The Magician departments of various companies also fully formed and the sanctuary was entering more colorful times as Deji and his team of intelligence superiors made large strides in the fields of technology.

Apart from psychic technology Deji’s team of intelligence superiors now know as ‘Genius’ had fully unraveled the workings of Flash Thunder. They could now make weapons that used both aura and monster special abilities. The major ability weapon that was sold was the elongating weapons from the Nemesis corpses which utilized the Nemesis’s general ability to stretch their exoskeletons.

The only other ability weapons that were made were those of monsters that weren’t Hive monsters which were only used by those who owned the corpses as they weren’t in regular supply.

Genius had also brought forth a theory on why different people had different aura colors. From their surveys they concluded on the following:

[Aura color indication

White: Fueled by devotion

Red: Fueled by passion

Orange: Fueled by ambitions

Yellow: Fueled by relationships/friendship

Green: Fueled by responsibility

Blue: Fueled by competition/enmity

Indigo: Fueled regrets

Violet: Fueled by reason

Black: Fueled by tranquility]

Genius stated that from their findings it is possible for the color of one’s aura to change as it was determined by the person’s mindset and the major motivators the person had. If the person’s mindset changed the person’s aura color would change but as it wasn’t easy for mindsets to change it would be quite hard to change the color of one’s aura and access other properties.

Genius also stated that it should be possible for people to use more than one color of aura as it was possible to be simultaneously motivated by every factor. The team said that as aura training research progressed such would be possible.

Throughout the 4 months Genius had not succeeded to create a single spell. They hadn’t even cracked the significance of each pattern. Although they were Magicians, magic was still a completely foreign concept to them.

The sanctuary had tried to create a Nemesis horde after 1 month of the Ranker Academy’s run. There were many high ranking people and they could easily defeat Rank 6s hordes and the numbers of high rankers were still growing, so they tried to turn the remaining Rank 6 hordes that had Hive wombs into Nemesis hordes.

It didn’t work no matter what they did. They would harass and torture the horde but it would just die out without a fight afterwards. They prolonged the extermination of the hordes but none of them became Nemesis hordes and all the Rank 6 hordes were wiped out leaving the singular Rank 7 monster horde in the area.

At this point the Lagos settlement meeting was a week away. Jola’s company made the announcement, detailing that he had spied on some of the settlements and found most of them to be inhumane and abhorrent societies.

The sanctuary had about 3 million Rank 3s, 200 thousand Rank 4s, 500 Rank 5s and exactly 23 Rank 6s. The introduction of skills, better weapons and magic had boosted the combat ability and motivation of the sanctuary for individual members and for the whole community.

For the Lagos settlement meeting each settlement was allowed to bring a maximum of 10 representatives each. For the sanctuary Jola, Anita, Deji, Mistura, Samad, Funmi, Mira, Gbenga, Bella and Lanre, the leader of Shadeless, were going.

Jola told the public all the information about the meeting and this included the organizer being a person who could kill a Rank 6 monster when Jola was just a new Rank 4. This put a whole new perspective in people’s minds about who was strong and who was weak.

A rumor began that this person was Jade the ripper. This rumor caught the Island Devil’s ears as Jade’s visit was something mostly known by only the early sanctuary dwellers but with the rumors it became common knowledge.

Gbenga and his group asked Funmi about the authenticity of the claim and Funmi said “I don’t know about that. I thought he was in prison before the apocalypse, but my friend David said that it was true and that he had seen him with his very eyes.

Since this is a big rumor I decided to investigate and do an article on it, I’m calling it the dark beginnings of the sanctuary. It started with Samad meeting a man who was wearing a loin cloth made out of a weird material and dragging a large bag made of the same material, which we now know is probably a monster’s skin. At that time Samad was just a mere guard and the sanctuary was very small compared to what it is now.

Samad thought it was weird clothing but didn’t give it much thought. The sanctuary was still starting out so new people and weird were common and even sought after. This was just a normal recruitment process until Samad saw who the person was, it was Jade the ripper.

Jade the ripper said he wanted to just pass by the sanctuary but Samad didn’t trust him. Samad shot at him but he caught all the bullets, Samad and his colleagues only stopped shooting when their clips finished.

They ran away and gave an emergency report but Jade the ripper had already reached the sanctuary. People reported sightings of a ‘monster’ that fell from the sky into the roof a building; it was Jade.

Jola assembled a force and was ready to attack, but when he saw Jade he ran up to him and hugged him. Jola and Jade were long time friends” The faces of the Island Devils, was a painting of shock. The nice Jola, who doesn’t allow anyone to put honorifics or titles on his name, who was always transparent with the public and never masked his feelings, was friends with a terrorist?

Funmi said “Shocking right? This article is a natural seller. He and Jade reminisced about their experiences and afterward Jade told the early members of the sanctuary administration, which were just the founding members of Jola’s company at that time, about the IPs and the state of the world and left.

Jade seemed to have already gotten an IP before anyone else, which proves that, from the quest information, he killed a Rank 4 monster while he was human and he was an Ancient Grade species when he came to the sanctuary” The Island Devils looked pained as they remembered their ordeal with Jade.

Gbenga said “We also met him before. We assisted him in killing the monsters, we thought he was dead or that he ran away” Funmi said “Please tell me the story” and Bella sensing her greed said “How much?”

They decided on an amount to sell their story and Gbenga continued “We met him at a supermarket. We were so scared when we saw him coming in with guns. He greeted us as if it was a normal day and he was a normal person and offered us guns in exchange for our help.

We tried to fight him with the guns he gave us but that quickly proved useless as he was far more experienced and way smarter than us; the guns weren’t loaded” The faces of the Island Devils looked pained as Gbenga recalled the event.

“He made us come with him, threatening us and annoying us with random meaningless banter. We came to the location of a horde. He told us he wanted to pass over to the other side of the horde and we were to help him get there.

We were supposed to start at 12pm but he woke us up before that and told us he wanted to start right away, with a call. He used us as bait and he killed two probably Rank 4 monsters at the time. We were knocked out by a psychic blast and when we woke up he wasn’t answering his phone, if only we knew he was evolving” Gbenga said with regret and rage.

Funmi said “I’ve changed the name of the article we’ll call it The romance of Jade the ripper, the devils and the sanctuary. This is going to be a best seller!” Mira, who was listening to the conversation, had heard the Island Devils’ side but she hadn’t heard about the sanctuary’s side. She thought ‘Jade and Jola are old friends. No wonder he sent me here. But who is this person who is organizing the meeting; this person is clearly not Jade, he would have told me about it… It’s a rival for Jade’

Bella tried her best to hold back from staring at Mira, she could sense she was hiding something very important to the conversation but she couldn’t ask.

On the day of the meeting two strangers, a young black man in his 30s and a girl in her teens, came to one of the sanctuary gates. The guards noticed them and their eyes widened in shock at what their IPs told them: [Rank 7 Meta Human] was shown over the man’s head and [Rank 6 Meta Human] showed over the girl’s head.

The man said with a bright smile “How are y’all. We’re here to pick up your settlements representatives”