Arge was washed out with the flood in his shadow. It wasn’t like there was one shadow, but ‘Tingere Tenebris’ in that situation only let him get into the shadow. With the massive force of the water and the shifting shadows of the light passing through the tornadoes of water, he could only sit in the shadow he pulled himself into and try to nurse his wounds. He was swept out of the city on the massive waves before the oncoming water had spread out far enough to lose most of its force over the plains. He pulled himself out of his shadow on the plains groaning. Since the shadow was in full light, it was only held together by his unique magic so it faded in the sun when Arge flopped out of it. Arge was breathing heavily.
“That damn pilosa, I just wanted a new friend.”
Arge laughed out loud with abandon. Was he serious?
“I planned to dive straight into him and use ‘Ground Anchor’ to slam my body down on him and use that as a platform to spring off and start running if things went south. I wasn’t expecting that tongue…”
He deserved it though, he thought. He just couldn’t help being like this, it made him happy. Aleppo wasn’t an easy city to live in, and he had his share of hard times. He didn’t expect pity. Let him fail when he failed, let him die when someone got the best of him. That didn’t happen today, but he was spent. He checked his identification crystal in his glove. It was a deep red, by not crimson. A skin of the teeth victory by escape. That felt like the life he was living, and so he looked up and-
Is that an army?
====
===
I woke up and felt the identification crystal. Apparently I got hit by ‘Carpe Scaenam’ and its black after that. I tried to get up and felt bound by something tight and small. I looked up and saw the cityscape spread out before me, huge tornado waves were flooding down the streets and a brown hairy dragon was shooting around moving groups of people on its back to open roofs without domes.
“What.”
I was baffled. That color was definitely Timothy’s but was he really a dragon all this time? To think he has the long snout even in dragon form, it's really not a very dragon-like dragon after all. He was a action figure sized flying around the other side of the city in a hurry, looks like there’s no way to signal him from here. I felt the books stuffed under my sheet. I was sick of this sheet. I was not going to make the same mistake with squirrel tail girl. I turned and she was bound up like me, silvery loops close to the skin. On my other side was Slo with a happy face. Maybe I should just go back to sleep, this is too much for me. I knew I said I was a hard worker, but thats at running away and loss of consciousness sounds like a good idea. I was on a flat roof with two girls, all three of us were tied up and there didn’t look like a way down. Maybe I could jump to the next building…
I’m being too much again. This might be harder than I thought. Oh well, for now, I have that identification crystal in my hand. Earlier, I got it to change to yellow by forcing energy flow into it, so it's not like it would kill me if I put in as much as possible right?
=====
Cosimo in his ignorance and the results of his tragic life of putting too much effort where it wasn’t needed could have caused his end right here by magical overload. Normally there’s a cut off safety built into it but casting it directly with no spell in mind. It was a common rookie mistake that killed many people far too eager just to play with the identification crystal and just see if they could change the color. Like Cosimo did. Which is why the book was sold for a cheap price and the very first page was images depicting the death of a ignorant rookie adventurer who just wanted to charge the identification crystal like it was a battery. However, he had another ability thanks to the power selection program being poor quality. The second part of the list of abilities when he was talking to the Japanese God was ‘pick 2’ and the first part of the list of choices for abilities was ‘pick 1’. The technology startup had a mixup with the language they were using in outsourcing the code so the whole thing just became ‘pick 2’ and the whole power description part ended up getting cut due to time restraints.
The Japanese God back then said ‘oh so you want your first ability to be ‘Average’?’ and that was the first selection. Voice confirmation was a popular feature that was added by a programmer who was too gung ho at his job, it happens.
The second was ‘Mediocre’.
If Cosimo knew this he could have chosen two of the first part abilities which were supposed to be worth two lesser abilities, but the sad truth was that the technology startup had just scrambled all the powers and put them on the page randomly because it took enough time as is to make up the powers and their limitations and ways of use. In Cosimo’s favor, however, and he got two strong cheat abilities.
