Chapter 44: Posture
[Hidden Clues completed. You gained 80,000 EXP.]
[Hidden requirement fulfilled, Return the component intact. You gained a special reward of 120,000 EXP.]
[Reward obtained: Extract one ability from the Aberration. ]
[Note: The Aberration is a special psionic driven entity. Some extractable skills have been automatically adjusted to match your profession.]
[Random extraction in progress...]
[Extraction complete.]
[Please choose two of the following five abilities.]
[1. Painful Shriek: Skill. Consumes 90 Stamina. Release a mental scream at nearby enemies, dealing 132 + Mystery x 1.2 mental damage, with a chance to inflict Fear, Confusion, and Deafness. Damage and probability decline with distance.]
[2. Wide Range Perception: Skill. Consumes 3 Stamina per second. Once activated, base Perception increases by 20.]
[3. Energy Vision: Feat. Grants Energy Vision, allowing you to directly observe the rough outlines of magical flow and life energy. Perception +12. Immune to energy illusions and optical invisibility.]
[4. Hardening: Skill. Consumes 60 Stamina. Energy covers and strengthens your skin or clothing, resisting 40 damage for 5 seconds. Agility decreases by 20 percent while active.]
[5. Heavy Rampart Charge: Skill. Consumes 55 Stamina. Charge in a target direction up to 15 meters, dealing 80 + Strength x 2 physical damage to the first target hit.]
Hodell stared at the interface, a little surprised.
So the unknown reward was this.
The Aberration had not been a true living creature, just a psionic driven shell. That meant he had no chance of obtaining something absurd like [Inanimate Mind]. The system had adjusted the reward pool to fit his current profession, which made sense. Energy Simulation was flexible enough to imitate all kinds of effects in theory. As long as it could be understood as energy, there was room to force it through his own ability.
At the moment, his greatest weakness remained obvious. He lacked a reliable mental attack, and he lacked a more intuitive way to read hidden energy structures. Wide Range Perception was useful, but it overlapped too much with what he already had. Hardening was decent, but it clashed with the way he fought. Heavy Rampart Charge was even less attractive. His Strength was not where he wanted it to be, and he had no intention of turning himself into a human battering ram.
Painful Shriek would broaden his options.
Energy Vision, though, was too good to pass up.
It was not just the +12 Perception. Immunity to energy illusions and optical invisibility could save his life.
Without hesitating any longer, Hodell made his choice.
[You have obtained the skill Painful Shriek.]
[You have obtained the feat Energy Vision.]
A faint burning sensation spread through his eyes at once, followed by a subtle pressure, as if he had stared too long into a harsh light. He closed them for a moment, then opened them again.
The world changed.
It did not become unreal. Instead, another layer quietly overlaid itself on top of normal sight. Fine traces of mana, life force, and psionic residue appeared as half transparent flows, dimly luminous and perfectly integrated with the physical world. It was not distracting. It felt more like he had grown a new sense overnight.
Hodell did not test it immediately. He had time for that later.
For now, he uncapped another high efficiency energy supplement and drank it down in one go. A thin stream of source energy began to recover inside him, slow but steady.
Outside the room, the temporary safe house was locked down tighter than a military vault. General Administration operatives had layered defense after defense around it. Anyone who dared make a move now would be walking straight into a prepared kill zone.
Then the inner door slid open with a soft sound.
Arthur walked in.
As a member attached to Third Squad, he had passed the checkpoints without difficulty.
"Ryan," he said gently. "Do you have a moment? Somewhere private."
Hodell looked up at him for a beat, then rose without a word and headed for a small soundproof interview room connected to the inner chamber.
The moment the door sealed behind them, the atmosphere changed.
Arthur wasted no time.
"The component," he said in a low voice, his tone stripped of all warmth. "You cannot turn it in intact."
Hodell leaned one shoulder against the wall. "Why?"
Arthur's reply came fast, like he had rehearsed it.
"It suffered latent damage during the battle. It looks stable on the outside, but if the General Administration runs it through a high precision inspection process, its internal energy balance will collapse. Best case, the data is destroyed. Worst case, it explodes in the appraisal center itself."
