Mystical Journey

“And what the hell are you?” Baldhead glared at him coldly, staring at Garen as he approached.

“It’s all a misunderstanding, let’s make love, not war, and call it quits, shall we?” Garen said with a smile.

Joy flashed through Celine’s eyes, she knew just how powerful Garen was. While Baldhead was distracted, she gave her legs a jolt, and spun them hard, breaking free from his grip. She quickly took two steps back.

But that sense of powerlessness did not disappear.

“You used poison?!” Her expression instantly changed slightly.

“What do you mean by poison, little pretty?” Baldhead laughed, his eyes narrowed. “Did you think that you can get away unharmed after touching my body?”

“Didn’t you hear what I said?” Garen walked over and stood in front of Celine, facing Baldhead. “It was all just a misunderstanding, let us all calm down, and understand each other better.”

He would not put him and his companion in trouble just for something as meaningless as pity.

Baldhead seemed to have a considerable background and strength, it would truly be troublesome if he provoked a powerful faction just like that.

“I say, who do you think you are? Scram!” Baldhead’s expression turned cold. He actually stomped forward, his large foot aiming hard towards Garen’s face.

Garen tilted his body away slightly, avoiding that stomp, and then he abruptly grabbed Baldhead’s stomping foot with his hand. He released a slight breath.

“Garen, you never were the type to hold yourself back!” said Celine from behind, mercilessly.

“We can’t kill anyone here, so it’s pointless to fight back and forth, we should all try to be more peaceful,” said Garen, his expression calm as he shook his head.

When they heard that, Baldhead and the people around him all paused for a moment, they vaguely felt a hint of cold killing intent from Garen. All their hearts shook slightly.

Looks like this guy was a tough one too. The surrounding crowd knew that now.

At the same time, having been blocked, one of Baldhead’s legs was being held in Garen’s hands. But as Garen exerted more force in his grip, there began to be a faint sound of bone cracking.

“Let go!!” A sheen of sweat appeared on Baldhead’s forehead.

“Relax, can’t we all sit down and chat properly?” Garen smiled.

“I’m telling you to let go! Bastard!” howled Baldhead fiercely.

“Let him go! Unless you want to die outside, away from home,” the seductive woman beside Baldhead spoke as well, staring at Garen icily.

“Okay, okay… I’ll let go.” Garen smiled and relaxed his grip lightly, letting go of Baldhead’s leg.

All of a sudden, he turned around, and his booted leg became a grey shadow that whipped over. As though it was truly a lightning-fast whip, it even made an exploding sound in the air.

Bam!!

Blood sprayed everywhere. Baldhead’s whole head had been blown apart, blood and brain matter spewing all over the place. His body fell to his knees stiffly, and as the woman beside him screamed, he fell forward, and was completely lifeless.

In an instant, his corpse had turned into a large field of white lights that scattered and vanished.

“Tsk-tsk-tsk… See, it’s not like I can kill him for real, this will lead to troublesome consequence,” said Garen, shaking his head.

“You—y-you!!” That seductive woman could not even speak properly anymore, all the blood had drained out of her face, and she pointed at Garen as she stumbled backward. Suddenly she seemed to trip on something, falling to the ground, but she could not get up again no matter what she tried.

“That’s what I said, there’s no way you could be that kind of soft, weak, useless type of guy.” Celine seemed to have recovered some too, so she walked up to Garen and stood shoulder to shoulder with him. She lifted one leg, and kicked up a metal shard that was on the floor.

The metal shard spun quickly, and nailed itself into the woman’s brow.

With a bam, the woman fell onto her back, turned into many white lights, and vanished.

The people who had gathered to watch were all shocked, these two were unnaturally ruthless, and just seeing how decisively they acted, they surely must be that type of cold-blooded, killing maniac from the real world outside. Otherwise, they would not have simply taken lives just like that in here.

“Alright, everyone, break it up, break it up,” said Garen loudly, waving his hand. “This is just a virtual world anyway, it’s not like they’re really dead, so it’s fine.”

“Young man, you two have done it now!” the old man who had been talking and standing next to Garen just now spoke. “That baldy was from the Magnetic Field, if they discover your location in the real world…” He did not complete that sentence, but they knew the immense severity of it from his expression alone.

“It’s fine.”

Since Garen made his move, he would naturally have been prepared for this situation.

“Are the people from Magnetic Field that big a deal?” said Celine coldly. She had settled some messages for Garen beforehand, otherwise Garen would not have acted so decisively either.

“Let’s go!”

She split the crowd apart, and left with Garen, one after the other.

Bam bam!

After two crisp sounds, the two of them instantly exploded into many white dots, and vanished from that strange space.

In the room, Garen opened his eyes slowly, and lifted his wrist to see the contact request from Celine.

He tapped ‘confirm’ lightly.