‘Average’ doesn’t sound like much of a ability at all though. When Cosimo finally gets time to learn how to check his status, he’ll be quite surprised at what it does. The sole reason he was able to keep up with Arge a experienced fighter and assassin no problem running in the city without losing breath was because of it. The sole reason why he wasn’t about to kill himself because of ignorance was because of it.
‘Average’ was the ability to remain at a certain specified value for a certain amount of time. It’s limitations were that the value had to be an average value. An average value was what you considered an average person’s value to be, and the length of time was how much you thought an average person could last.
Specially for Cosimo, it was actually a much stronger ability since he considered average people to be high worth. An average person would have abandoned his sister, so in his mind, just thinking that way actually allowed him to put in far more energy than the real average person ever could. Moreover, his energy wouldn’t drop at all because ‘Average’ would keep him in the same condition never expending energy. However, if he ever exceeded that time limit which he had not tested, it would be like he didn’t have that ability at all, and would just be himself. Charging his identification crystal past that certain time limit would drain his stamina like a normal person.
======
I went for the gold and just kept charging it. Raw energy from me flowing into it, until a point where-
“Unique magic mastered! ‘Charge Flow’”
Sounded off in his head.
Was that the identification crystal? It didn’t sound like it was rumbling from the pit of his stomach like Timothy’s voice, just a thought in his head.
He just kept charging. This has got to be doing something right.
“Unique magic mastered! ‘Mediocre Force’!”
“What.”
I said out loud for the second time as I was lying there on the ground. On second thought, couldn’t I just roll around and try to find something to cut the wires on? Damn it, I always have to take the hard way. It’s a little late though, so I mimicked Slo and said,
“Mediocre Force!”
Nothing happened.
I started struggling against the bonds to see if I got any stronger. I began to tug and roll and put all my strength into it. It felt like I wasn’t getting any tired at all, just what was that about? I kept a constant pressure and focused into my muscles and then I thought ‘I wish these wires were weaker’. Do you want to make them mediocre? Popped into my mind. That was a yes, just like last time with Xana’s corpse. That time I thought I was mediocre, maybe it takes direct contact like before? A dim light surrounded the wire I was touching and it felt like a wet noodle. I pushed against it and it still wasn’t good enough, as I thought I wish I had more strength in my hands I thought about using ‘Mediocre Force’. Energy charged into the muscles of my hands and they sudden snapped the already weakened wire like a toothpick.
“Guess that’s how it works, focus on the muscles then trigger the unique magic…”
I easily snapped the other wires off with my hands only, I didn’t even need to use ‘Mediocre’. As soon as I was free I went to pull out those damn books to get some idea of how to use my abilities but squirrel tail girl starts spinning off. She’s awake! I jumped up and stood there watching her massive ponytail swinging round and round like a top before she slammed into the end of the roof.
“Agu!”
It seemed like it hurt. She’s trouble. I know that but, I can’t leave her here. She might be able to cast ‘Carpe Scaenam’ again though. I sat back down and ignored her. I’m not making the same mistake as before. All around me the city was flooding with massive waves, Timothy was probably a dragon right now saving lives, and the girl that knocked me out with some weird spell was groaning in a corner. I needed to read this picture book, and I needed to read it now. I opened the book with the identification crystal picture on it to the middle and started skimming the pages.
“Hi.”
I ignored her.
“I’m sorry about earlier. I’ve got a dagger in my pocket. Cut me free so I can fly away. There’s a dragon flying around it looks dangerous. This is the second time I met one so I’m scared. Hey? Are you listening.”
Those eyes with bags under them stared at me with little light and matched her monotone voice. I focused on the book, seems identification crystals can be used at any merchant across the world. I needed to find the- ‘second time’?- no, ignore her. This will end badly for the second time, even if she’s telling the truth I can’t be trying to save someone again. The whole city is drowning in water after all, I spent my life on one to one service you know?
