Chapter 9 - The Hunt Begins Part 1

"Why... Agemo?

Agemo... you need to stop!

...It was you? It was you all along? Why?

Agemo...

Agemo...

I knew it! HAHAHA! So this is who you are! Wonderful!

What have you done to yourself? Have you gone mad?

They're coming, Agemo. They don't like what you've done.

Agemo Miura, chief of the Robotics Division V-21, come with us."

The voices stopped, and he saw a scientist with raven-black hair and multiple bullet wounds lying back against a machine. Several people in black camo uniforms appeared, pointing their guns at him. The scientist laughed, spewing blood as he did so. An elderly man with round, black metal-rimmed glasses appeared in a similar white lab coat.

"Agemo Miura. How low you have fallen," the elderly man said. "You were my best student. Why did you do it? Why create Project O?"

"You could never understand the greatness of what I was pursuing," Agemo laughed.

"It used alien DNA! You're not a god! Sure, you have created prosthetics that feel as real as a human arm. Your discoveries in cybernetic studies have revolutionized the world! Why did you tamper with the human genome? Did you know what you have done? What your test samples have become?" the man roared.

"They are the evolution of mankind. The first of their race: homo superior. Sometimes, evolution just needs a little help in order to evolve," Agemo gasped as blood trickled down his mouth. "I only regret that I don't live to see it. You'll never find them."

"But we can track them using your DNA. You put yourself through the experimental procedure, didn't you?" the old man said as he looked Agemo in the eye.

"HAHAHA! No. You cannot find them. I was the only success, but they will live on. They have my research and will continue my work," Agemo laughed as he was losing feeling in his limbs.

The building began to shake, and the elderly man stared at him in shock and asked aloud, "What have you done?"

"I won't let you take my research when I die. I'm no fool. You think I... I didn't know? The people you secretly work for? Heh. Goodbye, teacher. Thank you for all you've done. I... I...," Agemo began, and everything went dark.

Lu Shu's eyes burst open as he sat up in bed, panting heavily. He put a hand on his forehead and lay back down. It seemed that his past name had triggered some memories. Agemo Miura. Just who was he? The last calendar date he remembered was 2819. Mankind had created flying cars and evolved the internet, able to see a holographic screen from their eyes.

They had even created virtual reality gaming. Prosthetics had evolved, and mankind had even made programmable robots that seemed almost lifelike. Agemo Miura had a prosthetic left eye and was a scientist in charge of programming robots. He had made a breakthrough and released the information to the world. After that, his memory started to fade. He didn't know much more, and those were his strongest memories.

"Just what was that dream?" Lu Shu murmured aloud. He couldn't go back to sleep and decided to cultivate spirit energy for the next hour before dawn.

"Hey Agemo! Over here!" Jiro shouted as Lu Shu and Meng Ce exited the town three hours later.

"Glad you all made it," Gillian nodded. "Today we hunt the Hyperion. I will be riding atop my magical beast. It has the ability to sense the Hyperion. The trail led to Wightwood Forest. If what the young scholar, Agemo, said was true, we might need to go underground. Weapons at the ready. Who knows what we will find once we make our descent or where it will lead us."

Gillian rode a large lizard as big as a horse with black and dull blue scales. It had frills around the back of its head and neck and screeched before heading into the forest. Lu Shu and Meng Ce followed Gillian on their white tiger magical beasts in their full size, while the seven recruits followed them on horseback. As they rode through the forest, faint traces of claw marks, footprints, and paws were present all around them on the ground and trees.

"Remember, the Hyperion are not like magical beasts. They are more feral and always travel in groups. If you see a humanoid, shout and let me and Scholar Jing deal with it. No matter the stage or tier, humanoid Hyperion are vastly superior to those of the same rank. The horde leader is always more humanoid than its monstrous peers. However, this situation is beyond abnormal, so there might be more than one humanoid Hyperion. Leave them to us and stay together," Gillian shouted and saw a large tunnel in the ground. "It seems Scholar Agemo was correct. Be careful now. It will be dark, so use your mana and spirit energy to detect each other and stay together."

"Let them stay together. You just stay close to me," Meng Ce said, and Lu Shu nodded as they followed Gillian into the tunnel. Lu Shu would occasionally take a sip from the gourd hanging on his left side. Inside the gourd was lion wine. It wasn't actually wine, but it did have an amazing taste and improved his spiritual energy flow within his body.

They followed Gillian in the darkness. They didn't travel that far down, only about fifty feet, before following a large, straight tunnel forward at the same elevation. The tunnel was clearly artificially made. The markings left by the Hyperion were no longer faint and more prominent, suggesting that they had no need for subterfuge while traveling underground.

Gillian was feeling worried as they traveled. This was obviously a small army of a few hundred. Just how many humanoids were there? They must have very powerful spirit sensitivity to avoid detection with such a large group.

