Third person POV.
Ray floated down from the crucifix, even as black ashes fell from the other 10.
This was his third time doing this, and the returns were unexpected, and not in a good way.
The returns were increasingly sparse. While at first, it gave him 5% of his entire ether ring with each time he sacrificed Tim mortals, it first dropped to 4.5, then 3%, then 2.5.
Even with the gains decreasing Ray couldn't exactly be annoyed.
In less than a day he had gained more than 20% of his entire ether ring.
Things like that normally took months at the very least.
Bye The Time his feet hit the ground the inscriptions across the crucifixes had already stopped glowing.
Picking up a broom he had grabbed during one of his runs up to find more mortals, he quickly swept the black ashes into a pile.
He didn't know what he was gonna do with them, but until he did, he will keep them down here, they had to have some use considering how they radiated zero ether.
As soon as he was done, making said pile, he leaned the broom against one of the crucifix before walking out of the room.
As he stepped into one of the halls of the maze, Ray put his hands into the pockets of his tattooed pants.
No maze was a bit of an over exaggeration, after the illusions were dropped the so-called maze became nothing more than eight hallways that intersected.
Navigating said hallways Ray thought about his next moves. Even though he had increased his cultivation, he still had much to do before Leon got back to iron blood Manor.
Such as find a way to kill a third ring cultivator.
Because Leon would die, there was no doubt about that.
"how could I just let you enter my domain without any punishment?"
Ray thought As the edges of his lips curled up in a grin.
When Ray snapped back to attention, he realized he was already below the warehouse that him and his mortal captives fell through to find the maze.
"I would say it feels like I been here for a long time, but it really doesn't."
Ray said, his voice seeming to ooze boredom.
Then with no apparent strain both his metal and blood ether began to act in tandem to lift his body.
He floated upwards until he reached the doorway of the warehouse, he would have stopped on any piece of floor still left in inside warehouse if there had been one, but the collapse of the warehouse's floor had been absolute.
He didn't have to use his ether to get to the door.
Using his strength that was nearly comparable to a second ring cultivator, he could have jumped and using the Raptors for handholds, made his way towards the door.
He could have, but he didn't, because of the fact that it had been too long.
It had been too long since he was last able to use power of any kind free.
He wasn't even as either reliance as most cultivators, he had been more a fan of physical strength.
Yet spinning two years as nothing more than a immortal had felt crippling, it had been to losing every bone in your body.
Even now the filling hadn't fully elevated, and Ray had a feeling that it wouldn't, not until he reached the twelvefold again.
"Well I should start reaching for it now, since the future seems to be changing."
Shaking off the gloomy thoughts, Ray quickly began looking for something
Seeing what he was looking for, Ray grabbed a makeshift bag he had created from a tattered cloth.
Wasting no time, he quickly pushed up the door before stepping back onto the ground behind the warehouse door.
Quickly closing the door behind him so no one could see the warehouse that was obviously lacking anything that could be called a floor, he sat down on the ground with a bag in front of him.
Quickly flipping the bag upside down rusted and bent nails straight across the uneven stones in front of him.
"This is going to take a fuck ton of ether."
Ray thought, as he pushed his metal attribute ether into the nails.
The infusion caused the nails to flare with silver light, before slowly the ones that were bent became straight again, and the ones that were covered in grime began to become cleaner as said grime flicked off slowly.
The whole process took nearly 10 minutes of complete focus, yet through it all Ray' S eyes never straight from the nails.
When he was finally done, said, nails looked almost presentable, or as presentable as nails can look anyway.
The process had told Ray two very crucial things.
One, the metals used to create these nails we're fucking terrible, and two there were almost 9 metals used to create them.
Ray was just about to use his ether to fuse all of the nails together when he realized something very crucial.
"Dammit I'm out of ether."
Ray thought as his attempt to shift, the nails only caused them to rattle before falling still.
"Oh well, what does it matter. If it really came down to it, I can just steal from the manners armory."
Putting the nails back in the makeshift bag, Ray lifted it before, tossing it back into the warehouse and closing the door.
Shoving his hands back into his pockets, Ray made his way down the alley. He walked with the natural leisure of a man who is used to having everything under his feet, a walk. No one moving in the back alleys ever should hav.
The reason for that was currently creeping up behind him. Ray was entirely focused inward as he mapped out what to do next.
So he didn't notice the knife coming towards him until it was too late.
Sensing something was wrong Ray quickly, turned and raised a hand, but the knife of the pig pocket had already reached his ribs.
