Chương 96: They’ve built a wall.

Dennis was the sensation of being stabbed, personified. A sense of murderous unease that blanketed an area around him, scaring off low-level monsters and people both. A promise of instant decapitation. A lust for blood. His mysterious fear aura was the source. Come to think of it, it wasn't that mysterious anymore. He knew what his Frankensteinian zombie-Soul looked like, and yeah, that thing was scary, all right. It required a decent level, exposure and effort to get used to.

Kinda like sharing a house with a corpse, maybe. A stabby one. Unlike him, Lily didn't give off any murdery vibes, but it was undeniable that she had an aura of her own. Mostly from abusing her skill in ways it wasn't supposed to be abused, and at least she didn't have a zombie-Soul, but the results were similar. Everyone and everything around the girl was magically forced to be aware of her. Of her existence, her emotions, even her name – she was the main actor on a stage.

It didn't matter that the actor was fumbling all the words and having a seizure at the same time, it was still clear that everything and everyone around her was just a decoration in comparison. Well, except Dennis, because he was that cool. Currently, she was giving off a mixture of subdued anxiety and flickering hope.

She didn't–couldn't–truly believe that things were going to be fine despite all the 'evil' she'd done and everyone now knowing what she 'really' was, but she allowed herself to entertain the possibility. Her hope was a fickle thing, too new, too unfamiliar, and shrouded heavily with the expectation that it was a temporary thing. After all, they were going to meet new people. She would be judged, of course, and deemed too dangerous, too messed up, and everything would make sense again.

She was prepared for that possibility. Waiting for it, really. She didn't know what she'd do when that happened, so of course she was imagining and psyching herself up for the worst. The chances of Lily panicking and turning into Cthulhu were low, but very clearly not zero. Dennis decided that it was Mary's fault for teaching the girl what Cthulhu even was, in enough detail that acting like it became a possibility. In short, Lily was a mess.

A half-defused bomb, not on a hair trigger, but still very much capable of exploding. Her aura reflected that. Just like his aura reflected that he was going to go on a murder spree, apparently. Together, like Power Rangers, they combined their awesomeness and blanketed the area in anxious-hair-trigger-stabby vibes. It was a bit of a problem. Mark was smiling kindly at the guard, not a single twitch of a muscle betraying his true thoughts, whatever they were.

The man was a picture of calm serenity as he slowly and methodically explained yet again that yes, he was an elite and had the authority, and yes, they were supposed to let them pass, and no, those two kids behind him were totally safe, and yes, that was an elf but it wasn't anyone's business. The guards weren't buying it. They weren't buying it at all. Judging by their pale faces, by their shaking hands, they were just one or two wrong words away from either running in fear or sounding the alarm.

Well, Dennis assumed that there was some kind of alarm. It was funny how they avoided even looking in his direction, somehow deciding that Mark–a pretty high fucking level on his own, by common standarts–was a safer bet to complain about it with.

Clearly, they believed that both Dennis and Lily were two people who should be as far away from the city as possible, for the safety of everyone involved, and yet despite having a problem with them, it was Mark who bore the burden of their absolutely totally unreasonable fears. At first glance, NLA wasn't that impressive in Dennis' opinion. At least as a first impression.

He didn't know why, but he expected to be awed, to turn the corner and see magitech everywhere, or floating islands, or something equally impressive that would say 'humanity fuck yeah'. It had been a few months since the apocalypse happened–and he really should ask someone exactly how long ago it was, because it seemed that his adventure in the Echo may have fucked with his sense of time–so he expected to see… something cool, he guessed.

Since civilization somehow didn't completely collapse despite the monsters and all the fuckery that came with the System existing, he expected to see some wild adaptations. Like magitech. He really wanted to see some magitech. He didn't know why. It sounded cool in his head. He was weirdly excited about the idea. It was weird. Instead, he saw a wall and a bunch of disheveled dudes guarding it. NLA wasn't a city as much as it was just a walled-off portion of LA. Literally walled off.

The street they were riding through was cut in half by an admittedly impressive stone wall. It was seamless, not built from bricks or anything but literally just a wall-shaped stone, about four or five yards tall, with a chokepoint entrance guarded by half a dozen relatively strong people. He could see more of them stationed on top of the wall, seemingly patrolling or just keeping watch. Depending on how much area they had managed to surround with a wall like that, it could be a lot of wall.

Dennis wondered if it was made by one overpowered person with wall-making skills, or if variations of 'stone-shaping' skills were common enough to make the construction possible. How could someone even get earthbending as a skill? Play with sandcastles a lot? Be an excavator operator who really loved their job to an unreasonable degree? Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The guards, seemingly filled with a patriotic sense of duty, didn't want to let the truck pass for some reason, despite the fact that Mark was supposed to be some kind of bigshot who totally had the authority to do whatever or something. Dennis didn't really know how chain of command worked here, but he assumed that level played a big role. After all, it was hard to be in charge if you could be deposed with a flick of someone's overpowered finger.

