“Hero Astin Petrel would like to speak to you now.” A king’s guard relayed to me in front of the lobby room where visitors are held prior to having an audience with the Hero. In most cases around every empire, the Hero is regarded as the one who fights in the battlefront leading the charge and the one who rules the nation like a monarch. Although I can’t say all tower empires have a ruling system the same way as ours, most of them vary in form but all systems would make their Heroes have the most influence in their society. Right now, I am about to meet that hero who slayed the Aqua Dragon Queen with the influence of my knowledge on how to deal with such an Armageddon-class threat.
The doors are opened from the inside after one of the king’s guards knocks on the door signaling the other guards inside to open it. This massive door from the castle is made out of Sea Wyrm scales, one of the hardest materials humanity has ever encountered. Rows and rows of these scales are placed on the surface of the wooden door serving as armor plating. They reek of Sea Wyrm smell so it is not entirely pleasing for me to stay and look at them carefully. I immediately started to walk inside as soon as the doors fully opened for me and some of my escorts. Eura Von Carda, my younger sister, is also here with me to have an audience with Admiral Petrel.
We entered the center of the throne room following an unappealing brown carpet laced with random designs of pure gold metallic strings and other pieces of jewelry most likely stolen from passing ships from every other empire. Most of their wealth is displayed inside the throne room itself, which is just inviting more thieves rather than delegates or visitors from other nations. At the end of the room sits the man himself with the throne made of skin from the Aqua Dragon Queen, boasting his own greatest kill at every visitor that has ever come.
“I am Hero Astin Petrel of the East Toratoga Island States, Admiral of the Great Aiyan Fleet. It would appear that this would be our first formal introduction after slaying that Aqua Dragon Queen together in an unforeseen unity amidst our neutrality. You may address me as Admiral Petrel.” Admiral Petrel stood up from his throne and made a gesture of welcoming arms. There I would then introduce myself to him formally for the first time as our fleets were fighting a common enemy at the time and didn’t even think of fighting each other there.
“I am Aru Von Carda of the West Cardavenia Empire, Heroine of the Night Warfare and beside me is my sister Eura Von Carda, Heroine of the Day Warfare. You may address us as Aru Carda and Eura Carda. Pleasure to meet you after a great battle, Admiral Petrel.” It was at the time when we were fleeing against the attack of the Aqua Dragon Queen near the Aiyan Sea Typhoon. One ship from our neighboring 7th tower empire from the Toratoga Islands came to aid us in our escape. At first, it was one ship from a distance, after it saw us fleeing there were 11 more ships arriving from the horizon. In an act to show our gratitude for our saviors' for a single ship from another nation, we turned around to join the fray against the beast. With their armada using magic arrows and weaponry from their ships to distract the beast, their leader is there fighting the Aqua Dragon Queen in close-range combat. We saw Admiral Petrel swing his sword while floating on water, along with another person presumably one of his subordinates casting support spells from the back. Eura and I later joined the fray in this winning battle against the monster using our high-speed skills and star daggers made for monster assassinations. These daggers were made to swiftly cut anything apart and were made from a star that crashed into our nation centuries ago. As one would have assumed, this is an heirloom weapon.
With that sea dragon slain, an Oceantite Gem appeared from its carcass. As our unexpected cooperation against this beast, we promised to give this gem to Admiral Petrel himself as our gratitude for saving the only Cardavenian Flagship used by the Heroes and delegates for diplomatic relations.
“As the empire sharing the eastern part of the continent, I shall sign this document declaring our empires to be at peace and are mutually cooperative in both economy and defense. I shall ask you as our newly found allies to sign this mutual treaty with me. Shall our nations benefit from this day forward?” At first, we were invited for a feast and meeting with Admiral Petrel, we were not expecting to sign a mutual treaty before the party. I guess that is their bait to lure us in only to impose unexpected treaties during feast incentives.
The only benefit both our empires would gain is a form of a united army. One would specialize in naval warfare which they would provide and in advance information and sabotage as ours would provide. There the most ideal form of pirating and raiding is unexpectedly born. This form of espionage and raid is so effective that I did not think our people would very much be successful in combining our skills and forces. For that, I do not regret our mutualism, only for that bit.
