“Are you ready to talk now?” The Revifier said after slamming me into the ground for the fiftieth time. I, like always, just spread out my aura in a vain attempt to dissipate her ghostly body for even a second to get some breathing room. “When will you learn?” She threw me away while telekinetically pushing me into the ground. My head scraped against the suddenly rough ground with a texture akin to fine sandpaper and I could do nothing but endure the pain.
I pushed against the ground in a vain effort to lift myself up or atleast slow down so that I wouldn’t be scraping my head as hard. It didn’t do much of course, other than scraping my hands. I only stopped when my head bumped into something. The Revifier wasn’t pulling me down anymore, so I stood up only to see the thing I bumped ahead of was a sword. I immediately picked it up and threw it at the Revifier who was significantly closer than she should’ve been based on how long I was scraping against the ground.
She just teleported behind me as always. I tried to elbow her to no effect as my elbow just went through her. I put my entire aura into my arm and spread it to make her disappear as the sword I threw started flying right back at me. The Revifier appeared again and grabbed the sword right before it hit me.
“Why don’t you try using it? I heard that–” I interrupted her as I picked up the sword only to throw it at her again. She faked surprise as she just teleported it back into my hand. “Aww, you silly little mortal. I sincerely hope you know swords aren't meant to be thrown. Try slashing at me instead.” The Revifier said with an intentionally infantilizing tone. I already knew what she was trying to do, so I just threw the sword again after putting the attribute of un-change on it.
“I’m not using a sword.” I said in a calm, monotone voice. The sword passed through her, leaving a temporary hole. This battle was the Revifier’s only chance in a long while to convince me to side with her, or to slowly plant a seed that will lead me to joining her in due time. I already knew what the seed would be. It would be the fact that I could use swords ‘with incredible talent’. She had implanted knowledge of how to use a sword into my head the second time I met her. So much so that even the slash I did was considered noteworthy enough by the knight captain that he commented on it.
“And why not? What is it that makes you so committed to using a gun of all things? Isn’t it utterly boring to injure someone while not exerting any physical effort?” That didn’t even make any sense. The Revifier is the goddess in control of magic, how could she not see the flaw in her argument?
“You wouldn’t care if I were a mage. Mages don’t exert nearly as much effort as I do when shooting. Recoil is a thing y’know.” The Revifier scoffed at my argument before summoning a tiny shiny ball which she flinged high up with her finger. The ball exploded, enveloping the sky and pushing me down to my knee with its shockwave.
“But can your guns cause explosions this vigorous?” She’s just switching criteria now. First it was the thrill of doing something physically that made her weapons better, but now it was the fact that they looked more impressive than guns?
“Rocket launchers exist.” I stared right at her as I got back up to not give her any reason to look back and realise that Anna and Christian have rescued the nano-chatte. Our argument was keeping her distracted longer than our fighting, so I was better off entertaining her by keeping it going. There wasn’t anything I could do to hurt her anyway.
“Don’t make me laugh. Those toys couldn’t even reach a tenth of what that explosion just did.” Said the Revifier.
“But would the average wizard be able to create an explosion that big?” I said back.
“But you wouldn’t be an average wizard or average in whatever you would choose to be. You’d have powers so strong that it would make Reincarnators jealous. Who knows, if you’re loyal enough, you might become a chosen.” Chosen? Weren’t those the ten strongest people serving the Revifier? What would loyalty have to do with me getting there? Surely I would just need to get powerful and be supporting the Revifier, even if it was in a small way. Did she just go mask off with me for a second?
“Oh, yea, because loyalty is what I would need.” How long did rescuing the nano-chatte take? Can’t they just grab it and… wait a minute. How do we get rid of the Revifier if I’m not fighting it?
“Indeed! Loyalty to me means more power donated by me to you. Nobody that didn’t would ever interrupt me in the middle of talking to someone I want to recruit would be gifted even an ounce of my powe–” The Revifier was cut off by a hole in the space opening. I saw the dimension made of pure destructive energy again, but this time it didn’t disappear. A man wearing a robe and with his hair tied up in a manbun stepped through and looked at the Revifier without any extraordinary expression. He didn’t have a poker face on. He was just looking at her like how someone might look at a normal person.
