– Era of the Wastes, Cycle 218, Season of the Setting Moon, Day 12 –
Once again, Terry did not sleep as much as he should. Sadly, it was not the result of another half-conscious insight during his dreams.
No, this time it was a lot less pleasant.
Terry rubbed his eyes and sat up. After reading through the local news, his thoughts had begun to drift away from him.
If I had not fled. If I had chosen to engage the undead hellspawn…
To do what? Die? All you can do is run. Stupid delusions of grandeur. Can’t count on a dungeon to bail you out of your own incompetence another time. It’s already a miracle you survived your last bout of idiocy.
If I had bought time. If I had at least extracted one person, carried them on my back…
One person? How would you choose? An unknown stranger. Could be a backstabbing snake like Willow or Shen. Could be a harbinger of disaster like Kipkoi and Ava. Could be a monster in disguise like Anand. How would you know?
Terry sighed and got out of bed. His mind had turned into a mess. Somehow, his intrusive thoughts had become even worse than in the dungeon with the ghouly Alricks.
At least back then he had something clear to work towards. A single objective: escape. He had doubted his ability to achieve it but there had never been any question about which objective to pursue. His only opponent had been the situation he had found himself in. He only had to resist giving up.
At least back then it was not his own choice that had been haunting him. He had been free to tell his own intrusive thoughts to piss off. He had been free to embrace failure in order to succeed.
Now, it all seemed so different. Somehow, even the thoughts trying to defend Terry from himself made him feel worse. The only defense against the thoughts condemning his choice to flee were the thoughts reminding himself of his own incompetence. His choice did not matter, because he was a failure and would not have made a difference anyway.
Having to choose appeared so much more difficult than simply resisting to give up.
Embracing failure appeared so much worse when it was more than his own life at stake.
He was not even sure what success could look like when placed at the same crossroads given his own limitations.
Terry continued where he had left off the evening before. He placed his arms in front of his chest and formed knife-hands. He circulated mana into the divine hammer inscriptions at his forearms and slashed his knife-hands forward. At the end of each slash a small layer of translucent golden mana appeared to whip through the air.
Terry had never really wondered why his aunt Sigille had often swung her inscribed axe even when the target of the divine hammer was out of the axe’s reach. Now, he understood that it was an intuitive way to focus and get the timing right.
The layer of divine mana was growing bigger and thicker with each swing. The whistling sound when the divine mana was pushing air away helped Terry calm down. It helped him push the images from his nightmare away.
Whenever Terry had dreamed about fleeing from hordes of monsters before, it had been just him and the monsters. Last night, however, it was different.
When the horde of undead hellspawn appeared in his dream, his dream self had been standing in the middle of a crowd. People started screaming and running. Some bumped into Terry when he was still watching the army of monsters invade the city plaza. Eventually, he joined the fleeing crowd. He ended up overtaking all of them. Their screams never stopped until he woke up.
Terry wanted to distract himself until the memories from the dream faded away. He knew that the best way to do that was to keep himself busy. His eyes quickly wandered to confirm the time on the clock on the bedside table. There were still a few hours before his job interview in the morning. Perhaps he could squeeze in a run through the sky and some more physical exercise before then…
***
Terry glanced at his notes to confirm the address.
Should be the right place.
He put the note away and circled around the location of the supposed job interview. He was deliberately early. First, because he preferred waiting over letting others wait. Second, because he was still wary of rookie traps and he wanted to scout the area before agreeing to accept the mission. His family had warned him that rookie traps could come in many forms.
The most common trap was a mission that was impossible to achieve from the beginning. That seemed unlikely to be the case since the job did not list any specific criteria aside from acting as a guard and payment was by day of employment. There was no clawback of payments either.
A more pernicious form of a rookie trap was one that lured the Guildhead into an ambush. Again, that seemed unlikely given that the place was in the middle of the city and its entrance was wide open.
There were only three points that stood out to Terry and made him somewhat wary.
First, the entrance being open was weird for a place that requires a guard.
Second, there were no mana signatures matching flora, so he was unsure what the guard duty was about.