Even with this document declaring our friendship at hand, I doubt both our nations will benefit from this unexpected friendship. Sure there are several empires under the same tower, but that doesn’t mean those empires are allies with each other or should be allied with one another. Some tower empires are close, some in war, and some are neutral. In our case, we were neutral until we decided to fight for the same cause. If one would have to compare our empire against the Toratoga Island States, ours is wealthier in all accounts simply because we had more competent rulers over the past centuries of our existence. Religion is also another factor of our unity and democracy among the vampires, which the Toratoga Empire lacks. Our methods of gaining resources are simply darker in diplomatic relations with other tower empires than simply pirating and raiding other merchant vessels one would come across by. At the moment when I saw the castle of Admiral Petrel is made of jewels and gold, I doubted his leadership for his people.
And so I was right to doubt it.
The thickest clouds of mist and fog encircle our flagship, The Transylvania. This dark mist spreads as the whole sky has just turned from blue sea to ash. As I continued to self-rant about our cooperation, and we should have made amendments and rules, we were just suddenly ordered to fight the Demon Lord. All of the vampires know how the demon lord could simply snap her fingers and most of us would be cut in half by then. With one of my messengers arriving from their fleet to ours inside the Siren’s Mist, the contents of the letter and all require our full cooperation. I thought the demon lord is dead, is she not?! It’s annoying. They are annoying! It’s madness!
I ordered my own entire fleet of 6 ships strong to change course and set sail directly into the West of the Siren’s Mist where we would meet up with the ‘Great’ Toratoga Navy. After our arrival from the south of the Siren’s Mist border, I was greeted again by another messenger that is directly assigned to Admiral Petrel. The second letter told us to use my vampire colleagues to scout the area for any sign of where the demon lord could be hiding. The last contents of the letter were next to unusual as it showed a sketch of something that we could encounter with the scouting party there. It looked like a… fortress of some kind? I do not know… but if a scouting mission is only what they eventually need from us then we shall do it as ordered. Not only for the safety of their fleet but of our own as well, in case something unexpected happens and we have to escape back into West Cardavenia.
At the southeast of the Siren’s mist, our fleet breaks away from the embrace of the fog and onto a sea with a dark sky. On the horizon just at the edge of the fog, we see some of the ships of the Toratoga Fleet heading to the meeting point set by Admiral Petrel. We sent a messenger from our fleet and told the upcoming ships that we wish to join their forces. These messengers are natural, day vampires to which they use a passive skill that makes them immune to sunlight. Of course, these are low levels whose only job is to carry messages around. Higher-ranking vampires such as myself are naturally immune to such effects simply because of our level and stats. These messengers turn into a bat and fly papers around and about. The messenger to which I sent to the portion of their fleet arrived with a confirmation of our request to join them in formation. I once again order our fleet to turn towards the Toratoga fleet and follow them up until they arrive at the eastern edge of the mist.
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Several ships ranging from frigates to several of their biggest or newest flagships are there to launch an assault on the demon lord. Why do they need this many ships when I believe they said the last remaining demon is the demon queen herself? Their most advanced flagship, The Aiyan Conqueror, is also at the center of their formation. They are bringing their entire arsenal into this fight. I guess that coward of a demon queen from the Aineura Empire still has some tricks up her sleeve. With both our Transylvania and their Aiyan Conqueror at the center of the formation, the Toratoga Fleet aimed their ships toward the mist. I had no objections to this yet until we broke out of the mist from the inner layer and slowly pressed on towards the storm, which is the unending Aiyan Sea Typhoon. I quickly rushed to fly out of my quarters myself and head directly towards the neighboring flagship. There I saw the Hero or the Admiral standing on the deck of his flagship.
“Are you mad?! Why are we heading straight into that storm? Every tower empire in this world knows no one has ever returned from that storm! Every expedition exploring that typhoon was never heard from again!” Petrel looks at me with disgust as he replies.
“I have pierced that impossible barrier and escaped from there! We all have to cross the typhoon if we are to kill the demon queen once and for all. I expected your scouts to be more competent as none has reported anything from your empire to me yet.” Petrel turns his face from disgust to rage in a form of annoyance due to our ‘apparent incompetence’. Just as I was about to defend my people from being mocked, a messenger crossed from our flagship to the other and reported to me the results of the scouting mission.
“Pardon the intrusion, Hero Aru. Reports from the scout team have arrived.” The messenger opens the paper and reads the message out loud.
“The Aiyan Typhoon is stretched and would take around 1 day to reach the center. The center of the typhoon is calm and enough for the entire fleet. A massive tower is seen directly at the center of the typhoon. Aineura Demon Empire retaliated with our scouts and killed 15 of 16 of the scouting party. This report is coming from the last 1 scout leading the mission.”