He stepped closer, voice hardening.
"When that happens, the blame will not land on you personally. It will land on the entire Field Department. On your squad. On Kyle."
He let that sink in for a heartbeat.
"Let it fail naturally. The report will say the evidence was compromised during the operation. Your squad still gets credit. The chain of command stays calm. This matter ends cleanly."
Arthur lowered his voice further.
"If you insist on handing it over in this state, and something happens inside the General Administration, do you really think the higher ups will trust your explanation over the consequences?"
Hodell watched him quietly.
Then he straightened.
"Commissioner Arthur," he said, almost mildly. "You are remarkably certain for someone who has never examined it."
Arthur's expression tightened.
Hodell kept going.
"The appraisal center has not touched it. The technical division has not opened it. Yet you already know it will destabilize under testing, and you can even describe the process in detail."
He took half a step forward.
"That is interesting."
A small twitch appeared at the corner of Arthur's eye.
Hodell's voice remained calm, but each word landed with clean, deliberate force.
"What you fear is not instability. It is the opposite. You are afraid it is stable enough to survive inspection. Stable enough to reveal what is inside. Stable enough to point toward certain people, certain places, or certain methods that should remain buried."
Arthur's face slowly darkened.
"I don't know what you're implying."
"I'm not implying anything," Hodell said. "I'm saying it plainly."
He met Arthur's gaze without blinking.
"The people who intercepted us fought to the death over that component. They did not do that for a piece of junk about to self destruct. They did it because it contains something valuable. Something worth killing for."
His voice turned colder.
"And now you are asking me to make it disappear. For the same reason."
Arthur inhaled sharply.
"You have no evidence," he said through clenched teeth.
Hodell gave a faint smile.
"Do you?"
Arthur went still.
Hodell tilted his head slightly.
"Do you have evidence that it will self destruct? Or were you planning to help it along yourself? Here, inside the General Administration, where everyone is already watching for the next betrayal?"
He reached out and tapped Arthur lightly in the center of the chest.
"The scent of your energy is not clean. If I include that in my report, do you think anyone will be interested in following the trail?"
Arthur's composure finally cracked.
For the first time, genuine alarm surfaced in his eyes.
Then, just as quickly, he changed tactics.
He reached inside his coat and withdrew a deep blue prism. Energy drifted inside it in quiet, layered waves.
"Ryan," Arthur said, forcing his breathing back under control. "Do you know what your problem really is?"
Hodell said nothing.
Arthur lifted the prism.
"You came from a place like Muai County. You clawed your way into a top academy. You made it into the Rapid Response Department. That kind of climb takes talent, yes, but talent alone isn't what decides who goes farther."
He turned the prism slowly between two fingers, letting its blue glow play across the walls.
"What you lack is not ability. What you lack is access."
Arthur's voice smoothed out again, becoming almost persuasive.
"I can give you resources. Money. Equipment. Lists. Channels. Promotion opportunities. Independent operation authority. All the things people like us know how to move quietly."
He studied Hodell's face, then smiled in a way that made the room seem smaller.
"And if material things are not enough, there are other forms of enjoyment. I can arrange people. Beautiful ones. Obedient ones. Mages, Physics, whatever you prefer."
He let the next line drop like a private indulgence.
"Even fox blood hybrids. Rare stock. Expensive. But for you, I can make it happen."
For the first time in the conversation, actual disgust crossed Hodell's face.
Arthur noticed, but misunderstood it.
He pressed the prism closer.
"Inside this are family spells and restricted notes that never reach the open market. Black market bidders would kill for a chance at this. You trade me the component, I give you the prism, and I handle the aftermath as transport damage."
He smiled again.
"You gain power. Third Squad stays safe. Everybody wins."
Hodell glanced at the prism.
Then he looked up and asked, very suddenly, "What exactly does that component do to the soul?"
Arthur froze.
Hodell's eyes did not move.
"Memory tampering? Thought implantation? Control?"
Arthur's breathing hitched.
For a second, his expression emptied out.
Then panic flashed through it so quickly it would have been invisible to anyone less observant.
