The Insidious Rumor to the Ears of Ratatoskr [Kolme]

"Woez! I'm back from the logistics area! Did you know that there's a Primordial in the Assailant Headquarters, right now!?"

"I'm sleepy enough to choose my loot, help me catch a break by shutting up that mouth of yours."

Floor B6, a facility for personnel to trade goods and Calamities' materials from their hunt. Two Aekhas are conversing in front of their loot they got from the mission they've accomplished. One with a normal stature of a woman with fading grey hair and a small pair of reindeer antlers on her head, she takes the half a meter malignant purple bones of a medium-sized B rank Calamity with her gloved hands and then analyzes the item. After casting a spell to determine the quality of the marrow, Woez breaks the bone into two to see the precious treasure inside.

"Ratatoskr, do you want these Vasaj's bone marrows? It seems like we hit the jackpot, they're pretty high quality. I don't really need them to make my Orb's shell so, you know, I don't really need them."

Ratatoskr, with her dull-darkish grey hair and broad palmate antlers twice the size of her petite body, tore her eyes away from her device. It seems like her eyes lit up when her partner said "Do you want" and "Vasaj's bone marrows".

"Oh! Yes please! Just leave them all to me! I'll prepare the condensing formation later on at our secret hideout, ufufufufu~" She twiddles her fingers together like some comical villain in a children's television show. "With all the nourishment ingredients available, I'll be able to start cultivating breakthroughs for my Golden Orb! Honor, power, wealth and popularity! They'll be mine!"

"That's nice." Woez rolled her eyes. "Make sure you tell your plans to the Vagant Association too."

"Of course I will!" Then she pauses to give it some thought. "Wait, no I won't! Anyway, look at this!"

Ratatoskr pointed towards the speeding messages passing by the screen of her device. It was a group in a messaging app gossiping about the two new powerhouses that had joined the Assailant department.

Ratatoskr continues, "Holy moose, one of them reaches the limit firepower cap on the Test Range."

"Well, ain't that great. The top brass would probably feed them most of the resources and suck up to them. The worst scenario is that those legendary beings would probably use our kindness and struggle then ditch us on 'Last Ark'."

"Come on, be positive! We might be able to reclaim your homeland, I will be submitting a mission request with those two Primordials around."

When a ping from the adaptive phone reaches Ratatoskr's ears, she immediately opens the message and replies to them.

"Hold on a sec—"

12,000 years into the future, a phone has been already discovered although recreating the golden age of internet is near impossible with massive cases of disruption from signal waves emitted from the Voids and Calamities. In the end, they can only recover 2% of the worldwide miracle with most of the satellites and databases being destroyed by the Calamities. The world lacks their media of entertainment, so they need to think fast to recreate smartphones as fast as they can.

'Adaptive User Interface Screen' or 'AUIS' in short. People usually refer to them as an Adaptive Phone. They are a mana circuit based smartphone priced at 45KC, replicating most of its predecessor's utility, but their demerit is that they can be only used inside the Citadel where an in-built transmitter receptor will connect to the Wi-Fi within the forcefield of a Citadel. It can't be utilized outside of a civilization because there is a case of an easily leaked access pattern where an intelligent Calamity tries to sabotage the transmission and give fake messages, attacking the database resulting in the degradation of information.

While handling the deal with the other, a specialized operator for inside logistics that went by the codename of Dealer, who comes after seeing the two Aekhas stance getting ready for settling for their pay.

The sleepy Aekha has finished separating the loot. "Dealer, we will be selling everything besides the bones, claws, ignitors, and fangs. Can you check the quality of scraps?"

The Dealer checks the rest of the junk before pulling his calculator. "Most of them are in great condition, as expected of our huntress. That will be roughly 98KC, will an immediate payment be enough?"

"You're saying as if there is anything better than an immediate payment." says Woez.

Finishing the deal, the Aekhas pack the chosen items into their black dodecahedron-shaped space pocket device, which is the size of an adult's palm. A pricey device made by a talented magic-device craftsman from Kratos Citadel.

"Oh yeah, Blast is already back from the expedition. I caught him online, want me to invite him for a while?" asks Ratatoskr.

"Well feel free, I'll be going to our apartment immediately. I need some sleep."

"Have a nice rest!"

Ratatoskr waves her hand to the ever-tired Aekha. Curious, she decides to check upon the testimony of the people that are still in the Test Range.

After arriving, she sees a familiar person slouching with no energy.

"Hagel! How are ya doin, sonny?"

Instead of the pitiful Aiseirighian, a Ferrakhian senior appears from behind and answers the question for him, "Your usual, he is gambling with the wrong person."

A dreadful pressure suddenly encapsulates every being of Ratatoskr. A suffocating amount of aura is being emitted by two sources of unimaginable power near her vicinity. She glances at the person near the senior, until two infamous figures appear in the frame.

Unlike others, Ratatoskr is a hybrid of Tanomobi, the rodent people and the Aekhas even though her Aekha's gene is dominating her trait, but she also has Tanomobi's benefits of agelessness. Besides being young forever, she has heightened senses that she has cultivated to feel the slightest energy wafting in the air. As a cultivator in the 'hollow orb phase', she can determine the two vampire's mana depository.

In her eyes, the pale petite figure with bluish silver hair is emitting a sun-dense blue flaming aura. Strangely, there are massive amounts of elemental essence presence within her and it's dissolving into the air continuously to the point that she can make the area near her a cultivation zone. This case of emitting elemental essence from one's body is unheard of. There is no way for a single person to create an elemental essence on their mana sea from nothing, let alone carefreely releasing them at massive amounts.

Elemental Essence is an essential material needed to nourish a mana sea, as it gives the miniature realm a trait of mother nature and helps in conducting elemental-based assimilation and activities such as fire, water, wind, earth, and electricity with no difficulty. They are very rare to find and most of them are available by manually converting nature into condensed dust in a pure place with no void, which is almost impossible in this age of apocalypse. Despite all that, a more powerful and natural elemental essence exists within an elemental crystal which is more rare than finding a place to cultivate elemental essence.

The other one playfully floats near her, donning the same gothic lolita getup, as expected from a vampire. She emits a crimson type of mana from a Blood God's Golden Orb. An obvious giveaway is that she has one of the most unique types of Golden Orb. However, Ratatoskr immediately knows that this type of Golden Orb demands unfathomable sacrifice. The crimson Primordial might be more dangerous than she thought, as it sends cold shivers from thinking about what she had done to obtain the Golden Orb.

As strange as it is, the blue Primordial doesn't emit the same killing intent like the crimson one. Ratatoskr can feel that there is a Golden Orb inside of her but something feels off, the mana wavelength the blue Primordial emits is not something that has been processed and nourished by a Golden Orb. It's just a pure high quality mana filled with elemental essence. Moreover, this is the first time that Ratatoskr can't measure the real amount of the person she is sensing, because both of them clearly doesn't have many mana, hell, it was lower than her but they somehow manage to topple her power.

As scary as it is, Ratatoskr swallows her saliva and smiles.

"Senior Seizequill, can you introduce me to the current newest recruits?"