Magistrate Tower
Phetue colonial city
Litvain
Osa Solar system
Pavesa Galaxy
Colony planetary Region
Krios 7th Y-1909
Meridien sat before the Magistrate of Phetue, the only colonial city of the planet Litvain. Effie stood behind her while she silently surveyed the office. It had been some time since they had arrived on the planet and docked their ship before they were summoned to the Magistrate tower. It seems the Magistrate's office had gotten their message, though the Magistrate didn't seem to be too happy to see Meridien. But Meridien simply ignored him as her eyes fell on the window that showed her the scenery of the planet. The Magistrate Tower was the tallest building in the city and they were at the top, as such Meri could see the vastness of the desert that lay outside the city. Yes, Litvain was a desert planet. With a supergiant star that emitted intense heat unlike any planet she had been on before. As soon as Meri got out of her ship, she felt the heat, even though the sun had set. Luckily for her, she was born with a stronger constitution. Her eyes moved away from the window to look around the office. It was a grandeur office, with exquisite pieces of furniture and decorations adorned around. Fixed on the walls were portraits of the former Magistrates who had served the city for hundreds of years. The current Magistrate was a man in his forties or fifties, it was hard to tell due to Pleiadian's natural slow aging. Pleiadians had a longer lifespan than most races, being able to live for centuries. So to Meri, the Magistrate was still considered young, even to her who was far younger than him. The Magistrate was drying his forehead which was filled with sweat with a pretty handkerchief, his blonde hair stuck to his wide, symmetrical face with his broad nose and sharp eyes. If one were to look at him, one would consider him to be highly handsome though Meri was not one of those who would notice such a thing. What she did notice was that ever since she had arrived, a part of the Magistrate's eyes couldn't stop ticking, like he was experiencing some kind of anxiety or something. Meri didn't mind it. She had played on it by exploiting his ignorance when the Magistrate had mistaken her as an Adjudicator sent by the Federation to judge how the colony was progressing. Since she was from the Karajan family, the Named family that was in charge of the Supreme Court, his mistake wasn't so far fetch. And it was to her advantage that she made him think that she was were for an inspection that shouldn't be due for another month or so.
"The city looks lovely," Meri said. She was honest about that. Phetue city was the only advanced city on this planet, with an infrastructure resembling that of Agartha. The city was protected by an electromagnetic dome that was able to reshape the atmosphere, making it more comfortable for the colonists who lived in the city. Still though, even with the electromagnetic dome, the heat from the sun was not something the Dome could truly fix. All that the Dome could do was to lessen the heat.
"Thank you, My lady," Magistrate Dafoe said. "To be honest, I wasn't expecting an inspection so soon. The Message came out of nowhere."
"Well, with the Situation in Lamentias, we have to make sure that every colony is meeting the quota," Meri said. She glanced at Effie from the corner of her eyes, hiding the smile that tried to form on her face. Meri wouldn't put it past her to create a situation like this, taking advantage of her family's name and using it to their advantage. It wasn't the way Meri would play things but she couldn't deny that this was both advantageous and hilarious to her.
"I understand. So will you be inspecting the usual places? The infras-"
"I'm more interested in the Borderland," Meri said. "I've heard rumors about Litvain's special Oasis," Meri said. "I believe capturing this oasis has always been the point of having a colony here,"
"Yes, it has. But the situation with the Locals...It's not on the level of Lamentias. And we have plans on negotiating for further expansion beyond the city," Magistrate Dafoe said meekly when Meri raised an eyebrow. "But I wouldn't go out there just yet. The Borderland is very dangerous during this time of the day. It would be better to spend the night, then tomorrow I can assign you a guide." He waited for Meri to say something, her silence was making his heart beat so fast. It was hard to be in the presence of one of the Noblesse.
"I expect the room service to be impeccable," Meri said.
****
"Ziron, Activate all security clearance," Magistrate Dafoe said as soon as Meri and her Lady in waiting were gone.
