Chapter Eighty-Six: Retreat…
His experience from the dungeons made the first step rather easy for Greg to figure out. Information gathering. The more they knew about their guests and potential foes, the more prepared they’d be for whatever might come their way. This is how Greg came to be playing the role of the new Town-head’s servant. The head of the Valla household had been both displeased and apprehensive when Greg appeared at his house and told him that he’d be pushing him around for the day. Not a stupid man by any stretch of the imagination, the new Town-head wasn’t deluded into thinking that Greg had developed a sudden bout of charity. But while he knew that there was an underlying motivation for his actions, he was entirely wrong as to what they were. “The healer doesn’t need to send you as a spy. No one among the three families is stupid enough to make enemies of her over a few guests,” He’d said when Greg told him that he’d be pushing him around.
Greg hadn’t even considered this dimension when thinking of the upcoming meeting. That his presence at the meeting would keep all three families in check and ensure that they were very careful about what they said. To him, his teacher’s warning had been enough. While she was genial most of the time, Greg knew perhaps better than anyone in town that his teacher was no saint. If any of the three families crossed her, chances are that only two major families would be left in town. So, he hadn’t even been thinking of policing anyone. If any of them wanted to die, they were fully welcome to do so.
Still, he didn’t correct the man of his erroneous assumption. Instead, he just smiled behind the wooden mask, knowing that the man could see his cheeks pulling apart. “Then my presence there won’t make any difference. Will it?” He’d declared. With no further objections to offer, the man had just nodded, allowing Greg to take position behind him. Greg had gotten so used to wearing the CHARMING mask around town that wearing the wooden mask again felt a bit odd to him. Still, Greg had been afraid that these visitors would recognize the CHARMING mask as a magical item, drawing attention to him that he didn’t necessarily want as of yet. He’d thus put on the simple wooden mask.
Though none of them said anything, Greg could see by the slight unease in their expressions that the head of the Ember and Aria households had made the same assumption as the new Town-head about his presence at the meeting. But other than greeting them and telling them to act like he wasn’t there, Greg hadn’t said anything else to them. If his presence there kept them on the straight and narrow, then all the better. Greg’s focus, however, was on the platform descending from the airship.
With everyone looking in the direction of the flying vessel, no one noticed when Greg’s irises went from their usual color to a nebula of stars. His goal in activating his appraisal vision was to see just how much of a danger the people coming down would be. After all, while it wasn’t a perfect measure, the value of the things on them would give Greg a hint of the kind of power they commanded. Greg, however, got an unexpected surprise when he activated the eyes. While the people coming down were decked out in all manner of magical items based on what he was seeing, the thing that immediately caught his attention was the second platform floating down beside them. On it, only a single man stood. Greg had to switch back and forth a few times between his normal vision and his appraisal sight to ascertain the fact that the man was completely invisible in normal sight. As someone who had a hidden guard in the form of Olivia, Greg could appreciate the wisdom of having an ace that your foes weren’t aware of. Unfortunately for them, this ace wasn’t as hidden as they might have liked to believe.
When the hidden man turned to look at Greg, he didn’t flinch or look away. After all, the airship was still in the skies behind them. Greg just acted like he was looking up at the airship.
Greg had to admit that he wouldn’t have been as good at his task of gathering information from their visitors if he didn’t have two consultants in his mind to confer with. For example, Morpheus had warned Greg that the invisible guard would more than likely test him when he got down on the ground and that he needed to keep calm and not react. Which is why he turned his appraisal gaze off when they finally landed. Greg wouldn’t have been able to pull off nonchalance if he actually knew what was happening. With him blind to it, there was nothing to react to. It was only after the whole meeting was over that Morpheus reported that the man had sent a dagger flying at his head at least three different times, each time, however, the blade would stop just an inch away from his head. Greg had felt a cold sweat soak his back at the idea, at the time, however, he’d been blissfully unaware.
