C373 Oily
Khan was right in front of the hooded figure. He only had to stretch his hand to touch the long cape covering the entire alien, but he remained still and relied on his sensitivity to mana to inspect that species.
The Tors were beyond secretive. Khan couldn't learn much about them even after reaching Milia 222, and his current situation didn't help either. He could sense the amount of energy hidden behind the cape but nothing else. The synthetic mana in the environment appeared immune to that presence.
'The cape,' Khan thought when he found the reason behind that strange feature.
Khan's sensitivity to mana had significantly improved after his encounter with the mysterious man in the Slums. The Nele's arts had also added a new layer of understanding to that skill, so he could find details that many would easily overlook.
Any trace of mana affected the rest of the energy in the environment. Nothing ever stood still in that invisible symphony, and the changes were greater when it came to strong presences.
Powerful warriors would affect the mana in their surroundings without doing anything specific. Even standing still worked, but a shift in the emotions and similar events would produce stronger effects, especially when left unchecked.
However, Khan couldn't see anything similar around the Tors, and the cape explained that peculiar event. The synthetic mana flowed above that long mantle without ever interacting with the energy past it.
The event didn't only involve the fabric of the mantle. It spread through the hood's opening, preventing the synthetic mana from interacting with the Tors. The clothing's hidden features became more evident there, allowing Khan to sense the faint tremors that ran among the opening's edges.
The cape behaved like a mana barrier, forcing Khan to move his attention to the environment. The Tors were jealous of their arts, but they couldn't completely hide their influence in the place where they lived. The district could reveal something, but the situation didn't allow Khan's mind to wander for too long.
The Bise had almost reached Khan. Its mad charge and lowered head made it unable to see what was happening in front of it. A yellowish membrane powered by a vast amount of mana occupied the whole street and moved toward Khan without bothering about the arrival of the Tors.
The vast amount of mana and overall size of the spell made it slower than Khan. He could run past the Tors and let it deal with the Bise while he looked for a way outside of that district.
Yet, Khan didn't only learn about the Tors' care toward their secrets. He had also seen them in action now. The second-level warrior had no reason to care about the sniper, but it had come out anyway to deal with the attack. Khan could guess what would happen to him if he ran even further.
Adding enemies to the current mess would be idiotic. Khan found a single available option and didn't hesitate to pursue it.
Khan turned to face the incoming Bise. His previous clash with that giant spell gave him an idea of its overall power and told him that the Divine Reaper alone couldn't deal with it.
The chaos spear had enough power to fend off the Bise, but time was short. Khan could cast and launch his spell, but the explosion would happen before him. He would suffer injuries, and he would even affect the Tors.
Khan shot forward. A purple-red short sword grew from his empty hand while clotted blood vessels covered everything from his fingers to his shoulder. His right arm transformed into a sturdy spear as he pointed it toward the Bise and accelerated.
The knowledge gathered during the previous exchange and the mana in the environment guided Khan's actions. His right hand pierced the yellowish barrier and stabbed the Bise's torso, but a pushing force immediately fell on him.
Khan's hand would have broken without the reinforcement of the [Blood Shield]. The damage would have also had the chance to spread through his whole arm and shoulder if the Bise managed to stop the purple-red short sword, but the Niqols' technique prevented all of that.
The chaos claws spell was so effective that the Bise's charge pushed Khan's hand deeper into its torso. Still, the alien ignored the severe wound and pressed forward, threatening to slam on Khan with the entirety of its body.
Khan had foreseen a similar event. The [Blood Shield] took care of the worst possible scenario, but his sensitivity to mana handled the best. He violently stomped his feet on the floor to disperse his momentum, and he added enough strength to match the Bise's speed.
The stomp made Khan fly backward alongside the Bise. The jump allowed him to keep his purple-red short blade inside the alien while keeping it at a safe distance. The spell continued to express its effects, and a gory web soon opened on the Bise's torso.
The destruction of the chaos claws expanded while it remained inside the Bise. Its skin almost exploded as damage spread through its internal organs. The small wound soon transformed into a head-sized hole, turning significant chunks of the alien's insides into a mess.
Khan kept his cold eyes on the Bise. The alien showed its incredible resilience during the charge. Its spell remained active even when only small chunks of flesh kept its body in one piece, but everything soon started to shatter.
