Ch65.Action

The Auction proceeded quite smoothly, there were a few mishaps here and there with some arguments over a bid, as well as families trying to pressure the other bidders into giving up, fortunately the Dean stepped in and promptly solved the situation by threatening to destroy the family should they continue their behavior.

I had made very detailed notes on who bought my drugs and the exact quantities that were bought. As the Auction ended and everyone collected the objects that they bought, I made a special note as to where all the drugs were stored, how many storage devices each family had as well as the other objects that were bought.

I then quickly passed these details along to my Clan members and told them to carry out the plan.

After completing all of the financial processes, I made my way back to the area hosting all of the Bosses and sat down with a notepad in hand. I started explaining all of the profits that were made and started splitting the money between everyone. I then explained that I plan to try and organize an event like this once or twice every year so whoever is interested in forming a permanent partnership are welcome to start their preparations early and to start hoarding certain stock for the next big auction.

As I was busy with these discussions , my clan members had started the plan. In order to complete my plan successfully I had created a few different teams, each with a different purpose. There were five teams in total, each controlled by one of my trusted clan members, these clan members each were in control of a team of 'Shadow Puppets'.

When I say Shadow Puppets, what I am talking about is the half-successful experiments that have been made by Ylaric. What I asked him to do for me was to find a way to better integrate my Rune Injection method so that not only are normal people able to practice magic, they are also able to improve their strength as well.

The limitation I have found out with my current method is that, just because someone has a Rune forced upon them, doesn't mean that they become a true mage. They are able to absorb Magical Energy, but only at the Circle 1 level as they aren't able to create their own Magical Circle, thus are only able to use singular Runes. The only way for them to improve in strength is to add more Runes onto their body. Unfortunately, there will always be limited space on a persons body and the Runes will never be able to link together and form resonance.

What I have been planning with Ylaric is to be able to create a method to 'inject' a complete singular circle that can be improved in a way resembling the Barbarian training method. The Barbarians only use one Rune for their whole lives and they are somehow able to continuously improve that Rune to a level where it is comparable to a Multi Circle Mage. Now I can't hope to create a system that complete as I don't nearly have enough information on the Barbarians system, but I want to be able to 'inject' a circle into certain clan members and then with enough time, I hope that these members will be able to improve that one circle to a decent level, thus becoming true powerhouses.

Now although this is my plan, the shortcoming that is preventing me from completing this project, is that when injecting someone, that has never had Magical Energy coursing through them before, the sudden increase in power either causes instant death or, in rare cases, causes the person to become brain dead.

What I have devised with the Brain dead individuals, is to use a method to remotely control them in a way similar to how one would control a magical puppet. Just these 'puppets' are human and have a fully functioning Magical Circle that has up to16 Runes attached. I am able to exceed the normal limit of 12 Runes since they will only ever have one circle.

These Circles are all based off my Shadow Lord Rune, I have just been experimenting with using different elements in order to achieve different effects with this Rune, such as fire, the user can use fire as a medium for the Shadow Lord Rune, combined with a few convenient Runes, this results in an ability that allows the user to travel freely through fire and send items into the Shadow Space through fire.

Another great accomplishment that I have done in these custom made Magic Circles, is creating a type of Shadow Link Rune, therefore, allowing these mindless Puppets to enter a Shadow Space linked to my own through these different elements. This means that when they send an item into the Shadow Space, even if they die, I will still be able to access these items!!

After discovering this, I have made many future plans in order to fully take advantage of this absolute marvel of a skill. The possibilities in this Runes application are nearly endless.

Ylaric is completely oblivious to this true application of this Rune and only thinks that others with the same circle can link together into the same 'general' space and I fully plan to keep this secret as it is absolutely critical in a number of my future plans.

I just hope that Ylaric will be able to finish this experiment so that I can give my clan members their own Magic Circle and finally complete my Shadow Guard, Legant has been constantly bugging me to give him a Rune so that he can be a proper 'shadow' that can follow me everywhere. I have had to constantly tell him that I am preparing something very exciting for him, but he must first master the art of stealth, disguise, murder, and escaping first, otherwise this 'gift' will cause him to become too lazy and no longer work on mastering these basics, but necessary skills.

Anyway, what I have planned for these 'customers' is to have my 'Shadow Puppets' assault them, steal all of their valuables and send them into the shadow space where I will transport to my own Shadow Space, and then try to escape.

They will each be wearing a Bronze masks that has a certain facial expression displayed on the front, these masks are the Mind Control Rune Devices. These will be covering their faces in order to appear 'mysterious' while they are kitted out in old school Ninja outfits. They have been hiding in the shadows along the pathways since the beginning of the auction, waiting for their perfect opportunity to strike and complete their mission.

I have well over sixty Shadow Puppets, therefore I have deployed quite a few for this plan in order to get this job done as fast as possible, some will be used as distractions or sacrifices while other accomplish the main task of stealing back my drugs. As soon as I get all of my drugs back, that is when I will start phase two, pacify the situation and shift the blame!

So as soon as I send out the signal, my clan members immediately started controlling the Shadow Puppets into action. They jumped out of the shadow and started launching some indiscriminate attacks as the ones with more stealth attributes concentrated on stealing the products.

After they had caused some damage to the surroundings and caused a great deal of immediate confusion, they quickly started to visibly target the storage devices that held various objects as well as the drugs that the stealth team were unable to secure. After successfully acquiring all of my drugs they started targeting other valuables. I made sure to not just target the people holding my drugs so as to not make myself an obvious target when these Families inevitable blame us for having their products stolen.

As soon as they had acquired all the drugs, their task was to just cause as much chaos as possible and attempt to steal as much as they could.

The Families started fighting back rigorously quite quickly, not giving us much time, killing off quite a few of my Shadow Puppets. It was then that the Dean rushed to the area where the largest group was located. His Job was to cause even more chaos while appearing to be fighting to help the families.

As soon as he arrived he started screaming, "HOW DARE YOU ATTACK THE GUESTS OF 'MY' EVENT!! YOU MUST HAVE A DEATH WISH!!"

The Dean immediately created a small Magical Circle on his palm where a small fireball was created, he then started creating a large number of smaller magical circles that were then fed into that fireball.

The Fireball started Increasing in size, it started getting much hotter, becoming a bright Yellowish White and Red color. He proceeded to raise the fireball up above his head as he continued to feed it more and more magical circles. The Fireball quickly grew larger that the Dean himself before it split into multiple smaller Fireballs that shot in every direction, attacking everything in sight.

Fascinatingly enough though, was that the fireballs only ever landed on my Shadow Puppets, never once hitting anyone else.