Chapter 416: Guns & Money (1/2)

Jason, Chen, Guo and Gerling walked in the direction of the pagoda, through streets painted with dead anomalies.

“Just to be clear, you are renouncing any claim you might have to these bodies, outside of taking a few cores,” Jason said. His tone made it clear that it wasn’t a question.

A quirk of Jason’s looting ability was that he could only loot his own or unattended kills. It was likely that once the gold-rankers left, all the anomalies would count as unattended but he wanted to make sure they relinquished the rights to them. He didn’t want to risk being unable to loot enough cores to keep expanding his spirit domain.

“Of course,” Chen said. Jason knew that Chen had gleaned some insight into the nature of Jason’s ability from the exchange but that wasn’t enough to risk losing all the cores.

Around the pagoda was the area where the dead anomalies were at their thickest, having gathered around it while waiting for Jason and the others to emerge. They had done so in a storm of violence, leaving a sea of the dead. Picking their way through the bodies, Guo gathered up a half-dozen of the unstable black and red cores in his arms. Chen only took a pair of them, one in each hand. He looked at Guo carrying so many and was met by a challenging glare.

“What?” Guo asked.

“Nothing,” said Chen, who then glanced at the empty-handed Gerling.

“Aren’t you going to join us, Mr Gerling?”

Gerling looked at Jason, then at the core in Chen’s hands.

“I’m good,” Gerling said.

“I really think you should,” Chen insisted, “if only for the sake of caution.”

Chen’s eyes flicked in Guo’s direction and he shared a look with Gerling.

“Right,” Gerling said. “Need to avoid any mishaps.”

Jason observed the exchange and watched Gerling pick up a pair of cores.

“What are you talking about?” Guo asked.

“Let’s just get out of here,” Gerling said. “I’m running low on mana and I don’t want this shield to crap out.”

Jason led them to the elevator, escorting them up to the portal room. Guo gave Jason a hostile glare.

“We’re going to meet again,” Guo said. “Things will be very different outside your private magic land.”

Not waiting for a response, Guo carried his armload of unstable genesis cores through the portal. The other three watched the portal for reactions but there were no visible changes.

“Should we just leave these cores here?” Chen asked Jason. Having prevented Guo from suspecting the cores might be dangerous to carry through; neither he nor Gerling was going to take the same risk.

“I’ll take them,” Jason said, collecting the cores from Chen and Gerling.

“How long should we wait?” Gerling asked. “If those cores just explode immediately we should be fine, but if they do something weird on the other side, we might want to give it a minute.”

“You don’t have a minute,” Jason said. “Get out or I shut the portal, wait for you to die and then loot your corpses before getting on with what I came here to do.”

“Close that portal on us and we’ll make sure you die before we do,” Gerling said.

Jason flashed him a snake’s grin.

“Are you sure about that?” Jason asked. “Think about what happens when we meet. You try to catch me and I escape immediately. You lose to a vampire and I kill it easily. Are willing to bet your life on my bag of tricks being empty?”

Gerling’s huge frame towered over Jason, who looked up unflinchingly at the face of his brother’s killer. Chen reached up to put a hand on Gerling’s shoulder.

“That should be delay enough,” Chen said. “Mr Asano, I hope the next time we meet it will be as allies. I believe you’re an enemy I would rather not have.”

“Then you should be more discerning in the company you keep. That said, I imagine we will all stand together when the time comes. The vampires are too used to dominance to not try and take over and I suspect their numbers are greater than any of us realised.”

Chen nodded and then stepped through the portal without another word. Gerling gave Jason an angry but conflicted look before following.

Jason went about the laborious task of touching each of the dead anomalies to loot them. Eventually, the streets were cleared, the anomalies all gone up in rainbow smoke. All that remained were some unstable genesis cores violently expelled from the anomalies and not converted to stable ones when he looted the bodies.

The haul was a huge boost to Jason’s coffers, with ten silver spirit coins and an equivalent value of bronze and iron coming from each one. It reached the point that Jason was glad spirit coins appeared in his inventory as a simple counter or he’d need a storage pit like Scrooge McDuck.

There were also the expected stable genesis cores, although a good number of unstable ones had already been violent expelled from the anomalies and weren’t converted by his loot power.

Aside from the spirit coins and the cores, he looted quite a lot of healing unguent and a handful of other items. There were a few mana potions, as well as a shape-changing potion that would allow for minor physical changes. Jason was familiar with such potions from the other world, although he had never used one. They could be used for disguise or to make more combative modifications, such as claws or bone spikes sticking out from the body. It generally wasn’t considered a strong combat tool, but with his powers sealed, Jason would take anything he could get.

Jason’s belt was enchanted to protect the potion vials in it from incidental damage. Jason hadn’t used it since reaching silver rank because it was only iron-rank and the protections were ineffective against any threat that would push him hard enough to need a potion.