The heavy wooden box containing the twenty-six sets of pills, bandages, and sprays sat squarely on the mahogany desk, its contents perfectly solidified and intact.
The transit had been flawless, leaving no trail through the snow-choked streets of the Western Sector.
Alaric closed his bedroom door, the lock clicking into place with a definitive weight.
He pulled off his dark wood and bamboo mask, tossing it onto the bed, while Tylor unraveled his cloth mask, exhaling a long plume of mist that quickly dissipated in the warmth of the room.
Tylor didn't waste time getting comfortable. He leaned his back against the bedpost, his lavender eyes reflecting the dim, flickering light of the desk lamp.
"There is a ninety-five percent chance that Ascilis and Volt will make the public announcement about the approaching Lunar Eclipse within the next one to two days. They aren't going to wait for the five-day mark to prep the sector's infrastructure. They want the public compliant before the sky turns."
Tylor said, his voice dropping into a sharp, clinical register.
Alaric poured himself a small glass of water, his throat still dry from the residual adrenaline of the market bazaar.
He didn't look up.
"One to two days. That gives us less than forty-eight hours before the Volt and the Crown stand on the same platform."
"Exactly," Tylor nodded, crossing his arms.
"Which means you don't have the luxury of practicing your baseline conduit functions for weeks. You need something that can disrupt Volt's defensive line instantly."
Alaric drained the glass, setting it down with a sharp clack.
He turned his brown eyes toward Tylor, his expression flattening into that familiar, cold merchant focus.
"Time for Modification?" Alaric asked nonchalantly.
Tylor's brow raised slightly, a grim, approving smile touching his lips. "Yes. Time for Modification."
Tylor stepped into the center of the room, clearing a small space between the desk and the bed.
He held up his right hand, palm facing skyward.
He wasn't rushing his movements were deliberate, slow, and calculated going incredibly easy so Alaric could track every shift in the atmosphere.
"Unlike teleportation, which is a displacement of matter through the network, Modification is a hostile override of an object's physical logic," Tylor explained smoothly.
A faint, low hum vibrated through the floorboards.
Slowly, almost lazily, a few sparse reddish-black particles began to bleed out from the skin of Tylor's palm.
They didn't manifest with the violent, snapping speed of a combat weapon.
Instead, they drifted through the air like heavy dust motes, settling onto the surface of a common, ornate iron paperweight resting on the edge of the desk.
"Every object in this room has a defined entry in reality's ledger," Tylor murmured, his eyes locking onto the iron weight.
"This iron is dense, rigid, and heavy. That is its baseline logic. To modify it, you don't destroy it. You rewrite its variables."
The reddish-black particles seeped directly into the metal. The dark iron began to shift, its surface losing its metallic sheen and turning a dull, chalky, brittle white.
"I am changing its density variable to match that of dry, fragile clay," Tylor said, keeping his voice perfectly steady.
"Watch the friction."
Alaric watched closely. The air directly around Tylor's hand grew visibly distorted, a subtle heat ripple shimmering over his knuckles.
"Just like sacrifice using conduit properly and sacrifice for using peak of lumen Siphon, for Modification is slightly different it's a coin flip" Tylor warned, his eyes cutting to Alaric.
With a slow, gentle tap of his finger, Tylor struck the modified iron.
The heavy metal shattered instantly into a dozen brittle, powdery pieces, scattering across the mahogany like dried mud.
"Fifty percent of the time, the deficit goes external," Tylor explained, pointing to the desk floor where a small patch of the dense wood had suddenly warped and splintered into loose sawdust to balance the mass shift.
"The environment rots to pay the debt only to you obviously.But the other fifty percent of the time..."
Tylor pulled his hand back, his fingers twitching slightly as the reddish-black particles snapped back into his skin.
His face tightened for a fraction of a second.
"...the debt snaps backward into your own anchor. If you turn iron into clay there is an equal chance your own skeletal frame will temporarily inherit that exact same clay-like fragility for the next few minutes. One wrong step, and your own shins shatter under your weight."
Tylor looked at Alaric, the weight of the upcoming audit hanging heavily between them.
"It's a coin toss with your own biology, Mr. Xyle. Still want to open this ledger?"