Third, the building itself.
Even though the building was quite large, Terry’s mana touch could not feel anything resembling a greenhouse or large garden. Furthermore, aside from the open main entrance, there appeared to be several hidden entrances. Those were reached through tunnels from several other locations inside the city.
Terry was not sure what to make of it, but his wariness did not go so far as to miss out on a job that would allow him to train while working and that perfectly aligned with his schedule. Inside the building, he did not sense any mana signature he would consider a serious threat. In fact, there were even manaless folks inside.
A shade of purple layered over his mana sight and Terry had to shake his head to get rid of it. He still did not know what to make of the extra layer of color in his sight. It seemed to follow all living beings he could see, even the manaless ones. Sometimes, he also caught a trace of purple from himself, only for it to vanish while the remaining purple shapes remained.
While definitely intriguing, it was mostly annoying since he had neither figured out how to prevent it from popping up nor what it signified.
Perhaps I’m just going mad.
“Not helping,” muttered Terry to himself. He spread out his mana and continued observing what was going on around this potential employer. Right on time, he walked up a few steps and stepped through the main entrance.
When Terry was inside, he was greeted by the examining gaze of a tall-grown human woman whose black mane of hair was sprinkled with a few strains of grey. The shoulder-less dress revealed visible muscle definition on her arms and it was evident that she was a mana user. The woman had stepped into the reception hall from another room at the same time as Terry.
“I appreciate punctuality.” The woman smiled and walked towards a comfortable looking armchair in which she sat down before resting her gaze on Terry again. “Please, come in.”
Terry stepped into the reception hall but chose to remain standing near the door. “I’m here because of the job posted at the Guild.”
The woman chortled, which made Terry uncomfortable. He had held no intention of saying something funny.
“I could tell,” said the woman. “Not many regular guests at this time of the day. The Guild told me there might be someone coming over soon. I assume you are Terry?”
“Yes.” Terry did not enjoy being under the ongoing scrutiny of the woman’s examining gaze. It reminded him of his days in Arcana Academy, and not the good ones. After a moment of silence, he was getting impatient. “No one shared your name with me. This is the place for the Flower Protector mission?”
The woman raised an eyebrow and then chortled slightly again. “There is no one in this city that does not know this place or my name, so I take it you are new here, Terry. Yes, you are in the right place. I posted that mission. I’m Jasmine.”
“Lady Jasmine.” Terry nodded as a greeting. The woman appeared older than him as well as a potential employer. Even though he was not enjoying her gaze or the idea of a job interview, he reminded himself to be polite.
“You can drop the ‘Lady’, although I appreciate the respectful attitude.” Jasmine smiled slightly wider than before. “There are a few people with less amicable attitudes towards my establishment.” Seeing Terry scrunch up his face in mild confusion caused her to chortle again. “Hard to believe, I know, right?”
Once again, Terry felt like he had missed the joke. He shrugged inwardly and let Jasmine continue.
“With the influx of refugees, we also receive guests that are not familiar with our customs or others that are attempting to steal. That’s where the Flower Protector comes in.” Jasmine gestured towards him.
“So all that is expected of me is to hang around here and make sure no one is causing any trouble?” asked Terry.
“Basically, yes.” Jasmine nodded before her voice turned more serious. “And there will be trouble makers. Always are. It’s generally nothing we couldn’t handle, but sometimes our mana users are busy elsewhere and even when we’re all here, it is not good for business to be known for unwanted interruptions. We need a deterrent and someone that can handle themselves. We have our trump cards, but those are for emergencies and we need something more visible.”
Terry frowned slightly at the certainty in her voice when she declared that there would be trouble.
“You’re not really manaless are you?” asked Jasmine. “Well hidden.” She rang a bell. A well-dressed and richly ornamented elven woman with high cheek bones entered the hall with a tray of tea she placed in front of Jasmine. The elf glanced at Terry and then caught Jasmine’s gaze before shaking her head. She left as quickly as she had arrived and never lost her aloof expression.
