The Path of Ascension Chapter 401

Chapter 401

 

Watching the raid in reverse was a unique experience.

Things started normally with the guards arresting people, but as they watched further and time rewound, they got to watch as the scientists working at the facility destroyed evidence as fast as they could. More interesting than all of that was the person four rooms over who shoved various boxes, bottles, and papers into a spatial bag that had appeared out of nowhere.

Melinda fiddled with the pillar and together they rewatched the event, but this time, wholly focused onto the area.

The scientist was, in fact, dumping items into the bag. But once he was finished and just before he was going to get captured by a team of guards clearing room by room, he clapped his hand and the bag vanished.

That explained how the bag had appeared out of nowhere, but not what had happened to the bag.

Everyone’s eyes went to Allie, whose grin was feral. “How interesting.”

She led everyone to the room in question with a confident swagger that vanished the moment she was in the room.

“I don’t feel anything.”

She drew out her dagger and started cutting through space, but didn’t find anything.

Matt checked the signature of the scientist as well as the bag he had been using, but both were only Tier 20, so it wasn’t like the item was a higher Tier than them and escaping their notice that way.

Harvest Moon’s perpetual frown deepened and started to glow, but even his checks didn’t seem to find anything and his already dark mood blackened further.

Matt even activated his Meld just in case the effect was a Domain-based one, but like everything else, it didn’t make the bag appear.

Melinda looked around before walking out of the room. “Let’s keep watching.”

Together they returned to the pillar and watched the raid continue in reverse, and eventually watched as the facility returned to normal operations.

It was then that Matt noticed Melinda and Harvest Moon staring at him.

“What?”

Melinda met Harvest Moon’s gaze for a long moment before slowly speaking. “It’s one thing to know something, but it’s another to see it in action. Last time we used the device going back over a week was… How should I put this?”

Harvest Moon snorted. “It put me on my ass. I had to channel a ton of mana into the device while also refilling my own reserves, and I gave out before the device only able to push us back slightly over a week.”

Melinda coughed slightly. “I was going to say it was very expensive, but that is also true. This device is very old and is Talent-made, which makes it less efficient than it might otherwise be. We had to requisition more mana stones when we used it. It’s just impressive to see you manage this is all.”

Despite everything, Matt felt his mood lighten as the complement landed. It was rare for people to appreciate just how much mana he was used to throwing around, and the skill it took to do so.

“If the feedback I’m getting from the pillar is accurate, I can push time back another week or so at most.”

Melinda closed her eyes for a moment as she let out a sigh, before hugging Matt as hard as she could for a moment before letting go. “That might just be the best news I’ve heard in the last year. Maybe longer, but really, everything before that feels like a dream.”

What came next was far less nice as they got front row seats to the operation of the blood magic facility.

Things were far worse than they had initially thought. In just the week they were able to see before the image started to become impossible to view, thanks to distortion, the facility nearly killed over a dozen low Tiers in their experiments. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, only one actually died thanks to the same scientists that were hurting them having a similar amount of healing abilities.

The scientists seemed to be working on five different projects, each of them somehow more horrible than the last.

One team was working on making a cold a far more debilitating disease, which if released, could cripple a world’s medical facilities even if the actual sickness was survivable.

A second group took turns repeatedly infecting their subjects with a plague before partially healing them with more conventional methods, trying to breed more drug-resistant plagues.

A third seemed to be working on a plague that, from the tests they could see, limited fertility in both men and women.

The fourth was working on the mental inhibitors plague which made people far more liable to take suggestions, even after healed.

Melinda and Harvest Moon took special note of the tests they saw that team perform and used the pillar to ensure they recorded every detail they could.

The final group seemed to be working on a method in which a bloodline’s natural powers were amplified. In and of itself that was a fairly ordinary thing to look into; Liz’s bloodline research facility was working with a dozen other facilities on that same effect, but this facility did so by extracting a person’s blood and turning it into potions.

Potions which they then fed back to their prisoners.

