Azura was exhausted. He had pushed himself pretty hard to get all the traps set up before noon. The majority of the attacks happened sometime between noon and evening though, so he didn’t mind putting in the extra effort. Now he could just wait for whoever was setting up the explosions to get caught. Unless his other theory was correct, but he had something set up for that scenario as well.
Sure enough, Something set off almost immediately, but it wasn’t 1 of his traps. He quickly teleported to the nearest teleport circle he had set up. Unsurprisingly he found one of the maids holding a strange metal cylinder that was most likely an explosive. Her eyes were dull as if she wasn’t really awake. He sighed, worst case scenario it was. He put his hand on her head as she began to turn and walk away. Thankfully the maid was shorter than him, so her head was easy to reach for. The second his hand touched her short brown hair the woman collapsed. He wrapped his arms around her stomach to catch her, and lowered the unconscious maid gently.
He put a bubble of mana around the metal cylinder in case it exploded, and sent it back to the Armory for further study, and also in the hopes that being in a subspace would stop any signal to make it explode going through. He glanced at the maid sleeping peacefully on the ground and released another sigh. So they were teleporting an object to a specific spot in the castle and then using a servant they had hypnotized ahead of time to set it up. They really were excessively cautious. In most cases this would be basically untraceable.
A violent smirk came to his face. This was not most cases, He was here, and he was finally done playing catch up. The problem with hypnosis is that the inlaid command still has to be activated somehow. His first thought would be upon seeing the explosive device, but that would be too risky, because they would have to put the explosive somewhere people might run into it. Moreover the bombs were originally placed at specific spots for specific times. In other words the commands are being transmitted rather than just having been given when the maid was first hypnotized.
That meant they could be tracked. Then even if whoever was on the other side was smart enough to do it away from the base, he’d finally be on the right track with his time viewer magic. So after a quick meeting with Xander to keep him updated he was out of the castle tracking the signal he had briefly felt. It was from pretty deep in the city, and it had obviously stopped by now, but he had already memorized where it led to. When he got there he had to admit to being a little impressed. The signal came from a strange blocked in space. The 8 buildings around it were all built so close together you could barely see between the gaps much less walk through them. So most people would have to go through the buildings to get to the space.
He however had a few options. He could break apart to get through the slight gap, or he could jump up onto the building's roof, and enter the space from above. Given how quiet it was it was either empty and his entrance wouldn’t matter, or his foes had planned an ambush in case he eventually found them out. Well either way he had no intention of playing a passive role any longer. So he burst through the gap as hundreds of tiny lights and reformed into the surprisingly spacious yard. Unfortunately the only thing decorating the grassy yard was enemy mages.
“Yup, this is the only viable answer. Whoever your boss is, I’m very much looking forward to meeting him.” Apparently their boss didn’t feel the same way as there was no call to surrender, in fact he was instantly besieged by several attacks. Fire, wind, lightning, rock, and tendrils of shadow shot at him. It was a good thing he hadn’t gone for the jump in approach, or these would be coming from all around him instead of just 1 direction. He quickly formed a wall of ice to protect himself, and enchanted it to absorb as much magic as it could hold. It didn’t take long for that limit to be reached and for the wall to violently shatter, sending all the power it gathered back.
He used the brief confusion of the retaliation to rush in. The person who sent the rock spikes at him was the first target. If the man wised up and started messing with the terrain instead of just shooting projectiles at him this fight would get a lot harder. With that in mind he swiftly placed his hand on the man and released a burst of powerful ice magic freezing the man solid. A new enemy appeared in his clairvoyance, but he didn’t see from where.
They shot a stream of water at him with enough force to actually damage him, but that was fine. Right as it hit him he burst into lightning and traveled through the blast of water without resistance. Once he reached the water mage he reformed and gripped the wrist of the hand the blue haired man had cast the water blast out of. “It was a good plan, but there was 1 critical error.” The other mages he hadn’t taken out had all frozen once he had grabbed the water mages wrist. “I’m stronger than I was at the academy.”
Surprisingly the man he was tightly gripping smiled through his wince. “You made a critical error yourself.” His eyes widened as the magic in the small area started violently writhing. Shit it had been a trap. He thought he had grabbed the boss, but it was a team leader at best, and all of the other mages were apparently fine with their team lead being caught in the crossfire as they all prepared their most powerful spells. Worse a spell had been placed around the area to prevent him from leaving.
