Dave scanned the landscape drearily from his post in front of the gate, closed and locked in the early hours of the day since word reached them about the neighboring town being sacked from the few refugees who escaped. He had been on edge at the start, made to stand guard outside the safety of the walls, flinching at everything he thought he saw in the dark but hours of nothing had calmed his fraying nerves. Now he only felt rather bored.
He shifted about in his uniform, chainmail and gambeson with a metal helm and leather boots, same as they had given to all the other working class with no talent to do much else. Still, it beat facing off against horrifying monsters and psychotic players and if he was being honest, it beat sitting at a desk 10 hours a day too, as long as nothing happened.
“Hey, look sharp!” The captain of the gate shouted above. “All of you, get ready!”
It took a moment for Dave to snap out of his lull, drawing a bow from his spatial bag and nocking an arrow. He could see the source of the heightened guard coming over the horizon now, a person, followed by several white bird monsters. He and the other guard stationed outside, aimed their bows, tension spread across their faces. A black haired girl appeared in a blur, without the white birds, unidentifiable.
“Move on if you don’t want any trouble!” The gate captain barked.
“Open the gate.” Shin had no patience for this opposition.
“Did you hear what I said!”
Shin blitzed dropping the other gatekeeper with a sharp palm to the chin. Dave barely shifted his eyes in the direction before everything went dark. Arrows from above peppered the ground as Shin appeared on the battlement next to the captain. Shin ducked and spun on his hands snapping back the chin of the one who seemed strongest as his sword sailed over him.
Panicked and steeled shouts erupted around him and were quickly silenced as the soldiers convening on him were dropped in a blur. Shin’s eyes snapped to the side and his cobalt sword sliced a giant dense mana bolt in two. The source an irked old man with a disdainful expression surrounded by half a dozen guards.
[Human Noble (epic) - Intermediate Lord]
Shin slipped a palm thrust surging with yellow mana and slammed a Tremor wrapped fist into his torso, sending the monk crashing through a stone battlement and over a wall. A heavy armored knight swung down his greatsword and a second crackling kick smashed him through the roof of a building.
An immovable force locked Shin in place and the wall where he stood exploded in a vicious bombardment of mana as he appeared on to its side with the fading specter of a shug. He burst off, running only the wall through arrows and spells, focused on the young woman with striking red hair and emerald eyes soaring towards him through the air.
[Human Arcanist (epic) - Intermediate Lord]
A volley of mana orbs shot forth destroying the wall behind him as he sped around. A bow found his hand and he loosed three arrows, all bouncing off an invisible sphere around the arcanist, the position of its surface flashing for an instant with each hit. Shin lunged from the wall at the mage a quick slash of his sword shattering the sphere as he reached for her neck.
His hand passed through air as she vanished, appearing above as a mass of mana swelled in her hand. The giant mana bolt cratered the ground below to the mage’s shock as Shin appeared at her back, enveloped in a spectral shug. A quick jab broke the veil of protection around her and with his hand around her throat, he blinked back to the wall alone, watching her carefully.
The woman watched him with confusion and shock waning as contemplation replaced her ferocity. “...What do you want?”
“Take in the children.”
The woman paused and glanced to the distance at the white birds. “Is that really all?”
“How dare you make demands now, you cur!” The old noble bellowed at him. “All enemies that harm the dignity and security of the House of Rhun must be shown no mercy!”
Shin glanced at the man, his eyes focused on him but his words seemed otherwise. But Shin had no interest in his intentions nor his words, save for one. He looked back at the arcanist’s emerald eyes.
“Daphne?”
The red haired mage’s expression shifted instantly, almost to desperation. “Have you seen her?! Where is she?!”
“Do not engage with-!”
“Be quiet!” An intense biting order shut the old man’s mouth with great reluctance by the look in his eyes, albeit he remained so.
“I found her in the first stage.”
“Where is she now?” The mage urged.
“Don’t know.”
