Ionnia watched Boss's mooring line fray more and more as he paced back and forth on the rooftop. "He tripping knew," their usually taciturn leader repeated yet again.

After enough time to swab a deck he had his line properly whipped at last, turning to her and giving the only sensible order. "Ion, I want eyes in the sky. If he knows, he knows. Didn't seem like he cared about us at all, so it should be fine. Don't get close, I just want to know when he leaves." He glared at her. "Maintain maximum distance. Do. Not. Engage. Understood? Our primary is inside the warehouse. Give the secondary target sighted signal when he leaves, then maintain overwatch."

She understood he was likely seeing sharks where there were dolphins, but one didn't grow old in this business through recklessness. "Got it."

She called on her Bond, and the world changed. Her teammates towered over her, the colors of their clothing popping with previously unseen hues. Waddle's shirt and pants might both seem brown to him, but she could tell they came from separate sources, his shirt dyed the brown of natural, water-soaked wood, while his pants were instead a rich, earthy, deeper brown. She made a mental note to poke fun at him for getting his outfits mixed up again.

Shifting forms always made Ionnia think of her mother, how the two of them fought so, over Ionnia signing up with the Merchants. Her father, blessedly, had understood and helped maintain the peace. Ten years of service for the opportunity to Bond with a wind-aspected mountain eagle was practically a bargain, the best offer she had for a way out, a way to not get stuck working the docks like the rest of her family. Once the contract concluded, five years away now, she might even stay on. Her pay would more than double, and the work itself varied enough to remain interesting, more than her dockhand parents could claim.

Ionnia had hoped for some wind sorcery, a path to true power, but life as a scout wasn't so bad—safer than most positions, her father would happily point out at every opportunity, not that she told him the kinds of things her team got up to. Her position on the team remained a bit awkward, however, as most of the time Boss didn't need her view on things, his air Bond often sufficient or better suited for scouting the way, but she supposed that was why they were one of the Merchants' top espionage teams. Aside from Waddle and his club, they all had their scouting tricks, and any one of them might make the difference between the team's success and failure.

Iona could't call out her beast like some, nor did she have anything special in her dull form aside from being a bit lighter on her feet perhaps, but when shifted she could fly and she could see. She actually became her Bonded beast, in full control of its blue-gray feathered body, her own gone away, vanished into her soul until she swapped back.

Some might prefer the safety of the ground or only risking their beast to scout, since Bonded beasts couldn't truly ever die. But Ionnia didn't care about any of that. She got to fly. Not even Boss, with all his command over the air, could fly without putting on that stupid suit of his, the one which made him resemble a flying squirrel. They all knew he hated the thing, no matter how he pretended otherwise.

Being a bird made precise communication difficult, but she had her well-practiced signals. Patterns she flew over something of interest, a spotted target, or an area to avoid, a single call for impending danger, a longer cry for the team to close in on a fleeing target, one short followed by one long to announce an approaching friendly, plus a few lesser-used signals which might leave Waddle scrambling through the pages of his little codebook with his thick fingers.

She jumped and flapped her wings, enough to clear the building. Stretching wings wide she caught the air and accelerated, Boss using his Bond to boost her with a sudden updraft.

She gained altitude in a wide spiral, relishing in her freedom from the ground, climbing until she could just barely make out her team members down below. Finding a windstream she leaned into it, hovering, the wind and angle of her wings and tail feathers almost enough to hold her aloft, only needing to flap her wings from time to time to counteract gravity's constant pull.

She held her position up in the sky, keeping half her attention on the warehouse in question while she observed the city below as people, tiny specks, each with their own lives to live. She found her apartment block and the building where her extended family claimed nearly three floors. From this height, one might make the mistake of believing the two locations weren't all that different.

After a bell in the sky, it occurred to Ionnia that Boss's orders failed to allow for the possibility of the Hero never leaving the warehouse. The kid couldn't be invincible. Could be the rats asked for something he was unwilling to do, or he got greedy, or negotiations broke down in some other fashion. By now they could be gnawing on his bones, trying to suck out the marrow with their tiny rat mouths.

She considered signaling to confirm her orders, though she'd have to drop out of the windstream to make out the position of Boss's arms for his answering signal, which would in itself break his given orders. She'd give it another bell. Something had to happen sooner or later.

A burst of red from the coast brought Ionnia out of her stupor. Even flying eventually lost its appeal when she could only hover. She looked up and down the alleys around the warehouse once more, but the boy had yet to reappear.

She turned her full attention towards the coast. A flare from the lighthouse watchtower on the island just off the shore was unusual. For them to signal red…

She grew cold as she made out a black tendril rising from the dark waters, despite the distance. The thing must—

The tentacle nearly the size of the tower it attacked slammed into the outpost, shaking the structure. A tiny explosion sent the arm into a wriggling fury, its next blow missing the tower and slamming into the island itself, though the tower shook again just the same.

