Shirtaloon
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Chapter 974: Most Practical Purposes
🕑 Added 2025-01-15 22:00:05 +0000 UTCTera Jun Casta looked through the transparent floor of the dirigible as it drifted across the sky. Over the course of the day, they had floated over canyons deeper than most mountains, forests painted white with snow, and deserts filled with rolling dunes and shimmering oases. The more exotic locations included a chain of islands floating in the sky over five waterfalls spilling over one long cliff face, into a tropical lagoon. Upstream, a town built entirely out of ice floated in the middle of a lake.
They were now flying over river lands that stretched from horizon to horizon, waterways snaking across the landscape like veins in a body. A vast escarpment ran along the direction they were moving, making for a grandiose vista. The messenger reflected that the same could be said about every destination they had seen.
In each location had been buildings that, like her villa, blended into their surroundings. This ranged from tree houses to whole towns carved into canyon walls. In each case, the designs and proportions were clearly built with messengers in mind. The scale was too large for humans, and access usually required the power of flight. Few of the locations were occupied, as even the messenger armies surrendered to Jason were not enough to fill a planet.
“How is this a prison planet?” she murmured, not noticing Jason’s pleased smile.
The dirigible’s observation lounge was mostly transparent, both the floor and the curving wall that made up the vessel’s stern. Only the section by the bar was carpeted, with the doors leading to the cabins and bridge. The construction was too strong and clear to be glass, instead being made of force magic. There was some scattered cloud furniture in the area, a few chairs, loungers and a hammock. They hadn’t seen much use, the occupants choosing to walk around and experience the panoramas.
Tera tore her eyes from the landscape to look at Jason.
“Why?” she asked.
“Why not?” he replied. “If a paradise is as easy to build as a gulag, why not make something beautiful?”
“Because it’s for housing your enemies.”
“The messengers that were surrendered to me are not my enemies. Few messengers are, even amongst those I’ve killed. Most are victims, forced to fight, to obey. So indoctrinated that they consider their own slavery to be righteous.”
Tera turned away, unable to hold Jason’s gaze. He kept his eyes locked on her.
“There’s no shame in what you went through, Tera. In what the messengers on this planet are still going through. There is only shame when you get to make choices. You’ve chosen to help your people, and that is something to be proud of. That shame your feeling doesn’t belong to you. It should belong to the astral kings, but they have no shame at all.”
“He’s right,” Jali Corrik Fen said. “From here on out, you make your own decisions, and give more of us the chance to make theirs.”
Jali had stayed by her friend’s side for the duration of Jason’s planetary tour. Tera looked at Jali, then turned her gaze back outside.
“I don’t even know where to begin,” she said.
“The good news,” Jason said, “is that messengers don’t die of old age. You have all the time you need to figure it out. Rather than look at it as one enormous job, break it down into manageable chunks. Maybe start with where you are going to live. You need a place to operate out of. What did you see today that you liked?”
Tera didn’t answer for a long while. She stood, staring through the glass wall in front of her. She didn’t turn away from it when she finally started speaking.
“In my life before, my first task after leaving the training world was to guard an unpopulated planet. It was teeming with life, but nothing sapient. It was a beautiful place. After I was assigned elsewhere, I returned a few years later. People from another world had arrived and violently stripped its resources, leaving a bleak, dead rock behind. I was tasked with teaching the people who did that the error of their ways, and I did. That was where I learned what would come of letting the servant species govern themselves. Of why, however cruel their subjugation might seem, they could not be allowed to despoil the cosmos.”
She drew a long breath and let it out in a long shudder.
“Thinking about it now, it was just more indoctrination. A justification of atrocities fed to those who showed signs of compassion. Those people were probably sent to ravage that world by messengers in the first place.”
She bowed her head.
“Even the one memory I thought was clean, they poison. I hope that you can give me better memories, Asano.”
“I can’t,” Jason told her. “The best I can do is give you the chance to make those memories for yourself.”
“I chose where I lived then, too. I didn’t get to make many choices for myself, but I had a whole planet to myself. There wasn’t anyone else, but that never bothered me. I lived in the desert. There was a network of canyons, like a tangled spiders web. Great crevasses of red rock, the wind blowing through them, strong and wild. Flying through them was a fresh challenge, every day. I lived in a tower, overlooking the sea.”
