The Path of Ascension

Matt, Liz, and Aster were all startled by the report, and were going to investigate when Kurt and Luna appeared in front of the door to their hotel room.

Luna seemed only half interested in them, and was looking off into the distance in a manner that would’ve suggested the use of an AI in anyone else. Considering Luna’s vocal hatred of the tool, Matt had no idea what she was doing.

Still, even while distracted, she was the first to speak. “Things have escalated. You have twenty-two days before we intervene.”

Kurt was quick to write, “If you can't solve the issue before that, I will step in to prevent the deaths.”

That gave a surprising amount of information, and Matt jumped onto it. “So you know what’s going on?”

Liz noticed a more important detail. “That sounds like a hard limit. Why?”

Kurt went to write, but Luna shook her head slightly, and he stopped.

Their manager said, “Yes, it is. The situation is what we expected, and I won't say any more. Twenty-two days is a firm time limit. We expect that to be the soonest the kidnapping victims will die, but I can’t call it a concrete fact. Things could easily overtake our projected timeline.”

Aster paced in a circle a few times as she asked, “Why not deal with it yourselves, since you know exactly what is happening?”

Kurt's pen moved faster than he usually allowed it, and his message was instantly written. “This is training you need, even though I don’t like it. You might very well be called to deal with a problem like this later on in life. I know I've dealt with it before. Better to learn now, with us here to prevent a mess.”

With that, he shook his head, and Matt couldn't interpret the man's expression. It seemed sad, angry, and resigned all at once, but there was more he was unable to read.

Luna just waved her hand and said, “I'll have April send some disposable identities over. Use them, and remember your time crunch.”

Matt interpreted that to mean they shouldn’t be as meticulous and forward thinking as they usually were while planning.

With the two managers gone, they started to strategize while they waited for April. When she came, she only appeared long enough to send them their cover identities, which they changed their physical form to match.

Aster grumbled about having to morph into a dog, but eventually acquiesced. For all her outward complaining, Matt could feel that she didn’t want innocent people to die either.

Matt shifted to a smaller form, with paler skin and darker hair, while Liz shifted to a taller but thinner form.

Checking their newest identities, Matt found that their cover combat roles were close enough to their actual styles. They wouldn't need to shift their fighting style. Liz would be the most hampered, as she was listed as a water mage, so she would be using only her outer skills.

Still, they could and would break that restriction if they needed to.

To their surprise, their identity came with a few perks. They were empowered as a part of a special task force that the local noble set up to hunt down the culprit terrorizing the city.

They, along with half a dozen others, had the backing to do nearly anything to prevent more people from vanishing.

The city was also being put under curfew, and Viscountess Alara had already issued a public statement warning that she was ready to put the city, and even the entire planet, under martial law until the guilty party was caught.

Matt picked up the dog version of Aster, and began to pet her while he asked Liz, “What do we know?”

This back and forth between the three of them was how they started most planning sessions.

Aster started them out. “We know they can’t or won't kill the kidnapped people for twenty-two days.”

Matt nodded along as he followed the logic. “So that means the kidnappings happen continuously, but the killings are planned to take place at a certain date.”

Liz asked the pertinent question. “What’s twenty-two days from now? If they’re waiting for a reason, why not move ahead now?”

While he didn’t have an answer, Matt started searching through the local calendar for any moon phases, or something odd about the current year, but the date given didn’t land on anything of any significance.

Liz asked a question that brought his attention away from his AI.

“What if they’re waiting because they need more people? There’s been close to fifteen people captured every month for the past year or so. That could mean they need fifteen people. The noble said she was going to lock down the cities with no one coming in or out. If that limits the kidnappings to a single city, we know that the lockdown was effective.”

That was a little too cold-blooded for their liking, but it was a good point, and would give them more data to extrapolate from.

“I don't like it, but that is something we should look into.” Matt hmmed as he thought for a second before adding, “I think we need to consider the possibility that someone’s trying to frame the guild.”

He checked the information packs for the name… “Nigel’s Delvers. Things point a little too well at them, and look at the message he sent out. While he might be a great actor, he looks pissed.”

Aster wagged her now less fluffy tail and shook her head. “That only means he's not involved. Could be someone else in his guild.”

They agreed that it was a possibility, but the guild remained at the top of their suspect list.

