Part one:

It was the 20th day at the Aperture Temple, and the night had already fallen.

Nonetheless, it wasn’t late yet.

If it was summer, the sun would be visible for at least 3 more hours. It was time for dinner, and both Zafer and Skil were headed toward a nearby town to satisfy their hunger.

The town wasn’t big and developed like Razihelnor, but it was still the 3rd largest city that was part of the National neutral territory.

They found an interesting-looking pub and decided to eat there. It was decorated with a fishing net and anchors, revealing the type of food one could taste here.

“Can I order for you this time?”, Skil asked.

Zafer wasn’t the one paying for this trip anyway, so he agreed.

Skil started listing through the menu as if he was looking for something.

“Have you ever tried octopus?”

Zafer frowned, “No, what’s that?”

“It’s an undersea animal. You will see”, he put the menu down, “the National Security paladins are using it as a badge”.

“Just like we are using a four-pointed star?”

Skil nodded, “Yes, except they also use it as a strength measurement. The more tentacles someone’s badge has, the more powerful the individual is”.

Now, spotting a regular paladin was rare for a regular citizen, but a member of the National security? That was even rarer!

Despite Zafer venturing into the world of paladins, he was nowhere near the depth of being constantly surrounded by such individuals, so it was expected for him not to know this fact.

National security members didn’t have a single badge for the whole organization, but rather 5 isomers, versions, of a single idea that revolved around the octopus.

This sort of “ranking” based on their strength was different from rankings in other factions where you had recruits and officers.

It was known as one’s Threat Level and was very important to them. Zafer will recognize this importance shortly.

“What’s the highest number of tentacles one can have?”

“Six, and there is only one person designated with that badge”.

“Only one?”

“Yes, and not only that but there is also only one person designated with a 5 tentacle one as well”.

Zafer was shocked.

“How is that possible?”

“Well, I don’t know how they are measuring that stuff, but obviously not every paladin can reach such strength and power”, or so he assumed.

“Their weapons must be equipped with every strongest rune…”

Skil laughed, “Oh no. Their Threat Level doesn’t have anything to do with one’s weapons. It purely resembles one’s combat and destruction capability”.

This meant that no possessions like weapons or scripts were taken into consideration when deciding one's Threat Level.

Important note was that this didn’t apply to one’s anomalies, since those were considered to be a part of every human’s physiology.

The Simple Physiology of Anomalies: Paragraph 11

The anomaly under serial number 8, the Parchment, was the feature of the skin of its owner to be transformed into parchments on which scripts are written. Using the ancient language, codes could be written on said parchments to bring imagination into existence, and that what is present into nothingness…

As they were returning to the Temple, walking through the naked forest, a strange aura started radiating in the air. Only Zafer sensed it, but he thought nothing of it.

It was only halfway towards their accommodation when they spotted a tiny figure appear in front of them. In the middle of the woods.

Had the trees not lost all their leaves, the moonlight wouldn’t be able to reach and illuminate the ground as it did now.

It was wearing Miyalin armor and was equipped with a sword made out of the same material.

It was Arcanie!

They both halted.

“Well, your anomaly really did mess me up. I had a headache so strong I could not stop throwing up for 3 days”.

Arcanie eyed Zafer down.

“Crap! I don’t have my potions”, Skil looked at Zafer who already had his sword out.

“Drawing your blade? I won’t kill you”, she said calmly, “However, I will kill you”, she pointed at Skil, “and everyone else in the Temple. So that only one suspect remains. I wonder who is going to get to you first. The National Security, or your beloved Temper?”

Zafer swallowed his saliva and it slowly descended his throat.

He wasn’t aware just how strong Arcanie was, but if she really was capable of carrying out her threat, then it definitely would be a huge problem for Zafer, since nobody really knew anything about him.

Even Simra’s sympathy was a mystery to him.

Also, until now Zafer only saw regular guards patrolling the Temple. This was because NS supposed that nobody was crazy enough to attack the Aperture Temple since it was located near the 3rd largest city within the neutral border.

If an attack happened, and an alarm was sounded, there were plenty of NS members in the city to take care of that.

At least, such an attack never happened.

“I think it would be Temper”, a voice came from behind Zafer.

Both he and Skil reflexively turned around to see the 4th officer Uk! He wore a Miyalin armour that resembled that of a samurai and had a long thin sword hanging from his waist.

It seemed that not all paladins were preferring axes over swords, however, just as Zafer thought of that, Uk stretched out his arm, and a Miyalin axe appeared in his palm out of nowhere.

“Sir Uk! I’m unarmed!”, Skil informed him as he walked by.

It was rather a shame for a paladin like Skil to be in a situation like this.

