Flying above us, literally swimming through the air, was Emma, Bob’s twin brother’s daughter. She was wearing scuba gear and fins, like she was giving a diving tour, but was missing a few critical items.

I wondered if we were somehow under the ocean, and just seeing her swimming in it via some magical means. The shop was close enough to the ocean that it seemed possible given how large the floor was.

I looked around, but didn’t see any tourists swimming with her.

The apocalypse would be an odd time to go for a little dive, especially wearing as little as she currently was. While she liked her bikinis small, I couldn’t imagine her going without one altogether.

“What’s that on her back?” Vyrania asked.

“Air tank,” I answered. “It’s so she can breathe underwater. And fins on her feet to help her move faster.” Though she didn’t look to be using the tank.

“The way she moves,” Vyrania said, “it’s hypnotic.”

“Many tourists would agree. The question is, what is she doing? Is she really here, or are we seeing into the ocean somehow?”

“She’s here,” Koren said. “Look for yourself. Just not too hard.”

I was about to reply that I already was looking, when I realized what he meant. I opened up my manasight, trying to see her mana. It took a moment to come into focus, and when it did it looked… strange.

“Why does it look like that?” There was something about the mana, something hard to focus on. Like I was looking at an afterimage.

Koren shook his head. “I have no idea.”

“Should I inspect her with the system?”

“I wouldn’t. Can’t you see how powerful her mana is?”

I could, in fact. It was the most powerful I’d encountered while having the ability to see mana. Which wasn’t saying a lot, but she felt at least a rank higher than Koren, and he was nearing Steel.

But at the same time, I wasn’t worried about her noticing us. She wasn’t a monster.

“She wouldn’t hurt us,” I said.

Koren looked at me. “You’re sure about that?”

I wasn’t, so instead asked, “How’s it possible that she’s so strong already? What’s been going on outside while I’ve been stuck in here?”

“I have no idea,” he said again.

“I really need to find a key so no one else from my Earth gets stuck in here.” I shook my head. “But that doesn’t make sense. She wouldn’t walk into my bathroom like that. Are there multiple portals into the tower?”

Koren shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Even if so, I don’t get why she’d only wear a tank. Or why she’d go skinny-dipping in the apocalypse.” The only thing I could think of was that something happened while she was getting changed, but the order just didn’t make sense. Fins would be the first thing she took off or the last thing she put on.

“Guys,” Vyrania said.

Koren and I pulled our gazes away from Emma swimming languidly high above us and directed them toward what Vyrania indicated.

A cloud of smoke was swiftly making its way in our direction. It was shaped like a dragon.

“A monster?” I asked.

“Not exactly,” Koren said. “Inspect it and see for yourself.”

“You sure?”

He nodded. “It’s a drone. Kind of. And it’s already coming for us anyway.”

I inspected it.

Vapor Dragon

Giant-class Phantasm

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

Level: 1

“Phantasm? That’s new.”

“Hm,” Koren agreed. “Be right back.” He disappeared then reappeared in the phantasm’s path in the middle of the air, slamming a fist into it.

The dragon exploded, dissolving to mist. Dead.

Koren landed lightly on the ground, barely even needing to bend his legs to absorb the impact despite falling a good fifty feet.

“Another one,” Vyrania called, pointing at another cloud of smoke heading toward us.

But this one was different. It was larger, not shaped like a dragon, and there was someone riding on top of it.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.

‌

∎ ∎ ∎

“Intruders!” the man shouted down at us from his cloud. His eyes were barely slits, and he had four vape sticks stuck in his mouth, puffing away. It was the source of the cloud he floated upon. Somehow, the vapesticks stayed in his mouth through his shouted accusation.

Stranger still was that I recognized him. It wasn’t only Emma who was somehow down here. “Bob!?” I called up to him. “What the balls are you doing here?”

“Lizard!” he shouted, his voice impossibly clear for how full his mouth was.

“No, it’s me. It’s Noah!” I had no idea how he’d gotten down here, but now I was convinced I wasn’t just seeing out into the ocean. He and Emma had somehow ended up inside the tower and in this event.

I couldn’t even guess at how or why Emma was swimming around in the air with nothing but scuba gear, nor what her mental state was, but Bob was clearly off his rocker. Emma occasionally partook, so maybe they’d microdosed to deal with the stress of the apocalypse.

But, an apocalypse has a lot of stress to counteract, and enough microdoses add up to a megadose.

