Pulling Mia on my shoulders, I glared at Treia.
“Do not shackle me to a bed again. I will not hesitate to take that as a sign of war. I will repay it in turn-”
Treia covered my mouth with her hand in a panic, looking around warily. “Do not say that out in public, you! People would getthe wrong idea!” she hissed in a low tone.
Mia snickered from my shoulders and I hit her hand, causing her to yelp. “Don’t laugh. You let her. You betrayed me, you pint-sized Dragon.”
“It’s a bit terrifying that you can deduce the meaning of words just from my current emotional state,” I muttered, eyeing the brown tail that flashed at the edge of my vision. “And I’m still struggling with the fact that Leah has a damned girlfriend. Yes, I see you trying to hide in the corner over there, Char.”
A yelp answered my suspicions and her head poked out from the corner with a meek look on her face. “Uh… I’m pretty sure you weren’t discharged.”
I rolled my eyes. “I discharge myself. I’m a damned Pri- er, Jason. I run this place, damn it.”
Treia gave me a skeptical look. “Since when?”
“Since I’m the strongest person here,” I snorted.
Char frowned. “I’d bet on Leah. I’ve seen her strength.”
I let my jaw click ominously. “Would you like to bet on that?”
She looked at my jaw curiously before realizing that I’d asked a question. “Probably, to be honest. I’ve never actually seen you fight. Fairly at least. The only time I saw you do anything was when you blew up the Juggernaut. And a few hundred other things.”
I shrugged. “I’m starting to get why people don’t like Runes now, Treia.”
She shrugged also. “They’re missing out.”
I poked her spine. “Says the person who gave up after a Light Rune went wrong. Don’t try to seem on my side, you idiot Princess.”
Char looked between me and Treia, trying to deduce something. Before she could say anything back, Treia poked my horn. I poked her cheek. Eventually, it devolved into a poking war as Leah walked out of a hallway.
She stared at us for about ten seconds before shaking her head and poking my horn from behind. Mia poked her nose, causing her to flinch in surprise. Before this could go down the rabbit hole, the mother of the Tree walked into the room, both Treia and I freezing mid-poke, looking at her flat expression as our fingers pushed into one another’s cheeks.
“Enough of that, you two,” she snapped, walking between us and pushing us apart. “One, Jason-” I looked meekly up at her as she held out her hand. I sighed and pulled out all of my current Runescripts from my Bag and handed the stack of them to her. “-Enough Runes for now. And Treia, you should’ve been back out on the field yesterday.”
Treia gave her mother an annoyed look and gestured at me weakly.
“Mhm. You both have double-time now. Jason for being an idiot and you for ignoring orders, which is also idiotic,” she said in an annoyed tone. “And now that I’m done with commanding-” She slowly turned towards me and I backed away.
“Y’know, I think I’ll take that shift right now,” I said, quickly opening a portal behind me.
Treia didn’t even wait before dashing through. After a small wave, I dashed after her, closing the portal behind us.
~~~
Treia snored lightly with her head on my shoulder and under my cloak. I let her rest there as I conversed with Mia. We hadn’t made any gains recently, but Treia had been crawling through Tier 2 and was quickly approaching Tier 3. Whenever she got the chance, she’d tell me what she’d wanted for her next Class in an excited tone, no matter the situation.
However, I had the feeling that her Race would not like whatever she wanted and would force her class, like mine did. She’d been trying to research her Race to no avail, with the only mention being something offhanded in a book about the Voidborn Abyssals. However, in that, we’d found that, in all the history that was known about Abyssals, there hadn’t been a single Voidborn Abyssal Prince.
I shook my head. I had an idea of who could know anything about Voidlings, the two being either my Aunt, or the Void Mages of this world.
Sighing, I leaned back and pulled Mia closer as she also slept. “I really don’t consider this my world yet, huh? Well, not that big of a deal yet. One day though… who knows.”
I looked down at Treia and tried to sort out my thoughts. I haven’t actually answered her question. How do I feel about you, Treia?
