《I Need Time》 01 I wake up with a splitting headache, all I see is pure darkness and feel cold stone under my palms. Thinking back, I remember falling asleep in my bed after finishing a programming project for tomorrow''s class. My groans echo off the walls of what seems to be a giant cave of which I am currently inside. This startles me as any simple explanations of this being my garage or bathroom are crossed out. I feel panic creep up but I push it back down. I check what I have on my person and only find my comfortable home wear, luckily I still have my socks, a long sleeved cotton button shirt over a t-shirt and some cotton shorts, at least I will not feel cold. I feel the ground around myself and find it is strangely smooth, definitely artificial, I stand up, choose a direction and slowly walk. After 20 meters or so I come up to a wall that is just as smooth as the ground. I decide to call out for help in the languages I know, which includes: English, Spanish, Russian. All I receive as a response are echoes, it feels like this cave has a very high ceiling and is definitely expansive, maybe 100 meters or so in diameter. I decide to follow the wall and hope to come in contact with a door or something. So far nothing but questions concerning the origin of the surrounding material pop up into my head. My brain fails to come up with any explanations that are reasonable, the best guess I have is a water reservoir. I ask myself where, how, why but I can not answer these questions. After walking 50 meters my foot hits something and I hear a series of clanks and clinks like a pile of coins would make. I crouch down and pick up a coin into my palm, it feels heavy and covers half of my palm. On the coins surface I feel a face on one side and a symbol on the other. This only confuses me as it does not support my idea of a water reservoir. I put the coin down and feel around some more, all the coins feel rough and irregular, if I had to guess they are made by stamping a mould onto the metal, or something along those lines, like historic coins you can find in a museum. The pile is gigantic, if I lean onto the pile and reach up I fail to find the peak of the pile. I decide to walk around the pile as climbing a pile of coins may not be the best idea. Making sure I stay in contact with the coins, I slowly walk about 10 meters before finding something in front of me. It surprises me as what I feel is not the same as the wall before but is a rough surface. I run my hands over the surface, I feel ridges repeated in a regular patern. After a minute of feeling the surface the answer hits me. Scales! The material is not stone as it does not absorb heat fast enough like stone, knocking on the material proves that it is not hollow and trying to dislodge a scale is proves to be a futile effort. I decide to walk around what I guess is a giant statue or replica.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. I find what I believe are the hind legs of the statue, next I continue to step over the tail. I walk back on the other side until I come upon the pile of coins again, I continue following the pile untill I touch the wall again. I sigh and continue mapping the room, this goes on for many minutes until I reach the pile of coins. My plan to find a door failed but at least I now know that the room is a giant circle with very smooth and cold walls. As my efforts in trying to find an exit or anything by feeling the wall is a failure, I decide to investigate the giant statue. I come back to the hind legs that would be over my own height if stretched out, though right now they are tucked in under the main body of the statue. I carry on feeling the statue until I reach the tip of the tail which seems to be a giant spiked mace a meter wide. I tried pushing the mace using my body, I nudged it just a bit. This statue is most likely some kind of giant replica of some unknown creature, most likely a dragon. I wonder how detailed is it as I think of an image of a dragon resting its upper torso and head on a pile of gold coins. I let out a chuckle as this now seems like an elaborate prank where the light turns on and I get scared to death by a giant dragon. This seems to be the most logical explanation I can come up with so far even if it is a very long stretch as I do not have friends that would do such a thing. As I think again about finding an exit, I sigh as only 2 options are left, one possibility is a hatch somewhere on the floor and the second option is on top of the pile of coins or on top of the ''dragon''. I let out a long breath thinking about crawling about the floor, feeling for anything that is out of the ordinary, as the space I am in is not small my search may take hours and then there is the problem of how will I regulate my search pattern as not to miss any spot. The other option of climbing the ''dragon'' or pile of coins in pure darkness does not sound like a good idea to me. I slump down and lean against the ''dragon'', my mind still trying to comprehend what hell happened and how did I end up here... As I do not know how this happened to me and dying of dehydration is not an option, I start to crawl using a linear pattern from the wall at different distances from the coin pile. Hopefully this will eliminate missed areas due to deviation, even if I have to search the whole surface twice with the center being passed by many times. My boring and tedious search is interrupted by a voice. 02 A voice out of nowhere says: "Salutations" I freeze up, a few seconds pass and I respond "Hello". "How have you come to be inside my domicile?" This raises my right eyebrow, not his strange manner of speech but that he does not know how I got inside his house. "I have not the slightest clue how I came to be inside your domicile. I woke up here and the last thing I remember is falling asleep in my bed" After my answer I hear the sound of coins, most likely the person is there so I turn towards him. "Where do you come from?" Should I tell him my home address? "Umm, Bilbao." Damn why did I say I have no idea how I got here, I could have mentioned that my friend told me this would happen today or something. Now he knows that most likely my family and friends have no idea about my current location. *Silence* What you do not know Bilbao? I am still in europe, right? "Spain?" *Silence* Is he suspicious of me or thinking on his next course of actions? "Ehm, Hello? Are you there?"Stolen story; please report. "Yes, I am present, I do not recognize those names." "What? How can you n... Ahh, I get it, is this part of the setting? So that the dragon replica has more effect on me? Next are you going to tell me that magic exists?" *Silence* "What? I spoiled the fun? Well I am not having fun at all crawling around on cold stone for hours on end. Can you just get on with the joke?" *Silence* The silence makes me frown, what if this guy has intentions that are more threatening then just an elaborate joke. I unconsciously take a step back before I realise I am at his mercy. I feel a shudder run through me as I start looking in all directions but all I see is pure darkness as before. I start to feel real fear set in and panic starts to swell in me. My heartrate speeds up as my breath becomes deeper and quicker. "Calm, you are safe." Instantly my fear and panic disappears, I am utterly flabbergasted when I realise that I have calmed down. My mind goes in circles trying to understand, first I feel a load of confusion then I feel anger at this control of my emotions finally my mind realises that I can not feel fear. This makes my mind go blank, as I am forced to accept reality of having lost my fear. "Impossible... what?, what, how?" I can only think of hypnosis as a explanation of his control over my fear. "You hypnotized me?" How? To have such a strong effect on my emotions... what else has he done to me? How much time is needed for such control over my emotions... how long have I been here? I am trying to deny what is happening inside my mind when I freeze, I realised something else, something very important. Something that breaks whatever removed my fear and it comes crashing down again ten fold, the thing that removed my fear could not completely control my mind when the situation hits me. I grow pale and my vision goes black when I realise... 03 I go pale and lose consciousness when I realise that I never heard any voice, my ears have only heard me speak so far. I bolt up in a cold sweat, let out a breath and then freeze. Pure darkness check, cold stone check, unknown voice that speaks to my mind..... "Hello?"... good no voice. I release another breath and steady myself. I get up and conclude I have been here longer then I think and it has already caused mental problems or I have a weak mind that goes into hallucinations only after a few hours, who knows if this is normal or not. I have to get out of here and see some daylight. "Hello again." I jump up in fright and shortly crash to the ground. I mutter to myself "no, no, just voices, concentrate, I will get out of here" and start calming myself to resume my search of the floor. "I am not a voice inside your head, I am talking to you using telepathy." "Meh, I have never had any mental problems before, is it the darkness?" "Why is telepathy something that you try to deny? Do you not know about the existence of magic?"Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. "Well, maybe because it does not exist!" "I am using a spell to send my thoughts to your mind, I am sure high ranked human mages have something similar." "Magic? Bahahah, magic does not exist and you do not either." "How about a demonstration?" "Sure, sure, just teleport me back home or make yourself disappear." Gallons of water splash on my head, I sober up from my previous muddle headed state and my mind goes into circles again. "Is that to your satisfaction." A few minutes pass before I calm down, I start to feel the back of my head, maybe telepathy is possible? Using some kind of implant or something, I deny the possibility of magic. "No." "Why not?" "There are many different ways to pour water on somebody in complete darkness." Especially considering I did not move from the spot where I woke up, it could be set up before hand. "Let me show you something that you will not be able to deny." I hear an overwhelming noise of clinking coins, I turn over to the noise. I feel the ground tremble and something large moving, then I see a giant fireball overhead, but what really catches my undivided attention is the origin of that fireball. I gaze upon 2 blue orbs that are staring right at me, I se... *Unknown POV* Not this again... but it is expected of a mortal human. Where has he lived for him not to know of magic?... But the manner in which he appeared is beyond my knowledge... Did a god send him to me? Whatever his origin, this human is not as simple as he seems... Oh, he has urinated himself... I think it is best to suppress his fear from now on. Hmmm, I can examine him closer under the excuse of cleaning him... 04 Opening my eyes I see a ceiling far away with a bright source of light in the center. I can see! I blink my eyes rotate my head and look at a dragon laying on a pile of gold coins, I stare, the dragon stares back, this continues on for a few minutes. I realise at the back of mind that I feel no fear yet again, this time I do not fight whatever removed my fear. The dragon is beyond anything I have seen back home, its size, its movements and its slow breathing are mesmerizing to me. I can feel the dragons presence in a way I can not describe, is this related to magic? "Beautiful." "Yes, this is my property, a fine collection for one such as young as I am." "No, I meant you." "You..." I notice the dragon opens his eyes a bit wider, shifts a little on the gold pile. "Thank you. That is first time I hear that from a human." I sit up and continue looking at the dragon. "So, you have removed my fear for us to have a conversation?" The dragon nods. Nodding is yes? Good... Is body language here similar to back home? Why? "Yes I am casting a spell to dampen your fear by an extreme degree." Alright, I hope there are no side effects. "You appeared out of nothing in my home, without any [mana] fluctuations, just one moment nothingness then the next you materialized before me. I would like to know your side of the story." "I have not the slightest clue how I got here, if it was not you then who?" "That is the question, only something beyond my capabilities could do such a thing." "Wait, how can you tell I am telling the truth?" "A spell to see through lies. Furthermore I feel no inner mana from you, all I see is a human with no magic capabilities." "Magic." I mutter to myself... My mind keeps spinning around to accept what is before me. "What now?" "Tell me where do you come from in detail. How do you live without magic? Why do you not have magic? You spoke multiple languages before, are you a scholar? Clean hair and body, fine clothes on your person, are you a noble in your lands but I do not sense arrogance from you..." The dragon stops its barrage of questions and is embarrassed by its over enthusiasm or at least I think so. I stare for a few seconds before answering: "I come from Spain, Europe, Planet Earth, 3rd planet from the Sun, the Sun is a sole star our planet orbits. We live very well without magic, as far as I know there is no magic from where I come from. I am an average student in my 14th year of study, in my country over half of the people have similarly clean hair & body. I am not a noble, social classes based on titles died almost a century in our past." The dragon stares at me with keen interest, I feel like we will have a long conversation. A few hours later, I find out that I have been disrobed, inspected and cleaned after previously pissing myself. While this dragon finds out that magic is not necessary for a civilization to prosper or even to exist. By describing and concentrating on a few images of modern society in my mind, the dragon was able to comprehend and understand concepts from my world (skyscraper, airplane, car), in exchange the dragon shared information about this world with me. Not much to my surprise the surrounding kingdoms are in what many would call a medieval era with some appearances of modern conveniences thanks to the help of magic, mostly mages, royalty and nobility have such privileges. Magic is almost everywhere in this world, even small mammals may have it in some form, for example enhanced body or senses, while larger and more powerful creatures may directly use innate magic spells. The percentage of sentient beings like humans, beastkin and elves who wield magic is less than 10% of the population. The system used in these lands to rank mages is from rank 0 to rank 4. The dragon for example is a peak rank 3 mage, he can cast many rank 3 spells with much proficiency. Judging by the power he described, I can infer such spells are on the scale of modern warfare are similar to large caliber guns like artillery, 30cm ship cannons, maybe a bomb of a few hundred kilograms. Rank 2 is on a scale more comparable with the main armament of any modern MBT (Main Battle Tank) and RPGs while rank 1 spells are similar to a hand grenade or an automatic rifle. Rank 0 spells provide close quarters combat utility, as an example rank 0 mages can often use minor body strengthening. The king of the dragons is said to be a rank 4 existence with no more information given to me, I can only guess that enters into the area of weapons of mass destruction like MOAB and tactical nuclear devices.The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. "Stagnation due to magic hindering the advancement of technology, a concept often brought up when talking about magic fantasy worlds like this one." "Stagnation, yes it is clear now that advancing, improving of what we have is held back by what is thought to be the pillar of civilization. Magic and those who wield magic push back any kind of advancement that threatens their power. Just the existence of magic removes motivation to solve problems when a spell can be used to fix it. Your people studied the laws of the world beyond what people here can even comprehend, even I am having trouble coming to grasp with what you have told me." The dragon lets out a roar that sounds like a laugh, the whole cave trembles, but with my fear missing it is only annoying as the sound beats uncomfortably on my chest. "The knowledge that you hold is a threat to the balance of this world." Another laugh follows, the dragon is clearly very happy with this new found knowledge thanks to me. His words make me think... My mind fails to grasp some concepts in my present state, I wonder if fear would be good to have as some parts of myself have lost meaning and are missing. "Thank you for something truly interesting. I wonder what should I do with you." The dragon looks at me intensely. "I would like to return home." "Aaaah, fear removal spell, your mind is very different now and does not even comprehend the situation you are in, but removing the spell you will be back to your previous state..." I think for a bit and understand I can die by the hands of the dragon and many more possible ends of my existence in my current situation. Is he threatening me or just informing me? "Can you remove the spell, I will try not to pass out." "We have no other choice as having a conversation with your current state is less than appealing, I will reduce the spells power over time while we continue our conversation." I feel some parts of myself return, when I look at the dragon I feel apprehension, now I can really understand the words of the dragon. I am at its mercy, in a world with no clear way of survival. I do not have much of a choice here, I need to increase my chance of survival and to find a way home, leaving is not possible right now as a non mage I would not get far. I see a solution... learning magic from him. Such an opportunity will not present itself again, the dragon itself does not seem hostile. "Will, you teach me magic?" The dragon lets loose another laugh, I fall onto the floor and look up at the dragon. "Human, are you making demands now?" "In exchange for the knowledge that I have shared and will share in the future I believe this is reasonable exchange." "Yes it is, but what is to stop me from just forcing you under my will?" Nothing of course, then why am I still free? "Nothing but you have not done so in the hours we have spent together. So, will you teach me?" "Ah, yes, you are lucky to have met me and not my brothers and sisters, some of them would just burn you to a crisp for daring to appear in their cave." I nervously gulp, then calm down and smile. "So you are an eccentric dragon?" I am met with laughter again. "Yes, I am, we dragons hoard knowledge and wealth. We are awfully prideful at most times and thus lack wisdom in some cases." The dragon lets what I think is a sigh. "I will teach you magic human, in exchange for knowledge and your company." It seems the dragon is quite lonely, more importantly I will learn magic and now I have hope for my future. I just realise that we still do not know each other''s names after talking for hours, am I just as eccentric as this dragon? "My name is Anton Ippolitov." "Alright, Anton lets begin." What about your name? 05 A few weeks pass by, the fear removal spell was no longer needed after a few days. I did not notice its absence until one morning I woke up and had a panic attack which was promptly removed by the spell again. This cycle repeated itself a few times until the spell was not needed any more or in other words I did not piss my pants from the dragon just moving and looking at me. Now my emotions would be best described by the anxiety you feel before a final exam, of course multiplied by 10 or so. I have a suspicion that scaring me will be very hard from now on. Whenever I bring up the topic of negative side effects of the spell, the dragon averts his eyes, on the bright side at least my mind is whole as I still fear death, like the unknown, heights, my mo... Overall I believe my new found insensitivity to scary things is a positive thing in this new world, but only time will tell whether it is so. To aid my chances of survival in this world I have been exercising and running laps around the cave or in other words improve my physical fitness to a more acceptable level. Otherwise, my full concentration has been on learning magic to protect myself and return ho... I can not decide if I want to return home even if it is possible but I know I must try as I do not want to die regretting not searching for a way, as I have unfinished business back home. The decision I have made is to explore this world after gaining strength with the dragons help and to find a way home or send a message home. The only problem so far is that the dragon is against me leaving this cave or more precisely his side. Furthermore he does not want to share the reason as to why I cannot leave his side. My best guess is that he is worried about me disturbing the balance of this world but that may just be my ego speaking. While all is good concerning my current livelihood as the dragon provides my daily necessities from god knows where, I can not stay in this cave forever... can I? Yup, he can make me stay here forever and outlive me... I have learnt that the many races here cast magic in different ways, like gestures, glyphs, symbols and incomprehensible chanting. Some peak existences like dragons and rank 3 mages can use magic at will and mould it with intent without the need of any symbolism for their intent. Often times the non magically gifted races of the world like humans and beastkin use artifacts to cast or enhance magic. My first obstacle in learning magic was the absence of my own mana inside me which is not surprising due to my circumstances, a solution given to me by the dragon is what I would call a meditation technique, I have been practising for days with no result but the dragon says I have inner mana now. It seems I have little talent, it will take me weeks to have enough mana to be able to sense it in myself. Most of the conversations with the dragon have been about politics and the races of the world. I did not want to open the door to physics, biology, chemistry and modern weapons to this dragon as that is a potential disaster waiting to happen. I can only imagine what will happen if I describe a nuclear device and the appropriate material or better yet describe a virus and DNA... that would definitely be interesting if it lands in the wrong hands and minds. I think the dragon suspects that I am holding back information but he has shown no intention of breaking his hospitality and our relationship so far. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. The dragon understands me by translating the intent of my words when I speak and can not directly peek into my thoughts if I were to believe his words. Reading minds is not so simple as an outside intent can not comprehend another consciousness but it can overpower it. So, sending information and receiving information telepathically is easy, but comprehending another consciousness is not. Forcing another consciousness under your will using intent laced mana seems possible but I refrained asking further questions in this area as the dragon did like me doing so and making a dragon unhappy is a big no no in my book. An example of this would be the spell he used to remove my fear. When asked about the spell, he said it is a rank 3 spell passed down for generations for the purpose of communication with weak races of the world, he refuses to share the spell with me, saying that spells like this that can influence a consciousness are dangerous and are not spread out. A crucial point I learned from him is that the spell had such a strong effect on me was due to the absence of inner mana inside of me, with enough mana I would gain increased resistance, maybe immunity. Today I was able to sense mana and what little amount I currently have, as magic is intent based we decided I can use my native language as the magic symbolism and the meaning behind the words will represent the intent. This made me realise that if my intent is the foundation of a spell then knowledge represents the building blocks and mana is the power source. My first spell was to cool down a rock, as direct mana control to shape an object may prove to be too difficult and in the case of heating something, I do not wish to burn myself. I imagine a 3D structure with many different atoms and their atomic bonds and chant: "Freeze, cease vibrations, absorb energy, minimal state of energy." I do not feel anything until I feel pain on my hand and drop the rock, it seems the rock burned off the surface of my skin or better to day, freezed it off. Now I am looking at an ice covered stone on the floor. The dragon is observing my actions with keen interest, then I feel my hand healing itself and I say my thanks to the dragon. I suspect I just made the stone reach near 0 Kelvin and can not help but wonder if it was because of my knowledge of basic atomic physics or is mana that powerful. "A successful first attempt, the efficiency of your spell was quite high." The dragon continues to study the stone and his eyes widen, "It seems you an affinity with ice." The dragon goes on and explains about different affinities; air, water, ice, fire, earth, plant, metal, lighting affinities. Affinities? My mind screams bullshit... I can not help but smile and think to myself, knowledge is power. I wonder should I explain what is heat and cold to the dragon or the possible forms of energy and matter but I dismiss the thought for now. Returning back to the topic of magic I have so many questions, is it my soul that controls the magic, souls exists? Can I interact with the soul? Was it my consciousness? Are they directly related or independent? Even this mighty dragon does not know such things and shows annoyance when I ask questions he can not answer. What a great teacher... 