CHAPTER 62: TESTING GROUND AND PROTOCOL AKSJI

Deep, dense darkness slowly enveloped the forest trail as the sun finally vanished behind the black line of hills to the west. A cold, biting wind blew from the north, and damp fog crept out of the deep roadside ditches, spreading in a thick, impenetrable blanket over the churned mud of the forest road. With a practiced, firm movement of the leather reins, Silas steered our new armored wagon onto a small, grassy clearing hidden behind a dense wall of ancient oaks. The spot was simply ideal for a night's rest and resetting the tension of our mana weaves after a full day of the wheels' steady clatter.

Mina and Elena efficiently set up a small campsite near the trunk of a fallen spruce. The girls rolled out a woolen blanket, and a moment later, a lively, warm fire crackled over the river stones. The aroma of a hot, high-calorie broth made of dried beef and herbs, which Mina stirred in a steaming cauldron with a soft purr, spread pleasantly across the chilly clearing, cutting through the sharp stench of decaying pine needles and wet oak.

I sat on the wooden edge of the wagon, leaning comfortably against the sideboard with my hands tucked deep into the pockets of my black coat. My brazen composure maintained absolute control over our surroundings. Silas approached the fire, sat down heavily on a dry log, and lit his wooden pipe. He released a cloud of gray smoke into the air, squinting his sharp, bloodshot eyes in my direction.

"Well, Boss, since we're entering Crossgard tomorrow, it's time for a hard intelligence debrief," Silas began, scratching his unshaven chin and clearing his throat softly. "This isn't Oakhaven. That metropolis is a completely different, far more ruthless sandbox. The city is currently torn apart by a geopolitical conflict and divided into two main spheres of influence. Halgard and Redgard maintain their troops on the streets there. Clashes happen constantly, and the guards look at everyone sideways, ready to draw their blades over any crooked glance. On top of that, there are underground arenas, massive merchant guilds, and a black market operating right under the Inquisition's nose."

I listened to his words in absolute calm, keeping my hands inside my coat pockets. I analyzed the data logically. A divided city, soldiers on the roads, arenas, and slaughter—it was an ideal operational environment for our crew. Crossgard presented itself as a massive, living testing ground where I intended to settle matters strictly on my own uncompromising terms.

Suddenly, the idyllic rustle of the forest and the crackle of burning wood were brutally shattered.

From the darkness of the trail, just beyond the line of oaks, came the loud, aggressive clatter of iron and the heavy thud of horses' hooves. A moment later, an arrogant six-man patrol rode into the clearing. They wore rusted military mail and worn cloaks, revealing deserters who had fled the front to engage in robbery and slaughter along the roads. Their commander, a burly brute with a nasty scar across his nose, aimed a heavy crossbow at me, casting an insolent glance at our armored wagon and the girls sitting around the fire.

"Well, well, what a fat prize on the trail!" the commander roared, baring yellow, rotten teeth in a despicable grin. "Get off that wagon and hand over your coin purses! That armored wagon and those pretty ladies belong to our unit from now on. Move it before my boys turn your backsides into sieves!"

Silas instantly turned as pale as washed linen, instinctively backing away toward the shadows of the wagon and dropping his pipe. Shnee and Karys reacted in a fraction of a second. First Pillar tensed her muscles to spring, her hand dropping to the hilt of her transparent rapier made of Celestial Silver, around which black, destructive frost immediately began to creep. Wild Karys extended hard, black claws of shadow from her fingers, her amethyst eyes blazing with primal predator fury.

I raised my free hand slightly, holding them back with a single, calm gesture.

"Step back. I'll handle this," I told them in a quiet, emotionless tone.

I stepped off the wagon in complete chill mode, keeping my left hand deep in my coat pocket. My posture emanated such a powerful, brazen composure that the deserters froze for a moment, disoriented by the complete absence of fear. Before their commander could pull the crossbow trigger, I decided to test a new theoretical concept. A sudden, predatory hyperfixation fired off in my mind.

If my telekinesis can easily shatter thick bones and crush steel plates, I thought with a predatory smile, then logically I should be able to reach under the skin and grab the neural cables themselves. Let's test this on a living organism.

Before anyone could blink, I shoved a massive, precise network of my will forward. An invisible, telekinetic force struck the entire patrol with the power of a titanium vise.

All six deserters were effortlessly immobilized in midair that very same fraction of a second. Crossbows, swords, and horses froze as if hitting an invisible diamond wall. Their multi-ton momentum was reduced to zero in a millisecond. They hung helplessly half a meter above the mud, flailing their arms and legs in absolute, paralyzing shock.

I walked calmly up to the first one in line—the patrol commander. I pause for a moment. My left hand drifts to my chin. I hold it, while my right hand supports my left elbow, instinctively dropping into my usual analytical habit whenever I process and calculate matters. I look at the trembling brute and begin thinking out loud so my entire crew on the wagon can hear every thought:

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"Man, wait... should I be using them as test subjects or not?" I muttered with genuine, brazen contemplation, drawing out my words. "Maybe not necessarily... Ah, fuck it! It's their problem they deserted and ran into me, not mine. They should've kept their fucking asses in the barracks or wherever and waited for orders instead of playing butchers on my trail."

The patrol commander stared at me with paralyzing, deathly horror in his dilated pupils. Only a quiet, pitiful rasp escaped his throat.

I begin the brutal trial phase. I closed my eyes for a fraction of a second, using spatial visualization to pinpoint the main neural pathways in his neck. I focused my telekinesis and attempted to plug directly into his nerve cables.

