Chapter 251: Anomalies with Anomalies

“So let me get this straight,” I muttered, “But all three Anomalies will be present in the same city?”

Q looked nervous when he answered. “Unfortunately, that is the way of things, Lord Arbiter.”

I sighed. “And were there any, let’s say, unforeseen interferences when the Aspirants were choosing their cities to protect?” 

I was talking about the Trash Matrix and the Overseer pulling some strings again, of course, and thankfully the admin understood my meaning clearly enough. He shook his head. “No, sir. There was no tampering, official or otherwise, at least on the part of Aspirant Jae-Hyun’s choice to be here. I have some ideas as to why the other two Anomalies are here, however…”

I raised an eyebrow. “Explain.”

“Well…” Q looked around hesitantly, eyeing some of the other Central workers - especially Jordan - and Sponsors with a frown, before turning his attention back on me. 

Right, there were Overseer goons all around us, it wasn’t exactly safe to talk about the more sensitive things out in the open.

“Explain your thoughts, administrator Q,” I clarified, “I just want to hear your hypothesis on why Toronto of all places is so special. There must be something drawing all of the Anomalies to the same location.”

“Right,” Q said, picking up my intentions, “That would explain why they are all here; those three must have all picked up on the same peculiarities of this location somehow.”

Jordan tried to interject. “But that’s impossi-”

“We are speaking, Junior Assistant Jordan,” Q interrupted. “But I understand your concerns. You think that it would be impossible for these Aspirants, anomalous or not, to pick up on the unique nature of this location, especially since they were stuck on the Main Stage. Why, getting that sort of information from across multiple planes would be a difficult feat for even myself, so surely it would be impossible for mere mortals.”

“Exactly, sir!” 

Q gave her a grin. “Yet here they all are. Now unless you want to tell me that someone has been giving them illicit information about the nature of the hidden reward in this city - a huge breach in Central Regulations, mind you - then the only other explanation is that they were all able to somehow detect this, even through multiple dimensions.” He shook his head and chuckled. “I don’t think luck can explain all three of them being here.”

“But…”

“Or,” Q continued, not giving her a chance to react, “you could file an incident report and have a third party investigate any potential leaks of information. You are well within your authority to do so, Junior Assistant Jordan, and I am sure that Lord Babylon would be glad to provide the necessary surveillance footage.”

Jordan’s face turned pale at the thought of that, probably because she or another one of the Overseer’s minions were complacent in that information getting to Ryan’s side. I highly doubted that the Overseering himself would ever get his hands dirty with something that trivial, but if enough clues point at his involvement… it’s not hard to imagine who would take the blame for any inconveniences that might arise from that.

“That won’t be necessary, sir,” Jordan stammered, “It is next to impossible to know the true extent of an Anomalies abilities, so it is not impossible for them to know such information. No need to bother the Master Alchemist on such a trivial matter, sir.”

“Then there’s no problem telling the Lord Arbiter my thoughts on this matter, right, Junior Assistant Jordan?”

She barely suppressed a frown. “No, sir.”

Xalla and her sister walked over and stood precariously close to Jordan. That made the poor junior assistant understand her precarious situation.

Q clapped his hands and grinned. “Now as I was saying before so rudely interrupted, I believe you were asking for my thoughts on why all of them chose to be here?”

I nodded. “Particularly our Temporal Anomaly. But there’s something I want to clarify first. I was under the impression that only one city-state can inhabit a city, so how is it that he is also in Toronto?”

“Ah, I think I misspoke before, Lord W.” Q said before pulling out a map of the city and its surrounding area. He pointed at the eastern part of the city. “It seems that Aspirant Jae-Hyun did not choose Toronto, but he chose Scarborough.” 

I frowned. “According to the map, isn’t that just a part of Toronto?”

Q shrugged. “I think it’s a different ward, but that’s just mortal semantics. They’re very loose on the exact definitions of a city, but it’s within reason to consider Scarborough to be its own separate entity for the purpose of this Trial. Well, it can be considered separate precisely because it is Kim Jae-Hyun.” He paused and gave Jordan a knowing smirk. “As you know, Aspirant Jae-Hyun has preferential treatment given his status as the number 1 Aspirant of Earth, so some slight rule-bending is within tolerance. It is up to the discretion of the Site Administrator to allow such things, isn’t that right, Junior Assistant Jordan?”

This time Jordan couldn’t quite hide her frown. “You are correct, Administrator Q.” 

“And he is by himself there?” I asked. 

“He took Aspriant Claire along, but he is essentially alone aside from her.”

My face scrunched as another thought hit me. “Then how does our Anomaly plan to defend this Scarborough location with just the two of them?”

Q’s smile was brilliant, much to the annoyance of his little assistant. “That’s the wonderful part, Lord Arbiter! Scarborough still falls under the purview of Ryan and his city-state, so Aspirant Jae-Hyun won’t have to do anything.”

“And this is allowed?”

“It is.” He winked at me. “Like I said, it is up to my discretion, and such a minor thing as allowing two Aspirants to set up in another city is hardly a big deal. After all, what can two Aspirants possibly do on their own?”

I chuckled. “Fair enough, and sorry for interrupting your earlier thoughts. Now what exactly is so special about this city?” 