Matt compiled the relevant information and then sent it to everyone's AIs.

“This is what we know about the first set of victims. They’re all Tier 7 through Tier 10, with the majority being Tier 9’s and Tier 10’s. The three newest victims also fit that profile, being two Tier 9’s and a Tier 8.”

They chewed on that before Liz sent over some additional information. “Look at the first three killings. The bodies were all hacked up brutally. That's a detail we can look into. Did the person attack them because of a grudge?”

Matt read the report and agreed it was a decent lead.

He then looked for any connections between the other victims, but even with his AI, they found nothing in their public profiles that fit the bill. He doubted that he’d find anything the professional investigators hadn’t already, but being thorough was key to solving these kinds of cases.

That thought made Matt realize something, and he said, “There are professional investigators, and from what I see, they’re all Tier 10s. Which makes sense, because this is only a Tier 10 planet. But the Viscountess also investigated the guild, and she’s Tier 20. If she didn’t find anything, I doubt there’s anything to find. Even an anti-spiritual sense formation shouldn’t pass under her nose, as long as it wasn't made from Tier 20 materials.”

Liz nodded at that. “So if it is the guild, they aren't doing it in their own home.”

Aster shook her head and asked, “Didn’t the higher noble try to shut this down? What if he's involved? He's a Count. He could’ve easily created a black room that the Viscountess wouldn’t be able to find.”

Matt scratched her neck as she liked. It was a really good point, and he told her so.

For all her beast form, Aster had matured a lot in the last few years. She was still playful, but she was just as smart as he and Liz.

Liz tapped her lips as she thought, and Matt let her stew as he looked over the rest of the information pertaining to the case.

After a few minutes, Liz said, “I can't rule out the possibility, but that doesn't feel right. Nobles have a lot of control. Especially in this region of space. The noble titles here are all blood inheritances, so their families have been here a long time. Count Rendall is a typical noble, but nothing I can find paints him as evil. If anything, the information I can find on him puts him in the don't rock the boat camp. He pays his taxes and invests in his planet, but has almost always backed down from power struggles. He'd have been removed from power by more ambitious siblings, but the others didn’t want the title, and took deals to advance or get their own noble titles in the frontier. Him being involved in some dark plot to sacrifice people just seems out of character.”

Matt remembered what Luna said and asked, “But Luna said he was siding with the guild. That isn't backing down.”

Liz shook her head. “No, it is. The guild lodged an official complaint about Viscountess Alara's investigation and her continued suspicion. She did overstep there, at least by publicly stating that she still believed they were guilty. Telling her to back down was the correct decision.”

With her being raised in the noble circles, Matt bowed to her expertise and changed his thought process.

He brought up another oddity that he’d noticed, which was also mentioned in the Viscountess’ team's investigation. Not a single one of the victims had gotten even one AI message out, which was frankly bizarre. AI worked at the speed of thought, but nobody had been able to get any calls for help out.

AI blockers, or at least devices that could prevent AI from working, were rare and expensive, let alone illegal for civilian use. The distribution of them was heavily regulated, with each unit usually tracing back to the producer and tracked by the Empire. Matt figured it was worth digging into.

If they were using AI bracelets, they could learn quite a bit by following the trail and discovering where they went astray.

But they might be using a more general blocker, which Matt felt was less likely. General signal blockers were easier to make and cheaper, but far more obvious. He had used them in their burglary missions often enough. But the broad anti-signal’s indiscriminate effects were a detriment; they made obvious dead spaces that the city and planetary AI would pick up on.

The devices were incredibly illegal to possess, but they weren't hard to make, which meant they were prevalent enough to be a problem. The anomalies they caused were regularly scanned for by city and planetary AI.

He doubted that the kidnappers were using them. If they were, the planetary or city AI would have picked up on it by now.

AI restrictive bands were more expensive, but nearly impossible to notice. If someone had one activated, it would just look like they stopped using their AI abruptly. It was a tell, but not something even a city AI could look into. There would be a billion false alarms for every kidnapping.

Matt decided to try and contact the local underground, and see if anyone was selling or buying bands.

He corrected that thought. They wouldn't need more than a few, so he needed to see if anyone had bought any recently. It was less helpful, but he would still check.

