Ostentatious was the word which came to mind as I entered the main conference room of what was once Westfields Shopping Centre. I knew that most of the furniture and decorations had vanished in the shift, but that didn’t seem true here. Quest rewards and system purchased items were on full display, eye catching in their magical garish construction.

There was a large table seemingly made of bone in the middle of the room, and various chairs which didn’t match were dotted around. They were trying their best, but it didn’t look like there was much actual crafting going on in the city. If you wanted a new chair in Newtown, you just went and cut down a tree and gave the wood to a carpenter. With the aid of magic and attributes, such a thing could be made in minutes. Probably. Maybe not. I realised I needed to get into crafting myself, if I was going to judge.

Either way, to my eyes, the items created by the System had a certain fuzzy nature to them like they weren’t all the way real. There weren’t many places in Ascentown which used the System stores, and if they did it was for materials. Something about the process of creation, be it alchemy, carpentry, smithing or otherwise, removed the haze around the items. While the materials in use in Londimin’s main meeting room were technically pretty, to my eyes?

The whole room was gaudy.

Yes, the wood had a valuable look to it, underneath the sheen of tacky magic but there was a carbon copy quality to all of the chairs. I felt a hollowness from the table without even touching it, an emptiness in the art hanging on the walls. None of it had been made by hand and the Dao within me could tell. It was both interesting and distracting, I had never been in a room like this before. In a lot of ways, it was the exact opposite of the Storm Dragon’s treasury, which had sung with Dao of its own.

Standing out more than any single item was a fairly tall man, standing at the head of a large conference table. “Seth, I presume?” Bedecked in intensely magical armour, Seth was pretty much exactly what I expected he would be. Even as I spoke, he withdrew a sword and shield from his personal inventory which absolutely screamed of danger. Each item thrummed with a similar power to the Hurricane Heart which eventually became my Dao Font of the Tempest.

As a show of force, even I had to admit I was impressed. At the same time…

“You planning to do something with those?” I asked, sizing up the distance between us. The man looked down at his hands, as though shocked to find himself ready for battle. He cleared his throat, and the weapon and shield disappeared. His armour remained, but I felt a little better. What had I done to deserve this? “Is that how you greet everyone, or am I special somehow?”

“What are you?” The armoured man demanded. “Why have you come here?”

I frowned. With each word out of his mouth, a weight pressed into my mind. Even as I resisted, I felt myself wanting to answer him fully and truthfully. “Stop that.” Shaking my head, I brought my magical fist down on the skill he was using, cutting off the strange connection he was trying to form with me. I wasn’t sure it was intentional, but from the way he winced, it didn’t feel great to be rebuffed. “I’m not here to fight, so stop using skills on me.”

Instead of the apology I had honestly expected, the man went white as a sheet. His blonde hair and blue eyes were typical for a Prince Charming, but the hair was the colour of straw not gold. His eyes were puddles of muddy water, not deep like the sea. The room was silent except for the shivering. Honestly, it was all quite a lot considering I hadn’t even done anything. “We don’t want any trouble,” said the man I was pretty sure was Seth. He still hadn’t confirmed anything.

At least the skill seemed to be turned off. Maybe it just had a cooldown. It was weaker than Frederick’s had been, but harder to notice. “Like I said, I’m not here to fight. If I was, I wouldn’t have knocked the door. Seriously, are you all alright?” It was hard not to be on my backfoot. I wasn’t forgetting some dramatic intimidation I had performed, was I?

“Are you a Nomad?” This time, it was the moustachioed man who spoke. I could hear the capitalisation in his usage of the word. All the heads in the room whipped to him, and he looked like he very much wished he had said nothing. I raised an eyebrow at his use of the term. It was quite specific.

“Where did you hear that word?” I asked, not liking this situation one bit. I would have been far better off just trying to steal the plane. Diplomacy was hard. Obviously, nomads were a thing on Earth before the Shift, but my hackles were raised at the thought of the impossibly powerful Fae being Naea and I had met in the woods. Was there some connection to these people? A game at play?

“So you don’t deny it?” The man who was probably Seth asked, getting way ahead of himself. He once more drew his sword and shield, and I felt the situation slipping more and more from my grasp.

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“Yes, I deny it. No, I’m not a Nomad. I’m a human. I came from a town a few days travel away.” I was intentionally vague about the location of my town, even pointing in the opposite direction in case anyone was trying to get clever. They all seemed much more interested in hiding behind maybe-Seth.

“I don’t believe him,” the one woman in the room hissed. Her, the moustache man and two others looked severely out of place in their business casual clothing when standing behind a guy in gleaming golden armour. The middle management all took a step back as the armoured man took one forward. The air began to fill with vibrations, all coming from two of the individuals - Moustache and Stretch, who was just slightly taller than everyone else.

“This is a seriously bad idea,” I warned as he took another step forward.

“Grant.” Naea was whispering but her words mostly appeared in my head through our bond. “There’s lots of people all rushing towards us. Want me to stop them?”