06 Another week passes by, I spent most of the time experimenting with magic. I have learnt to see mana in the environment by casting a spell onto my eyes in a way similar to body strengthening magic, but all I see are blurry outlines and when I look at the dragon I see nothing or in other words an absence of mana. My hypothesis is that the dragon is controlling his inner mana well enough for there being no radiation for me to see but in reality I have no clue. So many hypotheses to verify while being watched by a dragon and stuck in a cave... From my perspective my progress with magic has been good even if I still do not have the slightest clue about how magic works. I have mastered heating and cooling objects sufficiently, after that I moved onto shaping stones or in other words direct mana manipulation. The dragon supports my shaping training as he says this is the way he learnt it. I can only feel bitter when I hear him say this as dragons have insane mana levels and have an innate gift to manipulate mana from a young age by their will alone. Other races can develop minor mana manipulation, as I have, and are forced to use symbolism to guide their intent to form a spell... So my training may give me minor mana manipulation but it will be useless for combat but it is perfect for creating objects like a knife. I have no choice but to depend on my limited body spells for combat just like everybody else but I may have a slight edge compared to others. From what I understand, even though I have what can be said entry rank 0 mana levels, my spells have insane efficiency and good effectivity. I quite sure my efficiency and effectivity is high because I know how and what I want to manipulate in the physical world so I do not need as much mana as other beings. The dragon has started to sleep more as my mind wanders off onto the topic of experiments in turn interrupting our conversations, but there are still times we play chess and I talk about my home world which he reciprocates by sharing information about this world. My next project will be to to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen, I keep getting excited thinking about the possibilities and future experiments. After successfully splitting water molecules, my excitement was through the roof, I can manipulate the physical world on the nanoscale! Immediately I think of creating a diamond but decide that may undesirably grab the dragons attention so I make ice from the moisture in the air, I was able to make a perfectly transparent ice crystal. I suspect making a diamond will not be much more difficult, just finding the correct structure for the carbon atoms and maybe a bit more mana to change the atomic bonds and the result would be a diamond. For the sake of my future I have concluded I need more inner mana and more knowledge of how to use mana, essentially I need to understand what is mana. For now I will keep following this mana cultivation technique and study how mana interacts with the laws of the world. My interaction with mana so far is limited to using it as an energy source, I can not transform or create mana... So far I can guess mana is not physically present, is a form of energy and is similar to a gas. As compressing mana is hard but possible, I have no idea what is the limit but 10 times the density of ambient mana is possible, while my inner mana density is at about 4 times ambient. As I do not have any tools available to represent units of measurement I am familiar with, I can not accurately state the energy density of mana per volume but from what I have seen 1 liter of ambient mana is enough to separate 1mL of water to its base elements with some leftover mana. *Ambient mana energy density >15kJ/L* From the dragon I heard about artifacts that are enchanted with magic. These artifacts can store and use mana per its design so even a rank 0 mage may use such an artifact. Their purpose ranges from casting spells, improving the casters spells or independent functionality like a lamp. Now my objective is to create a device that can gather, store and use mana. Building such of a device may be hard but I have yet to try, as the advancement of my inner mana is very slow I need another source of strength. I can cast what I suppose is a rank 1 spell but I have never tried and it may just blow up in my face, all that I have shown to the dragon would be classified as rank 0 spells. I am pretty sure this is far from enough to ensure my survival outside of this cave. After listening to the dragons knowledge about enchantments and removing all of the nonsense I can sum up his knowledge with 1 sentence: To make an artifact that can interact with mana an enchantment is needed, to do such a thing you need to inscribe the object using symbolism to form the intent of the function which makes up the enchantment. In the case of the container I took the simple road by using an empty ball enchanted to not let any mana pass through by writing ''block mana'' on said container and a openable cap on top through which I can input mana. The ball of about 10 liters of volume contains about 100 liters of ambient mana, I decide against increasing the pressure any further. I put off gathering ambient mana for now and decide to make the core which will use ambient mana to produce light. Enchanting the core was done by writing what many programmers would call pseudo code, after many attempts this is what I came up with, ''absorb mana from source, emit electromagnetic radiation from 500 to 700 THz, radiant flux = 10W''. The failures include nothing happening when I did not state the spectrum and most likely radiating myself in a large spectrum including x-rays and gamma rays. Another failure was a blinding and burning flash after stating the spectrum but not the rate of emission of light. Overall I learnt that it is very easy to kill yourself when applying modern knowledge to mana manipulation. Of course you can simplify the design into something that says emit light as the people of this world do, but I can not do such a thing as light has a different definition to me compared to people of this world. Visible light is another option but then visible light to whom? For a dog or a human or a dragon? I may put in my intent of visible light for humans into the inscribed words but from what I have found an exact enchantment with precise definitions of the functions will give a higher efficiency of mana usage.This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. The result of this project is a 10W lamp that has a power source that would last over 50 hours if my approximate prediction is correct. On a few separate experiments I have found the efficiency of mana usage is higher than when I used mana to separate water into its base elements. This only confirms my hypothesis that the more directed and precise the intent, the higher mana efficiency. The dragon was impressed with my lamp that did not fade even after a few days of working. It seems similar enchantments run out of stored mana much fast due to mana inefficiency and they can not work directly on ambient mana for the same reason. While I can make 0.1W glowing rocks that only need to be present in ambient mana without a need for an intense source of mana. Scaling the power of the glowing rocks would require a larger area for the rock to gather mana from, so a larger rock would be the solution and a change in the code to specify the place of emission of EM radiation¡­ but all of this would just be an inefficient use of space. After the lamp used up the mana when I opened the container while having my experimental mana sight on I saw something invisible rush out and push back the ambient mana, after a few minutes the container was full again with ambient mana. ''Eureka!!!'' As a child I always wanted to yell this... This gives me so much information, how could have I missed this? Gas mix that tends to a homogeneous state? From my present observations of mana, mana acts as a homogeneous gas mixture. I suspect the other part of this gas mixture is mana that has no energy. So mana is not energy itself but is a non tangible substance that stores energy, present everywhere in this world and follows laws similar to gases. Continuing this line of thought I can name these 2 unknown substances and then use the name with my intent to affect these 2 substances. I shall call them charged mana and discharged mana for simplicity''s sake. From my past conversations with the dragon, it seems that he is not aware that mana is not consumed but the energy it holds is used. I may have overestimated the intelligence of dragons and the people here if they can not even perform a few experiments, as I have, into the nature of mana, but all I have is my personal experience with this dragon and I am fairly confident that if I explain my findings and knowledge about gases he will be able to comprehend this knowledge. Damn, I may have jumped to conclusions... The dragon may have decided against sharing this information, thats all. Before I continue onto the next experiment I ask the dragon on how to affect ambient mana beyond minor mana manipulation, excluding enchantments that use ambient mana. He says direct control of ambient mana is very difficult. Only rank 3 mages and dragons can do such a thing but it becomes useless at a distance and weaker than rank 2 spells. I did get additional information about inner mana from him, the meditation technique the dragon gifted to me affects ambient mana and transforms it into my inner mana. I wonder if I can use my own language as the base of the intent that gathers ambient mana into my own inner mana but I fear experimenting with such a thing. Directing my intent to make charged ambient mana gather in one spot, I taste success after a few minutes concentrating and chanting my intent. When I stop concentrating the charged ambient mana starts to dissolve back into the surrounding ambient mana. Most interestingly I met failure when trying to have an affect on discharged mana, it seems mana needs to be charged to follow an intent. 07 In my next experiment I make a device that gathers charged mana in one extreme and discharged mana in other extreme. I spend hours using my stone shaping abilities to make a 2 meter long cylinder with a diameter of 120 cm for a volume over 200 liters and 2 discs that will hold the enchantment inside the cylinder. I enchant one disk to attract charged mana, the other disc to repel charged mana. The experiment was a success even though the effect was minimal, the charged mana disk had double the charged mana gathered around it compared to the repel charged mana disc. In theory repeated usage of this process can give us a mixture of heavily concentrated charged mana. The next experiment is an enchantment to see if it is possible to convert energy from the physical world plus discharged mana to form charged mana. A simple enchantment to test this out, ''absorb electromagnetic radiation and transfer energy to discharged mana to form charged mana''. I nearly jumped up from happiness when I saw that it was a success. This means I can make magic weapons that do not just recharge from ambient mana but can also use energy sources in the physical world like EM radiation, heat and electricity. Thinking about charged mana, I start question how does inner mana work? Does it recycle discharged inner mana using energy from ambient charged mana? Or something else happens? I setup an isolated smaller cylinder of the previous experiment to confirm whether inner mana has discharged mana or not. When I am at full mana capacity the results show that my inner mana is pure charged mana. When I am not at full mana capacity I can see that inner mana presents discharged mana just like ambient mana. As I know that over time discharged inner mana transforms into charged inner mana I now question from where does the energy come from? I have no knowledge from where ambient mana get its energy, its source may be beyond my comprehension or just not visible to me at this scale from inside this cave. But I decide to investigate the source of energy for inner mana, lets see if ambient mana is the energy source. I will need a enclosed mana environment for this... After the experiment I start to frown as I saw no interaction between ambient mana and inner mana, so the energy source is inside of me or it is some other unknown external influence. The only thing I can think of with my knowledge is the soul, I decide to ask the dragon about the soul and their beliefs. "Soul? God?... All sentients have a soul and each race has their own God. There are also low Gods such as of love, luck, harvest, battle, beauty... The exception is the High God of Magic, mostly worshiped by magic wielders and he rewards all the races for their accomplishments in magic. After death the soul goes to the god of their belief for judgement and salvation." This information raises my eyebrows and only serves to give me more questions. The missing information about the afterlife is one problem another is that a race can pray to only the god of their race and be judged by him ignoring the other gods, this system of gods may not condemn the killing etc. of other races. I ask in detail if my assumptions are correct and the response confirms that there are hostilities between the races. Luckily religion does not have that much of a foothold with the general populace as it is more of a guiding hand and it does not encourage actions against other races but does not condemn them either. Most people still act in their self interests, religion or no religion, some people of different races have non hostile relationships to the point, I was given an example, of a city that has multiple races as its inhabitants. I return back to the topic of inner mana and ask from where does inner mana come from, the answer I get from the dragon is limited in information but from what he does say I gather the most likely source is the soul. Now I begin to ponder is the soul an infinite source of energy? What is the cultivation technique given to me doing then? I frown as I do not like the possibilities, I do not believe the soul has infinite energy. I have too little information but if the soul is the source of energy then recharging my inner mana using my soul does not sound so good now. What if it is finite? Will it affect my future or my afterlife? For all I know some god wants me to destroy my soul by using it as an energy source. Hell, I don''t even know what is a soul or if it even exists¡­ Still, I decide to keep this in mind in my search for strength. Asking about the lifespan of mages gives me little help, most human mages live little over 100 years some rare cases go up to 200 years. I can only guess that magic may heal the body, fix back problems, diseases and other consequences of old age but can not reverse neural and DNA degradation as that requires advanced knowledge. So my current theoretical lifespan on this world does not really differ from mine on Earth. While the lifespan of elves is 10x, a beastmens lifespan varies greatly 0.8-3x, demons 3x, fairies 5x and dragons are immortal by his words.If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. As the existence of my soul is large possibility and the consequences of magic on the soul is unknown I decide that I need external sources of power. If I did not have knowledge of modern warfare I would be left without a choice but as I see it, a tank is comparable to a rank 2 mage if not rank 3 mage. First I will try to accomplish building external sources of strength such as a gun and hopefully this will not be a dead end. Otherwise I will have no choice but to cultivate to rank 3 and higher with unknown consequences on myself and my soul. Furthermore I may lack the talent to cultivate to rank 3 and it may require decades of time. I draw up a design for a mana powered air gun that shoots carbon. In other words an overpowered airsoft gun that shoots diamond shot (balls). On top of the barrel we have the storage for the shot next to the part that will extract carbon from air and create the carbon shot, I add a small fan to the extraction process to make sure the air cycles and always has a carbon content, an added bonus of the fan is the overall higher carbon extraction speed. Under the barrel we have the cylinders for storage of the pressurized air, in total 2 rows of 6 cylinders each with a diameter of 3cm and height of 5cm. On both sides of the barrel I mount enchanted pumps that will pump and pressurize the air into the cylinders. Near the trigger I add a control circuit which will fill up the cylinders, and when fired the gun will use filled up cylinders in series, each row gets a turn after the other. I do not feel comfortable asking the dragon for metal, so I simply decide to use carbon for constructing the weapon. I suspect a diamond barrel will be too fragile for repeated use for firing shot at supersonic speeds. The solution is to make the barrel from tightly woven carbon nanotubes (CNTW), the same goes for the body of the gun. The pressurized cylinder bodies and pumps are made from a diamond with a tight carbon nanotube weave wrapped around the body of each cylinder so even if there is a catastrophic failure it will not blow up in my face. The firing mechanism will be a semi automatic trigger which controls the loading and gas release, the pumps will activate separately to fill up their respective row of cylinders in series. The estimated fire rate will be a minimum 2 rounds in 1 second, for a total of 12 rounds in 6 seconds then fill up time of about a few minutes. I spend a few days working on the gun, testing the pumps, the firing mechanism, the diamond ball creation system and storage. The shot has a mass of about 2 grams or my unit of measurement of 2 drops of water. I understand that diamonds are fragile, this weapon will be useless against heavy steel armor or just enchanted armor. On the bright side if the ball shatters near skin this will cause some nasty surface damage, overall highly effective against soft targets which will suffice for now. Another downside is the extremely slow production of the diamond shot so I had to compensate by making the storage big enough for 50 or so of such shot. On top I add a non magnifying sight by crossing two CNT threads within a cylinder at the front and back. By coloring the front threads one color and the back ones another I will be able to easily line them up when I take aim. As the predicted effective range of the weapon is a few hundred meters, I believe this weapon will put me in a position to be a threat to rank 1 mages or higher. I have yet to fire the weapon to not arose the dragons attention but I did a few test fires with an empty barrel, so all he sees is another of my strange experiments involving cylinders. I inscribed an enchantment on the main structure of the gun to include self repair, mana charging, mana storage and atomic bond strengthening. The overall size of the gun is probably just about the size of a desert eagle, the mass is a little over 1kg so I guess this will be my pistol and main weapon for now. 08 I continue thinking of ways to secure my future in the relative safety and creature comforts provided by my dragon acquaintance. My next idea is a hydrogen grenade within a diamond container. A small enchantment that starts the oxygen-hydrogen reaction a set amount of seconds after the pin is pulled. I shiver when I think about the explosion caused from 100 mL of water forming near instantaneously inside a fragile diamond that fractures into thousands of pieces and makes mincemeat of anything in line of sight of the explosion up to tens of meters. I dare not keep the grenades in their oxygen-hydrogen state so I have a few filled with just pure water waiting for me to start the enchantment which separates water into its base elements in the matter of minutes using mana from a 100ml carbon nanotube weaved bag which is filled with pure charged mana at 100x ambient mana pressure. This weapon I would say is comparable to a rank 1, maybe a rank 2 spell but all I have for comparison is the word of mouth of a dragon. I bet it is a few times more deadly than a modern hand grenade. I can not help but wonder how do mages fight... Fast? Slow? Range? I need combat experience against a mage, or at least watch a mage fight to understand if my preparations are worth anything. From the dragon I hear mages of different origins have different combat styles, from cast times, magic affinity, range and tactics. Methods of attack have been created, I look down at my clothes and decide to make armor. Using carbon nanotube weaved cloth I make pants, a sleeved shirt, gloves, boots, a good fitting long coat with hood that goes down to my calves with an opening front from the waist downward, a backpack and a vest for carrying my weapons. I even make a balaclava and graphene based goggles. Key parts of the body like elbows, feet, knees, groin, torso, neck and face have about double the thickness. The total weight of my new body armor is about 15 kg so compared to a simple bullet vest it is heavy but compared with similar performance full ballistic body armor it is light, as I am quite sure CNT threads outperform kevlar by far. Each item is enchanted with the following words: ''store mana at specified multiple of ambient mana pressure; conceal mana signature created by stored mana by showing the mana signature of ambient mana; user specify multiple of ambient mana pressure; if over specified multiple of ambient mana pressure then expel discharged mana until within specified multiple of ambient mana pressure; if over specified multiple of ambient mana pressure and under 1% of mana is discharged mana then expel charged mana until within specified multiple of ambient mana pressure; strengthen atomic bonds 2x; if current state not equal to the state at the moment of enchantment gather carbon from air and restore the state to the state at the moment of enchantment; repel all material that comes into contact to a minimal distance of 10 times carbon atomic radius; Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.gather ambient charged mana; enchant inscription affects item even if damaged inscription; if enchanter specified spectrum, reflect electromagnetic radiation in the specified spectrum by the enchanter and absorb all non specified spectrum electromagnetic radiation and transfer absorbed energy to discharged mana in storage, if not enchanter specified spectrum absorb all electromagnetic radiation and transfer absorbed energy to discharged mana in storage; if outer surface temperature over ambient temperature then cool outer surface to ambient temperature; if outer surface temperature under ambient temperature then heat outer surface to ambient temperature; ''. Is what I came up with after multiple iterations when thinking about the necessities and possibilities of enchanting my clothing. This armor will self-repair, have extreme resistance to erosion and getting dirty, is much harder to puncture and cut compared to its non enchanted state and keeps the surface temperature identical to ambient so it is very hard to spot in infrared. I tested this feature using an infrared shift filter on the goggles and the armor did stand out against the cold rock but I am sure it will work much better in an open environment like a forest. The most interesting and newest feature which I added was the conceal mana signature which shows the ambient mana signature so I can not see any difference between the object with or without an enchantment using my horrible vision. I redid the gun and grenade enchantment to include this concealing effect as well. I wonder why the dragon shows an absence of mana and does not show an ambient mana level like my armor, maybe there are other factors I may not be aware of yet. I can also select the color of the armor by specifying the spectrum of reflection, if not specified the clothes are an uncanny pitch black. The dragons reaction to my mana storage found, for example, in the grenades was minor. I suppose I will probably need 100 or more of my grenades to grab his attention and probably many times more to be an actual threat to him. Forgetting about the dragon, now I have enough confidence to venture out into the world on my own thanks to my new equipment. From what I can tell the food the dragon has hoarded is slowly dwindling and he will have no choice but to venture out to restock otherwise I will starve and maybe he will allow me to come with him. I bring up the topic. "Will you let me go out into the outside world?" "No, you are too weak." "What strength do I need to achieve for your permission to go outside?" "Rank 3" I nearly facepalm when I hear that, either this dragon has a very high opinion of me or just does not want me to leave at all. "Then what about food? I can not eat jerky and dry bread for months on end. I have noticed the quality and amount of food is getting lower and lower." After a minute of silence the dragon answers: "Tomorrow we will go together." My eyes widen at the statement of the dragon, go where? Hunt? A human city? "Where will we go to?" "A nearby elven village." I am surprised again, as the dragon has not shared any knowledge about the local geography with me. 09 Next morning, or what I believe is morning, I gather my equipment, put on my empty backpack and strap 4 grenades on to my vest then double check everything. I pick up my pistol and check the functionality of all of its parts. Its firing mechanism is simple as a crossbows so it should work and I am sure it will be lethal judging from the pressure tests I have done in the past but it is a whole other question whether the accuracy will be any good. I inform the dragon that I am ready to leave the cave. He gets up and I vaguely see massive amounts of mana swirling around him, his body starts to shift, he decreases in size, starts forming a humanoid shape and before I know it my mind goes blank. "What?... I thought you were past the whole fear and panic situation..." I stare at the humanoid form of the dragon for a couple of seconds before braking out of my stupor. "WHAT?? WHY ARE YOU FEMALE? NO!! NEVERMIND! WHY DID YOU HIDE YOUR HUMANOID FORM ALL THIS TIME? DID YOU ENJOY SCARING ME TO DEATH?" The obviously female dragon gains a tint of redness on her cheeks and avoids my eyes. The female dragon responds feebly: "I did not think about it." You forgot or you did not care? I suppress my extreme desire to insult her, and continue to stare at her with obvious anger. After a minute or so I take a deep breath and say "Lead the way Miss Dragon."Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. "My name is Kathorrunth, Seeker of Knowledge" She says with a straight back and a puffed up chest, radiating pride. As she introduces herself I take closer look at her, she has a slender build with barely noticeable breasts. Although her head is up to my chin, she looks taller thanks to the 2 horns sticking out from between her jet black hair. The horns themselves curl backwards covering a quarter of her head. She has the same blue eyes as in her dragon form, color of her hair seems to be same as the color of her scales which is pitch black, I notice a tail behind her swinging, the is looks like a scaled down copy of her dragon form tail. Focusing back on her face, she definitely is a beauty. I look at her for a few seconds and decide that I will not be calling her Kathirunthu, Seeker of Knowledge. "I will call you Kate for short, all right?" I say and promptly turn away from her. "Hmm, sure, Anton, lets go." She nods and turns toward the wall. Talking to her in this form is much easier on my psyche. "You can call me Tony, as do my friends." Mana is gathering around us. Before I even notice it we are already a meter off the ground, we go up for tens of meters before going into a tunnel. I would guess the tunnel is a few hundred meters or so in length. Finally after nearly 2 months in a cave I shall be blessed sunlight. As we exit the tunnel I am blinded by the sunlight, Kate gives me time to adjust. As my eyes adjust to the light I realise I forgot an important detail... Mass! Where did all of her body disappear to? Can she use mana to create matter from energy and turn matter into energy? That would be incredible¡­ but that would require much more energy than is available in her mana. Did I calculate the energy density of mana incorrectly? I am jumping to conclusions... I can only take note to study this topic in the future. 10 The first thing that I see when I open my eyes is the clear blue sky, just a little past morning by the position of the sun, then the forest canopy as far as the eye can see and the trees have green leaves so I can be at ease for now, hopefully this planet is not too strange for my comfort. We are a few hundred meters high, standing on the edge of a cliff on a nearly vertical mountain face. I take a few deep breaths, feel the sunlight on my skin. I can not stop myself from smiling. After a few minutes of taking in the scenery I turn around to face Kate, my smile freezes. As my eyes are met with hers and her expression I can only describe with the words ''mischievous child'' I can already take a guess what will happen next. *Kate starts sprinting towards Anton who is on the edge of the cliff face, Anton has enough time to lift one foot before his second foot is already off the ground. Kate has Anton in a tight hug.* *A few kilometers away in the forest, an elf gathering berries stands up, perks her ears as she hears a sound that only an animal on its deathbed would make. She wonders what kind of predator would force its prey to make such a sound and can not stop a shiver going up her spine.* *Returning to Anton.* "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" *50 meters before they hit the forest canopy, wings appear on the dragoness and mana swirls under her wings, their free fall stops almost immediately and transitions into a graceful glide 10 meters above the canopy. Whilst her passenger is paralyzed from fear and is clinging on for his dear life.* After a few minutes of not experiencing free fall, I decide to open my eyes to see that we are gliding over the forest. As beautiful as this moment is supposed to be I can only think about the fact that the fear removal spell has not messed up my sense of fear permanently, or cases of near death experiences are exceptions... But that is not important, what is important, I need to get away from this crazy dragon woman at all costs! "I was right, you enjoy scaring me to death!" "I did not know... until you mentioned it." "Can we walk rest of the way?" As I finish speaking we are already falling to the ground, I tense up and brace for impact. At the last second we stop, Kate removes me from herself and drops me from a meter high onto the ground. I did not enjoy the drop nor the pain so I lay on the ground questioning my existence for half a minute before Kate speaks to me.Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! "Lets go, or I will leave you here." I can not help but smile, and do absolutely nothing. A minute passes by and my smile freezes as my foot is lifted up and I am dragged on the ground. I start to kick and I yell out: "Alright, I am going, no need to be so rough." I am set free after a few seconds, so I stand up, I pat myself off and notice my anti dirt enchantment works marvelously. I set the color of my clothes to dark green which grants me a mildly surprised look from the dragoness. I smile with a bit of pride and walk up to her as she turns around, already with a neutral look on her face. As we walk I do a few stretches to relieve my body from the previous experience. "Are we close to the elven city?" "Yes." "How long until we get there?" "Minutes" My excitement grows as we walk, but I remember that I can not speak with anybody as I do not know the language, only high rank mages will be able to communicate with me via telepathy, this dampens my mood somewhat. "Have you been here often?" "A few times." "So our presence would not be uninvited?" My question is met with silence. We continue walking for half an hour... As we come up to a City? Nope, it is a village with just a bunch of giant tree houses interconnected via rope bridges, we are surrounded by elves. Visually the elves look like slender humans a head shorter than me with pointy ears, light skin color with some light tones of different forest colors. For example: pale light green or pale with a light tone of brown. Looking at their hair, I see light silver, whitish, light blonde, blonde and even light brown hair. Their eyes follow the same pattern of bright forest colors with some cases of light blue, light brown. The elves around us can be classified into 2 groups, spearmen and bowmen. The spearmen have thick cloth armor interwoven with metal plates on the torso, metal strips woven into the forearms and lower legs and padding in other important places such as the knees and elbows. They do not seem to be fans of leather armor, but who knows how strong that thick cloth is, I am already thinking of how to ask for a sample for experimentation. I do not see any enchantments (different mana level than ambient) on the armor and I see a very weak enchantments on the bows and spears. The bowmen is a lighter version of spearmen without any metal. The elves recognise the dragoness and by their manner of conversation they respect her a great deal. Another thing that caught my attention was the manner with which she talks, it holds pride and authority. Not understanding their conversation, I have no option but to wait. At one point an elf does a minor gesture towards me, she gives a short answer and walks off. I intend to follow but then freeze in my tracks as I see pointed bows and spears at me. I slowly lift my hands up and smile. I am escorted to a prison at ground level. Here I am laying on the ground looking at a wooden ceiling of my new home for an undefined time. I do not know if Kate told them to lock me up or she did not care or any other thing that could have entered her whimsical head. I let out a sigh and close my eyes. It seems there are no magic users here but who knows, maybe only higher up positions poses magic abilities. It is too early for me to break out using magic as I do not know the reason for my imprisonment. I let out a long breath and close my eyes. 11 I am woken up by an elf hitting the wooden bars with his spear. Shortly, I am escorted by two elfs to a large tree house, in the center of the house there is a mature looking male elf who is sizing me up. Is he a mage? Kate has told me that usually mages are able to sense another mage 1 rank higher than themselves, yet I suspect he is stronger than rank 2. The mature looking male elf asks me: "You are the human Kathorrunth, Seeker of Knowledge took in as a student?" Questions swirl in my head but I promptly answer "Yes." "I am Kerym Brypeiros, elder of this village, your teacher has left you in my care while she attends to some business." I stand in silence, social interaction was never my strong suit. Should I say my thanks? "Thank you." "Kathorrunth has explained to me that you were dropped as a baby and as a result can not speak comprehensively but have excellent affinity to many elements. While you are here, you will join one of our patrol groups to earn your keep." I have a blank face, as many positive thoughts about my teacher go through me head. Is this her attempt to cover up my origin? Inability to speak comprehensively? Kerym talks to the guards who nod, then gesture for me to follow them. We exit and climb down to the forest floor. We meet a group of 4 elves, 1 female to the side which I suspect is the group leader and 2 males and 1 female lined up beside her. My escorts say a few words to the group leader and promptly leave. The leader walks up to me with a face that says ''I want to punch you human''. I smile, which only makes it worse... The leader addresses me via telepathy: "Name." She puts a hand on her absent chest and vocally says: ''Aelynthi Brypeiros'' then she gestures to me. I answer ''Anton Ippolitov'' then after a few seconds repeat ''Anton''.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. She continues to stare at me as if to find a lie or my inner guilt of me committing some heinous crime, at least that''s what I feel when I look into her emerald eyes. Then she says ''Anton'' with a nod, turns around to give an order to the 3 guards, 2 of which are smiling for some reason, and they start walking. I follow behind them after a few seconds of indecision. Alright, so Aelynthi is related to the village elder and knows magic enough to use simple telepathy, rank 1? If I were to believe my vague mana sight she is rank 1 but I should not make a judgement using such a small sample size. For all I know she is a rank 0 mage using an artifact or is a rank 3 mage and just does not want to talk to me. On the bright side I can see her mana unlike the village elder who was a blank just like Kate. Her mana levels are about 46 times ambient mana levels... So, rank 1 after all? I do not have a shred of confidence in my guess. Hopefully she does not stab me in the back with an ice spike... Why am I here anyway? Is it because Kate did not want to leave me alone in her cave? Was she afraid I would escape? I think I can escape now but I bet I will have elves on my tail... The elves speed up and I have to jog to keep up. I feel like this will be a long day and tomorrow my legs will hurt. I can also now see that there is no way I can escape these elves judging by their ability to move in this forest. I wonder what is included in earning my ''keep''... I hope they have meat, or at least decent food... Well, almost anything freshly cooked would be better than jerky, dry bread and pure water gathered from air. After a long day of jogging in the forest and dealing with the team leaders dissatisfaction, we return to the village just before dinner. My face was emotionless but I am sure anybody could see the sadness in my eyes as I ate berries and dried roots. Once dinner was over, I was pleasantly surprised to get my own tree house, if you count a hammock and a few floor boards tied to the tree to be a house. Hopefully there will not be any heavy rain during the night, as tree leaves are not exactly leak proof. Concerned with the security of this place I did what I could to make sure I wake up tomorrow. I improved my chances of surviving the night a hundred fold by lifting up the rope ladder of my treehouse, I immediately felt safe¡­ not. Next thing I did was to tie myself to the tree as a fall from this height will not be good for my back... Note to self: design and enchant quite a few items in the near future for camping, how did I forget to do so before? On the bright side I have a lovely neighbour, the team leader, Aelynthi, who is looking intently at me right now through her window. I feel safer than ever knowing that she will keep watch over me while I sleep. I climb onto the hammock, lift up my hood and metaphorically cry myself to sleep. I think I prefer the cave. 12 I wake up to the leader gently poking me with her staff wearing the same lovely face as yesterday. She definitely was not swinging the staff overhead to poke me, nor did she continue to poke me after the fact that I woke up. I follow her down to the ground for what seems to be morning military training.Aas my legs are already in pain from yesterday I think I should opt out but I dismiss that thought as soon as I look in the direction of our leader and she looks back at me. After 30 minutes of intensive full body exercise we head on to have breakfast which impressed me yet again with its variety of roots and berries. We set out for the morning patrol after a quick breakfast. Our pace, like yesterday, is somewhere between a jog and fast walking, this demonstrates the groups experience and fitness level by their ability to keep this pace in this dense temperate forest and clearly demonstrates my lack thereof. When we stop for our lunch break I realise that I have packed no food, I sigh and sit down. My absence of food is noticed in a minute or so, the leader does not change her hostile look at all, maybe a few percent more intense now than it was before and with an addition of scorn. One spearmen ignores me, the female archer takes pity on me and offers me some of her food, I decide to accept, the other spearman who seems to be the female archers friend tries to stop her, she dismisses his action and gives me a handful of berries whilst the spearman looks on with slight envy, all of this is ignored by the other spearman. Whilst our leader found a new person (female archer) to show her lovely face to. The female archer reciprocates by showing her tongue to the leader, the leader huffs in response and turns around. The female archer smiles as a result. So it seems the female archer and the leader (Aelynthi) are good friends and maybe so is the second spearman. Ten minutes pass, we pack up and continue our patrol or scouting or whatever is our job. I have no idea which way the village is in, need to make a compass in the near future¡­ Hopefully this planet has a magnetic field otherwise I will have to figure out from scratch how to use this worlds sun for navigation. We continue our patrol for a few hours until our group slows down, they start to whisper between themselves... I am deemed to not be important enough to be informed of the situation, but I am gestured to put my back towards them as they do the same. I pick this moment to activate all my rank 0 magic that enhances the body, within one second I am, what I call, fully buffed. My body magic, mostly concentrated on my bodies nerves and brain neurons, increases my strength, speed and reaction rate. Next I start the prepping system on two of my grenades, after that I pull up my balaclava and goggles. I turn on infrared vision within the goggles and take a look in front of me. There I see 3 points of what are most likely to be wolves, as the distance to the targets is about 100 meters I decide to take a look around me and I spot an additional 2 or 4 wolves on either side. So, 6-12 visible wolves and possible 4 or more directly behind me, surrounded on all sides, unknown combat abilities of enemy wolves and unknown combat abilities of my teammates. The most logical conclusion I can make is to act with full force at the fastest speed available. I switch the safety off on my pistol, take a standing firing position and take aim center mass at the left side.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. Before I start, I address Aelynthi: "Are they enemies?" I get no response within 5 seconds so... I take a deep breath and start to exhale, as I complete my exhale I pull the trigger. *Bang* One, *Bang* two, *Bang* three, *Bang* four, *Bang* five, *Bang* six, *Bang* seven, *Bang* eight, *Bang* nine, *Bang* ten, *Bang* eleven, *Bang* twelve shots. I used one shot for one target, to maximise damage to them all as I am limited by my weapons 12 round shot capacity. I drop my pistol and it hangs on my shoulder, next I pull out my combat knife and reassess the situation. I see no movement from 9 out of 12 wolves I shot at, it seems I have expert marksman aim thanks to my rank 0 body magic. Another 2 wolves are crying on the ground, 1 wolf is limping away and behind us an additional 4 wolves can be seen running away. Then I notice something while I am in my sloppy combat stance with my combat knife drawn and the noise from the pumps on my gun. Four stunned faces looking at me, at this moment my grenades decide to beep and tell me that they are ready for use. I slowly put away my knife, reholster my pistol, remove my goggles and lower my balaclava. Now I look down at my grenades and feel more fear than when I was about to fire on the wolves. I slowly remove the grenades, step behind a tree put the grenades on the ground and start their venting process. I return to still see 4 pairs of widened eyes. Now I only hope that the grenades do not choose this moment to explode, they should not but my paranoia says otherwise. 2 minutes pass, I know the venting has started and finished by now, so I return to the grenades, put them back on my vest. I take note to manually refill the mana storage and water container later. I walk back to the group, they have calmed down, surprised with a hint of confusion would best describe their current behavior. Should I say something? Good job team? Were those wolves hostile? For all I know I just killed their neighbours or pet animals, of course that is extremely unlikely but hey it is bad to assume things in a new world. Even if I do say something the only person who can understand dislikes me, furthermore I have no idea if she will be able to understand me beyond a few simple words. After another minute of silence, each of their expressions differs now. The silent spearman has a face of approval, the female archer has a face that almost screams ¡®my hero¡¯, the friend of the female archer is eyeing my weapon and last but not least the leader has a face of resignation. I decide to let them sort out their thoughts and go take a look at the corpses before we resume our patrol. From the bullet wounds found on the wolves I see 3 different types of bullet damage: full penetration and escape from the other side; penetration and shattering internally possibly against bones with possible fragment escape; shattering on the skin and making mince mint on the surface and inside of the target. In any case I would prefer receiving a bullet from a modern 9mm pistol rather than my self made 10mm pistol. 13 The rest of the patrol and the trip back home was lively and full of chatter and we all became good friends. Yeah right. Maybe it could have been if the only person who can understand me did not hate me for an unknown reason. The female archer kept pestering the leader, I have no clue if it is to thank or ask me question as she failed to convince Aelynthi to talk to me. The silent spearman is... the silent type. The friend of the female archer has checked out my weapon more times than I have checked out women. I am considering gifting him one of my grenades without explaining how they work and hope for the best... Why am I here again? Ah, yes Kate is busy... All the hype of exploring an elven village died when the method of communication flew away and other options are currently non viable. I wonder if I successfully run away what will Kate''s reaction be? Disappointed? Sad? Angry at me because I dared to disobey her? Collar me so that I can not run away? I get the feeling that our relationship is not that negative but she is a dragon, furthermore she is a woman, I may ask her or time will tell. We go our separate ways after returning, after dinner 2 elves come up to me and gesture for me to follow. Shortly we arrive at the elders tree house. There I is see the village elder with Aelynthi standing by his side, her face as always shows her favorite expression towards me. The elder looks at my holstered weapon, silence rains for a few seconds. Kerym Brypeiros finally breaks the silence by saying: "Thank for using your rank 2 artifact to protect the safety of the patrol group as that situation could have become quite dire." He pauses. Should I say something? Nah... Wait did he say rank 2? Why is it rank 2? Alright, from his perspective my gun rapidly killed 12 wolves from a distance of about 100 meters, so with this weapon I am in the power range of rank 2 mages. I do not feel powerful, in cqc I would be a goner or if attacked by large amounts of weak enemies, 20-30 would do. Heck, if I was alone against those wolves and 3 or so did not flee then I would most likely become a dog bone after the soft bits of me enter their stomach. Though there is a chance they would have failed to bite through my armor but I am not optimistic of my chances surviving being the chew toy of a group of wolves. I need to improve the sustained fire rate of my pistol or build a copy or completely redesign the whole gun not to use highly pressurized air. The elder breaks me out of my thoughts.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. "This here is my granddaughter Aelynthi, she entered rank 1 at the age of 20 years, with her talent I believe she will enter rank 2 before 50 years of age, she is talented in music, dancing and is a good housekeeper." Now this is starting to sound like a sales pitch, I wonder if the person in question knows about this, judging by her face it seems no, as her glare is not of a woman that is about to be married off to a man she hates, it is just the gaze of a woman that is looking at the man she hates. I decide not to speak and see where the elder is going with this. Is my guess incorrect? After all, she will have a lifespan of about 1000 years while I will have one of about 100 if I fail to extend it. "I wish for you to take her in as your lifelong servant." Huh, I did overthink things... So she serves me for 100 years, gains the status of a servant of a dragon''s student if that is worth anything, then when I die of old age she walks away with one or two of my artifacts and knowledge from my hands. This will stabilize her position as a rank 2 mage when she is free from my service. This is my best guess, that explains the motivation behind the elders offer, I did make some assumptions but I feel like I am not far off the mark. Can I even make this decision without Kate? I do not even understand my relationship with Kate. Well any guy would be happy to have a beautiful elven assistant, but I am not any guy, I have a boat load of secrets and the female in question has a wish to beat me up. "I would like to consult Teacher Kathorrunth before making a decision." Kerym does a nod of acceptance and starts talking to Aelynthi, I see a surprised look on her face, followed by anger directed at Kerym, she says something, huffs and leaves. I can mostly confirm that she did not know about the becoming my servant part. I wonder if there is another hidden motive in the elders actions like an external threat, political or otherwise. He turns to me. "She agrees and will be ready when the time comes. Good night." You call that being agreeable? I almost let disbelief cross my face and can not help but think does everybody see me as an idiot or something along those lines? Have I missed some information or interaction, excluding of course the part where Kate said I was dropped as a baby? Did Kate say anything more, like that I am a complete idiot?... 14 A week passes by with nothing of note happening, no more battles so far. I have abstained from creating artifacts inside of the village so my gear is still the same. The group dynamic has changed a little as the second spearman stopped eyeing my gun when he heard a rumour about it belonging to a dragon and now Aelynthi is in a sour mood most of the time. Aelynthi told me about this rumor indirectly when we exchanged words during the rare moments she talked to me, I said nothing to change their view on the origin of my artifact. I am starting to get impatient as not working on my ''artifacts'' and not advancing my strength does not bold well in my eyes. My inner mana has reached 5 times ambient but my mana control has seen much more progress, both inner and outer mana control. My bodily fitness has improved in part to all the jogging and in part due to eating fresh food the elves provide: berries, roots, nuts and some vegetables. I keep thinking about meat and whether I am getting a good source of proteins, though I am in excellent physical health with clear muscle definition on my body, slightly broader shoulders than I remember, so all is good. This morning I was pleasantly surprised by the person who woke me up. "Lets go." Yup definitely Kate, straight to the point and emotionless when there is nothing of interest. As we walk we meet up with Aelynthi on the outskirts of the village, Aelynthi looks at Kate with the same way a person would look upon their hero. I had my suspicions before but this may explain why she is not happy with me, as I, a human rank 0 mage, am Kates student. Aelynthi starts talking about something. Kates response is a nod and Aelynthi smiles while she performs some kind of ritual towards me... and we continue walking with Aelynthi next to me with Kate in front. So, Aelynthi is with us now? Alright I guess, how did this happen? Wait is this related to the lifelong servant thing? I ask Kate "Why is Aelynthi following us?" "She is your servant." "When did she become my servant, I never agreed?" "I did." "What? Don¡ät I hav.." My speech is interrupted. "You will do as I say or face the consequences." Consequences? I am stunned, Kate has never been like this before, almost hostile. Did something happen during her trip? Is her interaction with me a facade? I can only guess. I stop myself from asking what are the consequences... Talking to Aelynthi did not give any more information on this topic, so we walk in silence back to the cave. As Kate floats us up I notice there are stairs that lead up to her cave, most likely they are there for the elves to be able to visit when needed. Inside the cave Kate informs me that I have good enough grasp on magic, so the real ''teaching'' begins. How do dragons teach... well I found out, by combat, repeatedly. First Kate wanted to see my physical combat abilities, well I disappointed her and as a rank 0 mage like me mostly uses body magic, we did not touch the subject of combat magic. I was told to forget about magic until I can stand on my own two feet like a man... The job of beating me up physically under the excuse of training was left to Aelynthi, who did so with a face of pleasure. Knowing that this process of training me to dodge and take hits will take a long time, therefore any spare time I get I spend on thinking up ideas for future weapons and experiments. Before getting started on working on artifacts, I build a small cube house in which I will do all of my future experiments to avoid a noisy elf and catching unwanted attention from Kate which may be futile as I do not comprehend what Kate is capable of doing with her magic.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. I tested out the transmission and receiving of radio signals, it was a success and very easy to do. Problem of information transmission solved, now I need to capture information and to represent it. Sound was easy, I used a graphene sheet suspended in a rock for the recording and transmission, just record the vibrations in air and then repeat said vibrations using another sheet. Onto visual information, as I have already experimented with EM radiation, it was easy to make a sensor that records the intensity of visible light in different parts of the visible light spectrum. The only difference between this sensor and a camera is that a modern camera has millions of said sensors. As making millions of separate sensors did not seem like a good idea, I took a cube the size of 1 cm made out of granite and solved the problem with a more complex enchantment. By dividing one of the surfaces of the cube into a grid of 1000x1000 pixels and having each pixel record the visual information, I created a camera. As for the screen, taking a surface of 10cm x 10cm and enchant it so it divides its surface into 1000x1000 pixels like the camera but transmit visible light instead of absorbing it. Directly connecting the screen and camera resulted in a device that did not show anything but a blank screen, I forgot to specify the angle at which light should be absorbed and to add a refresh rate as I have no idea how the information transfers using charged mana but limiting the use is always a good idea. Now I have a directional camera that records infrared, visible light then a screen that represents this information perfectly. Adding mana signature within the visible spectrum was impossible as a mana signature is not EM radiation but is a reaction of mana to intent. Now I know that when I activate my mana sight all I do is allow the visual receptors in my eyes to receive ambient mana reactions to my intent, in other words ¡®see mana'' using my intent guided inner mana. I have realised why mana sight was so blurry and almost useless unless up close, my eyes can not act as a lens when dealing with a mana signature unlike it does with light. At this moment I have a breakthrough and do the same camera enchantment on half of a sphere. Additionally I take note to improve my mana sight using this knowledge. The half sphere gives me an image that ideally captures visual light with a field of view equal to the half sphere or in other words 180 degrees and removes the need for the enchantment to take the angle into account. Next I concentrate on representing mana using visible light. I make a new screen to represent intensity of visible light in black and white while adding an overlay of mana signature, red for below ambient mana levels and blue for above ambient mana levels. This results in the dragon being marked as a red dot as I see no mana from her, I am light blue with Aelynthi being a shade darker. My excitement is through the roof as I can now clearly see mana signatures and a representation of its threat, red signifies control of inner mana to such a level that my intent gets no response so obviously extremely dangerous, blue shades represent inner mana density vs ambient mana. I decide to add this viewing option to my goggles with an additional overlay of temperature in shades of green but with a low intensity so that everything does not become green colored. I guess this new viewing mode will be my go to combat mode and I will add an overlay mode where the image is not black and white but just has the color overlays on what I normally see. I believe my combat awareness will be much better now as I will be able to see spells, mages and body heat. Of course it is possible to cloak mana and body heat, most likely such advanced artifacts are non existent because you would need knowledge about visualizing mana which could be common amongst mages but knowledge about infrared EM radiation would be much rarer, unless of course other sentient beings from other technological civilizations randomly pop up on this planet like me, so I have no clue. 15 Thinking of other possible uses of cameras, I make a 190 degree camera mounted on a 30cm stick that transmits the image at a 4000 x 4000 resolution via radio. Each pixel will have 5 ''bytes'' to represent the typical R,G,B, infrared and mana intensity. Although it was hard to define each color, I succeeded by calculating the intensity of many small EM radiation spectrums and representing it using my system. As I will transmit this information via radio waves, I have to digitise all of this information and encode this information in such a way that minimizes errors due to radio transmission. After that is done, I setup the screen and now I have remote view camera. As my objective was to build an early warning system, I can cross out the most important part now, but now I have to write the software that will analyse the given video stream and decide if an alarm should sound. I decide to put this off for later. Right now I want to create a high caliber gun for stronger enemies. If my current gun is best described as a light weapon designed for close range combat (10-200m) and has good burst fire of 12 rounds in about 6 seconds while having no sustained fire capabilities with low stopping power. What I want to create is a weapon designed for long range that can kill an armored rank 2 mage with one shot. In other words I want to build a high caliber sniper rifle or an anti-material rifle (AMR). I decide that the bullet diameter will be 2cm, the total length will 6 cm, first 3cm of a cylinder then 3cm with a slightly rounded cone. Each bullet will be enchanted to strengthen atomic bonds which will lower the fragility somewhat and improve armor penetration. I will not change bullet material and use carbon again to make diamond bullets, like the diamond shot of my current gun. The barrel will follow the same construction method as my current pistol but its length will be 60cm with no muzzle break and a barrel thickness of 1 cm. The barrel itself weighs similarly to my pistol. For the method of propulsion I will use liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The combustion chamber will be made the same way as the barrel but with 20% more thickness in the walls and holes for the fuel injectors. Between the combustion chamber and bullet inserter there is a flow smoother to remove unwanted turbulence. After a few days of gathering carbon, experimenting with the bullet inserter and making the gun itself I am finally finished. A few experiments with the blast chamber were needed to find an optimal fuel mixture, an amount that is safely under the pressure needed for the blast chamber to explode. I make and enchant 10 bullets manually, I put 5 into a magazine and load up the gun, now I wonder when will I be able to field test this beauty. The overall mass is almost 5 kg, compared to modern anti-material rifles it is very light but for some reason I have little doubt that it will outperform a .50 cal anti-material rifle in stopping power thanks to its mostly magical nature. To make the weapon actually useable at the ranges I want of +300m I attach a bipod and 10x magnification scope enchanted with my combat overlay. The resulting gun length is 80 cm with the stock folded away, packing up the gun in my backpack has the barrel sticking out but otherwise it is an acceptable method of transportation.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Setting aside the matter of my new AMR, my progress on the physical aspect of fighting is pretty much non existent, at least I see it that way. I am still beaten up but now I know how to cover myself better to minimize the beating. Kate has been in a more non talkative mood than usual and has barely said any words since we returned, while Aelynthi mostly ignores me. I think Aelynthi does not even concentrate on my intent when I try to talk to her... They do talk between themselves in a language that does not sound like elvish, most likely about magic. Returning to the matter of my combat strength I decide to make a copy of my current pistol and a sword. Mostly because I have no melee combat capability and my pistol can not sustain fire while my sniper rifle is obviously not made for cqc. Thinking of different options for a sword, I go with a 20cm handle and a 80cm long blade with a core of carbon nanotube weaved textile and then covered by graphene, the sword edge is the edge of 2 graphene sheets that come together, with thousands of layers before we reach the CNTW. A simple enchantment for atomic bond strength, self repair and it is done. A blade that is extremely durable and has an edge thickness measured in nanometers. I love magic! The sword weight is about 2 kilograms, the performance is fantasy like, out of the surrounding materials the only thing that can somewhat resist being cut is enchanted CNTW textile and enchanted diamond but when applying force nothing I know can stop it, I have not gotten the opportunity to try dragon scales because asking Kate for some may not be such a good idea. I return to my older project, the alarm and cameras. I create a 5cm ball which will be the core that receives the video feeds and will decide whether to sound an alarm or not. I modify the cameras to send an image of the surroundings every 0.5 seconds as constant transmission, digitalization and encoding of the video consumes a noticeable amount of power and I do not need a high frequency for the alarm to be functional. I enchant the core to support up to 20 video feeds, mark up to 50 individuals as a source of heat and non ambient mana, scan for new sources of heat and new sources of non ambient mana every 0.5 seconds, if found new source then raise alarm. I do not add motion detection as that would require a higher frame rate and a much more complex process. This security system has a weight similar to my 2 pistols and does not take up much volume in my backpack, it''s really just a bundle of sticks and a 5cm diameter ball. I did make a 5cm x 15cm monitor that can be mounted on my arm to check video streams when I wish to, especially useful if the alarm sounds. Another thing that I added, just in case, is a low mana alarm which transmits to the core from each of the cameras and the core itself has such an alarm even if it is unlikely such a thing is needed due to the low mana usage of the artifacts as they easily keep themselves charged on ambient mana. The last thing was a lost signal alarm that sounds when one of the cameras stops sending its feed. Before leaving this project and starting on my next one I fix another weakness by adding a seismic activity sensor on each camera stick, with the appropriate reaction from the core. This perimeter security system can easily have a functional radius of 50 meters which I think is good enough for its job. 16 It has been 3 months counting from the day of my arrival, my physical fitness is excellent even if Aelynthi can still wipe the floor with me. My inner mana level keeps rising, now at 6 times ambient even though I have stopped cultivating. I think it is related to all of the mana shaping I do, I hope that it stops as I still have many unpleasant hypotheses on the origin and the nature of inner mana. I can afford not cultivating as the source of my strength so far is not dependent on spells but on my ability to recreate modern weapons and I do not think my AMR will fail to kill a rank 2 mage as even crossbows can pose a threat to mages if Aelynthi is to be believed. What I do need is freedom to conduct larger experiments without interference or a risk of exposing my knowledge. Currently I already have multiple working designs for mana based engines but I am limited by the resources available in this cave. Gathering carbon from the air for a large scale engine would take many weeks if not months, another problem is that oil is needed for the lubrication of the parts. I could try extracting carbon from stone but I do not think it is a good idea to do so in an enclosed environment and in front of a very curious dragon. My guns and their respective parts only need a few drops which I can gather from the little meat the dragoness gives me. It is possible but its like the difference between extracting iron from mud and extracting it from an iron vein. I would very much prefer freedom to do as a please and not have to worry about my actions. I have little choice but to gather my courage and talk to the dragoness. "Kate, how long do you plan on keeping me here?" Silence is my answer. "I can not live like this indefinitely, I need to eat fresh food, even Aelynthi has been affected and she has been here for less than a month." A few minutes pass. "You can leave." I am surprised, just like that? Kate does not wish to share any information about the reasons of why she changed her behavior after her trip or why she is letting me go now... Pushing her to open up would be a bad idea, trying to convince a woman of something or asking her to share her inner thoughts is suicidal, especially so when she can crush you like a bug. I go over to Aelynthi and try to inform her that we are leaving as she is supposed to be my servant... I am not sure myself, at the very least I will tell her I am leaving. Aelynthi does not even try to listen to me. I look back at Kate, Kate relays the information to my loyal servant. Aelynthis reaction is similar to a child whose candy has just been taken away from her. As Aelynthi is not Kates student but my ¡®servant¡¯, she will have no right to be here when I leave. I start packing up my things while Aelynthi keeps looking between me and Kate until she accepts the reality and her shoulders slump, after a few minutes of her depression she packs up her belongings. I have no food so I ask for Kate for some rations, she obliges. Now I have a few kg of rations plus the 10 kg of equipment in my back, if you add the 15 kg of armor I am wearing then I feel like a soldier leaving for war. Well, I guess I am. As I look up where the tunnel is, I understand that I need to make a ladder as Kate has chosen to ignore this detail but with my shaping proficiency it only takes me a few minutes to climb up to the tunnel. Before entering too deeply into the tunnel Aelynthi does some kind of bow and says a few words, I say my own. "Goodbye, thank you for everything." I hear no answer and start walking down the tunnel. Finally we exit the tunnel. I see it is still morning so this is a good start. After we climb down to the bottom, the forest floor, I turn around towards Aelynthi and ask if she can understand me via telepathy, she nods. "This is where we go our separate ways. Goodbye." "No." "What do you mean no? You go to the village and I go somewhere else." The mountains would be a good place. "I am your servant til death do us part." What? Seriously? "How do I know you do not stab me in the back then?" Aelynthi shows some anger and answers: "The reputation of elves." I think I have just insulted all elves... "Will you follow me into danger? Will you listen to me if I send you into danger?" "Yes, Yes." Interesting, this contract is not as one sided as I thought. I raise an eyebrow, "Why?" Aelynthi continues to show slight anger and answers: "The reputation of elves." That explains nothing, I do not even understand the motive behind this contract. "Can you explain the contract between us." Now it is Aelynthi turn to be surprised, she asks "You do not know?" "From where should I know?" "All mages know." I resist the urge to facepalm, "Please explain in detail about the contract between us." "I serve you with absolute loyalty till death do us part. If I die you are obliged to compensate my kin depending on the circumstances, if you die I receive part of your property which is decided by your kin depending on the circumstances. If I betray you my kin is punished accordingly to my betrayal." This contract puts a lot of trust into the fairness of our kin¡­ Does somebody enforce this stuff? Should I mention my kin is in another world? Does Kate as a teacher count as my kin? Well, nevermind. From what I gather this system was made for young talented short lived mages to whom an older more powerful mage provides his service. The master grows quickly, out grows the servant and dies off. The servant gets the masters knowledge and part of the masters property in the end. Wait, is she considered to be a more powerful mage? Well she is mid rank 1 while I am rank 0, the balance breaker in my situation is that I can make rank 1 and rank 2 artifacts but she does not know that, all she should know is that Kate gave me a rank 2 artifact judging by her previous experience. I need to probe her to see if she knows I can make artifacts.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. **Please note that this is telepathy between a rank 0 and rank 1 mage which would usually not be possible. Thanks to Kathorrunth teaching Aelynthi and Anton they can more or less communicate, so the errors made by Aelynthi are intentional for now. Their ability to communicate will improve quickly over time as Aelynthi has practiced little but is very talented in this regard.** "Have you learnt of the origin of the artifact in my hands from Kathorrunth?" "No." Well it seems that she does not, I will try one more time. "What is in your opinion the origin of this artifact." I point to my pistol she is most familiar with. She frowns and thinks for a moment, "Dwarves?" I guess that is as good of an answer as I can get from her. "You said absolute loyalty? Even against elves? What about your kin?" "We are mages, power first, kin are complicated." Alright, I can understand that. How important is power to her? She does not look like a person that would kill for power. I suppose she expects me to have similar morals as her, isn¡¯t that just naivety, though I would not kill unless it is for my survival. "Why did you dislike me when we first met." "Babysit human mage, unworthy to be student of dragon, my wish to be student of dragon." Yup I pretty much guessed all of that, so simple minded? "Did you agree to the contract just so you could learn from Kathorrunth?" She looks away and answers: "Part. Student of dragon worthy to be master." She does feel shame after all, but in small amounts... Well, now I know a little more about her psyche and maybe just a tiny bit more about mage mentality. "Do you know that I never agreed to the contract?" "You gave decision to Kathorrunth." "No, I did not. She took the choice away from me." Aelynthi pauses to think. A good minute or so passes before she says: "I contract of servitude form with you now." I smile and say: "I do not want to." Aelynthi is stumped and before I can leave she smiles and says: "I tell Kathorrunth." Now it is my turn to pause, as Kate can be an unpredictable element here. If it was before... I would not even be in this situation but now I can only guess Kate forced this contract on me to protect me? I do not have enough information, thinking positive about other people''s motives is not good for survival. For all I know she is here to steal my knowledge as I did not share everything with Kate which may or may not make sense depending on a few unknown factors... Can magic be used to subvert the will of a sentient being long term without negative side effects? How valuable is my knowledge in the eyes of Kate? Does Kate know about the weapon I created? It is possible that Kate was never informed of my artifact... Or in her view me killing a few wolves is nothing. "Touch¨¦" Aelynthi has a bigger smile now. "Why are you happy? Why do you even want to serve me?" "Beat up trash. Barely worthy enough." You want to beat me up more? Worthy enough? I should stop trying to apply logic to her motives... "If I am not happy with your performance as a servant what can I do?" Aelynthi looks like I have insulted her, she answers: "Send back to kin." Now it is my turn to smile again but before I can address her telepathically I dodge a fist to my face. Aelynthi nods with a slight smile: "Me good job, kin no punish." So her kin will judge if she did a good job? Can I just permanently order her back? Won''t she tell Kate then? Eh, I can not see a solution. Should I ask if her job includes sexual service?.. I think I should stop insulting her for now, as ''til death do us part'' may happen earlier if I do so. Most likely it requires consent of both parties and is not part of the contract. "Why did the elder want you to serve me so much?" "Politics, me not want marriage, old more powerful mage" "Does this put me in danger?" "No, the reputation of elves." All right, I get it, you guys have an awesome reputation. I sigh look at the beauty in front of me, silver hair, light green eyes, high cheekbones and overall definitely how I would imagine an elf if I was in my old world. I will not even start questioning why my worlds fantasy is this worlds reality... "Where are we?" I ignore the look she is giving me. "We are on the outskirts of the Elven Kingdom of Brypeiros." Alright, now we need to leave this territory and find.... wait, the kingdoms name and her last name are the same. "Your last name." "Distant kin." Bullshit, I could ignore it before but now this experience is to similar to a damn cheap fantasy transmigration novel. I bet my diamond bullets that she is a princess. I do the most graceful bow I can as I say "Princess" She shows surprise and then asks "How..?" "You just told me." After a few seconds of contemplation she kicks towards me in anger as I jump away. I turn around and start to run as I laugh. I barely make a few steps before I am on the ground with an elven princess sitting on top of me and pinning one of my arms against my back. "Don''t you dare spread this information, or you shall be persecuted by the crown." Royalty needs guards, does it not? Even if traveling incognito there should be some guards, but I do not see any around here. So I press on. "I shall tell every person that listens or does not, every person who can understand me or does not, shall hear me say where Princess Aelynthi is located." My arm is in incredible pain, probably pulled a muscle, but she has yet to dislocate it. I am released after a few seconds. I clutch my arm in pain and slowly get up and look on with a smile of victory towards an angry face. "I would suggest you go back to the village and we never hear from each other again." Her face changes to a face of confusion then to surprise: "You do not want to blackmail me?" "I am blackmailing you to leave me be!" Aelynthi pauses to think and decides to pursue the most logical choice "No." Woman and logic do not go on the same road. I pause and say "I meant to say I am blackmailing you to come with me!" She laughs and says "Alright." I sigh. At least I made her laugh. "What if I am trying to trap you and kidnap you?" "Student of Kathorrunth." ...How is that an argument? "Even if I go into human territory and tell every mage I see that you are elven royalty?" Aelynthi smile and answers: "You won''t do that, if you do I will just drag you down with me." Eh, yeah that''s a really good choice... Back on topic, why is she my servant now? "Your motivation to become my servant was to hide yourself more deeply and use the backing of a dragon to dissuade whoever is forcing you to hide?" "You are not as dumb as you look." I sigh, "Isn''t this more of a threat to me now?" "It is." "You wanted to use me without me knowing and now you want to use me while I know it." "What use? It is a fair trade, you get to accompany this princess." She says with a straight face. Girl, if my idea about my adventure here being similar to a novel, you most likely end up as my wife or dead. In conclusion I will spank your butt one day. I sigh again. "Besides I have a new motive to following you now. I intend to find out why you want to get rid of me so much." "It is because I dislike stupid girls." I say with an emotionless face. She puffs up in anger only to exhale and smile at me. She replies: "I am not stupid." "You, an elven princess, want to follow an unknown human out of elven territory without any protection. How can you not be stupid?" I barely dodge the staff aimed at my head, before I can feel happy about my new found dodging skills she uses the other end of her staff to destroy my stance... I find myself on the ground looking up at a smiling princess with her staff pointed at me. Her smile is cut short as I use my legs to do what she did to me... this escalates into a training session and her coming with me. 17 My offer of stopping inside the village for one night and to restock on food is rejected by Aelynthi. After a sparring session she convinces me thoroughly that we will ignore the village and start our quest. It will take us a few days to exit the elven kingdoms territory, then we will head into the mountains that are a week or so away, to set up a long term base. The princess agrees with the idea of a secluded base for obvious reasons. Setting up camp just before nightfall, I leave her to set up the sleeping place and start setting up my security perimeter with a radius of 50 meters. As we are in a fairly clear area the visibility for the cameras will be excellent, I am sure the cameras will pick up threats from a distance of 50m if not more. I am quite assured to sleep soundly tonight. I return to see a stone rectangle as our sleeping spot. The walls of this home are thick as my thighs, with the entrance being a seperate part so you can not directly see within but enter without a problem. "Who will take first watch?" My answer is simple and direct: "I will sleep the whole night." "What? I am not your slave, you are obliged to keep watch the same as I am." "Good night." I lay down and promptly fall asleep ignoring the sounds of an elven woman from outside. *6 hours pass* I am hit in the groin, good thing my armor is extra thick there. "Wake up, it is your turn to keep watch." "No watch just sleep." I get kicked again in the same spot, I decide to sleep outside. "Alright, you can sleep here." After exiting the rectangle tent, I lay against it and try to fall asleep. *2 minutes pass* I am kicked in my upper leg.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. "Bastard, keep watch, this is serious, a predator may sneak up on us, no mana will make a difference." I look up at her with a sleepy expression and consider researching a sleeping spell. "Damn it, I want to sleep too, so keep watch or we both may end up as food." At this moment my security alarm goes off, I jump up in fright, pull up my goggles and look at the screen on my left forearm. which shows the image of the intruder and a direction towards the camera that saw the intruder. I unholster my pistol and turn around towards the intruder. I spot the target visually so there is no need to change position, I take aim, exhale, fire. I put down my gun and return to my previous position in which I was attempting to fall asleep. Aelynthi only reacts now, "What was that?" I think she is referring to many things all at once. "The dangerous predator that could have sneaked up on us and eaten us." Aelynthi frowns, I think she does not believe me. She continues: "I will go take a look." and walks off into the dark forest, I hope she does not trigger my seismic sensors as I implemented a personal shock system to the alarm as I am a deep sleeper and I value my life so it was logical at the time, now I am reconsidering. I decide to return into the rectangle to sleep. *4 hours pass* I wake up and find something heavy on me. Oh great, this too damn predictable! An elven princess is sleeping soundly on my chest. Wait, why is she on me? There is not that much room but not to this extent, did she pass out from exhaustion? Now I feel guilty for not explaining the security system and letting her have a 6 hour night watch... Aaah, damn it, I guess I can sleep some more. *3 hours pass* My left leg is numb and I finished mentally designing a target triangulation system that I will add onto my security system. "You could have woken me up." "I was enjoying it too much." Aelynthi scoffs and proceeds to somehow repeatedly painfully pinch my right leg, the CNTW armor offers no protection. How can she pinch me through the armor? "That is for killing an innocent frog." "For making me take a night shift we will have double training for a month." "That is for... being mean." She has stopped pinching me and is now looking at me strangely. Why is she still on me? "Shouldn''t you get off me? You are a princess and of the opposite gender..." Aelynthi feigns surprise: "You know that I am female?" She stands up, of course using my body as support in the most painful way possible. I just realised something painfully obvious, Aelynthi can force me to do what she wants as all my means of resistance are only lethal artifacts. She is for some unknown reason physically stronger than me while being more than a head shorter than me with a skinny but athletic body and is more adept at magic be it spells or ''will'' magic. I do not want to kill her... I can either force her to leave or develop an effective non lethal way to protect myself from her. We continue on with our journey. Our exit out of the elven territory was uneventful. Four days after exiting the territory I spot something through my goggles. 18 Multiple large heat signatures and 2 mana signatures. This is not good, especially so considering their size and form. It looks like 10 humanoids riding on this worlds equivalent animal to horses. The distance I spot them at is 500 meters, a little too close for comfort but considering that we are in a forest it is my luck to have spotted them at such a distance. I immediately turn around and start going away from them, after 20 seconds I can confirm that they have spotted us and are moving in our direction, I wonder how? An artifact? I should be invisible to all of my known methods of detection. I realise my mistake when I look at Aelynthi, white robe, visible mana and heat signature, just great. I turn on the prepping of 2 grenades and decide to unpack my AMR, it is not made for usage at close ranges but if they have armored targets my pistols will be useless. I am afraid of breaking a bone if I shoot my AMR without using a bipod to absorb most of the recoil... I look around and find little to choose as a defendable position, as I would like a high vantage point with multiple points of cover but all I found was a rock a little over half a meter high, perfect to put my AMR on and large enough to hide behind if I use my grenades. I inform Aelynthi of 10 people coming on horses towards us, at first she looks troubled then says there will be no problem, we just need to inform them that I am a student of a dragon. I pause and look at her, is this really what she thinks? As we do not have time to argue I load up the AMR and set it on the stone, next to the AMR I lay down one of my pistols, hopefully I will be able to use it for at least one or two shots against the most dangerous targets. As they come up to us I see that they are humans, in my eyes I see the following: 1 rich teenager of mage rank 1, an old man of mage rank 2, 6 swordsmen and 2 crossbowmen. My face stiffens when I see that the swordsmen are wearing wearing full plate armor while the the crossbowmen are in chainmail torso armor and leather for all the other important places. When I take a closer look at what the two mages are wearing I do not feel any better because I see x100 times ambient mana. Looking at their inner mana I see that the teenager has 40ish and the old man has 350ish. Obviously, I center all of my attention on the old man. I will let Aelynthi do the talking as it should be visible to them that she is a higher rank mage than me and it would complicate things if I, a human, start talking via telepathy to them. My physical buffs are already up while my head spins thinking of various ways to kill them. Directly using the grenades? What if the mages survive thanks to their magic armor and the knights might not be affected at all at a distance larger than 10 meters. Double wield pistols? I will not be able shoot accurately while using both guns at the same time if I do not aim at the same target. My best bet is to hit the rank 2 mage with the strongest thing I have, then the other mage, crossbowman and hope I survive cqc with 6 knights, maybe Aelynthi will show her worth in cqc as she has done in our spars. They stop 30 meters in front of us and calmly walk to a distance of about 20 meters. The old man is observing my AMR, I suspect he can see through the cloak or at least sees something wrong with its visible mana level, probably the same as my armor. The crossbowmen have their crossbows drawn, they are the priority target after the mages. Although we run the risk of getting a bolt fired at us, I have no choice as my knowledge of mages is limited and I do not wish to experience first hand if they can blow me up with a spell. The rich kid starts the conversation with an amiable smile, while my whole body is tense. After a few sentences are passed between them in a language that is definitely not elvish, Aelynthi starts frowning. I bet I can guess the reason for her reaction as the knights start to encircle us. I am going to jump on my AMR now as I do not want to be surrounded by knights, the older man only forces me to act as I see mana move around him. I jump on the AMR, point at the old mage and shoot as I see a spell forming in his hands. I do not check the result of my shot as I pick up the pistol on the rock, within a blink of an eye the crosshairs of my pistol are already on the head of the shocked teenager that is looking at the falling body of the old mage. I pull the trigger and pull the trigger yet again within half of a second but this time center mass. I take aim at the right crossbowmen and see a crossbow pointed at me. I do not hesitate to pull the trigger once aiming at his head and start taking aim towards the other crossbowman. I feel something punch my left shoulder, my aim is thrown off and I spend time to take aim at the second crossbowman. He is lowering his crossbow for a reload, I fire at his head.