Museum Core Chapter 126: Get Off My Lawn

Immortality, fire resistance, endurance … once upon a time, the phoenix had seemed like a great idea.

Lukas Henderson had once heard the saying “the tallest blade of grass is the first to be cut” and learned that it applied to the Royal Marines as well, albeit in the form of “if you prove yourself capable of handling the stuff that gets dumped on you, expect to have even more dumped on you the next day.”

Apparently, sadly, that very same principle held true in the BPA.

He had the traits to explore the so-called “Red Desert” in the Indian Ocean, so that was what he had to do. Alone.

Loaded down with C-Rank summoning tokens, the best gear the BPA had had, discounting anything soulbound, granted, but in the end, that had been what it boiled down to.

Go forth and conquer … unless you see something even remotely dangerous, then you’re expected to run like hell.

As if he’d needed that instruction when this was a scouting mission to a place that had effectively been a black hole for scouting teams.

No food, no water, no native system, no GPS, and it had some kind of localized magnetic interference that made even compasses unreliable.

As such, someone had had the bright idea of sending Henderson alone, since if worst came to worst, he could just fly high enough to be able to orient himself by sight.

Incidentally, that was just about the same reason why Abrams was exploring the Golden Desert as well, though she’d gotten quite the boost from the anchor beast.

The thrill of exploration had worn off about five minutes in. Which had been four hours ago.

He’d transformed into his phoenix form from the start, and flown straight east, only occasionally dipping down to leave a long scorch mark in his wake to mark the way back.

Seriously, was anything ever going to happen? Would he have to kill something before he got system access? Having a sufficiently high rank and touching the ground away inlands usually worked.

Usually.

This place, though? It was both dangerous and utterly useless.

Honestly, he should just keep going until he reached the other side in a couple of days, then turn around and head back the way he’d come and return along a slightly different route just to make sure it was just as empty elsewhere, then go along the far coast until he reached the point where he’d started, and finally go to Bristol the exact same way he’d come here.

This place was as dead as the surface of Mars, and looked just like it to boot … yet even that thought and daydream only managed to distract him for a bare few minutes.

Desert, more desert, oh, look, a tiny rock …

The whole situation was made all the worse by the fact that he had to actively suppress the brain’s normal response to boredom, which was drifting off into thought. Because he had to pay attention, this was a very dangerous place … the combination of feeling like he had to drift off yet being forced to fight it off was one of those things soldiers had to deal with on the regular, but that hardly made it any more fun.

And then, finally, he saw it. Well, saw him.

An old man, sitting in a chair and looking up at him, with what was either a hawk or eagle on his shoulder, and a … a bloody crocodile, one big enough to ride on, curled in on itself behind it.

So this place was inhabited.

Henderson grinned and dove down, aiming to land a hundred meters or so ahead of the man, and shifted back into a human a couple of meters above the ground, landing heavily in the sand, which shifted underfoot.

Superhuman or not, walking on that kind of surface was unpleasant, but there wasn’t very far to go.

Yet as he got closer, he realized that things were ever so slightly … off.

Skin that seemed to be sunburnt without being damaged, skin that was wrinkly without being accompanied by that sense of being paper-thin, and while they were almost completely hidden by hair, Henderson was pretty sure those were horns sprouting from his temples, curving backwards to disappear into that white mane of a hairdo.

Henderson narrowed his eyes and tried to Inspect the man. That particular Skill was hardly his best, but at a bare minimum, he should get a rank, right?

And immediately, he received an answer. A detailed one.

Mid-B-Rank, his name was Agares, he specialized in magic stats and had powers relating to movement, both towards and away from him, earthquakes, and languages. And teaching said abilities … that couldn’t be right, in any way, shape, or form.

That was more information than he could have possibly gotten even from an F-Rank individual, never mind someone who was, in fact, stronger than him.

But no one weaker than him should have been able to mess with his Inspect to this degree, so the old man had to be absurdly strong, yet he had absolutely no trust in what information he had gotten.

Certainly, even if he hadn’t already been planning on approaching this carefully, that little nugget of truth would have sealed the deal.

Be extra polite, avoid all profanity, and don’t even give the faintest hint of an idea that he may have thought of doing anything that could even remotely be considered “aggressive.”

But before Henderson could even start with his “hello,” the old man said something. He was obviously speaking, it had the cadence and rhythm of a language, but it wasn’t one even faintly reminiscent of anything he’d ever heard.

Granted, Henderson was hardly what you’d call a linguist, but he had traveled, interacted with people from quite a few different countries, and seeing as he lived in the current capital of the nation, filled with embassies, he’d also been within hearing range of countless conversations in languages he might not be able to identify by name but could still confirm were fundamentally different than what the “maybe a demon” before him had spoken.

“I don’t …” he began to say, only to cut himself off. He’d been about to say “I don’t speak that,” which, while likely not having the same negative connotations in the demonic language, even if the other man had been able to understand him in the first place … but that was no reason to tempt fate.

But before he could take that again, from the top, the “demon” acted, sighing and spreading his arms, the low glow emanating from them immediately putting Henderson on edge.

And then the demon spoke once more.

“Now that I’ve granted you the power to speak Enochian, I’d like you to make a promise: don’t cause trouble while you’re here, in exchange …”

“I’m not making any deals,” Henderson said, trying to, somehow, sound polite while also being firm in turning the demon down flat.

His grandmother had always reminded him not to make deals with fairies, to turn down anything they offered as hard as possible, without getting on their nerves to the point where they’d just outright murder you. And even his very simple, no-strings-attached deal with the Worldstrider tribe had set him on edge for weeks afterwards.

Dealing with an actual demon was several orders of magnitude more nerve-wracking.

