Novel Full Chapter 830: Catching Fish
Chapter 830: Chapter 830: Catching Fish
The weak man on the floor, Ronan, blinked up at the man who stood over him, the sunlight casting his face in shadow. He still felt the sting of his own words—Sorry, but I don’t swing that way—ringing in the air like a hit gong. His stomach twisted with dread, humiliation, and intimidation. In his weakened state, the thought flickered that if this towering stranger truly was overcome with some kind of lustful urge, he wouldn’t have the strength to fight him off. He cut the horrifying thought short, but the silence that followed was unbearable.
“You misunderstand,” the man said finally, his voice steady but edged with faint irritation. “I’m not offering you that. I’m offering you strength. A chance to stand again, to fight again. A door you can open, if you choose.”
Ronan’s eyes narrowed. His pride clawed against the stranger’s words, even as his aching body screamed at him to listen. “Strength, huh? Sounds like every scammer I’ve ever heard.” He tried to scoff, but it came out weaker than he intended. His thin arms trembled as he pushed himself off the ground. “What are you really selling?”
“I’m not selling anything.” The man’s tone hardened, as if Ronan’s doubt was beneath him. “I’m giving you a path. Nothing more. Walk away, and it’s gone. Take it, and… perhaps you’ll find what you’ve been clawing after all your life.”
Something in the man’s calm confidence unsettled Ronan. This wasn’t the hollow bravado of a street preacher. He spoke like someone who knew—like someone who already owned the outcome and was merely letting Ronan glimpse it.
Before Ronan could respond, the stranger pulled a small disc from his sleeve and held it out. It gleamed faintly in the light, etched with delicate sigils that hummed with restrained energy. “If you want to reach me, use this. It will send a message only I can receive.”
Ronan hesitated, then reached out and took it. The metal was cool, lighter than it looked, and a strange bluish-purplish-grey colour that wasn’t characteristic of any metal he’d seen before. He turned it over in his hand, tracing the strange lines.
He didn’t know that the token was no simple trinket and was a product unique to Kain and those related to him. These tokens had first been crafted for Kain himself. The original had been a secure communication tool made by Exalted Grandmaster Halreth to contact him when Kain was ready to exchange more Source energy and/or metals from Pangea.
Its design wasn’t particularly advanced or special, but its material was—a combination of 3 metals unique to Pangea, impossible to find on Earth. When the dwarves of Pangea received Kain’s request to replicate it, they had treated it as a divine mandate. To them, it was the Creator’s first holy object. Their fervour had been unmatched, their determination absolute. They studied, experimented, and at last reproduced the tokens faithfully. Now, Kain had more of them than he knew what to do with, so he’d given the majority of his supply to Darius, who saw only the surface: useful tools for secure recruitment. He had no idea of their “sacred” origin.
“I don’t buy into cult talk,” Ronan muttered, trying to mask the unease that had crept into his chest. “But… I’ll keep it.”
The man gave a curt nod, then turned to leave. His parting words in the air. “When you’re ready to stop crawling in the dirt, use it.”
———————-
Ronan sat in his run-down apartment above the dojo that night, the token resting in his palm. Dusty trophies lined the shelves, relics of a strength he no longer possessed. He set the token down on the table, then picked it back up almost immediately. His thoughts swung between ridicule and temptation.
“Sure. Some shadowy stranger’s going to hand me my strength back. Sounds legit,” he muttered to himself. Yet as he flexed his wasted arm and watched his skin cling too tightly to the bone due to a lack of muscle and flesh, the mocking faltered. His throat tightened. “But… what if it’s real?”
He opened a drawer, dropped the token in, and slammed it shut. Then, after a beat, he opened the drawer again, staring at it as if it might whisper to him. Finally, he left it there, buried beneath old photos of him holding up various trophies from martial arts competitions, but he couldn’t stop glancing toward the drawer as he turned out the lights.
“Just another scam,” he whispered into the darkness. “But damn it, I wish it wasn’t.”
———————–
Darius’ boots clicked against the cobblestones as he walked away from the heart of a bustling marketplace. His hood was pulled low, but his expression was unreadable more from practice than concealment. Inside, though, his mind was restless.