"Wh what are you talking about?" he snapped.
Hodell did not rescue him.
He just kept looking.
That silence was worse than accusation.
Arthur's emotional state began to slip so badly that even his energy field rippled from the turbulence.
"You know too much," he said at last, voice rough and thin. "There are things you should never have started touching. Give me the component. Take the prism. Walk away. This is the last chance you will get."
"Otherwise?" Hodell asked.
Arthur's jaw tightened.
"Otherwise you will regret it."
Hodell gave a small, humorless laugh.
"I already do. Just not for the reasons you think."
Then he reached out, pressed the switch, and opened the soundproof door.
The dismissal was clean enough to feel like a slap.
Arthur stood there for half a second, staring at him with naked resentment.
Then he turned and left in a near stumble, the posture of a man trying to preserve dignity while retreating in defeat.
Pathetic.
The rest of the night inside the Oluson General Administration burned bright as day.
Corridors stayed lit. Panels remained active. Duty officers moved back and forth like sleepless gears in a machine that had decided it could not afford to stop.
By this point, no one serious still believed this was a routine local case.
A special investigation task force, Dust Purge, was officially assembled under emergency authority.
Its objectives were simple on paper and ugly in practice.
First, identify the attackers and their origins.
Second, determine the real purpose of the seized component and why an armed faction had been willing to go to war over it.
Because he had been one of the earliest people to connect the scattered clues into something coherent, Hodell was assigned to the core archive analysis group.
When he entered the office area, stacks of reports, route approvals, fluctuation analyses, and internal records were already waiting for him.
The General Administration was full of holes.
That much was clear now.
The School had infiltrators.
Some other hidden force had infiltrators too.
And those were only the factions he knew existed.
He sat down and began sorting through the material in front of him. Logistics chains. transport timing. Water contamination reports. Psionic residue analyses. Soul stone files. Emergency dispatch patterns. Names. Signatures. Departments. Permission calls.
The A rank mission text lingered in the back of his mind like a second pulse.
Cancer of Civilization.
When the thief has the mold for the key.
Hodell tapped the desk lightly with one finger as he arranged the threads in his head again and again, looking for a point where the web tightened instead of spreading.
Then someone stopped at his desk.
He looked up.
A woman in General Administration uniform stood there with a stack of files in her arms. Her posture was neat. Her expression was calm. He recognized her after a second, she had been there before, back when he had checked the database for information on the soul stone.
"Specialist Ryan," she said. "I've brought the latest report batch."
He had requested daily investigation summaries earlier, and the request had been granted without much resistance.
"Put them there," he said.
She set the files down carefully.
Her fingertips brushed the top page, then paused.
"The way you handle clues is unusual," she said. "Most people would not think along your lines."
Hodell's eyes narrowed a little.
"Everyone has their own method."
She pointed to one of the folders. "This one contains the latest soul stone analysis. There are still some blank spots in the General Administration's data. You may see something in it."
He did not open it.
Instead, he looked straight at her.
"What are you trying to get me to find?"
The woman smiled faintly.
"No hidden meaning. Just a routine handover."
Hodell leaned back slightly in his chair.
"Testing me?"
Her smile did not change, but she did not answer the question directly either.
Instead, she let her gaze travel over him, from his eyes to his ears to the lines of his shoulders and arms, as if comparing what she saw to a description only she knew.
"I've read your file," she said. "Muai County. Admitted into Liuli Cloud Dream Academy at the last possible stage. Directly selected into the Rapid Response Department after reform."
Her tone was light, almost conversational.
"An unusual path."
Hodell said nothing.
She looked at him a moment longer.
Then, very softly, "Your posture is strange."
That made him pause.
She tilted her head slightly, watching him with quiet curiosity.
"Not wrong," she added. "Just different. The way you sit, the way you turn before people finish speaking, the way your eyes settle on exits and hands before faces. It feels less like training and more like instinct."
A beat passed.
"Am I imagining it," she asked, "or are you always preparing to become someone else?"
.....
[If you don't want to wait for the next update, read 50 chapters ahead on P@treon.]
[[email protected]/FanficLord03]