Any piece of information could lead to solving the case.

Not long after, they ran into a wall created by their lack of information, and decided to go and scout the city.

Twenty-two days seemed like a long time, but with three lives already on the line, and possibly more, the triol felt great pressure.

They split up to cover more ground, but kept their AI active the whole time, making sure to stay in contact with each other.

Aster went to skulk around the guild and watch everyone coming and going, while Liz went to link up the other teams that the Viscountess had created to investigate the disappearances. They had called for a group meeting to prevent them from converting the same areas more than once, but only one of them needed to go, and Liz was better with people.

Matt made his way to the poorer part of the city, and changed his appearance once again. This time, he kept his normal height and bulk, but gave himself a more swarthy look ,with a few visible scars and a broken nose.

He stopped to buy some shabbier clothes from a second-hand store, and easily blended in with the denizens of the poorer section of the city.

It took some getting used to after spending so much time in more established cities. He had expected no one to be poor, but that had been an extremely naive notion.

There were always people who didn’t cultivate beyond the minimum, and those that were simply down on their luck.

The less well off needed to exist somewhere, and even with housing and food being provided to everyone by imperial law, there were always poorer sections of every city.

Since this was a capital city, things were slightly better off, but the decrease in building size was inversely proportional to the number of people Matt saw loitering around.

His first few stops were the various bars in the area, where he tried to pry information from the patrons through active conversation and passively listening, but he found very little information.

In his hours of fruitless searching, he only got one useful piece of intel. There was a local fence that had the connections to get AI restrictive bracelets.

He wandered for a while until he found what he was looking for.

A fence. Or at least, what he believed was the fence.

The shop was dingy and poorly lit, while also proclaiming that it bought all manner of goods, and in the proper location from the rumors he had heard.

Matt didn't dawdle as he came up to the front counter, and dropped two Tier 8 mana stones while enveloping the man with his Concept and spiritual sense.

“I want to buy information.”

The shopkeeper was an older man who Matt felt was at Tier 7. He swept the mana stones away without saying a word.

Matt sighed and put out a single Tier 9 stone.

That got the man's full attention and he asked, “What information?”

Keeping his voice gruff, Matt asked, “AI restrictive bracelets. What do you know about people buying them?”

The shopkeeper tightened slightly at the question. The only reason he noticed was his ability to observe the man through his Concept. It was less precise than a spiritual sense scan, but unless the man has his own personal Concept, it was undetectable.

“I don't know anything.”

Having long since run out of patience with peoples lives on the line, Matt sighed and reached over the counter to grab the man by his shirt collar.

Unsurprisingly, half a dozen defensive enchantments activated, but Matt flexed his Concept and resisted their activation. He was able to delay them long enough to haul the older man over the counter and throw him into the nearest shelf.

The shopkeeper yelled as he broke the cheap shelving and crumpled onto the pile.

Matt was already on the man as he tried to stand up and stepped on the man's knee.

“What do you know?” Despite his revulsion of this tactic, it was what his cover persona would do, and it was effective. So, he kept his voice steady and calm as he asked the question.

“I don’t know—”

Matt stepped down hard and felt the man's knee shatter.

Over the man's screams, he said, “Danny was a friend of mine. Grew up around here. He was too nice, and got out. I’m neither nice, nor out.”

Danny was one of the three guild members who had vanished last night, and was a local. From the petty burglary charge he had picked up when he was seven, he had been a part of the local underground growing up.

The judge had sentenced the young boy to community service for his crime, where he had been forced to pick up trash nearby Nigel’s Delvers, and had been picked up by the guild. From then on, he left a life of crime for one on the straight and narrow, by all accounts.

Moving his foot to the other knee, Matt asked once again. “What do you know?”

The shopkeeper kept it together well enough to glare and spit at Matt, but he answered. “I don’t know.”

Matt started to put pressure on the leg, ready to break the second leg, but paused as the shopkeeper hurried to add. “I really don't! Fuck man… My fucking knee!”

As the man got off-topic, Matt put more pressure on the knee and said, “You reacted to the question. Don't lie now. Me and my crew haven’t heard anything but the normal rumors, but I know you have something.”

Adding enough pressure to make the man groan, he asked one word at a time. “What. Do. You. Know? Last chance.”