“I think we can manage something like that,” Jason said. He was about to say something else when he turned to look at the lounge.
“Shade?”
“Apologies, Mr Asano,” Shade said as he stepped from a shadow. “Ms Park has something for you that I believe warrants your urgent attention.”
***
Jason rose from Natalie Park’s shadow like it was an elevator, startling her when she realised that he was standing right behind her.
“Apologies,” he said. “It’s a well-lit room, so no dark corners to emerge from. I shadow-jumped in case I need to portal quickly. I didn’t want it on cooldown.”
She took a moment to compose herself. They were the only people in the room, which was inside the Asano Village administration building. It was set up as a makeshift surveillance centre, with monitors on the walls and laptops nested amongst a jungle of cables on a central table.
“You were worried about the cooldown of your portal power?” she asked.
“Shade implied that I may want to act quickly.”
“Your portal power has a cooldown.”
“Everyone’s does.”
Shade emerged from Jason’s shadow.
“I believe, Mr Asano,” Shade said, “that her surprise is that you have any limits at all.”
“Just so,” Natalie said. “Everything we’ve seen from you implies that you don’t operate by the same rules as the rest of us.”
“I don’t. But for most practical purposes, outside of my private realm, I am just another gold ranker. By Pallimustus standards, not Earth’s.”
“You’re saying that all the gold rankers over there are like you?”
“Not all, just the good ones. But they have a lot of good ones. However, I think we’ve been sidetracked, Officer Park. My understanding was that you want to speak to me of something time sensitive.”
“Yes, I’m sorry. Look to that screen, please.”
She pointed out the room’s largest monitor as she sat in front of a laptop. The screen blinked of to show what Jason guessed, from the angle and the slight bobbing, to be drone footage. It showed the side of a snowy mountain, and a cave entrance that would be hard to spot if not for the flying white bus parked in front of it, disgorging people into the mountain.
“Since the CIA started looking into satellite spoofing, they came across what they believe is the methodology used to mask the feeds from the intelligence agencies. It involves recognising certain patterns that… I can send you a report on the specifics if you’re interested. What you need to know for our purposes is that they’ve been sitting on that information, waiting to see if the people behind it expose themselves with more activity.”
“Which would be unlikely, given that our briefings about it were certainly leaked by someone. Whatever our precautions, there were too many people in that room for any of it to remain truly secret.”
“That was our assessment as well. There were not high hopes, but the CIA logged new activity today. The satellite feed has nothing, but the Spain’s National Intelligence Centre was able to get someone onsite.”
“Spain is vampire territory. Spanish intelligence still has people in the region?”
“There are some remote mountainous areas where they managed to keep assets in place, hidden away. They’ve been the world’s chief means of observing both the vampires and your clan. In this case, they managed to get some drone footage of whatever the people we’re looking at don’t want us to see. Facial recognition identifies them as members of the Network branches from Zurich and Geneva.”
The image paused. A circle marked one of the people onscreen and what looked like an employee profile picture appeared on a second monitor.
“This is Geneva Andros,” Natalie said. “She’s the head of the Network branch in Geneva, and—”
“Hold on,” Jason interrupted. “What kind of sadist appoints someone named Geneva as director of the Geneva branch? That’s just asking for confusion. How many times do you think their admin people have been forced to ask if someone is talking about Geneva the city or Geneva the person?”
“Focus, Mr Asano,” Shade said.
“Right, sorry. Please continue, Officer Park.”
“Andros is the branch director of the Geneva branch, but in the footage we have, she appears to be in full control of everyone from her branch and the Zurich branch. There is no sign of any top staff from Zurich, just people from their enforcement teams.”
“But the Geneva and Zurich Network branches aren’t active, are they?”
“We didn’t think so,” Natalie said. “We’re beginning to suspect that those branches have been secretly operating in vampire territory after cutting some kind of deal.”
“You think that these are our reality core farmers? I hope you have more than people commuting to a cave in a magic bus. They might just be on a children’s TV show about learning simple life lessons through fantastical adventure.”
“Mr Asano…” Shade admonished.
“Sorry.”
“As you said,” Natalie continued, “attempting to hide more satellite footage now is a very bad idea. We’re looking at a couple of scenarios, starting with the obvious, that hiding whatever is happening there was worth the risk.”