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. Analyzing the situation I see 3 knights on either side of me, 10 meters from us and running towards us with swords drawn. I see that Aelynthi is in arm''s reach of me and is casting a spell with her staff so I make a snap decision to use my grenades. First I drop my gun, then I select the 1 second delay trigger and throw both grenades simultaneously in front of the stone. I pull Aelynthi towards myself and push her towards the ground behind the stone as I jump on top of her. *BBaannGG* A deafening explosion occurs, my ears are ringing and no other sound can be heard. As I get up I pick up the pistol that I dropped and I unsheath my sword. All 6 knights were knocked down onto the ground. They do not look in the best of conditions with scratches and dents all over their armor. When I take a closer look I see blood in various locations, yet there still is minor movement coming from some of the knights. I understand that I have to finish the job to remove the threat. I walk up to each knight, send a bullet into the helmet visors and then proceed to thrust my sword into the neck just to make sure. I confirm the crossbowmen and mage rank 1 kills then I walk over to the body that has a good sized hole in the center of its chest and just in case I pull the trigger twice emptying my pistol into his head. I turn off my physical buffs. Before I realize it, I have collapse to my knees followed by falling face first onto the ground. ** I wake up to find myself staring at a rock ceiling, all of my clothes removed except my pants. I notice bandages around my left shoulder with a spot of blood on the bandages, it seems the bolt did penetrate my armor with just the tip going into my skin. I walk outside to see Aelynthi staring at a campfire. As I walk towards her I see her tense up, so I stop and sit down where I am. Looking around I see that we are in a different location, did she carry me or use one of the horses to carry me... Not important, what is important is that I do not see the spoils of battle... No horses, no mage armor, no plate armor... just her and my stuff. I wanted to examine the mage armor and any other possible artifacts they had. Silence reigns for many minutes before I decide to talk. I say "Thank you for taking care of me." Silence continues again. "Who are you?" "Anton Ip" "No! Who are you? I understand that all of your artifacts are not from Kathorrunth!" She pauses before continuing. "They are all made from the same material, produce the same deafening sound and you use them as if you made them. I did not see that sword or large artifact when you were at the village, the first time I saw them was when we left the cave and I have not seen Kathorrunth giving them to you. Did you make them? But how, you are only a rank 0 mage! Is this why Kathorrunth took you in as her student?" Now what should I say... Where should I start? Well, let''s say the truth and leave out the details. "Yes, I made the artifacts. I am from a very far away land. Kathorrunth has not given me any artifacts. My relationship with Kathorrunth is complex." "What are you doing here? What do you plan on doing? Why is your relationship with Kathorrunth complex?" "I got lost, I plan to return to my home." Well I think this much information should calm her down, it''s not like I know her life story. "Why don''t you say more?! How can I trust you?!" She pauses after finishing her sentence, I guess she can hear her own hypocrisy. "Why don''t you say more about why you are here with me and not in some castle? How can I trust you?" She opens her mouth to speak but then closes it. She looks down back at the fire. After a minute I hear a feeble "Sorry." After another few seconds I hear "Thank you." "You are welcome, when do you plan on returning my weapons or do you feel safer with me unarmed?" She flinches and does not move. "Can I at least have the detection artifact so that we can sleep soundly at night?" Aelynthi: "How do I know it is not another weapon and..." I roll my eyes and say with sarcasm: "The other option would be to give me nothing, chain me up when you go to sleep and hope a predator eats me first so you can use me as an alarm system. As trusting me to keep watch is a bit too much for you." Shortly I get a bag thrown at my face. It is my backpack with the security system but nothing else. I go about setting up the security system, I return to see Aelynthi playing with one of my pistols, looking down the barrel. I flinch and say "That artifact is very dangerous as you have seen, put it down." "How does it work? Without touching it I can not even tell that it is enchanted and what I do feel is that it has very little mana, is this thing empty?" "It is not empty so put down the weapon." I will not tell you about my weapons girl but stop swinging it around, dammit! "It is not empty? Really?" She momentarily points the gun at me, then decides better of it and points the gun towards a tree and pulls the trigger. What I expected happens. 19 I pick up my pistol from a wide eyed paralyzed elven girl. I decide to take advantage of the situation, I sit down next to her and pull her up so that her stomach is on my lap, I use my left hand to steady her and lift up my right hand up. I swing my right hand down and start spanking her. *Smack* "That is for beating me up in the village." *Smack* "That is for trying to manipulate me." *Smack* "That is for acting like a spoiled brat." *Smack* "That is for following me." *Smack* "That is for waving around a dangerous weapon." *Smack* "That is pointing the weapon at me."... I continue doing so until I run out of reasons, I look down down and see a quivering elf, her eyes are puffy and red from crying. I decide that now is good time to test out my sleeping spell, and... it works, I call it chloroform. My mother always said that a person remembers a lesson or information they learnt right before falling asleep, hopefully it is true. I lay her down inside of the stone shelter and cover her up with her blanket. I return to the campfire and focus my mind on something that I have suppressed since waking up. I killed 10 sentient beings, 10 humans. Their intentions were visible from their actions, the way the kid looked at Aelynthi, the way they acted as if the kids action was common. I wonder if they specifically were looking for elves or just a detour past the elven territory? From what I have heard from Kate slavery exists here, but I don''t even know if their objective was elven slaves or we were just unlucky, or better said they were unlucky. If I knew the language then would the outcome be different? They did not even react to the words of Aelynthi as she mentioned whatever she did, I wonder what my words would change something, if anything at all¡­ The stupidity of it all¡­ The kid following his primal desires and his parents indulging him because they have the power to do so. Yet, I had more power and killed them. It was self defence, of myself and Aelynthi... I .. Trying to think positive thoughts I suppress the trembling of my hands. Good thing I did not understand them otherwise this would have been way too similar to novels from back home and I would have to listen to the kid talk about the power his father holds and how well he will treat Aelynthi. I bet I would not be able to bare listening to them for a few minutes before I would have deemed them as animals that need to be put down... It seemed Aelynthi was not angry at me for killing them, most likely she realised the nature of the situation after the fact... It will be a long night. *Aelynthi POV* I wake up to the smell of fried vegetables, as I recall what happened last night I tense up in shame and anger, the bastard is cooking breakfast. I take deep breaths to calm myself... When I convinced one of the horses to carry him to safety, I found a collar and chains amongst their belongings. The collar made me realise how naive I have been. I understand the bastard was angry and punished me for... but why did he have to hit so hard? What right does he have to do such a thing? I will beat him up during training, but what if he uses that thing to paralyze me again? It was not a pleasant experience as I felt it through my body... As much as I hate the bastard, he did save my life if not from an even worse fate so I will forgive him for now. Who am I kidding? I have been only a nuisance to him since I decided to follow him. Maybe I should leave after all but how can I repay him? If I ask him I am sure he will tell me to repay him by leaving but I do not want to leave... He is the first person that is not family who does not want me for my looks or to use me for personal gain... I have decided, if he asks me to go away, I will leave. "Good Morning" I ignore him and sit down to eat breakfast, I flinch when I feel the pain on my buttocks. The bastard smiles and I grit my teeth in anger and shame. He passes me my breakfast and starts making his own. As he cooks I notice something else, he is tired. I pause, did he sleep at all during the night? Is there some kind of problem?.. By the way he killed them, it did not seem to be his first time... I may have misjudged him.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. I gather my courage to ask him: "First kill?" He does not answer and continues to cook his breakfast, damn bastard ignoring me when I show concern for him and only making me worry. Answer me! I can... how can I comfort him? I have not killed anything living, and he killed 10 humans, his own race. Wait, why did he kill them? I understand my fate in their hands would be worse than death, but what relation does that have with him? I would still be alive so the lifelong servant contract would not affect him and by the time the elven crown finds whatever is left of me he can be thousands of kilometers away or he can work directly under some human king making artifacts. He had the option to choose and he chose to save me. My heart starts racing as I think of this. Does he like me after all? After all?... Why am I worried about him liking me? Do I like him?... This feeling is similar to what mother described to me when I asked about how it feels to love someone... Do I love him? We have spent 3 months together, is this fast? Or slow? He is a human after all, I heard that they are fickle and... I do not know! I am not of age, when I will be of age he will be on the verge of death. It is not meant to be... but what if he asks me? Will I say no? I heard Human men are rumored to be very forceful towards women. Will he force himself on me? Will I be able to resist? Will I resist?... *Anton POV* I stop hearing sounds from Aelynthi, I turn around to take a look and see a pinkish face with pinkish ears, when I look at her she avoids my gaze. What is wrong with her now? "Are you alright?" She avoids eye contact and says "You saved me." "Yes, and?" She starts to fidget while avoiding eye contact but does not say a word. I facepalm, does she think I saved her because I love her? Time to burst her bubble. "I saved myself and in consequence you, as I do not want to join any faction and I seek freedom, so hostile actions against that group of humans would have happened with or without you." Her eyes widen a bit, she turns and looks at me, some seconds pass, her face has disappointed now. "Do you dislike me that much?" I will not even try to understand what is happening in her head. "It is not that I dislike you, I do not wish to start a relationship in my current circumstances nor do I wish to start a relationship on " I pause. "a lie." I guess this would best describe her misunderstanding of my actions of saving her without sounding insulting towards her. She thinks for a moment and nods: "Alright." "If anything, I find your antics cute." Aelynthi is surprised then starts to ''fidget'' as she changes color yet again. The color change may just be my imagination but she stops and now she is showing anger mostly due to my smirk. She seems to about to tackle me but stops, she looks at me with a smirk of her own and says "Your breakfast is burning." I turn around and see burnt omelet and bacon, I am visibly saddened from the loss of good bacon and eggs. I throw it away and get some more meat, I guess no eggs today. The princess seems quite happy now. You may have won one of the battles but there are more to come and it is obvious that I will win the war. "Do all elves go red in their ears when they feel bashful?" The princess freezes at my direct attack, I suspect the only thing that is stopping her from becoming more bashful is the topic at hand is about her bashfulness. Before I know it I am on the ground with my hand in pain, I can not help but think about more wasted bacon. "The bacon will burn." She takes the pan, lifts it up and... blackness. *1 hour later.* I am kicked awake by an angry elf, this method of waking up is becoming quite common. I think about my rash decision to continue teasing her and can not help but smile. Now I understand the phrase ''one of man''s greatest pleasures is to tease a beautiful woman'' even if the consequences are dire. As she sees my smile she grits her teeth and sends another kick my way. "We need to change our tradition of waking me up with kicks, how about water? Water provides a good shock, sobering effect and does not damage the body. If that is not enough to satisfy your sadistic tendencies you may try pouring ice water on me." She pauses and looks at me strangely, then nods and says "I think I will." Why am I giving her ideas? Well, it is true that water will not damage me... and someday my groin will be unprotected, that day I will be nice to her. I get up and we continue on our journey. 20 As we walk, I think about the combat effectiveness of my companion, so far she has only acted as a tagalong. Though she did look after my wound when I lost consciousness and I can not blame her for not fighting in the previous battle as she did not even get the chance thanks to my effort but I have doubts she will be able to kill in battle. If she is going to stay with me we need to maximize her combat capability. I leave the matter of her being too kind for now and think about other ways for her to improve her combat ability. I take a better look at her robe and staff. I see that they have minor enchantments and they do not have any stealth enchantments. She sees me observing her and gives me a questioning look. I walk infront of her, my face centimeters away from hers and say "You are beautiful." before she gets uncomfortable with me so close. She enters bashful mode and does not even the absence of her staff. I can confirm there is an enchantment here, for... improving structural strength, auto repair and the last ones function takes me a few seconds to understand, it is interesting enchantment for a inner mana conduit. My conclusion is that this things enchantments are an utter ''masterwork'' of elven craftsmanship but I can not yet comment on the mana conduit enchantment as I have yet to fully understand its functions. Furthermore I have just realised how well I am able to feel the enchantments intent so are all mages able to do so or is the readers knowledge required to be at a higher level than that was put into the intent. A voice interrupts my thought process. "Hey give that back! Did you call me beautiful to steal my staff?!" Yet again I look into her eyes and say: "Yes, you are still beautiful." She goes back into her own world again as I walk off with her staff, I am already erasing the intent of the previous enchantments. From what I can tell the mana conduit enchantment allows the caster to cast spells not directly from their body, so it is useful when casting dangerous spells like fire. The staff also seems to combine the usage of inner charged mana and charged mana stored in the staff to improve spell efficiency. I enchant the staff using my knowledge with structural strength, auto repair functions, fix the horrible mana storage, add a concealing effect and add my own newly created mana conduit which will use very little inner charged mana if charged mana is available in the staff as it will transfer the intent from the casters inner mana onto the stored charged mana, this will make the efficiency skyrocket. Finally I add my ownership protection enchantment like on my weapons and an activation based transmitter or in other words a radio beacon. Ah, I almost forgot the conceal enchantment. After she breaks out of her daze she runs after me. I did all of this using a sub surface micro enchanting technique so she should not notice anything wrong judging by the surface inscriptions. "What are you doing to my staff!" "I am just studying the elven ''masterwork'' of this fine staff." I hand her back the staff. "I understand you are a talented enchanter but this staff was made by a renowned rank 2 enchanter! It was a gift for my birthday." Well, that guy is either a shitty enchanter or he does not like you. She proceeds to test out the magic capabilities of the staff, as the staff has yet to absorb mana the magic efficiency enchant should not yet kick in fully so I do not think she will feel a difference. She calms down but is still eyeing me suspiciously. "Don''t do that again!" I am already walking away thinking on about how to get a hold of her clothes, for obvious reasons. "What? Call you beautiful?"This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Aelynthi stammers as she says "Yes! Do not make fun of me!" "Do you always react like this to guys calling you beautiful or is it just me?" Aelynthi does not know how to respond to my words and proceeds with the most logical path of decision. Beat me up. I am not a masochist but I just enjoy the look on her face and her cute antics which are almost like some anime. Wait, if I always get beaten up as I enjoy her reactions won''t this make an association between pain and joy in my mind? Alright, no more teasing... Nevermind, creating a spell to remove pain is easier than to forgo teasing her. As that problem is solved, I solve the next, when we find a lake or river and she goes to bathe I will steal her clothes and... promptly return them after studying their enchantments but how will I mask my enchantments on the robe? The solution: weave them in within the cloth using my favorite material, carbon nanotubes. I will need to prepare some beforehand. We are lucky to find a stream the next day, there is a deep enough part for a person to bath. I say to Aelynthi: "Tomorrow morning I will take bath here, it is good for the skin." and go on setting up camp not too far away. Unfortunately she does not take the bait. We go to sleep but I stay awake, after 10 minutes she leaves towards the stream. I watch her leaving on my camera, my security core alarms me of a registered signature exiting the area which I turn off. Shortly I leave the camp to follow her with my combat overlay on. The plan so far is going good. She starts undressing, I am momentarily stunned at the display before me. I snap out of it when she enters the water, next I creep up and steal her robe that she had left on a tree branch. I do not touch her undergarments as that is not important for the objective. I leave the vicinity and start studying the enchantment. The first thing I notice is that the material is excellent, some kind of densely woven silk. The enchantments are subpar again with something to improve slashing resistance, an auto repair function and horrible mana storage. As I had time to prepare, better said over prepare as I have sheets of CNTW with me I decide to reinforce her robe. The necessary mana control and mana usage makes me sweat as I need to do this in an acceptable time period of 10 minutes. I redo the enchantments in a similar way to my current armor as I walk back to place the robe where I left it. I stop in my tracks when I hear a scream, I do not understand the content but I know the source and I have no choice but to continue going back. I see a head glaring at me from the water, I place her clothes on the tree branch and say: "I took the liberty of washing your clothes." and walk off. She did not say a word when she returned and we fell asleep in separate rooms of the rock tent. The next morning just before sun rise I am woken up by my security core that informs me: a registered signature is leaving the camp. I get up quickly, find a rock lined with intent that says: ''Goodbye''. I run around packing my things and set off after her. I am not going after her to get her back, no such thing. All of my actions so far have been to get rid of her and that will not change for the foreseeable future. I am going to escort her back to the elven territory, due to the contract, due to the fact she is royalty. It is definitely not because I am worried about her and most definitely not because I have already planned out to spend my free time by teasing her. I keep a minimal distance of about 500 meters from her. So far she has shown no indication of knowing that I am here. Even though this is not an effective use of my time, my mind is never idle. Along the way I made a directional security camera to aim at her so I can sleep soundly and not worry about her leaving or being in danger. She sleeps in trees with minor tree shaping to stop herself from falling. I note her casting a spell, before going to sleep, to investigate later. Sleeping while tied to a tree on its branches probably is not the most comfortable sleeping method but at least she is sleeping. She has most likely figured out that I have modified the enchantment on her staff after casting that spell, but that is not important. A day before entering elven territory I spot 5 heat signatures 200 meters from her off to the side and the bad news is that they are heading towards her. 21 A day before entering elven territory I spot 5 heat signatures 200 meters from her off to the side and the bad news is that their direction of movement is towards her. I immediately unpack my AMR and start shifting the soil underneath me for a pillar to put the bipod on, otherwise I will not be able to use the weapon at all. I am 400 meters away from them, so my accuracy should be good enough from the few tests I have done. I hold my finger near the trigger but I will not fire unless she is in danger. The 5 people, beastkin with no mana signatures, are dressed in dirty cloth and hide armor and their weapons are the following: bow, 1 sword, 3 clubs. She lets them surround her with the archer at her back while I hold myself back from facepalming as I need to keep to focus on the situation. Fuck, that archer is a constant threat... I need to eliminate him but she will know I am here and that will complicate things. I decide I will fire as soon as he starts to draw the bowstring. They have a conversation with her, during which she most likely demonstrates she has no desire to fight... They rush at her with the bowman knocking an arrow but not drawing it as they most likely want her unharmed. She starts casting, and lighting from her staff strikes one of the men with a club. The bandits are obviously surprised and scared, though I can see that the man is still alive for now. As the bandits see that she takes no further actions, as I bet any normal mage would have killed them all, they decide to attack yet again. The bowman starts to draw his bow, he fails to draw it as he now has a 20mm hole in his body. Aelynthi is distracted due to my shot is what allows the sword wielding man to slash at her. His slash failed to go through her robe but knocked Aelynthi off balance while my second shot is ready to be fired at the swordsman. The two clubmen decide to make a run for it after the death of the swordsman. They run 10 and 20 meters before suffering the same fate as the others. I do not forget about the electrocuted man on the ground and finish him off. At this moment I realise that Aelynthi has shortened the distance between us by 100m and is yelling the same word as the night I stole her robe. Within a minute I am tackled to the ground and hit with fists on my chest by a crying Aelynthi. After 10 minutes of getting pummeled by her she calms down enough to use telepathy and says the word "Bastard". From our interactions I can deduce the meaning of the elvish word she keeps repeating and this only confirms my suspicion. "Comon lets get you to the village." This triggers another few minutes of pummeling. "Why do you want me to leave so much?" "I have my reasons." They involve making rank 3 artifacts, setting up a fortress, rank 4 artifacts and indirect world domination. "You do not trust me, is that it?" Yes, it is exactly that, when you see that I can make rank 4 artifacts and threaten countries, what will you do? Will I have to point my gun at you? "Then why care about my safety? Why did you follow me? Why save me again? I know you improved my equipment, but you did it like an asshole, a damn asshole that cares about me." Damn it. Of course I care about you, we spent almost 2 months together, from the time we patrolled the forest, to the cave and our journey outside. We may have started off rough with you being a bitch, then you beating me up everyday, hell you still beat me up but now I kinda deserve it. After that we transitioned towards me being an asshole. Does that make us even?... On the positive side of things I enjoy the way you smile, the way your ears twitch following your emotions. Your naivety and kindness with intelligence on top. Yup, definitely not saying that. "Who will I tease then?" The pummeling resumes, I close my eyes and wait for it to stop. Ah, I will definitely visit you in the future but right now I need strength, so I do not lose my freedom nor my life. Aelynthi does something unexpected, she kisses me, my eyes snap open to be met with hers. Dammit she is going all out! I already know what she will say. "I am not leaving you. I will never leave you." Clever girl, manipulating me with emotions! "I love you." I see it in her eyes, they say you will not get rid of me that easily. "You are only doing this to annoy me, aren''t you?" "No." I roll her onto her back as I am on all fours on top her, face to face "What if I take you here and now?" Aelynthi feigns surprise: "Your thing actually works?" ... "What if I find another woman?" Aelynthi knees my groin and adds: "I will beat you up, if I like her I will ask her to help me beat you up." Damn this girl. "If I become an enemy of your kingdom." Aelynthi smirks and says: "I will sell you out in a heartbeat. Even if I have to get married to some old geezer, lose my freedom to study magic and lose the opportunity annoy you." I can not understand if this is sarcasm or not. My mind spins to understand... *Slap* Okay, I understand, I think? "I can be an idiot sometimes" Aelynthi smirks: "Sometimes?" Okay, she is now fighting me at my own game. I think I broke her. "Do you love me or hate me?" "What is the difference?" Want to play, alright! I kiss her back, now it is her turn to be surprised. We break the kiss after a minute or so.