"Security system activated," The monitor said in a monotonous voice. And then the windows in the office were covered with a blind covering the office in darkness. Magistrate Dafoe pressed a button on his zodiak system. "Get me a secure line. And call 0599." He waited for the call to go through, chewing his fingers in a mix of anxiousness and anger. After waiting for what felt like a long time, the call finally went through and a hologram image of a bull horn-masked figure in a black cloak appeared.
"Magistrate Dafoe, What is the meaning of this call," Mallus said in a cold domineering voice. Magistrate Dafoe felt his blood boiling with anger at the coldness of his voice. He was able to be brave in front of the Masked man due to the vast distance between them. That was why his demeanor with Meridien was vastly different than it was to Mallus.
"Why didn't you warn me that an Adjudicator was being sent," Magistrate Dafoe said.
"An Adjudicator...Ah! You speak of Meridien Karajan." Mallus said. "I take it she has arrived in Litvain."
"Yes, she is here," Magistrate Dafoe said. "And now is not a good time to have someone from the Justice Department here. Not when the operation is about to go through." Magistrate Dafoe was more than just the ruler of this colony city. One of his duties was overseeing the transportation of the resources of this land back to the Federation. And the spice from this land was worth so much money. So much that there were those within the Federation that wanted more. So Magistrate Dafoe had been selling some of the resources on the side. And thanks to that Magistrate Dafoe had grown his financial power to where it is currently. And it was all possible due to the assurance and protection of the man in front of him.
"Are you not protected already," Mallus said.
"Yes, but none of my security forces will be enough to get rid of that monster," Magistrate Dafoe said. If there was one thing that made Magistrate Dafoe sweat so profusely in front of Meri, it was her presence. Her presence was tremendous and suffocating, to the point that the Magistrate felt that she could have killed him with just a glance of her eyes.
"Hmm. you're right. Meridien is indeed a Peak-stage Sage ." Mallus said. "If anything she is the most powerful in that planet of yours.'
"So what should I do," Magistrate Dafoe said. He was desperate for guidance on how to handle the situation.
"I would have loved to come down there, but sadly I'm busy with Lamentias. So I'll send you one of my men. You remember Torhen." Of course, the Magistrate remembered that psychopathic killer. He was responsible for disposing of the Knight, who had discovered the truth about the planet. Magistrate Dafoe felt the universe was not on his side. Just after they had finished dealing with one of the Starlight dogs, a new problem arose. And now the Magistrate would have to deal with that psychopath again.
"Leave the situation with Meridien Karajan to Torhen," Mallus said. "Now I must go."
****
Meri and Effie had been assigned one of the premium rooms in one of the most expensive hotels in the city by the Magistrate. They were in a two-bedroom suite that was large with expensive decorations, a minibar with all kinds of drinks, a large monitor, and a view of the city in each room. Right now, Meri and Effie were in the room that Meri had chosen, camouflaged by the Barrier that Effie had set up. Sleeping on the bed was another Meri, a construct of Effie's spell. Meri examined the illusion of herself on the bed. A part of her was fuming due to the nightgown that Effie had chosen to portray her wearing. It was a satin silver gown with pieces of jewelry imbued on them. The nightgown seemed to fit her body, showing its curves and everything. She could almost even see her skin since the gown was almost translucent due to the moonlight. In other words, it was very scandalous. Meri glared at Effie who pretended to not notice Meri's uncomfortableness. She was proud of her mastery of the illusion spell.
"I still don't see why we have to play this game," Effie whispered. Meri sighed knowing she would have to explain herself for the third time this evening.
"I wouldn't put it past the Magistrate to try and kill me," Meri said. "In other words, I expect an assassin to be coming my way,"
"An assassin. Why would the Magistrate try and kill you," Effie said. "He will be signing his death warrant. He didn't strike me as a fool,"
"Magistrate Dafoe didn't strike me as a sinner either," Meri said. "But alas, I have judged him to be one."