“But that’s a fool’s risk. If the CIA was onto the method of masking the satellite coverage, using that technique again would only draw attention, wouldn’t it? Even if they didn’t know that, they had to suspect.”
“We agree. The second scenario is that someone inside the loop wanted this to be found. The magical world is currently scouring the planet at your behest, Mr Asano. The prevailing hypothesis is that someone is using that to point the world, or you, to this spot.”
“Which seems to have worked. Now, I want to know what that gets them.”
“You are not alone in that, but this footage is all we have. It’s not justification to barge into a secret facility belonging to one of the magic factions. If we show up at their door and say we want to poke around, they will be understandably aggrieved.”
“And you want someone who goes where he likes and doesn’t mind if the people there end up aggrieved.”
“In short, yes. Our concern is the potential for this to all be an elaborate trap.”
“To trick me into a hole with a nuke to see if it’ll kill me, something like that?”
“Something like that, yes. The question is, is there a trap on Earth that will work on you?”
“Depends on the expected outcome,” Jason said. “I told you that for most practical purposes, I’m just a gold ranker. Anything that should work on a gold-ranker without killing them should work on me.”
“And if it does kill you?”
“I said most practical purposes. It’ll take longer to get back than I’d like. Being killed too often slows me down more than I want it to. And when I did get back, I suspect I would be rather cranky.”
“That is consistent with what our analysts have suggested. There was some debate to whether we should ask you to go to Switzerland.”
“But the decision, in the end, was to ask?”
“The decision was to inform you of the situation and see what you thought. Keep you informed, without trying to railroad you down one path or another. I doubt you’d be surprised to learn that we have behaviourists analysing you. They suggested that you would best respond to honesty and transparency.”
“I could have told people that twenty years ago. In fact, I did.”
“Well, you are dealing with governments, intelligence services and centuries-old secret societies, Mr Asano. Having it only take twenty years for them to listen is not bad, if I’m being honest.”
Jason turned from the screen to give Natalie an amused look.
“What do you think, Officer Park?”
“I think that you want answers, Mr Asano, and right now, there’s a place you’ll find at least some of them. Even if it is a trap.”
Comments
Kconraw
Thx for the chapter
StarkRG
I like officer Park. We should hire her for something. Probably not as a bartender.
mzetqbbtyf
I'll just say it - this series is becoming as dull as ditch water. It used to be fun LitRPG with interesting powers and progression and action. I'm not really sure what it is these days, except boring.
Chloe
Geneva in Geneva is a lol Tyftc
Nea
Tears story is so compelling. I hope she's able to take some big steps in healing her trauma by guiding the other messengers
Dean
“ That shame your feeling doesn’t belong to you. It should belong to the astral…” should be “you’re”
Tom C
Your prediction has proven correct hahaha
Sean C Jackson
Also the Phoenix too cause she doesn't want some puny mortal to accidentally damage the fragile dimensional membrane.
Sean C Jackson
Hmm yeah, now that Wrath of the Magister is Gold rank he could probably destroy an entire mundane city.
Rando Calrissian
But we still have to find clive's wife
Alex Schellenberg
People came out of those zone unharmed, changed sure but unharmed. The only people who were harmed were those who fought. Which would be those Vamps, Cabal and network elites who didn't have the world's interests in mind.
King Nereus
Even that much still seems pretty out of character for Jason. Other than the vampires, cabal, network, and elites in various governments ..…the world is filled with mostly innocent non-combatants, and most of those are not even essence users.
Alex Schellenberg
It wouldn't kill everyone. they may change race, sure but once they learn how the network creates transformation zones, Jason can probably use Gordon to rig the global network into a conduit for the transformation zone.
King Nereus
Yeah I think that would kill everyone on the planet, would it not? Also how would he even do that if he wanted to?
Soli116
I may or may not have snort laughed at that.
ABTelford
She who? There’s 2 possibilities. And what point? Because I love a desert cliff home vibe but I doubt that’s what you’re referring to 😉
ABTelford
Hm…I predict a zinger of a weekend cliffhanger!
Alex Schellenberg
Yeah, that's the ticket. One planet sized transformation zone.
