Selene quickly made her way to the gate, where the guards were preventing Amélie from entering. She excused herself and told the guards that she’d handle it from there, then gestured for Amélie to follow her.
As they walked, Selene spoke up. "I apologize for our poor hospitality. Things have just been a little difficult for us as of late. I hope you understand."
"Nevermind that. Where are you taking me?" Amélie changed the subject.
"To the guest rooms," Selene said.
"What? I told you I wanted to meet the new Chairman," Amélie said, stopping in her tracks.
Selene turned around. "The Chairman is busy at the moment. You can wait for him to get back to you. I’ll tell you immediately once he’s free," she said.
Amélie still wasn’t convinced. "No. I want to speak to the Chairman right now," she demanded, turning around.
But Selene grabbed her hand.
"What are you doing?" Amélie asked.
"Miss Amélie, please don’t make things difficult for the both of us," Selene said.
"What do you mean? Are you threatening me?" she asked.
"Oh no, I misspoke," Selene said quickly, her tone sincere. "I only hope that the Miss doesn’t make things difficult for me. After all, I’m just an insignificant officer following orders." She paused, meeting Amélie’s eyes. "The Miss might have some issues with the Chairman, but I hope the Miss won’t harm an officer who’s just following orders in the process."
Amélie looked at Selene for a long moment.
"Hmph. Fine. I’ll wait," she said.
"Thank you," Selene said with a small bow.
"Insignificant, you say..." Amélie spoke as she observed Selene.
Suddenly, a huge explosion reverberated through the Association area, and a loud voice came from above.
"Association trash, your time has come!"
With that, massive fireballs began raining from the sky.
...
Selene turned to Amélie. "I can’t entertain you further, Miss Amélie. Please follow the path to the guest rooms..."
Amélie scoffed at this, "Are you asking me to hide with my tail between my legs? Who do you think I am?"
Selene’s expression remained serious. "We will try our best to protect our foreign friend. But if things go south, we will put the safety of the organization before you."
Amélie mused at the thought of being protected. She rose up into the air to meet an incoming fireball, which she instantly destroyed with her hand.
"You were saying?" she asked, looking down at Selene.
Selene could only sigh. "Thank you for your help, Miss Amélie. The Chairman will be grateful for your assistance in defending the Association."
"He better be," Amélie said as she flew up to meet more of the descending fireballs.
Atop one of the Association buildings, Draven stood looking at the undead that were beginning to gather, then up at the descending fireballs. He was about to go meet them when he saw someone else flying through the air, intercepting them. He looked up, recognizing the flying figure.
"Sister-in-law?" he murmured.
He wondered when she’d gotten here. Would she fault him for what happened with Marcus? He sighed. Even now, it didn’t feel real.
He shook his head, regaining his focus. That wasn’t important right now. He needed to focus on defending what they had left first.
With that, he jumped off the building. His mechanical arm transformed mid-fall, producing flames that slowed his descent. He landed between the zombies, and his hand transformed back. He then smashed his mechanical and natural arm together, creating a shockwave that pushed back the undead.
"Time for round two, you bastards!" he shouted and charged at them.
...
Cipher appeared atop a building a few blocks away from the Association entrance. He looked toward the association. The situation didn’t look good. There were undead everywhere in the Association. He could still hear the fighting, though, so at least the situation wasn’t as bad as it could be.
He summoned his system. He needed to quickly fight his way through the undead and get to the Immortal King. In the battle with the Chairman, he’d awakened quite a few new skills and hadn’t checked them out yet. He decided to give them a quick glance.
He summoned the system and checked the first ability.
[Skill: Battle Instinct (A-Rank)]
[Type: Passive]
[Cost: 0 Mana]
[Description: Enhances sensory perception in combat situations. Allows the user to read and interpret battle intent from opponents, predicting their actions before they execute them.]
"Battle intent?" he wondered.
[That’s right,] the Heavenly Demon spoke up.
[Think of it like killing intent, but for battle. With killing intent, you can feel when someone is leaking their desire to kill you. But with battle intent, you can read someone’s desire to strike and mostly predict where they’re going to attack through reading this intent. It’s quite an advanced technique. I’m even surprised you actually learned it.] She said.
[Usually, at this level, someone would just learn regular battle instinct that relied on killing intent to predict the flow of battle. This is quite easy to overcome, as stronger opponents can hide or manipulate their killing intent, making the predictions almost completely useless. But with battle intent reading, you can more accurately predict your opponent’s attacks.] She added.
Cipher looked at the skill. "That powerful?" he wondered aloud.
[Of course. To reach this level in the Jianghu, you need to at least reach the Origin Realm. In your terms, that’s SS-Rank,] she explained.
Cipher nodded. It was indeed a powerful ability. If used well, he could definitely use it to deal some serious damage while preserving his life, which was his biggest problem at the moment. Although he had the means to deal high damage, his cap was always his other stats, which prevented him from being able to match people in a higher realm than him.
But if he could predict their attacks, he should be able to somewhat keep up.
He moved on to the other awakened skill.
[Skill: Unwavering Will (B-Rank)]
[Type: Toggle (Passive/Active)]
[Cost: 200 Mana (Active)]
[Description: Passively boosts resistance to mind-related status effects. While active, improves concentration to the maximum for five minutes, resisting all mental disruptions and allowing complete focus.]
[Note: Leaves user under mental exhaustion after use.]
Cipher observed the skill. It was a good skill. This in conjunction with Battle Instinct would be perfect - if not for the hefty price that is. Worth two hundred whole mana and lasting just five minutes. There was no way he could use this at the moment.
Especially not with the mental exhaustion penalty that he didn’t know anything about. Mana exhaustion was quite bad so he didn’t expect this to be any different. He first needed to get a Patch Card for it. And maybe an Optimize Card to reduce that hefty price.
As for the last skill...