The Bise slowed down, and the mana condensed behind the yellowish membrane started to disperse. The overall power of the spell diminished until the alien completely stopped and fell on Khan.
Normally, Khan could have easily side-stepped the falling alien, but the drawbacks of the [Blood Shield] hit him and froze him on the spot. The tall and muscular Bise crashed on him, pushing him to the floor, where he dealt with a cough and heavy chest.
The drawbacks were harsher than the last time, but Khan could see the bright side. He had activated the Niqols' technique twice before facing those issues. His body was already getting used to the power of the third checkpoint.
Khan did his best to keep his attention on his surroundings. Dealing with the Bise didn't solve all his problems. The Tors was still behind him, and the other bounty hunters were bound to reach that street sooner or later.
As the drawbacks softened, Khan noticed that the Tors remained in its place, and the sniper didn't fire anymore. He didn't know whether the alien's counterattack had hit that hidden and distant enemy, but its silence was more than welcome.
Khan's condition eventually stabilized enough to make him push away the Bise. Blood and gore fell on him as he lifted the corpse and flung it to the side. The baggy jumper became a dirty mess, but Khan cared only about his surroundings.
The Tors tilted its head while keeping it under the hood. Its opening pointed at Khan and made him raise his knife to prepare for an eventual attack, but nothing came in his direction.
"[Friend]?" Khan forced himself to say through a hissing accent that his cough promptly disturbed. He didn't know how off his Tors' language was, but he hoped that the alien understood it.
The Tors retracted its head before slowly nearing it toward Khan. Everything remained under the hood, and the cape stretched oddly as the alien crouched toward Khan without leaving its position.
Khan and the Tors were almost two meters away, but the latter could get quite close to him without losing most of its height. When the hood reached the area above Khan, the Tors remained one and a half meters tall.
"I came here by mistake," Khan tried with the human language. "I mean no harm or offense."
The Tors stretched its head further down, but the hood's darkness remained impenetrable for Khan's eyes. The clothes' opening was right above him, but he only saw blackness.
The properties of the cape made Khan unable to sense the Tors' intentions. He couldn't even perceive whether the alien was moving its mana. He had the chance to attack, but that would turn the Tors into an enemy, so he stood still and prepared to move his knife or activate the [Blood Shield].
Something finally became visible among that darkness. A forked dark-green item came out of the hood and timidly approached Khan. The tool never tried to touch his face, but it trembled up and down while remaining a few centimeters above him.
Khan vaguely knew the Tors' anatomy from his studies back on Earth. That dark-green thing was the alien's tongue. That behavior was also one of the few pieces of information recorded in Luke's materials. The Tors was studying Khan, and he hoped for friendly reasons.
The arrival of foreign presences made Khan and the Tors move their attention to the street. The remaining bounty hunters became visible, but the same went for their hesitation.
Five Orlats, two humans, and two Fuveall appeared in the middle of the street. Except for one weak Orlats, all of them were second-level warriors. Moreover, they had backpacks, rifles, and other items with them. They seemed ready to make Khan's life difficult.
Khan glanced at the Tors still bent toward him before slowly sliding away to have enough space to stand up. The alien's head snapped back on Khan, which made him stop his movement. Yet, the lack of further actions from the Tors eventually gave him enough confidence to resume his careful gesture.
Khan showed his most confident face when he stood up and faced his nine opponents, but his pain and discomfort told him a different truth. His back felt off. He knew that bruises covered his body, and his right arm was sluggish, to say the least.
The enemies wouldn't be as threatening if Khan could run away, but he couldn't understand what the Tors wanted. Still, it seemed that the bounty hunters were in the same situation since they hesitated to dive deeper into the district.
'I've seen worse,' Khan thought.
Khan wasn't joking or mocking himself. He only had to think about Nitis or Ecoruta to recall scenes where his condition and situation were worse. His experience allowed him to remain completely calm and focused on the mana, but he still struggled to find suitable solutions.
The silence that fell into the area retained its unchallenged domain for a while. Khan studied the bounty hunters while keeping track of the Tors, while the latter only seemed to care about the nine newcomers.
As for the bounty hunters, their gazes moved left and right between Khan and the Tors. They appeared as conflicted as their enemies, and their grip on their items tightened and relaxed without ever committing to either action.
Khan didn't mind waiting. His bruises couldn't heal during that stalemate, but he would be happy as long as his right arm regained some mobility. Stretching it would help, but he didn't dare to make harsh movements in that situation.