“My name’s Aeschyli. I’ve got a tragic past. You remember the assassin thing I said down there. I’m not lying. It's bad. I have no friends. I’m hungry. I’m on the run from a noble. It's really exciting. I can’t tell you my dark past at all if you don’t introduce yourself.”
You already did didn’t you? She’s good at getting attention. I stood up and shut my book.
“You don’t remember my name already?”
“You’re Cosimo. My energy is low. I can’t cast anymore. I’ll die. I’ll really die. I only talk a little if I’m about to die. Save me.”
I grimaced at her. Did I learn nothing from my dream? Sorry about this Slo. I charged my muscles across my body with ‘Mediocre Force’ and snapped the wires off her. Arge why did you do it to an ally too? I hefted her over my shoulder and jumped a little. The rush of air of was exciting as I easily flew up a couple meters.
“Woah. That looks fun. That’s great. You’re not leaving me right. I swear I’ll repay it somehow. Is marriage and two children good. Just snap these wires. I didn’t know you were so strong.”
I turned around easily handling the small girl on my shoulder as a practice weight. With this, I can at least leave.
“Actually back then I could have used a really powerful ability on you. It might have done something worse than kill you, so I didn’t want to do that. I’m not trying to hurt you, but it looks like you’re high enough here so you’ll be fine.”
I looked down and checked the waves gushing force and people sticking their heads out just watching it cover street after street.
“Plus, I think that dragon is the pilosa you tried to steal and my best friend right now. He might be mad at you for what you did to him. I can’t trust you either, I’m sorry but lets part here.”
I was really saying that to convince myself more than her. I felt like a bad person but there’s no way it's the right choice to bring her with me. I leaped to the next building and the next, before groaning and turning around at the sound I heard.
=====
Aeschyli was lying there like a pig in a blanket. She grew up in a noble- No, her backstory isn’t in this act. Anyways, There are really tough people in this world who can stand on the level of dragons. If you had to say what the smartest, most dangerous, most crafty being in this world were then it would be them. Even among the common people they would whisper,
“Hey, aren’t dragons raising taxes to fill their mountain hoards with more gold?”
“I hear they can take human form.”
“That's pilosawash, there’s no magic like that!”
However, Aeschyli met one, and for once it wasn’t a lie or deceit. In this world there are rankings corresponding to level. You could only level so much. That was already decided from birth. For people like Aeschyli who had a one point identification crystal, they were able to master far more complex unique magic. Often they could pick and choose highly advanced abilities with many functions. Just being rated a one point identification crystal from your status check didn’t mean much if you didn’t apply yourself, but those who had both could go far.
Aeschyli’s stage magic was hard to deal with due to the seven different abilities she could summon from seven different boxes, and her favorite skill which surpassed mental magic but unfortunately lost its power quickly or if she passed out and had only a single target. Beyond that, the ‘Act 2’ and ‘Act 3 Curtain Calling~!’ which were high risk high reward spells. In addition she learned Parry Arts out of sheer fear during fencing lessons as a child in her dad’s hose. It was because of ‘Act 3 Curtain Calling~!’ and her Parry Arts combined, being able to use an enhanced ‘Sixth Open Rosa Lingua’ to summon a dagger. Parry Arts alone can bring one hundred percent defense if she has something in her hand wielded as a weapon. With an ‘Act 3 Curtain Call~! Sixth Open Rosa Lingua’ dagger she had offense with every trigger of Parry Arts. Although she won’t last long at all due to her naturally low endurance especially under the stress of ‘Act 3 Curtain Calling~!’, she managed to put on an act long enough for the dragon to pull back with the impression that she could actually win against him. This had nothing to do with her being pursued though, that was just her family trying to kill her. She had no problem dealing with dragons. So when Cosimo said the dragon and slash or pilosa might kill her, she wasn’t intimidated at all. This was important because she had made the call earlier that Cosimo was clearly the perfect mark to mooch off of. From the start, she had a good sense for story and drama, but with the way he was acting it was obvious. Although he didn’t look like much, he had a nice pilosa. After many, many nights freezing in the cold surviving only with the summon produced by her ‘Fifth Open, Glande” a well trained pilosa was a gold mine. Since Cosimo already proved easy to deal with, she wouldn’t need to steal it at all. For Aeschyli that was great, because the first thing he ever stole was the pilosa and she felt horrible about it. She had already forgotten about the punch because of this, or she was blinded by greed for having a soft pilosa to sleep on. Either way, her life would improve by leaps and bounds from here on.