Another area where Olivia came in clutch was in pointing out the schism between the young man and the lady speaking. Given how calm the mask he wore was, Greg had thought that everything was playing out how they had planned it. It’s, only when Olivia pointed out the stiffness of the young man’s gait, the way his hand unconsciously clenched and unclenched, and the fact that he didn’t smile even when the two ladies were, that Greg noticed. “It’s easy to control one’s facial expressions, but to shut down all the tells of the body is not a skill that many have,” Olivia had informed him at the time. Of course, they couldn’t be sure what exactly was going on, but one thing was clear, the young man and the lady weren’t on the same page.
Greg wasn’t sure why, but for whatever reason, the young lady who’d thus far been speaking seemed intent on antagonizing them. Not only did she rudely brush off the former Town-head, but she also immediately replaced the new one. All through the interaction, Greg had been expecting at least one of the family heads or the former Town-head himself to raise an objection of some kind. This was, after all, just a young woman several decades their junior steamrolling over them as if they were nothing. The supremacy of strength in this world, however, was once again hammered down in Greg’s mind as he noted that, despite their indignation, none of them gave voice to the clear ire he could see in their eyes. After all, the several guards standing behind their three visitors weren’t there just for show.
However, while they couldn’t do anything directly to the visitors, that didn’t mean that they couldn’t do it indirectly. Given that they were in the former Town-head’s compound, by custom, he should have been the one to welcome them into his home to share a meal and confer with the visitors. After the blatant disregard from the young lady, however, he’d gone silent far past the point where it would have been polite to invite them into his home. On his part, as soon as he was stripped of his role as Town-head, the head of the Valla household said with a genial smile, “It would seem I have nothing more to do here. Let’s head back,” He’d calmly instructed. The people of this town had led hard lives, they might not be powerful in terms of magic, but there was a spine to them.
Although Greg wanted to hang around and see what more information he could gather from their visitors, he couldn’t break away from his role as the servant to the head of the Valla household. As such, without any hesitation, he reached forward to take hold of the man’s wheelchair. It would seem he’d later have to question the head of the Aria household as the way things were going, he’d probably be the one to host them. Greg, however, had only placed his hands on the handles of the wheelchair when the young lady’s cold voice rang out “I haven’t given you permission to leave,” She coldly growled.
“I didn’t ask for it,” The head of house Valla replied calmly, clearly not bothered by the young lady’s objection.
“Toli,” The young woman called out just as Greg was about to turn the wheelchair.
One of the guards behind her, a man with a cold look in his eyes and a jagged scar running across his face stepped forward. “Yes, young mistress,” he answered.
“If they move even an inch before I give them permission to, cut them down where they stand!” she’d ordered.
“As you wish,” Came the simple straight answer from the guard. Looking at the cold way he was regarding the two of them, there was no doubt in Greg that he would carry out the order without hesitation.
Under his shirt, Greg was wearing a tier-two pendant that could suppress one’s mana signature up to the second tier. This was the reason that their visitors hadn’t picked up on the fact that there was a mage standing before them. Greg was certain that in any other situation, a simple pendant wouldn’t have been enough to completely hide him. In this situation, however, it was the expectations of the visitors that worked against them and in Greg’s favor. Until they reached the top of the mountain where the abyssal ooze was, they had no way of knowing that there was a mage in this town. They probably thought of everyone in this town as a mundane human, which is why they didn’t look twice when they saw the very thing they expected to see.
The moment the order was given, however, Greg’s gaze hardened as he readied himself to react. He didn’t know if the pendant could keep his mana masked once he started actively cycling it, and frankly, he didn’t care. He still had the element of surprise and he planned to make full use of it. Olivia had already revealed the fact that the guards were third-tier mages, if he allowed the man before him to make the first move, he more than likely wouldn’t survive long enough to retaliate. As several dives in the dungeon had taught him, once Greg had decided to attack, he had zero qualms with making the first move. Having already prepared himself for the possibility of violence, Greg had several explosives in his personal pocket space that he planned to deploy after his first attack, to further sow discord and allow him to escape in the chaos.
‘Calm yourself!’ Morpheus’s stern voice had cut through Greg’s instinctual reaction before he could act. “There are five third-tier mages around you. Even if you managed to kill the first using the element of surprise, you’d be dead even before you fully managed to turn around and run,” He laid out. “Besides, the fifth invisible guard is currently standing behind you. Make any move to attack and your head will be rolling off your shoulders before you know what happened,” The being had further warned Greg, causing him to stiffen up. Luckily for Greg, he'd already gone rigid with tension when the kill order was given, so his reaction to the presence of the guard behind him wasn’t noticeable.
