Chapter 4

What waited for us when we left the portal was a bunch Magicians and government officials hurriedly obsessing over us.

There were probably civilians outside since, but approximately thirty meters around the portal there was a shield that shut the light and sound off to those outside of the barrier. Of course, it was also a physical barrier.

“Division and Code?” Asked a tall and gruff middle-aged man after taking a poof of smoke. He was holding some sort of an device.

Lily answered first. “The Secret Awakened Division, Code 803.”

Gruffy, the way I decided to call him, entered all that in his device and after confirming her identity he said. “Welcome back, Sergeant Lily.”

He turned to me.

“The Secret Awakened Division and The Secret Master Division, Code 107.”

Gruffy’s face went completely white and he opened his mouth to say something, but I told him it finish the procedure first.

After confirming my identity, he fixed his posture and saluted to me. “Welcome back, Major Alexander. It is an honor to meet you, Sir!”

“At ease.” I waved my hand at him. This day was just getting more and more annoying.

Lily snorted from the side. Seeing this, Gruffy wanted to reprimand her, but I just shook my head at him.

I was always for arguing, especially with her, but we didn’t have time for that right now.

He asked us, now politely, what happened in there. We said did not hold anything in and reported everything that happened, including the weird situation with the rings.

“I will need the third ring to send to the higher-ups, Sir.”

I nodded and gave it to him. “Send it directly to Nero, he will know what to do with it.”

He face got pale. “You mean the Head of Space Department?”

Yeah, Nero had a little bit of reputation going around. Nothing drastic really.

“Yes, directly to him. If there are any problems, said that I sent you.”

He nodded and saluted before he left, probably to really what happened.

After that, a few medics approached us. We weren’t really injured, but Lily’s hands were burnt and my ear was grazed.

After that finished I called the one of the space Magicians that were supposed to close the portal.

A small brunette came to me and said. “For what do you need me, Sir?”

I told her that we need her best space Magician.

“That would be me, Sir.” She told me, trying to hide her pride.

“Can you evade the Mana Detection System?” I asked her. If she wasn’t able to, we would be fucked.

Luckily, she was. She nodded in confirmation.

“You need to teleport us at ‘Kingslayers Street, 34’ around eleven meters in the air.”

She closed her eyes, I suppose she was doing mental mathematics.

I may have complained earlier about not being space Magician, but I was mostly joking. They needed to do a bunch of calculations so they wouldn’t teleport the wrong way. If one them were to do that, there wouldn’t be second time.

After she opened her eyes, she called us loudly. “We are ready to go!”

Lily and I both went and grabbed her hand. She nodded at us and then, in a less than a millisecond, we disappeared.

We appeared in the room we jumped off, the window was still open.

The brunette turned to us and saluted. “Thank you for your service.”

After that, she closed her eyes for a few second before she disappeared.

Now… the hard part. How to explain our absence in the last hour or so?

I turned my head to Lily and noticed she was already looking at me. At the clothes I was wearing, precisely.

I needed some time to understand what was going on in her head, but when I did, I started cackling. “Wow, my brother is going to love this.”

“Shut up, Alexander. Don’t misunderstand, this is only business.” She spew the words as she went to me and rumbled through my hair.

I did same to her hair too. Pity, really, it was nice before.

Now though, with crumpled clothes and messy hair, we very looked like we… engaged in some inappropriate activities.

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As we went down the elevator, Lily took a deep breath.

‘Wow, she must really like Norman to be this nervous.’

I guess I never really inquired why she was so hung up on Norman, and it was none of my business, but even I can get curious.

As the elevator’s door opened, everyone set their eyes on us. They were.

All the guests wore mixtures of expressions. Garo looked like he wanted to murder me and Amana was smiling like nothing was wrong at all.

As we sat down on our chair, my mother sent me a death glare. My father looked proud and my brother was not looking at me at all.

I looked where he was looking and saw Amana whispering something to Lily. Now, I was not some fantastic lip reader, but from what I saw, Amana whispered ‘good choice’.

When Amana went back to her seat, she noticed me staring at her. She just smiled sweetly at me.

Soon, the mood went back to normal and people were again chattering and eating.

‘This went better than I expected.’ I concluded.