The shopkeeper clutched at his leg and started to babble. “I don't know shit about anything to stop AIs. No one’s asked for any large shipments in years. Last time was for a gang that’s already disbanded, and that was ten years ago. All I know is you’re the third person to ask about that same thing today.”

That caught Matt's attention, and he asked, “Who were the other two?”

“I—”

Sensing the man going to lie, Matt stomped down on his knee.

While his ability wasn't as good as Luna and Kurt's in sensing deception, he was able to get the gist of truth and a lie through the man's pulse and other body functions.

He had been abou to lie once again, and Matt's patience was gone.

Kneeling down, he grabbed the mans clutching hand and gripped his fingers, and separated one from the others.

“Who were the other two?” Asking once again, he put a bit of pressure on the finger.

“I don't know—”

Matt snapped the pinky and gripped the ring finger.

His unspoken question was quickly answered.

“I really don't know who the first one was. Not for sure.” The man was staring at his hand in shock and horror.

Matt could feel the overwhelming adrenaline coursing through the man, and it was starting to pollute his readings. He needed to hurry this up.

Thankfully, the shopkeeper began spilling his guts.

“The first person that came around was obviously a guilder, but I don't know from which guild. A shorter man, with brown hair in new but cheap clothes.”

As the shopkeeper started to curse about the pain, Matt put a little pressure on the ring finger.

Seeing that it didn’t work, he squeezed the hand until he felt bones grind together.

“My friend is missing, and my patience is gone. Answer, or I start breaking larger bones.”

“Fuck! Fuck you! The second was one of those investigators. I told them both I don't know shit. Unlike you, they aren't assholes.”

Matt believed the man.

He debated how he could make this right while not burning this identity.

Finally standing, he pulled out a sack of twenty Tier 9 mana stones and dropped it on the man's chest.

“Next time, speak up first. Then I won't have to break things. I was willing to pay. You made this harder than it had to be.”

With his thuggish logic as his parting words, Matt hurriedly left, with the overwhelming feeling of needing a shower.

When he opened up the door, he found five tuffs.

Quickly, he scanned them and saw that they were only Tier 7’s. Not feeling a threat, Matt kept up his act and asked, “What?”

“Menard pays protection to us, and you beat him. You think you can just walk away after that? Not a fucking chance.” The man cracked his knuckles as he tried to puff himself up.

Matt walked forward until he was surrounded and said, “My friend vanished last night. I couldn't give two flying fucks about your racket. He didn’t answer my questions, so he was encouraged to answer faster. Besides, I paid. There are twenty Tier 9 mana stones with him. That will more than cover his healing and the damage.”

Seeing the greedy look in the leader's eyes, Matt reached out and gripped his shoulder.

He once again squeezed until the man started to drop to his knees. Matt prevented him from hitting the ground with his greater strength. If he humiliated the man, he would only start a gang war, which he didn't have time for.

“That money is for his pain and suffering. Would you like to earn your own share?”

Matt didn’t want the shopkeeper to lose the money he had given him, despite the fact he dealt with stolen and illegal goods. He had been the aggressor, and in a fashion he detested, but his time limit meant that he didn’t have time to slowly gather information through alternative methods.

He looked around to the others as he asked. They all shrunk back, so he asked, “What have you and your gang heard?”

Loosening his grip, Matt let the leader stand on his own.

The man brushed himself off and took a step back, but answered the question. “No. I don't know anything. No one does, and we’re all losing our shit about it. We all had the word that this shit was supposed to be over with the last investigation.”

Matt nodded as if his prior knowledge was confirmed, and said, “Then you know nothing that I don’t already.” He sighed and brushed past the group, and walked through the city for a few blocks. When the loiterers who lounged around the buildings stopped glaring at him, he found an inn and got an early lunch, knowing that he was out of the first gang's territory.

He sat there and listened into as many conversations as he could, but found out nothing substantial.

Everyone was nervous, and scared of being the next ones to vanish.

They had believed that they were done with this nightmare, after the last few months of a break from disappearances.

Matt moved around the city, changing disguise and asking questions as he went, but learned nothing more.

Still, he found out that there were two others who were also asking the same question about AI restrictive bracelets around.