Judging by Bob’s state, that’s about where he was at. And getting farther gone every moment.

That still didn’t explain how he and Emma had ended up in the tower, let alone down here in the event. Had they been in the ocean and got swallowed somehow? Maybe Emma’d had too much and gone for a swim, and Bob had gone after her.

Though that didn’t explain how he had four vape sticks in his mouth and the power to turn his exhalations into a flying cloud.

He was staring down at me suspiciously, smoke billowing out from around the mass of vape sticks in his mouth and floating downward into the cloud instead of up. “Noah?”

“Yes,” I assured him. “It’s me.”

His expression softened, and he looked around.

“He’s completely mad,” Koren whispered.

Vyrania elbowed him.

Bob lowered his cloud closer to us, eyeing me, then the others, then back to me.

“Five-G,” he said, apropos of nothing.

“Uh, bad?”

His brow furrowed. “That’s what you would say.”

“Yes, because I’m Noah.”

“Face-wearing liar!” he shouted. “Noah had nothing to do with that tower!” He shot back into the air and a puff of smoke billowed out from his cloud, forming into a smoke-dragon the size of a pony.

It dove for me, breathing smoke instead of fire. “Fester and burn,” I quickly chanted, activating Smoldering Caress as I punched the phantasm.

It ignited in a burst of flame which coated my body as Vyrania and Koren quickly leapt out of the way.

Seeing how I was already in bad shape from my fight with the giant, I quickly activated my new card, Blood of the Phoenix.

“Let flames become flesh!”

Unlike my Contract card, this didn’t use all my mana at once, instead slowly—or swiftly, as the case may be—draining it to convert the damage to healing.

The pain turned to relief, but there was something else in the fire that my card didn’t help with.

My world began to spin, strange thoughts entering my mind.

Koren did something which blew the flames away. He seemed to have too many arms, and he left a trail of light behind him. Whether because of my mental state or some ability, I couldn’t tell.

“Push your mana through yourself,” he said, sounding very far away.

“Your face is four-dimensional.” I laughed.

“There’s poison in the cloud.”

I scoffed. “Not poison. Only a microdose.” I blinked rapidly several times, then laughed again. “A verry large microdose.”

Koren slapped me across the face. It wasn’t just a slap. I felt his mana push into my mind.

My own mana reacted, counteracting his, in the process somehow pushing out the ‘microdose’.

The next thing I knew my vision was clear, my senses normal.

Koren was on the ground in front of me.

I frowned. “Uh, what are you doing?”

Vyrania looked between him and me. “Wow.”

Koren was just grinning at me. “That, my boy, is how you control mana. It felt like getting walloped by a Steel.”

“I hit you? Sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

“Not at all,” he said, getting up. “Your mana retaliated against mine, which is what I was hoping for, but you did so better than I dared dream. You have quite the potential.”

Vyrania gestured up at Bob. “What are we going to do about him?”

He was flying around in circles above us, puffing madly on his vape sticks, leaving a smoke trail in the air that followed after him, entering into his cloud and making it grow larger. He either had forgotten about us or was trying to decide what to do about us.

“Don’t hurt him,” I said

“Since you know his name, I’m guessing you know him as well?” Koren asked.

“Yeah. He’s her uncle.” I gestured at Emma, who was still swimming around far above as though oblivious to us.

I wondered again why she was wearing scuba gear in the air, and how exactly she was flying, and how either of them had even gotten in here.

None of this made any sense, clearly, but something about her scuba gear and lack of attire was tickling my mind. There was a memory there trying to surface.

“Oh, he’s back,” Koren said, drawing my attention away from Emma.

Indeed, Bob had either remembered us, or never forgotten us in the first place and had been stockpiling his smoke-cloud, which he now sent down toward us in the form of a horde of smoke dragons.

I noticed his cloud diminished in size as this happened, and got an idea.

I wasn’t going to risk hurting him, but maybe we didn’t need to.

“Take out the dragons,” I said.

“That’s obvious.”

“No, his cloud shrinks with each dragon he creates from it. Maybe we can run him out.”

“He’s putting out a lot of smoke,” Koren observed. “Why don’t I jump up there and take him down?”

“Can you do that without hurting him?”

“Of course.” Koren leapt, landing on Bob’s cloud with ease.

Then went flying off like he’d been shot from a rocket.

He crashed down in front of us, head buried in the dirt.

He vanished then reappeared, right side up. “On second thought, your plan’s good.”