Before Greg could reassess and come up with a new plan of action, an objection came from an unexpected direction. “That won’t be necessary Toli,” came the voice of the young man that first spoke when the visitors landed before the young lady took over. “Stand down!” while he spoke calmly, Olivia told Greg that the young man was suppressing rage. Taking a step forward, he unexpectedly offered a bow in apology. “You’ll have to forgive my sister. Months of travel aboard the airship have left her rather irritable. I thought a trip off the airship would do her some good, but clearly, that was a miscalculation on my part. I thank you for welcoming us, but I beg leave for the day. I’ll come down to meet you again tomorrow,” The young man said before turning and getting back on the boat-shaped flying vessel.
Greg could see in the eyes of the man’s sister that she wasn’t at all happy about being interrupted in her power trip and being essentially ordered to get back to the ship. Greg also hadn’t missed the phrasing of the young man’s words. He hadn’t said that ‘they' would be back, but ‘he’. More than likely, this irritable sister wasn’t going to be allowed off the ship again. When she turned to glare at her brother, however, she froze as she caught the same thing Greg had thanks to Olivia. Despite his calm façade, the young man was barely holding it together. There was a murderous rage in the young man’s eyes, if she pushed him, there was a very high likelihood she’d be attacked. With one last venomous glare at them, the young lady turned her nose up and walked back to the flying platform.
Once the guards had gotten back on the flying vessel, the thing floated up off the ground heading back toward the airship. For a second, Greg was tempted to activate his appraisal sight to see if the invisible guard had also left with the others. At the last second, however, he decided against it. If he was in the man’s shoes, he’d wait precisely for a moment like this to test Greg, just to see if he could be seen or not. If Greg activated the appraisal sight and found the man looking directly at him, he wouldn’t know what to do. So without any fanfare, he just took hold of the wheelchair in front of him, turned it towards the gate of the compound, and started pushing. Thus ended the first meeting between Greg and someone who’d come to be a lifelong friend…
***
“Call the captain, NOW!”
From all his etiquette training, Lothar knew that it was unbecoming of him to be shouting but he really couldn’t have cared less at the moment. He had called them to his office. He had explained to them that there was a danger in this place, that they needed to tread carefully lest tragedy befall them. And yet, the very first thing his sister did when they got to the ground was to try and stir up trouble. If not for the fact that her master would kill him if he laid a finger on the bitch, Lothar and his sister would probably have already come to blows. Deep down, under the layers of pain and betrayal, some part of him ached and grieved for the sister he’d lost. The sister who’d once cared for and loved him. The sister who now was no more.
Deina, it seemed, was perfectly happy to risk harm if he too suffered as well. That’s the only explanation Lothar could come up with for why she would so openly seek trouble after Lothar had warned them of the hidden danger in this area. Perhaps it was because she had her teacher with her that she believed that she’d be able to escape whatever the fallout of her behavior would be. Perhaps he’d been wrong to warn them. He'd done so out of an abundance of caution thinking that they too would know not to stoke any trouble. Not factoring in her hatred of him in that decision had been a mistake, one that Lothar wouldn’t make again.
“Lothar,” came a tentative call to him from her fiancé, Irena. “Try to calm yourself,” she urged, her gaze following him even as he paced from side to side on the deck of the airship. “Like you said, Deina was just stressed out from…” The scathing look that he sent her immediately caused any further words to die on her lips.
“You called for me,” Captain Brenar's voice cut through the silence on the deck. The man had just emerged from below deck, his amethyst snake wrapped around his neck as always.
“Captain, at full speed, how long will it take you to go from here to the city of Varun and back?” Lothar immediately questioned.
“Lothar …” Irena made another attempt to speak, but Lothar held up a hand, cutting her off, his gaze never leaving the captain.