Sure, this night was complete and utter shit, but it felt good for something to go my way.

‘No one even noticed the ring.’

I tried to conceal it by putting it in my pockets, but there were for sure times when it was noticeable. Luckily, no one saw it.

The dinner finished soon after and Turrymans were the first one to leave. We also gave our goodbyes and left.

The limo was already waiting for us. ‘Yay, interrogation time.’ I prepared myself took a deep breath as I entered in.

“Drive us home.” Instructed my father the driver.

The interrogation that I awaited with no small amount of dread never came. My brother was unnaturally quiet and my mom seemed like she was contemplating something.

To be honest, I expected fireball in my face from my mother the moment I went in limo, but nothing happened.

‘Weird, weird. What the hell is happening?’ Something was terribly wrong, I could feel it in the air. The silent mom is much, much scarier than loud mom.

As we arrived home, I went directly into my room.

As I laid on the bed, I started inspecting my new ring in hopes of discovering just what the hell was going on. And to redirect my mind from my family acting weird.

It was definitely very old, possibly around few thousand years. It just has that type of ancient aura that no machine nor magic could replicate.

‘Why do I always get interweaved into these types of situations?’ Not for the first time today, I pitied myself.

‘Anyways, no reason to worry about this now. Tomorrow, I am going to talk with Nero and he is going to have answered. He always does.’

Satisfied with my plans, I checked my phone, and seeing that no one messaged me, I closed my eyes and drifted into sleep.

“This is the most peculiar.” Said the short, very short, man that could have been mistaken for a kid. Everything around him was trembling. His room, the air, and even space itself was trembling in the man’s presence.

His uniform that was vibrating had a name-tag with word ‘Nero’ written on it.

“Finally, some fucking FUN!”

BOOOOOOOM

A part of space exploded, as if to celebrate with its master,

“And you say that Alexander found this?”

The gruff man nodded fearfully. “Yes, Sir. Esteemed Code 107 found these rings himself with another agent, a Sergeant.”

“That is good, very good! Alexander always keeps me entertained!”

The space, as if agreeing, imploded a few times thus making a melody of… something.

“Gruffy, – I am going to call you Gruffy – you did good job, just continue and you will make it far.” As Nero finished, he waved with his hand and teleported Gruffy… somewhere.

The childlike smile that was already in Nero’s face got even bigger as he looked at the ring once again. “This is going to be awesome!”

The Lord of space, master of Void and puppeteer of both, Nero, was having a good day.

“I’m going outside!” I informed my parents and started jogging lightly towards our HQ. It was around three kilometers west.

The morning sun was burning strong as I was on my way. No cloud in the sight.

‘Yaay, it is going to be hot again.’ I shook my head, even the weather hated me.

I went through a few streets and a few food vendors. A houses of varying colors and shapes were common thing in our part of the city.

As I arrived in ‘Olivernen Street’ I could already see government building. There were no expensive houses, expensive cars, not food vendors thirty meters around it.

It was big white building that seemed like it was straight out of old movie. It was big and, well, not old exactly, but definitely strange. The word for it would be palatial.

There two were guards guarding it, both holding swords.

I shook my head. ‘They are still going on with this medieval stuff. They are Magicians for God’s sake, they don’t need swords!’

They didn’t need to identify me, I was a regular here. As I entered, I didn’t even got a glance of the insides as I was teleported.

“I love you SOOOO much!” Shout someone with childlike voice.

Everything trembled at the sound of that voice.

‘Here we go again..’

I turned around and saw a child sitting at a desk. He was holding a ring, the ring, in his hand and playing with it.

“Did you teleport me here?” I said trying to keep my calm. I really hated when someone tried to enforce their magic on me.

Stabbing me with your earth spike is okay, but engulfing my aura and forcibly manipulating my very essence was something that most of the people hated.

“Well, of course I did! Look at this! This is magnificent.”

There were small explosions of space all around me, as if to follow his excitement.

“Calm your tits, Nero, and tell me all you know about it.”

“Of course, of course, sit here first.” Nero patted a free place on a desk.

Even though there were two chairs I sat on a desk besides Nero.

All the trembling stopped.