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“Dazzling the stage! Flutter! Curtain Open~!”
She saw Cosimo turning and grumbling. Just as planned. There’s no way he’ll stop her if she follows by herself. Her eyes filled with light, this high energy mood was reserved for the stage.
“Gobo Contract, 3rd Open, Celer Flos”
She shot up into the air then forward looking like a tube shooting through the sky with the shining circle above her head and the seven boxes trailing behind. The third one was cracked open and a steel like plate unfurled like a flag and fit onto the circle above her head. This one was just a flower and only made her flying speed faster.
She banked in the air and quickly used another two, neither switched out her plate on the light sphere..
“6th Open, Rosa Lingua”
A dagger shot out and she caught angled it to cut through each one of the wires. This was a strange use of Parry Arts because ‘wielding as a weapon’ also counted if you just summoned it. That saved her life at least three times before. Then finally-
“5th Double Open, Glande”
Two acorns the size of her fist popped out and she handed one to Cosimo while she took a bite of hers and gave him a high energy look.
Cosimo took the damn acorn and leaped away carrying Slo.
Her 6th and 5th boxes had closed with a slient ‘Curtain Call~! 5th, 6th!’ in her mind. Naturally it took away her own energy to cast it that way but the look on Cosimo’s face made her think she was on thin ice.
=====
Cosimo couldn’t find a place to cross to the other size of the raging flood. Streets on either side were far too wide, both having their own river expanding out from the city center. There was no way even with his new ability he could jump that far. Taking a look, he could either head towards the city center or head toward the wall and hope there was some stairs to the top somewhere. Aeschyli was silently floating nearby with a positive look munching on a acorn.
There wasn’t any guard towers at all though. He remembered what Timothy said, that it was more of an art piece that a real defensive wall. These people wanted this place to last. No matter what happened, it didn’t look like this was getting cleaned up anytime soon but at least it was just water. He looked at the massive alabaster landscape. It’d take an army to destroy this place.
Timothy was helping people. If that was Timothy. He’d rather wait for him to confirm at this point. He looked down at the flood and wondered if he could do anything. While he did say he would run away, that he was doing too much, if there was a proper time to pitch in this would be it. Aeschyli probably isn’t going to attack him again. He looked at the acorn. Not eating it.
He tucked it in the back with his books and was at loss for what to do.
“Something wrong? I can help you know.”
Aeschyli broke the silence. Cosimo believed she was holding back so he inadvertently praised her in his mind.
“Can we, uh, I want to help this,” he gestured out to the city, “thing somehow.”
“The Adventurer’s Guild.”
“Oh, right. I don’t know where it is from here and it looks difficult to get anywhere though, “ he gestured toward the flood.
“I can fly you. I think.”
“You’re not dropping me in the water right?”
“Nope. I can boost my abilities after all, I’ve got one that can slow your descent even if I did drop you.”
“Well, okay. You know, I’m sorry about punching you earlier and pinning you to the ground.”
“I apologize for the surprise ‘Carpe Scaenam’”
Cosimo suddenly felt like she was a normal person after all. Maybe this could work out.
She grabbed him by the back of the neck.
“Hold on.”
He went to grab her hand but she flew back a meter at full speed.