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. "I plan to return home, it is not as simple as it sounds, I do not know if you can come with." She processes what I just said, then smiles and proceeds to kiss me back more passionately. After another minute passes. "I was your first kiss?" Aelynthi pinches me on the arm magically through the armor. "I will take that as a yes." I get another pinch for that. Where do girls train to pinch? "It was my first also." She starts to blush and looks away. "A romantic?" Aelynthi turns back towards me: "Your language it is more complex than the language of the humans here, it is comparable to elvish, is it of your home?" "I speak 3 languages and know how to say bastard in elvish." Aelynthi is really surprised, thinks for a moment and says: "If I tell my mother that you are a scholar, a dragon''s student and a rank 2 enchanter she might consider marrying me off to you, but if she finds out you are human and have stolen my heart... a dragon will not be enough to protect you." "Does your mother have you on a leash?" Aelynthi shakes her head and says: "My mother wants what is best for me, but has little choice in the current circumstances. The proposing party is a rank 3 mage with a high rank within the elven mage association. My father died 4 years ago in the war with humans. The war has passed but has left my mother with the crown until my brother becomes of age to be crowned the new king." They are using her moment of weakness caused by her father''s death to seize more power and her. No wonder she ran away. Now I also know why a dragon may not be enough to protect me from her mother, humans killed her husband and attacked her kingdom. "So, within a few years you can run away from me back into royalty?" Aelynthi pinches me as she says: "No, drag you back to meet my mother. Are you worried about me leaving or betraying you?" I am worried about a lot of things, that is low on the list, but yes I am worried. I have trust issues and I do not like sad ends. "Won''t your mother kill me?" Aelynthi smirks and says "How will she kill the father of her grandchild?" Okay elves and humans can have children, good to know. Wait, do I count as a human of this land? Are the children fertile? Do mages and non mages differ? Will I be able to fix the infertility problem with my knowledge? As I am lost in thoughts, Aelynthi interrupts: "We elves have a ritual called soul binding, couples often times do such a thing, it binds the life of two as one." Does she want to go through such a thing? Does she not trust me completely as well? How will it affect my soul? I am not from this world, do I have a similar soul to humans here? How are humans affected? I am again taken out of my thoughts by Aelynthi. "You do not want?" "It is not that I do not want to. I do not like the sound of soul magic, as I can not see the soul. I do not know how my soul may react to such a thing. I " As my explanation continues Aelynthi visible saddens. I stop. "I am from a different world, who knows what may occur." Aelynthi shows anger and attempts to push me away: "Do not spout lies!" I read about situations like this, I know the solution. I lean down kiss her, as a response she bites my lip and she bites my lip again. I must persevere! I am kneed in the groin a few times. This continues a few seconds until she calms down. She looks at me with teary eyes and asks: "Another world?" "Yes, you can ask Kathorrunth, as I have shared my secret she will not deny." "Kathorrunth knows? Why?" "She was the one that found me, better said I found her cave." I smirk and add "How did you think an unworthy human became the student of a dragon?" "No soul binding?" She looks downcast. "Why do you wish to soul bond so much?" "My mother says that if you give yourself to a man, give yourself fully." Dammit girl, wasn''t your mother afraid that with your naivety you will soul bind yourself to a con man? She pinches me, it''s almost as if she reads my thoughts. Wait, can she read my thoughts? "Our inner mana has been in contact for some time, I can feel your emotions. It is also why I came to believe that you do not lie about being from another world. What other secrets do you have?" "You want to know my secrets." She nods. "Do you know why I have so many secrets?" She shakes her head. I smirk "It attracts women and keeps them interested in me" I get bitten on the nose. Aelynthi playfully says: "I will find out all of your secrets and share them with all women so not one will be interested in you." We left the main topic, back to it. "Why can''t I feel your emotions?" Aelynthi smirks and says "Idiot." Yup, that explains it. I do feel something but I need to concentrate to feel it and I do not understand it at all. "The answer is men are idiots when it comes to emotions? Or just me?" Or I may just be having a harder time feeling hers due to my lack of experience doing such a thing. Aelynthi laughs and smiles but does not answer. Back to the topic at hand, give herself completely to me? Is this translated properly? I put my hand to my heart and show a painful expression "What have you done with my heart? It is missing." Aelynthi smiles and answers: "I have stolen it and locked it up." Interesting, she understands the metaphor and the symbolism of the heart. I continue to stare into her eyes. I feel strange feelings inside of me... Why did she have to complicate things so much? I can not bring myself to say no... "Why do you love me?" "Do I need a reason?" I continue to look into her eyes. Aelynthi: "You saved my life twice if not three times. You care for me even though I have been a nuisance to you... I have never met a person towards whom I had similar feelings." I sigh. The future is uncertain and dangerous. I have promised to myself in the past to live without regrets and I feel like I will regret by telling her no. "Please explain to me what is soul binding." Aelynthi brightens up and starts talking: "An elf can bind his soul to another person. With his soul bound his life will depend on the other. If the other dies he has 1 year to say his goodbyes before following the other into death and the other will always know his location and emotional state" Well, this sounds to have been made for lovers. When I concentrate on what I feel from her, all I get is positive emotions and no sense of malice. This does not seem to be a lie judging from this. Having a healthy amount of paranoia is good for preserving lives, even if it shows in my decisions related to trusting people close to me. I believe it is mostly due to being alone on a whole planet filled with unknowns. I decide to test out the emotional link. "So you want to have children with me?" I concentrate on the link and I feel happiness and bashfulness from her. I did not expect anything else... "You do not?" Now I feel sadness and hope? "Maybe after building a safe home. If we do this will you still be fun to tease?" I feel happiness and expectation, then I feel pain in my arm and happiness with bashfulness from the emotional link. Why does she look angry while she feels those things? Oh my god this information can answer the ultimate question in the universe: ¡®What do women think?¡¯ This is a key to advancing our civilization to the next level and... my thoughs are interrupted by another pinch. "Are you testing out my motive using the emotional link we have?" I fell sadness and... pity? Pity? She pities me? I nod. "I am willing to bind our souls. How does this work?" She kisses me and I feel happiness from her. "I perform the ritual and you accept me the same way I accept you." It is consent based? "I have to say I accept or something else?" A"You may accept in any manner of ways but for it to work you must accept me into the same role as will be said by me." "What role do you wish?" "As your lover!" "Alright." Aelynthi: ''¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤'' I feel something very strange but I see no mana movement around us. She seems to have finished and is looking at me, I feel... love? "Aelynthi, I accept you as my lover, nothing more." Something strange happens... 22 Something strange happens... I feel... Aelynthi? I close my eyes and feel on whole other level where she is located and I find another stream of emotions that is not through the mana link. Concentrating on both I feel her overwhelming happiness. This confirms she has bonded to me via the soul. "Is it my turn now? What do I have to say? Is it same as you?" "Humans can not do such a thing." My mind goes blank. Did she just bind herself to me? While I am in my unresponsive state I get hugged. I feel her fully press into me even though I am on all fours, she has wrapped herself around me. "Now I am yours, even though you can not be mine, I do not regret, I shall follow you till death and follow you to death." Fuck, she just gave away more than 800 years of her lifespan. "By the way your paranoia was not misplaced as soul magic is very rare but can be used to enslave, I even know how to do so, but I have used up my ability as this soul magic is a one time thing." "Now you are just making me feel like an bastard." Wait, she can only do this once? I suspected that this is a one way thing but I am the kind of person who does not believe in the impossible especially so when taking into account me being on another world if not universe. Anyway, this only confirms her pure feelings towards me. "You are a bastard, my bastard. As my mother said to me, first give yourself to a man, then tame the man and make the man yours." "Somehow I feel like you used that soul enslaving magic on me" Aelynthi ignores me and continues: "At first I wanted to follow my mother''s advice and give myself to you just because it is what I was taught to do when I found a man I love, but then I felt your fear, loneliness and distrust. At that moment I understood how to help you, so I followed my mother''s advice for a different reason."If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. "Now you will not be alone, I will always be with you." I can no longer bottle up my emotions. My heart pangs, my breath shallow, my eyes grow unfocused and my muscles go weak. I fall onto Aelynthi. Aelynthi does not notice and continues to hug me as I cry and lose control of myself. My mind is in chaos as all the stress since waking up in that cave, killing humans, worrying about my future, safety and my home comes up to the surface to escape my body... *Undetermined amount of minutes pass.* I sober up and Aelynthi is still hugging me, is the ground not hard? I am still on you silly girl. I get up and pick up my princess with me or better said she just hangs onto me. "Silly girl, how is your back? Why did you not move me?" All I get is the emotion of contentment as a response, via the soul bond and mana interaction, I can not help but smile. "Are you trying to brainwash me with happiness? I can not take this much happiness, you sending it to me via soul bond, mana interaction and just knowing that you are mine is going to overwhelm me soon." Aelynthi giggles: "Good." "I am fine, no need to overwhelm me with happiness, my stress levels will be fine for the next few months if not years." I hug her back and caress her back. No change. "Are you following your mother''s script? Is there a guideline on how to tame a man?" Aelynthi laughs again, god I love her laughter, and says playfully: "Yes, she used the same method on my father, so I know it works." "There is no escape for me?" "Only through death." "Didn''t you say you will follow me to death? So there is no escape." Aelynthi smiles up at me but does seem to plan to get off me anytime soon. I pack up my AMR with difficulty and with a little coercion of Aelynthi I put on my backpack while the front position is taken up by my container of happiness. "Hey, that mana emotion thing, after a few minutes of pummeling me, you read me like an open book didn''t you?" "Yes I did, I am happy you made me angry enough for me to hit you that long." "I am happy that I made you angry too." I get bitten on the ear. Movement is progress I suppose. After another few hours of walking, and not getting anywhere, it starts getting dark. "It is almost nightfall, let''s set up camp" My passenger does not move. I sigh, next I go about setting up the security system then we shape the shelter and I go to sleep on my back with my princess still on me but she unwraps her legs for comfort. I promptly fall asleep. In the middle of the night the alarm goes off. 23 In the middle of the night my alarm goes off and it electrocutes me to a fully awakened state. I look down at the screen on my forearm and I am shocked to see an insanely intense mana signature which looks to have about 300x density, a rank 2 monster. I jump up, wake up Aelynthi and I start the prepping two of my grenades. Checking my screen again I see the monster is moving towards us. The distance is a little over 100 meters, as it is a bad idea to let him enter cqc range and as my grenades would not be ready by time he gets here I have no choice but to run towards one of my prebuilt pillars for my AMR. "Please listen and run away for now, so I can focus on combat" Aelynthi nods with a tense face filled with worry. I run out of the shelter with the AMR in hand and the monster reacts to the sound of our movement immediately by running towards me. Fuck! By the time I have my AMR on the pillar and take aim between its 2 red eyes, it is already 10 meters from me. Left with choice I do not hesitate to fire. The bullet shatters as does the skull of the animal. The dead body continues on thanks to its momentum until he hits the pillar. All that is left of its head is a bloody mix of bone, brain, skin, fur and muscle. Now I take a better look at it and see that it is an overgrown bear. Aelynthi, did not even have enough time to run away. I look at her and see that she is crying. I feel guilt, sadness and shame from her. Guilt? I understand the problem after a moment of thinking... the giant bear was attracted to the smell of blood of the beastkin bandits and it caught our scent as we did not leave the area due to Aelynthi hanging on my neck. I drop my AMR. I run over to her and hug her. She starts muttering something, I decide to silence her with a kiss even if I do not elvish I do not need to know what she is saying. She struggles at first then goes weak in my arms. I break the kiss and spend the next 5 minutes calming her down. "It is not your fault, I am the idiot that did not think about our safety." She does not accept my excuse, but what else can I say? I can not blame her as my actions also caused this mistake. "Comon, lets pack up and set out." She nodes weakly. Within 10 minutes we are leaving the camp, with the addition of a few kg of bear meat. Aelynthi is still depressed and won''t talk to me. "Do you know what else poses a danger in our situation?" I step right next to her. "Acting depressed and not paying attention to our surroundings." She yelps as I pick her up in an over shoulder fireman carry. We walk like this for a few minutes before I feel a pinch on my buttocks. How? I think she shaped a hole in my clothes via mana. I need to find a way to patch this weakness of items with... My contemplation is interrupted by another pinch. I decide to reciprocate. *Smack* "No pinching!" I get another pinch as a response. *Smack* *Smack* *Smack* "No pinching!" She stopped. I pat her buttocks on the same place as I smacked her and say "Good Girl.". After a minute I feel something painful on my side, she bit me! *Smack* "No biting!" As I take another step I feel something burn me, she casted a spell! *Smack* "No burning or spell casting!" After another step I feel a different kind of burn, ice. *Smack* "No freezing." I did not smack her for casting a spell again as this clever girl first made the ice and kept it in her hand before burning me. Well, at least she is no longer depressed. She seems to be enjoying being carried by me. I switch her over to a princess carry and ask "You seem to be enjoying this." Her reaction is bashful at my statement. "Good, I was worried your bashful cuteness would disappear if we go this far into our relationship." This only increases her redness and she tries to hide her head in my chest. I get an idea and start gathering carbon in my right hand under her legs. "My mother pinches my father all the time as well." She perks up at the mention of my parents. I can see her interest but she still continues to be mute. I smile and receive a pinch in response. "My mother is a housewife." As I do not say more I receive another pinch in response. "My father is a scientist." Now that the bait has been set, no matter how much she pinches me, I do not open my mouth and wait for her patience to run out, as I know the word scientist would catch her interest. After 5 minutes pouting she relents.Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. "What is a scientist?" "A person whose occupation is science." "What is science?" As I do not answer immediately so I am pinched yet again. "I am gathering words." She looks at me strangely, hey at least I understand science and can define what is science. "Science is the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the surrounding world through observation and experimentation." She pauses for a few minute. "Study of the world?" If you had to sum it up in 4 words, that be a good choice. "Yes." "Knowledgeable?" "Very." "Powerful mage?" "My home has no magic or mana." Aelynthi stares wide eyed, this is not simple to comprehend when something from her perspective seems to be the pillar of your civilization is not needed at all. Ah, I had this conversation with Kate. "How do you live?" "The peoples average quality of life in the country I live in is on par with royalty here." She is stunned, this is beyond her ability to understand, the same can be said for many people on this planet. This is like living in the 1800s and predicting the 21st centuries technology. "Of course we do not have servants, but the functionality and quality of everything in almost all aspects of life is better than being royalty here, if the information that Kathorrunth gave me is to believed." As Aelynthi is not strong enough to read image based intent, I can only say: "Maybe someday I will show you." Aelynthi nods happily and leans her head against me and surprisingly falls asleep. This princess acts like a princess... As the sun is rising I nudge Aelynthi awake as we need to get some distance from the bear corpse. I set her down on her feet, and give her a round cut diamond about half a palm size. This sobers her mind from sleep as she takes the diamond into her hand whilst it is sparkling in the rising sun and stares wide eyed at it. Looks like a diamond is rare here after all. I teasingly say: "Usually a woman kisses a man when he gives her a diamond." I wanted to use the diamond as an example of knowledge gained thanks to science but nevermind, this works too. I do get a kiss but not before a kick to the leg. "Is it an elven custom to beat up the one you love or just your peculiarity?" "When we need to discipline men we do so." That goes both ways. "I am not convinced by your excuse, as I do not see the reason you beat me up all the time. I believe it is just your peculiarity." "Do you enjoy bullying me?" "As much as you enjoy beating me up." "That is a yes then, I will tell your mother you bully me." I stop and think for a moment. "You win princess, I shall not bully you anymore and worship the ground you walk on." Aelynthi smiles: "Interesting phrase, does that mean you will worship me?" I say playfully: "No, just the ground as you are too spoiled." Aelynthi is confused: "Spoiled?" "Overindulged, narcissistic self-centered" This grants me the expected reaction, I am knocked down onto the floor with Aelynthi on top disciplining me. She pauses her playful beating. "You think I am self-centered?" Oh great... I reverse the position with me on top. "No you are not, I am more self-centered than you." and proceed to kiss her. Can everything be solved with a kiss? By her reaction, yes it can. I break the kiss, she is lost in her own world, I smirk at her "Am I such a good kisser?" She does not appreciate me teasing her and I am bitten yet again. I have to stop bullying her, my mother would not be happy with me. I help her up and we continue walking hand in hand. 24 We reach our destination, the Algough mountains, though it has taken double the time that was needed. Now I need to scout out a good area for building my safehouse. On another note, I have been abstaining from bullying Aelynthi, but I feel like a drug addict in withdrawal. Otherwise everything else is good, no surprises or accidents since the bear incident. It takes us another 4 days to find a cliff face with a sufficiently large open area in front of it for me to set up a defensive perimeter. I setup the security camera perimeter in a half circle with a 30m radius. The plant life is somewhat dense around here, it will be the first to go as I start the construction of our new home. I start clearing out the area, stacking up the plants and trees for carbon conversion, next I expand the security perimeter to a half circle with 50m radius and start digging into the cliff face at a 5 meter height from ground level. The digging itself will probably take me weeks due to the overall size of my ambitious design. An entire week passes by, I have dug out the corridor but I am already getting sick of lugging stone. I guess I can reinforce the corridor first before I continue on to digging the rooms. The corridor is 30 meters long which I think is sufficiently short for our convenience but long enough to make it into a death trap for those who dare enter. I use 2 days to solve the problem of my new demand for CNTW by making an artifact to spin CNT threads and an artifact to weave large single piece CNTW sheets by feeding it CNT threads. It takes me another 3 weeks to dig out everything up to my desired specifications; luckily I can use the local flora as a carbon source to make the interior decorations and structural reinforcements otherwise I would have to use another material as gathering carbon from air would take too long. I put diamond pillars in the corners and every 3 meters along the walls, for the roof support structure I make a square with a criss cross using 10cm diameter CNTW cylinders and on top of it are multiple sheets of CNTW. I spend another 4 days building the inner structure and covering everything with CNTW, so now I am no longer forced to look at stone walls and diamond pillars. Behind the CNTW covering I run a few ventilation shafts and water pipes for the future water system. I let Aelynthi play with the room colors via the enchanted walls as I concentrate on making the water system and bathroom. Within 3 days we have a working bathroom and hot water. Even though Aelynthi is very happy with the large bathtub I have built, I am told she has something similar back at the royal castle, she wishes for me to dedicate less time towards work and spend more time with her. Spending a day on making a perfectly soft bed, that reminds me of my own home, completely diverts the princesses attention from me and towards enjoying the first soft bed in what has most likely been months for her. Getting back to work I often times find myself happy, the reason being an elf that is radiating contentment from our bed. It makes me wonder was she really happy after our love confession, as her current contentment due to the unnaturally soft bed is similar to what I experienced back then. Well... she is a simple creature... furthermore she is a woman, maybe that has something to do with it or... "Darling thank you for the bed, I love you." Or, I am the simple creature in this relationship that can not figure out how this soul bond works and how it affects a woman''s intuition. She hugs my arm and looks up into my eyes. "You''re welcome, enjoy it to your heart''s content." "Come enjoy it with me!" Um¡­ Although that sounds tempting I am sure she does not mean sex nor do I have the time laze around just yet. "I am not done building our home, so I can not join you in doing nothing, yet." Aelynthi is not surprised by my answer, she does not say anything about my refusal as she walks off back to the bed. I can finally concentrate fully on making a rank 3 weapon. The weapon design will be based on my AMR, upscaled 5 times and a shorter barrel length of 2 meters. Within the day I have a stationary 100mm turret. The first test fire was successful and a few calibration shots later I have a functional rank 3 weapon. The part that was previously responsible for smoothing out the combustion expansion now has a 180 degree twist that will give the 100mm shells a nice spin. The shells are based on the 20mm bullets, the only change is the proportion of the cylinder part to the cone tip. The 100mm shell is a 20cm cylinder followed by a 15cm cone, it also has 2cm of fins on the bottom of the cylinder that will allow the combustion chamber smootherer to spin stabilize the shell. I make a note to myself to add this spin stabilization to my AMR and 20 mm bullets to improve long range accuracy. I also develop, after a few hundred failures, a 100 mm HE (high explosive) shell which is filled with pressurized oxygen and hydrogen, in other words an upscaled copy of my grenades designed to exit a 100mm barrel at supersonic speeds. As crazy as that sounds I performed all experiments behind two meters of rock, though it is less than 2 meters of rock now¡­ The only downside so far has been that Aelynthi no longer comes to watch me work, or is it an upside. Back on the topic of 100 mm shells. For now I do not touch the topic of APFSDS shells as that is much more complicated as I will need many more experiments to find what works and what is optimal. Furthermore diamond is not suited for APFSDS and developing a HEAT shell is beyond my current ability as it would need insane amount of experiments to compensate my limited knowledge on topic and a different type of explosives than I have available.The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. With the addition of the 100 mm turret I can sleep more soundly but I am still weak to an attack that overwhelms me with quantity as I do not have any ability to kill hundreds of targets in an acceptable manner. Tomorrow I will work on another turret, this turret will be 4 AMRs mounted together for a total of 240 rpm and this turret will probably be my main combat turret for the foreseeable future, thanks to its lethality and efficiency per kill. Most of the next day I spend on mana shaping multiple AMRs and very little time is spent on mounting them together to form a 20mm quad turret. I can now truly sleep comfortably and soundly at night knowing that I have a means of protecting myself and Aelynthi. The projects I have planned for the future include an inbuilt detection system for the base, a large omnidirectional camera, a long distance directional camera (telescope) and finally a radar system. The omni camera will most likely out range all of my currently setup small cameras, it is quite large with its size of 2/5 of a 1m diameter sphere. I do not need a full sphere as I will place it on top of the entrance to the bunker, it only has to see what is infront and over it and not under or behind it. Its resolution is 6.4 gigapixels, I have calculated it to be accurate enough to spot a person a kilometer away and make out the details of a person''s face from 200 meters. The directional camera is more difficult to develop as I can not bend the view pathway of a mana sensor like a lens bends light in a telescope. To solve this problem I make a giant plate with a radius of 1 meter and 16 megapixel resolution. I mount the plate on the top of mountain as otherwise it would not be used to its full potential, as at ground level the forest and landscape would hinder it. I program a circular search pattern for the default working mode of the directional camera. Its main use will be manual remote viewing of objects of interest and maybe occasionally spotting something through the forest canopy. When I get thinking of a radar system I realise that I do not need to use radio waves, how could I forget, I can use LIDAR instead. I do not need the extreme distance observation granted by using radar or the inherent lower accuracy of radar, I just need to map a few kilometers and with enchanting I can solve the engineering problems of constructing such a device. I immediately re-enchant my omni and directional camera to include LIDAR. The only problem is how do I visually represent this data, as each pixel gives me not the intensity of light but the distance from the object it reflected off. I can not use a 2D screen to effectively represent this data without making a computationally intense program to make the 2D image comprehensible and right not I do not have much to go on with computational power. The solution I find is to use a metric cube of diamond (1m x 1m x 1m). I could use glass but I would need to extract silicon from dirt and rock and the idea of a 3 tonne diamond sounded nicer. The most important part is that I can color each cubic pixel within the diamond to get a perfect 3D image of the surroundings. Additionally I make a 100x100x10cm screen to use for the directional camera. After setting the omni camera as the center, coordinates (0,0,0), I assign each pixel on the camera its own coordinates. Now I know the vector of each pixel and the distance to the object, translating this into pixels on the hologram is just a matter of multiplication. I test out the program using the directional camera by looking at a tree and I am seeing the tree but most of it is on the background layer so that means I am not getting all of the distance data... The tree leaves are absorbing the infrared light my LIDAR emits... A few hours later I have a multispectral LIDAR and I am looking at a beautiful tree that is 99% accurate 1/2 scale model of a tree outside my base. The enjoyment of looking at a tree inside of a diamond is cut short when the image disappears... the camera ran out of mana. I resist the urge to bang my head on a 3 tonne diamond and start optimizing my LIDAR enchantments. I connect all of the cameras up to a control core that will be responsible for identifying intruders. All that is left to do is connect the turrets to the control core and add an automatic target tracking ability to the turrets, which is easily solved as I know the coordinates of the turrets. The core just needs to calculate the vertical and horizontal angle of the firing vector and relay this information to the turrets, for distances longer than 100m bullet drop will be taken into account. With a functioning targeting system I can increase the number of turrets as they no longer require manual control. When I get a good turret count, of lets say 10 turrets, it will be safe to say that an army will not be able to get anywhere near my door. After finishing setting up the tracking system I realised a weakness, fog, smoke and dust clouds, as they reflect and scatter light & IR light. This can be solved with a radar system, which I previously thought was unnecessary. Another oversight would be how to designate new friendly targets. So far me and Aelynthi are seen as friendlies by the control core so there should not be any accidents, especially so considering the turrets are in standby mode by default to further minimize the danger of friendly fire, but for it to see us as friendlies requires manual registration of a small core that tags us as friendlies and constantly relays our position to the base control core. I leave these problems for later and decide to increase the turret count before worrying about the visibility loss caused by fog, smoke, dust clouds and the friend or foe system. After another week I have 12 turrets. 