‘He never changes, huh?’ I remember meeting him some eight years ago when I just learnt that I was a water Magician.

He approached me and at first I thought the wanted to play with me. At the theme, he looked my age and was friendly. Through our ‘games’, he taught me how to bend the magic to my will.

Around five years ago, he confessed everything to me: that he was, at the time, twenty-six years old and that he worked for the government.

One could say that he scouted me. At the tender age of thirteen I did my first mission and killed my first man.

Since the age of ten, he was the only true constant in my life.

And to this day he still looked the same even though he was thirty- one years old. Still short with a brown hair, still with an everlasting childlike grin on his face, still trying to improve himself.

“This, my dear student, is the oldest Space-Port I have ever seen. According to my estimations, it is twenty two thousand years old!”

“But that is-“ I tried to add, but Nero interrupted me.

“Older than any known civilization? Yes, I know! I mean, Space-Ports aren’t really a complicated piece of spell engineering, but still! This is basically a proof of older civilizations!”

I rolled my eyes. Only Nero would think that Space-Ports aren’t complicated.

Nero may not be a history buff, but he knew what he was talking about. Ancient civilization meant more ancient magic, more ancient magic meant danger. Especially since ancient magic was considered to be more… destructive than the modern one.

“So? There is going to be an expedition, right? Do you know who is going?” I asked, but I could already predict that I was fucked.

“Well, that lass and you are going for sure. Both of your rings are bound to you. Three of Magi are most probably going to send one more master, but that is all that I know. We are going to get answers today.”

He cleared his throat before continuing, his voice just a little quieter. “How is your magic progressing? Are you going to become a Master anytime soon?”

I sighed and shook my head. “It is mind magic that’s the problem. My water magic is the most excellent it could be, but without mind magic I am very limited in an actual usage of my magic.”

I shook my head once again and spited myself. “I even wrote a new piece of magic that I call Everchanging Golem. Fifty Symbols, advanced magical use of all states of water and advanced use of mind magic. Fifty Symbols I am going to be able to do in a two years, but mind magic? Probably in thirty.”

Nero obviously had no consolation, but he tried to help. “Can’t you brute force that spell? Is it possible to use your own mind instead of creating fake one with mind magic?”

“I have thought about it too, but that thing is fifty meters tall, with its parts of body always staying in-between all three states of water.”

Nero cocked his eyebrow up. “All three?”

“For the fuck’s sake, Nero. You know what I meant. Anyways, I wanted to say that my brain would collapse for even trying to control that thing, let alone fight with it.”

“Well, my boy, you will get through it, you always do. Leave me alone now, I need to explore the intricacies of this ring.” He waved his hand and teleported me out.

His randomness confused me, like always, but I let it be and didn’t resist teleportation.

I looked around where I got teleported and noticed everyone was staring at me.

I was in a big, circular room with a bunch of arenas for everything but that one agent would need: espionage, camouflage and fighting. The usually white walls had a few of big red dots here and there.

‘Heh, all roads lead to training ground, don’t they?’

The other agents went back to doing their training and I started searching for my sparring partner.

Lily Manda was pissed. Everything was going wrong for her these days: she first had to do a long-ass mission where she got heavily injured few times, then she had to do a Portal clear with the most arrogant and obnoxious person in the world, and now she couldn’t find sparring partner.

No one wanted to spar with a little Awakened after all.

“Well, well, if it isn’t Lily Manda in person.” She immediately whipped her head.

‘Oh. My. God.’ She couldn’t believe her luck, or rather, lack of thereof.

“What do you want, Alexander.” She knew she could have greeted him better, or said it with less poison, but his tone always infuriated her.

He sounded like he was better than anybody else, like he was invincible. Like nothing could ever make him nervous.

“Do you need a sparring partner?” He said, his voice lacking any hint of mockery.

Of all the things she expected him to say, this one was way down on the list.

“Don’t you big-shots have each other? What happened, your bros left you?” As Lily’s best friend Cali would say, poison was strong within her.

He frowned and took a deep sigh before continuing.

“Do you want to spar or not? Don’t waste my time “

As much as she despised him, she decided that it was more embarrassing to be without a sparring partner.

“Sure, it is time to keg your down a little bit.”

Famous last words.