Maxine was still furious that she was forced to participate in the Alliance's politics and was waiting patiently in a massive virtual room for the welcoming ceremony to finish. This welcoming ceremony was nothing more than a means for the factions within the Alliance to recruit more members. However, she refused to move from her spot, unlike most of the other 50 new members, to join a faction. She didn't see a point to it. Since from her perspective, Earth was already part of the Kavros Clan's faction since they already sent their warriors to protect it.
"Excuse me, ma'am, but which world do you represent? And would you like to join my faction as one of our many vassals?" the Shillantian faction representative asked in a friendly tone, but she could still sense his underlying irritation. I can't blame him for being a little irritated. Everyone else here is showing their faces while I have my essence armor's mask on. I'm only wearing this damn thing because I don't want them to talk down to me or think they can take advantage of me to me due to my apparent youth.
"Earth and no," Maxine answered simply without opening her eyes, "Is there anything else that you want to ask me?"
"No, that's all," the faction representative said with barely noticeable annoyance before he walked away. He has no idea of the frustration that I've had to deal with the past couple days. Almost every major power on Earth is raising up a big fucking ruckus over the fact that they have no say in who gets to represent them. They only calmed down once they found out what the requirements to become Earth's representative was and those fuckers still insisted that I give them a report about any contact that I have with the Alliance. Which I was going to do anyways. I may hate being here, but I know better than to do this entirely on my own.
However, Maxine didn't get to contemplate her past few days in the silence for long when someone else approached her. "You know that wasn't wise of you to be so rude to him," Krelnak, a blue skinned humanoid, cautioned Maxine, "We are both from new worlds. We need their protection."
"My world already has a pair of patrons protecting it: Poison Emperor Guan and the Kavros Clan," Maxine replied calmly.
"You're quite lucky to have gained such powerful protectors so early, but I have to ask. How did you manage to get the protection of a large clan?" Krelnak asked.
"That's my secret," Maxine answered. I see he hasn't heard about daddy yet. If he did, he would be more surprised that daddy is protecting Earth.
"Excuse me, did you say that you're Earth's representative?" a female representative from the Tezart clan asked, "Is it the same Earth that produces chocolate?"
Maxine finally opened her eyes as she answered, "Yes, it is."
"Is it possible for you to arrange for a few extra tons of it to be sold to my clan?" the Tezart clan representative asked hopefully. Ahh, a fellow chocolate lover.
"I'm sorry but no. If I negotiate for one group to get more chocolate, I have to do it for everyone," Maxine explained, "But, you can send a ship of your own to buy it off of our local companies. Just be discreet when you do it. You don't want to upset the Kavros clan."
"That's a given and thank you for the tip," the Tezart clan representative said cheerfully before she wandered off. Krelnak walked away as well towards the faction that he joined earlier.
Maxine didn't see anyone else looking to approach her and decided to meditate until the end of this 'welcome ceremony.' Which did happen after another hour.
"I see almost all of our newest representatives have met their seniors," a holographic image of an elderly man said, but he oddly made a point to stare at Maxine, "Unfortunately, there will always be a few people that think they can stand on their own without the advice of others, but instead opt to learn the hard way. It's upsetting to see them suffer like this, but they chose this path. Anyways, the welcoming ceremony is now at an end. The next Alliance meeting will be in two standard months and I hope to see all of you there. Farwell, until next time." Maxine didn't waste a single moment as she logged herself out of this virtual room and opened her eyes.
She was inside of meditation chamber within her biological parents house. They had recommended that she be in a very safe place for the welcoming ceremony and she couldn't think of any place safer, at least on Earth, than the meditation chamber adjacent to Guan's alchemy lab.
She glanced down at the communication disk and returned it to her dimensional ring. She still marveled at the fact that it even had that kind of function. She had thought they would send her some kind of virtual reality helmet, but instead, they had simply invited her to the virtual reality greeting room through her communication disk. I still don't know how that thing has so many different functions crammed into such a small package. All I can say is that whoever originally created the damn things had to have been a genius.
Maxine stood up and quietly left the meditation chamber. She had taken only a few steps out of it when she was tackled by Lucas. "Play?" he asked innocently while looking up at her.
She chuckled briefly before she replied, "Sure. What game do you want to play?" Lucas immediately took up a fighting pose and looked up at Maxine hopefully.
"You want to spar?" Maxine asked with a raised eyebrow, "Where did you learn about that from? Was it daddy or mom?"
Lucas shrugged and looked at her with puppy dog eyes as he practically begged her, "Please, sister. Play!"
"Fine, we will play for a little while," Maxine said and checked the time, "But I've got to go report in later and don't give me that look. I don't like it anymore than you do. So, let's get to the training room that daddy built for us." Lucas quickly scampered off towards the training room and Maxine smiled to herself before she followed behind him at a jog.
The training room was nothing more than a room that was a massive cube. It was 100 meters long, tall and wide as well as reinforced to withstand any kind of training that Maxine might undergo. However, someone else besides herself and Lucas was in it.
"Thanks for bringing her here, Lucas," Zephyr said, "And like we agreed, you can join in on the fun."