3 on each side of my door, a 100mm cannon between two quads. Two quads on the cliff face half way up to the mountain. Finally 4 quads on top of the mountain surrounding the directional camera. To make the whole system more robust I setup a small omni camera and a directional camera on each turret, in the case of main camera loss they will switch to their own but I will keep the control core centralized which I can remotely access through a mobile core on my person. Next, I plan to armor each of the turrets and make them all retractable before returning to the topic of radar. 25 Even though I have automated the process of extracting carbon, I am still unable to enchant something to consistently make large detailed objects. In other words I can automate the production of 1cm diamond shot but not 20mm bullets as they have a shape that is too large and complex even if made without the fins. I am just happy that I was able to automate the production of carbon nanotubes of infinite length which in turn gave me automated CNTW production. So here I am making countless amounts of 20mm bullets day by day and slowly going insane from the repetitiveness of it all. I still spend little time with Aelynthi, as my work requires concentration, she seems to understand but obviously is not happy about it. After spending the previous 6 weeks on work I decide to dedicate a whole day to Aelynthi. "What do you want to do today?" Aelynthi looks at me surprised and asks: "What do you mean? Have you finished the construction?" "No, but I need a break and I have not been fair to you." "Lets go train!" Damn it. What part about the word break do you not understand? She just wants to beat me up again, even though I somewhat deserve it but what I built is essential for our safety. I need to divert her attention. "How about I teach you how to use guns." "Guns?" "My artifacts that go boom." Aelynthi happily nods: "Alright." She is more enthusiastic than I expected. I go through general rules of gun safety I remember and can extrapolate. Keep your gun pointed at a safe direction at all times. Finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot. Safety on all times outside of combat. As my pistols do not have a magazine nor do they have an unload option. There is little else I can teach her, but I have her repeat gun handling movements until she is accustomed to them. She has understood that a gun is dangerous and has said it is similar to a crossbow. I did not deny it as I have already experienced an enchanted bolt to the shoulder. I setup targets 10, 20, 50 meters away for her and we start our practice. We continue practicing for hours. She seems to be enjoying herself, I know it is not because she is destroying targets at 100 meters but I can not resist joking. "For a kind and peace loving elf you sure do enjoy killing things." "It has nothing to do with you spending more than a hour of time with me?" "Hey, I am sorry, I built all of this for our safety." Aelynthi weakly nods. "Not even the mages of the elven association will take you away from me." Maybe in a few months not even a dragon will dare to fly over my territory. Aelynthi smiles and hugs me. "When is your brother going to be crowned? How old is he now?" "4 years, 96 years" Alright, so not anytime soon, at least in my perspective. "To lessen your boredom while we wait we can try to contact your relatives and friends. Maybe visit them or something along those lines." Aelynthi seems to be in deep thought. "I have a friend I wish to visit in 11 weeks, it is an important day for her."If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. "Alright sounds like a plan, hopefully I finish my next project in time so that our journey will be safer. How far is the place you want to go to?" "4 weeks travel." "That is far." Aelynthi understands my implication. "Hey, we will decide in 7 weeks okay?" I guess I have about 9 weeks to design, test and build a car. The main problem is that all of the motor designs I came up with so far directly use mana and are all too low power for a vehicle. Replicating the modern piston engine and transmission system is way beyond my abilities. The only option left is to make an electric motor, but to do so I would need iron, an insulating material and most importantly electricity. Right now I do not have that much time to spend on experimenting on mana, electricity and batteries. I leave the matter of the motor and decide to use my time working on the wheels and suspension system. In the worst case we can find some horses to bull the car... wagon. The wheel diameter will be 1 meter, as this vehicle will never see any roads and the best it will see will be well traveled ground from wagons. I start working on an air based suspension system using the same combination of materials I used for the pumps on my pistols, within the day I have a working prototype. I leave the matter of the car as even if we leave I would very much prefer the turrets to be hidden, the same goes for the cameras. So, I dedicate a week to solving this issue. Now all 12 turrets can hide and pop up in the matter of seconds thanks to a good number of air pistons. With 8 weeks left to finish building the car, I dedicate time to creating the wheels and suspension system, as a result I have 6 giant wheels waiting to be mounted onto a chassis. I finish off this week designing and assembling an air piston based steering system. I can not build the chassis as I have yet to decide on a motor to power my future creation. Presently, with 7 weeks left, I am trying to maximise the potential of my car by using the strongest per volume motor I have come up with so far, even though it is extremely weak given its size and weight. I guess I will have to stock up on mana as I can not even predict the milage I will be getting, though I am pretty sure it will have enough horsepower to push itself. The idea behind the motor is to maximize surface contact between two parts and use mana to rotate them in opposite directions. The motor design is a tube with a slightly smaller tube inside but inside that tube is another tube that is connected to the outer shell, so we have layers and layers of tubes that will push each other in different directions, thus creating torque. Two weeks flash by as I work on making these damn motors. I had to clear more of the forest for raw carbon so now we have a nice 100m radius clearing. I start working on the chassis and draw up the specifications, the car will be 2 meters wide and 3.4 meters long. The wheels will stick out in front and behind of the chassis by about 20 cm which will also be the same distance between the wheels. The design of the chassis will be essentially a giant rectangle with rounded edges. There will be no side doors as the only way into the car will be through the back. The armor will be all around 3 cm CNTW and the windows will be made of 5cm of layered graphene enchanted with one way transparency. Another week is used up to finish the chassis and armor. 4 weeks to the deadline I set for myself, but Aelynthi thinks we have 2 weeks left as she has yet to understand what method of travel we shall take. I spend another week setting up everything inside the vehicle. The vehicle control core will be responsible for everything, drive modes, brakes which will be just an inversion of the mana torque inside the engines, the steering system air pistons and an experimental feature which is directional course plotting for lazy driving or remote control. Everything checks out, so I start installing secondary systems such as headlights, climate control, inner walls and the seats with seatbelts. The mana storage of the car involves using the whole car, with most of the mana concentrated in the motors as they represent over 50% of the mass of the car. I spend another week installing an additional tonne of diamond mana containers as one of my old experiments showed a positive correlation between material hardness and mana storage. The final result is a light armored vehicle with 6 wheel drive and steering, with low acceleration but is excellent on maintaining its speed and is horrible at braking. Time to show off my creation to Aelynthi as she is probably starting to get worried about leaving too late. I get into what I suspect is a 5 tonne vehicle and drive it out of the hanger and honk the horn. After a few minutes Aelynthi comes outside from most likely preparing dinner and is surprised to see a giant rectangle with wheels. She can comprehend that it is for travel and guess that I have an unknown method of propulsion. "What is this? Did you build this so we can visit my friend?" "This is a car. Yes but not only, we needed a safe method of travel." Aelynthi happily hugs me and says "Thank you! Come inside, dinner is ready." 26 Currently I am adding the most important part of the car, a quad turret. After building the turret I quickly connect the turret to the car control core and connect the newly installed cameras with three on each corner of the car plus the turret omni camera. A little bit of redundancy is always good. Next, I install a remote control option for the turret from the driver side seat and automatic target tracking. I add the same light armor to the turret and load up 2000 rounds into the turret. Finally, I load the rectangle car with other essentials such as my mobile security system, 2 AMRs, 5 pistols, 10 grenades and 100 kg of carbon. It is very handy having pure carbon laying around, if I am ever in need of something I just take some and fix almost any problem... My brain returns to something I have delayed for some time, Aelynthis armor. I take measurements from an embarrassed elf and go about making an identical set to my own. Before building our home I lived in my armor around the clock as there was no need to change, because with magic problems of sweat and dirt disappear or for that matter any hygiene problems. Right now I am explaining the combat overlay inbuilt within the goggles to Aelynthi. "These goggles have 2 main modes: black and white combat image mode which is excellent during night time as it functions as night vision and it has no problems working during daytime, the other option is combat overlay mode which shows information in the same way as the first mode but without replacing your view of the surroundings with a black and white image." "Green represents heat, some surfaces may get a green tinge but mostly you will see other people and animals with a light green color." "Red represents an unknown or absent mana level, high ranking mages will have such a color. A red tinge represents lower than ambient mana levels which may occur due to an artifact concealing its mana level or the person themselves concealing their mana level, so these targets are to be counted as dangerous." "Blue represents mana levels that are higher than ambient, from low mana light blue tinge to high mana solid blue color. Another important function of blue is it allows you to see spells in the making, see where and when an enemy mage is casting a spell and see the power of said spell." I turn on the combat overley for her and we go outside. She looks around everywhere, at my face, at the ground, at her hand and at the rabbit I caught for this explanation. "Incredible, is this how you are able to see people in the distance? They are just a bright color for you."If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. "Yes, I used this to follow you back then." Aelynthi nods as she continues looking at her hands and proceeds to cast spells. I leave her be and go check on the mana charging progress of the car. All seems good, tomorrow we will set out. Just over 3 weeks of time left, we should make it with days of spare time. Aelynthi is only happy about this fact. I return to find that my dinner has been set free... The next morning we set out. the truck reaches a good speed after a minute or so and it barely loses any speed on turns. The turn angle is low but 4 wheel steering makes it somewhat bearable. It is very stable with a two meter width, a relatively low silhouette and a low center of mass thanks to the motors and mana battery. I feel excitement from Aelynthi, she seems to be enjoying the ride. "Not scared?" "Why would I be scared? I have ridden in carriages just as fast and horses that are faster but this is much more comfortable and you can see everything outside." Just as fast? What horse can sustain speeds of 40-60 km/h?.. Aah yes, magical horses, of course. Two months of work and it gets compared to horses. "Do you want to drive?" "Can I?" "Of course." I start teaching her about the controls and explain some quirks of this particular vehicle. Now I am sitting in the passenger position and using the directional camera on the turret to quell my boredom. I can also see that my prototype horizontal and vertical stabilization system is working even if it is far from perfection; when looking on a target I do not have to manually keep the camera pointed on target. As the camera is physically connected to the car and thus viewing screen, I can set the update cycle to a comfortable 200Hz. I also have a 20x20x20 cm diamond cube showing the surrounding area using the cameras LIDAR even if the frequency is lower as LIDAR requires a good amount of energy, I set it to 10Hz. Compared to the energy consumption of the engines it is not worth mentioning but I want to save mana where possible as I still have no idea about the mileage of this thing, though it does seem positive so far. I hope we get most if not all the way there by the time the mana runs out as recharging this thing will take forever. After a few hours of Aelynthi driving I switch back to the driver''s seat. As the sun sets we find a clearing to park, I go about setting up the mobile security system and connect it to the car''s security system. It does not really improve the visual radius but it does add new observation angels, so now we have an excellent 3D map with a radius of over 100 meters. It does go on towards +200 meters but the quality drops dramatically. We go to sleep in the truck on the cargo bed behind the two front seats. 27 The next morning, all is good as we set out onto the road again. Aelynthi is behind the wheel when the security system spots something on the turret omni camera. I point the directional camera at the point and see two elves and show this to Aelynthi. Her response is to turn the vehicle away from them. "Scouts." "From who?" "I do not know." Alright, best not to give them information on her whereabouts. Now we know they are searching for her in the vicinity of our home. We continue as if nothing happened. "Are you going to tell me about your friend?" "No, it is a surprise." "Is it a good surprise, or bad one where I get beaten up?" Aelynthi laughs: "It is a surprise." She is still getting pay back for the whole leave me be fiasco. As we continue our journey I experiment with residual stress in materials, in other words trying to make Prince Rupert''s Drop spherical without a tail, of course I am using diamond instead of glass but it is the same concept, theoretically it has more extreme properties if done right. I fail completely, I will need to make a few PRDs without the use of mana shaping and study them as making a PRD directly with mana shaping is beyond my knowledge. Aelynthi has long gotten used to my eccentricities, it seems the concept of an eccentric genius often appears within mage circles, but I do not count myself as a genius. I regret not paying more attention in school, maybe I would have less problems to solve now. With nothing else to do I spend some time on improving my AMR. I double the magazine size and fire rate. Additonally I convert the AMR to accept 20mm APFS bullets which I have been delaying for some time. All of my quad turrets are missing this upgrade but their current performance is more than enough to plow through an army so I am not in a hurry. Finally I add a muzzle brake and pistons to the stock to reduce recoil. Thinking that if the weapon has more manageable recoil then I can comfortably shoot a faster bullet, I add a control for combustion size with a setting for more power than usual. After testing it out I realise I have masochistic tendencies¡­ I promise to myself to never again fire this weapon without using the bipod. Although hese upgrades increased the guns weight from 5kg to 7 kg, it is a major weight increase, but considering that it is still extremely light for what this gun is capable of, the weight does not worry me. Finding that we still have 4 days to go I turn my attention to my armour as I did not enjoy receiving a crossbow bolt to the shoulder. I rework the armour strengthening enchantment from being passively always on to an active detection and response system. Theoretically this should double its defensive capabilities. I also add an air filter function to the balaclava with chemical and biological filtering. Due to our leisurely pace it takes 8 days, since we left, before Aelynthi informs me that we are here. I keep driving in the direction she points at, so far nothing, at this moment the security system informs me that it has spotted 1 target, no 4... 13... 37... 79... Error. This error should only appear in the situation that there are more than 128 unknown signatures. I tense up as I realize that we are surrounded, all of the targets are extremely small but each one is at least rank 1 in mana levels. I make a note to increase the upper count limit, I will have to expand the control core. I look towards Aelynthi, I see her smile at me, next she happily jumps up from her seat and runs out of the car. She then proceeds to yell something. All of the signatures start moving, mostly towards us. I understand that they are not hostile but my brain is already thinking about making a high rpm pistol turret as one 240 rpm quad does not make me feel safe in this situation. Aelynthi is surrounded by tiny people with wings, fairies. This is my first contact with fairies, how do their brains work? I bury the curiosity budding within me to dissect them. They are keeping their distance from me but I already see some of them inspecting my car with interest. I spot a few them trying to paint the car, they fail miserable as the surface is the perfection of non stick and self restoration. I start thinking about the cars enchantments. I have prepared for worst case scenario like this as I have experienced how easy it was for me to erase another mages enchantment. I have back ups and back ups for back ups for a situation like this, multiple alarms for when one part loses its appropriate enchantment but I can not help but want to run around swatting fairies and yell ''get away from my car''. Now I see them mana shaping different parts of the car, the car restores itself over time but if they mana shape over an enchantment I will have to restore that manually. I look towards Aelynthi with an expression of an abused animal, she ignores me. I am not sensitive enough to understand the fairies via telepathy as the intent carried by their mana is too weak. I try sending my intent towards multiple fairies to stay away, the result is that they understand me... but more fairies swarm the car. I start thinking what if they reach the pressurized air, liquid H2 and liquid O2 containers inside of the car. I run over to Aelynthi. "Can you stop them, that car is our means of protection." Aelynthi hesitates as she enjoys my worry, I guess she feels safe here. "They are just having fun, they are interested in anything from the outside world." Outside world? They do not go outside? "Look, my car is not a toy, it was made for war." As Aelynthi is about to respond, we hear a bang. We run over to the swarm of fairies. A wheel has been popped. There is a fairy on the ground, the fairy is not moving. The fairies swarm the fairy and I lose sight of the fairy. I send a glare at Aelynthi, I feel guilt coming from her. A slightly larger female fairy flies over to us from the distance and all of the other fairies give way for her. I spot the downed fairy again when the larger fairy flies over to the downed fairy, she casts a spell on the fairy and then says something to the crowd, 4 fairies go over pick up the downed fairy and take him away. The larger fairy turns toward me with anger on her face. Before anything else, Aelynthi says something to the fairy.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work! ''¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤'' The fairy responds: ''¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤'' I feel relief from Aelynthi. The fariry points at me and continues speaking: ''¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤'' I feel surprise and then slight anger from Aelynthi. Aelynthi responds to the fairy: ''¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤'' The fairy continues speaking: ''¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤'' I feel more anger from Aelynthi. Aelynthi interrupts whatever the fairy was saying, goes over to me and holds my hand as she proceeds to glare at the fairy as she continues to speak: "¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤" Aelynthi points at the fairies, the car and me then back at the fairies then at the larger fairy. This goes on for about a minute, the larger fairy says a few words and leaves. I feel slight irritation from Aelynthi. I send a questioning look at Aelynthi. "The fairy is alive, but unconscious. The elder wanted to put the blame on you for hurting the fairy. I explained the situation but she would not listen and started spouting nonsense about humans using you as an example. I informed her of your status and called her out on the nonsense she has spoken, she said the high elders will decide your punishment." I feel a headache coming on, great now I have to deal with politics? Good thing I brought 100 kg of carbon, I can make a few pistol turrets with that. I do not plan on using them, but better safe than sorry. My grenades should be highly effective against the fairies, also I will need to... My thoughts are interrupted by Aelynthi. "I am Sorry." For? The fairy? "I am not the one that got hurt." I feel guilt and shame from Aelynthi. Aelynthi nods then shakes her head and says: "I know, sorry for screwing up again." I sigh and proceed to hug her and kiss her on her head. "I am going to check up on the car, what about you?" "I will go and find my friend before this grows out of proportion." I nod and start inspecting the car. It takes me 2 hours to comb through every possible aspect of the car but I still do not feel satisfied because I could have missed a hole or enchantment somewhere. So far what I had to fix includes: one headlight, 2 small cameras, 3 wheels, a suspension piston and the steering on 2 wheels. Luckily the inside was left untouched, they did not have enough time to shape a whole through which they could enter I guess. The first thing I do after feeling somewhat satisfied that the car is not compromised is add another firing mode to the aiming system of the AMR turret for small targets, so each barrel has its own aiming vector as in the original aiming mode there was a 10 cm radius spread, which is no problem for human targets and larger but when the target is only 10 centimeters high... I look at my grenades, they are the only thing that can save me if fairies decide to attack me en masse. Now I set about making pistol turrets, good thing I have 5 spare pistols in the car. It takes me only 1 hour to setup a pistol turret, even though it has hundreds of rounds it only has 48 air tanks, so 48 shots, which it will empty in 6 seconds. The annoying part is that with these small volumes of air if I make an air tank further away it will be less efficient as the longer hose will make the pressure drop and a longer reaction time will make the RPM drop even if just by a bit. I think of using one large air tank to refill the turret air tanks then I remember the car already has an air tank for the air suspension and steering. I make my decision to connect the turret air tanks to the car air tank. Firstly, I need to upgrade the car air tank a bit by increasing its wall thickness. Furthermore add an intermediate tank between the main tank and the vehicle steering & suspension that will replace the previous function of the main air tank. I add another 3 pumps to the main air tank and start working on another turret. I scrap the pumps from the already built pistol turret as we do not need them anymore and redundancy would not be efficient in this case. It takes me another 2 hours to finish the second pistol turret and set it up. It has been 5 hours since I parted with Aelynthi, the sun is setting. I concentrate on my bond with Aelynthi, she is fine judging by the happiness I feel from her. I take a break and start planning out my next course of actions. I am low on pistol ammo, by my estimations the turrets will run out within a minute of firing. Of course within that minute it will fire over half a thousand rounds but the truth of the matter is that the air tank will only be enough for less than half of that. From this my current priority is adding another air tank and upgrading the control core. I spend 10 minutes updating the control core for a large amount of targets. As I am about to build another air tank, I see a group of larger than average fairies flying over to me. If the previous ¡®large¡¯ fairy was 20cm compared to an average fairy of 10cm then these are about 30cm. I take a quick look at my camera to see their mana levels. The 30cm fairies are rank 3 it seems, but that is not a matter to be afraid of as even if their mana levels are so high they probably have less total mana than a peak rank 1 human mage. Though, it will be a different story if their spell efficiency is many times better than what I have seen so far, however that is very unlikely but I should not assume anything. I can''t help myself from thinking about the speed at which a bullet leaves my AMR, I have no idea but I suspect it is over mach 2 and what will happen if said bullet hits the fairies that are coming towards me with faces covered in anger and displeasure. Right now in front of me are two rank 3 fairies and a bunch of rank 2 fairies, my guns are on standby and ready to follow a simple command of firing hundreds of bullets on non registered signatures. One of the leading rank 3 fairies says something. Judging by the way he looks he should be hundreds of years old. I suspect he thinks I should understand his words but obviously I do not. I answer by sending my intent via mana as always, hopefully I can receive his reply. "I am Anton Ippolitov how can I help you?" ''¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤'' I do not answer his gibberish and look at him, I am pretty sure he received my intent by his reaction. "Do not play games human, there is no need to use telepathy." Oh great, what excuse should I use to explain away me not knowing the human tongue. "Alright." Is what I sent to him, next I smile and proceed to talk in English, I think Aelynthi would enjoy my joke. ''Hello again, I am Anton Ippolitov. You have yet to introduce yourself. You wanted to speak publicly well here I am speaking. As you did not ask why I used telepathy, you presumed I was doing so on purpose. I bet your arrogance will blind you from seeing the obvious, I am speaking an unknown language to you and I did not understand your language in the previous conversation.'' His anger intensifies, it looks like he is on the border of outright attacking me. I hear a laughter in the distance, I recognise one of the sources, it is Aelynthi but not the other. As the fairy is about to explode with anger, all of the fairies bow in the direction of the 2 newcomers. 