It took the captain a second to reply, clearly not having expected such a question. “At full speed, we can be back in the city within three days. It’ll take a day to have the airship checked, restock anything we might be running low in, and have the crew rest before another three-day trip back. So about a week,” The captain laid out.
“Good! Make preparations! You’ll be leaving me with five guards while you take my sister and fiancé back home!” Lothar ordered in an unyielding tone.
“That won’t be necessary!” Deina countered in a defiant tone. “I’ll be going home when I want to not when you say so!” she declared.
Lothar rounded on his sister, heat beginning to flow off him as the fire mana within him started churning. “Have you forgotten the condition on which I agreed to you joining me on this journey? “ He questioned.
As head of the house, Lothar couldn’t reject him when his father had said that his younger brother and sister would be joining him on the trip he planned to make. The excuse given was that they too needed a break from the city, not that Lothar believed this for even a second. Still, he couldn’t defy the head of his house. Not without a really good reason. But just because he couldn’t say no, didn’t mean that he couldn’t lay conditions for acceptance.
There were two iron-clad conditions that Lothar had laid out for his father. If Deina failed to abide by either, he’d be fully within his rights to immediately send her back. The first was that she couldn’t pry into his purposes for the trip. Any attempts to do so, magical or otherwise, wouldn’t be tolerated. This was why despite travelling with him for the past two months, she still hadn’t been aware what it was he was after. Ironically, the same had been true of him. With how vague the wording of the prophecy was, Lothar had fully expected to have to make several such trips. It was an astounding stroke of luck that he’d come across the answer on his very first voyage.
There was no doubt in Lothar that both his sister and fiancé were aware of the abyssal ooze near the mountaintop. They weren’t blind after all. But just like gold on the side of the road, one who came across it would pick it up whether this was their primary goal or not. In other words, the cleansing pearls from an abyssal ooze were valuable enough that it wasn’t odd for Lothar to pause in whatever he was doing to harvest them. This fact made it so that even with this stop, they couldn’t be sure whether this was his real goal or just something he was pausing to do in the middle of pursuing his real goal.
The second condition that he’d set forth for the trip was that he was the highest authority on board the airship. By the contract between them, the captain of the airship would heed his commands within reason while they were on the voyage. But the same wasn’t necessarily true of any other passengers on board the airship. But because this was a private charter, Lothar hadn’t been worried about this, right up until his father chose to foist his sister on him. Naturally, Lothar had been quick to assert that he wouldn’t countenance any fights for power while on the voyage. Either his sister submitted to his authority or she stayed behind! His father hadn’t been happy about this one but Lothar wouldn’t be moved.
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“Really Lothar?” Deina questioned, sounding part annoyed and part confused. “You want to send me back home just because I threatened a few mundane people?”
Lothar, however, wasn’t having any of it. She’d already outed herself as antagonistic to anything he might be planning to do here. Even if she swore to be kind to the locals, Lothar was certain that she would find another way to undermine him. If he allowed her to stay, he’d have no one to blame other than himself for whatever trouble ensued. Turning away from her, his answer to her was simple. “Say hello to Mother for me when you get back!” he coldly stated. It was a bit of a cheap shot, as Lothar knew that the only person in their family that Deina hated perhaps more than him was his mother. Just like her father was his father by law but not by blood, his mother wasn’t her blood mother but her mother by law.
A fact that she resented with every strand of her being.
Enough so that, Lothar was forced to turn around when he felt water mana gathering around her sister. “Do not call that viper my mother!” she hissed in a tone so venomous that Lothar knew any further provocation from him would incite an attack from her.
Still, Lothar wasn’t intimidated in the least. “I’ve been in the second tier for more than ten cycles now, while you ascended to the first tier just a cycle ago,” He said in a deceptively calm tone. The mana in his body, however, was churning, causing the heat from his body to ratchet up significantly. “And you think to threaten me with your middling power?” he asked, taking a step closer to his sister causing half of the water that had already started to coalesce around her to evaporate.
Lothar could see it in Deina’s eyes that she didn’t want to back down. Still, there was no disputing the power gap between them. A dark part of him wanted her to go for it. If she attacked first, Lothar would be fully within his rights to counter and put her in her place. On the other hand, his little brother was on board, if he hurt Deina badly, the only family member that still liked him would start hating him far sooner than he otherwise would have. Before his sister made a move one way or the other, however, someone else appeared on deck.