John Durrett
Depends. If he claimed the world under his domain like the temporal spaces - he would be a literal god over the planet - his family clan would not be threatened as much as all his enemies would be quickly eliminated. This is no place you could hide that would not be known. No conversation or whisper to soft to unheard. But yeah. He doesn't want to go that route, and never will.
Carl Gherardi
I'd go with "travel time". Hundreds is a small number to divide into the number of people and locations to investigate and monitor.
King Nereus
I suspect there will be some conflict with the vampires sooner than later. They will want to use an allied force for cleanup after the battle with their higher ranks, or as a distraction before hand. Using Asano clan elites as part of these forces only makes sense.
ByLAWphoto
he's working with Rebecca--the vampire who LITERALLY used another vampire's life as her own leverage and then double crossed everyone. to a certain degree, you are who you associate with.
Cameron Becker
Sure, Jason knows, and they know that he knows, but I wanna know too lol.
ByLAWphoto
he has. that's Nik's job.
ByLAWphoto
@Code Reed--and now that they're on Earth, it's time that Clan Asano comes out of the pocket and gets real-world experience. they have the advantage of fighting alongside a BUNCH of higher-ranked people. it might be a logistic nightmare to write, but I'm with @Cameron Becker. bring on the monster fun!
Code Reed
From my understanding they've been locked up in a pocket world for most of their lives. That works had monsters to fight otherwise they wouldn't have grown in rank. And Jason knows everything that goes on on his realm. So he knows exactly what they are capable of.
Code Reed
She makes a decent point.
King Nereus
While that would no doubt be expedient, a lot more people would die in the process and his clan would be hated and under constant threat. He doesn’t want to be a tyrant anyway, he would rather help lift everyone up. What he really wants is stability so the planet can run itself without his constant attention, and doesn’t pose a huge danger to his loved ones without his intervention. This will give them a greater chance to grow and thrive, all of earth for that matter. He has to still deal with the messengers, and possibly some other threats that we are unaware of (Dawn warned him of something). And he just got himself a new space ship. He will want to use it. Jason is also likely aware that his actions here will impact his reputation in the wider multiverse, they have long memories and even longer lives. He was, after all, already warned by the diamond rankers to not get too involved into mortal affairs.
Cameron Becker
I love the series so please don't take this as a criticism, shirt, I know you have a plot to drive in the narrative. I would love to see some old-fashioned monster hunting. Maybe Jason takes Emi out and sees what she can do, or her boyfriend to see if he has what it takes to protect her.
Vincent Ciavone
It's why I'll never get tired of Jason being Jason, because it's so important to his character.
Mist Sparrow
And there's hundreds of him
Mist Sparrow
Or they'd have a magical race on who can make the faster containment
Kismet
From your mouth to G... oh wait, nevermind. 🤭😁
Skalias Pablo
The interaction where Natalie Park was surprised that Jason was worried about his portal CD is such a great moment. I've been thinking since the end of book 11, Jason's perspective is very alien now, his true self is a living universe lmao. So having these humanising moments for him just hit deep.
ThoMiCroN
I’m still waiting for the establishment of diplomatic relations between Australia and the Storm Kingdom.
Frog
Good stuff advancing the main plot, but how long until the prophecy is fulfilled, Clive sleeps with Zara, and Jason sleeps with Lorelei
Stuart Thwaites
No, Belinda would improvise a magical containment for a nuke. Clive would stand watching in fascination, asking question and then go off and make it easy for normal people to make a magical containment for a nuke.
Alex Schellenberg
I'm starting to think he should have just conquered the world. Might have been faster.
Soli116
We have knowledge they don't. All they have is that clip. We know more than Jason. We could be Knowledge.
Daniel Storm
I think it's probably Strongest AND oldest. Not or.
Daniel Storm
Oh of course! It couldn't be anything else.
J Holmes
My mind immediately went to Ms Frizzle, so... probably?
Mist Sparrow
He's got Clive, Belinda, and estella, I don't think it matter what " traps " they have, I think Clive could improvise a magical containment for a nuke at this point.
Mason Bacalis
Adventurers assemble
Havics Child
Wouldn't matter either way, Jason would have to personally transfer them to get off Earth. I say he pretends that isn't the case and lets them get blasted to Astral dust.
Der Ritter
"soul slave Sidekick" i love it. You made my night
mockery jones
Hard to imagine it’s really a trap considering we saw the evil duo and their soul slave sidekick trying to run for their lives. Could be but that makes the previous scene make less sense.
