Chapter XXVI: Pre-Victory Party I

Onin

Sengoku Empire

The Great Plateau

Month of the Pangolin 9, 172 ,328 DE

As we leave the bleachers then the arena, no one does more than glance in out direction. I look at Magabe. "You're doing something."

"Can you feel it or are you guessing?" Magabe grins smugly at me. I have no doubt that he already knows the answer to his question.

"Extrapolating." I do not bother to hid my frown. Magabe is different from Old Man Jones. That shitty old man is not half as sharp as this shitty old man. Unlike Old Man Jones, this old man clearly has a decent ability to read Minds and Souls, and he does it so subtly that I cannot catch him doing it.

"Ho-ho-ho. Extrapolating, eh? That is nothing but a guess based off the contents of a very limited set of data. In the days of the War Masters, even failures, who were too lacking to be War Masters themselves, would never accept someone's conjectures without testing and verifying them. You have a sloppy Mind. Though, I suppose, that is no different from any Great Beast. You all act based on your instincts more than your reason."

With his smug grin that does not reach his eyes, Magabe stares at me. He makes no attempt to hide the fact that his is measuring and evaluating me. Between his smug smirks and his affected laughs, the old man has a demeanor that makes you wan to hit him, but he has knowledge, knowledge I need. "You have a lot you need to learn, and Young Jones is crap as a teacher. The Great Wolf Mother lost to the Dragons because she has never wanted to go beyond her Bestial nature. She lived by her instincts and willing restricted herself to her Realm, this Realm, but that is the same for all Great Beast Mothers. The Celestial Court uses knowledge gained from countless Elemental Realms, and the have seized thousands of Beast Realms. If you do not want to become a fur rug in some Dragon Priest's study, you need to acquire a more knowledge, a lot more, and obtain a better understanding of how to use that knowledge. Come to Northern College as my student.

"Northern College may be a Cultivation College, but the Cultivation part is just to fool the Dragon Priests. They think out purpose is turning out good little Cultivators, and they mostly stay away. I let the Dean stay nominally in charge, but I maintain complete control over the Engineering School. Each Dean informs his successor of what he is allowed to do, and those that overstep their bounds have fatal accidents."

When we walk out from the arena entry, a section of the interior at the back of the helicopter becomes visible. The Soldiers Cultivators have Karen chained to a bare metal bench at the back, but from the mix of anger and arrogance on her face, she seems to think herself to be the one in control of the situation. The Soldier Cultivators have impassive expressions, but brushing an Empathy thread, I find them filled with satisfaction. One shows outright vindictiveness directed toward Karen. I could probe their Minds with Telepathy , but I am not interested in the reasons for their feelings.

While time seems to slow to a crawl as I probe the Providence Republic Soldiers, Magabe does not accelerate his speech. His words disappear into a low burr of sound, forcing me to adjust the speed of my memory of it as, he continues talking. Since I have no doubt be was aware of what I was doing, he probably has a reason for not speeding up his speech; I am just not sure what his intentions might be.

"I will make you into an Artificer, and I can teach you enough that you will, at least, have a chance against the Dragon Gods. Over the past hundred thousand years and more, I have studied the Daos. I will teach you about them, as well. You will be able to pass yourself off as normal Cultivator should you choose."

As I return Magabe's stare, I do not hide my frown or my irritation. "I already decided on joining Northern College. The shitty old man said someone there, I'm guessing it's you, could teach me a lot more than he could. There's a lot I don't understand, especially about the Daos and how they have the ability to fuck everything up."

With a glint in his eyes, Magabe smiles. "The Daos do not fuck everything up. It is Yuan Qi, Mind Power, and Soul Power that do that, as they were designed to do. From what the War Masters knew about them, more than a few Dragon Gods sacrificed their sentience to create those bastard Powers. The Daos are something different. No books or scrolls in the Temple of Life and Death's Library has any record of their origin. Neither has anyone I have spoken with figured it out. They are real Elemental Powers, but they exist solely for the purpose of holding knowledge. With the exception of the Daos of Chaos, Light, Dark, and Law, they are mostly innocuous. There is no reason not to study any of the other Daos. The War Masters never determined their origin, but you can learn a great deal about how Elemental Powers interact with Amalgamate Realms from them."

Hearing Magabe's comments on the Daos, a scowl settles on my face. "The Daos are tool of the Dragon Gods. They use the Daos to subjugate and limit any being stupid enough to practice Cultivation."

