Allen and Nera raced through the air of Atelier City. They were hanging on by an ethereal vine conjured by Allen’s Craft Card, Vinea, with the help of the mysterious apparition called Flos. The woman wreathed in golden light flew peacefully next to them as the skyscrapers rushed past the pair. The people below wore a mesh of futuristic articles and antiquated wardrobes. Their movements centered around a sight that was visible throughout the Luminaire Ward. It was a colossal tower that extended into the clouds whose exterior was made entirely of wooden materials.

However, such spectacles were common in the Netherworld, a realm formed from humanity's dreams, where miraculous art and nightmarish monsters both sprang forth. Allen and Nera had already come face to face with many of the wonders and terrors the city had to offer at this point. This was much less the case for Allen. Until recently, the dark-haired young man in the black jacket with red trimming and bandages wrapped around his arms had been an ordinary art novice who came to the city looking for a new lease on life. Unfortunately, he got much more than he asked for when he was cursed with a power that could turn him into a monster himself.

On the other hand, Nera had already spent years in the city. Still, she was faced with a shocking revelation of her inheriting magic from the Grim Reaper, a mysterious executioner of souls that even the leaders of the city’s magical society couldn’t control. She had been confronted with this unwelcome knowledge along with a cruel battle royale that involved everyone with a similar link to the Reaper. However, that was the last of her worries as she yelled out.

“Hey, watch where you’re steering this thing. I can’t open up for work if I’m a splat on the side of a building!” Nera exclaimed right in Allen’s ear in order to be heard over the whooshing wind.

“C’mon, cut me some slack! This isn’t exactly a motorcycle!” Allen countered while trying to point out where he wanted to go to Flos in a way that would not catch Nera’s suspicion.

“You weren’t exactly good at driving one of those either, Lackey,” fired back the young woman with violet eyes and messy hair that was a hodgepodge of black and white. Her words returned Allen to the night they encountered the Muspelheim Inheritor, Erno Rautiainen. He was a ruthless warrior with flames that fed on destruction that Allen couldn’t help but be envious of.

‘Could Nera use similar abilities if she mastered her Inheritor powers? Could I learn something like that?’

“Dammit, get your head out of the clouds before we end up there too!” Nera shouted and Allen realized they were hurtling toward a large building at breakneck speed. Looking over to Flos, he could see her frantically trying to divert the vine to the side but their velocity was too great for her to do it alone.

“Uhh…” Allen took a moment to assess the situation before coming up with an impromptu plan. “On the count of three, we’ll both kick to the side!”

“That’s it?!”

“You got any better ideas?”

Nera heaved a sigh which Allen took as her agreeing to his plan before he said, “Alright, on the count of three, One! Two!”

“Three!” They both shouted the number in unison as their legs struck out in tandem to deflect their momentum away from the building. Allen felt his muscles groan in protest even with reinforcing them with magical energy. However, they successfully managed to avoid being flattened and had to run along the surface of the skyscraper to keep going toward their destination and prevent falling backward.

“Maybe it is as easy as superheroes make it look. That worked out well and we still have leeway to sightsee.” Allen chuckled with joy at the dizzying experience. An endeavor like this one was straight out of his wildest dreams and it happened so suddenly. Moments like this made all the crazy of Atelier City seem almost worth it, almost.

“Hmph, I think you give yourself a little too much credit, but…this is one hell of a view,” Nera uttered in awe as she looked up at the aurora that covered the Luminaire Ward from a distance closer than ever before. The myriad of colors that spanned every corner of the light spectrum was reflected in her eyes. They even passed over two gigantic statues of a wolf and a snake at the entrance of a bridge. To focus more on everything, she pulled herself up from dangling by Allen’s hand and wrapped her arm securely around his waist.

Allen was taken aback by this when a pleasant scent wafted from Nera to him from that close distance.

“Vanilla and…strawberries?” Allen quietly said as pointed out the subtle blend that filled his nose.

“Huh?” Nera’s face then reddened when she realized what he was referring to. “It’s just shampoo I like to use because it’s parfait scented. I don’t care if you think that’s tacky.”

“Nah, it was just a nice surprise I guess.” Allen honestly commented while being as careful with his words as possible

Nera’s eyes widened and she averted her face. “You really are a freak.”

“What’s that for?” Allen questioned but Nera didn’t answer him. Instead, Flos flew next to him.

“Don’t take it too hard. Nera’s actually smiling right now. I didn’t expect you to be so straightforward with women.” Flos relayed while timidly tapping her ethereal fingers against each other.

This accusation hit Allen like a truck. “You don’t think I would mean it like that, do you?!”

He said that part out loud which led to the teen’s downfall.

“I get it, but you don’t have to refute it that strongly!” Nera had turned back at him while staring daggers into his soul. There was no trace of the smile Flos had told him about. On the contrary, he imagined this is what people meant when they spoke of killing intent.