'They aren't too scared,' Khan noticed after a few minutes passed.
The bounty hunters were hesitant, but a layer of confidence enveloped their stance. Khan guessed that their knowledge of the Tors partially reassured them, meaning that he couldn't hope too much in it.
The realization that the bounty hunters knew more than Khan about Milia 222 told him that he had to be the first to do something. After all, his enemies would do that if it would benefit them.
The bounty hunters were in the chaos spear's range. Casting and throwing it was the problem. Khan wouldn't only need to summon a large amount of mana. He would also have to make a sharp gesture, and he didn't know how his hooded friend would react to that.
The Fuveall had also proven themselves quite resourceful. The two probably had something that could stop the chaos spear, at least partially, and Khan wasn't fast enough to take them by surprise with that spell.
Khan didn't have anything else at his disposal. He would usually rely on his speed and attention to the symphony of mana to deal with the situation. Still, his enemies had already proven that they had items capable of stopping him.
The tension intensified and almost reached a critical point, but a presence suddenly appeared on Khan's right. He turned, and his gesture made the bounty hunters look in the same direction. A mass of energy had entered the range of Khan's senses, and a hood soon became visible from under the guardrails.
A second hooded figure climbed the guardrails to land on the street. Its movements were smooth, and nothing of its body appeared during the process. Still, its arrival revealed a corpse attached to something under the back of the cape. The Tors was dragging a headless Fuveall, and some hope filled Khan when he inspected her.
The dead Fuveall had implants on her legs and shoulders, but the rifle attached to her right forearm remained her most striking feature. The gun had an oddly long barrel and a big scope which made Khan connect the scene to the silent sniper.
'They killed her and seized her corpse,' Khan commented even if he didn't know the exact reason behind that behavior. Still, his thoughts barely lingered on that topic. His whole focus was on finding ways to exploit that development.
Khan didn't like to rely on hope, especially now that two Tors stood at its sides. The alien on his left was still bent toward him with its head pointed at the hunters, and the one on his right soon followed its companion's example.
Some awkwardness enveloped Khan. He didn't know the Tors' stance, but he pretended to be their ally as he showed his most confident expression yet. The aliens didn't seem to mind how the scene depicted him as a friend of their species, and he played along as best as possible.
The arrival of the second Tors destabilized the bounty hunters. The Orlats were close to giving up on the mission, and that reaction only intensified when more hoods appeared behind the guardrails of the street.
Khan wore a faint smirk that broadened whenever a new mass of energy entered his senses' range. Inside his mind, his thoughts had turned into a chaotic mess of curses and reckless plans, but he kept everything outside his face.
Soon four more hooded figures landed on the street, two of them being very close to the bounty hunters. The latter didn't even try to negotiate with that species. They simply turned to leave and never looked back.
Khan's smirk froze when the six hoods eventually pointed at him. His knife was still there, and his right arm felt better, but his opponents were six mysterious second-level warriors. He didn't know if his situation had improved or not.
"Thank you for the help," Khan forced himself to say. He stuck with the human language to be safe, but the Tors didn't react to his words.
The Tors on Khan's left lifted its head a bit before sticking out its forked tongue again. The Tors on his right did the same, and Khan soon found those two body parts trembling near his face.
'They don't eat humans, do they?' Khan wondered. 'I would remember that detail.'
After a few seconds spent without knowing where to look, Khan heard a hiss that carried clear words in the human language. His surprised face even turned toward the sound's source, and the Tors on his right didn't hesitate to repeat. "Chaos wielder."
"Chaos wielder," The Tors on Khan's left echoed through the same hissing voice.
A series of what sounded like gasps came out of the other Tors. The four abandoned their position on the street to reach Khan and stick out their tongues.
Khan now had six forked tongues trembling around his face. In a different situation, he would have felt sure about the culinary tastes of those aliens, but their words revealed something deeper about their interest.
"Come, chaos wielder," The Tors on Khan's left eventually said before retracting its tongue and moving deeper into the district.
The other Tors imitated their companion, crossing Khan and leaving him alone in his position. The path back to the known areas of the dock was finally open, especially for someone as fast as Khan, but he didn't know if escaping was the right decision.
"Chaos wielder," One of the Tors exclaimed when it noticed that Khan had yet to move. "Come."
