Chapter 136: Learning from Failure

Amorra and Chozen had handed out almost 1000 flyers before the guards confiscated them from the girls and let them off with a warning. They graciously apologized, and did their best to head away from the areas they had interacted with guests under Amorra’s direction, as Chozen was still unsure why they even went out of their way to do so.

“Are you going to fill me in now?”

“Don’t worry about it, the less you know the better. I can tell you're not built for these kinds of things,” said Amorra. Her docile tone beginning to rub Chozen the wrong way entirely.

“And what kind of thing would that be? Spreading propaganda? You're a joke sometimes, you know that? Can’t believe I took you—“ Amorra pressed a button on her chair and a series of explosions were heard all around the warehouse as the pair entered the front door of the newly renovated storefront.

“What was that?”

People began to scream, and guards rushed past both the young women as panic filled the areas all around them. Chozen saw a fire break out in the distance inside the store itself.

“A joke…”

Amorra drove her chair further into the store, making her way toward a door near the back. Chozen having to jog slightly to keep up, stopped when she came across a literal explosion. A man and woman bleeding out into the aisle could be seen burned from flash fire caused by a mana implosion. Chunks of their limbs sent into nearby areas; a scene so horrific Chozen thought she was watching a horror movie. Every bit of her meal from earlier that day emptying itself from her stomach as if it were poison.

She wasn’t used to mutilation of the type, which was why she’d been so excited by the tournament of scions before it grew in intensity. The sight before her causing an involuntary reaction when her mind flashed back to the death around her once the competition had become deadly.

She grew dizzy, her intrusive thoughts heavy enough to make her feel as if she was going to lose consciousness. She stumbled away in search of Amorra, finding the queen at the back of the store slapping two posters on the wall to either side of the doorway she strolled through in her chair.

Chozen barely made it through the door when she felt heat at her back, forced to pull the momentum from the air being set on fire from pure heated mana. The wall behind them crumbled even as she barely closed the distance unfazed. Sections of wall debris still moving fast enough to bounce off her back.

“What the sparks is going on?!”

Chozen rushed to catch Amorra, not quite closing the distance. Amorra leaned to the side to glance at the princess.

“I’m following through with my plan, and your dress is on fire!” Amorra sped on, and Chozen was forced to rip her dress from her back and continue her mad dash in her undergarments.

Before long the pair rushed into a room full of portals. Amorra didn’t stop, peering through the various gateways, until she found the one she was looking for.

“How do you know this is the right one? Better question, how did you know this was even here?” Chozen was yelling as the mayhem could be heard even through the dense walls, and felt she was losing a handle on the situation as a whole.

“You don’t listen very well, couldn’t take the stairs, needed a distraction… if you would have read the information I sent you, this portion of the home would look familiar to you, as for how I knew these portals would be here, I listened,” Amorra said completely annoyed by that point. Chozen’s questions making Amorra wish she was fully healed and still not struggling to send mana through her body. She would have come alone if she knew what the Princess would be like beforehand. She especially would have been able to avoid being asked dozens of questions. Questions the young woman should already have the answers to.

“Listened to what?”

“Oh my maiden!” Amorra roared in frustration as she pushed through the portal, Chozen still at her side.

“There were guests who had already been inside the store. They described in detail that no items sat on the shelves, only holograms as place holders. And that stations with databases full of items could be used to find all goods and services being offered. Once selected from the shelves or databases, the items materialized perfectly packed into the guests' hover carts…”

“You absolutely lost me,” stated Chozen only then realizing she hadn’t even noticed the items in the store had been holograms, as everything on the shelves had looked so lifelike and substantial she’d been impressed. Feeling as if she’d just entered the most clean and organized market or store she’d ever been in.

“For a system like that to work they would have to have advanced portal systems in place, or a teleportation grid, something of the like. We just lucked into the various areas of this compound actually being connected in this way, but we may not be able to escape that way. Just help me find the bloody mana core for this place... you're wasting time!”

Chozen felt completely out of her element. The quirky queen she’d thought was simple and lovestruck, was actually incredibly intelligent and lovestruck. A combination that Chozen feared more by the blink. She hadn’t even seen Arson by this point, and admitted to herself regrettably, that the odds weren’t in her favor for that actually happening.

The young woman opened door after door, finding more alarming and unsettling things with each breached section of the home.

Libraries larger than the entire outside of the building they were supposedly inside. A series of multiple halls filled with gateways pouring out monsters, stopped only by barriers just beyond the doors they opened.