Experienced paladins were always on alert and armed.

“Don’t get in my way”.

This was meant more for Zafer than Skil, but the former didn’t realize this at the time.

Arcanie frowned unsheathing her Miyalin sword and dashing towards Uk.

As the two were fighting, Zafer remained frozen, unsure about what he should do. Should he disobey and try to help, or just watch like he was useless?

He clenched his sword but was still not strong enough to break the handle.

Skil grabbed his shoulder, “Don’t. It’s an axe versus a sword”.

This implied that officer Uk would come out victorious.

The two were moving too fast for their eyes to catch every detail, so they could not tell who was winning. Neither Uk nor Arcanie possessed superhuman speed or strength, meaning that both had to have drunk a potion before they stepped out of the shadow.

There were only 3 major types of potions with different effects.

The blue one which enhanced one’s reflexes and overall speed.

The red one was granting regenerative power and,

The purple one was enhancing one’s raw strength.

The blue and the purple ones lasted 20 minutes, while the red ones lasted only 10. There were special places where one could buy potions, and the price was the same everywhere, as well as the dosage.

Zafer didn’t know how much the dosage was in numbers, but it was approximately 3 big gulps for him.

This information will prove to be meaningful later, as the speed at which one could consume a potion is highly important.

This was because it was much easier to harm someone while they were consuming a potion, so a paladin would try to keep that consumption time as short as possible.

An interesting fact was that although one was fast and had sharper reflexes, the rate at which they could swallow remained the same.

Once the liquid was consumed, however, the body took only a couple of seconds to absorb the active substance, granting its user its effect.

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A lighting bolt suddenly fell from the clear sky right on Arcanie.

Her armor protected her from the damage, but the lightning bolt created another problem for her.

It neutralized all the potion effects she had, forcing her to consume all of them again, while simultaneously fighting Uk.

This was a rune that could only be implanted in a Miyalin weapon.

Zafer remembered reading about it in the Book of Runes and Curses.

It was called the Purge rune and was able to summon lightning even from a clear sky on a single nearby enemy, resetting their potion effects and burning them, even though it was way weaker than the real lightning.

The rune could activate automatically, each time its cooldown ended, and also manually.

Nevertheless, this time Uk was unlucky, and Arcanie managed to create enough distance to drink the blue potion.

Now that she could move as fast as Uk, it would be somewhat easier to replenish her body with the remaining red and purple potion.

However, just as she was taking the gulps, Uk did something rather surprising.

He unsheathed his katana, completely letting go of his Miyalin axe which fell on the ground.

Although he was over 50 meters away from Arcanie, he swung with his sword horizontally in the empty air.

By the point he returned his katana in its case, a deep horizontal cut appeared on Arcanie’s neck. Blood spilled down her throat.

Her head and neck were unprotected by the Miyalin armor.

“Damn it. Barely within my range”, Uk scolded himself.

She dropped her vial, having the potion leak out on the fallen leaves. It was the red potion, and she was so close to consuming it.

The fight lasted only 15 minutes, and it was already over.

She fell on her knees, grabbing her neck and trying to catch a breath. But that was impossible.

She was drowning in her own blood.

Even if she managed to pull another red potion out of her pocket and successfully drink it, it wouldn’t change her fate.

The wound will close, but her respiratory system will still remain filled with blood.

That was after all how fragile humans are. Both anomalies and weapons were able to cause mass destruction, but a single cut across the throat, and one was a goner. The same applied to the heart and the head.

No red potion could regenerate those 2 before one's soul left.

Zafer came down running to her, kneeling down beside her.

Her chest was heavily rising and descending at a fast rate as her eyes were filled with tears. Was this really what she deserved? Death? And this kind of one? He wasn’t sure why, but he could not accept that.

He pulled a red potion out of her pocket, placing the vial on her lips, but she spilled most of it coughing, and not like it would help her anyway.

“What are you doing?”, Uk was still holding his axe.

Zafer could not take his eyes off of her, “I don’t know. Maybe… we can just hand her to the National Security and have them deci-“.

“That’s impossible. Nobody cares about that piece of trash. Just leave her, come on. Get up”, he ordered.

Zafer exhaled, pushing himself to stand up, but then Arcanie grabbed him by the clothes. She didn’t want him to leave her.

She maybe wanted him to keep trying to help her, or to just stay by her side, but that wasn’t something he could do.

Not after the 4th officer of Temper ordered him. Just the mere act of him approaching her like this was enough to question his loyalty to the faction, and if not that, nobody really needed a fragile paladin who would act on his emotions.

He heartbrokenly pushed her hands, standing up to join Uk and Skil.

Part two:

“Yeah, since the beginning. Banana told me to”, Zafer could now hear the conversation between Uk and Skil.

