New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

Chapter 955  Making Demands

Merlin nodded, his face still stern, and as soon as Alex lifted his ass, he waved his hand at him, pushing the books away carefully, before a bland-looking brown wooden chair appeared in their stead.

Alex looked at the uncomfortable seat and chuckled.

"Sure. That\'ll do."

He sat on the chair, looking at Merlin with a shit-eating grin.

"Now, as I was saying earlier, what are you doing still alive, Merlin? Forcing yourself upon your descendants is a far cry from the righteous front your legend says you upheld."

"Child, speak not of matters you know nothing about. I am not forcing myself upon anyone. Each Exarch chooses to let me in of their own free will. And I don\'t push them out of their bodies, either. Howard is still somewhere in here, probably waiting for you to leave."

Alex looked around with a curious gaze, but he couldn\'t sense the other mind. It didn\'t help that he was an unwelcome guest inside this man\'s head, though.

"Whatever you say. But that doesn\'t explain the soul snaring. Seems a bit of an excessive measure to take on people under you, no?" Alex asked, trying to look outraged.

But his acting skills were less than adequate, and Merlin looked unfazed.

"Do not presume to understand my motives, young one. I have lived almost a thousand years, and your mind could not begin to comprehend the dangers humanity has faced in the shadows before you were even a drop in your father\'s sac."

Alex snorted at the comment.

"Wow. If the historians knew you had a foul mouth like this, I wonder if your legend would have caught on as it did," he chuckled.

"Enough taunting and verbal scrimmage. What do you want?" Merlin snapped, pulsing his mana out again.

Alex felt his mind tug slightly backwards, as he was almost expelled, being caught off guard.

He could feel his body getting further and further, and the connection between them was slowly becoming tenuous. He couldn\'t play around too long before his mind retracted on its own.

He wasn\'t a telepath, after all. Already, making it this far out of his own body was a feat he hadn\'t expected to accomplish.

"Fine. No more messing around. I am already breaking the soul snare on Killian, and I want it to stay this way. He is a friend and ally, and I don\'t want a third party to mess around in his mind if I am to trust him," Alex said, his face becoming serious. n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

"And why would I do that? Who are you to make demands of me?" Merlin replied, his face turning into an arrogant grimace.

Alex\'s grin widened.

"I\'m the man who will soon start shaking up the truths of power this world thinks it has established. All the hidden old beasts of the world are about to have a run for their money, as I upset the balance in power," Alex arrogantly answered.

Merlin wanted to laugh him off, but he kept himself serious. Even if he thought it was erroneous that a child could upset the balance of power already established, this young man had already done something he thought impossible.

"Those are big words, coming from such a young person. Do you think that balance you seek to upset is so easily perturbed?" Merlin asked.

But Alex only grinned back at him.

"I guess we\'ll find out soon enough. In the meantime, stay out of Killian\'s mind. If you try to snare him again, I\'ll come after you, physically this time," Alex threatened, before he retracted his mind.

Merlin looked at the chair, his gaze hardening.

"Howard, I know you are watching. Come here."

A moment later, Howard\'s form phased out of a nearby bookshelf, and he bowed to the old man.

They didn\'t look too distant in age, on appearances alone, as Howard was already a little past his sixties, and Merlin had died looking still the age of sixty, although he had reached almost four centuries past that.

"Yes, venerable ancestor," Howard said.

Looking at him, Merlin couldn\'t help but think this man was one of his most reliable descendants yet.

Throughout the thousands of years he had been dead, all his descendants and the Exarchs he had resided inside of had come nowhere near his level of smarts.

Howard was an astute man, in both business and magical arts, and he had managed to unlock the highest potential within himself that the Merlineans had seen in a long time.

With his business smarts, he had managed to make the ancestral fortune flourish like no one before him, enabling their family to hold a position in today\'s society that had been long since lost.

If it wasn\'t that the natural magic of the world had waned so much over the last millennia, Merlin was almost sure that Howard could have reached close to his height in power at that same age.

"What do you think of this young man? You keep tabs on people of potential around the world. Did he seem like one of your potential powerhouses?" Merlin asked, rubbing his eyes tiredly.

Howard sat on the chair before Merlin, scratching his chin for a bit.

"I think I saw him in a report a little while back. Something about displaying strange powers. We thought he might be a lycanthrope, given he was shifting into a beast-like entity.

"At first, we thought we might have let a family of lycans slip through the net during the great hunt, and that they might have moved overseas. But with further digging, we couldn\'t find any other like him. So we ruled out lycanthrope," Howard said, thinking back to the report.

"A shifter, then?" Merlin asked, looking slightly confused.

"We ruled that out as well. He maintains the same appearance the rest of the time, making him unlikely to be a shifter. After all, they can\'t stand wearing the same skin too long."

Merlin sighed tiredly.

"Do you think his threats hold any weight?"

Howard\'s face became glum.

"Very much so, venerable Merlin. He has already killed many, and we fear his actual kill count may be higher than what we can confirm. He is already marked as a level-three threat."

Merlin\'s face darkened.

"Mark him level five, but note him as \'keep tabs.\' I don\'t want us to conflict with him just yet. Making a powerful enemy at this moment is not in our best interest."

Howard bowed, before he retracted from the mind space and returned to his body.

As Merlin was left alone, he sighed again, looking dejected.

"What in the gods has been unleashed upon our world? Where do all these monsters come from, and why are more powerful people being born? Is the world really ending?" he mumbled.

His gaze went to a scroll in a corner, which was unrolled and displayed inside a glass case.

\'Let\'s hope they were just the ravings of a crazed woman on death\'s door…\'