It was well beyond midnight, when Mira stopped practicing her [Conjure: Thorn] ability, with which she had caught over a hundred fishes during the day. The spell itself did not take a huge amount of mana to execute, although using the magic too much put a huge strain on her body, tiring her out immensely. So it was not wonder that she entered her room exhaustedly, ridding herself of all her clothes in a moment and falling down on the sheets immediately.

But even though she was tired and her mind and body felt stiff, sleep did not come. Too much was going through her head, ever since Matah Naht had given her this crystal. A dark and sinister energy escaped every now and then, revealing her desire and loneliness. With this feeling of loneliness a deep fear revealed itself to her, that threatened everything she had learned to love during the past weeks and months of training. Her family.

It was irrational, since her family had given permission for her to pursue a military career, thought her parents had walked back on promises before and it would not be the first time she had to suffer under their decisions. While learning how to use magic, she had gotten close to Marcella, who was like a sister to her and further down the line she got to know Daz. But even though she had finally found people that accepted her without asking, she was sure her own feelings would ruin everything in due time.

Mira rolled around in her bed, looking to the already fast asleep Marcella. She was cute, when she slept, with her red hair wildly hanging into her face. Mira stood up and walked a few steps before she knelt down before Marcella’s sleeping face. Her fingers stroked her hair and cheeks before she woke her up. “Mars?”

Marcella woke up with a slight grunt, entirely unbefitting of her cute looks. “Mmmh. Is it morning?” Mira shook her head lightly, although the girl still had her eyes closed, so she could not have seen it even if she wanted. “I can’t sleep.”, she declared.

Marcella rolled around, revealing enough space for Mira to join. “Okay.” Mira had done this before, when they were still training together, but ever since they were adopted by the prince it felt somehow inappropriate. Mira cuddled herself towards the taller girl an hugged her. “Mars?” The redhead, now completely awake, grunted back tiredly: “Mm? What is it?”

“You will never leave me, right?” Mira whispered. “No, silly. Of course not.” Marcella gave her a light kiss on the forehead and hugged her tightly. “Never.” A while passed before the redhead spoke again. “Do you like Daz too?”

Mira nodded, while still being hugged. “You want to share?” Marcella asked with a whisper, barely audible. Mira thought for a long while, making her taller friend anxious for a bit. Then she nodded. “As long as we can stay together forever.” Marcella smiled gave her another kiss on the forehead and they fell asleep, tightly embraced in their deep friendship.

As much as Twig had loved to laze around in the sunshine, he had to say, that this thunderstorm was way more entertaining. The ship had a magical barrier mounted on top, allowing the heavy rain to be avoided entirely. This heavy sound of clattering raindrops mixed with the laughing members of his team made for a promising aura. The ship had now been on its was for a little over ten days, and their arrival was imminent.

The good weather, and in no small amount Dazs pulling effort, had made it possible for the ship to save about one or two days worth of time. Twig had enjoyed the time on board and his experiments with the inferno beetles had made for a huge success. The first thing he had noticed was that the eggs only needed about three days to hatch. And not only had he a lot of small and useable explosives at hand, they also leveled up his initial summoning skill a lot:

[Inferno Beetle] Level 3 - Mastery 07.89%

[Inferno Beetle: Contradictory to common belief, a inferno beetle does not belong to the family of beetles, but is more closely related to ants. Unlike ants, their queens reproduce asexually and do not require a male. The male beetles however, protect the females with their lives, even going as far as to explode on top of their enemies to protect her. A queen lays between fifty and one hundred eggs, which commonly hatch 97.1% male.]

[Manacost: 4.000 Mana]

[Monster Core Cost: 8.000 Mana]

Current Mastery Benefits:

1 Female Inferno Beetle.

Lays 75 eggs per day.

Explosion Power: 15

Monster Core Bonus: +60 eggs/day, 0.3% chance to spawn additional female Inferno Beetles.

Not only were his beetles three times as effective in explosive power, they also had a huge chance of over 3% to hatch a new, fully developed queen! With a 135 eggs laid per day, his future arsenal would only increase exponentially. With the third level the costs went down further as well, only playing more and more in his favour. Twig was motivated by this development to spawn more and more queens, though he had first discovered a even greater feat.

His [Absorption] skill was able to absorb the newly hatched explosives with ease, powering his mana by 2 points per beetle. This was not the hugest amount, since a queen would only produce about 200 mana per day, but Twig had not been sitting idly. Over a hundred and fifty queen beetles were currently inhabiting a few of the large chests in the back of the ship. With a stunning twenty thousand eggs produced every day, Twig had boosted his mana regeneration immensely! Not to mention the fact, that those queens produced more and more of their own sisters to join their ranks every day.