“It’s the hidden dungeon located underneath the city, near the lake,” Q answered, “Or more accurately, it is the fragment of the Main Stage that was merged with this planet to initiate the Ascension process and to integrate its inhabitants with the Central Collective.”

I frowned, digging deep for information pertaining to this. Thankfully Awake-Walter didn’t leave me to dry this time and considered this information important enough to keep floating around my head, like that tidbit with Stanton’s hair. Why I thought that lotion incident was of the same importance as the core operations of Central was anyone’s guess, however. 

Anyway, from my memories, the way that Central initiates any new round of testing is to obviously select a candidate planet or species with promise. The next step, and this one is the crucial one, was to chuck a piece of the Main Stage and imbed it into the candidate planet. If said planet didn’t explode or mutate or turn into a black hole… or any of the other 155 other horrible consequences on the official Trial Selection handbook, then the inhabitants would be considered to have passed the bare minimum requirements and can move onto the next selection phase. In fact, it was this chuck of foreign land that provided the framework and energy for the humans to evolve further.

All of this was just a fancy way to say that the Central Collective warped in a chuck from an alien dimension into the Earth, hoping that it wouldn’t cause the extinction of a few billion years worth of evolution, and causing this start of this whole mess. 

“I’m assuming that accessing the initial Seed will be beneficial to the Aspirants?” I asked.

“Yes,” Q replied, “The Aspirant or group who obtains it will be rewarded, as per Central regulations, but obtaining the Seed is more of a benefit to the inhabitant’s city-state than any individual. As you know, it is used to terraform a mortal planet to suit the needs of the higher planes, and the energies it contains, even drained after its initial use, can still drastically improve the Aspriant’s home. To obtain it this early on would only snowball the benefits, although the dangers associated is equally as high for rookie Aspirants.”

“But not for Anomalies.” 

“No,” Q said plainly, “Not for Anomalies.” He peered down as if gazing through the pillar and to the Earth at the three in question. “But I don’t believe that there has ever been a situation where three Anomalies, all with different properties, have been gathered in one Trial location before.”

“Then it’s a good thing that we have the Lord Arbiter here to deal with any unforeseen problems,” Xalla added with a smile.

“Yes,” Jordan grunted, “And I am sure that he also knows that he must remain neutral during his tasks. The Anomalies need to be monitored in case of dissent, but they are still Central Aspirants, and are allowed to act within the Trials as they see fit.”

I chuckled. “Of course, I know that Junior Assistant Jordan, and I would never dream of interfering with the Trials directly. I am here to observe and ensure that Central operations are in order.” I put my hands up and winked at her. “It’s all I’ve ever been doing, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, sir,” she muttered. 

Yeah, she didn’t believe a word that I said, and I didn’t blame her; there was no universe in which I wouldn’t be helping out the Regressor, especially if reward’s something that’ll help Pandora’s growth. I wasn’t sure exactly what the seed was - Awake-Walter didn’t specify outside of what I just said - but it must be good if the Overseer’s little pets were here as well. Of course, the only problem was that they had two Anomalies on their side instead of the one on ours, and I didn’t have a clue what Ryan and Ashwin’s abilities were while they probably know what Jae-Hyun could do all too well. 

Thankfully I had access to a literal army of cultists at my disposal, and while my physical body might be stuck on this pointy rock, I had the sneaking suspicion that I was a lot freer than Jordan or her ilk thinks. After all, it was the duty of the security team to monitor my movements, and who was going to argue about any mishaps to a pair of pissed-off Xollon? 

All I had to do was split my attention like Abigail or Molly does, an easy task given the amount of faith flowing my way. While my main body handles the tedium of Central bureaucracy, I think I can devote a good chunk of my mind to other tasks. Tasks, like, say, giving some prophecies to my new worshipers with a dash of divine intervention. Xalla and her sister, as if sensing my thoughts, turned and gave me a barely perceptible nod. Yeah, I knew I could count on their help.

All that was left for me to do at the moment was to get a better sense of this Trial. The Aspirants were still setting up their defensive positions, as they were alloted a weeks time to prepare for the inevitable invasion. Q also notified me that the hidden dungeon could not be accessed during this prep time either, so I had some time to myself for now. I planned to use that respite to check out Ryan’s forces and the Earth Aspirants as a whole. With the Regressor’s guild going down the evil path, these Aspirants would all be competators and foes down the line, and doing a bit of recon and espionage work now couldn’t hurt. 

So all in all, that left me with a handful of tasks for this Trial. The main priority being helping the Regressor - all sneaky like as Noel would say - steal that seed thing. This I need to accomplish above all else. The secondary priority was to discover Ryan and Ashwin's capabilities while devising a way to hinder their growth to the best of my ability. I knew that I couldn’t outright kill them here, not with their special status as Anomalies, and I couldn’t see a world where recruiting them was possible either, so that was the best I could hope for.

Finally, if I had time, I wanted to see if it was possible to influence the rest of the Aspirants. Maybe insert sleeper agents in the other city-states with a bit of brainwashing or convert their leaders to worshiping me. That was a tertiary priority at best, but it never hurt to plan for the future.

With all of that being said, I smiled. Let the Fifth Trial start in earnest.