Treia, in short, was my friend. However, she was also a Princess. Even if she didn’t like to show it often, she was able to lead. Maybe that was the entire point of her Class. [The Leading Whirlwind]. Was she meant to be a leader, something she didn’t want to be? If she was, how would she take that? She couldn’t just run away like I did.
I grimaced. “Run away”, huh? I thought. That’s what I did. Run away. If Treia were to become Queen and want my help, would I run away again?
I growled under my breath. No. I will not run off. Not again.
***
A low, long rumble echoed for miles from the opening of the Dungeon, where hundreds of monsters were still flowing out. At the roar, however they all stood still, almost at attention. Even the few Bosses and Juggernauts stood still, looking at the hole.
The Orchestrator was being birthed.
***
I flicked my, now pointed, ear, frowning. Treia had pointed out (no pun intended) that my ears were pointed now, which hadn’t come as a surprise. What had come as a surprise was Treia pulling on the ears in question playfully. It didn’t hurt, but was a bit odd.
I tried to ignore my ear as it twitched, looking over to Mia, who was running over to me after eating her fill of bear steak.
Yeah. Bear steak. There was apparently this Fire Mage who cooked the bears for her, which she ate with glee.
Also, why does she hate bears as much as I do?
She didn’t stop as she hopped into the air. I caught her and continued on to our apartment, opening the door for the first time in three days. I breathed in the dust and coughed.
“Home, sweet home. Though it’s pretty dusty. How is it so dusty after three days?” I muttered. Mia shrugged in my arms and pressed her nose against my cheek. “Whatever. Static electricity?”
She quickly let out a ball of near invisible electricity, causing most of the dust in the room to fly over to as I held a bag below it. The dust dropped into the bag and I tied it as Mia put her hands on her hips, proud of herself. I shook my head and opened the window.
We spent nearly an hour cleaning before Mia fell onto the bed, already asleep. I shook my head and sat next to her, twirling her hair between my fingers. I eventually laid down next to her and stared at the ceiling, which shifted from it’s normal light blue to it’s midnight purple scattered with stars.
Treia had been quite annoyed when I told her that I had rented an apartment. She’d insisted on me staying at her manor rather than an old apartment of some astrologer. I didn’t know whether or not I should be taking her advice, but, for Mia and I’s own comfort, we decided that we would stay. We both liked it and I’d recently reinforced the entire room with Intermediate Hardening Runes with a few Minor Density Runes. There were also a few Soundproofing Runes that were already there.
Now, about my interest in Runes.
When I’d found out about Runes from some books in the Kia Manor’s library, I’d immediately become hooked. Could I make some sort of cool sword that was segmented like that one from… I actually don’t know where, but it was from some game or movie. I’d discarded that idea, though since it was really complicated. I’d remembered I had no ranged attacks so I had gone with the idea of throwing out magical sword blades like Frisbees. I’d also discarded that since my first prototype had exploded from the Mana it’d needed.
Eventually, I’d gotten to the idea of disposable paper slips. I could have hundreds of Runes ready to be activated. I’d tested out paper planes, paper ninja stars, and other things, the slips of paper and ninja stars working the best. I could fill the stars with some Mana and yeet them at people, watching the stars explode. The main problem with that was detecting when they hit. That required me to use the second paper that I needed for the star to be a Pressure Detection Rune, which connected to the Enhancement and Gathering Runes.
I sighed. I wasn’t at the level where I could put an Enhancement Rune on one side and a Gathering with a Detonate Element Rune on the other. I had to make sure it had a Buffer Script, which gathered until it reached a threshold and ten released it to the Detonate Element Rune all at once.
Mia let out an annoyed yip in her sleep as my thoughts kept running. I chuckled.
“Okay, okay,” I whispered, rubbing her horn lightly. “I’ll rest as well.”
~~~
Leah stuck her tongue out at me as I passed by her. I simply threw knocked her on the head with my fist before sitting in my chair next to Treia, who threw me an annoyed look that barely masked her contentment. Char, who sat next to Leah, had her face in a book that I could see was about Dungeons.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
The room was quiet for a few moments as nobody spoke. Treia slowly moved her chair to press against my side (for some reason, I really didn’t care… wait, am I foreshadowing? I would never). Finally, as Mia was getting annoyed from the silence, I spoke up.
