Capítulo 24: The Escape
While Midas was walking away, Andrew stood there, still looking at his hand that he had used to shake Midas' hand. The more he thought about the situation and what happened previously, the more he felt like some things did not make sense.
How could Midas go against an S Ranker like him? Unless… He was also an S Ranker? But if he was an S Ranker, what need would he have to pressure him with other S Rankers? Something wasn't adding up. He felt humiliated, like he had been led by the nose.
"Rico," called Andrew with an unsightly face.
"Yes, boss?" said a short Mexican man who approached. The man's face looked like a rodent's face with warts and discoloration on it and even his somewhat bloated fat body made him seem less than attractive. When he walked he had a hunchback that made him lean forward so when he approached Andrew it was as if he was grovelling.
"Follow them. Take three people with you. Find out where they're going. Bring them back if you can," said Andrew.
"Sure, Boss." said the Mexican, but he was immediately *Pa!* clapped across his ugly face by Andrew.
"What did I say about how you address me when there are no outsiders around?"
"Sorry, My Liege. I'm very Sorry. Please don't hurt me. I won't ever do it again, your highness," said the Mexican, getting on his knees and not daring to look at Andrew's face.
He was trembling visibly and his face was coloured with a mortal fear as if Andrew could unleash unspeakable pain upon him. Even the other Slaves around him started trembling when seeing this.
"Get your dirty face away from me right this instant. And follow them, find out all you can about them."
"Yes my Liege." said the Mexican while bowing again and then he stood up and scurried away. Fascinating to see at this moment would be the fact that the Mexican climbed onto the trees and started swinging across them like a monkey with the utmost agility and speed.
He would later stop and sniff around as if trying to find their scent. The direction he was headed in was the direction Midas and his group had headed in previously. The three others followed in the Mexican's directions, leaving Andrew and his other Slaves at the scene.
"The rest of you, get back to work! I want a castle built before sunset, you hear me?!" said Andrew while turning and walking back towards the Stone Tablet.
"Yes, Lord," said all the Slaves as they ran back frantically to resume whatever they were previously busy with.
In the forest, Midas had a nagging feeling that something was wrong as he kept looking behind him. The other two, wondering what was off, couldn't help but ask him some questions about what just happened.
"Hey, Midas, why didn't we stay there? I didn't even get to fully see the amazing Tablet." asked Aydin.
"Trust me, if we stayed there, YOU would never see anything ever again. Let's speed up." said Midas while increasing his pace. Something was wrong. What was it?
"What do you mean?" asked Julio, easily catching up to Midas' increased pace.
"That guy. His Gift is the Gift of Domination, it's an S Rank Gift and with it, he can enslave people." said Midas with a scalding look that said, 'You do not want to go back there'
"What?!" exclaimed Aydin. But Midas wasn't finished.
"All his friends and buddies… are his Slaves. That means everyone at that camp except for him is a Slave of his. What do you think would have happened if we stayed there?"
"Wait, wait, wait… So you're saying there's someone who's enslaving people in this place? And he already has more than twenty slaves?" said Aydin who was now panicking.
"I even saw some women there. Were they sex slaves?" asked Julio.
"Who knows, maybe. And just then, he was trying to enslave me too. But he failed, and so he let us leave."
"What the fuck? How dare that guy do that?" said Julio, getting infuriated. Even Aydin was angry and slightly scared. A part of Aydin was also even envious. An ability that allowed one to collect workers and underlings, and maybe even women who would throw themselves at your feet? Isn't that every man's romance?
Now that he thought about it… How did Midas fight against an S Rank Skill?
"Yeah, well. I don't think it's over yet. I'm going to try something right now, and I need you guys to excuse me for a second." said Midas, and before they understood the meaning of those words, Midas had already spread his arms to his sides and grabbed the shoulders of both Julio and Aydin.
Julio did not understand why, but he felt like something was different about the world as Midas was touching him. Aydin on the other hand, did not understand any of what was happening and he also did not understand why Midas was suddenly craving some skinship. He looked at Midas with some confusion in his gaze, trying to figure out what the hell was going on inside this man's head.
"It's okay, just keep walking. I hope this works." said Midas. And on they went, with two of the three in a confused state.
The confusion lasted only a few seconds as the rustling of the trees behind them gave away the approach of some people. Midas, Julio and Aydin turned while still connected to each other by Midas' hold and then they saw a dark blob running through the foliage of the trees until it dropped in the position they were in a few seconds ago.
The blob, which was now confirmed to be a ratman-like thing, looked like a rat with a large nose and small disgusting eyes. "It" started sniffing around in that position looking for traces of something. Then later some more rustling followed and three more men ran out from the direction the beast came from, with exhaustion in their breath.
Midas, Julio and Aydin soon realised that they were being followed this whole time.
"Why did you stop?" asked one of the men to the beast.
"I can't catch their scent anymore. It stops here. And I can't see them anywhere around here," said the rat-man beast to the three, causing them to be surprised and then angry. Midas could catch a hint of fear in their anger, which he found interesting.
"What?? What do you mean you can't catch their scent anymore? They only left like 15 minutes ago, and we followed them 5 minutes ago, we should have caught up to them already."
"Yeah, What the fuck Rico!"
"If we get punished, it's all gonna be your fault!"
"Yeah well the scent trail stops here!! So I don't know what you want me to do!" said Rico the rat-man with some fluster and anger. He had no idea how this happened. How dare these incompetent guys point their fingers at him.
"Oh no, our Liege is going to kill us."
"Stop panicking, if the scent stopped here, then we need to spread around and look in the area. They might still be around here," said one of the calmer men.
