Rebirth: The Shadow Of Greed

..."I'm fine Soli, I think because it was my first kill, something deep inside me awoken but this time around, I'm fine."

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In a dark underground chamber, a large table was set up. At the seats were men wearing masks,

"It seems 8's vitals are gone." Said a woman with a victorian ballroom mask,

"Did it just lose signal?" A man wearing a plague doctor's mask replied,

"I highly doubt so, signals aren't that easy to make vanish. If 8 really had been killed in action then the amount we had invested on him had been entirely wasted."

The woman replied again.

Turning towards a member wearing a black mask with a hammer on the forehead, the plague doctor spoke again,

"The council has tried their best to secure your position for the future, but with the death of 8, it would seem like you haven't been quite forthcoming with the truth. Are you certain that there isn't a bodyguard that was dispatched to protect his life?"

"I'm positive, he was sent to the academy to learn to strike out on his own, if he had someone accompanying him, we would have caught wind of it immediately and using it, it would have been easy to deal with his father. It looks like we have to expedite plan B instead."

The black mask replied, with the rest of the council members nodding in agreement.

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"Boss let us see your manifest!"

"Yeah, we need to see how we can work together to take out the beast guarding the door in 2 months."

Z smiled as he gently tossed his dagger in the air, it flew up sharply but just as it was about to land it stopped in mid-air. Z started to make himself levitate, as well as everything not stuck on the ground around him.

"Is this enough?"

"Boss! That's amazing! If we escape from here, I don't think you need to be a vanguard anymore, you can be on the offence team."

"Odrunn is right, your control over your manifest is quite good, you can control so many things at once, could it be you've already entered the high end of the tank level?"

Soli asked curiously, it was not rare for someone to have a psychic manifest, but for someone who just awakened to be able to control so many things and even levitate himself is an oddity in itself.

"I guess you could say, that I had some training before pertaining to multi-tasking. Anyway, I think we should occupy this cave for the 2 months before going to challenge the beast. We still have to be wary, I don't know if the people who sent the assassin would send more people here."

Z looked at the duo seriously as he explained the entire situation to them.

"Boss, who did you offend? Why are there so many people coming after you?"

Odrunn asked in all seriousness.

"They're not after me, this guy he was after you. So the question is, who did you offend for these people to send an assassin after you into a hole in the ground?"

Z threw the question back to Odrunn, he was certain that Odrunn played a vital role within the plans of the council, but he didn't want to alarm him by asking him directly.

"I don't know boss, look at me, how would I offend anyone so much they'd want to kill me so badly, the only person I can think of is that Basil guy. But it isn't my fault that I fell on top of him"

Soli started to blush, it was partially her fault for going ahead with the plan and making Odrunn fall onto Basil, if it was truly her fault and it was really Basil who did it, she had really caused a big commotion there and unwittingly dragged someone else to hell.

"I'll confront Basil about it when we get back. If we get back both of you will be under the Aquos family's protection! I assure it I won't allow anything to happen to the both of you!"

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2 months later, their training had reached a standstill, Odrunn could not progress anymore, not without an absurd amount of weights and neither could Z and Soli.

Z had practically done all he could to bring his body and his psychic manifest to the top condition and it was the best he could do in such a setting.

Soli had better control of her manifest, but she was still stuck as a high-level tank, unable to breakthrough through to Warship level. One must know that achieving a high-level tank status is not common at all, it was very rare in A city for kids this young to reach such a level. Normally, by the time you graduate you should have reached high-level tank and after a couple of years in the military, only then would you progress to a Warship level if you are lucky.

For them to enter the basin and put their lives on the line, is basically the shortcut to leveling up quicker, it was a fortuitous encounter for them to be in the basin as they were now.

The trio had made their way to the door 2 days ago, they had been camping out by the rock to monitor the movement of the door guard, it wasn't until a day before did it show up, a huge black ape with a silver stripe down its back. He landed in front of the door with a thud and stood there in his magnificence entirely blocking it.

Surrounding the door no other beasts would dare to go near it, it would seem that this large ape was the final boss they had to encounter before they could be free of the cave.

"Boss, what's the plan? How do we face this huge gorilla?"

Odrunn asked his voice trembling slightly, unable to mask the fear from the sight of the giant ape.