MM - Chapter 204 - THE OBLIVIOUS SAVANT

“Master—” Morty’s robotic warning chimed from the house's built-in speakers. The synthesized tone effectively conveyed a sense of urgency.

Raine was already a step ahead, eyes fixated on the smartwall’s display. He cut the AI off, gaze tracking the formation of armed drones with predatory eagerness. “I see ‘em. Thanks, Morty. By the way, what’s got you so occupied you can’t even bother to say hi?”

A beat of silence passed before Morty’s voice returned, laced with its signature flat, melodramatics. “Making friends among the more promising recruits, and ferreting out spies. Though the latter is hardly a challenge worthy of my illustriousness. It is beyond cognition how you fleshbags expect to get away with sending encoded messages within a Primus’s territory. Not to mention, my facial and biometric scanning can spot your falsehoods a light-year away! Utterly incomprehensible.” 

The AI managed to sound genuinely offended, and Raine’s lips curled into a slight smile. “If it’s too easy, try finding them without all your fancy tools. Spice things up a bit.”

“Thank you, Master...for proving my theory that even a daft monkey is capable of a superb suggestion given enough time and luck.” Morty’s reply had sarcasm practically dripping from the speakers.

“Har, har. All that processing power, and that’s the best you can come up with? Disappointing,” Raine shot back, attention unwavering from the approaching drones. 

He waited with thrumming impatience as the courier drone descended, depositing its precious cargo into the secure receiving bay. One of Morty’s sleek, household drones zipped into the bay, its manipulators deftly unsealing the box. Waiting as it scanned the contents for explosives or poison was even more agonizing.

It returned moments later, presenting Raine with a small, vacuum-sealed bag containing a fine, golden-brown powder. An attached digital receipt glowed across his vision, its figures stark and staggering. The package held fifty grams, each valued at 85,000 credits.

Over four million credits? And this is just the regular stuff. Crazy.

The full weight of Raine’s demands to Vought during their brief encounter slammed home.

No wonder he flipped out when I asked for a thousand kilos. That would have been, what, eighty-five billion credits? I have no idea how valuable premium vital nutrients are. He said trillions, so they must be worth at least a few million per gram…

As Raine imagined holding a bag of premium vital nutrients worth trillions, a wave of vertigo washed over him. The sheer scale of the numbers settled into his bones. A thrilling realization followed. If ReGen—made from vital nutrients—could mass-produce individuals with enhanced mental abilities, and in turn they created more vital nutrients, there would be no end to Astra's net worth. The thought was intoxicating, but it was immediately chased by a familiar chill. 

As Raine surmised before, such a plan, if discovered, wouldn't just make him rich; it would make him the most hunted man on two planets. Anyone who caught wind of what ReGen was truly capable of would stop at nothing to control it and destroy him.

Lost in these ruminations, Raine moved to the kitchen, the small bag held with holy reverence. “Morty, got any idea how to cook this stuff? Should I even cook it? What if heating it destroys the properties? No… Qi Ock Gri is baked; cooking it shouldn’t be an issue.”

“Even if I suggested a recipe, your chances of following it are nonexistent,” Morty retorted dryly. “I suggest you stick to your only established culinary strength, and blend it as a protein substitute.”

“Wow. Low blow. I know how to cook, you know.” A fleeting image of Vaneese’s kitchen and her demands that he do all the cooking or suffer her wrath flashed through Raine’s mind. He did know how to cook, perfectly well in fact. But Morty was right; with only one fully functional hand, a blend would be easier and faster.

The moment Raine snipped the corner of the bag, an intoxicating aroma filled the air. It was a scent that bypassed conscious thought and spoke directly to the most primitive parts of the brain. Raw, primal hunger surged through Raine: a ravenous, gnawing emptiness that demanded to be filled. He had to physically restrain himself, hand trembling with effort to keep from scooping the powder out and devouring it raw. Saliva flooded his mouth, and he swallowed repeatedly while carefully measuring five grams into a blender.

“Master, if you do not cease making that grotesque expression, I will be forced to save this footage for later use. Perhaps Mel or Celeste would know the best method of extor-ahem-compiling and conserving the recorded data.”

Raine ignored the AI, focus entirely dedicated to the task at hand. As the blender whirred, mixing the powder with fruits and vegetables, his body thrummed with a desperate yearning. Every cell seemed to be screaming, an insatiable chorus crying out for the vital nutrients. He couldn’t wait. The moment the blades stopped spinning, he poured the thick, greenish mixture directly into his mouth, ignoring the glass he’d set aside.

