“Did I miss something, or did you?” The Krantz took a step back. “Aren’t you here to kill our king?”
“Let me clarify some basic stuff for you.” Tetsu moved forward. “I don’t know where I am, why I am here, or give a flying fuck about who your supposed king is, or what he wants.”
The troop casually performed an “en pointe,” a ballerina’s toe stand, to peek at the unconscious men on the floor. To make it seem natural, the Krantz stayed on his toes, holding the side walls for support.
“Sorry about that.” Tetsu ignored the bizarre alien and continued, not wanting to startle the alien. “They aren’t dead, and I didn’t realize I could do... well, that. Damn.”
The Krantz’s curiosity overtook him, and he tiptoed closer, a burning question in his stomach causing him to forget the pain. “What is that last word you keep using? My translation skill isn’t able to translate it.”
“You have a bloody skill for—” Tetsu stopped as the alien stepped away, wary of the sudden burst of anger. “Sorry, my bad. I hate it when others get skills for survival while I am stuck with a stingy system.”
The Krantz retreated further. “I can’t give you my skill,” he stuttered, trying to hide, afraid that Tetsu might somehow extract the skill from him.
‘Vampires can’t do that, can they?’ he wonders to himself. “I’m pretty sure they can’t,” Tetsu wonder aloud, further unsettling the alien. “And I’m not one.” His fangs descend, rendering the point moot as he silences another Krantz. No, Tetsu did not kill him; he just drained the Krantz of life to the point of exhaustion.
As another group approaches, the questioning and standoff repeat. This time, he controlled his fangs, but they were more paranoid than the first batch, turning into potions for Tetsu.
After the eighth batch, his fatigue subsided, giving him ample time to hide and scout, but every group found him almost instantaneously, as if a cameraman were still following him around.
Only after kidnapping a Krantz, stripping her, then dressing her back up because it turned out to be a woman, kidnapping a male Krantz on his umpteenth attempt, and stealing his clothes and aura signature later did the scouts lose his tracks.
———<>|*|<>———
“A non-Krantz cannot enter the castle!” a general yells at the scouts. “How did he get inside?”
They remain silent and seething over their fallen comrades, with only Tarah questioning the norm. “He didn’t kill anyone? Why? Why is he even here?”
———<>|*|<>———
“Why the hell am I here again?” Tetsu questions himself.
His original goal, before chaos erupted, had been to pick up a week’s worth of rations. Once chaos ensued, all he desired was to escape. Tetsu aimed and was certain he moved away from the irrational brutes, yet he found himself at the center of the chaos. Later, more groups joined, and he persisted in remaining in the center, despite his efforts not to. Three free points down, three armies on his tail, and now inside the fourth stronghold.
“Where the hell did it all go wrong?” Tetsu rams into a group of unsuspecting scouts, his weight coupled with the boxers and stolen loot, knocking them unconscious.
Pilfering more potions and marking a few for safety, the castle appeared the best option at the moment, with no way around it. After infiltrating by some unknown means, Tetsu had no clue what to do next, but heading out wasn’t an option either. Whether or not he liked it, this castle proved to be the safest place he had encountered since this ordeal began, and he intended on staying until someone kicked him out.
“I have such petty goals,” Tetsu sighs.
To bolster his odds, Tetsu contemplated dropping another point into luck. Yet, he hesitated, as it had only spelled doom until now, and he had already consumed four of the precious ultimate hacks.
“Why isn’t the mist cleared yet?” K yelled into the microphones, his voice reverberating throughout the entire castle.
“The team...” Tarah realized. “The Intruder is in the new wing.”
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Tetsu crushed the earpieces. “Got the info, but have no clue what to do with it or how to use it. I must be the worst infiltrator to have ever infiltrated.” He discarded the crushed earpiece and replaced it with another while examining the damaged one.
———<>|*|<>———
Seven squads passed by Tetsu as he clung to the ceiling like a lizard experimenting with earth affinity.
“Earth, metals, and solids should come under the same affinity, right?” Tetsu pondered.
Aside from his physical strength, nothing else assisted in his attempt to dig through the ceiling. In the last ten minutes, he made several lacerations, yet none of them even served as a foothold, in a burst of inspiration, Tetsu attempted to manipulate the mana from within the marble ceiling.