By Twigs humble estimate, his little queens would have increased in number to a solid thousand within the week. The only problem being a big one: food. His ravens flew out non stop, picking everything they could find, at some point Twig had even summoned some goblins to help gather grass faster, but they would soon grow unable to support their numbers. It was good that the group would soon arrive at the next town, where they would finally be able to advance towards the border. Twig could hardly wait to try out all his new tricks.

These informations were also given to his master, Teiming, that had used them to plan various sneaky and very explosive strategies with that newly gathered knowledge. But no amount of explosive beatles would ever truly conquer the battlefield. Which was why Twig had plans to advance his other skills. For battle power he wanted something that could easily storm any army head on, not backing down and unyielding.

Trolls fit that description very well, but as they went into berserker mode, they were not easily controlled. Which made Twig opt out into Golems. A wall of metal and steel, regenerating as long as their core was intact, made them truly terrifying. They were very resistant to physical force as well, although they could very easily be destroyed with magic. But since his master was insisting that the enemy had no magic arsenal, Twig did not think about that too much.

Even if they would lose the battle somehow, he was sure that he could escape one way or another. But all things considered, Twig would be really surprised if that were the case. After all this was the strongest kingdom, Antalia, that had ruled the lands for a long time now, always unrivaled by the other kingdoms. Plus, Twig was sure their preemptive strike against the northern kingdom of Markan, would be a raging success, shattering their dream of war before it even started…

Putting aside the thought, Twig summoned a few stone golems with his abundant mana and let them jump over board. They would eventually catch up to him by walking, Twig really did not want them to delay their ship with their body weight. All in all he had summoned quite a few of those golems along the way, after he had noticed that the queens were increasing in number way too quickly anyway. Which had only been yesterday.

Still, about thirty golems were currently crawling through the riverbed, or walking along the riverside, just to catch up to Twig. Enjoying the sound of rain outside, and a dry atmosphere inside, Twig walked up and down the side of the ship. The usually rather cheerful group was awfully quiet today. Teiming was in his cabin, going over spy reports, while the two girls pestered and annoyed Daz, as per usual. Twig just shrugged it off, and went to the front side of the ship. Jorak was sitting there, staring off into the distance.

The young man seemed deep in thought. Twig walked up to him and put his two right arms on his left shoulder. “Are you alright?” A question, which Twig had notized humans lie about all the time. No matter the occasion, it almost always was “No”, but they usually replied with- “Yes.” Twig rolled his eyes and sat down next to Jorak.

“What are you thinking about?” he demanded to know.

Jorak shrugged. “This is the first time that I go to war. Last time I was just scouting and it was still dangerous… But now…” Twig sighted. “You are scouting this time around too. And I will protect you to the best of my ability. You are one of mine now.” And Twig meant that very literally. His students were his and his alone. Anyone that tried to take them from him would be eliminated. The young man showed a weak smile. “Thank you. But I don’t think I share the confidence.”

Twig pulled out a few inferno beetles and handed them to him. “Here. Tab them lightly on the back once. And not too hard.” Jorak did as he was told and the small insect stiffened up after its back began glowing in a dark red color. “Oh. What does it do now?” Twig grinned, showing his needle-like teeth. “Throw it.” The ranger did as he was told, and the beetle exploded when it hit the water, outside the ship. The explosion was not too large, but would still be able to rip a piece of flesh out of a person.

“Woa. What was that?”, Jorak exclaimed excitedly. “They are inferno beetles. Explosive insects that I summoned. You can add them to your arrows. With these and the ice elementals you should be fine right?” A greedy grin was now on the rangers face. “How many of them can I have?” Apparently he had love for explosives. Judging from the serious look in his eyes, he wanted to blow up stuff really, really badly.

Twig had no idea, if it was a smart idea to give such a person a near limitless arsenal of explosives, but what was the worst that could possibly happen? He lead the boy towards his gathered inferno beetles and showed him the queens and all their eggs.

“Thousands. And then some more.” Twig stated, matter of factly. “You want to take care of them?” Joraks eyes were sparkling, as if he had just stumbled on a early birthday present. “Y-yeah. Please.” Twig then proceeded to explain how to tell the females apart from the males, what they liked to eat and how they took care of their eggs. When Jorak realised just how many of these were hatching everyday, he grinned like a madman. Which was good, since cheering him up had been Twigs primary objective.

Now everyone in his group was ready for the war that was about to begin, and he would be damned if this mission would not be a giant freaking success! Twig left the young man alone with his new playthings and proceeded towards Teimings chambers. He would need to update him on Joraks newly found passion, although the faint noise of explosions told him that his master would already suspect something like this to have happened once he arrived.

Not knowing what he had just done, Twig did not have a care in the world, even though he had just unleashed the man that would come to be known as the Bomber of Karthagenia...