บท 239: 236: A Plague of Phantoms XX
I let out a loud groan as I finished making the fifteenth mana crystal of the day for the type of evo that we were producing currently at Moldworks. Three days had passed since my birthday party and things were moving at light speed at Sho'lajah and even that didn't seem like it was moving fast enough.
Grandpa, Bo, and Iris dove into making the second mana train and the cars for both as soon as they finished their food. I ended up setting them up in the abandoned workshop that I acquired at the same time as the apartment. It looked like it had originally been made to house stagecoaches at one point but over the last three days Grandpa has turned it into a personal workshop for him. While he said that it only took a few chemicals and some mana in order to make the train cars, he didn't tell me that said chemicals weren't that common outside of the United States…correction, Zeonic States. So I had to have Jane order a couple dozen gallons of each chemical. They were delivered this morning.
It took Madilyn and I almost two days to finalize the list of evos that we would be making. While not all of them had official type names, we were planning to make at least eight different types of evos to present at Evo-cution. Jane and the others at the shop were working on making pamphlets and presentations for each evo. Currently I knew very little about several of the evos we would be making since they were brain childs made to counter and improve on several evos that Madilyn suspected that Justice Technologies would be presenting as well. Out of the eight that we were making the only one that I has made before was the Ogarai.
"By the gods Chase! How many of these are you going to make?" Astrid groaned, mostly from exhaustion. I looked over at Astrid with a smirk.
She was sitting on a chair in the corner of Moldwork's specimen storage room next to the door. Damon was leaning against a nearby table with his arms crossed and a bored look on his face. Alberto was standing next to him, looking just as exhausted as Astrid did but trying his best to hide it. The reason for Alberto and Astrid's exhaustion was I had already drained mana from the both of them. Something I wasn't sure I could really do until two days ago. It was actually pretty easy, like giving mana but in the reverse.
"A lot. Ogarai are going to make the bulk of the evos that I'll be selling at Evo-cution, I currently only have enough cores for forty of them and that's after two days of work." I replied. Alberto frowned at that response.
"Didn't that Justice woman say that you were originally only going to make ninety of those things? That's almost half!" Alberto exclaimed.
"The key word there is originally. We had to redo the numbers after my laboratory was destroyed but if there are no delays we should be able to pump out about a hundred and twenty evos before Evo-cution." I replied. Astrid's eyebrows furrowed at that response.
"How? You only have thirty of those tanks here and even of all of your evos only had a gestation period of a few days the most you could probably get out of that is maybe a hundred." Astrid said.
"That would be true of Madilyn hadn't been so free with my money…" I grumbled and looked away from everyone.
After I told Madilyn about Grimm-Guard destroying the laboratory and all the gestation tanks inside she informed me that it would be alright because she had ordered three more large gestation tanks the day before we came back from the royal palace. With those tanks being able to hold five mid-sized evos apiece that brought my total number of tanks up to forty-five, technically.
"Whatever…" Damon griped and pointed to the clock on the wall above my head. "We've been here for hours watching you make your crystal marbles! How much longer until we are done?"
"Not much longer, I'm almost out again." I said to Damon.
I walked over to glass cabinet at the back of the room and opened it, placing the new mana core in a jar filled with sterilization fluids marked: Ogarai B2X9. It was the fortieth jar of its kind on that shelf, with each jar being no bigger than a small mason jar. The cabinet had eight shelves and each shelf had similar jars on each shelf though the markings on the jars changed for every shelf. I wanted to make at least fifty Ogarai so that shelf had the most jars, the other shelves varied in number.
"God's I hate letting you drain my mana. Feels wrong…" Damon grumbled. Astrid frowned and slapped Damon on his arm.
"You can't complain, you're getting two evos out of this while I'm only getting one!" Astrid grumbled. Alberto sighed and looked away from everyone.
"At least you two are getting paid to be here." Alberto grumbled. Both Astrid and Damon winced, remembering that Alberto was bound by a duel pact to be here.
"Well you made your bed Alberto, now you have to lie in it." I said, completely ignoring the mood of the room. Alberto frowned at me initially then sighed and shook his head.
