The sound of a deafening explosion made the entire building tremble. And terrified shouts and screams could be heard, as the most powerful of the cultivators in the area went to take a look at what had happened.
Daniel grabbed Serf's arm, and immediately teleported where the explosion had taken place.
The place where they had appeared, was once the marketplace where people could pay for a stall, and sell their product for an entire day.
The place, was now a mess.
No stall had remained intact, and hidden underneath the rubble, were dozens of corpses and mutilated people.
Dark smoke covered the entire place, and it was extremely hard to see.
"JERIGH!" Shouted Daniel to the top of his lungs, just a moment before a portal opened next to him, and Jerigh came out of it. He was accompanied by a few dozen people in black leather armor. "Block the entrances, lock the space and don't allow anyone to leave." He said before Jerigh and the others disappeared from where they were standing.
The moment the group disappeared, Daniel activated 'Time is Precious', and pushed every bit of his immortal essence out of his body.
He moved it so that it could fill the entire radius of the explosion.
Once he managed to do that, he turned it into time essence, which moved the cloud of dark smoke back from where it had come from.
As the smoke started to float back into the area of explosion, a wave flames appeared out of nowhere.
This wave moved backwards as well, as if forming a large encasing of fire.
Wherever the flame passed, the various splinters and rubbles would move, and retook the shape of the various stalls that the explosion had destroyed.
One by one the stalls reformed, unfortunately, the same couldn't be said for the people that were laying on the ground. Time essence could rewind natural mana, but not the consumption of life essence in a human's body.
Fortunately, thanks to his quick reaction, the people that were capable in healing essence were able to intervene on a much faster speed, and were able to save a small amount of the people affected by the blast.
Daniel kept his eyes wide opened for the people that were around during the explosion, especially after the blast of destruction condensed back into a black box from which it had originated.
He immediately locked the black box into frozen time and space the very moment it reformed, but unfortunately, he wasn't capable of feeling any mark of essence inside it.
Daniel was about to ask around if people had noticed anyone suspicious, if they had noticed somebody carrying this black box around, or perhaps taking it out of their spatial rings and leaving it on the ground in the middle of the marketplace.
Before he could ask, Serf approached Daniel at an amazing speed, and took the black box out of his hands. He smelled it once, and put it back on the ground.
After he finished, he looked at his surroundings, and breathed in once again.
His eyes opened wide as he noticed a middle aged man dressed in black clothes.
While turning towards Daniel, he said "Him!"
The man immediately noticed that Serf had recognized him, and despite the shocked state he was in, he needed to run away, and fast.
This man was an experienced user of spatial essence, unfortunately, he wasn't as fast as Daniel, which simply pointed a finger at him, and let out a thick bolt of lightning, so powerful, that it struck the man as strongly as a punch in the guts, and made him dig his entire shape into the stony wall fifty meters behind him.
*KHTCHA*
The man passed out on the spot.
Once he knocked the man out, Daniel waved his hand, and made him disappear into one of his ring along with Jerigh, and the rest of the guards. Then, he joined the effort in healing the survivors.
An hours passed before the situation calmed down.
In total, there were sixty-eight deaths, and more than two hundred heavily injured people that had been treated by Daniel personally, or from healing pills that he purchased on the spot from the various merchants present. It was clear that the culprit wanted to make as much damage as possible.
This was a big hit for their company, but it could have gone a lot worse if Daniel hadn't appeared at the right moment.
Once the situation calmed down, Daniel left Serf behind, and teleported into another of his pocket dimension.
The place where he appeared, was a dark cell made of cold metal walls. No window, no natural light, no place to sleep, no doors.
Melted into these walls, were thick sets of chains whose ends wrapped around the body of the man Daniel had captured.
His wrists, his thighs, his neck, and his ankles. He was completely chained.
These chains weren't normal of course. Daniel had bought them specifically for the purpose of imprisoning people, and had the exact same effect which the chains he had been put on during his stay in prison.
The majority of the immortal essence was absorbed by these thick chains and left the man weakened, and unable to break away to attempt an escape.
An hour had passed since Daniel had locked this man away, and in the meantime, he had already woken up. Jerigh and the rest of the black-armored guards were guarding him attentively.
When Daniel appeared, he was facing him directly.
He looked at him for a few seconds, and then said only one words. "Who."
"Kid, you don't have an idea of how many times I've been imprisoned. There is nothing you can say to convince me to talk, so why don't you just let me go? You were even capable enough to minimize the damages.. No harm no foul." Said the man as a dirty grin appeared on his face.
The expression on Daniel's face didn't change in the slightest. Instead, he took a knee in front of the man, and while looking at him, he said "I don't actually want to know who ordered you to do this. What I want now, is to tell you what I will do.."
