Chapter Smith
Saint felt like he is being cooked alive.
Every cell of his body is burning. He didn"t know what is happening. Even though he felt the pain when the spiritual energy poison invaded his body, this time it is very different.
His instincts are prompting him to open his eyes and wake up. But his body is not listening to his mind.
At this exact moment, there is a specter in Saint"s room. After all of the healers, pill makers, and potion makers went to do some research, even the attendants couldn"t do anything to alleviate the pain.
The pain killers they usually sell didn"t work and they didn"t want to use the meridian network to reduce the pain as there are too many anomalies in his body"s energy circulation.
So, they didn"t dare mess with him and left him alone to sleep.
As for close friends or people that care about him? They don"t exist. The selfish and vain life that Saint sought out until then, didn"t let him even have one loyal friend or subordinate.
In fact, there is a slight hint of hope on every subordinate"s face within the castle. n.o.body knows if it is to see their boss recover, but from the looks of it, it is most likely not and might even be the complete opposite.
So, Sam"s specter had an easier time sneaking into the mansion and even the room of this person along with some help from Sam.
Along with that, a couple of shadow mice also sneaked in.
The specter started casting some kind of soul manipulation on the unconscious Saint to make him slip into a deeper trance within his mind, while the shadow mice injected a few shots into his body.
The shots are not actually of normal medicine. The medicinal essence is mixed with a bunch of liquid energy and each vial contained liquid energy of a different kind and different state.
One vial has more active energy than the other and some other vial has almost dormant liquid energy which is almost the same as a dormant spirit stone.
After injecting these shots, the shadow mice and the specter escaped the mansion just the way entered.
Time pa.s.sed slowly, and as the healers checked up on him, occasionally, they started noticing some slight changes within. The body seemed to have been trying to fight back and absorb the energy poison within his body.
Even though it is harmful at the moment, at the end of the day, it is indeed pure spiritual energy, and his body which has been deprived of any external energy absorption since the explosion, it is trying to adapt itself and absorb this excess energy, process it, and make it it"s own.
It is even the instinctual reaction.
What no one else noticed is that there are some other energies that are being absorbed along with this because of the medicinal shots the shadow mice injected.
Currently, Saint"s body is being modified a bit and this will help Sam in dealing with him and the rest of the mountain.
Two days pa.s.sed and by the end of the second day, Sam injected the last batch of medicine he reserved for this guy.
"Okay, we are done here. He will be able to wake up soon. We can just leave for now. Let"s hunt more and we could make our move on the second target."
"So, this is the extent we are dealing with him. I am looking forward to seeing what his reaction would be after he finds out what you did to his body."
"Even I want to see it, but it doesn"t matter if we can"t look at his immediate reaction. Because as far as I am concerned his reaction would remain constant for the rest of remaining short life.
Anyway, let"s go to the next target. This one would be a bit easier as he is an artisan and an artifact maker. And the person with the most positive or should I say least negative character profile."
"So, the sixth in the list. The Smith."
Jack said as he looked at the report Sam made about this person.
This guy is quite interesting. Even more interesting than Saint. Because the only reason that he joined the Divine formation mountain is because of his love for artisa.n.a.l creations. He was told to be a well-rounded artisan and his specialty is to create equipment for squads and teams for different occasions.
The equipment includes task-specific shields, weapons, armors, special trap diffusing gadgets, trapping gadgets, capturing gadgets, sometimes killing artifacts, and defensive artifacts too. He tailor-makes everything to fit with the user, enemy, and environment.
Many large-scale organizations within the realms are fond of him and he is also the most neutral person in the whole organization.
He doesn"t care if some large organizations come to ask for his services, he will still take a small job as long as it came before that large order.
He always strictly adhered to the first come first serve and there is also the secrecy. Even if two energy organizations came and asked him to make equipment, he will do it.
But he will only do it based on the information that the organizations gave him, he would never let the information from one side bleed to the other side and he never let the personal info he had on the impact his creations.
He earns a lot of money for the mountain and for the formation a.s.sistance to his creations, he either works with the three disciples or the mountain master himself sometimes. Of course only when they are too complicated.
Otherwise, he has a decent enough team with him.
Sam decided something special for this guy. Even though Smith is actually not that aversive of a character, he is still on the enemy side and Sam has to fight him no matter what.
So, he figured it might as well be now than later, and also he is one of the few that can possibly go against Sam and his tricks and he might even be the person behind figuring out some of his mechanisms.
After all, no matter how skilled the three disciples are, their main expertise lies in the formations and complexity of those formations, they are not as skilled when it comes to the mechanical processes that are being aided by these formations and how they came to be in the first place.
But Smith can do that.
Now that the healer"s support has been dealt with, it is about time that Sam deal with the guy who could support the equipment and come up with defensive measures.
And he even has a perfect plan for that.
They arrived at a different planet where Smith is based on. This time, the city was not as hard to find. It is a pure mechanical city as there are a lot of puppets roaming around. Even the constructions are made with metal mostly and they have some neat functions.
The whole city is full of artifacts. Even the buildings, shops, and even the city gates are like that.
"Time to put some of my skills to test. Let"s see how this works out for us."
Sam said as he walked to the main building along with his friends.
"Sam, do you really think this is going to work? Isn"t this way too obvious?"
"Yeah, it is. That is why no one thinks that we will attack this place with such an obvious trap. And don"t talk so casually. We are strangers here. Did you forget that? I just escorted you because I met you guys on the way and you were lost.
Stick to the story if anyone asks.
We are also here to place separate a.s.signments by ourselves."
"Alright, but isn"t it natural for some people to strike a friendship on the journey."
"Yeah, slight friendship. Not to the point that they discuss plans of secret attacks on an enemy in the enemy territory itself."
Philip just didn"t want to bother Sam anymore.
"Why do you always have to suck the joy out of everything?"
"Look who is talking. You were the one that acted like you had a big spear up your a.s.s when Sam was not here."
Watt said from the side.
"You f.u.c.ker, I will kick your a.s.s if you bring that up again."
"Bring it on, let"s see if I will kick yours before you can land a move."
Jack just shook his head with a smile while Sam sighed slightly.
They stood in a long queue and waited to place their a.s.signments and finally, their time came after a long time.
The first person to go is Sam.
There is a person who is noting down something on a scroll sitting at a table.
He turned to Sam and smiled.
"h.e.l.lo, welcome. How can I help you?"
"I came across an artifact and I would like some help in unlocking it."
"Please take a seat and give me more details."