As he moved around, he was able to piece together a description of both people. The investigator was registered to a team that the Viscountess had put together. The guilder, he was able to confirm, was a part of Neil's.

It was interesting, and at least to Matt, confirmed the idea that the guild wasn’t a part of the attacks. At least, not all of them. And that only reinforced his opinion that the guild leader was most likely innocent.

When he met back up with Liz and Aster that afternoon, they both had learned little more than he did. Everyone was scared and worried that they would be next, but no one knew anything more than petty rumors they were able to dismiss.

They changed into their official cover identities and started inspecting the city's defenses, hoping to find some clue that the other officials might have overlooked.

That evening, the suspect guild, Nigel’s Delvers, opened their doors for anyone involved in the official investigation to inspect their guild house.

Matt doubted that they’d find anything. If the guild was willingly opening their doors, there would be nothing to see. They still went, just to check if anything seemed suspicious to them, and to get a general feel for the guildhall.

They even resorted to measuring the walls with their AIs to compare with the official building plans, hoping to discover a hidden room.

The guild leader had given the order that not a single door was to be left closed, and everyone was to make themselves available for questioning.

Matt compared his charts with the official records, but found nothing that piqued his interest.

The guild was a large one, at a little over five hundred people, with most of them being Tier 6 through Tier 9. Meanwhile, the guild's leadership positions were filled with Tier 10’s that had worked their way up the ranks.

Matt could understand why the noble found the guild suspicious at first glance, but after inspecting the place top to bottom, and talking to nearly everyone, he found nothing. Most of them were just like the average citizens, scared and worried that they would be next.

The only keeping the guild intact was the leadership. They were compassionate, and helped reassure their juniors that everything would be ok. It was a shallow promise, considering they had just lost three people, but it seemed to help.

The three of them waited until that evening, and broke in once things calmed down. Even then, they found nothing out of the ordinary.

Willing to break a few laws, Matt channeled his prodigious mana regeneration into [Earth Manipulation], and after gripping all of the ground around the guildhall, twisted slightly.

Alarms blared, and guards rushed out to find out who had tripped every ward they had, but Matt had immediately ran once he used his skill.

To his consternation, Matt found nothing that wasn’t officially reported. They hadn’t expected to find a secret basement with their three missing people, but they had to check.

They investigated the city and all the other guilds and corporations in the next week, but once again found nothing.

One week after the first three people went missing, another four more were kidnapped. They were also from the capital city, but this time, they were a team of local Tier 9 delvers. They had been returning from a two-month-long expedition from a rift in the mountains nearby.

The same morning, the Viscountess announced that the cities would all be going on lockdown until they found the killer. No one would be going in or out. She tasked her Tier 15 guards with inspecting the border.

It was a great idea in theory, but Matt didn’t need the still absent Luna or Kurt to explain why it wouldn’t work. They would need a lot more to catch an elusive person who could kidnap so many people and avoid capture.

Spiritual sense was limited in size depending on cultivation, Tier, and the amount of information one could process with their mind cultivation aspect. The three dozen Tier 15’s that the Viscountess sent out were woefully inadequate to guard more than one city. Let alone the half dozen she spread them out to.

With only fifteen days left, the three of them felt tremendous pressure building. Seven people were missing, and they had no new leads.

Despite Luna hating AI, Matt went with his better instincts and used his AI to crunch every data point they had learned. He had extensively trained his AI with Erwin, and they had practiced the skill a lot. With his ability to throw unending mana into his AI, it had grown fast if not efficient.

It sadly didn’t give him a miracle answer as to who was doing the kidnapping or where the victims were, but it did note that the kidnapped people were all taken from nonrandom locations.

They were perfectly mathematical in their methodology, to a degree that was only obvious when running thousands of other simulations, with all the kidnappings taken into account.

That prompted the three of them to investigate the location where the team had gone missing. Matt’s AI proposed that the kidnappings were more about people in the right location than specific targets being chosen. It was the best idea they had, so they set out towards the last locations.

All three of them inspected the surroundings with every skill they had, but found nothing out of the ordinary. Even their Concepts weren’t able to uncover anything, and they moved from place to place to still find nothing out of the ordinary.

No matter how many times Matt reviewed the information himself and with his AI, he kept coming back to the same conclusion. The people were being kidnapped because they were in the right place. Not because they were targets.