28 I spot a happy Aelynthi skipping over to me and a 40cm fairy flying behind her. The fairy has violet hair down to her back, she is wearing a white one piece dress down to her calves, the dress covers her arms and is wide sleeved towards her wrists. When she flies over closer I notice her wings have a violet tinge with silver sparkles and then I focus on her mesmerizing silver eyes, as I am staring at her eyes I am woken up by a painful pinch on my arm. I look down to see a displeased Aelynthi, the fairy laughs at this. I decide to get revenge for the pinch. I grab hold of Aelynthi and kiss her on the lips for a good 10 seconds. This seems to surprise Aelynthi and not only her, but all the onlookers are surprised at this turn of events. When I let go, Aelynthi is red and I feel incredible shyness and some worry from her, of course she does not push me away but is now hiding in my chest. "Bastard, not that status." Oh, what other status do I have? I shrug, there is not much of difference, she probably did not want to share just yet due to shyness. Oh, I forgot about her mother. Her mother''s reaction to this information will not be positive. The 40cm fairy is looking on with great interest, I address her with telepathy. "Aelynthis friend I presume?" Violet haired fairy smiles and says: "She called me just a friend? I practically raised her. I have been her teacher her for years now." Alright, so how does this fit in together? Well, I have no idea how long the war was and during what age she was taken care of by this fairy so I will leave the questions for later. "I am Anton Ippolitov, Aelynthis... boyfriend." "Just boyfriend? She seems to have fallen for you... sorry, impolite of me." She does a graceful curtsy. "I am Viola Silvercloud, Princess and first in line for the throne of this fine forest"Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. "You raised her? For how long?" "20 years, we still have more to go. She is young and has a lot to learn. I heard from her that you are from a far away land?" "I agree she has a lot to learn, especially about the word no and boundaries. Yes, I am from a far away land." Viola turns towards the group of elders, says a few short words and turns back to me as they leave. ¡°How long have you known Aelynthi?¡± ¡°A couple of months. We met by accident and then got into a little of trouble but I got us through it. How many people will be visiting you for your important day? Any elves from Brypeiros?¡± She ignores my questions and looks at Aelynthi who is hiding in my chest. Viola: ''¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤'' I am pinched by Aelynthi as Viola laughs. "You are my fianc¨¦." When did I agree? I am unable to say no to her... Does that mean I agreed? Aelynthi: ''¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤'' Viola: "¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤" I am pinched multiple times this time. I guessed Viola would tell Aelynthi about my comment but not immediately. "I know you are afraid of the future, afraid of commitment but it is too late now. We shall make the best of it. I am yours and you will be mine." I think she likes to proclaim herself as mine... Viola looks at us with interest bordering on suspicion, did she want to see Aelynthis reaction? Why? Viola face loses her smile as she says: "What are your intentions for Aelynthi?" I speak to Aelynthi: "Your teacher seems to be suspicious of my motives in our relationship." "I am a child in her eyes, my words about you were empty air to her." I guessed something similar. "Well at least she seems to care about you. How can we resolve this situation without this escalating?" Aelynthi says something to Viola: "¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤" The result of Aelynthi words have gotten a good reaction alright. Viola has a staff in hand and fairies are flying towards us from all directions. "I said not escalate, I did not say escalate." 29 Aelynthi frowns and I feel her worry grow. Great, I am surrounded by fairies that think I am coercing a princess that I kidnapped¡­ You guys can have her, of course you would need to first convince her to leave me. I sigh and prep my grenades, 4 of them. Aelynthi sees my action and shows anxiety on her face, her worry is replaced with fear. I understand her feelings but if my life is under a threat how else should I retaliate? Even if it is born out of good intentions it puts me and Aelynthi into a dangerous position. Now I am thinking of the fastest way to get me and Aelynthi into the car. Viola sees Aelynthis face change and it only makes the situation worse. Why do people like to jump to conclusions?... The only thing stopping the situation from exploding is most likely the fact that Aelynthi is hugging me. Aelynthi and Viola start talking, which shortly escalates into yelling. I guess she has some hidden resentment against Viola. All of this is interrupted by another large fairy of 50 cm and when I see her as a red dot on my screen I can not stop myself from tensing up. She is bigger than the princess, so is she the queen? She looks like Viola but with everything pink instead of violet. I never liked pink. She joins in on the conversation, after a few minutes Aelynthi starts talking to me. "They do not believe me, but they are willing to test out the truth of your words." Great, all of this is because I kissed my princess? ¡°They do not believe you love a human? Are good humans that rare?¡± ¡°They do not. Yes, kind humans are very rare and even fewer choose to copulate with a different species as mix species children are frowned upon by both. It is even less common with elves due to us living very long and the fact that elves will only have one life partner¡­¡± ¡°On top of that you are a princess.¡± Who lost her father in a war against humans. Aelynthi weakly nods. I apologise. "Sorry, for screwing up." ¡°No!... You did not, this is my fault, I failed to think of this matter.¡± I can not deny that, yet I will not accept it as an excuse for my failure to take caution and making wrong assumptions about the situation. I rub Aelynthis back. "How will they test the truth of my words?" "The same method I used to understand you." "Seducing me?" I can joke at a time like this... Aelynthi steps on my foot and says: "Through inner mana." "So do I have to choose between pink and violet? Or some other color?" If Aelynthi was not afraid of letting me go I suspect I would be beaten up, but right now I feel happy for having reinforced my boots. ¡°Why don¡¯t they verify the truth through you?¡± ¡°They said if my mind is controlled then it may mean nothing.¡± Supposedly I have free will and they can check the truth using me? ¡°What if we are both controlled by a third party?¡± ¡°They did not bring that up, nor do I think we should mention it to them¡­ Though it would paint you as innocent.¡± I can believe Viola not thinking of this but Lilliana? Allowing the situation to play out without interfering¡­ What is she playing at? All of this seems like a farce. Is she planning to capture us either way? We are surrounded by thousands of fairies and have low mage ranks. Why wait? For Viola? Ah, justification in front of her people. ¡°Can¡¯t we just leave?¡± Aelynthi shakes her head: ¡°Viola does not want me to leave with you¡­ She is worried about me.¡± Then her mother does not mind us leaving? What a headache. I put on my balaclava and goggles. The pink haired fairy introduces herself: "I am Lilliana Silvercloud, my daughter shall read the truth of your words through your mana. Human, if you try something your life is forfeit even if Aelynthis life is connected to yours." Huh, a threat to our lives¡­ Looks like Aelynthi told them about the soul bond, I bet it is what set off Violas actions. Now Viola, the teacher, takes responsibility for her student or does she just want to do it herself out of worry for Aelynthi? I wonder if I prove to her that the turrets on my car can make mincemeat out of them will it de-escalate the situation? How do I go about showing her that without killing them¡­ Viola flies over to me and promptly sits on my head? Why the head? Why are you trying to poke my eyes out with your legs, these goggles can stop low caliber bullets not to mention your legs. How long will she sit on my head? Ouch! She pulled a hair out. Ouch! I should have made the balaclava with a tighter weave. Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. I look at Aelynthi who seems to be enjoying my misery. Ouch! Why are you happy, your ¡®fianc¨¦¡¯ is under attack! Ouch! I hope I do not go bald like my father, my mother always said I inherited my grandfather''s hair and he is 70 with dense hair! Ouch! "I will be bald by the time she can feel my emotions!¡± Ouch! ¡°Do you want to be married to a bald guy?" Ouch! Aelynthi smirks and answers me: "I will love you no matter what you look like. Besides the more she does to you, the more apologetic she will be towards us. I always wanted to see her make a mistake. It would be the first time I see her show guilt and shame." Ouch! "Do you resent her that much?" Ouch! "Not really, she is like an older sister if not mother and I think of her so, it''s just that princess perfect has been educating me for years and she is never satisfied. I want to show her nobody is perfect. People make mistakes." Ouch! ¡°Why did I bring you here again?¡± Ouch! ¡°Because you are a nice person and wanted to make me happy?¡± Ouch! ¡°Are you happy now?¡± Ouch! ¡°Not really¡­¡± "How will you compensate me for my suffering?" Ouch! "I will not tell Viola that you have bullied me." Ouch! I hug Aelynthi tightly to express my displeasure. "Alright I will also stop my mother from beating you up... too much." Ouch! I pinch her side as she often does to me. "I will stop my brother from beating you up?" Ouch! ¡°Why do you wish to inflict pain on me? Do I treat you that badly?¡± No response. I notice Viola has finally run out of stray hairs to through my balaclava. We have a couple of minutes to talk whilst we wait for the mana link to form... It is not the best time to talk about this but it is relevant and I keep putting the conversation off. ¡°Is this about me spending months working on the base and car? I had plans for the base before you came along. The car was so we can get here in a timely and safe manner. After this situation dissolves we can enjoy our time here together.¡± ¡°Talk to me. Tell me if I did something you did not like or enjoy. We need to communicate for us to be happy in our relationship, especially so considering we are from different worlds and races.¡± Aelynthi finally answers: ¡°I expected... more?¡± ¡°Me being more romantic? Direct more of my attention at you? Is it the absence of sex in our relationship?¡± My last sentence causes her to freeze. ¡°It''s not the sex? Is it attention? My love I can not spend all of my time showering you with flowers. My current capabilities do not allow me leisure time¡­¡± I keep on rubbing her back. Aelynthi: ¡°I know¡­ I¡­ sorry, I was trying to impose my fantasy on you.¡± Is she a child after all? At least she is somewhat intelligent... ¡°My princess, that is one of the things grown ups have to do. Though I do not mind playing out your fantasy when I will have the time. Saving you from a monster, gifting you a surprise, dancing under the moonlight and reading you poems about my love to you.¡± Aelynthi is hiding her face in my chest but I feel her happiness and bashfulness. ¡°Though I have to warn you my knowledge of dancing is limited and most likely completely foreign. Also, I am no poet but I think I can remember a few poems from school. If that is not enough then I guess I will just have to kiss you. Will you be satisfied with that?¡± ¡°You are good enough¡­¡± Heh, she just wanted me to sweet talk to her. Back to the situation at hand, I get an idea that may have been influenced by my falling hairs. "How guilty do you think Viola will be?" "Very, I have not known her to make a mistake." "We could use a servant." "What do you mean?" "I am thinking of tricking her into becoming my servant." Aelynthi stares up at me and exclaims: "The reason I came here is for her coronation in 2 weeks." Oh¡­ When did I care about status? "Her status would be enough for us to accept her." "You are evil, that may be too much." "You will get to spend a lot more time with her and not be alone when I am busy making artifacts." "Do what you must." Is that a yes? Or is it a female maybe so you can blame everything on me if it turns out badly? I address Viola. "May I interrupt your recreational activity?" "No." "Alright then I shall not interrupt. Do you mind betting with me on the outcome of this procedure?" "You have nothing to offer." "No, I do, I am a talented and young rank 2 enchanter. I can offer my service until death." This makes her pause. "Lies. Your attempt at saving yourself is useless. Even if Aelynthis soul is bonded to you... you will not experience a pleasant life." "If I am a rank 2 enchanter?" "Then you shall serve til death as you have said." "Force and willing submission are different things. I get good food and accommodation and you in return get a personal rank 2 enchanter. My works differ from this places as I am from a far away land as I have said before. I am sure it would benefit your forest greatly." Viola pauses, personally I would be suspicious already but I took up a new profession when I came to this world: paranoiac. Though I am still an amateur at this craft. "Alright, if what you say is true we will continue to talk about it after." Later is not good¡­ Hmmm, how should I do this... I address Aelynthi, "You are going to be my hostage. Pretend to not be in control of your body." ¡°I do not think that is a good idea.¡± It is not , but I do not like Viola one bit, nor do I like to be threatened. ¡°Please.¡± Aelynthi acquiesces to my request. ¡°Be ready to run to the car if it comes to it.¡± Back to Viola: "No, we will talk now, or I will kill Aelynthi and myself." I pull out my sword and bring it to Aelynthis neck. Viola stops pulling my hair. I change the color of my sword to be pitch black, absolute EM radiation absorption, this should add dramatic effect, whilst Aelynthi pretends excellently. The surrounding atmosphere changes, and I see mana moving around the queen but she does not act. "Shall we talk now?" "Alright." "Swear by your name and kingdom to all to hear the following: that after confirming me to be sinister as you have seen, I will be given fair treatment as your lifelong personal enchanter. If you do not do this I will end Aelynthis life and mine right here and now. You have 1 minute to decide." I address Aelynthi: "Please tell me what she says." After 30 seconds she starts talking. "She swears by her name and kingdom that after confirming your evil intention she will make you her lifelong personal enchanter with fair treatment." Now for the centerpiece. I do short maniac laugh: ¡®Bwahahahhahahah.¡¯ I address Viola: "Now say that in the other case you shall be my lifelong slave who performs all duties in bed and out of bed. " This sentence should serve as a motive, to humiliate her and her kingdom as a last act of freedom. Of course Aelynthi will be quite angry but it is not like I will ask Viola to fulfill her end of the bet. All I want is revenge against Lilliana for threatening me and Aelynthi. I barely had any dislike for Viola until I started losing hair¡­ Viola obviously hesitates but I push on: "Do it, I want you to say it before I lose my freedom. You have 30 seconds." 30 Viola starts talking and I feel anger from Aelynthi. The queen looks like she will rip me apart any moment now. The crowd is murmuring to each other from what I can tell. "Bastard! You " I interrupt: "I will renounce the bet after everything clears up. No need to jump to conclusions." When dragons start fearing me all of this will become irrelevant, hell it may become the pride of this small kingdom. I know that I will stand on top of this world, as that is only part of my plan and it is only a matter of time and my hard work. If I die in the process, well at least I tried my best. My ego is thinking again¡­ Or is it confidence and bravery? I just hope there is nothing stronger than a rank 4 mage, I digress. Having, Viola, a rank 3 mage owe me, and with her mother being a possible peak rank 3, is a small step in the right direction. Though I may have just made some new enemies... "...Why humiliate her like this?" "They are your friends and family, but to me they are people who can kill me, take away my freedom and any hope of seeing my family again. Following that, the Queen threatened me. I think I can do whatever I want in this case. You have to understand that if you were not here, there would have been a bloodbath, a lot of dead fairies and a dead me. Even worse is if I was alive and they start torturing me for information I do not have or try to brainwash my mind to the degree of identity death, that would be wonderful." Aelynthi is filled with complex emotions right now... "I told you to leave me back then." "How could I leave you? I felt your fear and your care for me even when I had been nothing but an annoyance to you." Why is that past tense? Aren¡¯t you still annoying? "How could I not care about the beautiful annoying girl who follows me everywhere with her naive actions but kind heart... I blame your intelligence and curiosity, without them we would have seperated right after leaving the cave." I really blame your blind stubborn desire to do whatever you wish... "Good thing I am not stupid." If you were I would not be with you right now. "Why?" "Otherwise nobody would be there to tell you what a bastard you are." "Your bastard." Aelynthi: "Fortunately." Aelynthi: "I love you." "You keep repeating those words, is this telepathy thing translating correctly?" "What would you do if I was kidnapped by 100 rank 3 mages." "Ask you if any of them are innocent before killing the rest." "If I was sold as a slave and used for months."If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. "Worship the ground you walk on, end slavery on this world, learn soul magic and torture the souls of the people that wronged you. Most likely end slavery on any other world I find." "Isn''t that a bit too much?" "After doing that I would learn time magic and make it so you never experienced such a thing, then beat up my younger self and tell him to end slavery or I will come back." I feel amusement from Aelynthi. "I love you because there were no lies in your words. How can I not love a man that would go to any lengths to protect me." I could just be stupid?... Is this mana link working correctly? "But do not even think that there will not be a punishment for humiliating my teacher like this." ..... Plenty of time has passed, Viola should ask her questions soon. I still have my sword up just in case, I do not like how the pink fairy is looking at me. "I shall now confirm your intentions." "What kind of magic have you used on Aelynthi?" I will leave no loopholes for her to understand the situation. "I will start speaking about the state of Aelynthi, stop me if you find fault." "The girl hugging me with silver hair is Aelynthi, she is the same girl you claimed to have raised and know as Aelynthi. I have used no magic on Aelynthi. I have not subdued or attempted to subdue Aelynthis freedom or mind or soul. I have not influenced or attempted to influence Aelynthis freedom or mind or soul. I have not brainwashed or attempted to brainwash Aelynthi. I do not control Aelynthi, Aelynthi is free and in control of her body. I have no information on the situation of Aelynthis soul other than that she has binded her soul to me. I do not know who or what could be in control of Aelynthis mind or body or soul. My intention towards Aelynthi is nothing but to protect and care for her. My intention in bringing her here is for her to reunite with a friend, without any other intention. I will protect Aelynthi from all possible threats even if I die." That should be enough, there is a lot of redundancy and I said it slowly enough. "Hey is that last statement also true, I kinda wanna know if it is true." I get no response. A minute passes, Viola: "Yes it is true from what I can tell." "I love Aelynthi. Is this true?" "Yes." Really? How does this thing work? I wasn''t even sure about it. Where does this information come from? This mana reading is like a fool proof polygraph? I keep thinking about how this mana thing works. This should give time for Viola to calm down or whatever. "Will you use me as a s.." I can feel fear, shame, guilt, confusion, anger. "No this whole thing was to get you to spend time with Aelynthi back at our home, unless..." "Unless what?" I feel relief coming from her. "we enter a relationship and you consent to it. Besides I do not think it is physically possible for us to have sex." I can feel anger and a bit of bashfulness. "You are a bastard." "That is the first elvish word I learned, it was from Aelynthi. Why do I feel bashfulness from you?" Now I feel mostly anger. "Why are you reading my emotions?" Women logic, I can but you can not. "Why am I not allowed to read your emotions? Are you hiding something, have you been trying to manipulate Aelynthi?" Anger again from her. "What? No! She is my daughter!.. I mean I love her as my daughter." From the mana link it seems true. "Let us continue later, first please calm down your mother so she does not try to kill me. " She starts doing so via telepathy. "I will go to my mother and let her cast magic on me to test the clarity of my mind." Hmmm... "Wait. If you had to choose between your mother and Aelynthi, who would you choose?" Viola stops, she understands my implication. Who knows what the pink woman is thinking. She seems to be talking to her mother again. After a few moments Viola tells me: "Aelynthi." Good, to Viola Aelynthi is a daughter, to her mother she may just be a political pawn. "Is it true you are the student of Kathorrunth, Seeker of Knowledge?" "Well, Kathorrunth never asked me to be her student, though I did learn from her for some time and she did name me as her student when she talked to some elves. I believe my relationship with Kathorrunth is on the positive side so if she is ever asked whether or not I am her student she will not deny it." Viola yells something out loud which seems to piss off her mother. 31 "Why did Viola just proclaim to be your slave?..... Viola said that you are a student of Kathorrunth and that if her mother proclaims Viola is under your control and attacks you then Kathorrunth can confirm my free will. This forest will thus feel the wrath of a dragon and the elves. She says the truth will come out about Violas mother unjustly killing an elven royalty soul bond." What the hell is in Violas head?... Well, not ideal but it at least gives me some protection. I put away my sword as this will not be the weapon I will use to fight thousands of fairies, the weapon I will use is 4 grenades strapped to my chest and the turrets on the car behind my back. "She just chose you over her mother. She loves you like a daughter." I get confusion from Aelynthi... "Violas mother may see you as less important than the humiliation of Violas new status." "You made Viola choose between me and her mother?" "No, I made Viola realise that her love for you is not respected by her own mother and there may come a time when her mother chooses between something and you." Considering the long life span of said people and Aelynthis current unstable political situation, it may be a real possibility. I feel complex emotions from Aelynthi. Was my trick and humiliation of these fairies such a bad idea?... Her mother probably does not care about the situation of Aelynthi other than the political gain she can get by selling said person or information to the elves. I address Viola: ¡°You did not have to say that. We are trying to stop a fight from happening.¡± ¡°I am true to my word. I misjudged the situation and made a bet, I am paying up. If my mother can not accept me or my love for Aelynthi then she is not my mother.¡± ¡°I manipulated you into the bet.¡± ¡°I am 99 years old. I think I can make my own decisions.¡± Viola barely flies a meter towards her mother before she stops and turns to me. Viola start chanting something: ''¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤¡¤'' A commotion brakes out in the crowd. The Queen Lilliana is shocked but unable to stop Viola. Aelynthi: ¡°Bastard do not dare accept her!¡° "What?" "Do not accept Viola as a slave!." What? Viola: "Accept me." Is this the soul magic thing?... As much as I dislike Viola for causing the situation, she is family to Aelynthi so she is family to me. Even if she was not close to Aelynthi I would not take her as a slave for worrying about somebody''s else''s freedom. Although accepting her as a slave may protect me during the current situation, I suspect it will cost Violas freedom and I can not accept that. I find it impossible to even think of a reason for ever having a slave but I have yet to experience much in life. Anyway, the answer is obvious. ''I do not accept.'' I feel relief from Aelynthi. Can the result be seen by others? The crowd has somewhat calmed but are still most likely discussing my denial. I guess they can somehow tell the result, was something supposed to happen if I had accepted?Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. "You... you did not accept." "I did not." "Why?" "Many reasons... You meant no harm, I dislike slavery, you are like a sister to Aelynthi..." "I... Thank you." After a few moments of looking at me Viola continues over to the Queen. I wonder what is going on inside of the Queens head right now. The Queen starts casting various spells and I barely contain myself from activating the turrets. It is best to prepare for the worst case scenario. I address Aelynthi: "Do not worry about Viola, I will keep her safe. I promise. Put on your goggles and balaclava." I pull her back behind me. We are ignored. Do they see no threat from us? What kind of combat abilities do fairies have?... At this point, I can not change things. A flashbang or two would be useful right now, maybe some smoke grenades... It would open up a few options, currently I have a very narrow range of possible solutions to the present situation and future conflict... "When I tell you to run, you run and enter the car, do not hesitate, as that may cause our death. Please repeat what I have said." "When you tell me to run I will run and enter the car without hesitation." "Do as you have said and I will do my best to keep Viola safe, do not and I will abandon Viola and prioritize your life, this may put her into danger. Pull up your hood.¡± She does so. ¡°Please yell out that if they attack, any fairy that uses magic will be killed and any fairy that comes close to us will be killed." I feel Aelynthis apprehension, confusion and anger probably directed at me but she listens to me and starts yelling out. The crowd''s reaction is a surprise. I hear laughter, some are yelling something back towards me, while some show anger. Am I underestimating them? Are they underestimating me? Viola looks at us, from this distance and her size I can barely make out the worry on her face. "Aelynthi, tell me how fairies fight mages, general information." I should have asked this sooner... "Fairies are very difficult for mages to hit, a group of fairies can kill an equally ranked mage quite easily. Fairies specialise in small scale precise magic like an elemental dart. Fighting tactics include hiding and running away, constant changes to the origin of the attack, exploitation of enemy weaknesses such as gaps in armor, eyes and ears." From this I gather there is no direct threat to me other than being overwhelmed with magic attacks as my armor does not really have a specific weakness. The only problem I see is that I have thousands of targets and not enough guns to fire bullets fast enough, nor enough bullets, nor enough pressurized air... At least the target system has target priority based on mana signature intensity. Killing 300-400 of the bravest and most powerful fairies will significantly lower the threat posed by them but should I? Should I activate the turrets to kill hundreds of sentient beings¡­ is it worth my safety? There is no guarantee that I will die if I do not kill, nor there is a guarantee that I will not die if I do kill¡­ I can not answer this question, neither do I have the time to dwell on it. I must live. I cast cast body magic on myself. The queen performed multiple magics on Viola. After the 7th spell, something different happens. Viola is now on the ground in an unknown state. Great. Why did I have to provoke the Queen? Oh right, my petty desire for revenge and unwillingness to be under the power of another... Now the expected happens, the Queen yells something out and starts casti... I mean falling to the ground with a 20mm hole in her torso. I do not know whether she wanted to capture me or kill me but I do not want to risk it if it is the latter. Nor do I want to put my freedom and future into her hands as a captive. Are there really no mana shields or something along those lines in this world? Are mages really this easy to kill? A crossbow bolt would have been enough or maybe not as she would have recognised a crossbow as a threat and taken countermeasures against it. Obviously she did not recognize my 20mm turret as a threat, though even if she did I am not sure it would have saved her. Maybe it is just the enormous amount of kinetic energy and projectile speed that made her unable to resist or react. As I did not give her any time to show off her capabilities I will never know. Note to self, never underestimate your enemy. "Run."