Stages of cultivation had nothing to do with spirit sensitivity. It only had an influence on the range to manually increase it. People like Lu Shu did not need to grow powerful to sense really faint and far spirit energy levels. That was how he was able to detect the man protecting Ivy Shao in the shadows before he entered the vault.

"Just how far is it going?" Shu asked.

"I'm afraid we will soon be past Wightwood Forest," Meng Ce answered.

"What? I don't get to explore the forest and kill magical beasts?" Shu asked, disappointed.

"You get to kill the Hyperion. They are much better training dummies for you to practice and kill. When the people of the academy leave, we will explore the place the Hyperion tried to visit instead," Meng Ce amended.

"Okay. I'll accept that. Fewer people will have explored it. Good thing I brought several empty journals. I'm gonna record what we find, see, and kill in them. It should serve useful in the future," Shu nodded. "Have you ever killed a Hyperion?"

"Once, a long time ago. I used to join a mercenary group. We had a mission in the far east once. That nation no longer exists now," Meng Ce said sadly. "I was at the fourth stage of Spirit Shaman then. I once thought I was strong. I never considered Spirit Knights as I seldom saw one. I think it was snowing that day. We were supposed to get our payment from the town. What we saw were ruined buildings. We wondered where the people were. I tripped, and then we knew. I had tripped over a severed arm, covered by snow long ago. Only a scavenger party of Hyperion remained."

Meng Ce sighed sadly as they continued down the tunnel. "One of the party came from that town. Blinded by grief, rage, and sorrow, he charged at the Hyperion. We all fought and killed them all. We thought it was over until we saw it, the leader. It took three of the ten of us down with it when it died. They were the weakest three, but the man who came from the town, Benjamin, died. He was the strongest of us, not our leader, but he died because he could not calm his mind. He let his emotions take over and it blinded him, leading him to his death."

Meng Ce stared long and hard at Lu Shu as the tunnel started to elevate. "If you see someone you know and love die, do not let your emotions cloud your judgment. It is a weakness that will end up killing you. Just as you must numb yourself from the guilt of killing others, so too must you numb the feelings you have for others. Your life must take priority. Strangers to the Lu clan do not matter unless they are in-laws. Do not risk your life to save others if you know you cannot win. Heroes are only those who are declared as such after the deed has been done. You must become stronger, Lu Shu, to protect what is yours and attain what you must have."

"How do I increase my soul defense?" Shu asked, as his Eclipse Indestructible Body technique made him nearly indestructible to material attacks from those around his rank and below.

"You are already doing so. Regulating a steady, minimal amount of spirit energy in your body is a form of training your soul defense. The number of people who pursue learning soul attacks is minimal, but there are people who choose to study this path. Most of them are those who are uncomfortable with close-quarter combat, the ideal specialty of all Practitioners," Meng Ce said as they exited the tunnel and continued to follow the tracks.

"What is the difference between a material and soul attack? Do soul attacks really attack the soul?" Shu asked.

"Not exactly. Think of the soul as the source of your spirit energy. Right now, soul attacks are not effective as your Spirit Pulse has not assumed its true form and is still dispersed all over your body. Upon reaching the third rank, you must put a Mystic Stone inside your body or you will never be able to cultivate further," Meng Ce answered. "Before you ask, I allow the seven recruits to begin listening to our conversation about this. They should learn soon, and I don't want them to think we are up to something suspicious."

"Mystic Stone? What is that?" Shu asked after Meng Ce nodded to him after a moment.

"Mystic Stones are crystallized spheres of a planet's spirit energy," Meng Ce said as the recruits became interested and closed in. "Let it be said that mortals are not meant to become immortals. Thus, we borrow the power of the stars, like planets, to become the source of our spirit energy. In a sense, the Mystic Stone becomes like a core inside our body."

"I heard about those," Johannes exclaimed aloud and quickly bowed his head in apology. "Sorry, Mister Scholar. I'm a Practitioner, so I am also very interested in it. Can my friends and I listen too?"

"Sure," Meng Ce smiled. "Passing knowledge onto others is the natural duty of scholars. Now, where was I? Ah, right. You see, Mystic Stones house our spirit energy. They allow Practitioners to cultivate past the third stage and continue their path to immortality. I don't know what it's like for mages, but Mystic Stones become the storage of the spiritual energy in our bodies. Once your Spirit Pulse condenses to reveal its true form, the spirit will place itself inside the Mystic Stone. If the Mystic Stone represents the outer core of a planet, the spirit itself represents the inner core."

Gillian lowered his speed as it was a valuable lesson to his recruits and said, "We will rest here and allow their horses to rest. Please continue to tell them about Mystic Stones. I will water their horses and make sure they are well-rested. If we need to escape, they should be fit for such a task. I don't know where we are, but we seem to be in a hidden valley of some sort. After I feed the horses, I will do some recon to check our surroundings and recheck the trail."