“We’re not getting anywhere with the Break, are we?” I said in the most undramatic tone I could manage.
Naturally, everyone responded dramatically. Leah and Char gave me the same baffled expression as I would usually see on Mia, and Treia looked up at me as if she was processing what I had just said. Xaila and her mother just nodded along with some of the Governors. The other Governors gave me a taken aback look.
“Nowhere?” One woman exclaimed. “Nearly ten thousand beasts have been killed! That’s amazing progress! Who are you to say that we’re not getting anywhere.”
Xaila responded with, “He has a point. They keep coming in droves, cutting us off from any outside help. We’re slowly being surrounded. We can’t send him or Mia to the back because then the Beasts will push back. There’s definitely an Orchestator. And they know that he’s our trump card.”
The woman sulked at her logic and fell back into her seat. Leah, however, frowned.
“Trump card? How so?”
I shrugged and stood. I walked over to the end of the room and tapped on the wall. It opened up and Char and Leah balked as I brought out a thick sheet of a type of metal called Mythril. They were each embedded with four Modified Mana Crystals and covered with Runes.
“Each of these Mana Crystals are filled with 200 thousand of either Lightning or Wind Mana. When activated, all the Mana Runs through Major Enhancement Runes and into a Compression Script. Then it’s buffered and Mixed in an unstable Mana combination, then all funneled into a Detonation Rune. Or, simply, it’s an explosive device that will wipe out a lot. It just needs a lot of Mana to activate. Like, my entire Mana pool.”
Leah looked at me in horror. “Is that like what you used to wipe out those Beasts two days ago?”
“Yep. But on both steroids and crack.”
I slotted the metal back into it’s area carefully. In reality, each of those were filled with Void and Abyss Mana which mixed into Destruction Mana since I hadn’t figured out how to create Destruction Mana directly yet. So, what I had told them was about 10% of it’s actual destructive power. Possibly less. It was actually going to explode with enough force to rival a nuclear explosion. Maybe even surpass it. It would most likely wipe out the entire Break.
“That’s our last resort if all goes to shit,” I said. “Only me, Mia, or Treia can open it’s vault, so don’t try to take it.”
I sat back down next to Treia and set Mia back into my lap. Treia looked up at me with a sad expression. She knew it’s actual capabilities. Half the Mana in there was hers, after all.
~~~
I patted Mia’s hair absentmindedly for the rest of the meeting, ignoring the questions thrown at me.
When the meeting was finally over, I was going to wait until everyone left before leaving myself. Soon, when everyone was gone, I stood, lifting Mia into my arms. Before I could leave, however, someone grabbed my sleeve. I looked down to Treia and sighed. I sat back down and let her wrap my cloak around her. For nearly twenty minutes, we sat in silence. Treia leaned against me and I held her as I thought.
When in the world did I decided that I would indulge Treia? Better yet, when did this even start? I pondered silently. She’s a damned Princess. I shouldn’t be… wait. I’m a Prince.
I blinked rapidly as I finally came to that realization.
I was a Prince. She was a Princess. The moment I came to this realization, I finally understood why she acted this way.
Does she like me?
Mia snorted in my mind.
Mia, however, was a different story as she giggled her head off in my lap. I sat there, horrified at my incompetence.
Treia finally spoke. “Um, is she okay?”
I sighed. “I just came to a realization and she knew the entire time. I feel so dumb right now, but that makes sense.”
She tilted her head, her spines twitching. “W-what realization?”
“I’m a Prince,” I muttered. “I think I just accepted that fact. I’ve been running from it for long enough.”
Her eyes went wide as I looked at her knowingly. She stuttered her next sentence.
“But, you knew that a-already, right? Then what could Mia know that you just-” She stopped mid-sentence as Mia gave her a smug look, put her fingertips on each of her thumbs, and brought her hands together.
