Book 4 Chapter 26.2 - Armed Rebellion
In the western region of the great continent, a heavy and sturdy military boot heavily stepped on the mountain rocks, producing a crack in the earth eroded by wind. The rear part of the military boot still stepped in stone, while the front half already stepped on dark-colored earth. With this step, the snow line was already crossed, once again returning to a place suitable for human life.
Su stopped his footsteps and stared forward. Beyond the horizon was Steel Gate. This was a grand manufacturing metropolis, as well as the most important fulcrum for establishing a power of his own. Steel Gate's weapons, heavy chemical industry, manpower, and energy source were all indispensable things for establishing a great power.
Madeline and Cirvanas stood shoulder to shoulder behind Su. Cirvanas' small face was gloomy and pale, his lips seemingly completely lacking color. Even though he received Su's help the entire time, and the nucleus within his body continuously provided energy, trekking through the snowy peaks for an entire month still left him within an inch of his life.
However, the difficult journey still gave him tremendous benefits. The speed at which Cirvanas obtained evolutionary points was only a bit slower than Madeline, and his recovered body displayed shocking talent in the Magic Domain. In the three month journey, Cirvanas unexpectedly developed all known first level abilities, and he produced a derived ability Su had never heard of before: Energy Connection. Rather than calling Energy Connection an ability, it was better to call it a type of innate skill. It could substantially increase one's perceptivity towards all types of attribute abilities in this world, and as such, greatly increased the magic ability user's ability to control force.
As such, the trip that required one day to cross with Cirvanas' constant movement now required three.
However, Su didn't set off on this path, instead suddenly raising his head towards the sky, the expression on his face a bit strange.
"There seems to be someone spying on me from somewhere!" Su said with a frown.
"Spying?" Madeline was a bit doubtful. From what she understood, there were now very few people who could secretly spy on Su without being detected.
Cirvanas' brows locked together at the same time; he also sensed a vague discomfort. Through the nucleus and heart of darkness' connection, he now shared a few sensations with Su. This type of feeling was like being targeted by something, as if there were needles inserted into his back.
Su closed his eye and carefully sensed this feeling. The prying feeling was extremely weak, and it quickly withdrew. However, with Su's current level of perception, he could rely on spiritual reaction to trace back this strange feeling. When Su fully operated his Perception Domain abilities, a vague change happened to the reality reflected within his spiritual world, as if there were strands of ripples and cracks in air that couldn't be detected by the naked eye. His spiritual force pursued this peculiar sensation, exploring into a certain crack, and then emerging from another crack. After jumping a few times like this, the strange feeling then disappeared, and the spiritual perception Su probed out was exhausted as well.
Su opened his eye and said, "It wasn't spying, but instead that someone was thinking about me, moreover not anything good."
When these words sounded, Cirvanas widened his eyes and looked at Su with a look of disbelief. There was a formless connection between Su and himself, so he obviously knew that just now, Su didn't rely purely on a wild guess, but truly used spiritual ability to probe and sense. However, if he could even sense the unfavorable thoughts others directed at him, it really was a bit too terrifying. From here on forth, who could even harm Su?
Even though he now understood the source of the problem, Su instead entered a deeper state of thought. After thinking for a bit, he asked Madeline, "Why can I sense the thoughts of others? Could I sense the thoughts of others as well in the future, for example, Phoney's?"
Madeline's azure eyes flickered, and then she calmly said, "Being able to sense the thoughts of others isn't strange. In fact, the world we all reside in can be seen as a complete body, with all existences in this world having a vague connection with the world itself. Many abilities were established by relying on this type of connection. If many abilities in the Perception Domain are passive perception skills, then the spiritual probing you just carried out should be active perception. Being unable to sense Persephone's thoughts is quite normal, because active perception abilities require extremely high levels of ability. In addition, perception abilities often rely on the body's instincts, and our instincts are much more sensitive towards hostility than benevolence. That is why you can sense if someone is thinking unfavorably about you, but it is difficult for you to know what Persephone is thinking. Think about it, this is a good thing! If you can't sense it, then that means she is only thinking good things about you."
When he heard Madeline's explanation, some of the doubts within Su's heart disappeared, but even more were born as a result. Exactly who was it that was directing harmful thoughts at him, where the sense of danger was great to the point of making him feel this vigilant? From the feeling he just received from the spiritual reaction, this person should be someone he had never made contact with.
Cirvanas' eyes stared at Madeline, his expression complex. His eyes carried shock, hatred, but also a bit of respect. Madeline spoke about knowledge that related to the intrinsic nature of the world, and it was quite clear that this wasn't some baseless indulgence of one's imagination. His father, Conier, before the war, developed similar conjectures, and he had always been trying to prove this speculation. However, before leaving Frozen Throne, from Conier's recount of the past, his fundamental knowledge of the word was still chaotic and without any systems, to the extent where a description of the layers hadn't been completed yet.
"You… how do you know so much?" The young man asked. Because of Ansuna's death, he similarly hated Madeline. He knew Madeline's true age, and it was precisely because of her age that this was so absurd. How could a young lady who had just reached seventeen years of age know these things? However, his powerful curiosity and desire for power shattered the silent war between Madeline and himself, even though this war had only ever existed in the young man's imagination.
"These things? They were things the Empress told me." Madeline said.