Chapter 68: Low Risk, High Reward |
"Stop." Calvin raised his right hand, palm flat, making a "halt" gesture.
Arriving not far from that bizarre giant tree, Calvin raised his right hand to signal the three team members behind him to stop. This spot was less than two hundred meters from the strange tree, basically within the effective range of the extraordinary item in Calvin's hand.
The three people following behind immediately halted their steps.
Staring at the tree ahead, Calvin's left-hand fingers exerted a slight force, pinching the white rook chess piece in his hand. He turned his head halfway, looking back at the three behind him.
"Does anyone want to give it a try? Those who contribute more will gain more credit. This will help a lot with your future promotions, whether it's a position upgrade or obtaining higher-level Law Marks."
The two men and one woman behind exchanged glances, looking at each other.
The man in sunglasses was the first to take a small step back, the reflection on his lenses concealing his eyes.
"I'm just logistics support. This kind of thing isn't suitable for me," he said with a grin, showing his teeth. "At times like this, what I should actually be doing is hiding."
"Besides, I haven't fully adapted to my Law Mark yet. It'll take quite a while before I can advance further, so there's no rush."
"Then it's up to you two?" Calvin looked at the man and woman handcuffed together. "I'll see later if I can split the credit evenly between you."
"Okay." The two answered almost in unison.
Their voices weren't loud, but they were perfectly in sync.
After a few seconds of silence, the man on the left pondered for a moment, then shook his head and said, "Just give it all to her. I don't need it for now."
Calvin looked into his eyes, nodded, and said nothing further.
The four people present had a general understanding of the difficulty level of this current mission, so they weren't particularly worried. They could even casually discuss how to distribute performance credit.
From yesterday all the way until today, dragging on for an entire night—of course, they hadn't just been doing nothing.
Last night, they confirmed the risks of this mission through astrology.
Among the team, the man wearing sunglasses had the Law Mark "Stargazer," which was a relatively common logistics configuration in the Public Security Bureau.
Both safe and practical.
Many newcomers who didn't want to go to the front lines but still hoped to gain extraordinary abilities would choose this configuration of Law Mark.
Unlike divination, which could provide more detailed content, this ability only indicated roughly whether something was good or bad. However, in exchange, its accuracy was much higher, and it was also very difficult to mislead.
After all, astrology was different from divination. To counter-divine, one only needed to distort one's own information—it didn't even involve fate; it was just deceiving the person who saw the divination. But to counter-astrology, you'd have to fool the entire starry sky above.
The difficulty of that was extraordinary.
So far, no Law Seeker below Contemplating the Law was known to have achieved it.
Although blindly trusting the stars wasn't advisable, he was still a two-mark Law Seeker. In the security bureaus of some remote cities, he could even serve as deputy chief of a local branch. With the assistance of some Law Objects within the bureau, calculating things at the three-mark or four-mark level wasn't a big problem.
He had roughly calculated with astrology last night—today wasn't dangerous.
Although this tree looked pretty scary, it was only scary to look at.
Even so, they didn't let their guard down and chose to have a three-mark Law Seeker lead the team to clear this "dungeon."
"Alright, since it's decided..." Calvin turned back to face the strange tree ahead, then lowered his head to look at the chess piece in his hand.
Then, he raised the white rook chess piece in front of him and forcefully slammed it down onto the air before him, as if placing it on an invisible chessboard.
Clack.
A crisp sound rang out.
Although the piece fell onto empty air, it produced a sound similar to landing on a wooden chessboard.
The chess piece just floated there, suspended in midair.
Calvin opened his mouth, and his voice turned dignified and low.
"Check."
His tone remained unchanged—the dignity came from another overlapping voice.
Even though only he was speaking, two voices came out.
The two voices blended together. One was Calvin's, relatively younger in comparison. The other was deeper, a bit casual yet carrying an inexplicable authority—it was precisely the voice of Grelle Irrot, the Chief of Branch Three of the Public Security Bureau.
The chess piece hung there in the air, and with it as the center, the space in this area suddenly became isolated from the outside world, forming a square area two hundred meters long and two hundred meters wide. The air suddenly felt heavier.
This "rook" piece faced the strange tree ahead, with nothing between the piece and the tree.
The movement rule for a "rook" was that it could move in a straight line, ignoring the number of spaces.
If that tree was the black side's "king," then in the next move, this white piece could "capture" the king.
He suddenly felt very tall, as if everything before him had turned into pieces on a chessboard.
The teammates behind him, the strange tree ahead, the "rook" piece in his hand—everything, absolutely everything, was under his control...
Calvin shook his head, forcing himself to calm down.
After all, he was borrowing the ability of a higher-ranking individual. Even though the Chief had no ill intent toward him whatsoever, he was still experiencing a certain degree of pollution.
It was making him somewhat arrogant, conceited, and filled with a desire to control everything.
The Chief had to endure these emotions every single day. No wonder he took every opportunity he found to catch some sleep.
Calvin muttered inwardly, forcefully exhaling a breath.
"I'm using the Chief's ability to restrain the target now. You can go ahead and proceed with containment." Calvin didn't look back, his eyes fixed unblinkingly on the strange tree ahead, his voice still carrying the overlapping timbre of two people.
One calm, one dignified.
Then he added a reminder: "Although astrology shows this operation is safe, we still can't let our guard down. Don't pass between the piece and the target—approach from the side."
"Yes, Captain." The two answered in unison.
Hearing their simultaneous reply, Calvin didn't turn around. He just silently sighed.
Viktor, the logistics personnel, had lied.
He didn't not need credit points.
On the contrary, he needed them badly.
Of course Viktor needed credit points—promotions, better Law Object allocations, safer deployment positions—which of these didn't require performance as a foundation?
Whether it was wanting to advance or arranging various things afterward, credit points within the bureau were absolutely essential.
But Calvin understood. Viktor, like himself, had tacitly given this relatively easy mission opportunity to the pair of siblings locked together.
To be precise, it wasn't just them who had made this choice.
When Branch Two had said they couldn't handle this matter back then, Calvin had already suspected something.
Especially when Viktor calculated that this matter wasn't dangerous—that was when Calvin fully understood.
This kind of thing—clearly a big problem yet unexpectedly safe—was a hot commodity wherever it appeared.
Low risk, high reward.
But Branch Two had casually given it to them with some flimsy excuse.
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