“You’re a damn, fucking clever clogs.”

“What are you talking about?” Max wasn’t too sure if it was a compliment. After a few games, Max still ended up in a draw with Delrid. 2-2. They were due for a rematch if he ever had another riddle. As Max followed Haiddeck through the village, it was quickly becoming apparent there was tension in the air. Probably from a considerable number of community members suddenly going missing with Edric.

“You fucking keeping up with Delrid! Ever since I popped out of my mother’s cunt, I’ve never managed to get fucking close to winning against her.”

Max cringed from the vulgar description. “Can’t you cool it with the swears?”

He had expected Haiddeck to erupt into even more swears and make a scene in front of the village. Instead, Max got a slight shrug. “Yeah yeah, just don’t hold me back when I’m in front of the fucking Elders. Damn ancient pricks.”

“…That’s not much better.”

Haiddeck didn’t pay any attention to his words, since his gaze was fixed on two Elder’s talking near them. “Why’s the prick Elder with the old bag of bones?” The kid might have a potty mouth, but his judgement of others seemed solid.

“I don’t know. Should we go to them? I need to see both of them anyway.”

“Hang on.” Haiddeck suddenly stuck out his arm in front of Max, so he wouldn’t move any further. “Cunts grouped together spell trouble. A fucker like you should-”

“Elder Ji-min is motioning for us to come.”

“…Ah, fuck. That’s not good.”

Max endured the heavy glare of Elder Aris and the welcoming smile of Elder Ji-min. “Morning.”

“What the fuck did you do?” Elder Aris’s voice was aggressive.

“I don’t know. What the fuck did I do?” It wasn’t difficult for Max to assume he was talking about Edric and the sudden disappearance of a few of their people.

“What did he do?” Elder Ji-min asked as well, confused. “Are you talking about Elder Edric?” Elder Aris’s heavy glare turned towards his fellow Elder. “What does Max have to do with him?”

“You can’t be seriously suggesting it’s just a coincidence Elder Edric decided to go to the capital the day after this one gets in? And with over three hundred people? All with different mentors?” Three hundred? He rounded them up by himself? Edric wasn’t kidding about making a base for them.

“Elder Edric had been planning this trip for a while. You know this.”

Haiddeck whispered to Max, “I’m gonna die before these bitches are done. Smell ya later.”

When the youth tried to sneak away, Elder Aris suddenly barked at him. “Haiddeck! You have training now. Get to the field.”

Haiddeck didn’t hesitate to flip the bird towards the Elders before continuing his short walk back home in the opposite direction of the field. Max couldn’t help admiring him. He may be an unruly brat, but he had a good head on his shoulders. Max could see Elder Aris trying to decide where to focus his angry energy, the young kid or the outsider. The outsider won. “So, what did you do?”

“Nothing! You can ask Darius if-”

“Shut it.” Elder Aris appeared to have changed his mind as he started after Haiddeck. “Get those curses on him, Elder Ji-min,” he called out before leaving.

Elder Ji-min gave him a gentle wave in reply before opening the cabin door to his own home. Just peeking inside, Max could see a dingy, dark corridor filled with discarded items. It was similar to his chair during the interview; dark and filled with junk. The smell made him reluctant to approach. “Come in, come in,” Elder Ji-min said pleasantly, as he gestured for Max to enter the corridor first.

“Thanks,” Max stepped into the corridor when he suddenly felt a chill. The air was cold. Until now, he had little doubt that the cabins and rooms were scattered across the area, but the real location of this place must’ve been somewhere cold.

“Right this way,” Elder Ji-min hobbled along, as his dazzling clothes dragged over the dirty floor. The junk made Max concerned if the Elder was going to slip and break his neck. “Please excuse the mess. I’ve never been into cleaning.”

“That’s alright.”

“Maybe it could be a job for you.” Elder Ji-min turned to give him a cheeky wink. It was like a grandpa trying to con his grandkid into mowing the lawn. “I’ll give you 60 gaeles for it.”

Stingy by Tsujuma’s standards, but better than Bessie's rate. “I’ll think about it. Darius brought up the idea of me getting a second job. It sounded like he had something in mind,” Max gave as an excuse.

Elder Ji-min replied with an approving nod. “A busy life is good for calming a disturbed mind.” Disturbed?

The old man opened a door to a large, cold room, which was just as cluttered. He gestured for Max to try and sit on a sofa covered with books and scrolls. It took him a second to make a spot, but the cushions were alarmingly bumpy. Have they ever been washed? In the meantime, Elder Ji-min pulled out a series of orbs. Each orb had a different colour with the light inside either releasing a steady glow or was like lightning trapped in glass. They were spells. Max instinctively rolled up his sleeves.