'Well, there might be more Tors in hiding,' Khan partially lied to himself as he decided to follow the Tors. He knew his curiosity was controlling his decisions, but finding a decent excuse helped him eliminate any hesitation.
The Tors moved quickly and forced Khan to walk at a decent pace. The speed didn't prevent him from studying the environment to the best of his ability, so he gave free rein to his curiosity since no one told him otherwise.
Khan had initially seen the new symphony as filthy, but that was a misconception caused by his preference for the natural mana. The synthetic energy in the district was dark and oily, but that depended on the additional substances blended into it.
The substances seemed to have the same texture as the synthetic mana, which explained how they could blend with that energy. Of course, that explanation only worked for Khan and his ignorance. He knew that there had to be other scientific rules at work.
Khan didn't even know what those new features did to the synthetic mana. It didn't feel stronger or richer. It was simply different in ways that Khan couldn't completely identify or explain.
The buildings and streets were slightly different too. Most of the dock often saw changes in ownership, which made any investment in structural changes pointless. However, that didn't apply to the Tors district since they had basically colonized a chunk of Lower Level 3.
The streets and the various structures carried properties similar to the capes. The synthetic mana flowed over those surfaces without suffering any alteration. Actually, the opposite happened since that energy seemed to leave something behind.
Khan found himself half-crouching to swipe the floor with his fingers without interrupting the walk. The gesture didn't leave anything on his skin, but he still felt a bit dirty.
That sensation vanished quickly. Khan's mana removed any stain of that untraceable spot, but the event still confirmed his guess. That altered synthetic mana was changing the environment, but he didn't know how or why. Moreover, everything hinted at the presence of a specific source of those alterations.
'They are probably doing this on purpose,' Khan let his mind wander. 'Do they need a specific atmosphere? Shouldn't mana solve that?'
Khan could only speculate as his eyes and senses absorbed as much as possible from the environment. Main roads unfolded before him, but the Tors led him toward smaller ones. The alien carrying the headless Fuveall eventually split from the group, but the march didn't change. Everything ended only after reaching a relatively large building.
Three of the Tors stopped before the building, one went inside, and one directly left to disappear somewhere on the dock. The open entrance didn't reveal anything since the aliens stood in front of it, but Khan noticed how the synthetic mana grew slightly oilier due to the event.
'Is it waste from an experiment?' Khan wondered as he reconsidered his previous hypothesis. 'Is it the actual product they are trying to create?'
Those questions remained unanswered. Khan could only wait until the Tors left the building with a transparent container held by limbs hidden under the cape. The item could probably contain more than ten liters of water, and Khan tried to guess if the aliens could stuff his maimed corpse inside it.
'They might still want to eat me,' Khan stated in his mind, even if the container felt a bit too small for that.
The group changed direction at that point. Two more of the Tors left, and Khan instinctively followed the group with the container on a path that seemed to lead back outside the district.
The trip didn't allow Khan to see anything too peculiar, and the same went for the return toward the district's edges. He didn't even spot other Tors outside his team, let alone one without its hood.
The symphony had just started to regain its typical properties when the two remaining Tors led Khan into an alley behind a tall building. His mind instinctively went battle-ready since the fear of being eaten still didn't leave him, but the aliens had other plans for him.
"Fill it," One of the Tors said while placing the container on the floor.
"With what?" Khan asked.
"Chaos," The second Tors replied.
Surprisingly enough, the Tors were after Khan's mana. He didn't know why they wanted it, but he felt unable to refuse the request. The environment wasn't even an issue. He saw that as a simple payment for helping with the hunters.
'Imminent chaos,' Khan sighed in his mind as he approached the filter placed above the cylindrical container and released his mana. 'I'm totally giving them a weapon.'
Purple-red energy left Khan's right hand and flowed through the filter to accumulate inside the container. The Tors lowered their heads and part of their bodies to inspect the process, and Khan continued until the item was packed and started to reject his mana.
One of the Tors seized the container before Khan could remove his hand and left in a hurry. The other moved its attention on Khan, and a surprising line came out of the hood. "Come back to give more chaos."
Khan didn't expect that request, and his first instinct was to nod. However, he had already paid his price. Anything more than that would require something in exchange.
"What can you offer?" Khan asked while the Tors began to look away.
"Come back, and we set deal," The Tors casually said before leaving in the same direction as its companion. Khan could only watch as the hooded alien made a turn and vanished in that mysterious district.
To be continued