Chapter 535: Contingency Plans

'I wonder how skilled this guy is with his affinity,' Aron thought as he broke past Mach eight. He was still tracking the little purple worm as he flew, even though it hadn't stopped accelerating yet. 'I can't afford to be mind controlled. The empire can't afford it....'

Mind control was a truly problematic ability, one that Aron's currently structured shield rune wouldn't be able to fully protect him against until he took the time to adjust it and train with the new runic structure. Habit was both good and bad, and in the heat of battle, he really didn't want to be using new runes that he hadn't practiced with.

The same could be said for the mind control tech that was on him, as there was a slight possibility that it would fail, and no matter how low the possibility is, it is not a good idea.

Besides, he didn't have time to modify it now regardless; the worm he was tracking was still speeding up.

Everything would depend on whether or not the mana had taught Aron's target. He certainly hadn't released any information on how to use law mana or higher, so the person he was tracking down must have an esoteric affinity. And that likely meant there would be unforeseen issues during the upcoming fight.

But despite Aron's erratic thoughts and the other things going on in his mind, his eyes still glowed golden as he focused on the purple worm in the distance. If he hadn't absorbed every bit of mana in the shield earlier, he wouldn't have been able to distinguish it from the background rainbow of colored motes in his vision; in fact, he was already having difficulty spotting it now, even knowing it was there.

"There you are," he murmured under his breath as he watched the worm fly into a tall office building and not come out the other side. He came to a full stop and hovered over the office building, calling up the map of his surroundings to figure out where he was. If there were imperial citizens around, he couldn't just go in guns blazing.

He increased his altitude to the edge of the stratosphere as he looked at the map. "Amarillo, eh?"

It turned out that he had flown all the way to Amarillo, Texas, and was currently hovering above the Fisk Building. It wasn't the tallest building in the city by far, but it was one of the oldest and a very well-known feature of the downtown cityscape. Standing just over fifty meters tall, it had long been added to the National Register of Historic Places, having been completed in 1927 and once holding the crown of the tallest building in the city, though it had fallen out of the top ten since then.

"Nova, what do we know about Amarillo?" he asked, and a demographic and historical breakdown appeared before him in a virtual display window. "Hmm, 73% imperials... I'll need to take a stealthier approach.

"How about the mana map of the city?"

[Excluding the possibility of a false positive, it's high. Scans show it as a level eight location centered around the Fisk Building and thinning from there as it reaches out to the city limits,] Nova responded, overlaying a mana density image in Aron's view of the city.

Aron nodded and opened a compartment in the thigh of his SHIT armor (Super Hard Intermediate Tactical armor), pulling out a dozen small black cubes the size of standard casino dice. He threw them down toward the city and they disintegrated into nanite colonies, linking their swarm VIs to his HUD.

"Give me a real-time street-level view of the city, especially the downtown area around the Fisk building. Also, search for underground facilities that aren't included in blueprints," he ordered, and the status display representing the nanite supercolony in his HUD turned yellow to indicate that they were currently on mission.

Finding himself with some time on his hands, he continued reading the information about the city below him as he hovered in the sky under a veritable fortress of invisibility, stealth, and concealment runes.

......

"The fuck was that?" Rick groaned as he felt the mother of all headaches slam into him. He rubbed his eyebrows and called for Katrina to bring him some painkillers as he digested what he had just seen.

The lackey he'd been monitoring had been in hiding underground, but rather than dig out an entrance into the sealed bunker, the empire had just... deleted the entire fucking ground, knocking the last remaining cultists unconscious in the process. And the worst part was that he had no clue how they had done it! One minute, everything was fine, then the next minute it was over.

It was like someone flipped a switch and everything fucked off to somewhere else, leaving the people behind in the lurch!

"They're getting closer and closer to me. I need more time! Just a few more weeks and everything will be in place," he muttered as Katrina came into his room with a glass of water and two pills. He took them from her and swallowed the pills dry, then guzzled the water.

She kept her head lowered and only looked at him out of the corner of her eye. She was worried about his mental health; lately, he had been talking to himself more and more and relying on pharmaceutical aids more than was remotely healthy. 'At least he's keeping his illegal drug habit under control,' she thought. 'But I don't know how much of that is his self control and how much is just the lack of availability after the empire swept up all the drug traffickers....'

Rick looked up at her and shouted, "Get the fuck out!" He threw the empty water glass at her in a momentary rage. "Go make yourself fucking useful somewhere!"

Katrina could only nod and quietly leave the room. Then she heard him shout through the door, "And clean up this fucking mess!"

A few minutes later, the painkillers kicked in and Rick could be considered about 90% recovered after his most recent body hop. Though he didn't know it, the turbulence he'd experienced when pulling his consciousness back into his real body had been caused by the 'worm' bashing itself against Aron's shield, as well as the mana trace the emperor had left on it to ensure he didn't lose it.

He turned on the desk light and pulled open the small filing cabinet full of neatly sorted contingency and emergency plans his think tank had come up with, then pulled out a folder and opened it, skimming over the contents.

As he read, lost in thought, he started tapping the desktop with his knuckle in a rhythmic fashion, almost like he was a metronome keeping time for a struggling music student during their practice session. 'I have to rush some plans forward and prepare some leverage in case my base is discovered. It'll give us time to evacuate and move to the backup facility, or at least most of us....'

He closed his eyes and entered the purple world, looking for a specific thread of belief.