Ning had already left Harnot city 2 weeks ago. He was starting to feel regretful about killing the mayor and the few other people.
He wasn't regretful because he killed, but rather because he was now considered a criminal, and this greatly diminished his influence as someone that was trying to do good.
"Tsk, I should remember this isn't Kumia. It's way more lawful," Ning thought to himself as he waited for people to him.
The empire had branded him a criminal, and he was finding it hard to do his Apostle work without people figuring out who he was.
He needed to think of ways to do that. One way was to give the technique to the publishing companies and have them do the work instead of him having to do it all.
That was likely the fastest way to go about it. After all, his primary focus for doing all of this was to bring the techniques to the normal folks that the Tower was trying to suppress.
The problem he faced now were the duds. He needed to give them something that wasn't simply Aether Ores so that he could keep hiding. He also needed something that could be mass-manufactured like the scrolls.
He would have to think about those later.
Ning took out a bunch of scrolls and laid them out in front of him on the bed in his hotel room.
'How many is this?' he thought and started counting. He had about 300 more scrolls.
"Alright, let's do this. System, teleport these 300 scrolls to every publishing company in all of this world," Ning said.
<There are more than 300 Publishing companies>
"Hmm, then just do it for the top 300 of those," Ning said. In his thoughts, even if just 3 of the 300 started publishing those scrolls, it would cause a big enough wave that the other 297 would soon join in on the action.
"Also, write 'Courtesy of the Apostle of Alexis' on the back of all of these scrolls before you do that, okay?"
<Confirmed>
The scrolls vanished at a moment's notice and were no more on the bed. Now, he would just have to wait and watch the Tower's ass be lit of fire.
'That makes me wonder. Aren't they supposed to be trying to stop me? It can't be that they gave up just because of what happened with Merilyn in Xandria, right?' he thought.
Just then, he felt the movement of air around him. His shirt flapped in the moving wind as his hair drifted to the side as well.
Not only the wind, but all the objects in the room were also slowly moving towards a certain point in his room.
Ning looked to his right and saw something black appear in front of him. It was a very tiny black spot in mid-air, but somehow the image of everything around it seemed warped.
The image warping with the pulling of objects around him gave Ning an idea of what that thing was.
It was a point in space that had a very strong gravitational pull.
Just as Ning was wondering what unnatural phenomenon was happening, the gravitational pull in front of him stopped, the winds and objects around him stopped moving, and in front of him, a man appeared.
It was an old man with long white hair, a white beard, and a very weak-looking build. He wore a dark purple robe and held a rather amicable smile on his face.
"Are you the Apostle of Alexis?" the man asked.
Ning looked at him in absolute shock. This man in front of him, he had just teleported there.
Aside from himself and Jha'Akim with his system, Ning had never seen another man teleport. However, he was sure that this man didn't use any system, instead, he used normal enchantment.
Ning knew about the possibility of teleportation using Enchantment. He didn't know how it could be done, only that it could be.
To think he would see someone teleport one day using only the energy of the planet… this was a dangerous man.
Ning could tell that this man was strong. Far stronger than he could hope to become in a short period of time.
The man looked at Ning for a while, and said, "based on your description of having a young face and quite a strong Aether rank, I can assume that you really are the Apostle of Alexis."
Ning looked at the man and used his Aether Analysis on him to check his rank. Suddenly, a sharp pain flared in his mind, making him stop.
He had only seen the person's rank and it had caused him mental pain. He had just now spent most of his mental energy trying to view this person's Aether rank.
This was dangerous. He was not a man Ning could fight.
"I am Perry Thatcher, the current Lord of the Aether Tower," he introduced himself. He then brought out a small glass bottle.
Ning didn't know what it was, but it looked dangerous. At the same time, he felt something in his stomach.
Ning looked at the bottle in the man's hand and for some reason felt his stomach where the bottle was.
'Shit! He's squeezing space again,' Ning thought and teleported out of the room.
The Lord of the Aether Tower remained in the room with a look of shock on his face. He looked around, but he couldn't see where Ning was at all.
'Did he teleport without using Aether?' the lord wondered. He wanted to learn how one could do that as well.
However, he sighed as he would likely never learn it now. He weighed the bottle in his hands, and as expected, the contents of it had already been moved over to a different location.
The location being the stomach of the Apostle.
Ning reappeared on top of the Ruins of Afterlife— that was the only place he could think of in the fraction of a second he had to leave.
He was about to take a deep breath of relief when suddenly, something started burning from deep within him.
