. The lower level guard struck first, aiming a somewhat clumsy strike towards Alex’s midriff. Compared to the Ursu, the attack was almost so slow it was comical. In his haste to escape earlier, Alex had left his weapon behind so he just grabbed the guards arm and pulled him off balance, slamming a fist into the side of their head. The guard fell to the floor, momentarily stunned. The other higher levelled guard came in from Alex’s blindspot hoping to get a lucky shot on his exposed back. Alex heard him coming and backed into the oncoming guard, disrupting the swing aimed at him. Alex then swept his leg round to topple the off balance guard. The move worked and both of the Infantry were now on their asses. Alex looked down at the pair, and brushed off some imaginary dust.

“Point made? Please just stay down. You’re just doing your job, and I get that, but I don’t want to actually hurt you…” Alex said with a note of pleading in his voice. He really didn’t, but short of actually killing them he would do whatever was necessary to get into the base and retrieve the transport.

The guards both got to their feet, no worse for wear apart from a little bit of bruised ego. They coordinated an attack on Alex from 2 angles trying to cut off his approach. Alex activated Gravity Manipulation and jumped straight up over the approaching attackers. He released the skill as he hit the apex of his jump, and reactivated it in reverse, adding more mass to himself as he dropped like a stone. Copying an old wrestling move he’d seen, Alex extended his elbow and aimed the blow directly at the head of one of the guards below him. Both guards were in a state of confusion as to what had just happened, and didn’t expect for Alex to literally drop out of the sky down onto their heads. His elbow connected with the higher level guard and with the extra weight adding to the damage, the guard crumpled to the ground. The other guard attempted to attack Alex whilst he was on the floor, managing to get a couple of glancing blows in.

“Oww? Can you not? That is probably hurting you more than me honestly. You saw what I just did to your colleague right? Just get out my way, please!” Alex half yelled at the dumbfounded guard.

Whether from an immense sense of job loyalty, or because Alex had so far made them both look like little more than blundering fools, the guard swung their weapon at Alex’s head as he tried to get his feet under him. Completely done with this situation, Alex lashed out with a huge backhanded slap that caught the guard directly on the ear and jaw. With the extra power he now had the slap caused the guard a serious amount of pain and disorientation, and they fell to the floor clutching their ringing ear. Stepping over the pair, Alex walked up to the front door and walked in.

The entryway was completely obliterated. The little armory room was bare, having been stripped during the attack. Every step Alex took caused some debris to crunch underfoot, with every bench, every piece of decoration destroyed. Alex walked through into the dining hall that had held their map table and saw that every single chair and table had been tossed to the corners of the room, and the map was gone. Well, guess he needed a new plan of attack now. He threaded his way through the room towards the little back room that had served as Yas’ little lab, and where Alex had undergone his connection forging. The room had been mostly gutted, and what was left had been carelessly discarded all over the room.

Yas had told him that the transport would look similar to the little cube the Ocular Augmentor had been. Apparently that was how Yas designed all of their gear now for space saving reasons. Hunting through the mess, Alex couldn’t find it anywhere. Growing more and more frustrated, Alex flipped over the remnants of a chair in anger. *PLINK PLink plinkplink* As he flipped the chair, a small object flew towards the wall and bounced off into the centre of the room. Stooping to pick it up Alex examined the cube.

FroTech Slide: Despite the name, this item was designed by Yas to act as a low energy mode of transport that runs almost silently and leaves no discernable trail.

Alex pocketed the cube and made his way back towards the main entrance. He stopped off at his now shredded bedroll to see if any of the rest of his gear had been left behind, but it had all been ransacked. He would need to see if he could take a weapon from the idiots he left outside. Suddenly he was hit with the urge to roll to the side. Trusting his gut, he did so, and narrowly avoided being brained by some sort of truncheon looking thing with a weighted end. Carrying his momentum as he had been taught, Alex rose to his feet in a flash to square off with whomever had managed to sneak up on him.

“Lucky dodge Outsider! I saw what you did to the pair outside when I arrived in response to their message. Im impressed. You won’t manage that with me though, especially not in here and whilst you are unarmed.” A tall, muscular Fridigian stood there flexing their hand. Alex gave a quick glance at his opponent’s level.

Fridigian Soldier lvl 52

Alex drew his weight into a more defensive stance at seeing the much higher level. Granted this opponent was still many levels behind Whittaker, and Alex had managed to fight them to a standstill on more than one occasion, but it never hurt to play it cautious.

Wasting no more time, the soldier started to close in on Alex, covering each of their advances with a swing of the vicious looking truncheon so that all Alex was able to do was concede ground. With a frustrated grunt, Alex activated Jump Charge to try and give himself some room. The soldier gave a wolfish smile as they saw what Alex was preparing to do, and having trained with many Field Knights aimed a blow for exactly where Alex was trying to aim for. Unable to stop the charge at this point Alex managed to raise his arms to shield some of the impact, but it still took out his entire RockFlesh shield and about 10-15% of his HP. It also caused both of his arms to flare in pain.

“Didn’t expect you to block that one Outsider, well done!” The soldier carried on their assault on Alex immediately unlike the pair outside.

