Chapter 195 The Approaching Storm (2) He was right. But what happened next was beyond what he was expecting. Although he could not say how the heads of his family conducted their matters, he was surprised that his Ancestor had formed an alliance with the Ancestor of the Kuranes family. How that came to be, he really had no idea, and the plans they came up with were ridiculous according to what Augustus knew. They did not just hunt for Rowan in secret. No, it was the opposite, they gave out a high bounty on his head and whipped up the entire Empire to hunt for him. This was crazy! To anyone else this might be the correct step to take, but Augustus smelled a conspiracy. Rowan had the power to break out of the Bloodline Shackles imposed by the gods! The man could control a Singularity, he had the key to destabilize millennia of control by the gods, and that was not just the only thing he was capable of. Such a secret was worth hoarding and only used for your advantage, it was common sense not to let it loose, so it should not enter the hands of someone lucky or reach the ears of your enemies. Augustus had screamed in rage and disbelief when he heard of the bounty on Rowan, anytime he thought about his bloodline, which was so powerful Augustus could not wrap his head around it, he became struck between fear and lust. He knew his Ancestor must have an idea what sort of bloodline flowed in the veins of that man. Because he had given them the only remnant that Rowan left behind. Augustus still remembered that Absomet was quiet in shock, and he was sure the reason he was allowed to live after betraying his family was because he had retrieved the fallen scales left behind by those dragons, that Rowan had discarded like trash. So with all this evidence of Rowan's uniqueness, why this public hunt? Augustus had survived for long when he should have died many times over because he had a good instinct at identifying patterns and preserving his life. For the past month that instinct had been telling him to run, for the pattern he was seeing was not right. He was missing relevant information that may be detrimental to his well-being if he did not do something soon. He had begun making preparations but when he was given a guard in front of his office (his glorified jail cell) he began accelerating his plans. Augustus had been placed in a War Tower at the edge of the family's Domain, and had been commanded to wait for further instructions. He had been promised a new body with a powerful Tiberius bloodline potency for his contribution. Yet, he could no longer wait for such compensation because the instinct that had guided him for so long was telling him, what waited for him was not a clear road to Dominion but the reaper's scythe. They had begun making plans without any of his contribution, and as far as he knew they no longer valued him, his bloodline was lost, and his position stripped away, promises meant nothing with no tangible benefits given. Absomet that unholy bi+ch, had brought him nothing but loss and disdain, and he was not foolish enough not to realize that when the Rune ship talked about torturing and killing him that she did not mean it metaphorically. Absomet would be delighted to kill him, and she would do so very slowly and painfully. Augustus had tortured countless people, and he would rather not be at the other end of the knife. There was news she would be stopping by soon on an impromptu visit to the War Tower. The blades of the reaper never felt so close. Of course, Augustus knew she wouldn't kill him directly, but there were many ways to do such deeds for a being of power like her. After gathering the last of the Resources he had squirreled away during the month, and some of the hidden stashes he left around when he was a Dominator at Proclamation Realm, just one more step away from the Third Great Circle. He had seen the route to become great at the end of his life, and to see that path laid out before you, yet being too weak to walk it was a source of torture beyond reasoning. Anytime the thought of his previous glory enters his mind, Augustus felt like screaming and killing everything in sight, but he was helpless, and this helplessness stung him. He went to the windows, and manifested a sharp bloody dagger he began using to cut through the armored pane. When he was done, he quietly placed it by the side and climbed out. The War Tower was six hundred stories tall, and he was on the five hundred and twenty-third floor, at this height the entire expanse was open before him, and he could see the shape of a massive Spaceship, ten miles away. His target was not this one. The War Tower was at the center of a Tiberius family barrack that was three thousand miles across. Even from this height he could sense the air shuddering with countless deadly potential, as soldiers of war gathered in the millions brought a wave of blood light to the barrack. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶 The barrack also held a sizable city where everything could be bought and traded for. Everything! Most soldiers here cycled from the battlefield in the two lost Continents, and they brought back valuable loot which could be exchanged to the Empire for various resources. Augustus brought out a Shade Cloak from his Spatial Ring and draped himself, turning into scattered shades of shadows that could be easily missed. A flying carriage was coincidentally flying a little too close to the War Tower, and Augustus timed the distance and jumped, the flying carriage angled itself sideways and Augustus slipped through the opening slamming into the other side of the carriage with a bang. He shook his head from the small bout of dizziness he had, as he had fallen for twelve stories. Augustus had paid dearly for a small gap in the War Tower inspection team and also for the flying carriage to deliver him to the Merigold in an hour's time, just as it was about to leave for a Minor Planet at the edge of the Empire. It was more costly to carry along the rest of the Bone Army Soldiers, but they were to him another source of life, he had struggled to hide one of them far away, but the rest were coming with him, and if his preparation went well, they should be waiting for him at the ship. He dumped the balance for the ride on the outstretched hand of the carriage driver, who grinned and returned to his duties, while Augustus began looking around and noticing the amassing troops. This was also a new development he had been following closely. With the announcement of the hunt for Rowan Kuranes, the war machine of the Tiberius Family had entered into full motion. Augustus could be wrong, but the last time such a deployment was staged was for the hunt of a rogue god, five thousand years ago. Were they treating the hunt for Rowan similar to the hunt for a god? He wanted to chuckle that such a move seemed excessive for what he thought was to be a relatively simple hunt for Rowan, before his face went grave, it would seem he never learned his lessons. How long did it take for Rowan to be strong enough to nearly kill him with a single blow. A week? It had been nearly two months now, and although he would have gotten stronger, according to all common sense, the Paths to power only grew steeper the higher you climb. But, that Bast*rd does not obey common sense, does he? Maybe such an number of troops and weapons were just right to hunt him down.