"You sensed it-"
"Sssh," Meri said. She pointed at the window to the room. Effie glanced at it to see a shadow appearing beyond the window. The shape of a figure came into view, messing with the electronic pad to the window from outside. Luckily for them, the barrier around them kept them from being detected by the unknown person. After a while, the window was finally opened, and the figure came through, dropping on the floor. The moonlight revealed a gray-colored helmet in a dark outfit that blended with the shadows. Raising his right arm which was fit with a stinger blaster, the assassin shot three times at Meri's Illusion. Meri watched as her illusionary copy was hit. The assassin slowly moved to the side to check the pulse but was then caught off guard when the copy disintegrated into particles of light. And then the barrier around Meri and Effie was gone. Effie clapped, her clapping throwing the Assassin out of his shock. His target was supposed to be a Highborn lady from the Upper planets who came to Litvain for pleasure. When the Assassin, Guley, had accepted the assignment, his first thought was how easy and pleasing it would be. He had been keeping watch on the room from across the roof of a nearby building. He had been given the number of the room and where its position would be. He had watched as the Noble lady went to bed after her servant had seen to her needs for the night. He watched her fall asleep and knew it was his time to act. And so he did. And now he was forced to watch as all his preparation had been undone. His target disappeared from the bed having been a fake, and reappeared across the room, with her servant clapping. The Noble lady had the same appearance as the illusion but there was a difference with the real one. There was a coldness to her that made the assassin feel like he was in the presence of a death god. He tried to make a move but his leg couldn't move. His body was trembling, his heart trying to keep up with his breathing. If she moves, I am dead. That was the thought running through the assassin's mind. And right he was. Appearing in Meri's hand in a particle of golden white light, was a light-colored large two-handle battle axe. The head of the axe was engraved with a scale symbol while the handle was wrapped in cloth. With a quick sweep of her arm, Meri's axe swung in a horizontal slash that was so fast, that Guley didn't even feel his death. All he saw was a light followed by a burst of pain, and he was dead.
"A pity," Effie said as she bent to take the tablet wrapped around his left wrist. She made a gesture with her fingers, and the body was burnt with flames. Effie's precise control of her spell made it so that nothing else was burnt. Only the head, body, and blood. No trace of the body was left except for the ashes. But thanks to the wind from the window, the ashes were blown out of the room.
"Can you hack the Tablet," Meri said examining her weapon. Effie nodded as her left fingers began to detach themselves with mechanical wires which were then inserted into the portholes on the tablets. Effie began hacking into the Assassin's tablet's database searching for any useful information. After being satisfied that there wasn't any single blood on her axe, Meri dismissed it back into the storage space from which she had summoned it. Five minutes passed and Effie was done, removing her fingers from the tablet. Meri looked at Effie's arm, a prosthetic replacement that Meri had spent a lot of money on after a horrible incident saw her lose her left arm. Though she felt something similar to guilt whenever she looked upon it, Meri was glad that Effie seemed to have grown to love the arm. To the point that she had become a tech whiz.
"It seems someone put a bounty on you," Effie said. "It's on the local darknet...hmm. Weird..."
"What is it?" Meri asked.
"It's like whoever put this bounty wanted whoever accepted it to die...or they were just flat-out careless when posting it. The information about the target is a lie. I mean, you're a highborn lady, but I wouldn't exactly call you a regular one worth only 20,000 dignir,"
"Wait...What?" Meri exclaimed. "Only 20,000" Effie nodded. Meri couldn't believe it. To think that her value would be insulted. She knew she was worth more than a measly 20,000 Dignir. When it came to monetary value, Meri did not play around with it. She was furious, furious enough to find whoever posted that sham and kill them for it. Calm down, Meri. You have a job to do.
"They weren't careless. It was done on purpose." Meri said. "Whoever put out the bounty wanted to make it look like it was the Magistrate. They knew that putting out the true information about me would make the local hire killers hesitant to take the job, so they made it look like I was an ordinary Highborn. That way they wouldn't hesitate in taking the job."
"But there's no way flies like that can kill you," Effie said with the look of reverence she always had on her face when talking about her Lady.
"The point isn't for them to kill me," Meri said. "The point is to tire me out while I'm here. Keep me on the lookout for small flies. They may be weak, but even I'll get mentally tired if I have to fight hundreds of people every day. That way I'll be on the edge and it would be an opportune time to get rid of me."
"Gods! Who in the Nine hells would think of something like that," Effie said.