Damn. “Do you two have messaging skills to call others?” I asked towards the two men, who withered. “I’m jealous,” I moaned, “I’ve never met anyone else with them. What Aspect do you have?” Before I could get my answer, Seth was swinging his sword at me. I snarled a little as I hopped back out of his way, dodging the attack.

Or, I thought I dodged.

“Fuckin’ oww,” I complained, grabbing my left arm, “you cut me!” For his part, Seth also seemed surprised to have drawn blood. It was taking everything I had to not tear the whole room apart, but I would settle for the one actually attacking me. With a quick Mana Bolt from behind, I aimed to hamstring his leg. It would be a decent example of the healing potions to get him back to full health after.

Except, once again I was left stumped. This time, instead of inexplicably connecting with an attack I was ninety nine percent sure I had dodged, the shield dropped and blocked my sure-hit attack. Instead of hitting his leg, the magical attack fizzled into nothing, which was its own surprise. Those bolts could hit as hard as a truck, and while I wasn’t trying to kill the guy, I wasn’t holding back too much either. Dissipating the force alone was impressive. My eyes narrowed as confidence appeared on Seth’s face. “That’s it?” He asked.

I did one final courtesy, and backed up towards the door. I could hear people streaming towards us from down the hallway, as Naea had warned. It seemed most people were coming from the direction behind me, so I held the door shut firm. Pressure appeared from the other side, but unless they had an elephant, and a high level one at that, they weren’t moving me. “For the last time, I didn’t come here to fight. I just wanted to borrow a plane.”

“Borrow a plane?” Seth repeated dumbly, each word slowly chewing its way out of his mouth. I nodded, letting go of my wounded arm. A burst of healing magic from Naea had dealt with the cut. However, it seemed like poor Seth was not going to back down here, which left me with an uncomfortable decision. People began to enter the room from the opposite entrance, unable to get past me and going around. There was quickly quite a crowd, and most of them looked ready to fight. They must have called every scout in the building over.

Brave. Commendable, I supposed, even if it was for a poor leader like Seth. There had been absolutely no need for this, but what was I going to do? Back down?

With a stamp, I activated my first skill. Infusion caused the lines on my body to glow slightly. Normally, the skill was used to give me a massive boost in physical attributes, but it was not a simple muscle enhancer. For this use, I focused. I needed Infusion for the extra control I needed. I counted twenty eight people in the room in total, all facing me with worried expressions.

Good, the Dao within me crooned. Obliging to the sensation, I allowed my Dao to roll out from me unchecked. The clear sky above rumbled and the gaze of an apex predator locked down all of the energy in the room. I rarely did so in recent days as the effects were becoming more and more pronounced. It was no different now as people began to sweat, one man in the back even fainted. “Ah, damn, was that Stretch? Poor guy.”

I had grabbed all of the ambient mana and claimed it. To anyone in the room, it would be hard to breathe, their mana slower to return. Despite that, Seth stepped forward. My Dao slipped off his armour like oil, its effects completely ignored. Unlike the man who had been knocked out from it when I saved Rashid, Seth’s armour seemed to make him immune to the passive effects.

I felt affronted at the idea, gathering power. The mana in the air was mine, and I turned all of it into Mana Bolts. Twenty eight people, I had counted? So an even thirty, with three circling Seth’s head would do. Most people had flinched and stopped approaching on the release of my Dao, so it was just me and the other city leader moving. Someone sobbed.

Which is when I realised what I was doing and released the magic. I looked at my own hands, shocked at what I had been about to do. Had I not been decrying how terrible I felt Londimin was because of actions I had just been about to emulate? I could blame the place all I wanted for encouraging me, but that was just a flimsy excuse. Instead of controlling my Dao, it had controlled me for a moment.

“Naea, can you do something for me?” I asked silently, far faster than I could have by simply speaking. Naea, the seriousness of the moment forcing even her to be earnest, said that she would. “I need you to hide for a while. I’ll be fine.” While she may have wanted to fight and stop what was about to happen, I didn’t want that. I felt horrified that I had nearly definitely almost killed a room full of people over a misunderstanding.

Naea sent me a warning as she disappeared out of an open window. “You’ve got a day to get out of this stupid situation, or I do something drastic.” I wanted to hug her, but all I could do was pour some love down our bond as the crowd began to attack me. I allowed their blows to land for the most part, almost nothing they could do would actually kill me.

It just hurt.

After a while, my assailants were tired and there seemed to be some doubt about what to do next. Seth told them to throw me into a jail cell, which I also allowed. If anyone had actually tried to kill me, I would have fought back. It wasn’t necessary. I symbolised something to the people in that room. I was the unknown terror they had all been avoiding facing. The outside world was still there, and if more people like me were around? Londimin would fall, fast.

I didn’t care. I was sure I could talk to Nolan about this, and if not then I would start actually breaking out. Naea was telling me the whole time they transported my beaten body how stupid I was, but I couldn’t do things the other way around. If I attacked first, it wouldn’t be just one person injured, it would have been a massacre. I had to let Londimin make a big enough mistake if I was going to start a war.

And I seriously hoped they wouldn’t go that far.