The Covenant of the Dragon, along with a whole suit of other guilds and a large team of soldiers, have regrouped; they stood before a huge and ancient temple right before their eyes. It was under siege by a conglomerate of criminals, thieves, bandits, and an onslaught of other nasty characters.

Refusing to waste any more time, an alliance of guilds and armies charged forward, while a few groups stayed behind to quell the chaos and help the innocent. Inside the temple, the numerous armies and guilds put out all efforts to kill or arrest the various vandals causing trouble within; while others were somewhat manageable, some were more tedious, difficult, and dangerous than others, likewise a gang of ogres resisting being reined in via bloody violence or worse, mentally unstable wizards casting spells capable of mass destruction. All in all, it was a particularly big whirlpool of chaos.

Yet, the Covenant of the Dragon and many prominent and powerful guild members still charged forward to a particular location within the temple; this place was known to hold a unique and powerful artifact that was over tens of thousands of years old. However, as the alliance made their way to the bottom and soon after arriving there, something was rather off. The pedestal the artifact stood on was broken into a thousand pieces and the ancient object itself was nowhere to be seen. It was a rather startling discovery for everybody involved.

“Wait a minute, what in the name of the gods happened to the Orb of Malice?!” a guildmaster questioned with great fear.

If the artifact was suspected to have fallen into the wrong hands, then this could only mean one thing: The return of Archdemon Uruzel was underway.

The fate of Otono and the entire world hanged in the balance...

----------------------------

We return to Jason and Lilly. They were in an alley pawn shop that was near the cathedral. The duo were performing transactions with an individual who owned and ran the place; he was a Bribon and one of Lilly’s contacts/associates. The place itself was quite clean and well-organized for the most part, but there were some parts of the shop that were in desperate need of minor renovations like the floors and walls.

“So Craig, how much of all this is worth to you?” Jason’s cat-girl partner asked.

Craig simply couldn’t comprehend the near mountain of stolen valuable goods that stood before him. He almost wondered if his associate was from another world, because an individual shouldn’t be able to gather this much loot in such short notice. However, despite that, he won’t turn away such offerings as it could provide a much needed influx of money, due to the fact that business is somewhat slow these days.

The well-dressed Bribon took out a book and digital calculator to determine the total value of the stolen objects. He proceeds to flip through the pages while typing numbers in an assiduous, yet efficient and quick manner. Soon afterwards, Craig closed the book and faced the duo.

The pawn-shop owner cleared his throat, “Well, after looking through my book and calculating everything, I’ve determined that the total value of the objects that are in front of me are worth... 25,000 Pedazo.” he declared.

That number alone caused the jaws of Jason and Lilly to cartoonishly hit the floor. Thankfully, they managed to quickly recover from the silly event; still however, the duo couldn’t believe the amount of money they’ve earned. So in the end, all in a late afternoon’s work.

“I don’t have much physical money on me, so the best I can do is just give you a letter of credit; is that okay?” Craig asked.

“Sure, but can you split up the money into two halves?” her contact requested, “Because, I believe my friend here deserves it as much as I do.” she said.

“You got it.” the Bribon said.

As Craig wrote the checks down, Jason had finally come to the conclusion that besides his friends and teacher, he now had a legitimate ally and friend in this world. He hoped that whenever and wherever he goes, she goes with him.

After a short while, the duo exited the pawn shop with their letters of credit; both of them have an amount of 12,500 Peda. Soon after, the shop’s light turned off and closed up rather tightly for the day, giving off some hints for what’s to come.

“So, what are we going to do with all of this money?” Jace wondered.

“Not really sure, for now we should put this in the bank for safe-keeping,” Lilly suggested, “You may never know what kind of freak incidents we may get into; having a safe stash never hurts.” she said.

“I guess you’re right.” The knight concurred.

As they resumed their mission towards the cathedral, suddenly a group of men appeared to stop the duo in their tracks. More specifically, a four-man team of well-armored and well-equipped thugs.

“It looks like you’re those fuckers who stole from our base,” one of the men deduced, “Boys, I think we’ve found our target.” he declared.

“Who the hell are you douchebags?” Lilly demanded.

“Basically, we’re the guys from the Mendoza clan; you know, the place the two of you recently robbed?” the thug reminded, “The boss sent us to you know... give you both a goddamn hard time.” he threatened, before he and his group drew their weapons.

“Look, I don’t feel like fighting right now,” Jason moaned, “Can we talk this out or something?” he offered.

“Eat a dick, you should know who you’re fucking with before you pulled this shit!” one of the goons scornfully declined.

The knight sighed before drawing his sword and shield, “There are times where you can win by just talking; unfortunately, this isn’t one of them.” he remarked.

“You’re definitely right about that one.” his companion agreed; she then proceeded to unsheathe her chokuto from the back of her waist.

The first two goons charged at the Assassin. In response, the ninja cat-girl suddenly vanished without a trace; the perps stopped dead in their tracks, reacting with bewilderment and shock. They turned their heads back and forth in a rapid manner trying to find her, but to no avail. Then, in a shocking turn of events, the two goons were ruthlessly cut down with great speed and efficiency by a mysterious force; giant gashes appeared on their necks and blood came spurting out, before they crashed to the ground like ragdolls.

Lilly magically reappears, standing over the corpses, “Man, the Mendoza clan has been slowly slipping over the past several years.” she scornfully remarked.

Angered at the insult, one of the crooks dashed at the cat-girl. Unfortunately, he didn’t make it too far as a six-pointed shuriken zipped through the air and lodged straight into his right eye socket; courtesy of Lilly herself. He immediately collapsed to the ground and died soon afterwards. All that remains was a lone goon, shocked and beyond terrified for his life. Now that the dust has cleared for now and glad that his partner did all the work, Jason put away his weapons and walked up to the crook; he noticed that he’s sweating buckets and breathing rather heavily.

“Okay look, I understand that you’re in a rather tense situation,” Jace empathized, “However, I will let you live if you do what I say and F.Y.I, I’m a pretty reasonable guy; can you do that?” he proposed.

The goon desperately nodded his head.

“Good, first things first: drop your weapons.” the knight requested.

The hired racketeer released his sword and shield onto the ground; they made a loud clank together.

“Secondly, take off all your armor.”

“What?” the crook questioned in disbelief.

The blood-stained blade of a chokuto thrusted through the air and hovered close to his neck.

“Do it.” Lilly threatened, giving off a menacing look.

Already fearing for life, the crook complied and took off his set of steel mail. He now looked like an ordinary townsperson.

“Thirdly, drop your coin bag.”

The goon begrudgingly let go of his money bag.

“Then finally, turn around, run, and never look back.” Jason said, giving his final request.

Relieved, the criminal did what the knight said and scurried for his life, not giving a second thought of what might happen next and ran to where his legs could bring him to. After that whole situation was done, