After she heard the extremely dismissive words that Howard Boltmer had chosen to say directly to her face, Vye changed her strategy. Tatiana had been right; this man didn’t understand the differences in their perspective yet. And the way he dismissed his earlier attack as a mere test that she should willingly endure…

“Mr. Boltmer-” Vye began slowly, but the aging man’s eyes sharpened at her.

“I would really prefer if you would call me by my Class, the Blighted Paragon,” Howard Boltmer said with deceptive mildness. “I find it that such courtesies prevent misunderstandings.”

At this point, Vye was starting to feel like she had encountered a middle schooler that had wildly inaccurate views of his own importance rather than a man who appeared to have been nearing fifty even before the System had arrived. She even wanted to ask him where his adult was, considering his loose grasp on reality.

In fact, Howard’s confidence seemed so baseless that she was slightly worried that she was missing something. But the air in the tent was practically inert; after spending so much time around the influential group from the Order Ducis, how could Vye miss the fact that Howard Boltmer had no image to dominate the surrounding area?

There wasn’t a hint of his influence even at the seat of his power.

As her emotions started to run high, she could already feel her relatively modest image spreading to fill the surrounding space. And Harold Boltmer didn’t notice at all. He really was a child when it came to the System.

Vye felt her face easing into a smile that she had often seen on Tatiana’s features. “Mr. Boltmer, I think you are sorely mistaken about what this is. The Order Ducis isn’t currying favor to seek a partnership with you; the Order Ducis is deciding whether to crush your little movement or allow it to proceed. And I’m the woman who you need to have on your side when my superiors ask for a report.”

For several seconds, Howard Boltmer’s face was invaded by a genuine wave of confusion. Slowly, that confusion solidified to a tightly controlled fury. He clicked his tongue. “...is that the case. Well, it appears that further discussion will get us nowhere. Please remove yourself from my camp. And do be careful, it would be a shame to be blamed for your death if monsters rip your arrogant expression off of your face-”

The Ritual she had seared into her flesh throbbed with pain as her image readied itself. Vye’s eyes were gleaming stars in the dim light of the tent as Vye raised her hands and pressed her palms together. She could have walked away, but now Vye was thoroughly enraged. Someone needed to teach these people a lesson and Vye wanted it to be her. Howard Boltmer’s eyes narrowed at her movements and his skin seemed to ripple until he was covered dense black scales, but Vye ignored him.

This was a demonstration, not a true attack.

Vye currently possessed six Rituals: Ignite, Reject, Mirror, Donate, Consume, and Cleanse. She began with the easiest and most destructive of her original four Rituals, Ignite. But as she did so, her image manifested in the surrounding space.

It was a map, but a map of something grander and more ethereal than any physical location. It was a byzantine series of interlocking yellow dots and lines that guided the flow of energy from the spiritual plane. They floated in the air above Vye, following the billowing peaks of the tent roof. The image was based on Vye’s fuzzy memories of her grandmother’s ritual altars, carefully improved with exhausting practice sessions with the other members of the Order Ducis.

It was a floating, interlocking, rotating, shifting series of symbols. Vye’s image didn’t possess the same sort of definitive correspondence that Engraving did, but that wasn’t the point. It was, and always would be, a plea. Her image was the shape of Vye’s grand prayer. It was a humble request. It was a lock, slowly being undone. It was a map.

The surrounding air shuddered with its power.

That finally got Harold’s full attention; perhaps his danger sense finally triggered. He scrambled to his feet and threw out his hand, producing a blast of maroon gas. Under the weight of Vye’s image, that gas almost instantly dissipated. But the Blighted Paragon wasn’t done. He raised his voice and shouted. “Guards!”

Vye sensed the movement outside but ignored it. The Ignite she created between her two hands flared up until it encountered one of her palms… which she had covered with a Mirror. So the Ignite ricocheted sideways into the other palm, which was likewise covered in a Mirror. Faster and faster, it shot back and forth, quickly rebounding almost fifty times, gaining a little bit of power with each Mirror.

Howard Boltmer lowered his stance, watching her carefully as he considered his next move. Gritting her teeth, Vye forced herself to endure through another dozen Mirrors. Even with the support of her image behind her, it would be difficult to hold on for much longer. So Vye didn’t bother. She opened her palms.

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WHOOOOOOOSSSSSSSHHHHHHH!

A roaring pillar of flame exploded upward, blasting Howard Boltmer’s tent directly up into the air, stakes, tent poles, and all. A split second later, the heat of that flaming pillar was enough to ignite the various materials and reduce them to ash. Even though the heat and pressure was given an outlet upward, Vye still winced from the experience of holding the pillar. She even earned a couple of Levels in Pain Resistance for her troubles.

