The knights are here?!

“Shit how are they already here?”

“Well I was under high surveillance, some mages had this tracking box around my room.”

“Why were you under high surveillance?!”

Risible started tapping his foot against the ground as he put his hands in his pockets.

“Well I just needed a lil drink-”

“And?”

“I wasn’t being left alone, so I started fighting back.”

He put his finger up excitedly while smiling.

I was a little jaw dropped, but I couldn’t even get mad at him since I do the same shit.

The silver and red knights came barreling around the corner as they spotted us.

“That’s him!”

“The Regulus monster that’s worth ten platinum coins!”

Risible looked toward the knights, then back toward me.

“You're worth ten platinum coins…?”

He tilted his head back as he looked at me before slowly starting to inch closer to me.

“Hey- Risible. I’ll buy you some drinks if we get out… alright?”

I started to back up slowly as I put my hands up in a reassuring manner.

“We should probably get going right?”

I turned around to see Esther already running in the opposite direction of the knights. I started running after her, as Risible chased me down.

“Come back my ten platinum coins!”

“Flight-”

Esther began flying to quickly go down the corridors of the dungeon since the knights and Risible were now chasing us down.

||FLIGHT||

I activated [Flight] as well and followed after Esther, the hallways of the dungeon were massive allowing us to travel at high speeds. When I looked behind us I saw Risible right on top of us, the air around him was bending to form this almost shield-like bullet. He was running and was seemingly way faster than we were flying.

“Did he remove the air resistance?!”

“This isn’t the time to be laughing Ode-”

I looked behind Risible to see the knights catching his slipstream and traveling almost at the same speed as he was.

“What the fuck is with everyone?!”

Fuck it, I’m not going to get caught and cause more problems.

I accelerated the boost on my [Flight] spell and went barreling ahead of Esther.

||SPELL CREATION||

The cyan gears appeared in front of me as I flew at a rapid speed.

We’re modifying a spell this time, it’s my first time experimenting with this so it better work…

Or I’ll get caught, which overall will just be a total hassle.

First I’ll start by copying the gear formula for [Water Shot] and placing them onto here. Then I’ll mix in some acidic components. Hydrochloric acid along with Carbonic acid and Nitric acid. Now I’ll up the effectiveness of the acids to the maximum.

I shattered the gears and they began reforming onto my arm. The cyan sigil on the back of my hand slowly shifted into a dark green color.

||WATER SHOT; MODIFICATION, ACIDULOUS||

The acidic display of water formed into the palm of my hands. It had this deep green coloring as I started to accelerate it, the ball expanded and turned into a lance-like shape.

I was approaching the wall as I threw the lance of acid forward at an upward incline. The wall and the ground above it crumbling and melting into this giant open hole to the surface.

I flew up and out of the newly formed hole in the ground, canceled my [Flight] skill, did a flip and slid against the dirt covered floor. I threw my hand forward onto the ground to help me stop sliding. I slowly stood up, and realized I was in the middle of the fort’s training grounds. Knights were surrounding me as I stood there, they all turned their attention toward me and drew their weapons.

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I put my hands up innocently and laughed lightly at my predicament.

Esther came flying out of the hole and grabbed the back of my coat’s collar and started pulling me along as we went toward the gate.

A few seconds later, a giant boom came from the hole. Bricks went flying everywhere as Risible emerged, holding the side of the building as he looked around. He spotted me and started running toward us at top speed. Barreling straight through the knights there, closing the gap within a few quick seconds.

We went rushing past the metal gate as the knights dropped it down. It slammed into the ground securing the fort’s entrance in place.

Risible got to it and threw a punch which ripped straight through the solid metal. He continued running after us, until he suddenly jumped and grabbed onto me. Esther’s grip slipped and we slammed into the paved streets, he then pinned me down to the ground.

“Ten platinum coins here I come-”

Risible quickly turned his head to the left as this yellow-green thing in the shape of the bullet whizzed by us. As it turned through the air, we saw the number ‘58’ carved into it.