“You don’t need to do that, Max. We just need to place them right in front of you for twenty minutes.”

“Wouldn’t direct contact be faster and ensure proper transfer?” Max was confused. Surely, they would know this by now.

“I know, but this gives us a chance to have a proper chat.” Elder Ji-min sat across from him on a mound of paper. There was an excited grin on his face. “It’s been a long time since I got to talk to a high-class Nnita.” High-class? Must be a new term Edric cooked up in this world. Max would’ve been surprised at the relationship between Elders if it weren’t for the files he read last night. “Elder Edric warned me to be respectful towards you. You must be one of their top dogs, huh?”

There was no prompt or penalty deterring him from talking directly about his past and the system. Darius was just unlucky the system had it out for him. “That’s one way to put it,” Max reached out for one of the orbs to put on his skin for a few seconds as the spell transferred over to him. It was disobeying Elder Ji-min’s instructions, but Max didn’t want to be blasted by the other Elders for not completing this process properly. Elder Ji-min didn’t voice any complaints either.

“Then how would you put it?”

“Eh… I’m just a former farm hand.”

“Who, in another life, hunted down and tagged all of the Nnita on a world?”

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

Edric had been unexpectedly frank with Elder Ji-min. Although Max had seen the term ‘Ally’ written on his file, their short talk on the balcony left the impression that the Elders hadn’t been so close. “To be fair, that wasn’t my idea… the tagging part anyway.”

“But hunting them down?”

“Exactly how much do you know about us?” Max reached for the next orb as Elder Ji-min just answered with a polite smile. “You know the basics, right? We wake up, get blasted with story prompts until one is activated, are pressured into completing the story with various conditions and expectations thrown on top, before either completing it or dying. That’s it. That’s our lifecycle in every world.”

“You seem angry with the process.”

Angry? It wasn’t quite the term he would use. “It’s meaningless after a while. So, a few of us got together and began colluding on the different worlds. As we grew in numbers, we began distributing jobs to carry out every time we woke up in a new world. When we started getting reliable results, we began mass recruitment drives... or hunting them down as you called it. More members meant more people we can use. Originally, our theory was if we could complete a five-stars, we might get some kind of information about the system.”

“Elder Edric did tell me about that,” Elder Ji-min was clearly pleased with Max’s openness. “He was very proud of your passing rate for the others in your organisation.”

Max didn’t like the term organisation either. The ones who had faith held it a little too strongly in their hearts. “But we were wrong. When I finished the five-stars, nothing changed. Nothing changed in the next life either with Ellie.”

For the first time in their conversation, Elder Ji-min looked surprised. “She was real?”

“She is real. I thought Darius told you about her in his report?” Max asked.

“Your kind is usually sensitive about your past lives. I assumed you asked Darius to fudge the paperwork for you. He had done it before for other Nnita.” So, Elder Ji-min and Elder Darius had been aware of the others added by Edric from the start.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you letting in other people like me? Elder Aris might be a git, but he is right. The best way to protect your people from us would be to keep us away as much as possible.”

Elder Ji-min paused before answering, like he was evaluating how much to say. It was a little offensive. Max was being incredibly forthcoming so far. “Perhaps you’re right about Elder Aris’s stance when it comes to common Nnita. But you are not common, are you? And neither is Elder Edric. Maybe we could take down one or two common Nnita like we did with Niv. It would be a completely different story if someone like you decided to make us your enemy.”

“…So, you’re playing along to avoid becoming my enemy? Why did you throw me in jail then?”

“Although it was Elder Aris’s idea, Elder Edric thought it was a good decision. I’m playing along to get protection, improved technology, teachings of rare types of magic, and new ideas and philosophical stances from Elder Edric. We could live in the dark ages, and be scared of the idea that you foreigners are going to kill us for a story one day. Or we can offer to help an established alliance and fall under their protection.”

“If that’s the case, why keep Elder Aris as an Elder? He’s clearly against this philosophy.”

Elder Ji-min's face scrunched up a little. It would've been intimidating if it weren't for the wrinkles obscuring most of his features. “Because if we were to become enemies, he and the other Elders would be our best shot at buying enough time for our people to run and hide. Also, he is good at teaching musical theory to the children.” Musical theory? He didn’t seem the type. Elder Ji-min seemed slightly grumpier as he took away the empty orbs. “I won’t delude myself into thinking we can take you on and win like some of the other Elders, but maybe some could survive if we tried.”

The words moved Max a little. This wasn’t the first time that their secret had been spread enough to cause fear to the native inhabitants. It must be terrifying to know your life can be ripped apart by someone under the cold orders of a system.