"An expert killer," Meri said. 'It seems the Magistrate's sins run deeper than I thought." Meri had the uncanny ability to judge one's status and actions, which means through her ability, she can know almost everything about a person. Which was what she had done when she had been in the Magistrate's office. She had analyzed everything about him, and she had decided that the Magistrate's soul was full of karmic sin. Though his actions may have brought some good into the universe, in the end, his sins were more towards the side of negative. Which means there wasn't enough balance to cancel out the atrocities he was committing. Meri licked her lips, thinking of the ways she was going to kill him. She had already judged him and found him wanting. She got up from the bed and moved towards the window.
"Come Effie. We're not gonna wait here for more assassins. We're going out to the Borderland," Meri said.
"Wait..right now. In the middle of the night." Effie said.
"What better time than now," Meri said. "We know where Knight Isarus ship crashed. All we have to do is investigate the site and see if we can glean any information from it." Effie sighed, knowing she couldn't change her Lady's mind.
"Fine," Effie said. She moved towards the dresser and bought out cloaks. She threw one at Meri while she wore the other one to hide her face. "At least wear this to hide our identity. We can't just go flying through the city with our faces out."
"You're right about that," Meri smiled.
Underneath a clear purple sky, flying at a decent speed were two figures clad in a black cloak that hid their faces, though that didn't matter as most of the citizens of Phetue were going home for the night. The merchant on the streets had closed their stores, the private institutions were all closed, and the streets were getting empty of people. Only those responsible for manning the walls that surrounded the city were still at their post. Meri and Effie had hidden their presence from the Odyllic so that no scanner could detect them. Which was how they were able to sneak into one of the barracks fixed at the wall. They were in what looked like a garage, surrounded by Hovermobiles and Hoverbikes. Meri went to one of the newer models of hoverbike and was examining it.
"Looks like a TSC-4 model," Meri said. "I heard this model was outfitted with a short-range Xeta beam transport system,"
"Don't tell me you're thinking of driving it," Effie said.
"Of course. Please don't tell me you expect me to fly out there with that ridiculous atmosphere," Meri said. "We would be outside the dome, and it would be extremely hot." Unlike regular deserts that get cold when night falls, Litvain was outside the norm as even the night was just as hot as the day. And though Meri could endure the heat by coating herself with her mana, she didn't feel the need to do that and fly at the same time. Flight is a very complex technique that requires lots of concentration. The heat would not go well with her concentration. At least that was what Meri told Effie which was a blatant lie. Meri just wanted to ride the hoverbike. And so Effie hotwired it, and before long, they had stolen a hoverbike from the city. They rode through the white-colored sand desert, going at the speed of sixty kilometers, as Effie directed Meri to where Knight Isarus's ship had crashed. Thanks to the intel from the Admiral, they had been able to pinpoint the location where Knight Isarus's ship had crashed. From there, they could then trace his movement and track him down. Riding through the desert, luckily nothing attacked them. Meri had expected some local monsters to lunge from the sand, but nothing did. She could sense their presence beneath them, but they carefully stayed away from them. After fifteen minutes of riding, they eventually reached the site where Isarus crashed, only to find the place deserted of anything. There was a look of surprise and shock on Effie as she got out of the Hoverbike. She bought out her Zodiak as she examined the intel the Admiral had given them.
"According to the calculations, this is the coordinate where Knight Isarus landed when he came to this planet," Effie said. Meri said nothing but only began examining the site. It didn't look like anything had crashed in this place. But Meri was not simply using her eyes to inspect her surroundings, she was looking into the Odyllic itself with her Internal sight. The Odyllic that surrounded this space, where remnants of Mana still lingered. She could feel so many presences all mixed up together that it was hard for her to untangle them all apart. She then activated her Unique ability of Judgement, which allowed her to view the past actions that stemmed from the lingering mana in the Odyllic. What Meri was doing was not so simple. Normally, she couldn't view the past, but with a little bit of work, she was able to achieve something similar to it. Her ability, Judgement, allowed Meri to analyze the status and actions of people through their mana. And from the information she gleaned from it, she could decide on an outcome that was disadvantageous to her enemy or advantageous to her. But this time, Meri was reaching into the Odyllic, into the mana Residuals from days long gone, and analyzing them to see what had happened. It sounded so simple. After all, it was an aspect of her ability. But it took a lot of computational power, a lot from her Mental force, something an average mana wielder couldn't just perform. Meri frowned as her awareness came back to being normal. She had seen the truth of what had occurred. Knight Isarus had indeed crashed here, but he later seemed to have moved away from the crash. And the disaster from the Crash had been cleaned up. From what she saw, the one behind the clean-up was the damn Magistrate. Meri was gaining lots of reasons to kill that scumbag.