Skil frowned, “but how did Banana know that Zafer would decide to tag along with me?”

Uk looked at Zafer, expecting him to answer this one.

“Well…”, Zafer felt embarrassed, “Simra actually told me to ask you to come along. But! I would have asked you myself anyways”.

“Wow…”, Skil felt as if he was taken advantage of.

This whole operation was a plan made by Banana.

Having spent a lot of time with other adult paladins, he knew how most of them were thinking.

He knew that Arcanie would try to kill Zafer at some point out of hatred, so he had him join Skil, and officer Uk spying on them in order to get rid of Arcanie.

It was unknown to Zafer, but she actually indeed was hated by almost every other paladin, no matter the faction they belonged to.

She was a criminal, and a multiple traitor, who abused her charm quite frequently.

The fallen leaves on the ground rustled.

All three of them turned around to where Arcanie was still lying.

Her body wasn’t moving anymore as far as one could see from that distance, but both Uk and Zafer felt something strange.

She wasn’t dead yet, and only Uk knew why.

“You have to be fucking kidding me”.

A weird and disgusting gurgling sound resounded, and she threw up all the blood throughout her mouth on herself.

She then slowly stood up, turning around, showing her both eyes liquefied and leaking down her cheeks.

“What!”, Skil was horrified, “I thought that dead people cannot turn into apparitions!”

Uk gritted his teeth, “They can’t”.

It turns out that she went inverse with her last breath.

The skin on her face started to solidify and horns were puncturing through her skull. She kneeled grabbing her sword, as if she was still self-aware and sentient.

But she wasn’t.

She wasn’t human anymore.

Everyone was born with random 3 anomalies that were at the beginning almost negligible in intensity, but as one trained, the strength and intensity of anomalies would increase.

An apparition on the other hand, had all 11 anomalies unlocked and boosted to a certain degree of development that was based on their former strength and the individual’s former anomalous stamina.

Since Arcanie used to be an officer of one of the major factions, it was safe to say that her anomalous stamina and strength were formerly finely developed, but now, when she turned into an apparition, they knew almost no limits.

If a regular human turned into an apparition, only a skilled paladin could take it out, but if a paladin turned into an apparition, it was a death sentence.

This happened very rarely because paladins were somewhat resistant to mutating, but if it happened, it was a huge problem for everyone living in that area.

They indeed were very unlucky.

“Run!”, Uk screamed.

The leaves on the ground scattered as the invisible wave of the air approached them, hitting the officer at the speed of the sound.

His body was suddenly pulled towards inverse Arcanie as if he was a magnet.

It was all her doing, and she also readied her sword to penetrate both his armor and body. With her current strength and the speed at which Uk was flying towards her, it was quite deadly.

Luckily, Uk was able to kick himself off the ground in midair, flying over the inverse Arcanie and rolling on the ground until hitting a tree.

However, she immediately followed up, not letting him take a break. They were at it once again, but this time Arcanie didn’t need to drink any potions. Her raw strength, speed, and regeneration were far surpassing that of Uk’s potions; hence, she could fight far more aggressively.

Cutting her limbs wasn’t enough to tame her, as she could grow them back in tens of seconds, and her heart was protected by the armor.

That only left her head and neck, but as she currently had all 11 anomalies at her disposal, she could repel any attack that was meant to her face, just like Zafer did to her, except in this case, it would immediately kill Uk.

That’s just how strong each of her anomalies currently was.

However, her technique and fighting skills remained the same, if not worse than before she turned into this abomination.

Unfortunately, the presence of all anomalies was making up for it, and even the 4th officer Uk stood no chance of fighting her at all. At least not without some sort of a special artifact or script, but those just weren’t things paladins would walk around with.

“What should we do?!”, Zafer was panicking.

“We should run! As far as possible from here!”, Skil obeyed Uk’s orders.

“No! I’m not leaving him!”, Zafer unsheathed his sword, but Skil grabbed him by the arm’s and pulled him aggressively.

“Are you out of your mind! We can barely see them!”.

Both Uk and Arcanie were moving even faster than before, mostly because Uk was just being tossed around by her, trying his best to protect his vital points.

Zafer pushed him, “But he will die! I can see that much!”.

Skil got frustrated, “He can’t run away or teleport because of us! Let’s go!”

This was true. The only reason Uk was still fighting that thing and not trying to get away from it was that he was afraid of leaving Zafer, especially Skil alone since the Priest cared about him a lot, and he was actually a contributing member of the Temper province, unlike Zafer.

Skil was a scriptman.

“So, if all three of us manage to vanish, what happens with that thing? Do you think it will go to the Temple or the city first?”