Treia’s face went as red as a pomegranate seed and she scurried away before looking at her in horror. “You knew? B-but-”
Mia put her finger on her nose. Treia processed this for a moment before her eyes went even wider.
“Okay, okay, first of all, we haven’t even talked about it yet! This is really, really life-changing for me,” Treia started. “I do not have any idea how to go about a relationship.”
I shrugged. “Neither do I. Never was the type of person for that.”
We watched one another for a few moments, both of us gaining a growing awkwardness. Finally, I sighed.
“You know what? I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Let’s just pretend this conversation never happened,” I said, beginning to stand.
Mia jumped out of my lap and smacked my horn, annoyed. I frowned at her antics.
“What?” I said, baffled.
Treia was still thinking as she muttered under her breath. Finally, she looked up at me.
“No,” she responded. “I… think we should talk about it. First off, this will be the stupidest thing we’ve ever done.”
I raised an eyebrow. “It will be the second stupidest thing I’ve done. The stupidest thing I’ve done was meet Leah. You’re lucky you weren’t around.”
Treia tilted her head, but continued. “Secondly, you know how political this will get, right? I’m a Princess and you’re a Prince. I’m a Voidling and you’re an Voidborn Abyssal. If we were anywhere else but Aurora, that would be fine. However…”
I nodded. Then, Treia scooted back next to me and wrapped my cloak around her yet again. Mia gave me an expectant look and I responded with a flat one, though I did put my arm around Treia.
“And lastly…” Treia looked up at me. “I don’t think either of us actually care about the consequences, do we?”
Finally, I grinned. “Not a chance.”
She then pulled herself onto my lap and the world faded away as she kissed me.
~~~
I simply stared at Mia as she skipped ahead of me, not a care in the world. I groaned as I replayed the last half hour in my head.
She stopped and spun to me with her hands on her hips and a smug expression on her face.
I groaned louder and looked to the sky, praying for some god to deal with Mia.
Mia giggled as she bounded over to me and into my arms.
<...Hey, when did you learn to speak like a normal person?> I asked her with a confused look on my face.
***
The Orchestrator watched carefully as the male… thing walked through what the Human it’d captured called a city. It had the stink of something from a place that was familiar to it, yet it didn’t recognize. It held an equally strange thing in it’s arms that kept reaching for what the Orchesrator thought was food from what the human it’d captured called stalls.
The Orchestrator frowned. What type of monster simply sat in a “city”, ready to retaliate against it’s fellow Beasts? It was strange to it, but it’d grown used to watching the thing walk around as if it belonged there. Even the other Humans and what it assumed were “Elves”, humans with pale hide and pointy ears, accepted the monster in Human flesh with open arms.
Then there was the female in his arms. Something about her revolted the Orchestrator. He couldn’t tell but- wait, “he”?
The Orchestrator looked down at itself before nodding. Yes, himself.
Looking back to the female, his frown deepened. Something about her… there was far more to her than the male holding her in his arms knew. Not that he’d find out.
The Orchestrator grinned with his two mouths as it released his hand, letting it fall to his side.
***
A echoing boom sounded through the entire city and I stood still, Mia also freezing mid-chew.
There were whispers around me from those who heard it, nervous and confused. Turning towards it, I judged the distance and ripped open a portal to the nearest wall to thee area and jumped through before anyone could notice me. My eyes widened as I landed, and I began to fall down the crumbling wall.
“Shit, shit, shit!” I hissed, letting Mia fall below me as she shifted into her serpent form. I landed on her back as she hovered, smacking away what little debris fell our way with her tail as she glared forward.
I looked in the direction she was glaring and felt my breath catch in my throat.
There were nearly six Bosses and Juggernauts assaulting the wall while people tried to fight back in vain.
I felt the orb that was connected to Treia’s shake, but I ignored it as I growled, “Let loose the gods damned Domain, Mia.”
She dove down as a pressure released from her body, the area around us quickly cooling to ice cold temperatures. I didn’t feel it however, as I jumped from her back, falling towards the nearest Boss and unsheathing my sword.