“Well hidden,” repeated Jasmine. “Not even Lavender can detect any mana and her mana sight is even better than mine. Why do you want this job?”
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“I need money to get through the portal and this job fits into my schedule,” said Terry matter-of-factly.
Jasmine nodded along with the first half but raised an eyebrow at the second. “‘Fits your schedule’? That’s something I’ve never heard before. Most Guildheads complain about the hours. If money is what you’re looking for, then why don’t you take one of the more lucrative missions like dungeon work?”
“I plan to, which is why this job is perfect to fit into my schedule,” replied Terry nonchalantly. “I can go hunting or dungeon diving early in the morning and then come here, or reserve the quota-limited missions for free days.”
Jasmine searched Terry’s gaze. “Confident, aren’t you?”
Terry shrugged. He did not feel like explaining his past experiences. He was not sure if this was considered confidence. He was simply sure that he knew his limits. He had experienced them first hand in the folded space. He would not make the mistake of overestimating himself when it came to mission work.
“Could you undo your mana cloaking, please?” requested Jasmine. “I would like to see what makes you so confident.”
Terry tightened the grip on his mana and prevented the concealment necklace from absorbing it. Even without the necklace, not a single speck of mana leaked out. He had completely mastered the first stage of mana cloaking. Even the second stage of cloaking that consisted of blending into the ambient was no problem for him, except when it came to mimicking other mana aspects.
That was what the concealment necklace was for.
Although admittedly, he was mostly using it as a perpetual mana regeneration training device.
Terry lifted his hands and then let go of his mana cloaking. He flared his mana in a brief burst and then immediately constricted his mana and prevented leaking anything beyond the ambient mana density. He only did it for an instant to avoid drawing attention from outside.
Jasmine was staring with her mouth slightly agape. While she was stunned to speechlessness, another woman was rushing into the reception hall with flared mana. The tall woman had even more visible muscle definition than Jasmine and her sun-tanned skin was covered completely in tattoos.
Not tattoos. Body inscriptions. Terry noted the mana in the ink decorating the woman’s skin.
“What’s going on?” The latest arrival had her fists raised and gave the stink eye to Terry.
Her appearance jolted Jasmine from her daze. “Nothing, Iris. He only did as I had asked.”
“Another man looking for ‘work’, huh?” Iris glared at Terry.
“Not like the ones before,” assured Jasmine. When Iris’s face betrayed her skepticism, she added: “He did not even know my name.”
“What kind of…?” Iris stared at Terry with a different expression.
Once again, Terry felt like he was missing something. He was tired of it. “Are there any more questions? If this isn’t working out, I would like to use my time elsewhere.”
His attitude rubbed Iris the wrong way. “Hey, now look, what makes you think that—?”
“Iris, since you’re here, why don’t you join Lavender and Daisy so that we can put our candidate to the test.” Jasmine interrupted Iris before she could fly into an argument. She rang another bell.
The aloof elf from before reappeared and brought a young human woman that was completely manaless with her. The new arrival looked delicate and almost fragile.
“You have my attention, Terry.” Jasmine stood up from her seat. “But I still need to see that you can actually put that mana to use. See Daisy over there? We are going to be troubling her and it is your job to ensure that no harm comes to her.”
Terry furrowed his brow. He understood that they wanted to test him, but why like this? He looked at the young woman with her fragile appearance. The woman smiled amicably at him and even gave a little wave. It appeared that she was not worried about any harm coming her way from the others in the first place.
Wouldn’t a test in the garden be more appropriate? Spotting people trying to steal the flowers or something. Proving I can fight without interfering with the environment the plants require?
His accepted father had often talked about how difficult it could be to raise healing herbs and other magical plants. He was wondering why they left such important aspects out of the test.
Perhaps later?
One step at a time.
Focus.
Lavender pulled a stiletto dagger from somewhere underneath her lavish dress, but before she had a chance to even pretend a stabbing motion, the dagger was ripped from her hands by the invisible attraction force of Terry’s bidirectional attraction glove.