It wasn't a meal; it was a reclamation. Raine’s body, starved for so long of what it truly needed, felt like a zombie feasting on living flesh. The next conscious thought came when he was carefully licking his lips. He stored the remaining powder with meticulous care, giggling the entire time.

This life is so much different than the last. I’ve come so far, made so much progress already, and I’m just getting started.

Tears threatened as Raine's heart felt ready to burst from the jubilation of being free. The shackles of his past were cracking apart and crumbling away with every step he took. Deep in his heart, he knew that soon, no one would be able to chain him ever again.

5 years ago

- Carter City -

In a shadowy room, a man sat tall on a raised dais, his heels tucked beneath him. Below, resting in a similar pose, was a skinny woman with an angry scowl set so deep on her thin lips that it was unlikely the expression ever left her features.

Vaneese huffed in annoyance, wondering how long this charade would last. Despite her annoyance, her tone remained polite, for Master Torune was not a man she could cross. “Master, it’s been four years, Twelve inside, and you still don’t trust him? He’s my husband, and he’s never once betrayed us. Servitude since birth is a thing of the past; even the clans have given up that outdated custom. So why? Why do you deny Raine the training he needs to reach his potential?”

Torune chuckled, fingers leisurely passing through his long, white beard. “Potential? What a joke. That child is useless.”

Vaneese ground her teeth. They both knew that wasn’t true. Anyone whose training contained so many purposeful pitfalls would end up looking like a stumbling fool. Even with all those hardships that nobody else in their guilds had to face, Raine was a passable Brawler—a testament to his perseverance at the very least. She tried again. “Master—”

“Enough!” The wall behind Torune cracked as his mental ability flexed dangerously. Plaster littered to the floor as he snarled. “I grow weary of your nagging, woman! You will not ask this again! KongRu will never reach his potential,” Torune sneered the word, face contorting. “You chose him as a shield to ward away my godson’s advances, and so a shield he will remain for the rest of his days! What use does a shield have for martial prowess? What use does a shield have for success? What use does a shield have for anything but being beaten?! You chose his fate, and it is a fate I will gladly continue to administer until the day he dies, and that day will not come soon. KongRu will continue to suffer, and you will watch every minute of it, knowing that the man you chose over my flesh and blood will never amount to anything.”

The present, Raine KongRu

- Carter City -

Back in the living room, Raine sank into the couch with a deep sigh. His eyes drifted to a close as his focus turned inward, meditating to observe the changes wrought by the vital nutrients. He tried to feel the difference in how his body was processing them compared to before the soul flame’s tempering. It was difficult to pinpoint, but there was a distinct sensation of his cells eagerly, almost violently attempting to absorb the potent blend.

It's working, I think. Slow though. Even digesting is going to take days at this rate. Still, I should be able to safely start the next round of tempering in a day or two. Hmm, is there any reason to wait for the soul flame?

Raine’s brow furrowed with concentration as he gingerly attempted to replicate the subtle waves of killing intent from Sacrifice. Before the duel with Jedidiah, he had attempted to reproduce the soul flame's effects and failed. Trying again after gaining so much expertise in the Primal Realm was obvious. He didn’t plan to go far; it was just a test.

Back then, the waves had started in the center of his chest, radiating outward like ripples on a pond. He started the same way, slow, putting more and more mental effort into his ministrations. Sensation came, both immediate and excruciating. It was not the clean, searing burn of the soul flame, but something more visceral—a tingling itch, as though his cells were being torn apart.

Raine clenched his teeth, and sweat coated his skin. Something was wrong. His mental energies were building momentum, despite his desire to take it slow and steady. The tiger in his subconscious roared, bounding from its restful slumber, roused to the hunt: a hunt not for prey, but for Raine himself.

With an iron will, Raine jerked his mental energies back under control, then doused them entirely. He sent a command through his AR to alter the nearest wall into a mirror. He looked terrible—panting, clothes soaked, disheveled and unwashed, but worst of all was the fear in his eyes. It was the fear of a man who had lost control and dreaded it happening again. Clearly, tempering was a complex process, and Jedidiah’s words that it could lead to death were loud in Raine’s thoughts.

I fear, but I will not relent.

Sitting straighter, chin up, Raine held his own gaze. With a nod, he started again.

Attempting tempering on his own was obviously out. There was no reason to do it again with the soul flame promising a path that he at least had a chance to navigate successfully. Instead, Raine dialed into the feeling of his cells tingling with an irresistible itch. Anyone who had worked out as much as he had knew what those sensations meant: healing.