For once, Magabe does not laugh. He frowns. "Cultivation is a tool to prevent sentients beings from becoming all that they are capable of being. The Daos are just another set of Elemental Powers, if weak ones. As I said, the War Masters never found the origin of the Daos, but they have been around for a while. The best the War Masters could determine is that the Daos came into existence as Elemental Powers more than five hundred billion years, but less than a trillion, as time is measured in the First Realm. The Daos themselves are not exactly sentient, and they exist to codify and exemplify knowledge., no more, no less. The Dragon Gods created the Cultivation systems, and while they use the Daos, they are not of the Daos. I do recommend studying the Daos."

When I do not say anything more, and Magabe stops talking about the Daos, but he keeps walking with me. While walking through the parkland and across the avenue to Quad Five, I take the chance to try and understand what Magabe is doing to make the humans unaware of our presence, but the most I can find is an odd Psi resonance in the Eidos. As I extend a Telepathy thread, I find it to be a localized effect that is centered on Magabe. The Power field is so subtle that it could just be the normal back energy of the sub-Realm reacting to Magabe, but my instincts tell me that the it is being consciously manipulated.

Magabe chuckles. "You finally noticed. My method is a bit different from your war maul approach, isn't it?"

I frown at Magabe. I have no idea what war maul is. assume it to be some kind of weapon, but his intent to point out the clumsiness of my attempts to make people unaware of me comes across. While walking through Quad Five toward the Sky Tower, I use the little I can perceive of his technique to modify my own, but I have no real success. I will need to experiment more in the future. For now, I have some noble trash to deal with.

The Tokugawa's party is supposed to be in the Sky Tower, and while I have only heard of it, I can only assume that it would be the tower that rises from the middle of Quad Fire. Constructed from a metal framework, the tower has for legs made from metal beams that form numerous triangles and join together at around a third of its roughly one-hundred-eighty meter height. Perhaps forty meters from the top a huge circular disc extend outward forty-five or fifty meters from the main body of the tower. Windows in the sides and floor of the disc allow the humans inside to look out over the city.

Wending my way though the streets of Quad Five, I wind up at the open center park and parking area surrounding the Sky Tower, only to find it filled with steamer cars and a double-handful of Ferocious Beasts wearing saddles. While Ferocious Beast used to be the standard form of transportation, steamers and airships have almost entirely replaced them. Now, only the strongest Cultivators and Cultivation clans keep them as a status symbol. There are no clans in Shizukana Gake that would dare to expend the resources to keep Ferocious Beasts as mounts, but I see more than a dozen different species of them around the base of the Sky Tower, though half are some form of mangy cat. Each of the Beasts stands in its own open space, where no one dares to walk or has parked a steamer car.

Less than thirty people remain in the park. Sitting or standing in small groups, the member of each group appear to be on friendly terms, but the members of each group turn hostile looks on the other groups. Over the course of few minutes, one at time, the groups head for the elevator at the center of the tower. Two Cultivators in red and blue uniforms that resemble the military dress uniforms of the Dunkle Sonne Empire serve as door attendants and check the invitations of each group member before allowing them to enter the elevator.

The door attendants have Cultivations that appear to be at the peak of the Qi Condensation realm and ages that appear to be in the middle of their thirties, meaning they are pure trash as Cultivators. After the last of the guests for the party is gone, they cast nervous glances at the nearest of the Ferocious Beast mounts.

Magabe smirks at me. "How do you plan to get up there? Do you have an invitation?"

I shrug. "Take out the trash and use the elevator."

Magabe shakes his head. "And this is part of why your aura is filled with bloodlust. Follow me."

As we walk toward the elevator, the resonance in the Eidos dies out, and the door attendants obviously see us. Despite looking askance at us, they do not show any signs of hostility or disrespect. The Sky Tower is an attraction for the wealthy and influential. Even with both of us being gaijin and me being dressed in leather clothing, they would not dare to be disrespectful until they know that we are not part of the guest list. There were several gaijin among the late entrants that we saw, and a several of them wore clothes in abnormal styles.

The door attendants hold out their hands. "Invitations, please."

Magabe smile condescendingly. "We are not the party-crashers you are looking for."

While Magabe speaks, a new resonance forms in the Eidos. This time it appears to only form around the two door attendants, and I have no idea what to make of it. I have never encountered a description of anything like it in Old Man Jones' books.

The door attendants expressions turn glassy-eyed. "You are not the party-crashers we are looking for."

"Send us up to the party."

The door attendant to the left gestures to the elevator. "Please enter, Noble Masters."

After I follow Magabe into the elevator, as the doors close and it begins to rise, a shouts reache my ears. "Hey! The elevator is moving!"

"Someone must have called it from the top."

Raising my eyebrows, I look at Magabe. "What did you do?"

Magabe smirks. "Ho-ho-ho. Young Jones calls it a Jetty Mind Trick or something stupid like that. I simply manipulated a pair of weak Minds. They will never remember seeing us."

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