Potions that made the mortals start to transform into their bloodline forms, but without the magical effects that gave them two distinct bodies.

Potions that forced the body to rapidly grow and change in incredibly painful ways.

It was also lethal in one case, where a man’s skull split open when he started turning into a deer as the antlers failed to manifest, and he used his transforming fingers to puncture the vulnerable flesh.

It made Matt sick to see the scientist rushing in to try and heal the man. They failed, but he could tell it had been a close call, as they tried to battle the potion’s effect and the damage was constantly being done to his transforming body.

That baffled Matt as from what they could see, even the worst researcher at the facility could have made themselves fabulously wealthy as a healer with their skills.

Liz must have noticed his look because she sighed. “It’s not that surprising. I’d bet most of these were in fact healers at some point. Some people are always wanting to push the limits of their powers, even if it’s distasteful or outright illegal.”

Melinda nodded her agreement. “That would fit our last raid. Lots of former healers turned to experiments after being contacted by a mysterious organization, but others were simply researchers who were willing to put aside their morals to test without limits. According to the people we interrogated last time, the leadership was always willing to test things so long as they involved blood magic in some way.”

Susanne gestured at the room around them. “These people are obviously well-funded. Any chance that funding isn’t from the Empire, but rather another Great Power?”

Harvest Moon shook his head. “Anything is possible, but that is unlikely. I doubt the Emperor would have allowed things to progress this far if there were outside influences acting within our borders. While this is bad, hidden secret research facilities aren’t that uncommon. A lot of people want to push science for a variety of reasons, both good and ill, and those reasons sometimes go against the law so they go to black sites like this. That isn’t to say this is unimportant, just that the odds are more likely of it being done by someone within the Empire than without.”

“Where is Manny? I asked to talk to him when we were at the Capital, but he wasn’t there,” Matt asked.

Harvest Moon huffed. “If the Emperor didn’t feel fit to inform you, then I won’t tell.”

Melinda burst his bubble. “Moon doesn’t know either. When this started and the Emperor put me in charge, he said there was something he needed to do and he wouldn’t be around for a while. Where to, we don’t know, but that was over a year ago. And as far as I know, he’s been out of contact since.”

Matt frowned, not having expected that.

Melinda, however, took that differently and looked on in concern. “Is there something else wrong?”

Matt waved her off. “It’s nothing, sorry. Just lost in my own thoughts.”

However, his dismissal didn’t work nearly as well on Aster, and he felt her probing him through their bond.

When she didn’t find anything, she asked, “What?”

Matt tried to put off her curiosity, but she wasn’t so easily dissuaded, and that got everyone else interested.

Finally, Matt decided it wasn’t any more of a secret than his using the time reversal device had been.

“I stumbled on the fourth part of my Aspect and wanted to talk to someone with a bit more experience, who also knows me really well.”

That shocked everyone, Aster most of all.

She flicked him on the side with her tail. “What the shit!? We’ve been here for days, and you never mentioned it? I’m actually hurt.”

Matt gestured to Harvest Moon. “And without a higher Tier here to block anyone from seeing or hearing me, there was no way I was going to mention that.”

Aster growled at him. “You may be right, but I’m mad at you. When we are done with this, you have to spill.”

Allie stomped her foot. “Yeah! I can’t believe you beat both me and Zack.”

Matt was going to say something else when Harvest Moon coughed slightly and removed his hands from Melinda’s ears. “We have someone who hasn’t finished their Intent yet. Watch your words.”

Melinda glared at the older man, but congratulated Matt with everyone else.

“Sorry, I didn’t use the word for it for so he wouldn’t have to do that.”

Placated, Melinda looked beyond the walls of the facility. “It’s fine. Anyway, it’s time to bring in the rest of the team while we talk to the former prisoners, captured researchers, and guards alike.”

Before she could put action to words, Matt held out a hand. “While we have some privacy, do you have a spare storage ring?”

Melinda looked to Harvest Moon, who plucked a ring off his finger and handed it over after transferring the content to a second ring.

Matt pretended he didn’t hear the grumbles.