‘She’s pissed.’

Nera opened her mouth to berate him more, but she paused when she heard a shrill sound from close by. Her bionic ears allowed her to pick up noises from up to a kilometer away. She focused on this one in particular until she could discern what it was and gasped when she did. It was the all too familiar sound of someone screaming in danger.

“We need to head in that direction. Someone’s in danger.” Nera suddenly told Allen.

“Hmm? Metal, let’s go that way then!” Allen was unsure what they would be getting into but was glad to have a way out of the previous conversation as he retracted Vinea and then directed Flos to send it in the direction that Nera was pointing to.

They arrived within a few seconds at the speed they were going and spotted a trolley barrelling toward a young boy no older than ten who had fallen over in front of a building at the end of a street. The vehicle had lost complete control and there was no telling where it would crash so no one was keen to take the risk of rushing to save the boy besides a woman who looked to be his mother. She was being desperately held back by other pedestrians to prevent the woman from risking her life.

“Weathervain!” This was the name Allen had decided on for the silver-bladed axe that could conjure a vortex of intense wind among his Craft Cards. It appeared in his hand with a shimmer of ethereal light that emerged from the case at his hip. Summoning the axe was an attempt to slow their speed enough to where they could land properly. By acting like a fan pointed down, this miniature cyclone slowed their descent and would allow them to reach the ground safely. Despite this success, it would be much too late if they waited for that to happen.

“Allen! Fire me at him!” Nera commanded and Allen immediately understood what she meant as she let go of him and raised her foot to his palm. Allen gathered Extract in his fist until it turned jet-black then unleashed a blast of energy that rocketed Nera to the street.

She landed with a crack of asphalt and tried to move out of the way with the boy seconds before the trolley hit but realized that his small foot had slipped in between the opening of a sewer grate. That left the two with no time to get out of the way before the trolley crashed.

A thunderous crash exploded through the air and Allen descended in stunned silence as he watched on in disbelief. The wreckage of the trolley stopped right before hitting the storefront and the young child. Nera had used her own body as a shield with the metal tearing and slashing through her clothes in various places.

“Nera, are you okay?” Allen snapped back to his senses and rushed over to the scene. The young woman waved him away with gritted teeth a layer of sweat on her brow. She instead urged Allen to free the boy from the metal grate who immediately ran to his mother in tears. Allen checked on Nera again and saw her left arm wedged inside the front of the trolley and twisted gruesomely.

“Yeah, I just need to twist it back into shape,” Nera said nonchalantly as she rotated her mangled limb back into its correct alignment. The process only took a few seconds but the surrounding bystanders looked on in horror, Allen thought back to when the Cobbler Crafter, Vanna, had recovered immediately from a broken shin. The only difference was that was done with magic. There was no mystical energy present here. “Don’t worry, they made my joints mega loose to enhance my grappling.”

“They loosened your joints...?” Allen began to say and Nera’s eyes widened in shock when she realized what she had let slip.

“Uhh, I just mean I was trained to be extra flexible,” Nera said with a nervous laugh that was always evident of her lying. She tried to brush it off by picking up an action figure she noticed on the ground and handing it back to the boy she had just saved. “This is yours, right? Make sure to take good care of it.”

The young child hid behind his mother, a middle-aged woman with long brown hair and a stern scowl. Nera bent down to his eye level and raised the knight toy for him, but before his small hand could reach hers. The toy was smacked out of Nera’s fingers. It clattered dully on the sidewalk.

“Get away from my son, you mutt!” The woman berated Nera. “It’s probably because of some gang war that the trolley was broken, wasn’t it?”

Before Allen could rebuke her accusation, other people in the crowd asserted her claims.

“...Yeah, that must be it. There’s no way one of the Luminaire’s trolleys would malfunction on their own!”

“Right, that woman is one of those criminals who’s been wreaking havoc in the Underside!”

“They’re nothing without violence, so they have to ruin our peace!”

“Shut the hell up, you can’t pin all that on her! You don’t even know her!” Allen shouted in protest but his words fell on deaf ears. It was like he did not even exist to them as they continued to yell and jeer at the girl with the black and white hair. The young woman slowly raised to a standing position without saying anything. Her back was still turned to Allen and she appeared uncharacteristically indifferent. “Nera, are you ok-”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

His words were cut off by a fruit that flew in out of nowhere and exploded against Nera’s head. The remains of the fruit covered Nera’s hair and dyed it red like blood as liquid dripped onto the ground. Allen frantically searched for whoever threw it but his hand was suddenly grabbed and he was forcibly pulled out of the crowd.

Allen and Nera escaped to the very end of the alleyway beside the building they were previously in front of.

“Hey, what was that all about? Why did they go rabid and more importantly, why didn’t you do anything about it?!” Allen asked Nera, his disdain for the angry mob leaking out.