"You are right…complaining will not change things." Alberto said.
I turned back around to face the group and then looked down at my farm crystal. I had about fifty percent mana left after making that last mana crystal. Thanks to Alberto, Damon and Astrid I managed to keep my mana above critical levels while making the new mana crystals. I always drained mana from one of them once my mana reached about fifty percent. I did this for two reasons. To spread false information about how much mana it costs to make my shaped evos since the three of them, especially Alberto, were probably reporting everything that they saw here to their families. Also to maximize how mana crystals I could make in a day. The more I made with their mana the less I had to tap my evos for mana.
To say I had only made forty mana crystal cores in the last three days would be a lie though. In actuality I had made more than eighty. I used my classmates mana in order to make the mana crystal cores for the evos that I will be presenting at Evo-cution and then once they were tapped out for the day and gone I started tapping my evos for mana to make cores for personal projects. I knew it was sneaky and backhanded and totally inefficient but this tactic was also in the name of spreading false information, on how long it takes to make large quantities of evos.
"Well I'm low again. Damon I'll take your mana and then you all can leave for the day." I said as I held my hand out to Damon. He grumbled to himself but took my hand and then gritted his teeth.
Taking mana was rather easy. I just channeled a stream of mana into someone's body and sought out their farm crystal. I had to be careful to not let my consciousness merge with any evos that the splicer might have inside their crystal but once I had a connection I yanked all my mana back into my body, basically sucking all the mana out of them in one strong yank. Astrid described the sensation feeling similar to jumping into freezing water while having being concussed.
"Gods above that's vile!" Damon grumbled as I drained about eighty-five percent of his mana. This put me at about eighty-eight percent, not great but then again Damon did have the least amount of mana in his group.
"Okay. We're done for the day." I said as I let go of his hand.
"Finally!" Damon exclaimed then turned and headed straight for the door. He took one step and nearly collapsed as his knees buckled. I choked back a laugh as Astrid and Alberto both rushed over to keep him from falling.
"Are you ever going to learn? You need to give your body a minute to get used to the mana loss!" Astrid griped.
"I forgot! I just wanted out of this damn room!" Damon grumbled. Alberto and Astrid each took a side and draped his arms over their shoulders to help carry him.
"Come on, we'll help you outside but I'm not carrying all the-way back to our dorm." Alberto said.
I watched the trio as they walked out of the specimen storage room and straight into the main production floor. Now that they were gone I could pop out a couple mana crystals quickly instead of slowing down the process for them. For the next half hour I used most of the mana I got from Damon to create five more mana crystals.
I had actually learned quite a few new things about shaping in the last couple days. Shaping was like any other skill, the more mana crystal cores I created the better I got at making them. Which meant I could make them faster and with less mana, surprisingly that didn't affect the quality of the mana crystal cores. So I could now create five mana crystal cores in a half hour using only twenty-eight percent of my mana, leaving me sixty percent. Ten of that coming from Damon.
As I placed the fifth mana crystal core inside its jar in the cabinet I heard a knock on the door behind me. I turned and saw Alberto standing in the doorway.
"I thought you left already." I said calmly as I shut the cabinet.
"We did. When we got back to the dorms I pretended I left something and came back…" Alberto said then glanced over his shoulder. Just outside the small room Exotic, from Jiggles Ogarai squad stood about ten feet away watching Damon from behind a tank. "…I need to talk to you about something…privately."
"Follow me…" I said as I walked past him and headed into Moldworks production floor.
Alberto stayed close as I lead us through the many tanks, all of which were currently full with prototypes of a varying evos. I had made a couple of each type of evo to make sure none lf them would end up like the primordial. I stopped in front of one tank in particular and looked at the readouts.
"What did you want to talk about?" I asked as I checked up on the evo's biometrics.
"I said privately." Alberto said.
I leaned down and placed a hand on the floor, channeling mana into it. Dozens of small runes glowed around the base of the tank we stood in front of and a axiom spell sigil formed above the tank. A shimmering field formed around the tank and us, that obscured us and blocked any sound from getting past it. Every single gestation tank had these runes around them. Alberto looked surprised as he spun around.
