Arcane Apocalypse

22 – The New Norm

“Good, you two are finally here,” Jeff said evenly, looking at the two girls entering the hall on the ground floor with a stony gaze. “Come.”

A small crowd was gathering before the man, with a duo of … fully armoured up people stood behind him. Mia did a double take, almost stumbling as she saw the two knights that wouldn’t have been out of place in a medieval movie or at a Renaissance fair.

Their armour doesn't look like props. Her gaze snapped to a dented part, then a long scrape where a trio of claw marks were still visible when the light shone on them. Mia only knew one thing with claws of that size, and that thing tore through their wooden door with those claws like it was butter, but that armour only got a scrape. How the hell did they get armour like that? Did someone get a metal-working Class or something? 

Mia kept her thoughts to herself, giving a greeting nod as she joined the back of the small group with Lina sliding up next to her. The blonde was taking in everyone with a wary glance, but her eyes stayed on Jeff more often than not. 

“Now that everyone vital for today’s plans is here,” Jeff said, his weighty gaze landing on Mia for a moment, which drew the attention of the two dozen people around her onto Mia as well. “I will explain what we’ll be doing and what everyone needs to do. Firstly, Erik, how is your project going?”

“Ehm,” a young man with dishevelled blonde hair and deep bags under his eyes straightened up and cleared his throat. “I … think I have finished a prototype. We just have to test them now to make sure they work, but I think even just having them neer my window might have produced some effects.”

“I see.” Jeff nodded. He squinted, then his gaze hopped over to the two girls. “Lina, you and Maria have been hunting Goblins this morning, have you not? Have you noticed any changes from yesterday? Fewer numbers perhaps? Lower average levels?”

“Uh,” Lina frowned, looking at Mia uncertainly. “I don’t know, only Mia was out yesterday too.”

Which, of course, put the two dozen gazes back on Mia. Sticking her hands into her pockets to hide their shaking, Mia answered quickly. “I think so. Compared to yesterday, we barely saw a couple dozen of them over the span of a few hours. And there weren’t any Hobgoblins around either today.”

All that meant today’s hunting was basically worthless, since Mia got zero stat ups or level ups. At least Lina levelled up once, so it was sort of fine?

“Perfect,” Jeff said, the hint of a smile appearing on his face. “Erik, we are going to need as many of those deterrents as you can make. Give whatever plant seeds you need grown to Martha.”

“Alright,” Erik said, eyes droopy from the lack of sleep. The poor man looked like he didn’t get a wink of sleep ever since the Awakening. “This thing will only work for the goblins though, the birds have an atrocious sense of smell so to deter them, I’d need something much more … erm, magical?”

“If you have any ideas, just say what you need,” Jeff said. “If your concoctions can keep the monsters away from the building, we’ll do whatever we can to supply you with whatever you need.”

Erik just nodded, almost stumbling as he did so.

“Good. With that done, our biggest worry is water, which we will partially solve today,” Jeff continued. “We have dozens of finished lightweight tubs for collecting rainwater. All we have to do now is to place them around the garden and on the rooftop, and for that, we’ll need some muscle and anti-air support.”

Jeff took a moment to look around, as if asking anyone who had questions to raise their hands. Surprisingly, someone did.

“Yes, Vincent?” Jeff asked, raising an eyebrow at the thirty-something man who wouldn’t have looked out of place behind the counter of a grocery shop.

“I’ve been reading through every book I could get my hands on concerning Enchanting,” the balding man, Vincent said. “I believe making something that could collect purified water out of the humid air could be possible if I had the right materials.”

“What do you need to make a prototype?” Jeff asked without wasting a second as everyone turned to stare hopefully at Vincent.

“Silver,” said Vincent. “Apparently, it keeps mana well and would work well as a base. Aside from that … a Rank 1 monster Core … per device, which I’d have to purify, meaning I’d need to be Rank 1 too.”

That dampened the mood considerably. Some looked at the man suspiciously, and Mia was among them. Is he trying to get carried all the way to Rank 1? 

“We’ll see what can be done,” Jeff said, his tone not betraying any emotions. “Silver will be doable. You are a crafter, if our current understanding of Classes is correct, you just need to craft to level up. The Rank 1 core though, will be problematic in more ways than one.”

“We don’t have any Rank 1 monsters around,” one of the knight wannabes said in a gruff voice. 

“Yet.” The other added, and Mia recognised his voice as the bloodied hunter whose face she introduced to a door a few days back. Hope he doesn’t hold a grudge.

“For now, we will focus on gathering rainwater,” Jeff said. “With the electronics working again, we can boil whatever water we get on a gas stove to make sure it’s drinkable. Now, I want anyone with abilities capable of depositing Erik’s new concoctions around the outside of the building to raise their hands.”