With 320 MPS going into his personal AI, Matt was a powerhouse of processing power, but he was nothing when compared to the planetary AI.

It was a massive external AI that could burn tens of millions mana in seconds, if fully utilized.

With their best guess, and their only lead, they met with Viscountess Alara and proposed their theory, while showing what little proof they had.

Alara was skeptical, but was willing to direct the planetary AI to run its own simulations with the information they provided. She had had it do so before when the killings and disappearances first started, but the AI had no guidance to go off of, and less information. The lack of data had limited its ability to see patterns.

To all of their shock, the AI agreed with the general idea, and was even able to extrapolate the most likely target locations of the next kidnappings, based on the formula that the other attacks seemed to be following.

The seemingly random locations were only random when looked at one by one, but when plotting them all at once, they made a complex grid across the planet. It intercepted a number of the cities and common passageways for people traveling to the more popular rifts.

It wasn't perfect, but the AI came up with forty-three locations that it believed could be targeted.

Still, it was better than nothing.

Seven days after the second set of disappearances, and with only eight days left to the twenty-two-day countdown imposed by Luna and Kurt, they staked out all the possible locations.

The locations were large enough that they had to enlist outside help to watch them all.

That evening, just as they suspected, a group of five broke curfew and walked through one of the suspected locations, and vanished.

Matt, Liz, and Aster watched the recording from the briefing room in the Viscountess’ castle.

The watcher, one of the Viscountess Tier 15 guards, had caught it all with his AI. As Matt watched, the group all vanished together as they crossed the shadow of a light pole.

Viscountess Alara growled out, “How did they do it?”

Everyone looked to Walter, the guard that had been stationed there.

He shook his head and said, “I felt nothing milady. They were there one moment, and gone the next. I searched the area thoroughly but found no one.”

Matt caught Liz’s eye, then met the dog eye of Aster, who was cradled in her arms, and saw the agreement in their gazes.

That was not a good answer, but they decided to let it go.

The man had reported the information in, even if his spiritual sense hadn’t noticed anything He most likely wasn’t with the kidnappers.

Viscountess Alara wasn’t stupid, and made the same conjecture that Matt did when he watched the video.

“They seemed to vanish as they passed the shadow. That reeks of a Talent.”

Aster yipped what she had noticed. “The temperature was wrong for fog last night, but it lingered around their feet.”

They spent the next few hours dissecting the video, but they didn’t get anything more than speculation regarding the ability. It was a weird enough teleportation method that it could only be an item, cracked skill, or Talent.

Everyone was leaning to the last option, as it made the most sense.

It sadly also explained why people were going missing, though no one came out and said it directly.

Matt had seen enough horror movies about Talents that required sacrifices to get the gist of what was going on.

It, at least if the movies were to be believed, explained the time between actual killings.

In the movies, Talents that required sacrifices were usually limited by strict conditions, or long times between uses.

Matt hadn't looked into real world applications for sacrificial Talents, but he quickly corrected that lack of insight.

The Talents were incredibly strong, but limited. If the movies got right, that is.

What they didn’t get right were the massive variety of ways that such a Talent could manifest.

It also explained why Luna and Kurt said they might need to deal with this again. While the Talents were rare, they were powerful enough that most of the people who got them eventually resorted to using them.

Now, it was just a matter of finding the culprit.

Liz figured that there were at least two people, which he and Aster agreed with. Teleportation was a Talent on its own. How that would fit with a sacrifice Talent in someone below Tier 25, they didn’t know. But they knew Kurt and Luna thought the trio could handle it, so it couldn't be someone that strong.

Besides, the people who were going missing were Tier 7 through Tier 10. None of it suggested that there was a Tier 25 involved, so there had to be at least two people.

They didn’t share their speculation with the Viscountess until after the meeting was over, and they had her alone.

When they left the castle, they redoubled their efforts in investigating the surrounding areas. Matt spent hours using [Earth Manipulation], checking for hidden bases in the lands surrounding the capital city, but found nothing.

As the days ticked down, they only had three days until the next kidnapping, and four days left until Kurt and Luna would step in. Finally, Matt, Liz, and Aster came up with a desperate idea.

They would be the next victims.

If they couldn't find the kidnappers, they would allow themselves to be the next victims.