Pyra shrugged her shoulders and walked forward placing her hand on the plate. Yana leaned in to watch the magic play across the metal panel. Marshall moved a few steps towards the door. The plate glowed for several seconds, but just faded out with no results. The clerk looked at it in surprise.
"Well, perhaps it's broken, I have another one in the back." The man said before hurrying to the back room. The three looked at each other.
"What happened brother?" Pyra asked looking at her fingers. Yana tapped his head, before continuing in a mind link.
"I think that plate reads the patterns in the body created by the System. It can't interact with the internal mana, it just reads it like a book. Then it creates some kind of feedback that the clerk can read. Fairly simple and clever." Pyra just tapped her foot, leaving a burning spot on the floor. Yana was stopped by the return of the clerk with another plate.
"Here it its, sorry about the delay, this rarely happens." Replacing the plate on the counter, he made a gesture to Pyra. She had a faint smile on her face as she placed her hand on it again. The glow returned, and Yana palmed his face as he watched his sister causing problems. The plate erupted into a fireball, the metal dripping from the counter which also began to smoke from the intense heat. Everyone scrambled from their chairs to stamp out the slowly spreading flames. Which was clearly an overreaction as they all got in one another's way, leading to a fist brawl after the flames were gone.
"There, now there is, at least, a good story to tell out of this." Pyra mused to Yana across the mind link.
"For the sake of Mother, you didn't need to start a fight." He sighed back to her.
"How do you even sigh across thought?" She responded with a raised eyebrow, as the clerk was clubbing troublemakers to bring about order.
"Skill, and what were you thinking to start a fire in here?" He asked, part of him feeling like it was just her love of flames at work, and the need to show off her skills.
"Marshall taught me that a distraction can help to sell a story, and the fact that the first plate didn't work and the second melted. Gives weight to my excuse that we were in a zone of unstable magic." Yana caught a faint trace of smugness across the link and was impressed at her skill. Even more so at the logical argument he didn't quite expect. Mother had warned him that Pyra tended to act on emotion more than logic as she followed her name sake well. He tapped his chin in thought as he looked at the clerk giving a lecture to the other adventurers.
It was a clever move to create chaos with her actions. Especially since the nature of unstable magic zones weren't clear to the commoners or even the specialized groups. They were a military secret that tended to inspire fear in most people. Mother and he had figured out that they were likely places with something related to his Orb, and it stripped the System from the mana in the environment. People would have pieces of the System removed as they spent time in them and would cause problems afterwards as the System tried to restart. It was likely that the internal magic, which was ordered by the System, was also heavily damage which could lead to death in certain situations.
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
The more he thought about it the more Pyra's actions made perfect sense, and was an excellent cover for their situation. He gave her an outward nod and then approached the counter himself. The clerk yelled a few more words at the adventurers before returning to his post. The guard outside had entered and was now glaring at the adventurers for the clerk. There was also a powerfully built women with blonde hair and blue eyes standing at the top of a flight of stairs. She was glaring at the whole mess like a noble. Yana marked her as the Guildmaster or something equally troublesome.
"I apologize for this trouble." Yana nodded to his group, "We didn't think the Unstable Zone we passed through would have such an effect, but clearly we were mistaken." The clerk looked surprised for a moment, and than paled reaching for paper and a quill.
"Where did you find such a Zone?" The man shakily asked, putting the quill to the take notes.
"Erol, we passed through the place and got a message about it from the System, but it ended quickly so we didn't think anything of it." Yana responded, remembering a few of the villagers mentioning the message as they left. He had learned that a lie was far more believable the closer it is to the truth. The woman leaned against the countertop at his words, Yana having tracked her movements wasn't surprised, but decided to act like it. Flinching back and placing his hand on his staff which made the woman nod.
"You say this was in Erol? The village a few days from here?" She asked, her eyes staring into Yana's clearly meant to intimidate him. He just nodded, not liking this attitude, but sticking to his desire for minimal issues.
"Yes, the villagers even mentioned it as we passed through so it doesn't seem to isolated to us, but also doesn't seem to have stuck around too long." Yana had long figured out how to seal the effects of his Orb so he didn't create a line of torn sky leading right to him. It was oddly easy to stop it from absorbing mana and enter a dormant state. It only required a flex of his Will and a mental trigger. The woman summoned a crackling energy into her hands, her eyes still locked on him.
The world around Yana rippled, and the lady was back at the top of the stairs. The plate whole and on the counter. Pyra and Marshall were looking around in confusion just like he was. A crack appeared in the wall, but not a crack of wood. A crack of black void filled with rainbow lights and stars. They all felt the world ripple again, and then everything went back to the same. The woman standing before Yana with crackling lightning in her hands. Suddenly the whole place froze in place, dozens of eyes looking off in the distance as they received a message from the System. Yana had a feeling he knew what it would be.
ERROR....DANGEROUS AREA DETECTED
The woman, clearly the Guildmaster, came too first and hurriedly looked around.
"Get up you good-for-nothings!" She yelled, eyes now wild. The world rippled and Yana saw a hand made from black nothing slip back into a new crack in the ceiling. The mana starting to move quickly and gathering in the center of the room. The adventurers didn't seem to notice anything, but were arming up while the Guildmaster was backing away from the crack in the wall. On a direct path to the gathering mana. Yana was curious to see what happened, and didn't say anything.
"Guildmaster be careful!" Marshall yelled at her, as her foot entered the twister of power. Causing her to turn around and the twister focused on her. Suddenly sounds of cracking bones, screams of pain, and lights so bright only Yana and Pyra could look at them. They were impressed by the turn of events. As the lights faded a humanoid form was revealed. Green, with bulging muscles and sharp teeth, it was hunched in the space from being too large to fit. Yellow eyes stared around before it bellowed a roar loud enough to pop the ears as it stood up. Breaking through the wood structure and swinging out with it's black clawed hands.
Pyra and Yana had already thrown Marshall from the building before the lights faded, both of them having seen the transformation. Now they could see the whole town was covered in the black cracks and swirling mana twisters. The sky above broken wide to reveal a void with a huge white smile.
"Found you."