"What if they teleported? Or maybe one of them can fly and he just took them away… Or maybe what if—"
"Shut up! If you have all this time to waste speculating on what might have happened, then you'd better use it to find them. Let's split up. I'll go North, you go South, you go East, And you go West. Find them, otherwise we will be the ones to suffer for this." said Rico while pointing at the men and delegating tasks.
"Wait, which direction is West?"
"It's that direction! Now fuck off and find them!!"
The trio being searched for currently was watching all of this unfold with a blank look on their face. They were literally 5 metres away from these pursuers and yet they could not be seen at all.
The four idiots, after deciding on their search directions, ended up splitting up.
The trio watched as one of them passed centimetres away from the position they were standing without even noticing that there were people standing there. Midas started laughing, causing Julio and Aydin to panic and hold his mouth, but later on they also realised that this pursuer could not even tell that they were around. He could hear nothing or see nothing.
"Are we invisible?" asked Julio.
"Pfft Hahaha, No. I'll explain later. Let's go," said Midas, turning around and walking off while dragging Julio and Aydin away with him. He made sure to maintain his touch on their shoulders.
"Hey, you can't just show us something like that and expect us to be okay with it" said Aydin, protesting, but Midas merely brushed him off saying things about every man having his secrets and like that they left the scene.
Like this, Midas had confirmed that his Passive Skill [Hidden Divinity] not only had the ability to hide his information from the world, but it could also hide any information he deems worth hiding by isolating it from the world. Actually, the reason why Midas was unaffected by Aydin and Andrew's abilities had a lot to do with [Hidden Divinity].
In order to understand what that meant, and how that was possible, Midas had previously asked himself a question. What was Information?
The dictionary definition of information is as follows: "Information: facts provided or learned about something or someone. What is conveyed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of things."
Information is essentially data that has meaning. And considering the fact that all existence has some meaning, then in essence, all existence is meaningful data. From the energy that exists, to matter and antimatter. Every particle, every wave of energy carries information in it, and thus could be influenced by his Skill.
His [Hidden Divinity] Skill had the ability to obscure information itself? Did that not mean he could essentially change the reality around him, he could maybe even change himself?
As Midas thought this far in the early hours of the morning next to a sleeping Julio, he decided on a direction to apply this in and test it out as a hypothesis. Midas had tried applying it to his Index and it worked, he had effectively created a fake representation of himself that managed to fool Julio and even fooled that little girl Mia.
Midas decided to take his experiments one step further, by hiding himself, as in the "information that recorded his whole existence". He essentially willed his Skill to hide any impression of his form in his surrounding universe, and then he felt it.
His whole universe changed. He was standing on the floor, but his steps left no impression or footprint. He walked out towards Julio and waved in his face, but the sleeping Julio saw and felt nothing and didn't even react. Midas, at that moment, released no sound, no energy, nothing. It was almost like he stopped existing.
After testing this much, he stopped his experiments and continued ruminating on any other applications. As he looked at the sleeping Julio, he realised that maybe he could take it a step further by hiding the information of other people too.
At the Northern Clearing, Aydin's attempt at trying to copy Midas' information was effectively Midas' attempt at testing the limits of what it meant to hide information.
When Aydin touched Midas and activated his Skill, the medium of information was met with: Nothing. Absolutely Nothing at all. No information. And thus, Aydin could not [Mimic] Midas' form, Skills or abilities and was left dazed and confused.
The same thing happened with Gwen. How could her [Mesmerising Eyes] mesmerise Nothingness?
The same thing happened with Andrew. How could Andrew [Enslave] Nothingness?
It was obvious that their Skill activations would fail.
But Midas, after his extensive testing, knew that this was not as overpowered as it seemed. Actually, there were loopholes, whether it be in his understanding or use-casing of the Skill.
Midas thought this might be because the Skill was only at Level 1, but after thinking about it some more, he realised that it wasn't the Skill that was the problem, but his own Understanding of it.
The Index merely existed to evaluate the Chosen, so the Skill level was merely an evaluation at the capabilities of Skill activation. If he wanted to better use his Skill he would have to better understand what it all meant.
With higher understanding, there would naturally come a higher application and thus a better ability at protecting his livelihood and the things he cared about.
"Damn it…Where do we go now?" asked Julio, who was bummed out after having his first home stolen away from him.
"I don't know. I don't even care about all that. I'm still thinking about the fact that We fucking disappeared in front of those guys like 30 minutes ago," said Aydin in exasperation and awe, still stealing glances at Midas now and then.
As a fraudster and a thief, that kind of disappearing Skill would be perfect for him. Just thinking about it and the amount of trouble he would have gotten himself out of if he had it had him salivating.
He wanted that Skill so badly.
"Yeah, Midas I'm actually confused too. I've seen your Index, and as far as I remember, you don't have an Invisibility Skill," said Julio, scratching his chin.
"Have you seen his Index?!" said Aydin, shocked beyond words. His eyes turned aggressively towards Midas as if saying 'What about me? I want to see it too!'
Midas laughed awkwardly, and figured he might as well start playing game for real now. That Andrew guy thought he could send his Slaves out to capture and bring them back? Midas would play with him from now on.
Of course, Midas did not trust Aydin. As far as he was concerned considering Aydin's history of crime and character, Aydin was not someone who could stay still in one place for long. He would show Aydin the fake Index just the same as he did with Julio and keep observing his actions from now on.
With regards to his performance, he already had an excuse for this. And he could not trust these two at all. His fake Index would be the only Index that others saw from now on. So he decided to tell them half truths.
"Eh, Julio, come on… I mean you've seen my Index so you know that I have a Skill called [Memory of the World]. What I did was augment the World's memory to make the world forget about us. To any outside observer, we do not exist."
Aydin felt his head spin. What kind of cheat is that?
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