“Is she safe? What happened?”
“Yeah. I brought her to the garrison. She’s with Chavez.” Shin didn’t truly know for sure, but Grace was fine and she had been in the same place.
A deluge of questions seemed to crack at the dam of the red haired mage but she held them back, taking a moment to compose herself. “I am Raina, daughter of Royth and Gwenllian, King and Queen of Rheged.”
“Shin.”
The name brought a slight reaction from her and a bigger one from the others who heard but it seemed quickly accepted.
“They’ll need to be inspected first.”
“Okay.”
“Geraint!”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“Yes, my lady.” His voice old and gruff, the black armored knight from before headed off to the gate, pointing out several to follow him, including the gate captain who had just barely started to rouse from his unconsciousness.
It took only a minute until he returned. “They seem normal children. None of the guards are dead either.”
Raina turned to Shin. “You may bring them in.”
Shin gave a thought to his origami and the white birds flew through the gates in moments, letting the children down with the people around helping them at the black knight’s direction. The white birds took to the air and burst into a puff of white smoke as three talismans returned to Shin’s hand.
“Is this really all?” Raina asked again.
“Yeah.” Before she could anything else, Shin took off without ceremony, racing back towards Ladron.
Through the wild and past the sacked town, Shin sprinted without break or interruption, slowed down by nothing. He cleared the east side of Ladron’s walls and darted through the training grounds, finding the other three standing around just fine.
“Took you long enough.”
Shin’s sword clanged off the shield Donny just barely managed to raise in time, his mace slipping underneath and knocking him back to the wall with a brief tremor. “Training.” Shin gave only a single word as he and Donny burst into an intense spar. Others were getting strong and they needed to be stronger.
---
Shin rested a palm on a training dummy’s chest, intense jagged ripples pulsing out. He envisioned the concussive force seeping in, exploding the dummy from within, and pushed. A catastrophic force blasted the front half of the dummy to splinters as the rest crashed into wall.
[Tremor has reached lvl. 10. 100 Attribute Points reward.]
His experiment had failed, but he had achieved the main priority. However, there was a problem.
“I didn’t upgrade with four.” Shin informed the rest of the party, drawing their attention.
“Well… makes sense each tier would get more difficult. It’s weirder that rare was so easy to begin with.” Yen spoke from her meditation.
“So what’d we think, five?”
“Probably.”
“Not a lot of time left. Gonna need to pick the easiest thing to level.”
“Take shortcuts to a shit class if you want.”
Shin focused on himself as the two bickered. His four epic skills, Tremor, Mystic Protection, Rapid, and Grand Martial Combat, neither of them had anything to do with spirits. He had rushed to get his upgrade so he could focus on new skills but this additional layer of difficulty also gave him an opportunity. His next one needed to be spirit based and he felt he needed to choose carefully.
Befriend Spirit wouldn’t provide any help in combat and the ceiling on Inari’s tier still held strong, which left two options, Spirit Possession or the fusion between Greater Spirit Orb and Greater Spiral he had envisioned. Standing at 25%, he couldn’t imagine the next tier giving him much more than half of the stats of the spirit possessing him, which at this stage didn’t mean much. The fusion could be another excellent offensive skill, as Ripple and Tremor proved to be, likely much more useful. He would have time to train the rest later.
Still, Shin felt drawn Spirit Possession. Something bothered him. There was a risk with being possessed, or so the skill said, though Shin had never once experienced that himself. But beyond that, there was still distance. He wanted more. He wanted to be more than one.
White mystic energy surged around him as he felt for the great radiant branch amongst the sea of others, drawing it in. The light swelled and burst into glimmering shards. His hair drained white into artistic red markings and a mask to match covered the top half of his face. Partial vestiges of Inari’s attire covered his own completing the transformation.
[Spirit Possession has upgraded to the epic tier skill Invoke.]
