Assimilation

A burly man, a lanky man, and a short young woman.

Alpha, Zeta, and Delta respectively as per their small-time organisation's codenames.

"He's close," The lanky man, Zeta, suddenly paused in his footsteps. "He should be in the crowd around us."

"What does he look like?" The burly man, Alpha, grasped the hilt of his scimitar. He was eager to swing his blade already.

"I don't know," Zeta shook his head. "He knows we're after him so he's probably hiding."

"I can't cast my spells here," Delta spoke. "Our target is a rat. An annoying one at that. Of all the places he chooses to appear, it's here."

Delta looked towards the centre of the base.

There, three people were standing together, overlooking the ghost horde that lingered before them.

Compared to Delta and her two companions, these three people were on a whole different level. Just standing in the same area brought her pressure.

She felt like she was being watched. As if the moment she cast a wide-area field spell, she would be discovered.

"And promptly dealt with..." Delta gulped.

"Delta? Did you say something? What's wrong?" Zeta glanced at her, prying her from her thoughts.

"It's nothing," Delta shook her head, looking around.

For an instant, her eyes landed on a teenager with peculiar orange hair. Their eyes met for a moment, and the world seemed to pause.

The young man then smiled at her before turning away to resume his business.

Delta instinctively smiled back and continued walking, looking for the [Gatemaker] she so wished to kill.

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The centre of the southern base.

Ariel, Farlier, and Repoire were standing together. A slightly awkward atmosphere had descended upon them.

Ariel's smile was stiff, while the two boys kept their mouths shut. They were silent.

"You mean to say... You two didn't prepare anything at all? No ring, no necklace, no bracelet? Nothing that can help you fight ethereal beings?" Ariel placed a palm on her forehead. Her usual sunny smile faltered at the sheer unpreparedness of her coworkers.

"We're sorry, okay?" Repoire shrugged negligently, "The message only mentioned a fight against the undead. Not what type of undead."

"Right!" Farlier exclaimed, "And here I was thinking something was off about the message. It isn't as specific as I am used to. Did our messengers change?"

Ariel could only sigh hearing these words. "They did. And I'm going to strangle them when I see them again."

The reason Ariel was so irritated was due to the fact that Repoire's and Farlier's Blessings were both physical in nature. Their Blessings both augmented their bodies but in drastically different ways.

Repoire had the Blessing, Slumbering Predator. A perfect Blessing for a lazy man like him. Paired with his Curse, Vow of the Sleepy, it granted him heightened senses and great amounts of agility the shorter time he stays awake.

Farlier on the other hand had the Blessing, Demon Ignition. It was a Blessing that transformed his body and gave him weapons for limbs and a breath of flames. His overall physique is also drastically boosted in combat.

Ariel could already imagine what would happen if she let those two fight the ghosts: Their attacks would pass right through.

Of course, they had the option of expending Spirit Energy and mixing it together with their attacks, but such a task was simply not as effective as say, Blaze's special artefact that gave Divine characteristics to her flames.

Simply put, the expenses would be multiplied.

"Whatever," Ariel sighed again and waved her hand, "We can put up a reward for anyone willing to lend their divine-attributed artefacts."

Farlier nodded, "Yeah… that could work. Those artefacts would be much more useful in our hands. On top of that, we might even unearth a unique one today! I brought the funds to buy some no matter how expensive they would be."

Farlier's irises glinted in greed. He had been stuck recently. His growth had reached a bottleneck. One of the many bottlenecks he had to face as 'required' by his Spirit Technique.

He needed the energy from a certain type of artefact to help him. It was fine if it was a 1-star artefact.

As long as it had the property of energy regurgitation and divine energy, he would be happy.

That was also the main reason Farlier was here in Midseer today.

And Ariel had her suspicions of such a fact.

She squinted at Farlier for a moment. Power was all that this man wanted, and it made him easy to read.

Thankfully, Farlier's greed for power did not impede his ability to do his job.

Thus, Ariel didn't mind him having ulterior motives for helping Midseer. She turned towards one of her underlings nearby and gestured for them to come to her.

"Is there anything you need, Madame?" An aged woman approached with a humble attitude.

"I need you to make an announcement. Place it on the Midseer MagiNet website and have a verbal announcement for all four cardinal direction bases as well..."

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Somewhere else in the southern base.

Magnus scaled one of the towers nearby to grab some food to eat.

He had enough of his headless search. Thus, he had Rie use State of Higher Existence to locate 'Samantha Barrei,' and this was the general location given to him:

A restaurant that was a few steps away from turning into a literal ghost establishment.

After ordering a glass of iced venom tea and a plate of liquor bull steak, he made his way over to a familiar face. Klaris, who was cloaked in black, entered the establishment after him and sat down a few steps away.

