Shadow parasite

Flying was a wonderful experience for Gorn. Being carried by someone during such a time was somewhat funny. Sara sneaked a few glances at him, curious to see if he was afraid or not.

There were no reasons to be afraid so his face was serene, without any negative emotions. The city was way smaller than what he had imagined at first.

'Humans are barely surviving in this hostile place,' thought Gorn while at the same time comparing this place to Earth.

The majority of the population was very weak and vulnerable. One adult reaper was enough to eliminate most of them and bring ruin to the city. While the monsters were outside and could not get inside for the time being, the same thing could not be said about humans. There were quite a few individuals with a power level above one thousand, and even greater. If such a person decided to do bad things then the weaker individuals were in for quite the ugly surprise.

A good example was Gorn. He could use his blink abilities and kidnap almost anyone, bringing them outside the city, and practically doing whatever he wanted with them. Living in such a place without much power could be a real nightmare.

'If you look at things from this perspective then Earth is the better choice.'

Even so, a terrible amount of bad deeds were happening on Earth despite the small difference in physical power. Gorn didn't even want to think what would happen if a part of Earth's inhabitants suddenly got superpowers.

While Gorn was analyzing the city, and at the same time comparing it to a normal one, Sara flew closer to the ground. She didn't travel at her fastest speed, but they almost arrived. From the sky, and even before arriving closer, one could easily tell that the city was delimitated in three. Roughly sixty percent of the space was used by the majority of people while the rest was used in an even proportion by the Mercenary Guild, respectively the city faction group.

The latter wasn't separated by an inside wall, nor had any fancy house trees, however, the buildings, as well as everything else built by human hands were of top quality, and beautifully organized. This part of the city was in a way the opposite of the Mercenary Guild area, relying less on nature, and more on pure human architecture. Different, but beautiful in its way. At this point, it was more about the taste of each individual. Gorn examined as much as he could until they landed.

"We are here," said Sara while arranging her camise.

Gorn felt rather strange, the atmosphere was eerie and bizarre.

"Follow me," continued Sara after finishing what she was doing.

Gorn followed her in silence. There were almost more guards than normal people.

'What is going on here?'

The few people present had fear plastered all over their faces, visible even though they tried not to show it. The same thing could not be said about the guards. All of them had poker faces, devoided of any emotion whatsoever, it was like they were statues and not living organisms.

'I hope I'm not way over my head in some kind of muddy waters,' thought Gorn while at the same time becoming even more vigilant. The weakest guard had a power level similar to his, so escaping in case of some sort of emergency was possible only by relying on his peculiar skills.

'Thankfully no one I saw can fly, or something similar to that.'

This fact brought some comfort in the uncertain situation. After some time Sara stopped in front of a big villa.

"This is my place."

Gorn looked around with interest. Everything seemed expensive and spacious.

"Come!"

There were multiple guards around the place. These people, however, looked normal compared to the other guards he had seen previously. Gorn followed Sara inside without saying anything. She brought him through a few rooms and stopped inside what looked to be a spacious library. Moving a certain book, a secret passage revealed itself. It was a small tunnel that led towards the underground.

'How convenient,' thought Gorn.

After a few more minutes, both of them reached what seemed to be a huge underground cave. Surprisingly or not, the place had various facilities built in, and lots of people working on different matters. Following her even further, Gorn entered a big house close to the cave wall. In the middle of that place was a cube, roughly five meters tall and wide.

"This is the device, please verify if you can store it or not."

Gorn went closer to the cube. It looked very mysterious and simple at the same time. It had two big buttons on it. One green and one red, except that there was nothing else. Putting his hand on the cube Gorn used some force to try and push it. The thing didn't even budge, confirming what Sara said about its weight. Next, Gorn tried to store it. In the next second the cube disappeared from their sight. Sara's mouth opened wide in amazement then she jumped at Gorn, hugging him.

"This is so amazing!" she was very excited and emotional at the same time.

Her actions took Gorn a little by surprise. Grabbing him by the shoulders she said with serious eyes: "Gorn, this is a great opportunity!"

Taking him by the hand Sara brought him to another room without waiting for any reply. Taking out a map she pointed at a certain place.

"At this location, there is a huge floating island. This is the spot we must bring the device to."

Gorn tried to remain as calm as possible through all these new chains of events.

"There is a gigantic mountain located there, but I don't know anything about a floating island."

Gorn read about quite a few matters in the last weeks, so his general knowledge was not the same as before.

"No one knows about that place except you and me," said Sara while moving forth and back.

Gorn touched his chin: "I want to hear more details."

At this point Sara had to go all in, otherwise, things could backfire on her. Taking a seat she started to explain.

"Alright. To make things shorter, what protects this city is a type of energy that is harmful to monsters. This energy comes from a special type of crystals that are deep under the city."

Taking a deep breath Sara continued with a somewhat trembling voice:

"That big cube can store that kind of energy and transport it. Furthermore, it can also use that energy to form a bigger crystal, greatly expanding the area of effect and its efficacity."

Gorn looked at Sara with great attention. She was uncomfortable telling him all this.

'She is clearly in a tough situation since she has to tell a stranger like me all these things and rely on my help...'

"How many such cubes are there?"

"There is a bigger one under this city, which was built directly on that spot, and the one you stored. Just these two as far as I know, since they require an astronomical amount of resources and time to build."

"So you want me to bring this cube to that floating island to do what exactly?"

Sara paused for a moment: "That floating island also has this kind of protective energy. I want to take that energy and bring it to our city."

"You just want to further upgrade the size of this city or perhaps there is something wrong with the energy here?" asked Gorn in a rather serious tone.

Sara stopped and looked him in the eyes: "The truth is that the energy in our city started to diminish sharply since a few months ago. At this rate, the city is going to shrink considerably and possibly..."

"And the cause for that is?"

"We do not know exactly what has caused such a phenomenon."

Loud, and constant noises were coming from outside. People were extremely busy doing all kinds of research in that underground cave.

"And how can you be so sure there is such an energy on that floating island?"

"I have a special device that can detect the energy emitted by those crystals."

Gorn got up, stretching his legs a little: "You flew to such a dangerous place all alone?"

"I was accompanied by a team pretty close to that area. But yes, I flew alone, since I'm the only one who has this ability. This happened half a year ago, and I didn't tell anyone about this matter."

'Good to know,' thought Gorn.

"Isn't it a little hard to miss a floating island?"

"The weather is a little...special there. Furthermore, the island is high in the sky and the energy emitted by those crystals acts like some type of cover, making it very hard to spot that place unless you are close enough... ."

"Then how did you discover it? or is the range of that searching device that great?" asked Gorn, wanting to know as many details as possible.

"The range of the device is not that great. Long story short I stumbled upon that place by accident."

Sara was becoming less and less patient.