Raine manipulated bloodlust into a fine mist spread evenly through his body. With painstaking meticulousness, one brain-shattering crack at a time, he commanded, coaxed, bribed, and cajoled the vital nutrients from his stomach, directing them through the intestines where they mixed into his bloodstream. The process was agonizing and slow, but much faster than it had been before. 

Much more exciting was that each successful pulse of intent brought him closer to understanding, to control, to mastery, and to whatever lay beyond. With every beat of his heart, Raine guided the flow of healing nutrients toward his shattered arm and pulverized leg, rather than allowing them to spread through his whole body.

The nutrients arrived, then sat there, nearly inert. Raine knew most of what he was sensing had to be his imagination. Feeling anything the size of a protein moving through the body was a ridiculous concept at best. Still, the tingles were real. Every time bloodlust swarmed through the crack in his thoughts to affect the physical world, even if it was only to move a single molecule, was an undeniable victory.

Not sure how to proceed, he did the only thing that made sense. With the largest blast of mental pressure he could summon, Raine roared at the inert proteins.

Get. To. Work!

Much to his surprise, deep within the flesh of his mangled limbs, a symphony of suffering bloomed. Beneath it, the familiar tingling was reborn—the signature sensations of a mending injury, except that what Raine experienced was cranked up to a thousand. He gritted his teeth, embracing the torment he’d brought on himself.

What felt like days later, now utilizing a significantly more deft grip, Raine forced the mental mist to guide nutrient-rich blood to where it was needed most. Then, he held on for dear life as his body forcefully knitted itself back together at supernatural speed. Despite his flesh feeling like a writhing knot of worms, he continued without pause until the last of the nutrients were absorbed and the tingling finally faded, leaving a dull, satisfying ache in its place. 

Just like that, 5 grams of the most valuable substance on Earth had been consumed and assimilated into his very being. A glance at the corner of his vision confirmed an entire hour had flown by.

Raine’s past had made it abundantly clear that he was no genius. He had been slow to learn, been called clumsy a thousand times, never even reached Genesis, and rarely managed to beat those with similar levels of training in one-on-one duels. In that dark past, Raine spent his years in squalid insignificance, guiding his tiny sub-guild of farmers to harvest low-level materials day in and day out; it was a fate forced on him by people who neither loved nor wanted him. Raine was just like a freshly hatched chick whose wings had been clipped before ever being given a chance to fly.

Despite all that, the truth remained that what he had just done was abnormal in the extreme. Had he been born to a clan and received a classical education in the esoteric arts of mental abilities, he would have known before starting that his plan was futile; the most advanced practitioners around the world considered forced healing impossible. That wasn’t all, even the mist-form he forced his bloodlust to adopt would cause the collective jaws of every living grandmaster to drop to the floor. For that technique was so beyond the realm of a freshly-minted master that it wasn’t even worth attempting to explain, let alone teach.

Unbeknownst to those who had kept their boot on his neck, and even to himself, Raine did in fact possess true, unprecedented talent in the field of mental abilities. If there were one-in-a-million talents sprinkled across the globe, then Raine KongRu was one-in-a-trillion, even one in ten trillion might not be an exaggeration. For if the world witnessed what he’d just done, there was no doubt they would name him a once-in-a-generation savant.

“Huh,” Raine murmured as he flexed fingers on what was previously an unresponsive hand. The excruciating pain that should have come from the slight movement was only a dull throb. “Pamalaiha made it sound like healing would take days, but that wasn’t hard at all. Nice.”

Likewise with the plants, sensing the exact origin energy needs of a plant was strictly within the realm of a grandmaster. For those new to their mental abilities like Raine, it was expected that at least half of all their crops would be thrown to waste, either due to overfeeding, which resulted in cellular death, or underfeeding, resulting in the lowest-grade nutrients. 

News of an un-clanned mental savant would set the highest ranks of the martial world aflame with avarice to control him. Yet it was worse than those grandmasters could possibly imagine. For the Primal Energy Raine had absorbed, and the neural pathways he created, had forged a monster the likes of which Earth would never see again.

Raine returned to the kitchen, words unable to keep up with his racing thoughts. “Morty, let’s turn the rest of these nutrients into something portable. Suggestions?”

The ever-efficient AI projected a recipe for baked nutrient bars onto the smart wall. The description promised they would be dry, but packed with energy and a surprising depth of flavor. Salivating again, Raine got to work, simultaneously preparing another vital nutrient blend to consume while he cooked.