He smiled. “Crafty bunch, aren’t you.” Scales covered his body, ice covering the scales to enhance their durability, and to hide the fact the scales weren’t a spell. He didn’t release his grip on the water mage. “Let’s see which of us is more durable then.” The smug look on the water mage slipped when the man realized he had no intention of releasing him so they could both avoid the attack.
“Are you insane?! I don’t care how much stronger than us you are, this much magic shot at you from point blank range is going to be fatal!” He merely shrugged in response.,his smile not wavering even a little.
“I guess we’ll see won’t we.” The water mage paled, most likely realizing that death was upon him, however Azura would give the man credit. Rather than try desperately to escape the man gathered his own mana to add to the attack meant to kill them both. When the gathering mana reached its apex all of the high powered spells were released at once encasing the area in multi colored light.
***
Sam was regretting taking this assignment. He had always thought there was nothing that fire couldn’t burn if it was hot enough, but he was currently in a living nightmare where the explosion of his whole team's fullpower spells left their target barely injured. The boy's weird ice scales were peeled in a few places, and there were a few singe marks and bruises. The damn kid wasn’t even bleeding. Unlike the corpse of their leader that was hanging from the grip of their target. The boss's body was riddled with holes and cuts. Both of his legs were just gone, with assorted pieces of flesh and bone scattered around the area he had previously occupied.
“Is this the part where you surrender and take me to the guy in charge?” The boy released his grip allowing what was left of their team leader to plop onto the ground with a squelch. He watched as the guy they had just thrown their everything at casually cleaned himself up, getting rid of all the blood and grime. “Unless you want to continue until I get to actually kill a few of you myself.” Malice radiated of the boy, the aggressive smile showing a thirst for violence ill befitting the sophisticated appearance.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
He looked at his remaining allies, and could tell they were all thinking the same thing. Their reputation as a mercenary group would take a hit, but they had already lost 1 person in their team, and their opponent wasn’t even fazed. At this point they would just have to cut their losses. Still surrendering and selling out your employer were 2 different things, and they had more professional pride than that. “We surrender, but you’ll have to find the boss yourself, we won’t sell him out.”
The monster in human skin glared at them briefly before shrugging. “Suit yourself, not like I really need you to, fighting you was more than enough for me to figure it out myself.” He paused as the boy's eyes began to glow. He vaguely thought he saw something shifting in the glowing eyes, but he didn’t look too deeply. If the kid was letting them go, he wasn’t going to antagonize him further.
To his surprise the kid immediately proved not to be bluffing as he casually opened the secret entrance into the underground network their boss had been working out of. “Of course I’m sure I don’t need to say this, but don’t go spreading details about me. I don’t need any more enemies.” The kid swiftly disappeared into the underground passage, the ominous final words gaining a sinister echo as they reached him.
“Let’s get out of here, before that monster and the 1 that hired us decide to destroy the whole city fighting each other.” He didn’t know which would win, but he knew when it was time to bail and find out what happened later.” His team nodded and they shot off to gain distance. He knew the job had been too easy for the pay they were getting. At least they had made a killing especially with 2 of their number having bit the dust. Or well 1, and probably soon to be another. Since Wally was frozen solid he would probably die in the upcoming fight between monsters. He felt a little guilty about leaving him, but they couldn’t flee while carrying a chunk of ice that big. He was never the religious type, but he sent a prayer out into the void for Wally, and Ryker too he supposed. The man had been a decent leader all told. The powerful explosion behind them encouraged them to stop thinking and run faster.
***
“Wow, talk about starting with a bang!” Azura hadn’t really been surprised when he was attacked the second the passage went from a narrow passageway to a wide open room that was much bigger than he’d have expected for an underground facility. The attack had been no joke too, the explosive force was easily 5 times stronger than the all out attack from the group he had fought before. He didn’t even try to block it, instead choosing to blink behind the man who had unleashed it. The explosion created a pillar of heat and flame that easily tore through the ceiling.
“Yes I suppose it was too much to hope a pre-emptive strike would be enough to take you out of the picture.” Part of him had expected to know whoever was behind this, but he was disappointed to find it being someone he had never met, and or heard of. The man was a noble, that much was obvious just looking at his slick black hair, and fancy clothes of the same color. No, what really stood out was the crimson red eyes. Almost like his fathers except…
“You’re a vampire?” That wasn’t good. He called forth his knowledge on vampires, and was disappointed to find it rather lacking. Vampires were dark mages who had turned themselves into pseudo-monsters in order to extend their lives. They had to drink mana rich blood in order to sustain themselves, but in exchange received enhanced physical and magical abilities, and their aging slowed to a halt. Due to their tendency to lose control and go feral, vampirism was an illegal study, and most vampires had a kill on sight status.