“What is going on here?” A soft feminine voice was heard, causing everyone on deck to stiffen.
Even with the heat coming off him, Lothar couldn’t help the chill that encased his heart at the voice. Even though it was her master, even Deina went a bit stiff at the realization that she was now on deck with them. Lothar’s gaze shifted from his sister to the woman who had just walked onto the deck. If his sister’s presence on this trip was because his father had foisted her on him, this woman was here simply because she had declared it so. Being her sister’s teacher, when she found out that she was planning on coming on this trip, she declared that she would be coming as well. Being a fifth-tier mage, and a rather powerful one at that, there was little that Lothar could do to object. Offending people who were far more powerful than even the head of your house was not a good strategy for living long.
While she was a powerful water mage in her own right, what Mage Shia was best known for was her alchemy skills, specifically poisons. Having already attained the vaunted status of a master alchemist at just four hundred cycles of age, she was already working towards the title of grandmaster alchemist. Only a few prominent names in history had achieved the rank of master alchemist before the age of five hundred, so it was easily understandable why her name commanded so much respect in the mage world. As for the rank of grandmaster, it did not have a certain number of cycles attached to it. Countless gifted alchemists had made it to the master alchemist level and then gone no further. However, every grandmaster alchemist who had interacted with Mage Shia had asserted that not only was she likely to achieve the rank, but she might be the first mage in history to do so before reaching a thousand cycles in age. The next youngest person to achieve the rank of grandmaster alchemist was one thousand five hundred and forty-seven cycles in age.
The reason everyone on deck went stiff despite her calm tone and even her soul-snatching beauty, was because this woman was known for her irascibility. You could be having a perfectly calm conversation with her in one moment, and in the next, she’d fly off the handle, threatening to kill you and your nine generations. Out of anyone else, this threat might have been considered empty blaster, but when it came from a master of poisons that had actually done it to a few poor souls before, then it was no longer as easily dismissible. While her alchemy skills made her a force to reckon with in the mage world, this anger management problem of hers landed her in trouble so many times that she was a headache for her superiors in her mage alliance.
That’s how she ended up as his sister’s master. The city of Varun, while large in terms of population, wasn’t anywhere significant enough in the mage world to hold such a figure. She’d been sent there by her mage alliance as a punishment. Lothar’s father, for all his faults, was not a stupid man. Seeing this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, he immediately began to send gifts and try to befriend the mage. Over the course of three years, he worked himself into her good graces and even managed to get her as a temporary teacher for his daughter when she awakened with the same element as Mage Shia. So long as she was in exile within the city, she’d teach Deina everything she needed to know as a water mage. But as soon as her time in exile was over, they’d part ways, their relationship as teacher and student severed
“I asked a question, do not make me repeat myself!” She growled when the silence went on a few seconds longer than she liked. Some of her legendary wrath already showing.
“I am sending Deina back home,” Not letting any of his unease show, Lothar straightforwardly relayed his decision. There was no denying that the woman inspired some fear in Lothar. He, however, wasn’t about to risk death because of her. With the prophecy still hanging over his head, Lothar had every intention of ensuring that everything went smoothly while he was out here.
“Is that so? Might I ask why that is?” She questioned.
“He’s upset that I threatened a few mundane people!” Deina spoke up before Lothar could, her tone and demeanor trying to play up how unreasonable he was being.
A look of confusion crossed Mage Shia’s expression as she looked around at the people present. It took a few seconds for Lothar to understand where her confusion stemmed from. “On the ground below,” He clarified.
For all her faults, this woman’s love of alchemy was unquestionable. She’d converted the floor she was on into a makeshift alchemical lab and locked herself inside for the past two months, barely coming out once or twice in that time. Lothar doubted that she’d even been aware that they had stopped. Given that even the servants on board were at least first-tier mages, Mage Shia was probably confused as to where these mundane people came from. Walking over to the railing around the deck, the alchemist looked down at the town below. “Oh,” She voiced in comprehension. After a short while of looking down at the town, she turned back to him. “Why make such a big issue of this?” she questioned in a genuinely curious tone.