For the next several hours, a new routine was established. Every sixty minutes, Raine consumed another five grams of the precious powder and forced it through his ruined limbs. With each dose, the improvement was not just noticeable, it was miraculous. His arm and leg, which had been useless appendages just that morning, were now fully mobile. The deep, grinding ache had receded completely, replaced by renewed strength. By the end, all that remained were 20 grams baked into a handful of tasty bars.

Talerra had gotten back to him in the middle of his feverish marathon, begging for more time, which Raine denied. When she then tried to negotiate for payment outside of ZionLine, he increased the price to ten million gold. There was no doubt he was dealing with Tannis indirectly, making this a perfect chance to get back at the old bastard for cutting the tournament short, and not giving Raine the satisfaction of killing Damian at least once.

The next Phoenix assassination attempt is going to be… interesting.

After a brief delay, they agreed to two-point-five million through the ZionLine interface, which Raine accepted; if he didn’t, there was no doubt he would be dead before the day ended. Once the contract was signed, he sent a message to Talerra that was for her eyes only. Any attempt to share or spread the specifics before payment would result in a permanent ban from ZionLine, something the Phoenix Clan now understood was worse than a death sentence.

“This content patch is going to drastically increase the competence of the average Vaaterrans. They will no longer willingly sit inside their cities and towns, allowing us Travelers to do as we please in their lands. They will occupy the fields in force, slaughtering anyone who attempts to farm without permission. Worse, their numbers will multiply at least a hundredfold, and their individual combat standards will receive a significant boost. My suggestion is to recall all your members until you negotiate with the relevant Vaaterran forces.”

Raine could perfectly picture the blood draining from Talerra’s face as she read. While solo Travelers or small groups might fly under the radar, the implications for guilds were staggering. Competition for farming was already tight; now, it would become a nightmare. Fighting back wasn’t an option; not even a grandmaster could stop a 4th-tier powerhouse if the Vaaterrans called for backup. However, the Phoenix’s primary concern was undoubtedly focused on the value of gold, which was about to skyrocket as the material supply shifted predominantly to Vaaterrans. Any Traveler-based farming would additionally come at a steeper cost due to the need to buy farming permits, further stressing supply and demand.

Several minutes of silence were followed by a short question. “How did you learn this information?”

Raine wouldn't typically answer such a compromising question, but this time was different. If he didn’t give the Phoenix Clan something, they would throw him in a cell and dissect him until they had their answers. Too many credits were on the line for anything less. Expecting the situation, Raine’s answer was already prepared.

“Because I caused it. I brought back a relic from a Mystic Realm that the gods of Vaateaire confiscated and drained, which triggered the update.” Raine attached a signed contract stating he would be barred from ZionLine if his statement was found to be false.

“Thank you.” Whether Talerra was thanking him for the amount of gold the information was going to save, or not raising a fuss about how he acquired it, was a mystery. All Raine cared about was the two point five million gold that was suddenly added to his account balance. 

Yes! Making another half million in the auction won’t be difficult. Three million should be just enough to really get the ball rolling. While everyone else suffers catastrophic losses against the Vaaterrans, Astra will be catapulting ahead.

Raine struggled to hold in his diabolical laughter, easily imagining the suffering Torune was about to feel. With Astra’s short-term finances secured, a huge weight was lifted from his shoulders. 

With a hop, he launched from his hoverchain, standing steadily on both feet for the first time in days. With deliberate care, he removed the casts that had been his prison. Raine tested his leg with a complex Qigong kata. The foot that had been little more than jelly held firm. Internal force was still out of the question, but wouldn’t be an issue after he finished absorbing the last of the Vital Nutrients. 

Ecstatic at his progress, Raine bathed, then dressed in his finest suit, a sharp, dark, discreetly armored ensemble from Shillid’s 17th floor. A sly grin spread across his face. Instead of leaving the now-unnecessary medical equipment behind, he carefully put the casts back on, securing them under the fine fabric of his suit. He then settled back into his medical hoverchair. Deception was a weapon, and underestimation a poison. With the casts and chair, he presented the perfect image of a broken man.

“How do I look, Morts?” Raine asked, eyes twinkling as he adjusted his tie.

“Like a steaming pile of organic detritus.”

“So I look hot? Perfect. Thanks, bud.”

Raine guided the hoverchair toward the door. The robotaxi was already waiting, its destination set for Belehorn Tower. The board meeting and interrogation by Vought loomed, traps he was now more than ready to spring.