Skil went silent.

“We need to stop it here!”.

At that moment Skil fell into a state of hesitation. He was so close to jumping on Zafer and dragging him away using force, but that wasn’t possible.

He was weaker.

Zafer rushed towards the apparition, waiting for the right time to jump in so that he didn’t get in officer Uk’s way.

He could not see them very clearly but relied on his senses, and as soon as he jumped into the battle, his skull was immediately pierced by a blade.

However, this was exactly what he wanted to happen.

Since he wasn’t lacking only speed, but also fighting ability, the only way he could help in this situation was to provoke the apparition to harm his face in as deadliest was as possible.

This was enough to automatically activate his anomaly, and the stab that should have killed him got repelled in a non-physical way.

Unlike the last time, however, he didn’t hold back.

This emptied his anomalous stamina almost completely, but it was a blow that could kill even an experienced paladin.

That was the whole point of his anomaly after all.

The explosion blew all the leaves off the ground away and even ripped out the nearby trees from the soil.

The constant pounding between Miyalin came to an end, rendering silence.

The explosion also created a crater in the ground and a sound that reached both the Temple and the city.

The leaves were slowly falling on the ground again.

“You did it!”, Skil stared at Zafer who was running away from the crater as fast as he could.

His face was sweaty, and blood was flowing down his eyes.

This was a sign that he was close to overheating himself since his anomalous pool got almost completely emptied.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t nearly enough to stop it.

The apparition was still standing there, in the middle of the crater.

Unfazed.

“Fuck!”, officer Uk’s hope got devoured.

He spun his axe, summoning another lightning bolt, but that didn’t knock down the apparition either.

It seemed invincible, but in reality, Arcanie was still there somewhere. She had no memory or any cognitive function active, but could still feel pain, most of which was actually coming from the transformation itself, rather than these futile attacks.

Zafer’s bloody eyes were staring at his superior who was getting thrown left and right, and it was only Uk’s skill and technique that were keeping him alive.

The feeling of knowing that even his superior felt helpless in this situation, awakened a new emotion inside of him.

Someone suddenly placed their hand on Zafer’s shoulder.

It was a man who was the same height as Skil but was brimming with strength. He wore a straw samurai hat and had a katana sword hanging from his waist, just like Uk did.

“This doesn’t look that good”, he observed the fight.

Zafer was still staring at him since he never sensed him approaching.

That was when he noticed the badge on the man’s shoulder. If he saw it yesterday, he would have thought that it resembled a monster from stories, but now he knew that it was actually an octopus.

Its head was a skull and had 6 tentacles coming out of its jaw.

That was a badge of the National Security! The strongest one of them all!

The man looked at Zafer seeing his condition calmly telling both him and Skil to close both their eyes really hard.

They did so without a second thought, almost reluctantly.

Everything went black, and the sound of Uk being thrown around immediately ceased.

“That should curb it until someone from the extermination unit appears”.

When Zafer and Skil opened their eyes, they could see both Uk and Threat Level 6 guy standing next to each other, while the apparition was pinned down to the ground with several Miyalin blades penetrating its limbs.

It was literally over in a blink of an eye.

“What do you mean? Lightning bolts falling from the clear sky, explosions… This is after all the 3rd biggest city in neutral territory near the 3rd biggest forge! I thought of coming to check earlier but had to go buy eggs before the store closed”.

Uk said something in a lower tone to him and neither of them looked away.

“Yeah, sure. I have to go now anyway”.

Zafer was baffled. Someone who was supposedly one of the strongest paladins in the whole Temper province was almost killed by a paladin apparition, but the strongest one from the National Security not only restrained himself from killing it but did it in under a minute.

“Is this the strongest elite warrior in the National Security?”, he wanted to confirm it with Skil.

The latter nodded, “Yes. Wabler. Many consider him to be the pillar of the whole Pashtrik”.

Zafer pondered for a few seconds, “he doesn’t even seem to be that old”.

Skil laughed, “How old do you expect him to be? After 50 one can only degrade and get weaker. His body is currently at its peak! The one who is actually talented is our officer Uk”.

The one who almost lost his life.

Zafer frowned, “how old is he?”

Recalling how the apparition got him by surprise and how officer Uk managed to fight it off for several minutes, it was obvious to him that Uk indeed was one of the strongest paladins in the whole Temper.

“He lived to see 20 summers. The same age as us”.

Zafer’s bloody eyes widened, “What?!”

The Simple Physiology of Anomalies: Paragraph 9:

The anomaly under serial number 6, the Iron Fist, was easily distinguishable by the extremely strong hand grip its owner possessed…

… A strength-enhancing purple potion could only imitate a fraction of its strength.