Mystical Journey

After a series of finger tapping, white sweat started forming on Garen’s forehead. He took two steps backward as his red jaded palms faded away.

The woman was covered in a layer of transparent light upon completion of her treatment. The layer of light flashed as it completely covered every part of the woman.

A cool and sharp chill suddenly filled up the whole room.

"She’s indeed a totem user." Garen smirked as he activated his white totem light to resist against the strong energy fluctuation.

The woman’s eyelids twitched before she opened her eyes and her slightly slanted mouth.

"Who… am I…" Her bloodshot, grainy eyes were filled with confusion.

"You’re Reylan." Garen immediately walked to her side and gently said, "You’re Reylan Lombard, the biological sister of Garen Lombard, which is I."

"My name is Reylan?... Garen Lombard’s biological sister…" The woman unconsciously repeated Garen’s sentence.

"We were separated since young due to the fire." Garen’s voice was softer at this point.

"We were separated since young due to the fire…" The woman repeated Garen’s sentence word by word as her gaze started to clear up.

With Garen’s guidance, he spun a flawless lie within her mind. Although he knew that she had lost her memories due to the severe injury of her brain, her strength was obviously incredible judging from her totem light. She must not be an ordinary character, considering that she was able to escape from the Obscuro Society.

As to whether if this mislead would succeed or not, Garen had no idea. He was just testing it out and there would be no loss for him anyway.

After spending about half an hour on her, Garen finally let the woman to fall asleep.

He then left the room to get some fresh air as he had a hard time breathing inside the smelly room.

He’d only crafted the story of her oldest memories and had not tampered with the the rest of her memories. He told her that he’d found her outside of his house and he didn’t know what had happened to her during the years they were separated.

"Looks like I’ll need to spend some time to obtain something useful from her."

****************

Garen then accompanied this girl and treated her as Reylan Lombard, in which she believed that she was Reylan Lombard.

Since her brain was partly damaged, most of her memories were already jumbled. She’d already accepted what Garen told her and acted as if she was his younger sister.

Garen took care of her everyday life by himself. This assured her of her memories, as if not for a biological relative, who else would still be willing to take care of a smelly ‘burnt corpse’?

Reylan started to open up to Garen. Her figure had been completely disfigured so no one actually knew how she looked like in the past.

One side of her lips had been burnt, resulting in her mouth slanting to the right. Saliva would drip out of her mouth whenever she tried to speak, and food would come out as she tried to eat. As her skin recovered, it was marred with scars from the blisters and the wrinkled skin that was left behind by the burns made her look eighty to ninety years old.

Garen then started to probe for some information, after Reylan had opened up to him.

**************

More than ten days later.

Reylan sat on the huge bed inside the very clean room, silently gazing at Garen who was reading a book. The cool air entered the room through a small gap of the window and mixed with the faint odour of a corpse.

The golden sunlight shone on Garen’s right hand, reflecting a smooth and white luster.

Reylan was envious of him.

"What’s wrong?" Garen placed down the notebook in his hand. It was the book he had found from searching the golden hair totem user’s body and it contained information of the primitive totem’s nurturing method. It was an isolated tradition and even though there was little information about it, it was still worth the reference.

"Nothing. Brother, are you looking at the notes on how to nurture a primitive totem?" Reylan asked softly. Her voice had recovered a lot and was no longer leaking. Her voice was coarse but it sounded like a woman of not more than thirty years old.

"Yeah. I obtained it from the enemy and I’m just reading it casually." Garen replied with a smile. "Do you have anything you want to talk about?"

Reylan thought for a while as she frowned.

"My brain’s damage is too severe. Although I don’t remember everything, I still can recall some stuff. Compared to the primitive totem, the Creature Totem is much more stronger. So, why is brother not focusing on nurturing the Silver Totem?"

Surprised, Garen shook his head and replied: "There are no other choice. A Crystal Derivator is needed to control the Silver Totems. Based on this assumption, doesn’t that mean that I will forever be controlled by someone else?"

"A Crystal Derivator?" Reylan looked confused. "That sounds familiar…"

Garen was patient and sat there quietly as he waited for Reyland to recall her memory.

Time slowly passed.

Reylan finally opened her mouth.