One would think that this type of meritocracy meant that Mark could just bully his way into the city, but that was not the case since the guards possessed balls, even if they were misplaced in this instance.

"Think of it like that," Daniel said quietly, sitting on the side of the truck bed and watching Mark suffer.

"Let's say you're someone important, like a personal assistant of a CEO in a big corporation. Would you be allowed to bring a bomb into the headquarters? Imagine that it's a big bomb, and it beeps suspiciously the whole time you're trying to move it through the foyer. And there's smoke coming off it."

"But can't we just…" Dennis was trying to find the right words.

"Go in anyway? They can't really stop us. I'm pretty sure Mark could literally carve a hole in the wall with his skill."

"In my analogy, that would mean trying to bring a bomb into headquarters while riding a tank. You don't see any problems with that idea?"

"This is dumb," Dennis grumbled.

"They're wasting everyone's time. And anyway, the tank is already there, might as well not pretend that we don't have it. It's not like they don't feel our levels."

"But we're not trying to fight them, are we?" Daniel said calmly, almost lazily. The dude had adjusted to Dennis' aura surprisingly quickly, becoming so laid-back that Dennis wasn't sure how the guy even became a sorta-elite. He seemed like the type who didn't bother with anything but the bare minimum.

"They're our allies. Potential friends. Good people. It's not wrong for them to be worried. Their job is to protect the city, and they risk their lives every day doing that. That builds a special type of character. Exactly the type who'd stand their ground against a tank. Otherwise they just wouldn't be here."

"So what, we just–""We play by the rules, so they can play by the rules back," Daniel said.

"They know they can't really stop us, but they tried anyway and we stopped, see? That tells them who we are. Not a threat, but a misunderstanding." He stretched, cracking his back.

"It's much better to sort this out now than try to fight half the elites from the city, you know?" Dennis watched Mark swearing that everyone was totally safe for the third time. For some reason, the supposedly brave guards weren't inclined to approach Dennis to confirm for themselves, instead deciding to hound the poor elite like he owed them money.

"Don't they know who he is?" he asked.

"Well, yes. But the bomb analogy still stands."

"You really can't turn it off?" someone grumbled nearby. It was Jack, one of Mary's friends, the guy with a pointy offensive skill, and also one of the two people brave and/or dumb enough to be openly hostile to him. The second one was Mark's useless subordinate that Dennis didn't really remember the name of.

"Nope," Dennis shrugged.

"Pretty sure I can't." He looked in El'el's direction.

"Unless there's some secret magical way to do that?"

"Not that I know of," she replied quietly, looking a bit shy from all the gazes she was getting. While Dennis and Lily were quite attention grabbing, she was still a novelty who got a lot of stares, and it seemed that she was not a fan of the attention. Honestly, El'el looked downright pitiful, already drained from trying to argue her weird world-creation philosophy, her state was getting even worse the more attention and questions she got.

It was like life was slowly being sucked out of her with every glancing gaze.

"To know the meaning of things is a fundamental rule. Just like you understand me despite us speaking different 'languages', how you recognize Concepts from just a glance, and how we can feel each other's Divinity and the stage of ascension. Your Soul exists, and so it could be seen." Dennis hummed, thinking about it.

"So you're saying that hiding my aura is the same as hiding my level?" She nodded weakly.

"That's weird," he muttered.

"Hiding someone's level when it's too high is, like, the basics. I'm strong as hell, isn't it almost a universal rule that I'll get a skill to hide my level? Or, maybe, a spell to do that? An artifact? A mask or a cloak? Or…" He scratched his chin, deep in thought, feeling that he was so very close to a profound insight.

"A costume…"

"I've never heard of such a rule–" El'el said.

"Damn, you're a nerd," Jack muttered, placing a hand over his face.

"A costume might actually help, if it's silly enough," Mary thought out loud.

"Aren't there a bunch of costume shops in LA? It would help to look more friendly."

"It would backfire and make him look even crazier."

"But his first impression is already as bad as it could be because of that aura." Mary was getting more excited as she talked.

"Just hear me out–""Not the time for it now," Evan said, nodding in the direction of the entrance, where Mark was still busy defending Dennis' absolute harmlessness.

"She's here." Amongst the scaredly-brave guards there was now a new woman. She was decidedly plain, a bit on the shorter side, somewhere in her mid-thirties, wearing casual clothes as plain as she herself was. In the world before the apocalypse, she would've been just one of many, an absolutely ordinary person who was probably a twice-divorced accountant or something.

Dennis wasn't sure what was so special about her until he realized that, unlike the guards, she didn't wear anything resembling armor or uniform, and didn't carry any weapons. She seemed out of place. Too casual. Too normie to exist a few months after civilization collapsed in the way it was known. She also looked bored as fuck. Maybe a bit annoyed while she talked with Mark. Mark looked like he ate a lemon, explaining something quietly to her. Everyone else was batshit scared of him. She was just bored.

Didn't even glance in his direction.

"Sydney," Daniel muttered. He looked at Dennis with a pained expression on his face." Please don't fight her. She's… she's better than she looks." Dennis hummed.