The pair both froze when a door was opened to reveal a nightclub. The name of the club had its name engraved in the ceiling above all of the partygoers. The notorious den of crime named Bloody Eden was eccentrically stylized in a mural above a sea of people probably each powerful enough to end all life on the planet they were on with mere thoughts.

“Holy…” Both young women trailed off after echoing each other. The sight outside the floor to ceiling windows, showing the club’s movements as whatever structure held the club, orbited the planet that held the CityNation of Maelstrom far below.

Amorra slammed the door closed and Chozen stuttered pure gibberish, struggling to make sense of what she’d just seen.

“Was that—“

“One of the most illegal places in creation? Yes it was, and it is hidden in the middle of nowhere in this backwater of a realm,” said Amorra, looking either way before charging off once more, Chozen stayed close to her side more than ever before.

“Can we keep calling this place a backwater if even their dumps are potentially more developed than some of the scientific realms, and more mana refined than even my home Prism, and your home?” asked Chozen quietly, beyond uncomfortable with where they trekked.

“No, but I’m doing everything I can to stay calm and you aren’t helping!”

They finally arrived at a door that wouldn’t open, and Amorra plastered the remainder of the flyers she had all around the doorway, backing down the hall before she blew a massive hole in the wall. She rushed back toward the flames and looked toward Chozen expectedly.

“What?”

“Suffocate the flames woman hurry up!” Chozen nodded in understanding and drained the momentum from the flames, which showed what was inside the room, and both royals gasped.

Inside the room was a half built mana core. The largest mana core either one of them had ever seen. Trillions of shards piled high in the air in various mounds that stretched toward the ceiling within the large room could be seen on all sides of the unfinished core. Their vantage point from where they stood multiple floors up from the ground floor inside the room.

“Bingo…”

Amorra pulled a single piece of paper from another section of her chair, and entered the room. Yet instead of closing in on the core Chozen knew was probably priceless in its unfinished state. Chozen watched as Amorra moved just beyond the damage of the hole she blew into the side of the room and place the seemingly black piece of paper onto the wall. A series of unknown runes scrawled chaotically across the paper’s front, the sheet then vanishing.

“Time to leave,” said Amorra as she then rushed passed Chozen’s stunned figure.

“What the sparks was that?” Chozen yelled after Amorra. Her need for answers the only thing unaffected by the roller coaster of a situation where she’d found herself following the queen of the Mana Monarch kingdom.

“Rune cyphers. They have multiple functions. Without them, we wouldn’t have been able to break through spacial pockets without collapsing them completely in on themselves. They can also be used as simple trigger-able bombs, they're a terrorist's best friend back in my kingdom.”

“Why do you have so many?”

“Bought them in bulk…”

The pair slowed to see a pair of fraternal twins walk up in luxurious black school uniforms. The stylish clothing somehow militaristic and business casual all at the same time. The word ABLE stitched into their collars.

“I’ll take the one on the left, you get wheel chair lady,” said the girl. The boy beside her shook his head, and looked at the girl next to him.

“Nope…”

The boy charged grinning at his sibling as he moved so quickly both Chozen and Amorra’s eyes widened in shock.

“No fair!“ the sister vanished, and before Chozen knew what was happening, she was forced to draw so much momentum from the environment that even she felt a slight duress in her own movements. Normally, her power would infuse her with the excess energy, but as it was only two opponents and not a mob, or massive energy source, she was far more slowed than empowered.

Amorra moved in slow motion, pushing her chair at a maximum crawl toward the nearby window, while Chozen was forced to guard against the twins who had merely been slowed to a normal speed, still causing havoc with every synced flurry of blows. Each blink of Chozen’s eyes came with being forced to block one of the twins, one after the other.

“What are we charging this one with?” asked the young boy to his sister, almost landing a spin kick to Chozen’s temple.

“Hmm, I don’t know, impersonating an orphan?” The girl almost swept Chozen’s legs out from under her, setting her brother up for an attack when Chozen jumped to avoid the maneuver.

“Works for me!” The boy struck Chozen directly in the chest sending her flying through the air. Chozen felt herself fly end over end, flying out of the range of Amorra before she smashed upside down into a nearby wall.

Amorra jerked forward, and dropped all the rune cyphers she still held all over the ground in front of herself.

“Oh by the bloody maiden, really?”

Chozen had barely gotten to her feet when she saw the bloom of light from all the papers on the ground begin to flare up. In that moment, she knew she had to do something, but what, eluded her, until her instincts took over completely.