Alaric looked at Tylor as he has just uttered a shit. "How in the goddamn way they use this in battle?"
"They don't." Tylor answered while assigning.
Alaric didn't respond.
He remembered when Tylor lied to him about memory modification as he chuckled.
"So where is memory modification?"
Tylor glared at Alaric embarrassed. "I already accepted its a lie."
Alaric leaned forward and whispered. "Now....how? when? And where?"
"I'll tell you...but not now I have to go back to Southern sector first."
More then an hour has passed since Tylor left.
Alaric who was lying in his bed.
His thoughts jumping from one to another like a Kangaroo.
Alaric raised his hands.
The obsidian rune glass lamp casting a shadow over it.
As slowly and gradually he fall asleep.
Alaric opened his eyes ,he was in complete darkness.
Nightmare.
It has been so long since he last had nightmares.
The same voice came again. "Don't leave me."
Alaric could clearly feel something coming towards him but he couldn't see it.
Something which felt like hands touched his nape.
He didn't feel anything like the hands were air.
And he head turned 180 degree again just like last time.
But this time Alaric didn't screamed like before.
Alaric's eyes snapped open.
He was breathing way too faster.
Alaric touched his chest , his heavy conduit heart was thumping faster than usual.
He sighed.
"Its been so long....last time it happened i had a mark on my nape."
Alaric immediately touched his nape.
But didn't feel anything.
Alaric jumped off his bed.
And instead of his wooden floor.
There was nothing.
He continued to fall.
He never reached the a solid space.
He continued to fall in complete darkness.
Alaric inhaled.
What's even happening at this.....
He exhaled
Point.
Second inhale.
Alaric tried to move his body but it didn't help.
Second exhale.
He stretched out his hand.
Third inhale.
Third and last exhale.
Alaric expected his lumen Siphon to materialize like always.
But nothing happened.
It was when he heard a sound of water flowing.
And before he could react he had hit a stone carved jagged spike.
The spike pierced through his chest.
A immense pain jolted all around all around Alaric's body.
Before he could feel anything more than this.
Alaric eyes snapped open.
Alaric was still in his bed.
He immediately stood up on his bed.
And glared at the floor.
The wooden floor was completely intact.
He threw the cushion in the floor.
It just normally fall on the wooden floor.
Alaric sighed.
That stone jagged spike was lingering in his mind.
As he has a very vague memory of it.
It kinda resembled Vath hills.
But Alaric ignored it right now.
It's not time for all this.....there are more important and urgent thing right now.
Alaric jumped from the bed and walked outside his room.
But just as he went outside, he immediately went back again.
He wanted to test or atleast use modification.
But that drawback.
ROI is way to bad.
Not worth it.
Also it will not work on battle.
The most i can think of using it is only in a case where I don't have my Lumen Siphon or any other Conduit.
He shook his head again.
For the first time in many days or months he felt like Unemployed.
He didn't no what to do.
That attempt for murder of Volt is also two days far.
I can...plan but i don't even when? Where? and how? It will happen.
This time he is not the driver, he has to change himself according to the situation.
Alaric didn't wanted to sleep, He was practically feeling directionless.
It was when Alaric remembered his conversation with Will Amkrik lek.
Sixteen hardest missions.
Alaric checked his magoony table, but there were no book of sixteen hardest missions.
He never focused on this thing.
But Alaric still continued to search.
He checked inside the bed nothing was there.
Alaric checked at his cupboard, which he never opened for months.
Alaric bent down and searched it.
He touched something solid and dusty.
That was the book titled - The Sixteen Missions with a subject of - Missions which take eternity to understand.
Alaric took it out, and opened the book without even dusting it.
It had many misprint.
Alaric could clearly read the first three contents.
Acceptance.
Finding the true love.
Faith.
Before Alaric could even continue.
Something breaked pass through the window.
Something was thrown.
Alaric immediately looked outside from the very same window.
There was no one.
Then Alaric checked what was thrown.
It was a small rough stone carved letter.
On the stone , something was roughly written.
"The answer of when is twenty seventh of December, answer of where is on the border of the southern sector...so plan accordingly by Tylor."