“That’s my seat, mage,” A man’s hand grabbed onto Arthur’s shoulder.
Arthur looked over his shoulder at the man. He was only average height, but he looked like he was from the cast of some Shaw Brothers film. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, but just a bolt of cloth tied as a belt around his waist, shorts, and shoes. His muscles were lightly oiled, and his skin had been tattooed, a snake on one arm, a tiger on another, and a crane on his chest.
“I’m just trying to have a drink, there’s other seats over there,” Arthur responded, his metal hand waving towards a table with four stools around it. His voice was touched by annoyance.
Minerva sighed, and sipped from her cup.
“I think you misunderstand, mage. I am a practitioner of spirit arts, you are but a mage. You should show deference to your betters.” The man was sneering down his nose as he looked at Arthur.
Arthur rolled his eyes. He knew if he didn’t do something this guy would pick a fight with him. Spirior arts held a natural advantage over magic. It wasn’t an insurmountable one, but it was a clear and present one. Of course, spirit arts practitioners were rare, less than 1 in a 1000 people had the capability. It made them typically rather arrogant.
“I do.” Arthur paused, taking another drink from his bottle. “My betters show basic civility, though.” His voice didn’t bother to try and hide the contempt
The man reached for the back of Arthur’s neck, trying to grab the collar of his shirt, only to hit his territory armor.
“Mage. You should know your place,” the man fumed, pulling back an arm.
“Arthur, couldn’t we have just moved?” Minerva asked, looking up towards Arthur.
He was moving to one side, letting the spirior enhanced punch slide past his head and release a burst of destructive force past him into the bottles of alcohol. “That didn’t help last time,” Arthur said as he smacked the man in the face with his bottle.
He’d noticed that more than a few of the spirit arts practitioners took his magical power as a sort of challenge as well. Well unless he was wearing some body spray that attracted them which he didn’t know about. He wasn’t even trying to complete the 50 bar fights bounty, and in the last 2 months of traveling across Elentear he’d gotten it more than 10% completed.
The man’s spirior flowed through his tattoos, the tattoo of a snake rising up from him in a three dimensional form. The giant snake lunged for Arthur, only to have its mouth filled with the beer bottle in his hand, and then his metal prosthesis struck the snake’s head, grabbing its snout. “Shining Finger!” Arthur shouted, light pouring into the snake’s head. The man wasn’t skilled enough to make the most of its resistance to magic. There was no automatic resurrection effect and the snake fell.
Then he struck at the man with his palm, his territory magic exploding in his palm to send the man flying out of the swinging tavern door behind him. 7 bar fights down.
Except the man rose to his feet, his finger pointing at Arthur. “Guards, he struck me! Take him out!”
Several large men began to push into the tavern. Arthur didn’t feel magical power from them, but he knew not to underestimate non-mages in this world too much. They could be swordsmen to give Erza pause, with physical abilities which were in - what he still thought of as - the real world absolutely superhuman.
Minerva was a blur as she moved, almost as fast as, if not faster than, Sawyer when using his slow magic. Her palm hit a man in the gut, and while the White Tiger Dragon’s speed didn’t translate into force in a normal manner, it was still hard enough to double him over when he absolutely wasn’t prepared for it. Jiemma’s hand to hand combat training was being put to good use. While faster in a straight line than Sawyer’s slow magic, Minerva couldn’t change direction well while using it, but it didn’t stop her from using it to launch herself up into the air, and letting the magic end so she could bring her foot down on another man’s head, before a roar sent the two more guards entering the tavern flying back out.
One guard was still standing in the tavern, and one had stopped before entering it. Arthur was moving forward now, though. His kimono flapped around him, his wooden sandals hitting the ground in an almost hypnotic rhythm. He unsheathed his sword in a single, swift, flowing strike and cut through the guard in the tavern. Not a drop of blood was spilled though the blade had passed straight through him, and the man fell screaming before going silent and still.
The Mifune Robe and its accompanying sword, didn’t offer much in traditional armor. It was a traveler’s kimono, black with a pattern of camellia flowers in white across it. It had an obi, a pair of wooden sandals, and put his hair up in a topknot that it inevitably would burst due to his agreement to retain a distinctive hair style. It came with a pair of katana and wakizashi, completing the traditional ronin look.