The pickpocket should have felt the tail Tail sign of flesh, ripping, Ray should have felt the throbbing pain of a knife, slipping between his ribs, but none of that happened.
Both the pickpocket and Ray watched in shock as the blade cut through the tunic he was wearing, and barely scraped his skin, almost as if it was boiled leather.
Ray wasted no time, as he clamped both hands around the pickpockets throat.
He quickly hit his surprise behind a mask of an annoyance.
"It took me almost 10 minutes to find clothes that actually fit me, and you just had to go and ripped them."
thenWith no difficulty, Ray collapse the man's windpipe.
He didn't use any elaborate moves, he just applied pressure with the hands he had clipped around the man's throat, and like glass under too much pressure. It collapse inward.
Ray smoothly stepped back from the man as his body collapse to the ground, the man began thrashing around, his hands crying at his throat as if he could somehow make a new airway with his nails alone.
Yet through it all, Raise eyes stayed blank, indifference almost bored.
Even as a man suffocated to death in front of him, he seemed to be focused on something more important.
Is silver eyes had that 1000 miles stare of someone focusing inward instead of outward.
When Ray crouched down in front of the pick pocket, he thought Ray would give him a quick deth.
Maybe something that was less terrifying than suffocation, but he was sadly mistaken.
Ray reached past the pickpockets riving body and picked up the knife he had attempted to stab him with.
As the pickpockets vision began to go blurry as oxygen deprivation came too much for him, he could've swore he heard something along the lines of.
"Yes, this knife should be useful, it could be the core of my newest creation."
Before the world went black.
Ray stood from his crouch beside the pig pocket's body.
Pulling his left foot back, he quickly slammed a kick into the Pick pockets, ribs, the force of it, sending him flying into a wall.
The movement had no real goal to it, the only reason he had even done it was because he was just that petty.
That and the fact that the pig pockets attempt ripped the only pair of clothes he had, while reminding him he had nothing for people to steal.
Slipping his hands back into his pockets, as if nothing happened, he continue to make his way down the back alleys while mapping out what to do next, after all the iron bloods wouldn't kill themselves now what they.
Meanwhile, in a tavern where Ray had found his last short-term servant.
Brax sat at a table, the Royce illusion around him, making him look like a short fat, middle-aged man.
It let him blend in with the rest of the riffraff that moved throughout the city, yet at the moment his mind wasn't focused on how brilliant his disguise was.
"Where the fuck is he?"
His mind was focused on just where was the man he had been talking to not two hours before.
He had found a mortal, someone with zero cultivation, yet they had the strength to match a first ring cultivator.
The only way Brax saw this as possible was that the man had orc blood running through his veins.
Finding the blood of one intelligent race in another was rare to say the very least, and he gave whoever had two bloodlines certain benefits. Such as the unnatural strength, the man possessed.
People like that we're seen as great resources by the Hyperion, people that were valued even more than multi elemental cultivators.
So Brax's surprise and joy at finding one of said assets could be understood.
Everything had been going so well, him and the guy whose name he had forgot to ask for had instantly began talking like friends after Brax or Royce bought the first drink.
They had been doing a drinking contest, the loser would have to do one thing the winner said.
Brax was intending to hold the man to the side of the imperial.
His first request would have been for the man to start cultivating.
This normally wouldn't have been possible for mortals, but with Brack's being able to introduce the man to Kingguy, it would have been possible.
Like all mortals, the man would've felt indebted to him, this would have allowed racks to introduce him to the imperium without any fears of him ever telling anybody.
Then, even as the man would rise to the ranks, he would remember the favor from Brax.
A smirk had unconsciously appeared on Brax's face while he had been thinking about his plans, quickly he wanted it away as a frown reappeared.
"It's been nearly 3 hours, just what could he be doing?"
Decided he had waited long enough, rising from his chair, he made his way to the door of the end.
Throughout it, all nobody in the end responded, or even looked at him for that matter.
This was all due to the fact that they didn't even know Brax had left his chair, in fact, they didn't even know Brax had been talking to himself.
With him having both vibration and lights as his elements, Brax was able to both notify the vibrations of his own voice before anything, or anybody could hear him, and keep the illusion of Royce sitting in a chair and sipping from what had to be the worst brandy in existence.
Stepping out of the door, Brax quickly sidesteps as a man that reeked of booze and what has to be years of kick dirt, staggered past him.
He turned making his way down an alley right off the side of the tavern he had just left.
"From the way he was turning pale and staggering he should have been puking his guts up, but it shouldn't have taken this long."
When Brax got behind the Tavern, he found what he was looking for, or at least half of it anyway.
