Chapter 408: Looting a House Burning Down Around You (1/2)

In the Slovakian city of Nitra, Gerling stepped out into the street and launched himself into the air with gold-rank strength, sailing high over the rooftops. As he reached the top of his arc, he triggered an explosion that sent him rocketing through the sky. More explosions continued to send him hurtling in the direction of the giant dome out on the plains.

Shade’s plane form dissolved into a cloud of shadows from which Jason dropped out. The cloud trailed him like the tail of a dark comet as he descended, being absorbed as he plunged through the air. Jason allowed himself to freefall, angling his body towards the huge target of the dome.

The auras gathered around the transformation zone told the story of the magical factions waiting to exploit it. The contentious Network factions were split into various camps. There were the American Network and the old leadership faction, still calling themselves simply the Network. Jason couldn’t differentiate one from another just by the aura of essence users, while the other factions were more obvious.

The breakaway Global Defence Network was not just comprised of essence users but also former EOA and Cabal members. Unhappy with the direction their factions had taken since magic was revealed to the world, they banded together and were the most numerous of the current magical factions. Their weakness was that for all their numbers, they had a limited number of powerful elites.

Jason would be more sympathetic to their cause if they weren’t here to plunder reality’s treasures like everyone else. He understood their need for strength to compete with the other factions, but his time in node space gave Jason a better sense than even Dawn of what stripping the Earth’s reality cores was doing. He couldn’t bring himself to accept people tearing the fabric of reality apart for their own ends.

Also present were the Cabal, split into vampire and non-vampire camps. It reinforced what Jason had learned in Venice about the Cabal’s internal tensions. The last faction present was the EOA, who had long been the poor cousins in the fight over reality cores. That was slowly changing, though, as more of the magical drug that boosted them temporarily to gold rank was disseminated. This allowed them, at least briefly, to match up with the power of vampire lords.

The EOA had largely abandoned the League of Heroes and the hero gimmick to operate more openly. It was a difficult position to maintain when other forces were demonstrably stronger than what were ostensibly superheroes. Now they were operating more like superhuman paramilitary, although their flight and eyebeam powers still maintained a very superheroic flavour.

There were several gold rank auras present in the vampire camp, but the most powerful aura present was approaching at blistering speed from the direction of the nearby city. There were explosions of magic in the distance, one after another, which Jason sensed before the sound of them reached him. They were propelling the gold-rank aura was rocketing toward the dome at supersonic speed.

“He’s here,” Jason murmured, his words whipped away in the speed of his descent. He angled his body down for maximum acceleration, trying to reach the dome before the gold-ranker that killed Kaito, Asya and Greg arrived. He aimed for the very peak of the dome, to avoid the factions gathered around it. He used his cloak to decelerate at the last moment but still landed hard on the glassy surface of the dome. Underneath, energy swirled like a rainbow lava lamp.

Without hesitating, Jason opened the magic door, although its appearance was different from the norm. Ordinarily, Jason’s portal abilities, be it the spirit vault, the node space door or a normal portal, took the form of an arch of dark, smoky glass with glimmers of transcendent light within. The node door he called up this time was set directly into the surface of the dome, the familiar glassy stone forming a ring. It was an aperture into the dome, exposing the rainbow energy otherwise trapped beneath the dome’s surface. The exposed energy churned like a boiling cauldron.

Gerling arrived next to the portal without slowing down, the impact releasing a massive gong-like sound, along with a shockwave that whipped at Jason’s blood-coloured robes. Each standing on opposite sides of the portal, they stared each other down.

“I talked to my girlfriend after you killed her,” Jason said. “She told me that I shouldn’t go looking for revenge.”

“You don’t have the strength for revenge.”

“No today,” Jason said as Shade’s bodies emerged to stand around him. “But you don’t have a fancy teleport trap in place, either. I don’t think you can catch me. Neither do you.”

“How did you get away the first time?” Gerling asked. “It was something to do with your aura, right? Negating the suppression collar? Is it an essence ability that lets you do that? An outworlder power?”

“I’m not here to answer your questions. I have more important things to deal with.”

“What are you doing here? Finally joining the fight for reality cores?”

“Think what you want,” Jason said. “I’ve warned you all and no one cares.”

Gerling stared at Jason, his face conflicted.

”I've been investigating you since we fought. You really are different from the essence users of this world.”

“What does that matter to you? You’re here for reality cores like the rest. You’re all too obsessed with power to realise you’re looting a house burning down around you.”

Gerling looked down at the portal set into the dome.

“Are you really trying to save the world?”

“Yes.”

“From what?”

Jason thumped a foot on the dome.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” he said, “but our planet is coming apart at the seams. I’ve been trying to stop it from slowly disintegrating but now there’s this thing and I have to stop it from quickly disintegrating.”

“Everyone thinks there will be more reality cores than normal when this dome opens.”

“Maybe there will be, I don’t know,” Jason said. “But if I don’t go in there and fix this today, it won’t matter what’s in here.”

Gerling turned his gaze from the portal back to Jason. They could both sense more auras rapidly ascending the dome in their direction.

“Go,” Gerling said. “Do what you have to do.”

“Seriously?”

“I have questions, but I’ll catch you another day.”

“Leaving me to do this doesn’t absolve you for killing my people.”