Quoted By:
"What Kaya is trying to say is, thank you. Unfortunately the holding cell had enchantments on it that made it... difficult to escape. So we were waiting for them to release us. Also we hoped to avoid an incident. By the way, how exactly did you manage to get the key? And did you cause that fire?"
"No. And I didn't get it. It was given to me. I got lucky and managed to convince that man in the red jade armor to let you go, in exchange for a favor."
"What favor?"
"I don't know Kaya, I'm sure he'll tell me when he wants to turn it in. Hopefully we can get far enough away that it will never come. But I'm not holding my breath 'til then."
They fell silent afterward and Jet focused on the road.
"Nice cloak by the way."
"Thanks Kaya, it was very expensive. Speaking of clothes though... why were you naked when they brought you in?"
"We went to the bath house."
"Typical..."
The trio went as far as their horses could take them while the sun was still shining down upon them. Deciding that it was safer to not move at night they made camp and rested. In his sleep Jet was tormented once more by strange dreams. In it he saw Gourd of all people, standing behind him whilst he, covered from head to toe in resplendent golden armor, faced four units of dragon-blooded, twenty in total, in combat. The fight was brutal, by his standards anyway, yet it took no effort to dispatch them all. He was able to send each unit flying with one punch each, and it did not even have to connect.
"They are not up to standard."
"My lord, I assure you of their quality myself. Each of them is from my bloodline and I oversaw their training personally."
"No. It's not an issue of training. No. 2 and No. 4 of the Third Unit have troubles with their anima. Essence flows irregularly through their chakras, causing motonic fluctuation. I could see deviations as high as 0.000000001 from the universal standard of other Dragon-Blooded. Pantera!"
An adolescent boy darted across the entire manse and showed up in his shadow with such speed it looked as if he used sorcery to teleport.
"My lord?"
"Collect bio-samples from each of these newbloods and take it to the genesys lab for study. I suspect Gens Raicho is succumbing to this new "disease" that ails our terrestrial cousins."
"Y-Your excellency! I assure you there's nothing-"
"If I find out that you have been sabotaging my troops, my stock in such a manner..."
He could feel the mounting fury of a thousand volcanic eruptions rising in his stomach. He felt like he could die from it any moment.
"I will cull each and every single branch of your degenerate bloodline, before you irreversibly taint what is mine by divine mandate! The Deliberative be damned!"
