It had been a pretty good day for Zeke. Instead of holing up in his room all day studying runes, he instead went out to help Cloud on his lord duties.

This was one of the reasons why Cloud insisted on Zeke becoming a Runist. He fully planned on using his abilities for his town’s needs.

Personally Zeke didn’t mind at all. Not only did Cloud accept him and his family (he still had a hard time thinking about that word) into his home with his own family, he taught Zeke so much about magic and especially on the great parts of being a Runist.

So when he heard he could use Runecrafting to help the citizens of the town, he was fully glad to do so.

One of the first things he did was inscribing a set of runes onto the town’s water supply. Normally, Cloud’s home can instantly create water from the mana, but as a mage with Runecrafting, such a thing was possible for his own home. However, it was different for the townsfolk.

So Zeke went ahead and inscribed runes on the whole of the town at the town’s main source of water–a reservoir hidden deep within the underground. With his runes, he was able to help clean the water and help the water move long distances to everyone’s homes, which is all connected via a single powerful rune inscription not made by Cloud, but by the kingdom’s helpers when they settled in so many years ago.

Cloud would’ve done it himself, but not only did it require intense inscribing which could take hours, if not days, but instill so much Mana that throughout all this time, Cloud was never able to do. The people have been living solely by working together to keep the water fresh.

With Zeke, that was no longer an issue. Now they can focus on more important things, such as keeping a decent food supply and other necessary components.

Cloud also mentioned that it was better not to go too hard on fixing the town’s issues. After all, what would the people living here do if the lords handled everything? That’s why Zeke’s insistence of helping with the food supply and waste management with his runes were shot down. He understood it, especially since the people are paid for their work. It was just that the water supply took so much priority that it was taken care of first and foremost.

He didn’t realize it at the time, but he was glad that Cloud pushed him towards the Runist class. It was an incredible class with plenty of benefits, especially for himself as the main caster. Thanks to Inscription Proficiency and Runic Library, what would’ve taken Cloud ages to complete only took Zeke about an hour or so.

Though he felt disappointed that he wasn’t able to use his new Class skill: Runic Spell, for any of this. Then again, what would he need a fireball to help the town’s water supply?

Since reaching level 25, he gained two new skill choices for his Runist Class. Though compared to before, these skills weren’t really all that interesting… or good, for that matter.

One of them is a skill that helped understand the history behind a rune. That would’ve been useful if it helped him understand the rune better, but it does only that–tell him the history of how it was born.

It didn’t help him draw any better. Apparently it’s one of those ‘learning’ skills for a Runist to help teach the young ones its history. In other words–it was useless. He didn’t want to believe it, but Cloud convinced him that there were so many different types of skills that one or the other had to be so niche that it was borderline useless.

The other one wasn’t anything better either, just slightly better than the history one. It allowed him to draw runes differently than how they were physically represented. For example, he could make a rune that looks like the letter ‘M’ mixed with a plus sign at the very bottom of the letter into a letter ‘Z’ with a sideways tiny letter ‘N’ at the center.

In the end, nothing changed. Apparently it’s one of those cosmetic types of skills that made the rune inscription more prettier. Zeke didn’t care about being pretty–he cared about efficiency.

Hence he gladly returned to the skill he wanted before attaining Inscription Proficiency–The Class Skill: Runic Spell. With that, he could make his favorite fireball spell–or any spell he could put his mind into. He felt giddy, and wanted to return home to work on it. He even planned on using some spells to play with Clara and Ana, which was becoming a hobby for him to figure out what to do with the excited girls.

Though this entire time, he wondered what he could do to help Mikella with her mood. He didn’t like that she had been slowly being disappointed by his lack of action this month. He can’t blame her–she had been fighting for the sake of the town and leveling herself up. Hell, it was thanks to her constant leveling that he even managed to help the town throughout the month with his rising power.

He had been doing what he could to pay back for everything she’s done for him, but as more time passed, the more Mikella seemed frustrated. Agitated, even.

So he decided to help with the household doing some cooking. Despite Cloud’s resistance, he eventually caved in when Zeke offered to help with the workload. He didn’t even need to be convinced either as Cloud had his hands full with his lordly duties and Val’s own duties as a captain.

It was a rough job, something that Zeke was glad to help ease the burden however he could. What else could he do other than study runes again? Though he did keep that part to himself to get excited over when he was done with the chores.

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By the time evening came, everything was ready and for once, the men would greet the women. He left the house, with Cloud following along as both Clara and Ana were still with Vivian, taking the time to learn more about the world, or at least hang out with their friends since they're still so young.

Zeke wanted to at least give some news about his work as a Runist today. Perhaps that might impress her. It got so tense that Clara got worried over it, asking Bobo whether Sissy was mad at her or something.

Her, not him. He tried to console her, telling her that Mikella was just having a stressful time getting adjusted to her job. He felt guilty for lying to her, especially since he knew that it might be his own undoing for causing Mikella such stress.

But in the end, he didn’t know what was going on. Perhaps the horde battle was affecting her harder than usual, and all Zeke did was hole up in the house learning magic letters. Not that there wasn’t much he could do–That was his training routine as a Runist. He even gained XP by doing exactly as he did today, though compared to hunting monsters, it was a trickle rather than a waterfall’s worth.