People looked around, shifting nervously until a hesitant hand went up next to Mia. The young halvyr blinked at the blonde next to her, then at the crowd as one or two more hands went up.

Wait. Safely deposit his new stuff around the building? … I could do that with Mage Hand.

Hesitantly, she pulled a hand out of her pocket and slowly raised it. 

“Anyone else?” Jeff asked after a few seconds of silence, then gave a nod. “Alright. Four people. Since Maria and Lina will be half-vital to keeping the birds off of the rooftop, this task will be pushed to the evening. Erik, get some sleep until then.”

The man gave a tired smile and ambled off to the side, collapsing onto an old stinky couch. It was a leftover from when Jeff gave an attempt at turning the large entry hall into a lounge. Erik was asleep before his head even touched the armrest.

“Alright people.” Jeff clapped. “Get moving. I want people watching the skies in ten minutes and the ten of you I’ve tasked with carrying to tubs to get yourselves warmed up. We’ll be getting a workout.”

From there, it was almost a repeat of yesterday, but with triple the anti-air support. Probably to be safe. 

Mia was ready, perched next to a window again along with Lina and another guy Jeff dropped into their lap. Said guy was apparently quite talented at using some manner of Earth Manipulation to lob sound barrier breaking pebbles at stuff.

He was also looking distinctly uncomfortable being in a room alone with two girls half a decade older than him. Not that Mia cared all that much, the boy could be made of marshmallows for all she cared if he could put some of the shooting duty off her shoulders.

“So, Karl, right?” Lina asked conversationally. “I’m Lina and the broody one over there is Mia. I think I remember hearing you are going to be on heavy-hitting duty?”

“Y-yeah,” the boy said, giving a jerky nod as he squirmed under the combined attention of the two girls. It didn’t help that Mia was scowling at just about everything.

“Great,” Lina said with an easy smile. “I stop the birds that come and the two of you shoot them down. That’s the plan, I think?”

“With the two teams around, I don’t think anything you manage to stop mid-dive is going to live for long.” Mia turned back to the window with her part said, eying the sky and keeping her hearing focused for any sign of the door opening below.

“Well, let’s hope I’m not the only one they are relying on to stop the diving birds,” Lina said with fake cheer, the tightly coiled nerves lacing her voice quite clear even to Mia.

“It’ll be fine,” Mia said, perking up as she caught keys turning in a lock. “They’ll also have those knight cosplayers to protect them if we mess up. We just have to keep them from getting swarmed.”

Responsibility was always a pain, and Mia usually did her best to weasel her way out of as much of it as possible. Being a tiny cog in great machine was much less taxing on her nerves than being a pillar holding up a building. 

A cog could make mistakes and others would pick up the slack, and even if not, it’d barely cause some tiny problems. But if a pillar holding up something great collapsed, everything else depending on it also came crashing down.

Mia dearly wanted to go back to being a tiny cog as soon as possible. That was the one thing she liked about being the team leader at her job. Manageable pressure.

The following hour proved to be just what she was hoping for it to be. She was tense at first, keeping a Blast just at the tip of her fingers as her eyes rowed the cloudy blue sky.

Then a bird dove, turning from an imperceptible silvery dot to a metallic missile that Mia’s eyes barely caught. All she saw was a glittery streak, and even that was probably just the afterimage of the real monster.

A gust of wind shot out to intercept it, its wispy white magic visible to Mia’s eyes. The two collided, dozens of metres above Lina’s detection net and the bird’s descent crawled to a halt as it was thrown around in a spherical tornado.

Mia shot off her Blast, having been waiting for just that moment for the last ten minutes, but she was just a touch too slow.

An arrow of golden light was faster, smashing into the bird and tearing a fist sized hole right through its body. Mia watched, bewildered as the arrow disappeared into the distance even as her own spell finally lept off of her fingers.

Her spell struck second, blasting apart and scorching one side of the bird before another couple of spells belatedly impacted the now very much dead bird.

Mia noted a flashing pebble coming from … Karl, that was his name. Followed by a bolt of fire and a spear made of concrete. 

“I think it’s dead,” Mia noted evenly, watching what remained of the bird plummet to the ground. Then get slapped to the side by one of the armoured men, sending it crashing into the wall and leaving the lines of saplings unharmed.

“Can’t make sure enough,” Lina said, flexing her fingers as the threads of air mana flowing out of them tensed back up after she let the bird fall through. “Guess that answers my question.”

Mia let herself relax after that, being satisfied with just holding a Blast at the ready and shooting it off whenever Lina was forced to catch a bird instead of the other Air Mage. As she did so, her focus shifted from reacting in the split second a bird entered her sight, to taking in all the different magics being fired off like fireworks.

Those arrows of light in particular, had her attention. That was Light magic, she was sure of it. The most destructive and chaotic element that still somehow strived off of enhancing and bolstering others. It was the closest element of magic to wielding pure Positive energy and Mia was endlessly interested in it.