Not backing down, Lothar calmly explained. “I have reason to believe that there’s a serious danger hidden somewhere on this mountain. It could be in the town, or somewhere else, I don’t know. Regardless, out of an abundance of caution, I instructed both my sister and fiancé to not provoke anyone while we were in town. That, however, is the very first thing she did the moment we landed in town. She was welcome on this trip so long as she was willing to abide by my directions. But as her actions clearly show, she isn’t willing to do so. Which is why she will be going back home,” He laid out his case.
“A danger?” Mage Shia repeated, her brows furrowed as she glanced back down at the town. “Oh,” she intoned, the confusion clearing from her face. “You mean the visitor from another world,” She more stated than asked, causing Lothar’s pupils to shrink to the size of pins. There were several formations around his office meant to secure whatever was inside and prevent prying from outside and yet, with complete nonchalance, Mage Shia revealed that she had not only broken in but that she’d also listened to the crystal prophecy.
Lothar could feel his jaws clenching as he forced himself to suppress his indignation. This was the arrogance of the powerful. Forget her confession, even if Lothar had caught her red-handed, there would have been very little he could have done to force her to give an account of herself. One of the conditions that he’d set out for his father was that Deina wasn’t allowed to pry into his reasons for the trip. But while he could lay that condition on them, He had zero hope of enforcing that same requirement on this fifth-tier mage. She was powerful and he wasn’t, that was the start and end of the issue.
“Does that mean you’ve found what you were looking for?” she asked turning once again to scan the landscape before them. Lothar couldn’t help the way his heart clenched at the pronunciation. As had already been established, the master alchemist was far too powerful for him to oppose. Despite having set his sights on it, he had no formal claim on the abyssal ooze. Saying ‘I saw it first' would just make him look like a clown to anyone who heard it. In this world, only strength mattered, the rest was just details. If she staked a claim on the cleansing pearls that the abyssal ooze would produce, if it hadn’t done so already, then there was very little that he’d be able to do.
Though it was entirely expected, Lothar still couldn’t help his dismay when she quickly zeroed in on the black lake near the mountaintop. “Ah, here we are,” She muttered to herself as she produced a runic lens of her own. The runes glowed blue with mana even as the image on the lens rapidly came into focus. Having looked at the abyssal ooze before through a lens of his own, Lothar already knew that there wasn’t much to see, to begin with. The thing looked a lot like a smooth black mirror surface and little else. This was why he was confused when Mage Shia stood quietly for a long while looking through the lens at the abyssal ooze. All of a sudden, even though they were high up in the air, it felt like they were drowning at the bottom of a lake. His mind rationally knew that he was breathing air, Lothar, however, couldn’t keep himself from gasping as Mage Shia’s nascent aspect flowed out of her uncontrollably.
It spoke to the twisted mindset of the woman. Most water mages focused on aspects like the formlessness of water, the life-giving aspect for those in the healing art, the crushing force of water if one wanted to take the offensive route, and so on. Mage Shia, however, had chosen to pursue a rather esoteric aspect of it. The ability of water to drown. It was a common saying in the mage world that there were as many aspects as there were concepts. Few, however, actually stepped out of the norm to pursue such a thing as the aspect of drowning. Lothar had heard that to comprehend a concept one needed to go beyond just understanding a truth but connecting with it in a way that went beyond simple logical understanding. It was the great barrier that kept many, including his father, from crossing over into the fifth tier. He dreaded to imagine what one would have to subject themselves to, to connect to the concept of drowning enough to make it an aspect. Right now, in its nascent stage, all it did was make it harder to breathe. Lothar, however, was certain that once she mastered it, she’d be able to drown a person even while they drew air.
Having already experienced her feats of rage before, Lothar immediately knew that this wasn’t like one of those. Yes, she’d fly off the handle but usually, she had a good grip on her aspect. This time when she turned around, there was murder in her eyes. “Are you trying to get me killed?” She growled through gritted teeth. In an unexpected twist, Lothar who’d been fearing the worst, found himself feeling confused when the look of rage landed on Deina. Crossing the distance between the railing and his now confused sister, the sound of flesh meeting flesh resounded as her teacher backhanded her across the face hard enough to send her sprawling to the floor!