Chozen was being rushed by the twins, but as she watched the explosion in her vision roaring to life everything around her slowed. Time seemingly stopping around the princess of the Prism Empire.

Her power flooding out in the largest dome she’d ever managed. She couldn’t use her plasma based abilities as the power would have been easily recognizable, but as her momentum drain stole power from the explosion, Chozen was able to move faster than she ever had in her entire life.

She became the equivalent of a gust of wind, moving so fast she was able to move passed the twins, directly up to Amorra, feeling more power ripple through her the more of the explosion she ate magically.

She lifted Amorra over her shoulder, watching as the glass beside her heated and splintered under the pressure of such a large explosion.

Chozen drank in as much of the energy as she could, knowing that she’d regret more than she already did that day if the explosion harmed the children behind her, and knew that if she was going to be able to make it out of all this alive, moving fast for a short while, wouldn’t be enough.

Once she’d felt as if her body was going to burst. Chozen crouched in a ready stance and charged through the window everything for her still slowed.

The glass shards. The people rushing about far below. The waterfall just to her side. Everything felt frozen in time.

Amorra’s scream stretched across the air as Chozen peddled as she sunk toward the ground. The princess felt as light as a feather and barely had to bend her legs when she landed. Her heart beat out of her chest as her adrenaline soared. A sprint unlike any other commenced then as Chozen rushed off.

She didn’t notice the canals, her steps taking her clear across the top of the surface of the water unhindered. The maze was no obstacle as she ran through the dense garden walls as if they weren’t there at all.

Even as she closed in on the perimeter gates, the mana cannons that fired upon her moved so slowly that she easily weaved through the streaks of light that pierced the air all around her, only fueling her further as the explosions caused by the cannons were also pulled into Chozen’s core as she pushed on.

When she stopped she realized Amorra was screaming something, and it took a moment for her ears to adjust, the queen pounding on her back frantically in a failed attempt to get her attention.

“Stop! Stop! Stop!”

Then a few of the fox owls on the perimeter walls began to take flight and the pounding on Chozen’s back grew more erratic.

"Run run run!”

…

Mr. Kim’s mobile hologram projector held yet another series of untimely deaths. The man did not care, although he was authentically surprised.

“Hey, darling, I think your favorite little queen has done it again,” said his wife by his side. Tree pose mirrored, as they channeled energy from the wilderness around them. The man showing his wife and son his method for channeling energies, using a dead art known as Yoga believed to be tainted on lower realms where mortals had twisted the art to suppress power rather than invigorate the soul.

The practices made to pour energy from the body and into the earth below in a vain attempt to save dying planets, rather than empower the beings on the planet that if strong enough could help the planet itself cultivate properly.

“Indeed she has…”

Seven struggled to keep the advanced pose, wobbling about, his slightly overweight body not yet developed enough to keep the position any longer. The family of three positioned like this since before the suns had risen in the sky.

“What do you think Carter is going to do about this?”

Mr. Kim didn’t answer. He’d had a realization over the past few days, and the young Cultivator known as Carter Gestalt had incensed Alister Kim in a way he’d never experienced prior.

For the first time in his long life, he realized, his opponent was ignoring him. With the exception of an attack, Mr. Kim was only slightly sure was Carter, all the things being done in retaliation were things that had been set in place long ago.

All of Mr. Kim’s research led to hacked systems, viruses slowly hindering his companies day to day operations that had been impregnated into his servers almost an entire season cycle ago, long before the young boy turned young man had even disappeared.

Alister was assured by the events occurring all around Carter, that the young man was without a doubt Sovereign Arson Omni. Child of Jade, and Draphen the king of dragons.

“I guess we will find out soon…”

Alister stopped his pose and slowly turned around to the sound of charging feet incoming on his location. He assumed it was his own personal guard as they were well into the forest held within the perimeter of his own compound, yet the sight of the dozens of graveyard officers was even more astounding than the chaos playing out on the holograms now behind him.

A taller man with a sergeant’s badge stepped up, flanked by two cultivators, and sighed, looking between the holograms and Alister himself.

“Alister Kim, you are under arrest, please come in willingly…”

Alister peeked behind the man at all the officers. Then his family, and back at the officers. The woman behind the sergeant cracking their necks and stretching as the sergeant opened a small portal in his hand, a sudden pull as strong as a spacial vacuum bursting into effect in the center of the man’s palm. The man smiling as his brows rose.

“Or don’t.”