"What entails fun?" Maxine asked in irritation.
"He wants to try dodging my lightning darts and you don't need to tell me to take it easy on him. I already know that," Zephyr said offhandedly, but added via spiritual sense, [I figured he would loose interest after he gets hit a few times.]
"Fine, so long as you're careful," Maxine answered as she retrieved her twilight iron blades from her dimensional ring before taking up a proper stance, "Ready whenever you are."
Electrical arcs jumped all over Zephyr's arms before he raised one towards Maxine and the other towards Lucas. Maxine saw a flurry of small dart-like pulses of lightning coming right at her while Lucas just got a much dimmer one thrown at him. Unfortunately, she no longer had the luxury of paying attention to anything aside from the lightning darts heading towards her.
With a thought, she coated the edges of both of her blades and tried cutting them the dumbest way first with swift strikes. The lightning darts scattered into small snakes of electrical energy when she struck them and she carefully adjusted how much blade energy she put into her blades in an attempt to conserve her energy. This is easier than I thought.
Once she lowered the energy consumption to the lowest point, she watched carefully how the lightning darts were cut as they scattered, but she quickly realized that she was only neutralizing the lightning darts' forward momentum. Her strikes were turning the lightning darts into static electricity. I wasn't expecting this to work anyways. I have a few more things I can try.
Maxine slowly cycled through various different ways to cut the lightning darts. Most of them ended in failure, but the most promising method was when she concentrated a crescent moon blitz attack along the edge of her blade without releasing it. It cut a lightning dart in two and both halves shot off to either side behind her before discharging into static. But before she could experiment further, Zephyr stopped firing flurries of lightning darts at her.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
She looked up at him in askance, but saw that he was sitting down on the floor while panting heavily. Ah, I was so focused on what I was doing that I didn't realize he was getting tired. Actually, it's rather impressive that he was able to maintain that kind of effort for a solid twenty minutes.
She turned to the side to see Lucas with Albert Einstein hair. Maxine chuckled at the sight. His hair shouldn't do that. Uncle Zeph must've done something to his lightning darts to specifically do that.
"It looks like Uncle Zeph is exhausted and that means our 'play time' is over," Maxine said and she saw Lucas pout, "I can play with you some more after I'm done with my video call with the UN. You can watch cartoons until then."
"Okay," Lucas said as he left the training room.
"Thanks again, Uncle Zeph," Maxine said to Zephyr as she started to walk out of the training room.
"Yeah, yeah. Just drop by the clan's compound later," Zephyr yelled at her back. Like I would forget. I owe you for helping me with my training and it's only right that I make a bunch of potions for you guys in return for taking up your time.
Maxine checked the time and opened a portal that lead to the front door of the Fire and Ice guild headquarters. She came here since she didn't own a computer. Or at least, not one that was compatible with Earth's computers. So she had asked Amanda if she could borrow the use of one to perform a video call with the UN.
"Please, follow me, Ms. Levings," an unfamiliar employee said as Maxine walked inside. She glanced at him and gestured for him to lead the way. However she kept her guard up.
She was lead to the back of the building and into a small room. There was a computer desk with a web cam sitting below the monitor, but there was nothing else in the room.
"Thank you," Maxine said and once the employee had left, she immediately scanned the room thoroughly with her spiritual sense. She didn't find anything that warranted her caution, but she didn't enjoy meeting an unfamiliar man. She had enough of the attempted assassinations and kidnappings. She did not want to go through it again.
She still had some time before the UN assembly meeting took place and opened up a word processor. Her finger flew across the keyboard as she typed out in detail everything she heard and saw. The computer could barely keep up with the speed at which she typed. By the time she finished, she had over 50 pages worth of information.
She read over her work a couple time to make sure there were no errors and right on time, the screen lit up with an incoming call. She answered it and she saw a view of meeting room at the UN. "Greetings, gentlemen," Maxine greeted them pleasantly, "I apologize for not meeting you all in person."
"That's alright, Ms. Levings," the UN Secretary said, "Could you tell us what transpired during this meeting ceremony?"
"I can do better than that," Maxine replied as she send the document that she just typed out, "I'm sending you a document about everything I saw and heard. I thought it would be better to transcribe everything so that it's easier for all of you to review it at your leisure."
"An action that all of us greatly appreciate," the secretary said, "Did you by any chance join a faction?"
"I saw no need at the moment for such action," Maxine replied, "We are already part of the same faction as the Kavros Clan. Why would we need to join an inferior group when we are directly linked to a large clan that controls over fifty worlds?"
"You're point is taken," the secretary said, "But you can understand why we are so concerned. You're very young and inexperienced."
"I understand entirely that I'm young and inexperienced in the political arena. That's why I'm so willing to cooperate with all of you gentlemen," Maxine replied, "I need your collective experience and wisdom to guide and advise me until I no longer need it. Hopefully, all of you will have retired by then." God, I hate this diplomatic bullshit, but fortunately for them, I'm not lying in the least. I have no fucking idea what I'm doing, but that doesn't mean I will always heed their advice. However, I will always listen when it's given.