Iris dashed forth to grab a hold of Daisy, but quickly found one of her belt buckles transfixed and stuck in place. Before she had any chance to understand what had happened, sturdy layers of divine mana appeared all around her.
An additional divine barrier appeared to separate Daisy from the others.
Iris’s body inscriptions flared up and she attempted to break through her cage of divine barriers while a very basic arcane bolt spell structure was shaped in Lavender’s hands.
Terry caught the stiletto dagger while his mana detection field compressed and rotated into instantly created focus refractors. His mana flared up and Lavender’s spell structure collapsed even before he finished his disruption field build-up. The mana suppression alone was enough to interrupt her casting concentration.
Not used to being in actual combat.
Terry’s eyes drifted over to the muscular women with tattoos that appeared to handle the pressure better. A part of him was curious if her body inscriptions would allow her to break through the divine barriers, but he was getting tired of this examination. He enjoyed a friendly spar, but he felt like he had outgrown opponents at that level and did not want to waste his time.
“Is this enough?” asked Terry and presented the stiletto dagger. He held the gaze of his potential employer.
“I appreciate that you were thoughtful enough to not only focus on the attackers, but also to provide a shield for Daisy as well. Now do it without that glove or golden mana,” demanded Jasmine. “And please return Lavender’s dagger.”
Terry released the hold on the divine mana and when the translucent golden barriers had vanished, he hurled the stiletto dagger blunt-side first near the aloof elf where it transfixed in the air for her to pick up. He was still standing close to the entrance. He had not moved a step from his original position.
In the next round, Terry used a burst technique to arrive in front of Daisy before the two others had any chance to do anything. With his back turned to her, he did not notice the slight blush on Daisy’s face.
“Use this.” Jasmine threw a wand to Lavender.
Terry recognized the imprint in the wand before Lavender had even caught it. “Even if she managed to ignite it, Ice Spike won’t get past me.” There was not a sliver of doubt in his voice.
“Wait.” Jasmine raised an eyebrow and challenged Terry. “What if you were not in front of her?”
Terry realized that Jasmine did not catch what he had done to Iris’s belt buckle earlier. He walked back to the entrance and gestured for them to continue.
Jasmine frowned slightly and added another instruction for Lavender. “Aim for the wall.”
Terry did not care about the lack of trust in his words. On the contrary, he was glad that his potential employer actually showed concern for the manaless woman that had acted as the damsel in distress before.
He allowed Lavender to use the wand and then transfixed the ice spike before it managed to fly more than a few centimeters from the wand itself.
The elven woman did not stop at a single try and ignited all the available spell primers as quickly as she managed, but every successive ice spike was neatly transfixed around the same distance away from her.
The act of compressing his detection field into spell structures upon contact had become almost automatic for Terry. There was no chance for the aloof elf to breach his protective mana bubble.
When the last primer was ignited, three throwing knives joined the assault on the wall from the direction of Jasmine. Her knives were transfixed in the air not far from her hand while Terry had his eyes on the other wand and wall.
“Not bad,” exclaimed Jasmine. Her tone seemed a lot lighter than earlier. “What if it’s a non-corporeal spell?”
Terry raised his chin towards Lavender. “She can try with her Arcana Bolt.” His eyes did not linger long enough on Jasmine to see her appreciative nod at the correct identification of Lavender’s earlier spell. He allowed the spell to be ignited but before the purple lance could make it far, he rotated his mana bubble and a wall of disrupting spell slicers shredded the weak attack spell.
“That’s the weirdest disruption discharge I’ve ever seen,” remarked Iris with mouth agape.
“Most effective,” added Jasmine with praising eyes and she let her gaze wander over her participants. Daisy’s eyes had long been staring starry-eyed. Lavender was still not showing much of an expression, but she nodded slightly. Only Iris still looked unsatisfied.
“All nice and good, but can he actually fight?” demanded Iris. “He hasn’t attacked at all.”
“The best warriors don’t have to,” said Jasmine firmly and pointed with her eyes at Terry’s equipment. “That’s not the outfit of a pencil pusher and his reactions have passed my muster. You can test him more if he’ll agree to it, but I think I can already prepare the contract.” She moved towards a reception desk in a corner.