Instead, he dumped the mana stones he had been making with his spare regeneration from Frederic’s ring into Harvest Moon’s. He was even nice enough to make the mana stones with Harvest Moon’s mana signature by using his ring, so the higher Tier wouldn’t have an issue absorbing them next time he needed to use the device.

Not that he wouldn’t be petty at the huffyness Moon displayed. In retaliation, Matt handed the ring to Melinda instead. “This should help.”

Her eyebrows went into her hairline as she peered inside, but Matt was far more entertained by Harvest Moon’s small sputter as he checked it.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Served the old man right.

Before they exited the room, Harvest Moon took back possession of the time rewinding device. In just seconds, the facility was swarming with the Imperial Health and Safety Investigators.

A teenage-looking man reported to Melinda and was given the time reversal recording before he started filling Melinda in on the former prisoners’ situations. They were stable, but some would need long-term observation to ensure that nothing was missed.

As they had seen, the facility had been working on long-germinating and hard to detect plagues.

That brought Matt’s attention back to the present.

Melinda spent some time interrogating Count Rilki, but the man didn’t have anything more to add to what he had already told them. He was much more cooperative with Melinda than them, but that might have been because of Melinda’s easy command of Tier 30s, who responded with instant obedience to any and all orders she had.

Matt might have been an Ascender and in the military, but he had rarely seen anyone command such respect, and had to wonder just what Melinda had been doing in recent years. Let alone how she had advanced so quickly, given the slow pace at which she had been growing her Tier 3 Talent during the war.

They kept in touch through messages or the occasional meal together when they were on the same planet and had free time lined up, but she seemed like a whole different person than either the young team leader from when they were kids, or the learning healer when they were in the war.

The current Melinda was… Experienced was the best word Matt had for it. He also suspected that this was hardly the first time responsibility had been dumped on her shoulders. He could tell that she had lived a lot more years in the last few decades than he and the rest of the realm had experienced.

The facility guards they then interrogated were, sadly, less helpful, as they didn’t admit to knowing anything not already in their reports or that they had seen in the time reversal view.

Liz seemed placid through it all, but Matt could tell she was growing irritated at not finding anything more directly useful.

Matt expected Melinda to go and interrogate the scientist to find out about the disappeared spatial bag after the guards, but instead she started decontamination procedures and ran all of the guards through it as well as them.

It wasn’t fun, but when they were done, they were at least sure they wouldn’t be harboring anything dangerous for any Empire civilians they might come in contact with in the next few years.

From there, the captured civilians were brought through and cleaned and healed of any remaining or lingering ailments they had been left with thanks to the raid.

The Imperial Health and Safety Investigators found nine hidden viruses or plagues that the guard’s healers hadn’t been able to notice or hadn’t been able to heal. Worst of all was when Melinda had to break the news to the victims that they would need to remain in isolation for at least a year.

They took it better than he would have, at least on the surface. The prisoners just seemed grateful to no longer be poked and prodded by anyone, but Matt and everyone else could see it in their eyes that they didn’t really expect to ever be truly free.

Matt had faith in Melinda and even Harvest Moon, but knew the next year would be a better situation than they had left. Nothing would remove the trauma they had undergone except a mind wipe, and all of them had refused that and the rest of the populations needed to be protected.

It was only then that Melinda turned her attention to the prisoners.

By and large, they seemed resigned to their fates and none of them seemed willing to play hard ball. At the same time, they didn’t actually know much beyond their projects or when they had been recruited.

They did learn that the facility had been in Kelispo’s gas giant for only two hundred years, and it had been moved there from somewhere else, but none of the workers they captured knew where that was.

They did get some interesting information when Melinda interrogated the scientist who had been stuffing items into the spatial bag.

“What do you know about the bag that disappeared?” Melinda’s question came after other more innocuous questions and made the scientist flinch.

“I don—”

Melinda glared at the man. “I’m trying to be polite but if you don’t cooperate, I will get nasty fast. Are you willing to talk or not? This is your final chance.”