Nera repeatedly raked her fingers through her fruit-smeared hair as if she were trying to pull it out until only faint stains remained. “Agh! You think they would have given a damn about what I had to say! They treat me like a monster and you like a ghost!”

Nera turned back into him with a maniacal smile. “We may have done a few good deeds here and there but they saw none of that, and even if they did, it still wouldn’t change how they see me.”

Allen was caught off guard but too angry to relent. “I know that, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to prove them wrong!”

“How, by beating them to a bloody pulp like that tomato they smashed into my skull?! That’ll show them how nice I am.” Nera taunted mockingly.

“Well, if they strike you, it’s only fair that you get to strike back,” Allen affirmed as he took a step forward. “I realized that by fighting alongside you. You don’t let anyone mess with you or what you care about.”

Nera groaned with deflated shoulders. “You don’t even know her. That’s what you said to the mob, right?” Allen’s brow furrowed in puzzlement. “Lackey, what exactly do you know about me? Besides the Grim Reaper Trial, do you know anything about my past, why I’m super-strong even without magic? For such a curious nerd, you never asked for an explanation.”

“Well, I…” Allen opened up his mouth to speak but nothing came out. He could not come up with a reason he never tried to learn about the mysteries surrounding Nera’s past. He never tried to learn what she did know about herself.

“Hmph, I think it’s because you’re afraid that I’m something different than what you envisioned me to be. But it’s not a big deal, putting people in neat boxes is how this entire city operates whether in the Underworld or not.” Nera pulled out her flip phone and pressed a button that made a holographic display appear between them.

Name Nera Vide

Title Exceptional Resident

Physical Ability 48

Technique 6

Mana Control 0

Mana Capacity 0

Mana Output 0

Skills 0

Merit 1

“Exceptional resident…” Once again, Allen wondered what was meant by that strange title and what Nera did to gain a Merit of one. Most people aside from the very rich or extraordinarily talented had a Merit of zero, including him.

“This city ranks people based on merit but that merit isn’t determined by strength, smarts, or even good deeds. No, it’s all about how close you are to the founders and how much you can benefit them. Merit is what decides how important you are here and how involved the council will be in your life. ”Nera explained in exasperation. “And Crafters view magical ancestry as the end all be all to deciding merit which is why you’re a nobody to them.”

“But, doesn’t that apply to you as well?” Allen had seen her Inheritor powers for himself but that was not common knowledge to even the residents of Atelier City’s Underworld or even the likes of the Uncrowned Monarchs who stood under the Grim Reaper like Nathan. To that crowd, she should have been just as much as a Craftless as he was.

“No, that’s what makes me an ‘exceptional’ resident. I am an exception to the concept that magical ancestry is what determines worth here and that’s why I’m hated. I’m a stain on their misguided ideal. But, I’m also an exception to the idea that merit gives you better treatment. Exceptional residents are people to be treated like tools who don’t deserve the same respect despite the merit they have.”

“I…I never knew a status was that important. I guess the view from the bottom doesn’t show much at all. I never got much in the way of handouts either, so I couldn’t tell the difference. In a screwed-up system like that, there have to be a lot of other people out there who are hurt by it too. ” Allen rationalized as best he could. He held out hope they could make a difference, somehow.

Nera flipped her phone back shut and her status disappeared then turned around. “I don’t know, but at the very least, I won’t become what that crowd thinks I am. If I give in to their low-blows just one time, I’ll be the one paying for it. I’d be…” Nera clenched her fist tightly in anger. The wall next to them was smashed as she created a large crater in it with her fist. “...the monster.”

She walked away and called back, “Come on, I still have to get to the store in time.”

“...Roger.” Allen voiced his agreement and then looked next to the crater on the wall where the words “Green Manticores” were graffitied before following behind Nera.

‘Did what that mob say about gangs causing that trolley to go out of control have some truth to it?’ Allen did not ask Nera. He wondered if he truly was afraid that she was not inside the box he placed her in.

***

Inside of small prison cell, a young man with brown hair in a standard orange jumpsuit was slumped against the stainless steel floor. The room had terrible ventilation so the hot summer sun turned it into a heatbox. The floor was simply cooler than his dingy bed. The man had a gaunt appearance with sunken cheeks and a sickly complexion.

“The frequency of meals and how they taste hasn’t changed but I’m definitely losing weight…are they getting less nutritious without me noticing?” He wondered if that was even possible but for a city as advanced in both magic and technology as Atelier City, he surmised they could find a way to accomplish that.

“Ugh…how long has it been since they put me in here? Months? No, it was a year ago.” The young man looked at the series of tattoos that covered his arm which displayed the same four runes over and over again. The mark of his crime that sentenced him to this prison. “I’m so hungry that I’m gonna pass out…maybe that’ll get rid of it. I’ll just rest for a little bit…”

His words trailed off as his gray eyes closed and he drifted toward an eternal slumber. A thunderous noise shook the entire building and roused him awake. He did not even have the strength to raise himself off the ground as he heard noises of pitched combat and panicked yells.