Shin raised his foot and took a step off the air, the traits of a Mystic Kitsune Guardian available to him now along with the skills. But he only took one. The feeling of holy energy surging through his body bestowed a comforting lull that bothered him. He felt a sort of emptiness not dissimilar what he felt from demons, masked by splendor.
Still, it was only a bother. Something to be tolerated at most. More importantly, he could feel his and Inari’s minds thinking together, sharing emotions and thoughts more closely than ever before. And chief among those thoughts was an incessant demand.
Shin took a step back in his mind and his head edged up, taking long glances around before inspecting his body. The inspecting soon turned to movement and movement turned to reckless play as Inari wielded his stats and abilities however she pleased. She flashed haphazardly around slashing her sword through training dummies and blasting them to pieces, until suddenly the transformation faded away with the last of his mana to her great annoyance.
“Hey, Sailor Moon.” Yen called from the side. “I need your help training later.”
“Okay.” Shin leaned back fully as an axe sailed over.
“I’ll get my sparring in now then.” The pair erupted into another flurry, Shin pressing harder and riskier than before.
---
Shin darted around Yen, throwing all manner of projectiles, all of which stopped uselessly on small clusters of hexagonal shields that arose around her body just as needed. Yen stood still, a smug expression on her face in gloating of the achievement her planning and foresight had produced. A dense spirit orb slammed into a large cluster and again and again until it broke away, as useless as the knives and stones. Armament, Yen called the skill, and it lived up to its name.
“I told you before, didn’t I? The system rewards ingenuity. It was basically made for a genius like me.”
A stone shattered through the cluster of armament and slammed into her shoulder with a mystic ripple, knocking her flat on her butt.
Yen scowled. “...what’s the point of magic protection if it doesn’t push back the fucking impact.”
“A genius could make it better.”
“Shutup.” Yen took out a ring, not bothering to head to the wall with the cover of night above them. “Give me four hours.”
“Okay.” Shin glanced around.
Donny was currently training his Hack skill against the dummies and Kamala remained deep in the grove having said she had no need for a training partner. With that, Shin dashed off. He was cutting it close but there was something else he needed to accomplish along with his class. It took scarcely a moment to reach the store, raising a hand to knock.
“Goblin.” A voice came from the direction he planned to ignore, as shadows unwrapped around the watchtower leader. “You have time to talk?”
“Not much.”
“It’s about Cesar.” Shin paid more attention. “You have serious problems with him, right? I can help with that.”
Shin remained silent, waiting for the man to continue, so he did.
“Cesar’s getting worse. More ambitious. He’s going to come after your party any day now. We should attack first, tonight. Catch him off guard.”
“No. We’ll kill him soon.”
The man chose his words carefully. “Cesar’s strong now. Might be more than you. And the people closest to him are stronger too. I can help. People in the gang will follow me. We can deal with some of the people around him while you take him out. Give you a better chance.”
“Okay.”
The guy seemed a little caught off guard himself by Shin’s instant acceptance. “I need some promises though. To get people on board. Items, doesn’t have to be the best stuff, and some money.”
“We need a lot of gold.”
“Cesar’s got a lot of gold. Enough for everyone to get their piece. What’d you say?”
“Yeah.” Shin didn’t have to think about much. Less people to fight meant less mana to spend and less time wasted recovering it.
“Alright. I’ll handle my end. Just give me a sign when it’s going down.”
“Mm.”
The man sank into the shadows and disappeared. Shin glanced in another direction then turned back to the door and knocked. The door opened soon and Shin walked in as the old gnome descended the stairs.
“It’s late.”
“I had to train.”
“Yeah, I suppose you do.” Despite her grumblings, she didn’t hint at trying to throw him out. “Figured out which crest you want to learn?”
“Yeah.” Shin took out a book and showed Grenda a page with markings around a figure’s face.
“Very mundane… There’s a lot more useful ones in rare tier, you know.”
“I need this one.”
Grenda took a puff of her pipe but didn’t argue. “Let’s get started then. Not a lot of time left now.”