After finishing setting up all of the gates, refurbishing the exposed stone structures, setting up ladders to the roof, setting up all the electrical equipment, and filling the turrets with 5.56, we set around a fire to eat. It was in-between lunch and dinner time.
As we sat down to eat, a blue window popped up in front of me.
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**ANNOUNCEMENT**
^Optional Quest: Find and kill subject 6535.
His position has been posted on every single one of your magic maps with a glowing red dot. Reward → Transcendent sigil.^
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I dismissed the window and looked at the others. They were also staring at their own windows. Things were about to get spicy. I still had an ascendant sigil from killing the alpha shark, so I decided to open it.
A glowing blue portal opened above me. A skill book dropped from it. I opened my system search window.
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{Input: Show me the last item in my inventory.}
{Response: War Mania → It is a consumable item. This is an Ascendant skill book. Description → When you are fighting against another subject, your stats will be doubled for an hour regardless of if you have killed him or not.
When you run into a group of five subjects or more, your stats will be multiplied 10x for 20 minutes regardless if combat engagement has been broken or not.
Will increase speed by 150 once learned.
Note, if consumed you will have to face the god who conquers. With the ability you have now, you may be destroyed by him, if he so wishes to.}
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Just as I finished reading, another window opened up.
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***UNDERSTAND → The god who oversees death has sent you a message.***
"You will not consume this skill. If you do, you will be killed. Give it to someone who you can somewhat trust. Even if you betray them, you should still be more powerful than them.
Don't give it to one of your soul slaves, or the god who conquers will destroy the one who you choose because he will sense your strand of mana over the soul which is my own specific mana."
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I looked up. "Guys, I have an ascendant skill that I am going to give Tizi because she already has a skill that suits this one quite nicely. Twon and Zint, I will get you all your own skills soon enough, just be patient."
I tossed Tizi the skillbook and I looked into her blue eyes. "Just know that when you consume this skill, you will have to come face to face with a god. Try not to become entangled with him. The gods have their own plans which probably don't benefit us."
She nodded. "Okay."
Just as soon as she did, she learned the skill and it disappeared in a bright red flash which filled the whole room with light. As the light faded, she fell against her back, unconscious.
I moved her back towards her bed and walked back to the fire. "Let's get ready for guests to come. Get a gun and lets fuck these shitters up."
Tie had made a good few weapons the other day.
There were 12 soul slaves, 3 soul summons, and 3 tribe members including myself who could fight. I sent a mental message to my soul summons: "Show yourselves, now is the time when you will all fight and prove yourselves."
Their ethereal bodies drifted out from the walls of our base and everyone stared at them, clearly horrified. I quickly explained: "Guys, these our soul summons and they are pretty much a skill. They are pretty powerful and they will give us a useful edge in this war."
Zint and Twon nodded. Zint walked up to me. "If I die, just know that I do love you. Please bury me if it happens."
I nodded. "Sure thing, do the same for me."
I was confident that I was not going to die, I had just said that to make her feel better.
I nodded to the others. "We will be taking shifts. Ige will stay inside unless we have to fight because she is going to give birth in about a day. Same thing with Tie and Set. The rest of us will be splitting the day in half. We will be sleeping or we will be guarding the perimeter. When we need food, I will go out alone and will get it myself."
Everyone agreed with the plan, but they didn't really have any other choice.
I stayed outside with Zint, five soul slaves, and the three soul summons who did not need to sleep. Zint and I talked, propped up against the metal wall, as afternoon turned to evening and evening turned to night.
She nodded towards me. "What is the craziest thing you have ever done?"
I rolled my head. "I've done a lot of crazy things, but I will tell you a story if you want to hear it.
As I've already told you, I was an army ranger. On one of my missions in Afghanistan, it was just me against a hundred terrorists. I had to infiltrate their base by myself.
Leading up to the mission, I had several other teammates who were supposed to help me, but they were killed by a kid with a bomb strapped to his chest when we went through a village.
Regardless, I approached the base I was supposed to destroy. I had eight sticks of C4. I was supposed to blow their tactical missiles to hell. I went towards the base in the dead of the morning and everything was really dark.
They had a barbed wire fence, but it wasn't very tall. It was the sort of barbed wire you could just carefully step over. If someone was coming enmasse, it might have been useful.
After getting over the barbed wire fence, I began to army crawl on my belly underneath a truck. There was a Talibani soldier patrolling on the other side of the car, so I pulled out a combat knife and softly slipped up behind him.
My knife slid across his neck. As he rasped, bubbled up blood, and softly coughed, I dragged him down under the vehicle. The truck was a Toyota Tacoma and it had a belt fed machine gun mounted on the back of it. Underneath the belly of the truck, I stuck a stick of C4 to the area below the fuel tanks.
I rolled out from under the truck and ran towards the center of the large camp. I saw a massive flatbed truck with a tactical missile mounted on its back. I hurried towards it. There were guards all around the truck, but they mainly just had flashlights pointing towards the outside of the camp perimeter.
Once I had reached the vehicle, I rolled under the truck and put a stick of C4 below its fuel tank. I quickly rolled out from the vehicle and moved to the missile. I put another stick of C4 on it.
I quickly moved towards the perimeter of the camp with my body low to the ground. I had my M4 in my hands. As soon as I reached the barbed wire fence, someone saw me. They screamed and began to fire.
I hurled my body all the way over the fence. Bullets flew over my head and impacted the sand drift above me. I rolled over into a little bit of a ditch and I fumbled with my tactical bag until I pulled out the C4 detonator. As soon as I hit the red button, red flames shot all around me and my hearing disappeared. The sound of the tactical missile blowing up temporarily made me lose my hearing.
I quickly headed up the sand drift and turned around once at the top. I grabbed my M4 and my tactical bag. I threw my tactical bag on the ground and steadied my M4 over the top of it.
I glanced down at the camp as I could see about twenty Taliban throwing themselves over the fence. Some of them were burning and some of them were not. It didn't matter though.
'BAM' a head exploded. 'BAM' blood burst from a Taliban's chest as he was flung to the ground. 'BAM', dead. 'BAM', dead. 'BAM', ruined eye and mushed brain.
They were getting closer. I toggled my M4 to automatic. I mowed the ones down who were climbing the hill right in front of me. They couldn't even return fire effectively because I was prone on the top of the sand drift.
There were three left and they were running in the opposite direction away from my sand drift. I aimed at one and steadied my breath. I pulled the trigger. 'CLICK', I switched magazines. 'BAM', dead. 'BAM', I shot him in the back. 'BAM', dead. I turned back to the man I had wounded, and I ended him.
I returned from that mission, but it was definitely my hardest mission even though I died on another. I was really lucky to have survived that one."
She nodded. "Wow, that's crazy."
We continued talking far into the night about various things and the future.