Cosimo began to think she didn’t like being touched. He had to be more careful. There wasn’t a change in her expression at all, so he didn’t know if that was the case.
“Did you think I was going to carry you princess style?”
“Um, let's just head to the city center.”
Aeschyli didn’t know why he said that at all.
=======
Timothy was going full blast with the shapeshift. It really had been a while, he only used ‘Form of Dragon’ when he was in a pissed mood trying to blow off steam. The reasoning being that he might cause a panic in the local humans who were terrified enough of dragons as is, although now they were going to know for sure. He didn’t know that the dragon he was shapeshifted as looked quite like a pilosa in the first place, and this would actually end up helping him later due to his efforts now. Those who had proper unique magics or healing magics were being shuttled to and fro with Timothy making full use of ‘Soul Communication’ and ‘Drudic Force’ to keep people on his back even though he was racing at breakneck speeds. He also didn’t think about how much he was using his tongue to board people on his back and scoop out people who were trapped by the flood. With those with water magic helping direct the flow away from buildings, those with healing magic taking care of the wounded, those with flying playing at Timothy’s role, things were running smoothly. Adventurer’s were using their Arts and unique magic to search out and rescue people trapped in the boats that were surfed into buildings by the flood. Some who were specialized in search magic to a much higher extent than Slo were helping that effort. The high traffic of speech and the constant communication Timothy was doing became a flurry of ‘Grab the hair’, ‘Yes I am helping you’, ‘Yes it's the dragon talking to you’. He got a few ‘what kind of dragon looks like a pilosa’ and he just answered ‘me?’. When asked his name, he gave out ‘a passing friendly dragon’. There was a chorus of thank yous and well wishing as Timothy’s magic, speed, and communication was making the difference. People were also using sigil creations in the form of birds to carry messages to the other hotspots along the roofline and the higher buildings. It got around the mayor was missing and his residence was underwater. They feared the worst, although he was regarded as a blowhard the general opinion was that he handled the diplomatic job that no one wanted. Stuck in the middle, a rich border town near quarries and a huge plains with lots of food and luxury goods trafficking in and out and on one side a city-state with huge naval power and the other a powerhouse nation that lacked nothing and had a competitive culture. Timothy didn’t see much looting. Although there might have been plenty of thief types around everyone seemed united by the scale of the disaster.
“If only it was like this at home.”
He was mulling. His people were not great at organizing for any effort really. It was a slow, disconnected and introspective life. Maybe because the humans were always in fear of other humans and there were so many trying hard to kill each other in their own cities that they were able to better respond to a crisis. To think that maybe because the Order led such peaceful lives that they perished, it upset him greatly. Of course, he had also passed along word that there was an army on it’s way. He happened to see it when he burst through a cloud on an excited passenger’s request and caught a glimmer off a shield by chance with his enhanced vision. Seems they were using a river and a small grove as cover when coming from the mountain pass. He was amazed that such a large group could get this far unnoticed, even over a mountain?
That was another reason why the mayor’s disappearance was a problem. If there was anyone who knew the current political situation or could manage to arrange a proper surrender it was him. The lower ward politicians were all generally just the most popular person in the neighborhood and had no skill in politics.
“Should I try to find the mayor? No, even those who have that kind of spell seem to be having trouble, maybe I’ll just fly them around to see if they pick anything up.”
Timothy asked around and was greeted by smiles. After all, he was pretty much bearing supplies and people with expertise no matter which camp he went to due to ‘Drudic Force’ he could ferry quite a lot at once, and boats were fairly useless.
“This is probably my fault somehow too. It’s too ridiculous to believe, if I ask around they might just blame me though without getting to the truth. These people seem nice, but I’d rather not use ‘Soul Communication’ on a human again if I can avoid it.”
That could wait until later. It hadn’t really sunk into his heart yet that maybe he caused a major disaster by acting out. He wasn’t in the right state of mind though, he thought.
