Sallia and I left Old Mo’s bakery a few hours later, though I felt dazed for a lot of it.

I had never seen a modern war. The closest I had ever come to experiencing a war was the conflict between the islanders and the Megailian Empire. However, if there was a war between modernized nations with gunpowder, mechanical prosthetics, and flying ships… it was obvious that the number of people, as well as the amount of destruction and death would be far higher than I was used to.

I suppressed the urge to shiver as I thought about the war.

If it had been during our previous two lives, I might have thought about whether there was any reason for the four of us to help one side. After all, the four of us could, quite easily, change the tides of battle between two stone-age villages entirely by ourselves, and even in a battle between weaker bronze-age nations, the four of us could potentially change part of the battlefield.

However, in a war between modern armies, I seriously doubted the four of us could make any impact at all. I could probably kill a dozen people using extinguish now, and Sallia could utterly crush any combatants in a close-range fight. With the four of us together, favorable terrain, and the ability to run after we started running low on essence, I was guessing that we could fight dozens, or even a hundred organized soldiers together, based on the strength of this world’s inhabitants and technology.

According to Old Mo, our nation currently fielded a professional army of close to 500,000 people, and could immediately levy more troops if needed. I couldn’t even make a dent in a small corner of a battlefield with that number of troops, and Sallia would probably run out of essence and get shot to pieces if she tried to charge such a large army.

After a few more moments of contemplation, I shook my head. The war was just too big for us to interact with safely. We were better off staying as far away from the battlefield as possible.

For now, at least, the war probably wouldn’t affect us too much. Not to mention, my own personal reasons to intervene in a war were pretty weak this time. I didn’t feel particularly close to my neighbors in this life, unlike when we had lived on the islands. I wasn’t sure if this was because of the anxiety spiral I had fallen into over the past few worlds, or if it had something to do with the culture of the slums, but either way, I didn’t care very much about this city or its inhabitants. I still didn’t want innocent people to get hurt, of course - but I also wouldn’t risk my neck in a potentially suicidal plan just to keep the people of this city safe. In other words, I didn’t feel very patriotic in this life.

If an army invaded the city, the first thing I would think about would be how to keep Felix, Sallia, Anise, and maybe my mother safe. Everyone outside of that circle would simply have to look out for themselves. I would help if an innocent person were about to get hurt and I could help them safely, but the fate of this nation as a whole didn’t bother me much.

Of course, while armies were currently a distant threat, heightened taxes and drafts were a much more notable concern. I imagined some of the people of the slums might see the army as a chance to make something of themselves, removing some potential threats from the streets. However, extra taxes, lowered army presence, and governmental control might also mean that things would grow more dangerous for Sallia and I in the near future. I simply wasn’t sure how the draft and the war would affect the situation in the slums yet. I didn’t have enough information.

I also now needed to keep an eye on the situation of the front lines. If things started to turn against our country, it would probably be a good idea to leave the city for a while. I didn’t think that our group would struggle to feed itself - my soul sense and extinguish would make hunting wild animals for food pretty easy as long as it wasn’t in the middle of winter or something.

Ultimately, I needed to be on guard against potential trouble from the gangs, potential marauding armies, and for opportunities to find and rescue Felix.

I hadn’t seen two of my friends yet, after all.

After I made my way home, I contacted Anise.

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I frowned. This was the biggest issue with rescuing Felix - none of us, including Felix, had a good idea where he was. Felix strongly suspected he was underground somewhere - but ‘underground’ didn’t really narrow down where we should be looking for him.

The only other thing Felix knew was that security in the facility he was in was high. There were armed guards stationed everywhere around his room, based on conversations he had heard from the faculty members of the facility, he wasn’t the only ‘interesting’ thing that was heavily guarded in the lab.

I sighed.