“Good.” Max said flatly, as he unrolled his sleeves. “None of our kind will be entering this domain while I’m here, and before I leave, I’ll teach Darius how to draw a few of my runes… Including how to make a distress call to Edric if more of our kind tried to enter your community.”

Elder Ji-min dropped an orb causing it to shatter against the floor. “What are you talking about? Elder Edric isn’t coming back after his business trip?”

“No? He’s not coming back.”

“And the others with him? I know some are working under him, but the others need to be brought back home.”

Max frowned. “They’re all working under him?”

“They’re all Nnita?” Elder Ji-min was beginning to sway causing Max to jump up in case the elder fell. He wasn’t going to get pinned for murder while they had curses constraining him. Luckily, Elder Ji-min caught himself on his desk. “How in the hell were they all Nnita?” Max shrugged. “Some of them had been here longer than him?”

“They must’ve gotten here before him.” Max tried to be reassuring with his words. “But they’re all gone now.”

“All?”

“Well apart from me, I guess.”

“And you can protect us if other Nnita attacked?”

Max wasn’t too sure about how to answer. Ordinarily, he could. But with the limitations of his innate magic requiring him to use prepared outside sources… Not to mention the story prompts, which could get in his way... It was more difficult to say. “I can call Edric to come back. It only takes a few runes on something with an adequate amount of magic.”

His words seemed to somewhat reassure the hyperventilating man. “Then why don’t you write it down now,” he began thrusting enchanted parchment papers in Max’s direction. “They’re not connected to one of Elder Nova’s books, so write what you need.”

Story Name:

Teacher! Teacher?

Genre:

Dystopian

Description:

A utopian, magic community starts to show its cracks as the MC gets more involved.

Goal:

Tear down Tsujuma.

Difficulty:

★★★★★

How to Start:

Try to teach people how to use rune magic!

Suspicious, Max took one of the sheets before stuffing it in his pocket. Elder Ji-min looked confused. “I can’t risk other people learning how to write runes. Come on, you need to sit down.” Max took the time to empty a chair from a stack of documents before he laced the seat with paper since it felt sticky. With some help, the shaken elder sat down. “I’ll keep the materials on me, and it’ll be quick for me to write it… At the moment, I’m not in the process of completing a story for the system.”

Elder Ji-min looked confused before it clearly clicked into place. “You’re fateless.”

Max nodded before starting to pick up some of the pieces of broken glass on the floor. The last time he talked to an old geezer, the mayor had been a selfish and deluded individual that thought he was special for pleasing the system. Elder Ji-min clearly cared a lot for the community he dedicated his life to. The sudden vulnerability must be unbearable.

“Unlike Edric, I haven’t completed my story yet, so the system still has some control over my actions. But, so far, there has been enough wiggle room for me to avoid various prompts… I can’t promise you nothing will happen while I’m in your community. However, I can assure you I will try to use my limited options to avoid disrupting life here.”

The elder was silent for a minute as he watched Max kneeling next to the broken glass and picking it up. “Little Cyrus-” Max glanced up from the glass with irritation clearly on his face. “Cyrus,” he corrected himself, “is a victim of that system of yours.”

“I know.”

“…Can you do anything to change that?”

“I can donate the funds I have for his next treatment.”

“I doubt Elder Charaka can do much more though.”

“I’m surprised he managed to prolong his life for such a long time,” Max agreed. It truly was amazing and made it clear why he deserved the title of Elder like the others.

“So, can’t you do anything more… permanent to help?”

Cy’s prompt was nauseating as it flashed as a warning in his vision. “Not at the moment. I can’t cure him with a certain prompt in the way… But prompts change, maybe with time I can do something.”

“You can’t cure him…” There was defeat in his voice. Kneeling on the floor, Max hadn’t felt so powerless for a while. “Does that mean you can’t treat him either?”

In a second, he felt his power come back. “That’s the wiggle room. I can help treat him if he has another heart attack, but I can’t stop them altogether.”

The answer seemed to have relaxed the elder significantly, who was now smiling once again. “Please stay by his side until we can fix this mess. Cyrus doesn’t deserve to suffer because we were doubtful about a prediction made by a little boy, who wanted to go home.”

Max replied with his own smile before seeing his reflection in the broken glass. For a fleeting moment, someone else’s reflection was looking back at him. It made him shiver. This house really was too cold.

Max heard some shuffling before looking up to see a re-energised Elder Ji-min carrying a new stack of papers.

“Since you’re going to be staying, there’s a few more forms for you to sign.”

“How can there be even more paperwork?”

“There is never enough paperwork.”