"Private enough?" I asked. Alberto looked to me and nodded, taking a deep breath before he spoke.
"I wanted to talk to you about…"
"The Lowell Titan you used during our duel." I interrupted, havkng already guessed what this was about. He gasped slightly. Worry, fear, and guilt all present on his face.
"Yes…" Alberto confirmed. I channeled mana into my void pocket enchanted ring and pulled out the crystal core that Bone-lasher ripped from the corpse of said Lowell Titan and tossed it to Alberto. He caught it in mid air and looked it over.
"It wouldn't happen to have something to do with that…would it?" I asked. Alberto looked confused as he looked at the crystal.
"What's this?" He asked as he held it up.
"A farm crystal…Bone-lasher pulled it from your Lowell Titan when he killed it." I said plainly, trying my hardest to not let any emotion seep into my voice. Alberto froze when he heard me say farm crystal instead of mana crystal.
"…you said farm crystal…you know only Splicers can have farm crystals right?" Alberto asked.
"I do. It's why I go out of my way to make the distinction between my evos mana crystals and my farm crystal…so why did your evo have a farm crystal inside it Alberto?" I replied and let a little steel enter my voice.
"You already know why…don't you?" Alberto asked his fingers fumbling with the farm crystal in his hands. I reached out and took it from him and placed it back in my void pocket before nodding.
"Yes I do….you used a living human to splice. You used forbidden human sacrificial splicing." I said softly. On hearing those words Alberto's voice caught, his body froze as if turned to stone, and I saw a myriad of emotions flood his face. He said nothing for the longest time before finally he turned to me and looked me in the eye.
"How long have you known?" He asked.
"I suspected it when I saw your Titan cast a spell. Not to sound conceited or anything but not even my evos can cast spells spontaneously like that, they all need a enchanted item. Then there was your Father's comment about ancient splicing rituals…we saw the aftermath of plenty of those in Tolapo village." I replied. Alberto nodded and ran his hand down his face, tears gathering the corners of his eyes.
"Gods…of course you'd notice. Of course your evo would grab Ramone's farm crystal…" He muttered as tears started pouring down his cheeks. "…all that and we still couldn't beat your evos! He died for nothing! Went through so much pain for nothing! FUCKING, STUPID, USELESS ASSHOLE!"
Alberto started hitting himself in the head. Accentuating every curse with a closed fist smack to the sides and back of his head. Hitting himself so hard I was worried he'd knock himself out. I reached out and restrained his hands. Preventing him from hitting himself any further, Alberto tired to break free from my hold but soon gave up and started crying on my shoulder.
I said nothing and did nothing other than let him cry. While his cries could have been an attempt to win over sympathy I didn't feel like they were. His tears sounded familiar, the pain I heard in then sounded familiar. It was the pain of losing someone close to you. It was something you couldn't fake. So I let him cry until he couldn't cry anymore.
Once he stopped crying and realized the position he was in quickly pulled away from me and wiped his eyes, trying to regain some semblance of dignity. After a brief moment of silence I asked the question that had been creeping in my brain while he cried.
"Who was he? Ramone?" I asked. Alberto looked at me with a look of pure self-hatred and regret, it looked like he was about to cry again but choked down the emotion.
"He was…he was…my older brother…"
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Hutexa_The_Djinn
Hutexa_The_Djinn HUTEXA_THE_DJINN HERE! HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYBODY!
Hope everyone is enjoying turkey day, for those of you that celebrates Thanksgiving, I know some of my readers are from other countries. I just wanted to tell everyone that I am very thankful for all the support, kind words, and evo suggestions I get. I'm sorry if I don't use them. I get a lot, especially from my co-workers who love giving silly *cough* stupid *cough* animal combos. [Talking about you Robbie!] Still keep giving me suggestions even if I don't use them right away I write em down and plan future chapters with them. Plus I love the interaction with people! Thank you and Happy Holidays!
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