After Lily wrote a nice calling card with her right hand and made a small, cookie-sized bomb with her left — just to show Claud that she really could make a bomb that was cheaper than a sheet of Elysia paper — she handed him the tiny bomb and stuffed the card into a nice, elegant envelope.
“Okay, so what am I supposed to do with this bomb?” Claud asked, eyeing the tiny package. The other customers in this shop clearly weren’t aware that he was holding a weapon that would kill normal indiscriminately; if the people in this café were aware, they would have been chased out on the spot…
Well, no one would believe that a cookie was a bomb, though.
“It’s more of a triggered explosive, actually.” Lily tucked the envelope into her clothes. “You place it on the ground and wait for something to break it.”
“Break it?” Claud looked at the cookie. “Like…snap?”
“It’ll probably explode too if someone bites into it,” Lily added.
“This looks like a freaking cookie, though. If one of those little babies see it, they’ll ask for it,” Claud replied. “I think it’s best if you disassemble this explosive right now.”
“Bah.”
After dismantling the cookie into weird powders and mechanisms that Claud didn’t recognise, she stored them away and said, “But I did prove that bombs can be very cheap, right?”
Claud nodded. “It’s just sad that they’re probably most useful as a distraction right now. They just don’t have the lethality to actually deal damage to a mana-user, unless there’s a lot of explosive prepared.”
He thought about how Lily had blown up the Julan main house back then, and then chuckled. “Well, you’ll need to lure them into a prepared terrain. I suppose there are advantages in using bombs, since they don’t have mana or anything, which some very sensitive folders can sense.”
“I’m not using them to kill people, so it’s fine.” Lily paused. “Well, other than my family. It’s more of a fun thing to me. There are all kinds of ways to use bombs, you know! Like firing them up in the sky so that they’ll explode in pretty colours. I’ve been experimenting, and I’ve managed to make a bomb that explodes with purple light!”
“Purple light?”
“Yeap!”
Claud smiled. “It better be in the shade of your hair. But how would you get the bomb up there to begin with? How big is the explosion?”
“It’s not really the explosion, I suppose.” Lily thought for a moment. “Like long lasting purple flames, probably. As for getting it up there…I’ll probably throw it up myself.”
“Good point.” Claud smiled. “I suppose we shouldn’t do this in Vacuos, though. We’ll screw a lot of people over if we detonate something in the city.”
“Yeah…”
“A problem that living with other people brings.” Claud patted her head. “We’ll go out and have fun with these explosives when we have time.”
“But you’re not in a good condition to go out, though,” Lily pointed out.
“It’s fine, okay?” Claud smiled, and then checked on his body. It was still as lethargic as ever, although Claud found himself a bit startled at how he had managed to at least weaken the psychological effect of his deep-seated fatigue. If he had to liken this feeling to something, it was as if something was impeding the draw of the abyss beneath him, helping him to stave off his fatigue slightly.
It was definitely a good sign.
“Hmm?” Lily peered at him. “Well, you don’t sound like you’re trying to fob me off.”
“Do I do something special when I’m lying or something?” Claud asked, curious. “Now that I think about it, you have a rather uncanny knack for reading me like a book.”
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“Instincts, probably.” Lily tilted her head. “It’s kinda like when I know if certain combinations would result in an explosion on the spot.”
Claud didn’t quite know how he should feel to hear those words, but again, Lily really liked tinkering around with explosive stuff and sweets. Both of them were her favourite hobbies, after all, so he decided that it was a good thing that reading his expression was one of her favourite things to do too.
He glanced at a small group of customers that were making their way inside. One of them seemed to be supported by the others as she whimpered and cried, but Claud had no idea why someone crying would make their way to this café, but—
A shiver ran down his spine as the crying woman looked at him once. Claud didn’t know who that woman was, but for some reason, he had a deathly feeling that she was here for him.
Or rather, the Omen.
However, before he could say anything, Crown started making little agitated meeps from his pocket. The feeling of being sought out intensified, along with the sense of imminent danger, and he glanced at his pocket.