Well one could say it came with them, though their existence could be questioned. The unreal swords were illusionary weapons. Merely projections of magic, they had no physical substance cutting through physical objects without touching them, and interacting on a psychical level as they pierced into the mind. The man he cut wasn’t injured, but until his mind overcame the illusion of the blade his perceptions told him quite clearly he had been severed in half. And his partner, despite executing an impressive block with his polearm, fell to the ground almost certainly convinced his head had been removed from his body.
It was, however, useless against creatures composed of spirit arts; instead they disrupted the blade completely forcing Arthur to reform it. Which meant that the remainder of the man’s tattoos which he had projected outwards in the form of pseudo-summons weren’t going down to the sword.
Given he’d manifested a spider as well as the crane and tiger, he seemed to have a fourth tattoo somewhere on his body. Minerva was already dealing with the tiger though, a palm strike up from beneath its jaw forced it onto its hind legs and she followed through with another to the chest a territory explosion forming and exploding point blank against it. Territory’s basic hand to hand offensive technique - nihility where you wrapped your body in your space and used it as a bludgeon or a blade - didn’t affect spirior constructs, but a shaped explosion could still add a lot of bang to your punch and as the explosion was not itself magic merely caused by it it’d take them out just fine.
Arthur went for the man himself. He weaved around the crane. It might be made from spirit arts but it didn’t seem immune to his illusions completely; the mifune robe defended the wearer by projecting images of them. Arthur himself couldn’t see him, but - according to his Archive and Minerva - depending upon the amount of magical energy he put into the robe others would see 3 to 5 of him, each composed of 3 to 5 overlapping images of him. The images would pass over each other as well, meaning that while it was possible for a target to figure out which one was real, it was like trying to fight a shell game.
Of course it was a mental effect; a strong enough mind could resist it. Spirit arts users were therefore likely to be resistant; Arthur had learned that at least the common belief was that where magic drew from emotion, it was spiritual and mental discipline which empowered spirit arts. Arthur couldn’t say whether it was true or not, but the users did tend to be hard headed at least. This one, though, did not see through his illusions as was clear when he struck one and then another to no effect, buying Arthur time to get close and plunge his sword down into the man’s skull.
The man fell, and his spider - the only manifested beast that Minerva hadn’t finished fighting - disappeared in an instant. Arthur would have considered it a bit harsh, forcing the man to experience the trauma of his own violent death and then existing as a lingering spirit in his corpse, unable to move, but still able to perceive the slow ebbing feeling of warmth leaving his lifeless body, but the guy hadn’t held back from blowing a hole in the building with an attack intended for Arthur or telling armed guards to “take him out”. You use lethal force, and you can’t complain at what force your enemy uses in retaliation.
People began to cheer and clap, though one man approached. “You’d better go. That was the governor’s son. He’ll hear what happened and he won’t let it go easy.”
“I’ve got another,” Arthur opened a screen from his Archive. “Six and a half hours then I’ll be on my way.”
“That’s plenty of time for the governor to gather his forces. And when he hears you killed his son, he’ll want vengeance.”
“I-I didn’t kill him, he’ll be fine once I end the illusion,” Arthur knew better than to let it run its course, leaving them in a death coma for 3 days would risk brain damage and possibly death. “Wait… Are all of you cheering that I killed someone?”
Arthur soon learned that while the governor was considered alright, his son was considered an arrogant, self-important bully who would have people arrested or beaten for the most minor of disrespect, slights, or even just on a whim.
It was after returning to the bar and ordering another bottle of milk, that Arthur was approached by a man in his fifties. He looked to be in his sixties at least, but it was just a matter of a harder life; like Earthland Elentear was closer to the modern era in a lot of ways than the medieval period, but it still didn’t have the level of quality of life one saw in 1st world countries on Earth.
“Please, sir mage, would you please save my daughter, please?” He pleaded.
“Save your daughter from what? Look. I’m not a wandering hero. I’m here to do a job and drink some milk. I’m not here to pick fights, save damsels, or anything other than to do my job.” Elentear was dangerous; Arthur had no desire to risk his life picking fights with spirit arts users. They tended to be pretty bloodthirsty as well.
“Please, sir mage, please at least hear me out.” The man was beginning to cry, tears running down his face.
Arthur sighed. He could at least hear the man out. He could use some spending money if the man was willing to pay. And should try and set a more heroic example for Minerva than he was. “Alright, tell me your problem.”