The first attempt ended in a gruesome failure. My mana weaves, still unaccustomed to such a subtle micro-operation, generated far too much pressure. The laws of physics and anatomy struck back with ruthless force. A violent overload occurred inside the commander's skull. The blood vessels in his brain and eyeballs simply exploded under the immense pressure. A sudden geyser of blood spouted from his nose and eyes, and the brute went limp immediately, falling lifeless into the soggy mud.

"Too hard... too strong," I muttered under my breath with cold dissatisfaction, adjusting my willpower. "Nerve cables are far more delicate than the axles of new wagons. I need to drastically reduce the pressure."

I move on to the second deserter. The brute was trembling so violently that rust flaked off his armor. I tried again to reach beneath his skin to grab his motor impulses. This time I reduced the force, but the pressure was still uneven. The nerve clusters in his spine were brutally torn under the sudden kinetic strain. The man bent into an unnatural, grotesque arch, vomited thick blood, and collapsed onto the ground completely crippled, losing consciousness from the agony of stretched nerves.

"Still too much steam in the pistons," I evaluated coldly, keeping my hand on my chin.

The remaining men hanging in midair watched this quiet, methodical, and terrifying torture of their comrades in absolute, paralyzing terror. Some pissed themselves in fear, weeping silently and pleading with their eyes for mercy. Every subsequent test became a severe horror for them, and my slow, casual footsteps sounded like a countdown to execution.

I examined the next one. The third and fourth brutes served as the next test subjects. My attempts grew increasingly precise, yet remained far from ideal. With the third deserter, an immediate paralysis of the left side of his body occurred, after which his heart simply stopped from neural network overload. The fourth began convulsing violently when my will accidentally clamped his respiratory nerves, and he went out in a fraction of a second, falling limply into the mud.

On the fifth bandmember, I finally hit the ideal biomechanical pressure point!

My precise telekinesis quietly entered his spinal cord, gently bypassing blood vessels and smoothly wrapping around the individual nerve fibers responsible for limb movement. The brute's eyes instantly went completely empty, dull, and devoid of any human spark. He became a mindless puppet. To be a hundred percent certain and eliminate any system errors, I tested the exact same method on the sixth deserter. My weaves remembered this perfect pressure pattern. The connection clicked flawlessly—his eyes went out as well, and his body stiffened, waiting for my commands.

We had it. Protocol Aksji was officially born on a forest clearing.

I released the general telekinetic hold, leaving active neural control over the surviving pair. The puppets dropped to their feet, moving with stiff, unnatural, and completely mechanical synchronization.

"Take this trash," I ordered them in a flat, icy tone, gesturing with my chin toward their comrades' corpses lying in the mud. "Drag them deep into the forest. If any of them are still rasping, finish them off on the spot."

The two controlled deserters, without a single word of protest, reached down for the corpses with empty gazes. Grabbing the bodies by the legs and dragging them through the mud like lifeless sacks, they set off with stiff, inhuman strides into the deepest darkness of the thicket. Their bodies moved at the command of my will, completely ignoring their own survival instincts.

A few minutes of heavy, suffocating silence passed, interrupted only by the crackle of burning beef in Mina's cauldron and the nervous panting of the deserters' horses, which still stood tied near the wagon. Finally, the two puppets emerged from the dark forest. Their hands were smeared with blood and mud, and their faces remained dead masks. They stood before me, awaiting further instructions.

I smiled insolently, taking my left hand out of my coat pocket.

"Alright, cleanup's done. Time to throw the trash bags out," I muttered under my breath.

I issued a final motor impulse. The controlled puppets broke into a stiff trot toward a deep, rocky ravine at the edge of the clearing. Without a second's hesitation, like programmed robots, they leaped into the fifty-foot abyss. Their bodies plunged limply downward. A second later, a double, dull, wet crunch of broken spines against tree trunks and rocks reached us from deep within the bushes. Dead silence fell. The trash had been definitively disposed of, and the trail to Crossgard stood free of filth before us.

I turned slowly toward the campfire in total chill mode, pleased with the completed optimization. Instinctively, I hold my chin with my left hand while supporting my left elbow with my right, squinting my sapphire eyes toward the shocked crew.

"Well, I just learned a new skill," I announced casually, adjusting my coat collar.

Silas sat by the fire with such a massive system blue-screen that a piece of uneaten meat fell from his open mouth. Karys stared at me with extreme, feral respect and a slight shudder of terror, realizing that her new Alpha could control someone's body without ever touching a weapon.

Shnee, the First Pillar of my structure, reacted quite differently. On her gorgeous, porcelain face bloomed that specific, extreme gap-moe—a predatory, slightly psychopathic smile of pure, childlike fascination. She pressed closer to my side beneath my coat, purring softly with pride and satisfaction at the sight of her Master's power, exhibiting not an ounce of fear.

From my ear, tiny white Kaede slid out. The spider climbed onto my epaulet and squeaked our tactical Polish cipher directly into my ear canal:

"Man... that was insanely psychopathic, but so fucking effective! You literally have buttons in your head to control people now!"

I walked up to the campfire, feeling a growing hunger after the tests.

"Mina, serve up that cauldron," I said casually, sitting back down on the wooden bench. "Tomorrow we enter Crossgard, and we need full energy weaves at the start."

The crew began eating in silence, and a safe, controlled night settled over the trail once more. The new city waited on the horizon, and I intended to play it strictly on my own uncompromising terms.