Brave Badger
Hasn’t Jason learned anything from Admiral Ackbar?
TjStorm
I mostly put it like i do to point out something wrong. I’m not suggesting it has to be my way, but more of a way to point out something is wrong and what it maybe could look like. But i think your right. Blinking on sounds better. Weird how it takes someone else to point it out before you go, ‘why didn’t i think of that’. But yeah, shirtaloon, go with joanna’s suggestion.
Matt Doyle
Is the magic bus a reference to the magic school bus?
Alejandro Piña
Or get Clive to blast the whole place down…
Jieuny
Soramir himself said he was just some rando backwater diamond ranker when it came to the cosmos, and he's likely one of the strongest, or oldest diamond rankers in Pali, its more likely they just don't know.
Hunter
Also Pali is not a part of the cosmic community. If they were than the messengers wouldn’t have had to use fake purity to sneak them in the back door. Same with how the pirates got on earth. You have to be invited.
Valmorian
hey thanks for another chapter! i'm still catching up. i've gotten behind by 20.
Joanna
I think it was meant to be "blinked on"
Soli116
I typo fir and for, too. Plus my area pronounces for as fir, so I have a double whammy.
Soli116
Elizabeth is the vampire. Unless she was turned recently, Natala isn't.
Kristy Riedel
The reason people on Pali don't have more knowledge of the cosmos is that the builder has been there for millenia suppressing their development of Astral magic. Boris was astounded that someone like Clive had not been killed.
gator mate
Tftc
mhaj58
There’s no trap that can hold Jason down, but he should bring Sophie, Lindy, Clive, and Farrah to break through the walls and get the source of the rot
Michael Smalley
Also I wondered how Pali does not know much about the greater cosmos. Then I realized it's because of snooby diamonds not wanting to share there exclusive info! So earth will have an advantage in that department.
Michael Smalley
There is simply no way Natalia will survive in pali!! She is a vampire, to many diamonds around to spot her. She either A dies on earth or B we get a funny outerlude of her getting killed in pali from a diamond ranker.
shabbybook
Whats stopping shade from investigating the base in spain he is gold rank and would likely be impossible to notice from anyone who isnt diamond
ABTelford
Oo-ho-hooo, Yes please! Action happening in two days! This chapter was real good, btw, and has me drooling for Fridays chapter. 😀
Joshua Little
Thanks for the chapter.
Hemlock
Thanks shirt!
TjStorm
The screen blinked of to show what The screen blinked to show what
ByLAWphoto
the problem with that scenario is that no one on Earth is both sufficiently self-aware AND in command of decision-making. the people in power are completely convinced of their own "power" and the people who actually know what's what are quietly sitting in a corner, praying Team Biscuit doesn't notice them.
NekoNoir
TFTC! 🍪
Stephanie Washburn
This was good. Jason is still Jason even if he's learning. I like it.
Izraifel
Biscuits! TFTC!
devildham
The vampires don't realize that the only thing keeping all of the Pallimustan Gold-Rankers from basically declaring jihad on them is Jason wanting to be more diplomatic than last time. If they did "nuke" him, Team Biscuit would go full exterminator and kill all of them and then hold the planet until Jason popped back up in 20 or so years (which is incidentally not alot of time for Gold Rankers). Honestly the smart play is unilateral surrender to Jason and beg him to go to that moon he set up for Craig. Everyone is worried about Jason (rightly so), but you have to take out literally everyone else too or you're still screwed.
Valhazstromoz
I like officer park
joshua carlile
Boots with the fir.
ThoMiCroN
The government of Spain could still be in exile in the Canary islands, and Portugal in the Azores.
Rando Calrissian
Was...that a fraggle rock reference?
Justin Butler
"...Having it only take twenty years for them to listen is not bad, if I’m being honest.” Understatement of the series
justin
So Geneva, double crossed her vampire overlords and want her ticket out of the soup. Naughty naughty
Anthony
These dialogues tickle and scratch my brain the right way.
Jacob Goodrich
Thanks fir the chapter and it's time fir Team Biscut now
Quintin Landhan
Tftc
Soli116
I love chapter days. Thank you.
Arakrin
Thanks for the chapter :)
Tom C
TFTC