It took a while to hear him out. The man was not the most to the point, plenty of tangents, apologies for imposing, random statements of ‘please’, and various other little asides. The story he gathered was that the man’s ‘beautiful daughter’ was abducted by the ‘demon of the cursed forest’. And that she was still seen occasionally by those who had to go near that ‘cursed and haunted place’, viewed through the trees but never leaving and often the ‘demon of the cursed forest’ would come to pull her back into the shadows.
Arthur felt bad about the idea of a woman held by a ‘demon’. But he clamped down a bit on his heart. He couldn’t be everywhere. He was already trying to deal with something bigger than this all. He was already feeling burnt out from his attempts to train with Minerva, find Altaface, and figure out how to use his Takeover magic on his dragon seed directly instead of simply choking it out with his demon-nature and then pulling back his demon nature. It’d been weeks sense he left Selene’s moon temple, and despite that bounty hanging over head asking him to relax for a week, he’d not really had a day off. He felt half-numb, and more than a little irate at the world in general. It made it easier to look away, and ignore the Spider-Man on his shoulder telling that his power gave him the responsibility to help people since only he could help them how he could. On his other shoulder was his personal Leto II, pointing out that he had great power and it came with great responsibility to help people since only he could help them how he could, and that meant looking at the larger picture, the path that needed to be trod, not risking his life to save individuals when he had a larger responsibility. Death was light as a feather. Duty was heavier than a mountain.
“So, please, sir mage, would you, please, help save my daughter? Your honorable self is the only one who can, please, save her. I am begging you, revered one, please go and save her.”
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Arthur couldn’t help but notice that the man hadn’t once offered a reward. He seemed to be simply expecting Arthur to risk his life to help him on the sheer hope he’d found a hero. The man had also given no useful information on the demon of the woods and what his powers were. Arthur didn’t even know if it was really a demon, or a mage, or a spirit arts user, or something else.
“Tell me about the demon. Why do you think I can beat it? Why doesn’t the magistrate do something about it?”
The man began to babble. The only useful information that Arthur got was that the man was a big, green, humanoid, and that they could control the forest. The description was interspersed with “So will you help me?” an “Please, sir, you need to help me, please.” These interruptions would force Arthur to once again demand more information.
“So why don’t you go to the governor?” Arthur really knew little to nothing about the local government. He’d been using Enif and Territory Magic to travel all across Elentear for 2 months.
“He won’t help us,” the man said, looking down and aside. “He…”
“Has arrived. And what will he not help you with?” A man said walking into the tavern. It wasn’t the governor, but one of his men, the governor entering behind his squad of guards. The governor was richly dressed, wearing silks, and a collection of magical tools - or spiritual ones as his Archive identified them thus. There was one that was magical, though. He was past his prime, a bit of a gut having formed with age; Arthur suspected he was nearly sixty, but he was definitely more in shape and fit than the man groveling at Arthur’s feet. He’d been a warrior once, Arthur could tell that.
“My daughter,” the man said with a hint of fear.
The governor looked at him, and then towards Arthur. Arthur’s territory armor was raised. His pure magic let it work somewhat against spirit arts; it rivaled their purity.
“I hear you taught my son a lesson,” the governor said. “I cannot say I appreciate an outsider beating my son, but I am not deaf to the stories of his… excesses.”
Arthur’s fingers were moving like a gunslinger’s ready to go for the fast draw. He didn’t exactly trust this governor who had surrounded him with a group of guards. “He tried to attack me. I defended myself.”
“Yes, I see, traveler,” the governor said. “I believe my subject here is giving you a wrong idea about me.” He looked at the man. “I have tried to deal with the demon of the forest. It killed two of my best men, and nearly killed my son. I hear you and your daughter however made a complete fool of my son and his servants.” Arthur had to wonder about the governor. Minerva was 14 - Arthur had apparently missed her birthday having never been told when it was until it was two weeks past it - and he was in a body that was maybe 21. Little sister would have made some sense, though they lacked any family resemblance. “As such, I would like to hire you both to kill the demon of the forest, and destroy its curse upon our woods.”
Arthur was stunned. He’d been expecting an attack of some sort. That the man was going to try and avenge his son’s dishonor. “Tell me about the demon,” Arthur said. “And the pay.” He had the feeling he was going to accept the job. But his Archive magic had identified that the governor was wearing a silver key as a necklace; if he was going to go fight a ‘demon’, he was going to try and get a key out of it.
Arthur considered the information he had available to him. The demon wanted the man’s daughter. He didn’t know why, but the demon had reacted hostilely to any attempt to contact her, and while he’d reacted hostilely in every encounter anyone had had with it, he only sometimes came if you entered the forest, and seemed to actively watch the girl. He had stopped one of her early attempts to leave the forest as well. So Arthur surmised the demon wanted to keep her there for some reason.
