I couldn’t help but wince at the beatdown Naea doled out so casually. Her ability to fight humans had jumped while I was away. More impressive was the immediacy of the Fledgling’s recovery. Even before Naea used her healing magic on them, the men and women she tossed around the training grounds were picking themselves up. Injured legs were ignored, broken bones were pointed to and laughed at.
From my viewpoint in a raised box, it was quite ghoulish to behold. I had seen gruesome wounds on myself over the past few months but aside from right at the start, when the memories were still hazy, seeing them on others was new. I wondered why it bothered me to see, and found that it was simple. Earth was moving further from its previously mundane existence, shown clear in snapped cartilage and spilled crimson blood.
My resolve firmed as Naea’s healing took over. This was how we would move forward as a people, how I had progressed since the start. Upon a path forged in pain and desperation, straight through the heart of the System. Naea had clearly understood this more than me, to no surprise, and the Fledglings were proof of this. As the last of the fifteen that had jumped into the ring with Naea were given a burst of healing, I dropped down.
“Not bad! A few more weeks of growth like this and they’ll all surpass me.” I made sure that my voice carried and smiled as I saw pride blossom in the less stoic-looking Fledglings. I didn’t mention that I was picturing the version of me that walked out of the dungeon. Without my achievements. Or my weapon. Nor Naea.
And that it would take all of them.
“Please show us your skills, sir.” Unsurprisingly, it was the most promising of the recruits who stepped forward. As the most adept at wielding his Dao alongside his weapon, Sanjay was potent. More than one he caught Naea’s charge with his spear, only a quick twist allowing her to dodge. It might not sound like a lot, but forcing Naea to change directions was challenging. I should know.
“Sir? Wow, that’s weird. I’m not sure about being called sir, or all of the respect stuff. I just got the best combination of good and bad luck you can imagine when this all went down. Everything can change in the blink of an eye.” The hard look in my eye seems to slow the man’s roll, freezing his smile awkwardly. I held my hands up and shook my head, diffusing the energy. “You want to play with me? I’m not sure I hold back as much as Naea.”
I was lying through my teeth. That little hellion enjoyed exercising her strength on the willing Fledglings. My words were met with a grin in any case, leading me to wonder just what Naea had put these people through. The next hour was spent showing exactly what an attribute deficit truly looked like. When I focused, it made everyone else look like characters in a photograph.
To them, I was the wind, a flicker in their vision that disappeared before they turned their head. Unfortunately, the wind also hit harder than a truck when it wanted to. I kept it to small moped levels, but there was still a pile of bodies groaning and waiting to be healed by the time I was done. For me, it was decent practice against opponents with different skills, something that would probably be important in the future.
I also weighed up my next Weapon Mastery option. There were only three chances, and while I didn’t regret the staff, I wasn’t sure about my next choice. When I held any weapon, the skill hummed in the background of my head, waiting for me to choose it. I knew that at any moment, I could completely skip any learning needed and become a master. The sword was tempting, of course. Watching Sanjay with his spear pulled me in that direction, while the idea of an more exotic option was still enticing. I didn’t need more ranged options, really, but becoming a master with a bow might be useful.
Until I found a new weapon that I resonated with, I didn’t see the benefit in locking myself down for now. To that end, I bid everyone goodbye and left Naea to her nursing. The Fledglings had been operating on 48-hour days, getting a break in the middle for an hour and four hours of sleep at the end. As such, they’d still be at it for another day or so.
Not allowing myself to feel guilty, I took a day of rest. I definitely rested. During which I did nothing but meet the people of Ascentown and make myself known to them. I memorised faces and names, committing everyone to a level of importance I had stopped myself from before. I still wasn’t sure how much I could let myself get attached to people who didn’t exist in my realm. The idea that I could accidentally hurt them with a thoughtless gesture wasn’t an easy hurdle to get over, for myself or anyone who had seen me cut loose.
Most people didn’t want to introduce themself to me fully, but one who did helped me with the rest. She was just so much like Niahm, even down to having the same chestnut-auburn hair. With Naea’s tendency to wear her heart on her sleeve like Sinead, both my sisters were now represented and thoughts of my family were hard to ignore. The talkative teenager had almost tackled me as I left the training ground. Almost, because while she did run into me at full speed, I hadn’t moved an inch. While healing her broken nose with an application of Naea’s magic through Battle Bond, we started talking. Or, she did.
“So that’s Lana N, who has apparently started on actual real life alchemy. Making potions and stuff. Over there is Calum P’s stall, he’s doing good things with magical cooking. As in, his food is fucking magical. Those two twins are your armourers, and their dad is a blacksmith. The Richter family. Wait, did he call himself a blacksmith or a forgemaster?” Putting a finger to her lip, Melissa finally paused as she tried to remember their name. Talking a mile a minute, she had been going non-stop, and a great help in knowing who everyone was.
I had to admit, though, walking through the central plaza of Ascentown was strange. We were only feet from where the dungeon had swallowed me and changed my life. The area that blossomed like a plant once completed had been taken over by merchants. It had become a busy market. “If he’s making metals, a smith of some kind. I’m not sure forgemaster is a real thing, though what do I know?”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
I let her ramble as we walked and she continued to point out places of note to me. She seemed to finally work up the courage to talk her true motives. “So, you’re really good at this System stuff…”
I laughed. “I’m not going to lie to you, I have pretty much just run face first as everything that’s tried to kill me. Me surviving is almost one hundred percent luck if you add up all the ways I should have died.” I remembered that my audience was a teenager and worried if I should be even as graphic as I had been but she seemed enraptured. Figuring it couldn’t do much harm, I told her the story of my dungeon while we wandered. My hope was that it would come across as a warning, but when I finished I wasn’t sure if that had been quite the effect.