“Hey boss. The General’s going on a Reincarnator extermination spree again.” The Revifier looked at him with her eyebrow raised.
“And? What does that have to do with me? Don’t you see I’m busy?” I looked away while the two bickered and saw the nano-chatte with Christian and Anna. They were waiting for me, so I just ran while I could. I quickly applied the normal holiness to myself, getting rid of the stiffness in my body.
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“Well, I kinda said that we shouldn’t act against the General if you didn’t tell us to in the last meeting me and the other chosen had, so it would be bad form to not ask you.” Said the man. I didn’t look back to see how the Revifier reacted, but it was safe to say it wasn’t well, or maybe it was well. I could never know with the Revifier, and her literally predicting this situation showed that she probably used her omniscience to know about this.
“Teleport already!” I told Anna, who was already wearing the nano-chatte. I looked back to see the Revifier wave me goodbye while the man stared at her with a confused expression. I turned back to see Anna doing nothing for a second, which was hopefully just her arguing with the nano-chatte about something. They closed their eyes after settling and teleported us back in the library in the blink of an eye.
“Oh my fucking god please never go rescue me ever again.” Said the nano-chatte.
“By the way, who were those people?” Said Mcdermott. He had to suffer the indignity of the Revifier reading his mind to see why in the name of god he would tell the group specifically made to fight the General to NOT fight the General.
“Why do you need to know? You’ve already angered me with your stupid reasoning.” The Revifier said back, trying to think of a sufficient punishment before letting Mcdermott deal with the General.
“So I know if I should kill them for running away from you.” The Revifier instantly turned her head, looking into Mcdermott’s soul after he said that.
“No! Don’t kill them. They’re… future associates who I let get away on purpose.” Mcdermott raised his eyebrow, but then shrugged and sliced another hole in reality to flee into. “Hey! Get back here!”
Sam was in the room. If I kept my aura on, I’d age even more, and be even harder to fix. If I let the nano-chatte fix me right now, he’d see it in action, and conclude it's a machine that the Revifier needs to know about. And finally, if I switched my aura off, he’d probably freak out and call me a demon.
“Hey! Sam. We had to help Anna learn how to teleport. Wanna go loot the tavern since nobody’s in there anymore?” Said Christian in an attempt to leave me and Anna alone. Him and Anna probably had a talk about what they would need to do after we left that dimension while the Revifier was beating me up.
“What would I want from there?” Said Sam. Christian just picked him up and carried him like a sack again.
“What wouldn’t you want from there?” Christian stepped outside and slammed the door shut. I finally stopped using my aura. I didn’t even want to look at myself, but I didn’t need to for long as the nano-chatte glued itself to me immediately.
“What happened, primitive? How are you even alive? Your skeleton is three fourths of your weight!” Said the nano-chatte in a voice that I chose to interpret as a caring one. My vision blurred, my skin burned, but after several moments of me seeing the world as a blur, everything cleared up and I could feel myself return to normal.
“How bad did I look?” I said. Anna looked back at me after making sure I was back to normal and cleared her throat.
“You looked like what a necromancer who only summoned skeletons before would summon as a ghoul.” Oh.
“Well… what did you two talk about while you froze?” The nano-chatte attempted to send its memory into my head, but we weren’t fully connected yet, so it didn’t work.
“He thought he couldn’t do magic, and I told him to try anyway because the goddess was about to kill us all.” Said Anna. Why did she call the nano-chatte a ‘he’? It was clearly non-binary.
“I can’t! I’m a machine. You did it by yourself. You even used your method of teleportation instead of my clearly superior portals.” The nano-chatte said as I sighed in exasperation. Did I really have to tell it the same thing again?
“Nano-chatte. Who, or what in the name of god made you think that MAGIC HAS RULES?!” I could feel the nano-chatte’s confusion at my statement, along with seeing Anna raise her eyebrow. “Look. I’ve already explained it to you, but magic doesn’t have rules, it has vibes. If the Revifier vibes with the way you’re trying to use magic, it works. If she doesn’t vibe with it, it doesn’t. That’s it. Nothing else matters.”
“Oh… I need to recalibrate my biological personality.” Said the nano-chatte with depleted energy.