"I remember this thing. Its control mechanism isn’t perfect so it can be avoided." She paused for a while. "Technically speaking, this item isn’t able to send images and can only send voice messages at best. Although the user interface is partially encrypted, it’s fairly easy to hack into it. The basis of deactivation is… Ah!!"

Suddenly, she grabbed her head as she let out a deep cry of pain and toppled onto the bed. Her body started to shudder, as though she was running in a blizzard without clothes on.

"Don’t force yourself too much. Get some rest! Get some rest and relax!!" Garen immediately stood up as his face filled with concern.

He swiftly reached out his hand and pressed onto a few pressure points to reduce her agony.

"Looks like you’re being assassinated because you have this knowledge. Those Obscuro Society bastards! I will kill all of them some day!" Garen’s eyes burned with killing intent.

"Don’t! It’s impossible to win against them brother!" Reylan resisted the pain as she pulled Garen. "I’m certain they’re trying to destroy this part of my memory. Believe me, I will find a way to recall!"

"There’s no need to rush." Garen sat down and covered Reylan with a blanket.

What was supposed to be a young woman looked like a seventy to eighty year old bald hag, with wrinkles and scars all over her body. Other than her voice, there was not a single external sign that she was young. Furthermore, she constantly smelt of a musty unpleasant odor.

She was touched when she heard Garen’s response.

"I managed to survive when they wanted me dead. Although I don’t remember who’d hurt me to this state, I will find out no matter what!" Reylan said fiercely before she paused and looked at Garen.

"You don’t have to be impatient too brother. Although I don’t recall how to deactivate the Crystal Derivator’s authorization mechanism, we can at least temporarily bypass it and control the authorization mechanism."

"Oh?" Garen’s eyes glimmered. "To bypass?"

"Yes. The authorization rights only allow the higher level Crystal Derivator to monitor the Crystal Derivator of the lower level. Since secret phrases are very reliable, it is very uncommon that a fake leader would appear. To control a lower level crystal with a higher level crystal, one must go through the Control Crystal. There are two prerequisites before one can go through the Control Crystal. The first condition is that the crystal that is being controlled must not be broken."

Garen nodded as he saw the broken crystals turned grey and couldn’t function any longer.

"The other one is that the crystal that is under control must be in a sluggish state."

"A sluggish state?" Garen repeated his question. "What is a sluggish state?"

"It is a special state of the crystal. When the crystal is in this state, its functionality, abilities and communication speed are all reduced. Errors occur more frequently as well. This way, if one were to keep using it without anyone from the Obscuro Society to fix it, the crystal will eventually break. This would still be fine for the typical crystals. However, if it’s a high grade crystal such as the Field-level crystal which is hard to create, they would not forcefully command the lower grade crystal under these circumstances to prevent any losses."

Reylan explained with full confidence.

"Furthermore, in the current world of chaos where strong experimental creatures have escaped, there were a lot of generals killed. Hence, crystals in a sluggish state are natural and inconspicuous. As long as you execute it naturally, no one would be suspicious of it. At the very least, you do not need to worry about the Creature Totem that you nurtured so hard going against you."

"This is a great plan." Garen nodded as he agreed with the feasibility of this method. "However, we can’t always be in the sluggish state, can we?"

"This can drag up to months and we will think of another idea when the time comes." Reylan explained. "At least we don’t have to worry about the crystal’s information being casually looked upon."

"You can casually look at the Crystal’s information?" Garen was startled.

"Only the Commander-level Crystal can do so." Reylan nodded. "Come over here and I will set up your crystal’s state."

Garen squinted his eyes as he hesitated but he took out his Crystal Derivator in the end.

"You don’t have to pass it to me. Just hold it like that will do." Reylan had no intention on obtaining the Crystal.

She reached out her right index finger and immediately produced a black fire.

The fire kept producing complicated black Tactic symbols in the air, which looked like endless of alphabet K superimposed together in a roulette shape.

"Go!" She gently pushed the Tactics forward.

Pew!

The black Tactic symbols turned into a black light instantly and went into Garen’s Crystal Derivator.

The pink Crystal Derivator glew brightly before it dimmed down for good. Garen could feel that the constantly faint ripple gradually disappeared.

"It’s a success. However, brother should learn some of the basic knowledge in case something complicated comes up when I am not around so you can solve the issue." Reylan explained.

Garen was startled and smiled afterwards. "That’s fine by me. I had the same intention as well."