“Nono, that baldy is just the younger brother of some Level Three Energy Machinist in Magnetic Field, don’t worry, it’ll be fine.” Celine’s face appeared on his wristwatch. “Last time I went to the main family’s ranking competition and won ninth, so I finally reached Level One of that Energy Machinist level I’ve been keeping a count on. I found one of the elders in the family to be my teacher, but I never thought I would bump into you there.”

Garen did not expect it either, to think he could meet Celine in the Federation of Energy Machinists’ virtual space. After she learned all those combat skills from him, this little brat’s position in the family kept rising as well. From her original place several dozen steps down, she had risen to ninth in the past two years. Even if he had not stepped out back there, Celine would not have gone down so easily, she would surely have her own way of dealing with it.

“Magnetic Field is the weakest faction in the Federation of Energy Machinists, the Star Cloud that I’m in never got along with Black Blade, but if it weren’t for the conflict between the two of us, Magnetic Field would not have had a snowball’s chance in hell. So Magnetic Field can show off a bit in front of regular Energy Machinists, but to us, even if my family’s Energy Machinists aren’t all that impressive, compared to small fry like him, hmph…” Celine explained in detail. “Your Black Flood Party has Energy Machinists too, they’re also in Star Cloud. When you get back, you can ask if you get the chance. To people with large factions behind them like us, there’s no need to worry about trash like that at all, it’s good enough that we’re not dominating the streets like that.”

“You sure are direct.” Garen had more or less understand where he stood, and he knew now that after all that mess, they probably had a higher status that Baldhead. The shade under a large tree was wider, after all.

“I always was! If it wasn’t in a virtual space, and was in reality instead, I’d have offed him with one shot a long time ago!” Celine was still unhappy.

“Alright, if we have time, we can enter the special ability space together. I don’t have a teacher at all now, neither do I have an Energy Machine Imprint, so it’s not easy for me. Could you get me one?” said Garen with a smile.

“It’s not that easy to decide on an Energy Machine Imprint, if you decide on one, it’ll take up a slot in your Willpower. Two levels of Willpower can only support one Energy Machine Imprint, and once you’ve decided on it, it’s practically impossible to change it, no, it’s more than impossible!” said Celine solemnly. “I heard my teacher say that once you’ve decided on an Imprint, you have to be Inherited Level or higher before you can change it, and even then you’ll need to use up a ton of resources.”

Hearing Celine advise him so seriously, Garen also learned the importance of this, and his intention to carelessly look for one just to scrape by lessened.

“What are the prices of the Energy Machine Imprints like?”

“They’re usually between two to five billion units each, and these are the lower grade ones. Many people want the better ones, and Energy Machinists are all pretty loaded, so once the competition gets heated, the price can vary drastically. At the highest point, a decent Imprint even sold for more than forty billion. As for the even better ones, the peak-level Imprints, don’t even think about them, no one will even sell them. It takes a lot of time and effort to create one of these, to an Energy Machinist, it’s a long and pointless effort. Without up to a hundred years, don’t even think about creating a stable Imprint. That’s why the Imprints we’re using now were mostly the product of our elders’ efforts from more than a hundred years ago.”

Garen was beginning to see how complicated the field of Energy Machinists was.

“Give me a copy of your info regarding Energy Machinists.”

“Sure. I’ll arrange it and hand it to you later.” Celine nodded.

After hanging up, Garen quickly received all sorts of basic info about Energy Machinists. And he had a better understanding of the whole deal with Energy Machinists now too.

Energy Machinists mostly formed units according to the teacher, students, and the workshop, the different numbers of styles resulted in the workshops forming many different parties.

One workshop could consist of just one Energy Machinist, or it could have many, depending on the scale.

Energy Machine Imprints were tools Energy Machinists created to support themselves, at first they were just very normal high-functioning support tools, but after many generations of improvement and distillation of Willpower, the power of the Energy Machine Imprints grew stronger and stronger, and gradually more perfect. That was why Imprints with a longer duration of Inheritance tended to be stronger, and many Energy Machinists who could not afford ready-made Imprints also resorted to creating their own. But those may just be empty white boards, that required using Willpower to carve and strengthen step by step, from the very beginning. These had no strengthening effect at all.

So the longer the duration of Inheritance, the stronger the Imprint. Some Imprints had even become the foundations of many parties.

Energy Machinists did not interact much with each other normally either, they tended to research their own thing, and only gather on specific dates, exchanging knowledge and making deals for items and Imprints through the special ability space.

In other words, the Energy Machine Imprint was just like a pilot’s personal Mech, its importance could not be overstated.

The difference was that every Energy Machinist was not just limited to one, they could have multiple Imprints.

In the time after that, as expected, Baldhead, who was killed off, made no ripples whatsoever. He had evidently been suppressed by Celine’s power, he was just a small fry from the lower levels of Magnetic Field, compared to the elite of a large family and party on this side, the difference was decided instantly.

The days passed one after the other, and soon, the day of the auction was upon them.

The Ring Light Silver auction that Garen had been waiting for all this time had finally arrived.