Ronan Teylan. That made four strangers now. Four who hadn’t accepted outright. But also hadn’t rejected him either. All he could do was wait.
Recruiting his own acquaintances had been easy. They knew him, trusted his word. When he promised them a life-changing opportunity if they completed tasks, they didn’t question. But strangers? Strangers looked at him like a vulture circling overhead, waiting to strip their bones. And vague promises weren’t enough to sway the desperate. Not when they’d been lied to a hundred times before.
He clenched his jaw. Ferrin had been different. The man had been dying when Kain found him. No options, no time. He would’ve grasped at anything. And Kain had offered him a hand. Now Ferrin’s loyalty was iron.
Darius, after hearing about this story from Ferrin personally, had been consciously following that same model. Every stranger he’d approached had some debilitating illness or condition. Ronan with his atrophy. Another woman with failing lungs. A miner whose eyesight was nearly gone. All broken. All desperate.
“Kain was right,” Darius thought grimly. “The desperate are the only ones who’ll bend far enough to be shaped.”
He reached into his cloak, feeling the weight of the remaining tokens. They were supposed to make things easier—proof that the organization had structure, permanence. But even with them, convincing someone without revealing the truth was like trying to sell air to a drowning man. They needed what he had, but unfortunately, the product he was selling wasn’t visible.
He stopped at the edge of the marketplace. His latest attempt, an older man he’d visited immediately after leaving Ronan, replayed in his mind. The man had flown into a rage, called him a fraud, nearly struck him before Darius slipped away before he could even offer the communication token. Desperation cut both ways. It made people pliant—or dangerous enough to bite the hand that reached for them.
He sighed, pressing fingers against his brow, walked the winding path back toward the manor, his cloak heavy with dust from the streets and heavier still with the weight of failure. He replayed the day’s attempts in his head—faces, excuses, dismissals. A few (four to be exact) had taken the tokens with cautious hands, but most had simply stared at him like a madman or conman. He clenched his jaw. Kain had trusted him with this, and so far, he had little to show for it.
“Recruitment,” he muttered under his breath. “Easier said than done.”
As if in response, a tug pulled at the edge of his awareness. Subtle, silent, yet unmistakable. He froze. The communication token at his hip was stirring, the faint ripple of spiritual power brushing against his consciousness like a knock only he could hear. These tokens relied on spiritual power to send and receive information. And during their first usage, would become bound to the first individual to use them, making them connected on a mental level so that messages can be sent and received discretely.
Fortunately for the people Darius wanted to recruit, the amount of spiritual power required to activate the token was around the maximum amount an ordinary unawakened person could attain. The real struggle was actually controlling their spiritual power well enough to enter the token.
In a sense, these tokens were more than just an entry ticket into Kain’s organization—they were the first test. Many the ordinary people could manage just enough spiritual energy to send a message if they had formed their first star. But if they couldn’t channel it properly into the token? Then too bad. They had failed the first gate. Kain didn’t need them. Even the most desperate couldn’t be of use without at least this shred of talent.
Now Darius’ eyes narrowed. Someone had used it.
The pull deepened—another message. And then another. And then another.
Darius blinked, startled, before a slow grin broke across his face. Four messages. Four different tokens. He pulled his token free and injected the barest flicker of spiritual energy, letting the script burn faintly against his vision as the words etched themselves across his mind.
’I’ll hear you out.’
Another glimmered in, almost on top of the first. ’What do I have to lose?’
The third was harsher, defiant: ’This better not be a trick. Otherwise I’ll kill you.’
And the last was shaky, tentative. ’I want strength again. Tell me what I have to do.’
Darius exhaled slowly, fighting to keep his stride even. He could practically feel his earlier frustrations lifting, replaced by a sharp confidence. Four hooks, four fish. Every single one of the baits he had cast had caught a prize. Even Ronan, who had been especially doubtful of Darius’ ’intentions’, had reached back out.
He tucked the token away, lips quirking in satisfaction.
By the time the manor came into view, Darius’ shoulders were lighter. He had results to report now. Kain would be pleased. But what kind of tasks should he give to the newbies to prove themselves?