Turning to Lothar she pushed the runic lens painfully into his chest. “Study the very edge of that clearing!” She growled.
Lothar, who still felt like he was drowning, didn’t argue. Trying to reason with Mage Shia while she was in this state was a lot like trying to convince fire not to burn you, or more accurately for water not to drown you. Quickly taking the lens from her, he did his best to move to the railing. Lothar, however, didn’t move too close in case the feeling of drowning overwhelmed him and he tipped over. Bringing the runic lens to his face, he looked through them at the clearing where the abyssal ooze was. This time, rather than solely focusing on his prize, Lothar looked to the edge of the clearing where the trees began. It took a second to find it as the first side he looked at, didn’t have anything on it. Following the line of trees along the edge of the clearing, however, it wasn’t long before he found them.
Lothar couldn’t help but feel that he too deserved a slap just like his sister. So blinded by finally having hope for a cure to his affliction was he, that he had only had eyes for the abyssal ooze and failed to notice what could only be a formation being set up around the creature. There was already another mage present on this mountain! Worse yet, whoever they were, if they had his sister’s teacher panicking, then they couldn’t be of low level. The hand that was holding the runic lens trembled a bit as it lowered once again.
Not waiting for him to say anything, Mage Shia spoke. “I've never been good with formations, but I know enough about them to recognize that whoever made that formation is at least at the sixth tier, possibly even higher!” She growled, her fury rising and the feeling of drowning increasing.
To most on board the airship, however, the feeling was lost on them. A single fifth-tier like Mage Shia was enough to kill everyone onboard without even breaking a sweat. And yet, they had just swaggered into the territory of a sixth, possibly seventh-tier mage without showing proper deference. If the seventh-tier mage took offense at this, then even bringing the ship down from the sky wouldn’t be beyond them. Their bodies went numb.
Lothar now understood why Mage Shia was so irate, especially towards his sister. A student reflected on their teacher. If she had gotten in trouble with the resident mage and then invoked the name of her teacher in an attempt to defend herself, she would have dragged Mage Shia into a fight with someone more powerful than she was. Depending on how unreasonable the mage in question was, Mage Shia might have even been forced to flee for her life. This was one of the very rare occasions where her anger was justified.
“I agree with you Lothar, we are leaving! Whether there is a visitor from another world or not, I don’t know. But what I do know is that you just walked into the lair of a dragon and it let you walk out! We won’t be provoking it a second time!” she declared.
Lothar stood quietly for a while, his eyes on the black pool near the mountaintop. Finally, he spoke out loud. “Captain Brenar, take everyone home,” He declared. It was a pointless order as the contract between them allowed the captain to overrule unreasonable orders especially ones that would lead to their deaths. Hanging around in the territory of a sixth or seventh-tier mage most definitely fell into that category. Had Lothar tried to get him to stay, the captain would happily have had him thrown overboard before turning the ship around and running. But while Lothar wasn’t stupid enough to try and make them stay, his orders to the Captain weren’t finished.
Producing the little boat-shaped flying vessel from the storage ring it was on, Lothar stepped into it and, supplying it with mana, floated off the airship. This was his last lifeline. Lothar had tried everything else to no avail. If this didn’t work out, then he’d have no future as a mage, in which case, he might as well be dead. All eyes were on him as he turned the vessel around to face the people on deck. “I shall forego the remaining month of service you owe me based on our contract. Instead, in a month, you shall pick me up at the town we passed by at the foot of this mountain. If I have not shown up by the time a week elapses, then I can be considered dead and you are freed from all your obligations,” He declared.
By the look of him, Lothar could see that the man was reticent to even come near the mountain. Still, the order wasn’t unreasonable as the airship wouldn’t be trespassing onto the mountain itself, so in the end, the man nodded. With the confirmation, Lothar didn’t wait any longer lest he too lose his nerve. With a block of ice settling in his stomach, he turned the flying vessel and began another descent…