Not long after, I excused myself from Melissa and found my guildmates. Well, most of them. Luke was apparently still off hunting. He should be fine, but it was probably about time to go looking for him. Gathering the others, I decided to take them to one of the restaurants that had popped up and have a serious chat with The Ascent. By pure coincidence, they had ended up in my dungeon and then in short order, that rolled into leadership of a town. The System’s way of choosing, as in “the strongest decides the rules,” left much to be desired but wanting a situation to be different didn’t make it so.
The conversation was light, if a little faltering between everyone. Harry and Tom both looked exhausted yet at the same time seemed desperate to get back to training. On the complete opposite side of things, Aaron and Ellie looked like they had been doing nothing but relaxing since leaving the dungeon. I supposed that was their right, but it was time to have a serious talk. “The future of this place depends on me.” Everyone nodded along, their faces full of chinese food. “You’re all important but even now I could tear through the whole of this town without anyone being able to stop me. I need you guys to step up.”
“Pfft.” There was a frozen moment as everyone looked at Tom. I just raised an eyebrow. “I know you’re strong, Grant, but you’re not that strong. You're not the most important person in the world.” This felt unlike Tom, but I wasn’t in the mood. Unable to help myself, I flexed the Dao that I had been keeping suppressed since Cloudslash Peak. The Dao Font of Tempests fed all of the power it had into my Dao Avatar of Dragons. Within the centre of my very soul, thunder and lightning crashed into ancient scales and a primal roar rang out. Not audible, but felt in the souls of any who had grasped the Dao.
A grip of pure electric steel wrapped around Tom’s throat, and held a finger to the others. “I might be,” I said truthfully. The scenes, the lives, I had lived upon the planet of Badaila had changed me. The dungeon itself might not even have ever been a real place, but I knew for a fact the Storm Dragon was out there, gorging itself on galaxies. How many set themselves against such a foe? I didn’t pretend that I had the power to stop it right now, but one day…
Finding my food no longer as enjoyable, I decided it was time to leave. I stood and shrugged. “I have had the realisation that I can’t fix everyone’s shit for them. You’re not here for me, I’m not here for you, but this town can be something special. Think about what you want to do in this place.” I gave everyone a final look. Aaron’s face made me want to punch him, a mocking expression as though my words were over the top. Elli and Harry both looked different kinds of distraught but they’d be fine. It was Tom that I gave the hardest look towards. It was almost easier to understand his mana than his headspace at the moment. Was he scared of me? Angry about something I had done? I didn’t care any more.
Whatever.
Naea found me before I even left the boundary of Ascentown, a compound of judgement and worry on her face. “It’s fine,” I told her, “let’s go do something fun.” I had thought of something on my way back from the mountain and wanted to see if it would work. “You get abilities based on mine, right?”
“Sometimes. Not all of them, and I’m not entirely sure why.” She bobbed in the air with a thoughtful expression. She didn’t catch my proud smile in her peripheral vision. Naea was a free spirit in all ways, but the seriousness to which she had started to take the things that mattered to me was always going to make my heart melt.
My eyes glittered. “So, I have a theory that you couldn’t get Mana Bolt easily because it wasn’t a System learned skill, but what about this one?” Held back in the fighting earlier, I flicked my wrist. I hadn’t planned it as much of a surprise, it just would have killed anyone it hit without fail. As the energy gathered in my hand and Naea’s eyes grew wider, I found even myself becoming alarmed.
Up to now, I had only used Blast through what was the Dao Pool of Tempests. Not only had the Dao Pool become a Font, it was also now mainly feeding the Dao Avatar at the very centre of my soul. My hand got heavier and heavier as mana fell into it. Five percent, ten percent, twenty… Only when half of my full mana pool fell into the skill did it stop gathering power. I couldn’t stop myself from smiling.
The Dragon wanted to play, too.
The air began to fill with the smell of ozone and a sphere of energy appeared in my hand. Naea whooped loudly, egging me on but whether she did or not, there was no stopping this process. Relenting on my nerdom, I didn’t make an anime reference this time. Instead, I just shouted the attack with all of my force. “Blast!”
Night was replaced with day as a new sun was born. A corona of electric blue and fiery red energy followed the bright white ball of power into the sky where it exploded. Consisting of the most powerful dao and mana the world had yet to see, the resulting shockwave seemed to carry not just force, but intent.
My intent.
Satisfied, I turned to my slack-jawed fairy companion. “So, wanna learn?”
—————————————
Paul watched the magical comet rise and burst like a firework. “That’s him, right?” The excitement caught, the whole mage squad vibrating with energy. They could do that, too, if they got stronger. That was the promise of the System, and it drove them into any danger the world could throw at them. The second-in-command of Ascentown had mixed feelings. He looked at the wanton display of power and once again felt the pressure of the future weigh him down.
As the light faded, and the echoes of unattainable power died, Tom heard something else. Before he could react, a whip of steel crashed into his chest. Ribs broke, but the attack wasn’t over and without even firing a single Mana Bolt, the squad was beaten. Frustrating welled up in Tom’s chest, almost outweighing the fear.
Almost.
A mangled voice spoke from behind Tom’s ear. The sound was not mortal, not created by anything resembling traditional biology. With words that sounded like they came from a pipe organ more than a throat, the metallic voice sent a chill through the six now-captive mages. Stepping into view, limbs ticking like gears as it moved, an awful homunculus could be seen. Then, it bowed.
“Greetings humans, I would like a chance to talk.”