The constructs grew stronger thanks to the excessive, unique Mana they held. The days of hiding underground, storing, and considering the earth as his home had played a part in him gaining earth affinity. If he applied the same principle to this marble or any solid surface... Tetsu concentrated, forgetting the world and the imminent danger lurking around every corner. Yet he couldn’t overcome the mental block.
Tetsu dropped to the floor, the Runes canceling out his momentum at the last minute, and followed the group, discussing refilling the cannon. Either they had no way of turning off the translation skill, or it worked on autopilot. Tetsu cared little at this point. All he wanted was a minor victory to boost morale, and what better way to accomplish that than to fulfill another childhood dream?
It was time for a heist.
Tetsu trailed the group into a massive vault, larger than the entire castle itself. “God, I love magic,” he snickered and hid. Once the group left, the easiest and weirdest heist in the system's history unfolded.
———<>|*|<>———
Four armies rushed to find the lotus.
Three wildcard entries disrupted the flow of the battle.
Two armies fought for supremacy, while one individual stole from underneath their noses because he had nothing else better to do.
“We need a set of key arrays to enter the castle,” Mor grunted.
“Set of? That’s not how arrays work,” Val frowned.
‘I realized that much,’ Mor mouthed. ‘I wanted a solution.’
“Figure out the details now. If a darn human can, so can we... you,” Val corrected.
The animated Horr’er roared, and the army mistook the yell for Val’s battle cry, charging towards the castle.
“Ah! I am surrounded by braindead... well, duh,” Val groaned, then yelled and charged alongside them.
———<>|*|<>———
An enormous shadow moved within the tunnel.
“My Queen—”
“Do not dare tell me what to do, child,” the Queen warned the Strategist.
“I shall deal with the humans myself. All of you, locate the treasure,” she ordered, sharing the quest with the Strategist and Ant General, her shadow disappearing without so much as a ripple.
———<>|*|<>———
“Human,” Prime Elementor commanded, crushing the information orb, “take over,” instructing the smaller Claytrons.
The lesser Claytrons observed their Prime roar and take several minutes to manipulate its trunk-sized legs to straighten their bodies, then a couple more minutes to take a few steps.
An information orb rolled below Prime’s feet. The Elementor stepped without glancing, absorbing the orb alongside the information.
“Do you want us to activate the skill?” the orb read.
Prime wanted to express the obvious with a frown, but Claytrons weren’t capable of such emotions or expressions... yet. So Prime nodded, and when they still stood oblivious to the gesture, Prime created a message orb to convey the message: “Yes!”
The Claytrons’ arms around the battlefield dissolved into a semi-solid form, connecting them while forming a labyrinthine clay slide. Prime took several steps to reach the closest stream, each step taking several minutes, but once it connected with the river, Prime surfed through the terrain, aiding the Claytron army by dropping clay orbs for them to absorb and grow stronger.
The majority of Ants and Claytron forces were stuck near the clay mountain, holding their line, stalling the other army, and the three distinct aerial beasts.
One aerial species used mist to block their vision, while another rained down fire that torched everything within its range. The third species was the most frightening of all.
These creatures were made of nothing but different hues of feathers and moved around by taking the form of wings. With nothing else but feathers to aim at, they invaded and struck their targets at specific nodes. One captured node broke the body’s connection to the brain, and the next turned even the Claytron into their host.
Once in range, the wings burst into tiny feathers, enveloping and forcing commands on the host. They seemed weak considering their size and delicate build, but each feather had the strength to rip an arm out of its joint if the host didn’t comply.
“What are you willing to lose... la la,” Tetsu hummed. “Not my loot, no, no, no...”
To say the Krantzes were loaded would be an understatement of the century. They were a true race of scavengers and builders. Based on the manuals Tetsu found, they never invented or modified existing tech, period. The Krantzes were more like a company’s customer care. They didn’t understand heads from tails, but with a manual at their side, they could answer general issues a product might face and satisfy most recurring problems.
The Krantz made a name for themselves by becoming the customer care for every inventor in the multiverse. They took on the grunt work and left inventions to the inventors. Of course, this gave them insights into every product, procedure, and technique available, making it easy for them to steal and sell on the cheap.
This didn’t mean they built them from scratch either; that work was delegated to another group. None of them took the job too seriously, though, and this unspoken rule kept them alive as everyone needed customer services while they always required a manual to guide others in building basic machinery.
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