The plants of the forest had grown strange and twisted since the demon’s coming, and would move to its command. It used something that was neither magic nor spirit art, able to resist spirit arts as magic could not but not composed of spirior or overcoming magic as spirit arts did. Given Gray’s Demon Slayer Magic could overcome spirit arts’ type advantage over magic, that lent credence to it being a curse and thus an actual demon. Besides, his Archive told him the forest was dripping with Curse Power. Not at the level of Seilah, or even Jackal, but it was there.
So the demon of the forest was, hopefully, a demon. And if it was a demon he could take it over.
It had also been seen outside of the forest on certain occasions. It had managed to alter and control the plants outside as well, using some plant based magic. But it hadn’t done so with the scale, ease, or power as in the forest. Partially probably because there were fewer large plants, but Arthur suspected it had seeded the forest with its curse power given the mutation of plant life.
Arthur sent Equulus and Altair into the forest as scouts. It was so much easier to summon them here. The sheer magic of Elentear provided most of the power of maintaining them without ever touching his reserves. Caelum was standing ready in firing position. And Arthur could feel himself ready to open further gates; he could have summoned every key he possessed without a hint of effort. The governor was shocked that he had wanted the useless trinket he had found; Celestial Spirit Magic simply wasn’t known in this world.
Equulus quickly ran back from the forest. The weiner dog-like horse was ultimately no warrior. The plants had noticed him, attacked, and sent him fleeing. Enif could be summoned, his speed vastly outclassed Equulus’s, and he could fight the plants; but Arthur would prefer not to risk Enif suffering enough damage to force his gate closed at the moment.
Equulus had just been a test of the defenses and dangers anyway. Altair had been the one looking for the cottages and huts which had stood in the forest. Only one remained in the writhing, overgrown mass of demon plants which was the forest now. Overgrown with twisted vines, Altair was - unfortunately - unable to get too close to the building.
Finding it was enough. Arthur was wary of simply extending his space over the forest, but with the image to focus on he was willing to seed it in front of the cottage.
Arthur was immediately attacked by the demonically infused plants upon his arrival. Massive, spiked vines whipped out towards him, slamming against his territory armor. He twisted his moonsilver hand, each finger releasing a blade of light which cut through the vines.
A tree lashed out at him, a massive limb swinging down towards him. His territory explosion splintered the tree limb, and he kicked the door of the cottage open. The woman was a dark haired beauty, Arthur would have to admit that. She wasn’t particularly curvy by the standards of Fairy Tail, but she had an elegant grace which was rare even here, one which the bits of dough on her hands and apron couldn’t ruin.
She screamed when the door splintered towards her. She was in the middle of rolling out bread, though now she was brandishing her rolling pin. “You can’t be here. He’ll come to destroy you. You have to leave now!” She said hurriedly.
“I’m here to rescue you,” Arthur stated.
“You can’t. Just leave me here. If you take me he’ll kill again,” She said. Vines were reaching in, envenomed thorns dripping with their cursed toxins. They crawled across Arthur’s limbs, scraping against that spatial barrier around him.
“I’ll stop him,” Arthur stated, silver-gold flames bursting across the vines crawling on him. He was far from mastering Moon Dragon Slayer Magic, but with the help of the hand he was capable of invoking it.
“How did you even get here?” She asked.
Arthur stepped towards her, grabbing her arm and teleporting them both back out of the forest. “I teleported,” Arthur stated.
“Take me back!” She screamed. “You don’t understand what you’re doing!” She struck at him, flailing and slapping.
“Then explain it to me. Why shouldn’t I remove you? The demon will come out, and the battle will be easier than fighting him in the forest.”
“You mustn’t kill him!” She screamed.
“Why?”
“He’s my husband,” She said. Arthur arched an eyebrow. He’d not been informed she was married. And then she began her tail. She had been involved with her childhood friend, the two planning to wed as soon as they could get parental approval. But her beauty had attracted the governor’s son’s attention. He wanted her and tried to force her into a relationship. When she refused, he’d had her lover beaten, and left for dead in the woods, and then proceeded to begin to apply pressure and coercion further. She’d been ready to break when the demon of the forest had emerged and attacked. It had abducted her, only for her to realize it was her fiance, but he was changed.