The ‘Human Detection’ unique magic users were usually leading groups spread out across the city. They were sending sigil birds to a main communication hub, Timothy dropped the rest of his supplies deactivating the ‘Druidic Force’ on his tail.
An old man greeted him warmly.
“Find the mayor? We just got a bird saying he’s at the Dunkirk Embassy. Seemed he went there right before the flood. Suspicious timing too, but if he’s going to do any good he’s right where he needs to be. Say could you go help-”
=======
Baqashot, the mayor of Aleppo, was taken prisoner as soon as he stepped on Dun Embassy grounds. Dun was really waiting for news from Dunkirk to decide what to do. He knew that just ordering the execution right here was only going to bring trouble if things went south, as they often did with the border towns. Marscione was difficult to conquer precisely because you had to to deal politically with the border towns and military invasion from the sea was too expensive and land invasion was just considered useless. In Grunkirk, the Dunkirk military faction was a collection of nobles collecting around the area nearby the mountain range that sealed off the Marscione plains. Really, the only use for maintaining military power there was to stop the border towns from invading. However, since they all were pretty much just full of monster hunters, adventurer’s, miners, farmers, and the upper crust with the luxury dealers there wasn’t much of a military force. Since Marscione was busy building an amazing mercenary navy to protect their trade routes, there was constant pressure from all the Dunkirk nobles to gain more rights to the border towns land. Of course, Marscione had to respond to support their buffer cites and this was all made worse by the rest of Grunkirk just not caring at all because the sea trade routes were profitable enough.
This was why Dun needed Baqashot alive. If the invasion gets sour and Marscione responds seriously, Baqashot was the perfect ‘It’s alright’ signal. The sea trade wouldn’t get disrupted with Grunkirk. However, if Dunkirk managed to succeed then it would be a question of right to rule and claiming the land with money. If there was anyone who could make this a legitimate claim so Marscione would have to back off, it was Baqashot.
Basically in the end the only value in killing Baqashot would be all out war.
Which Dun wanted.
But he couldn’t kill Baqashot before the invasion, then he was just an inciter and would be everyone’s enemy. He couldn’t kill Baqashot after as it would just be the Dunkirk conquering and razing the ground. It had to be in the chaos of the war, where Baqashot looked like a total failure and Dunkirk was just propping up the state and inviting Marscione to share. Of course, Marscione would have to just agree that Dunkirk had won and to accept whatever they dictated. The next step would be all out war.
So when he heard there was a massive flood, he was happy because now Baqashot looked like an idiot, but he was sad that it wasn’t happening when Dunkirk was at the walls. At this point, they would be the saviors of Aleppo and Marscione would now have to accept that Aleppo was already lost to them.
Therefore, no all out war.
Dun was going through the options.
“Can we kill him yet?”
A stiff guard was waiting for an order near Dun who was fatly ensconced in a grand chair at the head of a long table.
“No, not yet.”
“Can we torture him?
“No? Just be quiet.”
Dun sighed exaggeratedly. He liked putting on little dramatic acts for himself, it made him feel like the star of the show. He wasn’t the star of the show, yet, he thought.
“I can’t think of anything really. Aleppo is done and the army was already spotted, the power struggle will be brief, I guess the only way-”
He struck his hand down. He got it. A once in a lifetime gambit to start a intra-national war.
“I need that bastard’s help.”
The guard had to chime in at this.
“Should I get ‘im then?”
“Yes, yes.”
He shooed him away with a wave.
Dun had no idea what to say, so he stared at the ceiling and let everything pull together. Mysterious flood. Dragon. Dunkirk Army. Politics.
There was only one role Baqashot could play, it was just convincing him of he dastardly plan.
Baqashot was trudged in with alcohol in his hands. They figured it might help to let him have it anyways.
“Whatever it is,” he gestured with his finger, “I’ll do it.”
And so it was that Baqashot giving into Dun without a fight turned what would have been a bloodless war due to a flood into forcing Marscione to defend Aleppo.