A few people glanced at him at the same time, but he couldn’t care less about the gaze of strangers right now. Getting up from his seat, he and Lily hurried out of the shop and stopped a few metres away from the shop’s entrance.
“Meep! Meep! Meep!” His pocket trembled as the little guy seemed to move around anxiously, and he took out the velvety box.
“What’s wrong?”
The two of them, along with Throne and Sceptre, turned to look at the little guy. The other two meeplings was also taken aback by Crown’s sudden outburst, but after some short, terse meeps, the others also turned agitated.
Claud frowned as he tried to comprehend these meeps. He could sense an incredible urgency and fear in those words, and there were also…entities that were related to their fear. However, these entities didn’t seem to be the divinities; there was this weird feeling of nausea that accompanied this fear.
This was definitely related to the newcomers.
“What’s going on?” Lily asked, before turning to Throne.
“We’re leaving,” Claud replied. “Hurry.”
Lily nodded and fled from the shop with him. Crown’s agitation weakened with every step, and Claud found himself frowning a few times at the little guy. How did he notice that there was something wrong with that group that had just entered the café? Claud’s expectation that something was going to happen to him
After a while, Crown calmed down, and Claud patted it gently. “What’s wrong, little guy?”
The other meeplings meeped in response, and Claud tried to focus on his nebulous connection with Crown and Sceptre. Now that they had calmed down slightly, he could make out a few more thoughts.
“Distortion?” Claud frowned. “What’s that?”
“Meep…meep! Meep! Meep!” Crown jumped three times, and Claud turned around with Lily. A wave of nausea swept his mind a moment later, and the urge to retch filled his body. Claud withstood his body’s immediate desire to just double over, before turning his attention to Lily, who was forcing herself to stand up straight.
“Lily, we shou—”
A purple sphere erupted from the café the two of them had just escaped from, enveloping everything within its opaque purple light. With a thought, Claud activated Will of Freedom and swept Lily up in his arms. The three meeplings huddled around the two of them as he flew away from the expanding purple sphere, which was emanating a sense of danger to Claud.
When he next looked back, the purple sphere had ceased its expansion.
“…What’s that?” Lily whispered. “That thing…”
Claud shook his head. “I’m not sure either. But this thing…I can tell that it’s pretty damn dangerous.
The buildings that were partially enveloped by the purple sphere began to collapse, caving into the purple border and vanishing completely. It was as if the purple sphere was another space entirely, like his storage ring, just that it was much, much stronger.
And more deadly.
There was this strange sense of…wrongness attached to that purple sphere too. It was like looking at a shadowless world, or a Nero that was a teetotaller, but that thing just felt…wrong. Twisted.
As that thought flashed through his mind, the heavens themselves began to crackle with an unbridled rage. A golden light, one that seemed completely separate from the divinities’ representative colours, swirled in the sky.
Claud waited for it to strike down, and seconds ticked by.
As those seconds turned into minutes, however, Claud couldn’t help but stare at the heavens. The five grand skies had clearly ceased to gather power to smite this purple dome in front of him, but they weren’t striking down yet. It was as if someone or something was stopping them from doing so entirely.
“…Can’t we live out our days in peace?” Claud muttered.
“Maybe we can sell the shop and go back home.” Lily glanced at him. “But do you know anything about this?
“How did you guess?” Claud touched his forehead. “Unbelievable. Well, whatever. Well, when we were sitting there and just screwing around, there was a bunch of people who entered the café. I couldn’t help but think that their main character, a crying woman, was looking for me, and when our meeplings started meeping…well, you get the idea.”
“Instincts, then.”
“That makes two of us.” Claud turned to look at the purple sphere, which showed no signs of vanishing anytime soon, and then said, “Can’t we just have a peaceful year? The Red God hasn’t even died for more than a week, and we’re seeing this.”
“…Maybe it’s because the Red God died.”
Claud looked at Lily, and then shivered.