“Was I wrong, Boss?” Kidd asked, his shoulders drooping. “If I stayed with him, he might’ve survived…”

“Do you regret it?” Ewan asked.

“…I do…I feel guilty for it…I feel empty…” He stared at Cork’s head, his eyes listless. “I can never see him again…he’ll never talk to me again…he’s gone Boss.”

“It will never stop hurting,” Ewan said under his breath. Perhaps, far off in the future, Kidd would forget what Cork looked like. Yet the pain would remain, like it did for him, and like it did for Nana.

“He told me stories of strong and powerful men, how they lived as they pleased, how they were free. I admired them, and I yearned to become like that one day,” Kidd said. “But he yearned for it more…he wanted to change his life. Was he wrong to dream?”

Cork captured the slaves because it was what he knew, it was his livelihood, and it was what fed his sailors’ families. While the slaves killed him because he took away their freedom, he destroyed their lives, he was their enemy. Who was wrong, who was right… Ewan heaved a deep sigh on the thought. If Cork chose a different profession, if he led his men down another path, he could’ve lived. But…

Ewan looked around at the destruction and the mayhem, the dead did not include just the slave traders and the owners… Where the outlaws ruled, innocence mattered little…

“Let’s go, let’s send him away,” he said, and rolled out his vast Ryvia, looking for Cork’s body. And in the pile of coked and mutilated corpses, he barely found his remains. His mangled pieces carried not a hint of resemblance, and Ewan only found him through his lingering wave of spirit fluctuation.

Kidd lumbered after him as Ewan put together Cork’s body, wrapped him in a clean sheet, and sent him off to Morinfair. His life was chaotic, but at least the ocean would offer him some quiet and peace in his death, as the Ashocan people hoped with the tradition.

“Have you eaten anything?” Ewan asked, when the sun cast their long shadows. “Let’s go back, I’ll make you something. Stefan should be hungry too,” he said and led Kidd back to the villa.

….

Kidd nibbled the pan seared meat and went to bed only after a few bites, while Stefan cleaned up and followed after him with his bedding. He had yet to shed a tear, and his buildup had no outlet. Unending nightmares would torment him tonight, and when all the distractions went away, when the world hushed down, the dam of pain would burst. So, Stefan volunteered to look after him. The night was going to be long…

When the two settled down, and the five slaves despaired in the basement after their failure, Ewan came to his training room and checked the Governor’s gifts—he couldn’t delay it any longer and leave it unattended with him.

The onyx-shaded overcoat—Blackfeather—was an auxiliary artifact that assisted with balance and speed during flight, regardless of whether he used Ryvia or the spell to fly. As the Governor said, this made up for his lack of mobility during the battles. His strong defenses stacked up with the Blackfeather’s assistance would increase his survivability. However, he didn’t intend to use it as it was. The possibility of the Governor’s hidden design worried him, but more so, its properties didn’t fit his taste. Instead of an average increase in both balance and speed, he preferred a spiked enhancement, and his inclination was speed—he could make up for the balance bit with practice, he had enough confidence in himself.

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For the staff, Rainwarden, Ewan had to fumble around for a while before he discovered its ins and outs. It had two functions. The first was an amplification effect that ran on Novas coins—it would amplify the element for him based on the attribute of the Novas coin he added in. And the second effect was a rechargeable etched spell that also changed its effects based on the element of the Novas coin—the spell was . Ewan didn’t plan to keep the staff as it was either. And his idea for its modification leaned towards the addition of Moonkeeper.

The alteration of the artifacts would not only make them more suited to his liking but also expose and erase any schemes the Governor left in them. And the only person Ewan trusted for it was Nana. When the situation in Drarith panned out, when the Governor had no business with him anymore, he would give these artifacts to her for the changes. Until then, it was his danger to bear, he wouldn’t risk exposing her to the Governor.

The slaves rose up in the list of his agenda when Ewan put the artifacts back in a separate storage pouch. The five slaves tied up in another room were a special batch he’d ordered from Cork—they were the same as him and Kidd, they had a natural affinity with some element. They cost him a premium, and even though he could afford more, he had to succeed with the five, for Cork’s death and the slave rebellion deemed them the last batch he could get in Drarith for a good while.

And thus, he put on his gloves and began with the first one—he’d already finalized the process and only needed to confirm the results. His spell sacrificed his prepared items one after another, and created a blob of murky liquid for him, wriggling and trembling. Ewan noted down his observations and marked the first creation as ‘highly unstable’. Before he even took the next step, the quality of the potion guaranteed his failure. Nonetheless, he still bled the slave lying on the stone-cold table, added the blood to the liquid, and injected it back in him.

He screamed and convulsed, his back arching up, his bones cracking, his eyes bleeding, and he stilled under a minute of the shot. Ewan sighed at the expected failure and looked up, maybe their wails could soothe Kidd’s pain.

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Status: Healthy

Step-1 Severynth [Spirit-Nebula: Zeroth Surge]

Subtype: Step-0 Elementalist

Name: Ewan Ayres

Species: Human

Vitality: 7.0

Spirit: 25.3

Anima: [Fire – 25.3 | Ice – 25.3 | Blood – 25.3]

Astylinds: 4 [Potential: 1]

Rolling Cat [Toast]: Step-1 Severynth [Spirit-Nebula: Zeroth Surge]

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Fire Monkey [Orange]: Step-0 [Level-9] [Grade-B]

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Imp [Frost]: Step-0 [Level-9] [Grade-B]

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Blood Lotus [Iris]: Step-0 [Level-9] [Grade-S]

Equipment: Common Clothes; Yurn [Neck Gaiter]; Moonkeeper [Crystal-Ball]; Rainwarden [Staff]; Blackfeather [Overcoat].

Storage: Journal; Elementalist—The Path of Anima [Subtype-Book]; Spellbook; Bloodlust [Spell]; Transmute [Spell]; Unknown Book [Stefan’s Legacy]; Anima-Crystals [Novas Coins]; Obsidian Dagger; Hub-Connector; Ingredients.

Novas: 25,114

Crelith: 1,340