“Welcome, Terry!” Daisy beamed at him. “Thank you for protecting us!”
Lavender nodded and then retreated to her room.
“Mate, I hope you’re as tough as you’re acting.” Iris slapped him on the shoulder and then left the hall together with Daisy.
Protecting ‘us’? The mission was in the bodyguard section but it sounded more like guarding a garden.
Terry wrinkled his forehead in thought. While his mind was replaying the whole scene since his arrival to search for what he had missed, he walked towards the reception counter.
Flower Protector… Jasmine. Lavender. Iris. Daisy. Wait, are they all named after flowers?
He glanced at Jasmine who was preparing the contract to be certified by a notary from the Guild.
As long as I get paid, who cares?
Terry shrugged inwardly and then his eyes drifted around the rest of the room. There were a bunch of weird titles written behind the reception desk. He did not understand any of them, but then he recognized a familiar title.
Inverted Phoenix.
Wait, wasn’t that…?
In the folded space, Apex had asked him for cultivation manuals related to the primordial magic beast known as the phoenix. Among the many jade tokens and written booklets that Terry had offered, there was also one with that exact title. He had never looked into it. He had only offered it because of the ‘phoenix’ in the title and the only reason he still remembered it was that Apex had nearly bitten his head off.
Terry looked more closely at what was written on the wall. Thanks to his mana-enhanced eyes, he did not have to step closer. Underneath the ‘Inverted Phoenix’ title was a strange symbol…
Wait…
He tilted his head and furrowed his brow. The gestalt of the strange ‘symbol’ suddenly emerged and jumped on Terry. It was not a symbol, but a drawing. A drawing of two people. Two people intertwined and with their heads buried in each other’s crotches.
Oh well…
Terry puffed up his cheeks. He knew that he had missed something before. Instead of focusing on the present, his thoughts involuntarily drifted back to the situation with Apex and his face cramped up.
No wonder she blew up...
He did not know if he should break out in a laugh or in a cold sweat when remembering the whole exchange with the martialist and her explosive temper.
“If you’re having second thoughts, then now would be a good time to share.” Jasmine’s voice jolted him from his thoughts.
“No,” replied Terry absentmindedly. Why would I? “This job fits my schedule perfectly.” He was already mentally going over how he might fit another job into his waking hours if he could push most of his training and experiments into the hours he had to hang around here.
Jasmine slid over the contract for Terry to read but kept her finger on the contract to give another warning: “From everything you have said, I take it that you don’t sleep much. That’s your own business, not mine. However, I expect you to be ready for the job when you are here. I may run this house but it belongs to all of us. I care about every person living underneath this roof. I will not tolerate a protector we can’t count on. Don’t dare to come here sleep-deprived! If I ever see you bottomed out and devoid of mana, then you can look for another job!”
“Fair.” Terry nodded and read over the contract carefully, still wary of rookie traps. “Not very detailed.” Beyond the hours, the contract barely stated more than for him to ensure a safe environment for the people living in the building.
“Intentionally so.” Jasmine put on a pair of long silk gloves. “I’ve had enough amateur lawyers trying to weasel out of specific rules by strictly sticking to the letter instead of the spirit of the task.”
Terry could not blame her. He had his fair share of experiences with twisting words and having them twisted for him.
“I have found it works better to focus on the main point and keep things flexible.” Jasmine was rummaging through a drawer while searching through something. “Same reason why I prefer day-by-day contracts. If we discover that we have different interpretations of something this basic, then that is that.”
She pulled a small pouch out of the drawer and looked at Terry. “In my eyes, it’s simple. Our flowers deserve to be respected and that’s non-negotiable. They decide where their lines are and who has overstepped. Your job is to make sure no one ever forgets that as well as to protect everyone’s possessions.”
She moved towards the main entrance. “All the more complicated parts are handled by me. Now, if you agree, we can directly go to the Guild and you can start tomorrow. It’s fine if you need more time to think it over, but I’ll have an appointment to keep before lunch.”
***