Suddenly, four metallic thorns appeared on Daniel's hands.
The man could feel that the metal of which these thorns had been made out of, was the same that was keeping him in a weakened state. The only difference, was that these thorns were small, and their edges had small hooks that made them easy to pierce into the flesh, but at the same time, a pure torture to extract.
He then took a life and time sphere out of his spatial ring, and locked them into the walls.
"I'm going to stick four of these thorns into the spaces in between your ribs, so that whenever you breathe in, they will pierce your lungs, and rip a bit of flesh out of it. But don't worry, these two spheres will repair the damage right away."
He then waved his hand, and made hundreds of needle like spikes appear out of the floor. These spikes were as thin as needles at the top, and their thickness increased the closer they got to the base.
The moment these spikes appeared, they pierced the body of the middle aged man, causing dozens of holes to open and stretch.
*AAAAAARH* *AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARH*
"As you can see, there is not enough spikes for you to distribute your weight on them.. Just enough for them to pierce all the way inside your body."
The man couldn't help but lift his knees and pull his legs away from the ground, causing his injuries to heal just for a moment, before falling back onto the spikes, which penetrated all the way into his flesh once again.
*AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!* *AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!*
With a mild tone, Daniel said "Quiet.. I haven't even stuck the thorns into your ribs yet.."
The screams and shouts became so loud, that even the guards couldn't help but shake in terror from the treatment they were looking the man receive.
Additionally to the spikes, and the thorns stuck deeply in between the man's flesh, Daniel also added a bright light essence sphere, and a loud sound sphere, which prevented him from falling asleep.
Finally, he set a lightning sphere right underneath him which would go off and shock him awake once every hour, just to make sure that he would not lose consciousness.
The legs of the guards were trembling visibly, and one of them almost pissed himself the moment he heard Daniel's voice suddenly reach his ears.
With a shaky voice, this guard said "I-I'm s-sorry.. S-S-Sir?.."
"I said let's go, we'll come back later, after our guest gets to enjoy our hospitality for a few minutes."
-----
Once outside, Daniel, Jerigh, the rest of the guards and Serf appeared in front of Edmund, Emelnie and Heimart, which were now organizing for the families of the deceased to come retrieve the corpses of their loved ones, and talking to the government officers about what had happened.
"Are you Dan Hiel? The head of the company?" Asked the inspector.
"I am. Don't worry, we have already caught the culprit, and he'll talk soon." Responded Daniel calmly.
Behind him, Serf looked at Daniel with a surprised face. He knew very well that, just by being the head of such a company, he could have received for a gold-badge, and yet, he had kept that detail hidden from the academy.
Despite the slight surprise caused by learning the truth, his face quickly went back into showing his usual peaceful expression.
The inspect looked at Daniel's calm demeanor with slight suspicion, and said "You seem awfully calm.."
"We have everything under control.." Responded Daniel plainly.
"Do you have any suspicions about who might have ordered this?" Added the inspector.
Daniel shook his head, but before he could say no, from behind him, Serf said "They are a new company with high level product.. They will have a large amount of success in the future, it's probable that another company hit them to intimidate them, or decrease people's faith in their capability of protecting their guests.. If I'm not mistaken, they have probably received a lot of proposition by other companies in the past couple of days, and they must have rejected them all.."
"Who is this?" Asked the inspector with curiosity, while looking at the towering figure of Serf.
"He is a friend.." Responded Daniel.
Before he could continue, Heimart added "And he is right. In the past two days, we have received the visits of thirty-two company representatives. All of them eager to buy us out."
The inspector became quiet for a few minutes, then looked at Daniel, and said "I'll leave you a day with the perpetrator.." He then disappeared out of nowhere.
From how easily he had disappeared, Daniel could guess that his power and mastery of the essences couldn't have been marginal.
After the inspector disappeared, Daniel presented Serf to the rest, and then, they went into one of the conference rooms to talk about what had happened in the last couple of days.
In the following hour, Edmund and Heimart gave to Daniel all of the informations about the groups that had tried to buy them, and thanks to Serf, he was able to match each company to the few students within the academy.
Apparently, he had attracted other people's attention during his first day, and after they reported the details to their backing powers, these powers sent their representatives to conduct the negotiation.
At the end of this hour, Daniel teleported back into the pocket dimension where the bomber was being kept.
*AAAAAARRGH* *AAAAAAAAAAAARRH AAAAAAAAAAAAARHH!*
The screams were atrocious, and just as Daniel was about to lose his patience, he waved his hand, and made the various thorns disappear from within the man's body, and the spike merge back into the floor.
Daniel slowly took a knee in front of the terrified man, and noticed that if he had come any time later, the man would have probably gone crazy.
"Who."