Someone more academically-minded might have tried to come up with a proper deal that lacked loopholes … but that wouldn’t have been a sign of intelligence, but arrogance. A deal with the devil was not in the cards.

“Not even to …”

“I know my limits,” Henderson said, mentally steeling himself for a fight. “And reliably spotting the traps in deals with fairies or demons is one of them.”

“Alright,” the demon said, startling him. “Shoo.”

And he accompanied that with a shooing motion, lazily waving his right hand, as though he were trying to get rid of a large but simple animal, a harmless one at that, which had gotten somewhere it wasn’t supposed to be, so it needed to go, but wasn’t actually considered to be a problem.

Henderson blinked in surprise, feeling the tension leave his body, replaced by confusion.

“Shoo!” the demon repeated, more insistently this time, using both hands.

“Okay …” he replied, taking a couple of steps back, but apparently, that wasn’t enough.

“SHOO!” the demon repeated for a third time, the accompanying only a single, insistent, shove at the air, and the world around Henderson vanished.

Barely a split second later, it reappeared … with him standing on the surface of the ocean.

A surface utterly incapable of supporting his weight.

Henderson spluttered and swore as he surfaced, looking around wildly until he saw the nearby shore of the Red Desert. So he hadn’t gotten randomly teleported around; he’d just been ejected from the demon’s domain.

Yeah … he wasn’t going to go back in. Not now, perhaps not ever. Someone else could make the deal with the devil.

***

How rude were these humans?

Duke Agares shook his head slowly.

How terrible was this world that a promise as simple as behaving oneself was unthinkable? Although, in truth, perhaps it was precisely because no one would promise good behaviour that this world was in such an awful state.

Or so he assumed.

His interactions with the locals had been rather limited; some had run away the moment he’d shown himself, one man had even outright dropped dead of fright at the sight of him, so he’d stopped revealing himself to mundane humans and instead started listening.

And what he’d heard had painted a truly terrible picture. One of a broken world, split into innumerable factions, ones who were utterly incapable of trusting each other, barely even bound by any agreements they did reach.

Humans. Apparently, they were as hot a mess as the stories suggested.

Demons were so much easier.

You were given a power by one of the elders when you became of age, and in exchange, a small portion of the Stat points you earned would flow towards that elder, until you reached B-Rank, where you’d get the power needed to be able to share your own powers and make deals, and A-Rank, when you’d get your very own power based on those you’d gained in the past, what you’d done with said powers, and finally, what you’d achieved up to that point.

Even if you weren’t the only one capable of sharing an earlier power, that one would be utterly unique.

And if the elder(s) who had granted you your powers died of old age, all the points traded to them would return to their original earners.

Simple, beautiful, functional.

Yet the humans couldn’t even make the most basic of agreements!

***

A demon. In a transformation zone that may or may not be inhabited entirely by hellspawn. Even if they were apparently polite, that was still going to cause all sorts of issues with all sorts of people.

And the fact that a “deal with the devil” would be required before talks could even begin was also going to be an issue … if Frye had been inclined to try and deal with it himself.

But he wasn’t. He knew exactly who to kick this problem to.

The Worldstrider Tribe. Their Wardens of Truth would be able to easily cut through any nonsense that may be employed; someone being able to determine both the objective and subjective purpose of any given deal was unlikely to fall into any traps.

He’d pay them, obviously, though he’d have to spend a little time figuring something out on top of “mere” money.

***

Four days later

Things had moved with surprising alacrity once Frye had set them in motion, not even one hundred hours had passed since he’d kicked things off, and he was already holding a thorough report in his hands.

Basically, Agares was the only one in the zone; he’d been travelling between cities when the merge had occurred and was basically just bored. And lonely. But his opinion of humanity seemed to be … well, abysmal.

That being said, he had gotten an excellent overview of the local system and why it wouldn’t really be a good addition to what the BPA already had access to.

All in all, the System of the Warlock worked perfectly well on its own, as a contained system, pun definitely intended. Yes, it heavily benefited those who’d started out first, and generally was something of a Ponzi scheme, but ultimately, as it was, it worked. But it couldn’t compare to any other system, unless you were at the top.

And with how things were currently laid out, significant use of this particular system would massively increase the power of one specific being, who wasn’t necessarily going to be on humanity’s side.

Not to mention that killing the demon you were contracted to would return all the Stat points they’d gained. That option might not get used too often in demonic society; they apparently had better sense than that, but Frye was pretty certain that the kinds of humans who’d be willing to make those deals would likely see this as an exploit, rather than an option that shouldn’t be taken.

It was like the monkey’s paw, in a way. Everything about it said how bad of an idea using it was, yet all it made people do was go “huh, how can I use it and not fuck up?” once the true magnitude of the threat was revealed.

In this case, though, there was a n(entirely theoretical) idea about making a deal with the devil, gaining superpowers, then fucking over the devil and regaining everything you spent.

Even if it was possible based on the established rules, actually trying was a recipe for disaster.

And if people were sane, that would be the end of it … but from bitter experience, Frye knew something as basic as “logic” and “common sense” only stopped those who had their heads screwed on straight, something that sadly did not apply to everyone.

But if the Red Desert was ever going to cause an issue, it would be far off into the future. Or, at the very least, further than the next merge.

Solution: leave him the hell alone, and focus on figuring out how to bring the military up to full alert without letting it slip that they actually knew the second merge was coming. Or maybe just figure out a good excuse.

Because “we’ve known the entire time and didn’t see fit to share the information” wouldn’t go over well, not when it had been kept secret so long. Maybe figure out if there was an Anima Monk with a bond that could have provided an “animal instinct anticipates disasters” ability or something like that.