The bullet went flying into the fort through the metal gates. When this yellow-green liquid suddenly erupted swallowing the entire fort whole. Including all of the knights that were inside of it at the time. The liquidated substance looked almost as if it was eating before it reformed itself back into the small bullet-like shape, it then came flying back toward us.

Risible ducked quickly and when we looked in front of us we saw a man clad in purple and black. In between two of his fingers on his left hand was the yellow-green bullet that we had seen.

The man had this dark purple fedora on and he had black hair with this yellow-green streak to the left. He wore this fancy trench coat that was a dark purple with this gold color outlining it. The man had a black dress shirt and the inside of his coat was this slick black. He has darkened navy blue pants with black dress shoes and he had these yellow-green eyes, along with his tie and the band on his hat. Finally the man had these black sunglasses that were slightly tilted down. In his left eye was the yellow-gold number ‘58’.

“Hey Risible my man!”

I looked up to see Risible’s face twisted in a sort of disappointment.

“Deadeye…”

“Who’s the lil buddy you’ve got?”

I quickly warped my body to slip out from under Risible and stood back up, brushing my trench coat off as I looked at the man again.

In his right hand was a form of rifle from what looked like the 1970s… maybe a form of remington?

“I’m Cyn. Oh- well I guess you guys would call me One.”

Deadeye stared at me for a second before quickly backing up.

“You’re One…?”

Four seemed to be paying close attention now.

“So you were the main body- haha! Perfect luck!”

“How did you even get here Deadeye?”

I glanced up to see Esther cautiously flying above us, Risible also seemed to be confused on why Deadeye was here.

“Ode, wasn’t there only one variant here…?”

I whispered carefully.

“Yo One, actually is it fine if I call you Cyn?”

“Huh- uh sure.”

“Alright, well then Cyn. Can you connect us back to the main body?”

He pointed at himself as he said it.

“Yeah I can, but could you explain to me how you got here first?”

I questioned him carefully. I know for fact he’s a variant, but how did he get to this town? Ode only detected one variant here which was Risible. So how did Deadeye get here then?

“Well I was looking up the other day while peacefully resting in a field, when I saw these two things in the sky flying to the west. I followed out of curiosity and ta-da! I’m here now!”

Thinking logically, it has been a little over a day or so. Which means if he was already close by to the town it makes sense how he got here.

Well it doesn’t hurt to absorb them, and that was the original plan anyway.

My slime started to shift into the tentacle-like shape and whipped over to Deadeye and Risible. It started circling around them as they were being absorbed. I retracted my slime and two more variants were now back into the system.

⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱

Ode looked up to see Deadeye and Risible fall from the central point of the Lacuna. They landed down on the platform, and turned toward the console screen.

“Yo Ode long time no see!”

Deadeye waved his hand toward him.

Four jumped up and sucker punched Risible in the face.

“What-”

“Fuck you!”

Risible was met with another punch, before he slammed his head into Four’s.

“What the fuck was that for you prick-”

“Hey. Break it up.”

Deadeye stared at them menacingly, making them both immediately comply.

Six was sitting on the couch reading his manga still as the commotion went on. Deadeye walked over and sat on the couch next to him.

“Yo Six.”

He looked at the cover of the manga.

“You're still reading ‘Anomalous’?”

Six looked up and nodded toward Deadeye.

“Yeah, it never gets boring. I love the part with the fourth deity destroying the world to get revenge against the other three for imprisoning him.”

Deadeye’s eye twitched a little as he looked at Six.

“Is that so… well what about the part where the railgun is fired off to stop the bandit raids in arc one.”

“I love that part too, it looks so cool with the lightning sparking around the barrel.”

“Yeah yeah and-”

Ode watched as Deadeye and Six continued to talk about the manga as he turned his attention back toward the screen.

⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱

Esther flew down and landed on the paved road next to me.

“Another one?”

“Yeah apparently.”

I looked back toward where the fort used to be… so much for being stealthy.

“Let’s go, we don’t want to cause a bigger commotion than we already have.”

We started walking down the road toward the city’s entrance.

Now what?

Hm…

Ah!

“Hey Esther.”

“Yeah?”

“How about we start making our way toward the Elven continent?”