It was the best idea I had. Felix had mentioned he might be able to fire a fist-sized ball of steel into the air and make it glow by ‘altering’ it a bit… which would probably be hard for me to spot, even with my Grade-10 Perception and in the middle of the night. And it would also need Felix to be close enough to the surface that he could actually fire a ball of metal into the air, which was far from certain. The street lamps that now lined the city would definitely make it even harder to pick out a glowing ball of metal in the middle of the night. It was our best idea, but it was far from reliable.

said Anise.

I nodded. At least for now, Felix still wasn’t in danger.

It wasn’t much of a comfort, but it was something to hold on to for now.

After that, I started thinking about ways to rescue Felix again.

The biggest issue was locating Felix in the first place. I suspected that if I had a good enough information network, I could probably find Felix easily. But I was four years old. None of the adults on this planet would take me seriously. Maybe I could turn other kids into an information network, but I lacked the knowledge needed to do that - and I was worried that street urchins might not be able to locate Felix, even if I built an information network out of them. Not to mention, I lacked funds right now.

Even if Felix’s situation wasn’t urgent, I didn’t want to just keep hoping his situation didn’t get worse for years and years as I waited to grow older. At absolute most, I wanted to wait a year or two to rescue Felix - that was the maximum time I could tolerate being unable to rescue my friend. A year would give me time to build my third and fourth rune, and probably push my attunement back up to expert grade. By that point, I would match or slightly exceed my combat abilities in the world of the black sun. Even if my physical body wouldn’t be able to keep up with my previous strength, due to my lower age and weaker physical attributes, my reflexes and mental abilities would be a few grades higher, which would make my extinguishes and on-the-fly shaping far more versatile and dangerous than last life.

I sighed, before I started thinking about my third rune ability again.

I either needed a way to locate Felix, or a way to disguise my age from my third rune ability.

I asked. Both of us had set up our first two rune abilities to sense and nullify the danger of guns, meaning each of us had one rune ability left. The biggest constraint on our combat strength now was how much essence we had. I felt that meant that we should both focus on a utility ability for our third ability - and preferably, we should plan what we wanted before we made our final ability. That way we didn’t end up overlapping.

I said, thinking some more.

Unbidden, the words of the book we had found while exploring the Market last time came to mind again. The book had stated that alteration essence usually specialized in shapeshifting, illusions, trickery, and dimensional terraforming.

I mostly intended to go my own path - after all, just because most people did something didn’t mean it was the best way forward. However, that didn’t mean I wanted to wholly avoid the specialties of my primary essence, either. I just wanted to focus more on extinguish, renewal, and other abilities I could derive from my attunement.

After a few minutes of talking with Sallia about potential abilities we could form, an idea came to mind.

I couldn’t create a new, working limb out of nothing. If I knew what I was doing, I was sure it was possible - but right now, I was more likely to screw up how my organs worked and kill myself.

But what if I didn’t use alteration essence alone?

I had already noticed this last life, but alteration essence seemed especially good at messing with other magic systems.

What if, instead of just trying to shapeshift using alteration essence, I created illusions using my third rune ability, and then used alteration to make those illusions ‘permanent?’

I felt this was a potentially viable path towards shapeshifting.If I got good enough at coordinating my own abilities, I might even be able to shapeshift mid-combat, giving myself things like bear arms on the fly and then removing them once I left combat. I still intended to mostly pivot to a spellcasting role, to better suit our group’s needs - but that didn’t mean I needed to completely forego physical combat, even if I intended to let Sallia handle most direct physical confrontations.

And if I figured out this trick, I might also be able to use it on enemies mid-battle. Shapeshifting enemies into frogs or something would be a nasty surprise for enemies in the future, and ruining the muscles in an arm would be incredibly useful for enemies too hard for me to extinguish on the spot.

I quickly shared my idea with Sallia, and after some thought, I heard her chuckle through the communicator.

said Sallia.

I sent.

said Sallia, after a while.

With our plan made, we started working on our last set of rune abilities.

It was almost time to rescue Felix from his lab.