He found the puke he had thought would be there, but the man he had been talking to was nowhere in sight.
If it was anyone else, Rex would've thought they could have been hiding, but remembering just how, actually there was no nice way to say it, the man was fat surprisingly, so considering just how financially challenged he was. Breck quickly looked around for any clues on where he had gone, but all he found was a beggar sitting in a corner.
Deciding to try his chances width said beggar, Royce walked towards him.
He made sure to add a drunken stagger and a slur to his voice when he spoke.
"You seen a big guy around here?"
I don't know have I? I might remember something if you give me a few coins."
Brax had to resist the urge to cut the beggar in hat.
He took a deep breath to calm himself down, this was concerning a valuable asset, he couldn't afford to lose his temper.
Crouching down, brakes picked up five pebbles before using the common rank spell illusion, he slipped him into his pocket.
All the beggar saw throughout the entire process was Royce slipping a hand into the pocket of overly stained pants.
When Royce pulled out the pebbles again, they were copper coins, or at least they look like it.
Playing the drunker to the end, Royce made sure to drop two of the coins while trying to give them to the beggar.
As soon as the beggar had the coins in his hand, he began to speak, but the words weren't exactly what Brax wanted to hear.
"Have I seen a big guy, what type of question is that? I just got here not 30 seconds ago and hell no I ain't seen no big guy, but thank you for the coins though."
The man was probably about to start laughing, he was probably about to bolt, or even try to rob Royce.
He was probably about to do a lot of things, but the world will never know because as soon as he finished talking, Brax moved.
When Brax realized what the beggar has said, the Royce illusion dropped, and suddenly the beggar wasn't facing a drunker who had questions, but a nearly peak second ring who was pissed off.
In less than a second, Brax reached over his shoulder and drew his sword.
Then, in a movement that was too fast for human mortal eyes to track, he removed The beggars head from his shoulders before sheathing his sword back over his shoulder.
As the beggars head rolled to the ground, a gap Tooth grin was still on his face, he hadn't even realized he was dying.
After such a movement, most people would have to probably clean their blade, but the slash had been so fast that the blood had been thrown off of the sword before it was even complete.
Realizing the illusion had dropped, Royce or brax quickly put it back up.
Just like Ray had, Rex ignored the body at his feet as he thought.
"It's happening again, a variable that the reports didn't tell me of. Someone is fucking with my plans."
Realizing his only lead was dead, Brax decided to use ether to solve his problems.
Slowly, the two sky blue rings within his soul, began to spin.
Feeling The ether rushing through him, he quickly used the spell needed for this situation, Tremor Since.
Tremor, Since was a spell that allowed the user to observe the vibrations that happened recently in an area, the further one went back through the vibrations, the more ether needed to be used.
Brax quickly drew the fifth star spell into existence.
It flared with blue light before fading, but that wasn't because it failed but because it was doing its job.
Instantly Rex could feel the vibrations of himself walking back here, the beggar shifting around where he had sat on the ground, and even the vibrations of the beggar's head hitting the gravel.
Focusing on what he had to do, Brax slowly reviewed the vibrations of the people that were in the alley before him.
It has taken some time, but Brax had finally found what he was looking for, but what he was sensing was confusing to say the least.
"A kid?"
He had found when the man had disappeared almost 15 minutes ago, but it made no sense.
What he was sensing told him that someone who is small enough to be maybe 10 or 11, had somehow kidnapped a man that weighed over 300 pounds.
"There has to be something that I misunderstanding here."
Brax thoughts as he replayed the vibrations over and over again. But he found nothing that explained it.
Realizing he was wasting time, he pushed to his feet before canceling the spell.
As soon as he did, he realized his ether was at only 30% capacity.
Giving a puff of annoyance, Bracks quickly turned and went back to the tavern.
It wasn't like the vibrations would disappear overnight, they would still be there tomorrow, and he would still be able to find whoever messed up his plans.
They were making everything much more difficult than it had to be, his job already wasn't exactly easy.
"Just how the fuck am I supposed to contact someone that isn't even in the fucking city without leaving it?"
Brax thought, His gray eyes flashing with annoyance.
He was going to use the discovery of the orc blood human as something to give him a bit more time to find a way to do the impossible.
He was hoping that the iron blood patriarch will come back to the city before anyone questioned why he was taking so long.
Yet, his fist clenched in frustration whoever this was was making things even more difficult.
They would have to be eliminated, because they didn't stand with him, because they didn't stand with the imperial, and if you weren't with the imperial, then you were against them.
Because you were either a king or a pond in the imperial, and this person was neither.