My chest grew heavy as I heard that most of them met the demon lord's resistance and killed almost everyone. Earlier in that day when we were told to scout the area, I sent Eura to lead that mission as she is effective on quests like this. I was relieved when the messenger mentioned that 1 escaped and it was the leader. Thank our gods that Eura escaped that encounter.
“So she really is still alive, I made sure that the poison would kill her immediately. She must have something that helped her recover.” Petrel commented on the information the messenger gave.
“Pardon me.” The messenger left via teleport which caught me off guard. I did not realize that it was a priority messenger. These messengers are used only in emergencies. Eura must have been in a rush to tell that report immediately. She must have more details about what threats we are facing and how many of them are still there.
“That settles it then. We head straight for that tower in the middle. Have your own fleet prepare their Storm Shield skills because our destination will not be merciful.” Petrel tells me with his crew springing into action. That is my signal to take my leave.
“I’ll be returning to The Transylvania. Please, if you have any magical sea windmills, now is probably the time to activate them as we would use them when you do.”
“Ha! you jest.” the Admiral looks away and turns around facing his back to me and I teleport back to my flagship.
I enter the captain’s quarters and see Eura on the captain's chair severely trembling in horror as if she has seen the undead. The fear poisons my body as well as I hear her say a few words to me as I close the door behind me. I cannot clearly hear what she said the first time, the second time she properly spoke to me is the only time my heart rapidly beats.
“We cannot deal with that… thing. The storm… yes.. the Storm! The storm is its own creation and thunder killed everyone!” Eura utters.
“The tower is creating the storm? You mean this typhoon is made by someone?” I asked curiously as I swallowed my own throat hearing that the storm is merely a creation of someone too powerful to maintain a dangerous magical spell for centuries. Calamity magical spells are forbidden to use and are so powerful to create and maintain that they will surely kill the user. The demon lord surely could not cast that and maintain it.
“Yes, older sister!... We saw the center of the storm move in our direction as if it was surrounding us closer and closer. We went on the defensive and scattered in preparation for an attack. Instead, we saw a flower of death heading toward us. Not even High-Level Mana Shields could stop such an attack. It was all too sudden! We never had the chance to react.” Eura added as both of her arms touch the top of the table and her hands in her hair struggle to control with her tremble.
“In a flash of thunder, all of us are falling from the sky with our bat bodies turning back into vampires. Our disguises are failing and I barely escaped while trying to turn back into bat form and succeeded. I still have that wound from whatever hit us. Usually, when I get injured, I heal right away without a care. This time I had to cover my bleeding left leg with cloth as it is still not healing.”
“We have to turn around now, older sister! We CAN NOT win against those things. Neither can we be healed when hit. Their magic seems to be imbued with pure magic, I have no other explanation for my wound to fail its healing even though I have Lvl. 20 Self-Heal.” She turned to face me, opening the curtains of her hair to look straight into my eyes. I never met those eyes of hers yet, the one that shows true despair from battle.
“Pure magic?! How is that even possible? With the demon lord weakened as Petrel has said. She must not have anything left to fight with.” Pure magic alone is only used by the humans from the 1st Tower Empires. Pure magic is said to be holy magic and can be converted to any magic spell, light or heavy, by the book or by the gods. That would either mean the demon lord has utilized how to use such forms of magic or there is a traitor among the 1st Tower Empires.
I walked to turn to her side and held her head dearly near my waist. She begins to cry, hiding underneath my own arms and long hair. We never should have made a deal with these… thieves and pirates. The Aineura Empire was our greatest ally in the past, but due to them being slaughtered one by one by the heroes of every tower empire, we had to close the relationship with them to save ourselves. Any empire that wished to stand beside the demons is to be destroyed regardless of anything. Here I shall do this one again just to save everyone if what Eura says is true, that we cannot stop anything that is hiding at the center of the storm.
“Don’t worry, Eura. If we get to see what the demon’s weapons are in this upcoming battle on that tower, we shall rally our fleet and escape with Stealth Skill.” I comforted her as I said our plans. There has not been a single battle my little sister has lost ever or has an enemy that she fears so much as compared to the demon lord. Our titles of being the heroes of night and day are enough to tell that we fear no enemy. If that scout mission is enough for her to be mentally scarred in battle. Then I shall begin to formulate our plans of escape and surrender in case we are captured. That tower alone is suspicious enough to tell me that there is something more hiding there, not just the demon queen or whatever spell that hit Eura’s team. Them alone using pure magic to use against a small platoon of scouts is more than enough to entice fear within me and Eura.