He had become half plant, his flesh covered in mossy growth, hardened, woody claws tipping his arms, vines writhed around his feet. He was taller, bigger, but he was still her lover. Only he wasn’t completely. He had his moments of lucidity, at least when he was close to her. But he was driven. He’d taken the forest as his territory, killing anyone who intruded. She had grown to realize that her presence helped him retain what little humanity he had left, occasionally being the man she’d loved once more when around her. But he was dangerously protective of her, and she was terrified that he was going to completely be consumed now that he was rampaging at her theft.
She was openly sobbing and crying by the end, tears running down her cheeks. Arthur couldn’t look her in the face. “How did he become a plant demon?” Arthur asked.
She turned her head up towards him. “What?”
“If we know how he became a demon, maybe we can fix it and turn him human again.”
“... I… He talked about a plant pod where he’d been left. It reached for him. Dragged him in. And…”
“Kii!” Altair screeched and thunder roared. The demon of the cursed forest had been struck by Altair’s lightning. Anticlimactically he had fallen.
Arthur was at his side in a moment and approaching. He looked almost like a moss covered tree, his body coated in a green, moss-like substance, bark covering his flesh. His head was small compared to his body, woody ‘vines’ reaching into the base of his spine. Leaves had covered his face in a green mask, but now the leaves were burning from the lightning strike. Wooden talons stretched from the man’s hands, and roots dangled around the wooden boots that covered his legs. It was as if he was wearing a full suit of arboreal powered armor.
As Arthur approached the ground erupted, plants rising up towards him. Again Arthur let those moonlight flames burst forth, lashing out and scorching the plants. The hand did a lot of the work, but he was still learning. Selene had been true to her word; she was teaching him, even if she had chosen a rather hands off method of doing it.
The question was who or what was controlling the plants. Arthur leaned down, planting a hand on the floral carapace which covered the man, and reached out with his takeover magic. He had to remove his territory armor - with an expanse of pseudo-space between them creating an artificial distance it was hard to truly touch something - and it proved something of a mistake as a thorn grew, piercing straight through his hand between the bones.
It didn’t stop him, though. His takeover magic was flowing out and through it. And soon the arboreal carapace was pulling back from the man’s body. The vines at the base of his neck, really the roots of the parasitic plant-demon, slowly pulling out. The man had never truly been the demon. He had been a source of fuel, his rage and hatred for the governor’s son, and the people of the town which had allowed the corruption, had been used to feed it with a constant supply of curse power.
Arthur’s hand burned with its venom, lines of purple flowing up through his body. He used his takeover magic to embrace the chaos soul, taking on the aspect and power of his black sword, black spreading across his flesh as his limbs grew long and spindly, his fingers horrific talons, his teeth jutting into fangs, as his eyes reddened and the 8 arrows of chaos formed on his chest.
And then he consumed the demon body and soul. His claw plunged into the plant, each talon piercing it beginning to suck away at its life force. He tugged it up and pulled it to his mouth, biting into the demon, and ripping off a chunk. His Archive was recording, the demon’s mind copying into it.
Even as he consumed its soul, his arm was burning, pain searing through his flesh, as the poison crept upwards. He mixed in the plant-demon’s own power, changing his body further, making his form begin to lignify, flesh growing woody as he mixed demonic forms. He’d have to stay in this floral form for a time to let the poison run its course. And that would make things difficult with the town in terror of the demon of the woods.
He took the man back to his self-declared wife, and Minerva, and explained the situation.
Arthur took the man, and his lover, back to Selene’s moon temple for medical treatment. There was no Acnologia to fear here, he was able to extend his territory wantonly over the continent. Arthur was able to make an antidote as well, curing himself so that he could return and collect his payment.
It was somewhat troubling to realize that the plant-demon had been a true etherious; that is a creation of Living Magic and not a natural creature. Its information was limited, but its creator was a member of the Shadow’s Foot Sect. The news was enough to make the governor go pale with fright. They were a sect of Spirit Arts users known for their assassinations. The greatest of the unlawful sects in the archipelago. Arthur had too many other things on his plate to deal with. He could only juggle so many issues. Acnologia and Edolas were simply bigger; and he owed it to Diabolos, he didn’t owe anything here.
He did pause to give a spiel about how he would be back to see that the governor’s corrupt son had actually stood trial for his crimes. It was probably a lie, he suspected the man, and his lover, would rather relocate. But the threat would, hopefully, get some useful result. Even if not, hopefully the experience of his illusory death would have taught him a lesson.