“Time to get serious, bitches,” I said, unleashing my Avatar.
***
“Damn you, Jason!” Treia shouted, shaking the orb. “Answer me!”
Treia ran through the halls, looking for the girl called Leah as she attempted to contact Jason. With her Dexterity, she was nearly a blur, kicking off walls instead of slowing down to make turns.
Finally, she nearly ran into Char, Leah’s girlfriend, who spoke quickly to Leah, who was giving the window a withering glare.
Interrupting Char, Treia snapped, “The wall’s been broken through! Quit dilly dallying and get moving!”
Leah turned her glare at Treia, looking behind her as if looking for Jason. “Where is he?”
Treia, already pissed, yelled, “I don’t know where he is! Why do you think I’m bouncing all over the place?!”
Char gave Treia a look as Leah hissed back. “What do you mean you don’t know where he is?”
Before she could respond, there was a wave of what seemed like pure terror and destruction that swam through the entire building, and Treia shivered as she looked at Jason’s Status in a panic. However, it was replaced by the words:
The Avatar Of Destruction - Tier 3 has awakened. Time left : 4:59
“Avatar…?” Treia stopped in her tracks, staring wide eyed at the notification. “Wha-”
Immediately after, a wave of pressure rolled over her and she shivered harder.
You have been suppressed by the Domain of Ice and Lightning.
Leah seemed to have gotten the same notification as she frowned. “I… think I know exactly where he is,” she muttered. “And based on these notifications, I think he’s got it handled.”
***
Before I even realized it, the Boss was dead under me, sliced into two.
Did I just… I shook my head. No time for this.
With the Avatar, I felt… powerful. Invincible. I knew it was just the strength getting to my head, but for five minutes, these Beasts stood absolutely no chance. I unleased my Draconic Form and leapt towards the next two Bosses at a speed I could barely process. I slashed both of the Bosses and turned away to the Juggernauts as the Bosses burst into blood and guts. Before they knew what had happened, I’d killed the final three and spun towards the four thousand Beasts that loomed in front of me.
I leapt towards them, ripping through beast after Beast as Mia rained hell from above. Giant swathes of monsters were killed from her [Glacier Fall] and breath attacks. Even more burst into paste as she smashed into them with her body.
Ohhhh. That’s why she has so much Endurance!
We ripped through everything around us, slowly losing ourselves in battle, subtly guiding one another in the most efficent paths of destruction, ripping through everything around us with Void, Abyss, Lightning, Ice, you name it. Nothing stopped us. We were one being of Destruction.
We faught as war machines, pushing back the thousands of Beasts before, finally, there was nothing left.
Stopping in confusion, we looked around at the scene of destruction, spears of Ice and Solid Abyss deep in the ground while Lightning crackled around us.
We looked at one another and I realized something that we should’ve a long time ago.
Mia looked at me, confused. Then it seemed to click. Slowly, she slithered before me and lowered her head to eye level. I let out a single soft laugh as I reached over to her and rubbed her snout, dispelling all the Ice, Lightning, Void, and Abyss around us, leaving a scarred battlefield in our wake.
***
Leah looked in horror at the thousands upon thousands of Beast corpses, all of them made by two people.
“Oh my gods,” Char whimpered next to her. “What… how?”
Leah simply stared at the boy and Serpent that coiled around the boy. The Valkyries…
No. Not just the Valkyries. No one will stand a chance against them if they keep growing. If this is the power of just a singular Abyssal Prince and his Dragon… no one will be able to go against them.
***
The Manager studied Systie as she watched in abject horror, something that he never thought he’d see from her, as Jason and his Dragon killed everything in sight. For a long, long, few moments, she was silent. She then looked at him with a determined expression-
No. Not determined. Longing, The Manager thought.
“Yeah,” he said. “I think he’s on the road to become a god.”
To his surprise, Systie shook her head.
“No. He’s not,” she whispered, her voice sounding like a normal girl’s voice, taking the Manager by surprise. She then looked up at him with, this time, a determined expression.
“He’s going to become a True Archon.”