She had something of a grasp on the Negative side of things. It was all about control, order and manipulating what was already there, but Positive was projecting energy and making something new with magic. With her Arcane magic seemingly flip-flopping between being all chaotic and destructive like her Blast and extremely orderly and static like her Shield, Mia felt the need to understand that Positive half better.

Unfortunately, she only had a few opportunities to catch mere glimpses of the magic before the task was done. The ‘muscle’ as Jeff called them, worked fast. They carried out a dozen long baths and placed them up next to the walls of the garden, one after the other, in quick order. 

Mia let out a disappointed sigh as the door below clicked shut. 

“What got you extra broody?” Lina asked, poking Mia in the side, which made the smaller girl jump with a startled yelp. “Even your ears are drooping.”

“No they aren’t!” Mia bit back, reaching up to feel out her ears carefully and then glared up at the blonde when she found them standing perfectly upright like they should be. 

“So?” Lina asked, reiterating her previous question. “What got you all droopy?”

“Nothing,” Mia huffed, scowling at the blonde.

“Fine,” she rolled her eyes. “Keep your secrets then. Anyways, it’s time we got to climbing those stairs if we want to reach the rooftop before the muscly boys with the tubs we are supposed to be protecting do.”

Right, this was just the first half of our task. Mia perked up, happy about getting a few more possible opportunities to see the different magics at work. Especially that Light magic. I could even check who that Light mage is. It was so powerful already. What sort of creature could they have gotten turned into?

*****

“H- how ?” Lina wheezed, leaning against a wall up on the tenth floor like she was about to fall over any second now. “How are you fine?”

“I’m built different.” Mia shrugged, a smirk playing across her lips. She was breathing heavily too and was feeling the telltale burning of soreness slowly spreading across her legs already, but she was perfectly fine aside from that. “Quite literally. I think I barely weigh anything.”

“So unfair,” Lina grumbled, slowly getting her breathing under control. 

The two of them were some of the first up here, having rushed a bit, but Jeff and his two knightlings and another unassuming man were already there and waiting.

“Think Karl died on the way?” Mia asked conversationally.

“He tapped out three floors down,” Lina said, pushing herself away from the wall and taking a step on wobbly legs. “The only thing that’s dead here are my legs, a little help?”

Mia rolled her eyes, but slipped under Lina’s arm and let the girl lean on her for support for what it was worth. 

“So, what do you think about Karl?” Lina asked.

“I … don’t have much of an opinion of him,” Mia said, somewhat embarrassed. She had been entirely ignoring his existence. Not that the boy did anything bad, but she just didn’t care about him and he’d done nothing to change that.

“He’s kinda cute,” Lina said wistfully. “In that awkward, nerdy sort of way.”

“Of course he is,” Mia murmured under her breath. 

She learned to expect everyone to be straighter than an arrow by default, and hope that someone would prove to be a pleasant surprise sooner or later instead of keeping herself in a hope-disappointment loop with every new girl she met. Still, she could feel another tiny part of her heart fracture at Lina’s words.

“What was that?” Lina asked curiously, but Mia just sighed and shook her head with some sadness. “Oh look, he’s here.”

Mia turned, glancing at the door as the teen stepped through the door. She took a moment to actually take him in.

He had unkept dirty blonde hair bordering on brown and a pair of hazel eyes that just seemed endlessly innocent and confused about everything. His face was otherwise unassuming, maybe angular enough to be … handsome? Mia wasn’t sure. She never was.

She just didn’t see it. God knew she tried, but she just didn’t see what made most girls drool over boys, or even male athletes.

But she was well past the stage of forcing the issue. She left that behind in highschool. One or two kisses with ‘handsome’ boys in clubs and house parties were more than enough for her to know she didn’t have a straight bone in her body.

Hell, she kept imagining random girls in the boy’s place while she was kissing them.

I guess I can see that he is sorta cute? In the way puppies are with their big confused eyes? I guess? She tried to rationalise it, like always. 

“H-hi?” the boy greeted, smiling awkwardly as he gave a wave which he aborted halfway through, as if he realised how cringe it was.

“Hi!” Lina replied cheerily, and Mia closed her eyes for a moment. 

She held back a groan, huffing instead, before she gave a halfhearted nod at the boy. 

“Help her stand, will you?” Mia asked and pushed the blonde off of her and over at the boy, who scrambled to catch the girl.

Mia rolled her eyes, clearly seeing Lina had no trouble standing by herself in the way she gracefully flopped into the boy’s arms.

I should get these stupid tasks over with quickly and get back to going through that Lexicon. If that Erik’s stuff really works, my favourite XP bags are going to disappear. With hunting birds being as much of a pain as it is, getting more spells and completing quests might be the only way I can get stronger quickly before heading out to find mom.