“Oh? Quite well studied aren’t you. I suppose it’s for the best you survived, after all you are the guardian of the book of origin are you not?” As if he wasn’t already on edge. A vampire that not only knew about the book, but suspected it was in his possession. Moreover it felt like this wasn’t the first time he had been asked about the book of origin.
“That’s quite the old legend to be bringing up. Never expected a vampire to be interested in children's stories, but I guess vampires fall under that category themselves nowadays huh.” Was trying to incite a vampire a good idea? Probably not, but he couldn’t really afford to be put on the back foot here.
The shady man laughed. “Such an unsubtle attempt, I’d heard you were much more witty than this. Still I suppose if nothing else you hide your cards well. I’m unclear if you actually know of the book or not, or at least I would be if I wasn’t already sure you have it.” He’d give it to the man in front of him, the vampire knew how to handle himself. Either the vampire was an exceptional liar or he really did know that Azura had the book in his possession.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Hey man, believe in fairy tales all you want, just keep me, and the royal family out of it.” He sighed, not even a twitch of hesitation. So the vampire really was confident that he had it, but how would they know? He hadn't told anyone of his suspicions, and the only people who had seen the book were people he trusted implicitly. There’s no way 1 of them was a spy right? Surely he wouldn’t miss something like that.
The vampire chuckled. “Quite the stubborn child aren’t you. Well I suppose that much is to be expected.” His eyes widened as the vampire gave a noble bow. “I suppose I should introduce myself since I already know who you are. My name is Canis. Forgive my rudeness, but my last name isn’t safe to share for obvious reasons.” No doubt Canis was also an Alias, or not giving a last name would have hardly stopped him from finding out who this man really was.
“Well I’d say it’s nice to meet you, but given the circumstances I think I’m quite justified to ignore propriety.” Not that he was gunning for a fight. He was confident in his abilities, but a vampire wasn’t something you fought casually. In terms of combat, vampires actually had a lot in common with his new body. They weren’t dragon’s obviously, but as pseudo monsters, they had very similar abilities, just mostly using blood rather than pure mana. He couldn’t decide if it was a good or bad thing that Kaiser wasn’t here.
Canis laughed again. “I suppose that’s fair. You don’t have any of the context, so my actions must look truly heinous, and I’m sure my nature only serves to offset you more.” He rolled his eyes. He highly doubted context would make the man’s actions any less heinous. Killing the royal family for a mere distraction wasn’t something a normal person would come up with. It was only thanks to his recent interactions with his father's brutal tactics that he even considered it. “I’m sure by now you’ve figured out why we are attempting to kill the royal family, but am I correct in assuming you have yet to figure out what the distraction is for?”
His eyes narrowed. He had never heard more obvious bait, and yet he had no choice but to hear Canis out. “Maybe not completely, but I’m getting the feeling it has something to do with the book of origin since you seem so intent to believe it really exists.” Not like it could really rewrite reality like the legends said, or at least if it could he had yet to figure out how.
“Correct of course. The book of origin you possess is in its sealed state. Currently it may inform you of certain events, but anything beyond that is currently locked.” He raised an eyebrow as worry curled up inside of him. He hadn’t known that. These guys were the real deal, they had been studying the book for who knows how long, if he messed up they might actually be able to use it. “There are 5 temples across the continent, each one contains part of the seal keeping the book in its current state. Currently each temple is heavily guarded, and we don’t really want to kill all those guards if we can just kill 2 or 3 people instead.”
“So you’re just ignoring all the deaths that would happen in the chaos caused by the death of the royal family?” Well he said that, but he was fairly confident that it was a lie to begin with. He was pretty confident that Canis at the very least had no qualms with taking however many lives the vampire felt necessary. “If you’re trying to convince me to help you you’re doing a terrible job of it.”
“Well lucky for us we have no need for you to join us, simply keep the book safe until we release all the seals, from there we’ll simply take it from you.” Shivers ran down his spine. That was some serious confidence. There were plenty of mages stronger than him, but not nearly as many as tricky as he was. Capturing him was no easy task, but Canis sounded so certain that a shiver ran down his spine. He suddenly got the feeling that this underground base was the last place he wanted to be.