This was—

A second tentacle rose, wrapping itself around the tower. The first joined it, as did a third, and a fourth. She still couldn't see what—

Remembering to do her job she let out a single cry as the tower fell, a gaping maw rising from the waters to catch the towering stone structure. She'd instinctively flown closer to the coast, and now she could see smaller forms creeping through the wetlands, consuming anything in their path with their sheer numbers, a swarm of ugly, tentacled, balls of hunger. Here and there larger, slower creatures dragged themselves towards the city, their bulbous eye clusters focused on their goal.

She had no idea what the things were, except Trouble. Turning around, she dove towards her team. Now seemed like a good time to ignore her orders.

She hoped that Hero was more useful than he seemed.

Silas sat in his room.

He certainly wasn't hiding from his angry guard, almost certainly a different wolfman from the one who stuck to him yesterday. This one wouldn't shut up, going on and on about how irresponsible he had been to go wandering the city streets by himself, as if his mere presence would—

Well, the wolfman didn't know about Mana Magnet, in all likelihood, so Silas's point remained valid.

Silas didn't remember agreeing to have a guard follow him around, and frankly he wasn't going to put up with it. No one had asked his opinion, and it felt like he'd done something wrong, to have someone constantly watching over his shoulder. No one ever even apologized about shoving him into jail. And they still had his stuff! He wanted it all back, even if he didn't really need anything from his carryon any more.

It was the principle of the thing.

He'd warp out of his room again when he was ready to go visit the Academy. The guard downstairs could just go find a lemon and suck on it.

Silas conjured a lemon and looked it over. Did they even have lemons here? Could his lemon grow into a tree? Could he revolutionize this world's variety of produce? Was that really something he wanted to spend his time doing? Maybe he could hire an assistant, or team of assistants, to do stuff like that while he…worked on the exercises Eve suggested.

He closed his eyes again, focusing on the mana around himself. He knew it was there. Mana Sense told him so, even with his eyes closed. He could sense it beyond his room, giving him a rough idea of where people stood, bubbles of less dense mana in the veritable cloud of the stuff floating around him all the time.

He focused on Mana Magnet, not trying to expand its range and power, but to rein it in. The skill was useful, but having it drain mana from everywhere he passed, having that mana cloud supply everyone around him, would bring him all kinds of trouble.

The mages at the Academy had been all excited about the mana tide, talking about how the higher end trade district was recovering from a dry spell in the meantime, those unlucky tradesmen. Three guesses as to what they said after he left, and the first two don't count.

If he kept coming and going, someone was sure to put two and two together. It was only a matter of time. If they thought of him as some fancy ambient mana collector, well, either they'd try to lock him up again, probably within the Academy, or they'd just kill him for being a nuisance.

He—

"Keep calm and focus," reminded Eve. She started playing a track off some New Age meditation album from his relaxation collection.

He closed his eyes and focused on nothing but the sphere of his Mana Magnet aura, pulling it inwards, flexing it out, anything to manipulate the boundary of the skill. A noise almost brought him out of his trance, but it faded in with the music.

In. Out. Shrink. Grow.

He pictured the sphere shrinking, leaving behind a hint of mana in its wake so as to not leave the locals with another void by which to track Silas's passing. He felt…something, a flexing of a non-existent limb, and he pushed on that sensation, dragging his aura inward until it held the mana he'd accumulated tight to his body. He tried focusing the aura upward like a tower to bloom out like a flower or windmill to strain the mana from up in the air where no one would care, but the attempt sent lasting pain spiking through his brain and pulling him from his meditative trance.

Rubbing his temples, Silas opened his eyes and studied his new prompts with a grin on his face.

Skill Mana Magnet reached Level 20! +1 XP!

Skill Gained: Aura Control! +1 XP!

Skill Aura Control reached Level 5! +4 XP!

Skill Gained: Mana Manipulation! +1 XP!

Skill Mana Manipulation reached Level 6! +5 XP!

Status

Silas Aegis

11y 3s 20d 5h

L13 (424/455 XP)

H: 30.0/30 (30/day rest)

S: 30.0/30 (30/min rest)

M: 20.0/20 (20% eff.)

1 AP

STR:

AGI:

END:

VIT:

PER:

29 (+10)

29 (+10)

30 (+10)

30 (+10)

29 (+10)

WIL:

WIT:

SPI:

AFF:

CHA:

20

20

20

20

12

1 SP

Eve 29

Gaming 29

Mana Sense 29

Obscurity 29

Pain Resistance 29

Programming 29

Sight Reading 29

Interface 25

Mana Magnet 20

Bargaining 19

Gaming Necessities 19

Pestilence Resistance 19

Piano 19

Poison Resistance 19

Sleep Resistance 19

Language: Artean 15

Help 14

Chemistry 9

Summon Character 9

Mana Manipulation 6

Aura Control 5

Countdown to the End 4