"That's a good attitude to have, young lady," the secretary said approvingly and Maxine's perspective shifted to a different position in the room, "Now, we have other topics to discuss..." However at that point, what was being discussed mattered little to Maxine. She still listened, but didn't give it the same level of her attention as their other talks.
After a few hours, the UN assembly meeting was finally over and she was freed from listening to topics that she had no intentions of interfering with. She stretched her arms and back before leaving the small room.
As Maxine left the building, Turan appeared a short distance away from her. "Ms. Levings. It's so good to see you again," Turan greeted her, "You left the academy so abruptly that I wasn't able to catch up to you until just now." Is it really him or not? Well, it's easy enough to test him.
"Where did I leave my original diary?" Maxine asked. I doubt anyone besides him would know where it I left it almost a decade ago.
"I believe your birth mother, Claudia, has it, but you placed it on your dresser before you left for the Kavros clan," Turan answered without hesitation.
"It's nice to see you too Turan," Maxine said to him.
"I heard that you're hesitant about facing your tribulation," Turan said offhandedly.
"From whom?" Maxine asked cautiously.
"Let's just say your emotional outburst at the mall wasn't unnoticed," Turan replied simply and handed Maxine a small crystal, "This might help with your other worries." Maxine carefully accepted it.
"What's this?" Maxine asked.
"It contains recorded information on how Shadow Lords breakthrough to gold. I had originally acquired it for myself," Turan said and left the rest of what he clearly wanted to say unspoken.
"Thank you," Maxine said as she felt guilty inside, "Will this get you into trouble?"
"I don't believe that it will," Turan answered, "But even if it did, I would still give it to you."
"You should've asked to find out for certain," Maxine told him, "What if you get dragged away because you pulled this shit? Then your elders would send someone here that I don't trust at all." He may be a weird stalker, but he's never done anything to directly hurt me. If anything, he's done his best to help me and even admitted that he loves me in his own way. So, yeah. I trust him enough to know that he will not intentionally hurt me.
"I'll do my best not to betray that trust," Turan said with a genuine smile, "I know entirely how difficult it is for a man such as myself to gain it."
"Good," Maxine said, "I'll be sure to return this crystal after I've looked through it."
"I would appreciate it," Turan said with his customary smile and he glanced up at something over Maxine's shoulder, "Oh, it seems that your grandmother has entered this planet's atmosphere."
"What?!" Maxine said as she turned around and saw a fiery meteor hurtling straight at them, "Why didn't you say something about that fucking meteor?!" When Maxine didn't hear his response, she turned her head back towards Turan, but he had already fled.
[I'm sorry to abandon you like that, but your grandmother threatened my life the last time we saw each other. And as much as I would like to see the both of you together once more, I prefer to live,] Turan said via spiritual sense, but he severed the connection before Maxine could reply. What is he talking about my grandma for? All I see is a damn meteor.
Before Maxine could figure out why Turan was talking about her grandma, the flames around the 'meteor' vanished to reveal grandma Victoria with her arms outstretched in preparation for a hug tackle. Oh, shit! Grandma was the meteor! And she's coming in too fast to slow down in time! She didn't dare dodge it since it would both upset her grandmother and so she could lessen the meteoric impact that her grandmother would cause.
Maxine caught grandma Victoria at her ribs and used her whole body to arrest her grandmother's momentum. Unfortunately, she was just moving too fast and Maxine created a pair portals behind her at the last possible moment. As her grandmother's nearly flat chest slammed into her face, Maxine used the force of the impact to throw the both of them into one of the portals and out of other. Even as they hurtled back into the sky, grandma Victoria didn't miss the moment to squeeze Maxine happily. At least, my nose isn't broken this time.
"Maxine, how I've missed you! You have no idea how hard it was for me to come visit you," grandma Victoria said happily, but in the next moment, she became apologetic, "But I'm also very sorry. I couldn't keep them from coming to you any longer."
"What are you talking about?" Maxine asked once she freed herself from her grandmother's embrace.
"The young men trying to court you," grandma Victoria answered, "Once it was known that you were still alive, I had to remind them of that illusion that you created to show them your 'ideal man' to thin out their numbers, but I couldn't stop them from approaching you entirely."
"Isn't there anything else you could do?" Maxine asked.
"No, there isn't and I'm certain they misunderstood your intentions in that illusion," grandma Victoria answered, "They think you have a thing for valiant men with scars, but I know the truth. You desire a gentle and kind mate that you can trust, but you're not that particular about their gender or appearance. But at the same time, it's hard for you to trust any man enough to allow any romantic feelings to blossom due to that wretched man's abuse. I doubt any man will be able to meet up with that virtually impossible standard you've made. At least, no man living has reached it. I've come to terms with this but I know there are many other ways for you to have children. And like both of your mothers, I insist that you bring your children by to see me once you and your future wife decide to have them."
"I will," Maxine promised, "By the way, where are you staying?"
"The Kavros Clan's compound," Grandma Victoria said calmly, but in the next moment, she radiated intense anger without changing her expression or tone, "But before I go there, where is that wretched man? I have some words that I would like to share with him." That's not good. At least, I don't sense any killing intent emanating off of grandma, so she probably won't kill him. I think.