Alex carried on giving ground to buy enough time for his regen and shield to start recharging whilst he tried to come up with a plan of attack. This soldier was giving the fight their all, and Alex was unsure how to make his move. Wishing he had a way to get inside the range of the truncheons swing, Alex thought about his RockFlesh growing thicker on one of his arms, to act kind of like a buckler and redirect the swing to allow Alex to close in. He felt the rock respond and sparing a glance down, Alex saw that his left arm was now encased in what appeared to be solid rock. The soldier’s eyes widened as they saw this, and Alex struck at this little opening. The soldier swung as normal to try and force Alex back, but instead Alex took the entire blow on his newly encased arm. Knocking the truncheon off center Alex stepped in with all of his strength flat-palmed the soldier in the chest. Following through after his blow, Alex kept on top of the soldier, giving them no time to recover. Using the added weight of the rock arm to add extra damage to his blows Alex pummelled the prone soldier relentlessly. All the soldier could do was protect their head, so Alex kept pounding blow after blow into their stomach and ribs. On the third or fourth rock-fisted blow Alex felt and heard a sickening crunch and the soldier coughed, spraying blood and spittle all over them both.

Alex felt sick. He knew that the soldier was just doing their duty, and he really didn’t want to cause any truly lasting harm to the poor misguided fool. “Please stop…I don’t want to do this, I just want to rescue my friends!”

The soldier lowered their arms slightly and gave Alex a fearsome grin, teeth red with blood. “Allow you to rescue those terrorists? Fuck OFFFF!” With a roar, the soldier threw Alex across the room and rose to their feet. “As long as I still draw breath I will never allow you or those terrorists to destroy our world!” The soldier reached to a sheath on their back and withdrew a vicious looking short blade. A couple of feet long, the blade looked like a serrated machete with a much larger hilt. The soldier thumbed a switch and the blade began to emit a high pitched whine that tapered off after a second or two. Alex found that he could no longer fully see the weapon, like it was surrounded by a heat haze or motion blur. With no more warning, the soldier leapt across the space between them. They swung at Alex, and he raised his arm again to block… but received a huge slash anyway, as if the rock wasn’t even there.

Acting on pure instinct Alex threw himself back into a roll away from the soldier’s ferocious onslaught, just managing to evade a swipe that would have parted head from body.

“You have it totally wrong, I swear! My friends brought me here to STOP terrorists from destroying not just this world, but the entire Veil itself!” Alex kept backing away and attempting to dodge the still coming soldier’s relentless blows. “How do you think I got so many levels in such a short space of time? The Veil ITSELF approves of our mission!” Alex stumbled over a discarded chair, his legs becoming tangled, and the soldier crashed into him, pinning him to the floor with the strange blade against his throat.

“You think I’m going to believe that? You fucking lying piece of shit. We got briefed by the council themselves on what they had found out of you plans. Your friends want to take over the council and use our forces to wage war across the realm!” The soldier spat at Alex, unknowingly giving away far more information than they realised.

“I swear everything I have said, and everything I am about to tell you is completely true, Lest the Veil strip my connection bare!” Alex yelled, knowing what this would cause to happen.

Oath given to Naelex.

Alex kept looking the soldier, Naelex, straight in the eye as he watched them read the notification. “That’s how serious I am. Ready to listen now? Please? You’ve been lied to, all of you! The council are the ones truly behind whatever is happening in both our Realms!” Alex cried. Naelex looked at him for a moment. Then kept on looking, as if waiting for something. “Well? Say something at least, I know you got that notification!”

“I did. I was waiting for you to start screaming in agony. The fact you aren’t is surprising. Tell me, how did you manage to break a Veil Oath without even breaking a sweat?”

Alex just stared incredulously at Naelex, unable to comprehend what they had just said. “You mean you would rather believe I managed to break an oath witnessed by the Veil than believe what I have said is true?! Are you having a fucking laugh?” The blade was still at his neck, and he swallowed loudly.

“It is the only thing that makes sense! That, or you truly believe the lies that your friends fed you!”

Alex had heard enough, the council obviously had the majority of the population drinking their kool-aid to such an extent that even a Veil Oath couldn’t convince them otherwise. At least during this little conversation his HP had replenished and his stamina had recovered. He activated Stop Time and pulled himself up, away from the blade at his throat. With his current HP total, Alex figured he had just over half a minute of stoppage to play with. Despite everything Alex couldn’t bring himself to hurt Naelex, so he just took his strange blade and truncheon and walked himself back out the front of the building. He made sure he flicked the switch on the blade so that once the time stop ended it didn’t slice into his leg, and then attached it and the truncheon to his belt. He made his way past the 2 infantry who had recovered slightly in his time inside the base, and ran back up the hill to where he had left Yas. The time stop ended just as he crested the top of the hill at a full run, and he dropped into a slide immediately so that he was out of sight.

Yas jumped at Alex’s sudden reappearance. “Fuck! Alex what the hell? Where did you even..” They trailed off at seeing Alex coated in blood with 2 unknown weapons at his hip.

“Stop Time Yas, had to use it to get away from a Soldier inside called Naelex. They had me dead to rights.” Alex showed the now healed and rapidly disappearing scar on his neck. Yas just shook their head.

“Thank Frigid you have that skill Alex! Please tell me that this risk wasn’t a waste of time?”

Alex fished out the cube and handed it over with a smile. “Of course not! Took me a while to find it after what they’d done to your lab though. And at least we have some weapons now as well.” He motioned to the weapons at his waist, and handed Yas the truncheon, as he wanted the blade for himself. Yas nodded and took the weapon from Alex, attaching it to their own belt before activating the cube. It swiftly expanded out into what looked like a jetski balanced on some weird looking ball at the front, with the back just seeming to hover.

“Thank Frigid the Sled still works! Now we can get out of here before your new friends find us here.” Yas said as they threw their leg over and took a seat at the front of the strange contraption. Alex eyed it cautiously for a second before climbing on and sitting behind Yas. The moment he did, straps slid around his calves and feet to hold him down firmly. As soon as Yas saw that he was secure, they gunned the throttle fully and shot off almost silently, following the tracks left behind by the convoy earlier.