"There's a portal that they would like to collaborate on."
Dalton looked over to the attendant. "What's the catch?"
"Nothing obvious, and that's probably the problem. However…"
"However?"
The attendant came into view from the shadows of the dojo. It was a woman dressed in a pantsuit. She looked quite young and bore some resemblance to Dalton. She was actually his daughter, though the way they spoke to one another, you would never guess.
Her hair was surprisingly quite silver as well. But this wasn't because she had dyed it or because she had a genetic condition like Priya. Instead… it seemed to have only changed after the apocalypse.
Such mutations were rare, but if Zarek had been there, he would see it as quite an important thing to note.
Talents below A Class never caused such things.
"Their scouting situation is quite interesting. From what I can tell, they seem to be very much interested in Priya Synghe as well. Though, that is probably not much of a surprise."
Priya was an important pawn anyone who knew anything would want to get their hands on. Controlling her meant controlling one of the three most powerful men in the state. The fact she was out and about with seemingly no protection was ridiculous.
And yet, the fact she had been here for almost a month already and the closest person to getting a hand on her was dead… told a very different story about what was going on.
"But you seem to already know this," Dalton's daughter finished. "Your meeting with the attorney general?"
Dalton smiled lightly. His first smile since learning of his best friend's death.
His daughter had a way of making him feel quite good. Much of what she had said, he already knew, and he had already decided their next course of action. But hearing how much she had deduced on her own made him happy.
"Part of the reason I was away was for my meeting with the attorney general. There's been a deal cut between the Green Corporation and us. Or, more accurately, the Angels and us."
"The Angels?" Dalton's daughter frowned in confusion. "Wait, you can't mean the gang, can you?"
"Yes."
"I don't agree with this. They're too scattered, they're a snake with countless heads. And—"
Dalton held up a hand. "You are right to have this deduction with publicly available information. But the situation is different from what you know. The Angels are actually more cohesive than it seems. If my own deductions are correct, this is nothing more than a façade they've kept up."
"That…" she took a breath and exhaled, regaining her composure. "Dangerous."
"I agree."
If the Angels were truly just faking their lack of cohesion, that meant one very important thing. They weren't something state powers could deal with at all.
In fact, even the federal government was struggling to piece things together right now.
If one had to guess, the most powerful faction in the country was probably the President and his cohort. But… the Angels just might be a close second if this was true.
The Angel gang was something so ubiquitous with American culture that it was hard to tell just how ingrained they were. They had history spanning more than a hundred years, could practically be found in any given state, and were somehow both feared and an ingrained part of pop culture at the same time.
If this was the scheme of a single man… maybe even saying they were second to the federal government right now was understating their danger.
But in this case, it would be more dangerous to not work with them. How could you say no to such a power?
"So does this mean that they are trying to catch Priya Synghe as a sign of good favor to the attorney general?"
"I can't be sure."
"Why is that?"
"They are… too eager. Something tells me that they're more interested in the one protecting her—the reason she's been around for this long in the first place."
"Zarek Ashborn."
Dalton stood there in silence for a while before he spoke again. "…He is the one who killed Sakks?"
"He is."
"…" After a while, Dalton took a breath. "We will do the bare minimum."
There was a flicker in his daughter's eyes. "Father, you don't want—"
Dalton held a hand up. "No. This is a fight amongst giants, and it's those like us that end up getting hurt in the end. I will go to this Godsfall Tear, as they call it. I will protect my life, but I will not go above and beyond. When I return, depending on the situation, we will make a decision from then… whether to leave this city and go elsewhere, or to stay."
**
Zarek was like a kid on Christmas morning. The Turned were coming in droves, and without the Crimson Rain suppressing his mentality, he maintained a chipper attitude, moving through the wave with sharpness.
He was really testing the limits of Temp Duplicate, trying to see how much of it he could truly fuse with Harmonic Recall.
There was one main limitation of Temp Duplicate, and that was that it needed an item to use as a blueprint. Or, more accurately, material.
When Temp Duplicate was used, Zarek couldn't just use his memory to produce something. Normally, anyway.
Thanks to Harmonic Recall, Zarek could cheat a bit. This was how he was able to produce his crossbow-shield continuously.
Harmonic Recall had memory built into it, while Temp Duplicate didn't. As such, because he had a blueprint, he could recall his crossbow-shield from memory perfectly enough to use Temp Duplicate to perfection.
But Zarek felt that this ability should be used more, especially if he could stretch it out further.
There was something he wanted to be able to do more than this, though.
What if, rather than using Temp Duplicate to forge materials, he used Harmonic Recall to replace the scanning portion, and then used materials that already existed to replace the creation portion?
Would he be able to fix the durability of Temp Duplicate if he could use materials with their own durability?
Unfortunately, he felt that his Mastery was far too low to do that, even if it was possible—something he wasn't entirely sure of yet.
So, since his stats were at a stalemate… he was just going to have to use his Time Godsfall affinity to cheat and raise his Talents up some more.
Maybe [Limit Break] might give him a surprise.
His Talents were facing the same growth limiting issues as his stats because they were poor Talents. But... the difference between Talents and stats was that one could be twisted and changed based on mental state, while the other was more rigid and necessitated changes to the body.
Of course, there were some Talents that blurred those lines and would be more difficult to deal with. But Zarek's current Talents weren't so difficult to manage. This was why he could use his Time Godsfall affinity to force them to improve faster than they would usually.
'Hm?'
Zarek raised an eyebrow. Since he got Atom Link, one of the first things he did was get him and Priya a matching pair of braces so he could constantly feel what was going on around her.
Not only would this help him keep tabs on her location and ready him to interfere if needed, fighting while constantly paying attention to two battlefields at once was also an excellent way to train his Charisma.
Something caught his attention just now.
Zarek took a breath and exhaled. '... I'll let her handle it.'
He refocused his attention back to his battlefield.