Elena Thobar

High above the Sleeping Lake Forest cultivators were flying around. Most of them were using all kinds of vehicles to achieve flight. They came in all sorts of forms, but were mostly simple platforms for cultivators to stand on. From time to time they had to land and refill their energy storage, before reporting to a temporary building at the forest's edge and getting new directions.

This building was only a small metal house which had been standing here for over a week now. Above its permanently opened entrance the logo of Thobar Bionics could be seen. It was surrounded by a small, fortified camp, but would also allow all kind's of adventures cultivators in. Thobar Bionics' upper echelon figured it wouldn't hurt to trade with local adventurers, as they might deliver helpful information. The company could only relocate so much personal to search for a missing newcomer team after all.

At this time the crowd in this camp suddenly turner a bit quieter. A middle-aged man walked out of the small building, heading directly for the camp's exit. He arrogantly looked down on the surrounding cultivators, but no one found this strange as soon as they noticed the prominent logo on his chest. A majestic tail protruded from a small accumulation of clouds, framed by five shining stars. This was a Nascent Soul Realm cultivator of Dragon's Tail.

It wasn't a secret, that Dragon's Tail always tried to bring Thobar Bionics to their side one way or the other. The organization, whose leader was rumored to have ties to the big five, had been aggressively expanding over the years, basically trying to get their hands on anything combat related. No one knew how Thobar Bionics managed to hold them off for so long, but their situation didn't look good on the outside.

Inside Thobar Bionics main building a few cultivator were working on their desks. From time to time soldiers came in, reporting the fruits of their labor. Right now, a young man sat down in front of the leftmost desk, talking to the coordinator.

"Haa. Quadrant 23 searched. No signs of our targets. Awaiting orders."

The middle aged man working on the desk looked at the young employee with a smile:

"Alright. Don't give up hope, this search is important for the company."

"Come on second uncle, we have been searching for a week now. Those new recruits have been eaten by some beasts for sure. Why don't we finally stop this thankless job."

The second uncle quickly hushed his nephew:

"Pss. Don't let this hear the board. They will surely punish you. You better get out there and find this potential scholar. Your position within the company would rise in an instant."

"Isn't it just a scholar? I get that they can improve our bionics, but would this help us against Dragon's Tail? You have just seen how that messenger swaggered around. If I wouldn't run some fruitless search here, but be able to train, I could just beat up all those Dragon's Tail idiots. Just imagine we had a second protector instead of a second scholar, wouldn't we be much safer?"

At this point some exhaustion could be seen on the middle-aged man's face. He quickly forced out a smile however, as he told his nephew:

"The Thobar family have always been good to us. We need to trust that Miss Elena Thobar knows what she is doing."

In another part of this building an older man knocked on a room's door. After waiting for the calm, female voice to tell him to enter, the door opened by itself as he stepped into the room. No luxurious furniture or decorations could be seen in this room. Only a beautiful woman sitting cross-legged in the middle. He was always surprised about how much authority this young woman already exuded. Thinking about her story, he could only sigh.

The older man had been taking care of Elena Thobar ever since she was brought to their family by her parents. At that time her parents were rising starts, but they already smelled some sort of danger. He didn't know why her parents didn't stay with him, but they were adamant about going back to the Mhalor's Light Republic. It took a long time to console the girl after the message about her parents' disappearance reached them.

From that day on Elena Thobar became are calm, strong woman obsessed with cultivation. Only Elena and himself knew for certain that she trained in a miraculous cultivation technique developed by her parents, but after she showed rapid improvement, many assumed something close to the truth.

This made her important in the eyes of the families' eyes, but also drew many greedy gazes. As Elena grew up, she learned to deal with all those covetous people, but it only disillusioned her even more. Therefore in a way to distance herself from the family and to look into her parent's death, she decided to take over their family business Thobar Bionics. Among the company she still had a lot of prestige and support, but the outside pressure followed her even to this far off place.

Elena slowly opened her eyes and threw a short smile at her protector. She quickly told her AI to offer the older man a seat before asking:

"Do we have any news of our scholar?"

"Haa… No, nothing new. We didn't find any of the newcomers. But the forest is just so big, we can only slowly search from New Haven City's connection point outwards.

However, our search teams are losing motivation, while Dragon's Tail demonstratively sends a messenger every two days."

"Dragon's Tail doesn't give up it seems. They have been hindering our operations for so long now, only to pretend to offer help this time."

"Of course. They probably hope to find something, only to demand a steep price afterwards."

"From how they have been behaving these past few years they might just directly poach our scholar."

The old man sighed slightly. He wasn't the only one who realized how important scholars were to Elena. Her competitors have attacked this weakness multiple times, but there really wasn't any way around it. The stubborn woman didn't want to accept any of the families' help, so she could only watch as her scholars got poached one by one. Now she even seemed a little desperate, as she tried to show her sincerity by coming personally to search for their newest hope. Although the young woman was a genius scholar herself, but a successful company couldn't be carried by one person alone.

What even the old man didn't know however, was that Elena Thobar had inherited an extremely special body constitution form her parents. They had named it 'Sacred Fate Body'. Everyone thought she and her parents had the same body as many in her family.

It was a strong constitution, which allowed them to strengthen their instincts to the extreme, helping them to find weaknesses during fights or smell danger from their opponents. No one knew however, that the abilities of her direct bloodline exceeded those of the other family members.

Elena's Sacred Fate Body, which she fully unlocked after reaching the Gene Activation Realm, allowed her to feel opportunities and dangers of all kinds. Since her parents left her at the family and advanced towards a secret realm, they must have felt this was the right thing to do. As they should have realized that the opportunity outweighs the danger, Elena was even fairly certain that her parents should still be alive.

However, her constitution only led her towards opportunities, but she still had to grasp them herself. For this reason she didn't hesitate to mobilize all available resources from her company, as her body gave her an intense signal when she heard about a new recruit winning the newcomer competition. Therefore, despite how calm she might seem, Elena was sitting on pins and needles, hoping to find this man as fast as possible.

Unfortunately she hadn't broken through to a higher realm, or she might have been able to pinpoint her targets exact location. Right now, she could only urge everyone to turn the Sleeping Lake Forest upside down.

The protector didn't know about any of this, so he spoke softly after observing the calm young woman for a bit:

"Maybe we should begin to let our employees get back to training. Let only a few teams continue the search. We are still preparing for a very important deal. We can't let this search hinder us."

Elena naturally kept their next big delivery in mind, but she felt only a small opportunity thinking about this deal, which was overshadowed by strong signals of danger. Therefore, she was vehemently defending her decision to search for their new recruit, very much to her board's displeasure. As the young woman continued to stay stubborn, her protector was at least able to convince her to talk to the board again. Maybe she was able to buy some more time.

Just as Elena and the protector were leaving their temporary residence however, the young woman felt an immense throb in her chest, as the earth under their feet began to tremble.