"Get back on the bike," Meri said. Effie didn't question her but simply did as she was told. Meri drove the hoverbike towards the south, taking the same path that Knight Isarus had taken. After minutes of riding south, they finally came across a pyramid structure. It was a large pyramid with the face of a jackal, with some of the structures having large holes in it. Meri could sense a faint reverberation within the Odyllic of the site of the pyramid. From the presence of the structure, Meri assumed the pyramid was some kind of temple to a god. It was faint, but Meri could feel a holy power to it. Too bad it looked like it had been abandoned. They got out of the bike around the entrance, which had a huge hole leading inside. Meri felt the presence of people inside which made her turn to Effie, giving her a signal to follow her move. Effie nodded, having noticed that there were people inside too. They entered the pyramid, and the darkness inside was peeled away by Meri's enhanced senses. The inside looked like the opposite of the outside, pieces of equipment were placed around, and vines were growing from the ground, spreading throughout the walls and the ceiling. A hue of whitish-yellow color emitted out of the vines. There were also rows of machinery that didn't look like it belonged there. They were in a hallway that was filled with these machinery. Meri and Effie walked for a while as they observed the runes that were on the wall. Meri didn't understand the runic language but she knew that once upon a time, those runes once held power within them. Now they were dead, just like this temple was stripped of its divinity. Out of a corner, someone in a white bodysuit with armor pads, holding a mana blaster appeared. He looked shocked to see them, but Meri responded quickly. Her battle axe appeared, and she swung it upwards in a quick slash that even he couldn't see it. The guard fell on the ground yelling in pain though there wasn't a single drop of blood rushing out of his body. There was just a small gash on his cheeks from where Meri had cut him.
"Looks like our presence has been divulged," Meri said. "I'm going ahead." And in a blur, she was gone, leaving Effie behind. Effie looked at the guard whose helmet was torn part revealing a pale face with brown hair, and a gash at his cheeks. The cut was small, but the pain.... the pain was probably more agonizing than anything. This was her Lady's mercy. More than anyone Effie understood her Lady. Even with her past as a Hunting dog of the Yaeger Corp of Starlight or as a mercenary, her lady was someone who knew the value of life just as much as she treasured monetary value. She did not just needlessly take life like it was nothing. Instead, she used her ability to inflict agonizing pain that crippled her enemy instead of killing them.
"Be grateful it's my Lady dealing with you," Effie said as she waved her index finger. A circle of energy formed from it, and she weaved a spell through the Magic circle. The spell hit the guard right in the chest, making him lose consciousness. And that was what Effie did, as she followed the path that Meri left behind in her wake. She would stun every one of them while examining them. It turned out that each of them was humans, not humans from this planet, but Offworlder humans. The fact that their mana was weak was a clue to their racial identity. Out of all the nine races in the universe, the human race was the weakest when it came to Mystical power. Which was why they relied on gadgets more than any of the other races. Effie wondered what a group of Offworlder humans could be doing here. It wasn't often one met humans that had the capabilities to be able to leave their homeworld. But still...Effie could tell that these humans were nothing to look at. Though they were Od-sensitive, their training in the mystical arts of mana usage was lacking. Effie came out of the corridor, into a large open space. Around the walls were the vines that reached to the ceiling where they converged onto a greenery that covered the top with leaves. And in the space in front of Effie were rows of transport ships of both commercial and military issues. Effie saw the trails of bodies yelling in pain. She was about to continue stunning them when the ground shook. Effie glanced up to see Meri engaged in a fierce melee combat with an unknown entity.