It took a lot for Dame to say those words. Usually, he was free and willy-nilly about the way he spoke, and he would just say what came to mind. He didn’t care who he offended, even if it was other Clan heads.
The only person he was careful with was his own father and the Dark Magus. Maybe it went to show how much he respected this person, or how much he feared him.
“What are you so tense for?” Raze replied. “You don’t have to get so serious about it. Why don’t we head to my room, and we can talk for a bit.”
Hearing this, hearing that this was Raze’s reaction, the tension left from Dame’s body, and he felt a bit silly for thinking that Raze would react a certain way. As the two of them walked off, Simyon and Safa decided that they should head to their rooms as well, and seeing everyone leave one by one, Liam was on his own.
“Wait, aren’t I involved in this!” Liam shouted. “We fought as a team, we’re all one, we’re together and all that stuff. I want to know why Alter spoke to him as well, damn it! Listen to me!”
Yet they all ignored Liam as they continued on and entered their rooms. It was just Raze and Dame now together. They didn’t start speaking straight away, as it appeared Dame was waiting for Raze to start, and as for the Dark Magus himself, he was wondering how he should phrase the whole thing.
Although he was part of Alter, he also never felt like he was actually a part of their group. He had always planned to use them either as a way to get back or to take the powerful items that they kept locked away.
If anything, what he didn’t want was for Dame to get involved because he was his trusty business partner. The one that would allow him to spread his items throughout the world and start to gain his own influence.
“You might not be happy with what you hear,” Raze started off. “But I honestly don’t know much about Alter myself. I told you that I only recently came to this world, and that is true. The thing is when I did, the group Alter was investigating a bunch of mysterious deaths surrounding the area I was in.
“And they had come to suspect me. In the end, I managed to clear their suspicions and helped them out when they were in a tricky situation. After that, they invited me to join their group as a field agent.”
“I work for them, but honestly, they tell me to do nothing, and I felt like I somewhat had no choice but to accept this type of thing. The two that I met today, they were the ones I met back before. They were in the area and came to see me.”
Dame would usually say he was a good reader of character. When people lied, they tended to get more anxious; their lips would twitch, they would touch their face quite a bit, and their actions and words didn’t match.
Yet with Raze, he was so confident when he was speaking it was hard for him to see any of that.
“I see, so you’re only a field agent and don’t know much about them. Then I only have a few questions to ask you. Why did they meet you today, what did they want to talk about? What do you plan to do in Alter, and do they know about the Dark Magus?”
Raze smiled when he heard these questions; he was actually happy that Dame was asking these things. When he met him, he thought that he was quite shallow, and Fixteen was the one that had the brain, but it turned out that Dame was no fool himself.
“Today they said they just wanted to meet me; it seemed like they did want to say something, but their mind was distracted by something else,” Raze answered. “As for Alter, I plan to just use their information network, as well as other things, but I will make this clear; they do not know anything about the Dark Magus.”
“And I would like to keep it that way. The Dark Magus, I want it to be something that even they fear.”
Raze wanted the same infamy that he had on Alterian, where no one other than the Supreme Magus would dare to go up against him.
“Thank you for answering everything. With your answers, I think the two of us can still go into business, and we will do well,” Dame said with a smile. “Oh, and I have to ask, how many of the descending steps do you know, and how were you able to learn them so fast?”
Hearing this, Raze thought there was no harm in answering his question. “It’s my magic,” Raze said as he lifted his hand, and Dark magic started to swirl around his forearm until it condensed into a dark ball, smooth and not flickering, resembling a solid object. “Learning spells, controlling the mana in the air and in your core. All of it is far more complex than controlling Qi. So to me, controlling Qi is like second nature.
“The ten descending steps don’t require one to have a large amount of Qi, but one just to have great control over it.”
Dame was satisfied with the answer because it was all still due to Raze’s hard work in the end, as a magician.
“If there are a lot of mages like you in Alterian, then Pagna would be screwed if we were to fight them.”
“Don’t worry,” Raze replied. “I’m one of a kind.”
The group didn’t do much for the rest of the day. They were all still a bit sore and hurt, including Raze. He did think about going back to the Dimension to gather more beast crystals.
But since there was a chance of meeting up with the Light Faction, he thought it was best to wait until he was at least fully healed. He also wanted to ask what Dame wanted to do concerning that.
In the end, a day of rest was what was needed. The night sky went down, and the bright light from the moon shone down on the empty sleeping quarters. Raze was tucked in his quilt with the mattress on the floor.
He was sleeping away blissfully. His body still exhausted from the constant use of Qi. A deep slumber with nothing disturbing him, that was until he could feel a dense fog in his mind.
The image was growing; there was fog all around. Soon, he could hear several whispers entering his head. His body soon found itself in the thick fog. He tried to turn left and right, locating where the sound was, but it was nowhere to be seen.
‘This feeling… it’s the same as when I use the life and death cultivation technique.’
There was a chill all over, and soon a large stench had hit his nose as well, it was foul, it was the stench of the dead.
Finally, the sound of the whispers became louder.
‘I can’t protect you… I can’t protect you… from this… wake up!… WAKE UP!’ 𝞸𝓋𝑙xt.𝒸𝗈𝑚
The voice screamed in his head, and Raze’s eyes blurred open, and immediately, he could see a figure in the corner of his room.
