14 Everyone has their own problems (1/2)

Time restarted back on the Earth's plane and no one except the external observers was any wiser. Harrison got moved into a normal ward where by the lack of moaning and the sound that was made by only his equipment he judged he was alone in.

Laying on the hospital bed he tried to keep himself occupied by multiplying large numbers while on the other side of the USA, in Las Vegas to be specific a man was occupying himself with his situation.

As soon as Ambroise Ananta noticed the lack of connection to his guinea pig he hired a private detective agency to gather information for him. The report he was eagerly awaiting came by email within a day which was even surprising for him.

'They were surprisingly efficient as they should be for how much I am paying them,' he said in his mind as he browsed the report.

There was the crime scene report from the internal investigation which showed the diagram of Harrison's house. It included the transcript from the emergency call and also listed all the participants in the raid and how many rounds they fired. They were especially including the photos of his gun replicas which would supposedly lessen their fault in the incident. It was very detailed. It was so detailed that Ambroise was sure they had a man inside the police force as it looked like an official report.

The destroyed head gear was laying on the scene by the side of a pool of blood and Ambroise put special attention on any report document where it might be mentioned.

He finally found it in the list of evidence collected.

Harrison knew his headgear was somewhat special since he received it after winning an event but only Ambroise knew the real reason.

For anyone else it was just a better air conditioned model upgraded from the first batch. Since sweaty hair and sweat coming into the eyes was a common complaint from their players they decided to add ventilation on version 2.0 and this was like a preview version or one might even call it a prototype.

Only Ambroise knew that it was not the only thing he added.

Why he was so eagerly looking for it were the control and energy arrays engraved in it. The control array was already destroyed but the energy array was something Ambroise could reuse. He didn't really even care about the control array since it was easy to make but it was useless without the energy one.

The main problem designing his conspiratorial helmet was linking a part of his soul over distance to the subject. It was easy to engrave a soul with a contract with physical contact but doing it remotely took tremendous energy no human made battery pack could supply.

Things were made especially troublesome by the lack of spiritual energy in this plane so he could not use an energy gathering array on it. For this purpose he used an array he got from the black market which used quite exotic materials even for his immortal means. They were not especially hard to find but they were expensive. He collected only twelve sets of them to start his little side project.

It was a design he didn't fully comprehend since he was no array expert but he didn't need to be. Together with the control array the energy array and the twelwe sets of ingredients to make them cost him almost all of his wealth he collected in his over two milleniums long life.

It pained him greatly but the potential profits far outweighed the initial investment so he jumped at the opportunity with open arms. His subjects or with another word slaves, could earn him back the initial cost in the next century multiple times and he would reinvest and make more subjects and experience exponential growth.

'I have to retrieve the headset,' was a thought that kept repeating in his head as he read.

'If I throw money at them someone is sure to return it to me so that is not a big concern,' he mused in his head as he contemplated the greed of mortals.