Rather than being buffeted by any sort of explosion, the shock of what he was seeing seemed to send Howard Boltmer reeling several steps back. His face was twisted into a grimace. As the noise of the flames began to die down, Vye glanced over her shoulder to see several guards armed with poleaxes standing transfixed right outside the entrance to the tent. It was clear from their deathly pale faces that they were quite thankful they were a half step too slow on their rush to assist their leader.

“Capture the bitch,” Howard Boltmer growled. His skin rippled again and he seemed to physically shift into a reptilian creature. “Alive.”

Oddly, Vye simply felt numb. Her image stayed in the sky, the yellow lines and dotes slowly shifting into a vast, new pictogram. Without the tent in the way, it could spread out and fill the area above the central portion of the Blighted Paragon’s camp. At this point in a spar against Naffur of Helen, the opposition would have already expanded their own image, threatening to tamper down Vye’s influence in the surrounding area. Then the fight would enter a second stage where there was a mental wrestling match going on between the two fighter’s Willpower even as they fought physically with Skills.

Yet these people really had no answer to Skills. If anything, Vye’s influence in the area was only deepening. A quick scan determined that aside from the suddenly reptilian Blighted Paragon, there were about thirty guards rushing forward. Some were dropping their weapons and mutating like the hulk into raging slabs of muscle. Others raised their hands and began casting Skills. It all seemed so… pointless.

Even now, Vye couldn’t detect any hint of something that could threaten her. It was… strange. Almost boring. Somewhat lonely. And in a way that was hard to describe, it was exhausting.

Was this what the Ghosthound felt when he returned to Earth and the people here thought they were strong…?

“Golden Dragon!” A man at the back of the guards yelled. After blinking, Vye recognized him as the foreign minister who she had met previously. But at his words, his hands erupted in golden flames and a swimming dragon of fire shot forward toward Vye.

The projectile moved quickly over the other guards’ heads, reaching Vye a few seconds before the mutating guards could. Even as her left hand continued to throb painfully, she threw up a large Mirror Ritual in front of her. And despite the fact that the golden flames of the dragon were obviously very destructive, Vye barely felt anything as the dragon reached the edge of her Ritual and disappeared.

Without an image, there was barely any weight to the attack.

Congratulations! Your Skill Ritual: Mirror (R) has grown to Level 198!

The surrounding guards were clearly shocked to see the dragon of fire disappear. But they were even more shocked a second later when the air rippled and another dragon appeared, this one a true dragon with shining golden scales. Its eyes were balls of flame, but otherwise, it physically appeared to be a sinuous dragon whose body was one meter in diameter. It was a Chinese style dragon, and its long whiskers shook as it opened its mouth and roared. Whistling geysers of smoke exploded from its nostrils.

Then it blasted forward, moving with such violence that flames born of friction skittered across its scales. The nearest guard had been about to reach Vye, but the dragon bowled him over, burning away the swollen muscles of the man’s left arm in the process. The man screeched in agony and collapsed, unable to withstand even a brush of that golden dragon. Vye could see, almost in slow motion, the revealed bones of his arm baking before her eyes.

The other guards behind him collapsed like bowling pins, various portions of their body scorched away. Although the guards wouldn’t ever know it, Vye strained to control the reflected Skill so it wouldn’t kill any of them. She pushed it upward and away from the camp so that it shot up into the sky. But not before it had passed close enough to some of the surrounding tents that they were ignited.

There would be damage, but Vye didn’t let it bother her. That was what the modern world was under the System. As long as lives weren’t lost, the Order Ducis was willing to teach some harsh lessons to groups that wouldn’t respect the status quo.

While Vye had turned her attention to the guards, the Blighted Paragon had made his move. His head had almost completely transformed into a lizard at this point and he opened his mouth and belched out a cloud of green smoke around dozens of sharp teeth.

Vye’s eyes flashed. Her image projected a Cleanse over the area and extinguished the smoke.

But it seemed that the lizardman leader had been aiming for that opening. While Vye flexed her image, he stepped forward with remarkable speed and shot a scaled hand forward to grab her throat.

Narrowing her eyes, Vye instinctively activated another Ritual. This was her strongest, the one branded onto her body. Her left hand twitched as the throbbing pain numbed almost her entire arm with its persistent agony. Reject.

Congratulations! Your Skill Ritual: Reject has grown to Level 219!

Crack!

Vye could hear the sounds of Howard Boltmer’s fingers, strengthened as they were by this lizard transformation, being forced back away from her body until they shattered and the joints were torn apart. Even his wrist snapped, mangled by the sudden and unexpected resistance. Hissing between his teeth, the Blighted Paragon stumbled backward.

For a second, no one moved. The only sound was the low whimpers of the guards who had their flesh burned away by the golden dragon.

Then Vye smiled. “Such a pleasure to meet you all. But I must be on my way. Another agent from the Order Ducis will make contact with you soon and iron out the details of our future relationship. I hope you are anticipating that moment as much as I am.”