"Is this seat taken?" Magnus asked with a smile, sparing a fleeting glance at the seated Klaris.

Blaze looked up from her food with a slightly surprised expression. She swallowed the food in her mouth and said, "No... Go ahead. Take a seat."

"To think that we're meeting again just a day after," Blaze chuckled as Magnus sat on the stool beside her. Their shoulders were touching due to the close proximity of the chairs.

"Perhaps it is fate," Magnus smiled ominously as he said that, but Blaze was too focused on her food to notice.

"Perhaps," Blaze replied as she placed another spoonful of food in her mouth.

Magnus took a bite of his steak as well, and the two spent the next few moments chewing.

"I've been meaning to ask," Magnus then started, swallowing his food, "Are you afraid of death, Miss Samantha?"

Blaze glanced at Magnus. She saw the curiosity in the teenager's eyes and tried giving the question a bit of thought.

"I am," She answered without caring much in the end. "Who wouldn't be?"

"Then, if you were given the option to become more-or-less immortal, what would you sacrifice for it?" Magnus asked, gesturing vaguely with his hands in a way Blaze did before.

Blaze blinked. A multitude of thoughts ran through her mind at that moment before deciding on an answer,

"A lot of things... as long as I keep my humanity."

"As long as you keep your humanity? What do you mean?" Magnus asked again. He had a few guesses but wanted to confirm it through Blaze's mouth.

"I have no desire to dip my feet into the magic of undeath," Blaze answered swiftly and resolutely. "In fact, the reason I would even consider immortality in the first place is so that I can fight such a scourge for eternity."

Blaze sipped on the glass of water she had nearby, "I'm pretty sure you also have something you want to do for a very long time. Do you understand what I mean?"

Magnus nodded slowly, "Yeah. Pretty much. We have similar views, Miss Samantha. I'm surprised."

"Heh," Blaze smiled, "You'll get to meet a lot of people just like you, the longer you stay on Thare."

Magnus then placed a hand on Blaze's shoulder. "Then, how about joining the Hivemind?"

"The Hivemind?" Blaze asked, glancing at Magnus whose lips were rapidly moving.

Confused, she read the teenager's lips.

"I am the master and maker of the Hivemind,"

'It sounds like the start of a Blessing's invocation,' Blaze thought, 'But this... this isn't his Blessing...'

She had watched Magnus' battles in the Starry-Eyed Bout. Like many people, she more or less knew the verses to his Blessing.

"The mind behind minds," Magnus' voice turned into a whisper that Blaze barely heard.

A chill swept across her spine at that moment.

The world suddenly moved in slow motion.

Blaze's eyes dilated. Instinctively, she summoned a ball of flames.

VWHOOM!

The spherical inferno burned above her palm. She acted, seeking to lob the flame at Magnus whose lips never stopped moving.

"The one who stands above humanity,"

The fireball, burning with Divine Energy, landed on Magnus. It instantly lit up half of his face.

But Magnus didn't seem to care.

His words echoed in Blaze's mind in that split second.

"Then, if you were given the option to become more-or-less immortal, what would you sacrifice for it?"

'Immortality...? Is he not afraid of death..?' Blaze felt a bone-deep chill once more. The hand on her shoulder was abnormally heavy despite her status as a 3-star threat. Gravity pulled her down as she fuelled the fireball with all her might.

Skin and flesh burned at a rapid pace, and blood evaporated, but Magnus still did not move.

His face was quite literally melting, but he managed to speak his final words.

"And the one civilizations despise."

—VWAAAAAAAAH!

The world resumed its usual pace.

The flames consumed and burned Magnus' head into nothingness. Focal Point Inferno displayed its prowess at this moment despite not being perfectly invoked. The flames spread across Magnus' body and even threatened to burn the man seated beside him.

It was a powerful flame that many should fear.

But the act was finished.

Blaze suddenly felt her mind connect with another. And then another. And another.

Until she could feel her sense of self blur.

"The Hivemind," She involuntarily muttered Magnus' words.

A hundred eyes landed on her at that moment.

Murder in broad daylight? Did someone dare to do such a thing under the governance of the Interstellar Trinity?

Many were shocked. Confused. Exasperated.

Their meals were disrupted by the sudden appearance of fire.

Blaze looked around, unsure of what she should do. She, too, was confused.

Memories that weren't hers mixed with her mind. Thoughts that weren't her own intertwined with hers.

In her panic, she ended up meeting the gaze of the nearby Klaris.

"I..." Blaze mumbled.

[ Do you need help? ] Klaris smiled as he spoke through the Hivemind.

"Yes! Please!" Blaze nodded, unsure why she felt such trust towards a man she never met. She did not even realise that the voice rang inside her own mind.

[ Very well. ]

And then, under the stunned gazes of many, Blaze disappeared in a flash of light.