He was also worried that perhaps Mikella lost faith in him when it came to trust. While Mikella shared her past to him at some point, Zeke barely spoke at all. Strangely enough, Mikella never bothered to ask him about it during the two weeks they spent surviving the forest. He wondered whether he had done something to warrant mistrust between them…

As the dimming studded star above slowly changed to an orange hue, Zeke waited patiently along with Cloud near the entrance. This was usually the time when they returned from their hunt. Zeke was waiting for the perfect chance to surprise Mikella, maybe even thinking about making a joke about earning his levels while sitting on his ass. Well, technically, that was true–but he wanted to make it funny either way.

All of that was blown away when he saw the soldiers coming in. His face turned pale to find a battered and unconscious Mikella held within Val’s arms.

His heart sank, and his eyes turned wide. Without really thinking, he ran towards them, leaving the also surprised Cloud in his wake. He screamed:

“Mikella!”

He ran up to Val, who thankfully stopped walking the moment Zeke came rushing towards. She still carried Mikella with a princess-carry, her battered form being more apparent with every step he took. After Zeke went up close, he saw how she turned out to be.

She looked as though she had wrestled with an ape bare-handed and lost as expected. There were bruises and purplish blue marks all over, her armor cut in several places to reveal her battered skin. Her lip was cut and busted, her face was nearly swollen, and blood marred her once pretty face. It was a nightmare to see her like this compared to how she left this morning.

What made him wince was the strange foot mark on her abdomen, not like a dirt-covered one, but an actual indent of someone’s foot. The cheap leather armor couldn’t take it as it hadn’t recovered the normal appearance back.

He squinted at the point of impact on her abdomen. There was no way that a monster could do that… could it? As far as he knew, that boss monkey monster didn’t have such a perfectly replicated foot design, or did it?

“What happened to her?” Zeke asked, turning his attention to Val. He didn’t care that the other soldiers were looking at the two, giving him the most attention.

All he cared is how the fuck did Mikella ended up getting hurt in a group of soldiers? They all seem perfectly fine compared to her.

When he turned to Myra, Mikella’s friend within the group, she looked away. She didn’t even dare to look him in the eyes. That only ticked him off more.

“Zeke, calm down and listen to me,” Val said, finally catching Zeke and forcing him to do exactly as she said. “Mikella had… Well, she went against my orders.”

“What?” Zeke asked in shock. How could someone like Mikella actually go against her orders? Mikella always referred to Val like a role-model in her life. “What the hell happened? Why would she do that?”

He knew that Mikella was acting strange these past few days. Sure enough, she’s been distant, almost aggravated to the point that Clara noticed it. But he could understand that Zeke might be responsible for that. Ignoring her captain’s orders was another thing.

“Mikella went off on her own, abandoning her team, and went to face monsters on her own. She went against my orders and broke the condition I made her take. So I took action.”

“So you decided to just beat her up?!” Zeke yelled. He couldn’t hold back his emotions any longer. Rage swelled in his chest as it took hold of his calm and crushed it. “What kind of captain does that to someone just for ignoring orders?!”

“Zeke, easy…” Myra finally stepped up. She held her hand up, this time finally looking at Zeke in the eyes. When he glared back at her, she didn’t falter. Instead, she showed guilt, but there was conviction in her eyes. “I don’t know if you noticed, but Mikky has been acting strange for a while. I don’t know what finally made her snap, but she just jumped and ran from us. We tried to stop her, but she just kept going. Any soldier going off on their own is a definite death sentence in this town. You never know when something is going to happen.”

Zeke tried to find a retort, but her words sparked the very reasoning why Zeke figured Mikella was feeling off these past few days. They make it seem like there was actually something wrong with her, like something just possessed her.

The idea that the arthurian knight from the tower possessing her took his mind, finding himself widening and showing a look of horror. He shook it off–if that was the case, then why now? Why after almost three months has it decided to take over now? It just didn’t seem right, and Zeke read a lot of books regarding the subject of apparitions. They can only possess objects like weapons and armor, but no actual human beings–unless some sort of spiritual medium user was involved, but there was no hint of anyone like that anywhere around them.

“I will explain what exactly happened later. For now, let’s get into the house. She needs to rest up. Don’t worry–I made sure to go easy on her.”

That didn’t help calm Zeke at all as Val went ahead with Mikella in tow, her legs just flopping about as she remained unconscious this whole time. All the while, the other soldiers went past Zeke, still in his thoughts.

One of the soldiers, Jackie, as Zeke recalled from Mikella’s team, patted him on the shoulder. “It’s gonna be fine man. Don’t worry. Captain’s the best even when she’s dealing out punishments.”

He looked back at the man, not knowing whether to thank him or scream at him. The other team member and Jackie’s twin brother, Maxie, pushed him along as Cloud closed up to the still Zeke.

“I think I can guess what happened, and something tells me you’re going to need to sit down for this. Come on.”

Cloud patted Zeke’s shoulder again, this time grasping it so that Zeke would look back at him. Noticing his saddened but solemn stare, Zeke grimaced as he did as Cloud said and returned back to the Mystio household.