In a matter of minutes, things became eerily silent but right as he thought the storm had passed, the wall of his cell was blown up by a roar of flames. Two figures appeared from the smoke that followed. One was an unassuming man with a blank expression and a camera in his hands. The other was a tall, red-haired man with a brown jacket draped over his shoulders like a cloak and a button-up shirt he left open to reveal a black sun tattoo emblazoned on his chest.

“This is the one, right? He doesn’t look like much but battle is the real way to test someone’s caliber.” Erno Rautiainen spoke with a casual tone that stood out starkly to the chaos around him. His gold earrings flashed in the light but what stood out even more to the prisoner on the floor was the enormous golden sword that Erno held at his side as nonchalantly as a walking cane. Erno reminded the man of some of the most storied members of his clan.

“Yeah, this is the correct cell number and you can tell he’s a member of that infamous berserker family due to those runes all over him. We may have to carry him out of here but he’ll be as good as new with a few decent meals.”

“Nah, he’ll walk out of here by himself or not at all.” Erno approached the prisoner. “I’m looking for like-minded individuals who I can trust to stand by my side. Do you resent this system that has labeled you a criminal without being responsible for any crime?”

The prisoner was still for a moment before weakly nodding in agreement.

Erno shook his head. “Say it with your chest. You have more energy than that.”

“...yes.” The prisoner mustered a good deal of his strength to speak.

“Now, if a messed up system is holding you down then all you need to do is burn it down instead. Do you seek freedom?”

“...Yes.” This was wheezed out with more force than before.

“Do you seek retribution?”

“Of course I do.” The young man’s hand clenched with anger as all the cruel events of his past started rising to the surface.

“Do you seek fulfillment!” Erno began to yell.

“More than anything!” The warrior shouted in response.

“Well said, Kurt Beito!” Erno let out a roguish laugh and spun his dragon-guard sword in the air before catching it with both hands and embedding it into the stainless steel floor that had previously been the coolest part of the room. “Then stand up! On your own two feet!”

A trail of fire extended from the blade to Kurt Bieto and shrouded him in flames but instead of getting burned, he was filled with surging power. Kurt could feel his strength return to him and was able to push himself off the ground into a sitting position.The flames surrounding him gradually faded away into embers.

He checked his cheeks and arms to find that they had both regained their past health and fullness. “Amazing, I thought I would rot away in here but you changed everything in an instant! Who are you?”

“The name’s Erno Rautiainen, a mercenary. Didn’t I say stand up?” The warrior scoffed.

“Oh, right.” Kurt quickly stood up to his full height of 175 centimeters. However, he hoped he had not stopped growing at nineteen and would get much taller. “So, if you’re a mercenary, you must be looking for other warriors to help you with your next mission, right?”

“Yes, specifically the Sword in Stone Festival. You received an Invite Card too.” The photographer informed in Erno’s place as the red-haired man pulled his sword out of the floor and began walking away.

Kurt looked confused for a second before a flash of realization struck him and he pulled out a golden card from his jumpsuit. “I thought this was a hunger-induced hallucination but I guess all that stuff that hologram told me was real.”

“Enough chit-chatting. We got to move on before some bothersome people show up.” Erno warned while not slowing down his pace. Kurt nodded and walked outside of the small metal box that had been his home for over a year.

Then, out of a corner nearby, a prison guard leaped out and tried to shoot Erno with a large rifle. Before anyone else could react, Kurt vaulted to the man with a single step and crushed the muzzle with his left hand. It exploded in his palm as the shot was fired and left it a bloody mess of flesh. The young warrior was unfazed as his runes glowed bright red and particles of the same color flowed from the destroyed gun to his hand. They covered him in a crimson aura and healed his left hand to perfect condition.

This spectacle transpired right in front of the guard’s horrified gaze. Before he could even voice his dismay, Kurt clasped his right hand around the man’s neck in a vice grip. He did not let go until the guard blacked out. He let the older man fall to the ground with his chest barely rising up and down.

Kurt looked at his hands in bewilderment. That was normal for his powers but he had been incredibly low on Extract due to his poor health and it should have taken much longer for him to restore his reserves enough to be able to use the ability that just activated. His vitality was not just replenished instantly but his magical energy as well.

Erno and the photographer walked past him, paying no mind to the unconscious prison guard. Kurt was now set on at least figuring out who his mysterious benefactor was. Not only that, he wanted to know what allowed him to reach the point where he was strong enough to barge into a high-security prison run by magical elites of the underworld like it was a cakewalk. “Where are we going next?”

“You heard the announcement,” Erno replied. “We’re heading somewhere to meet our last team member.”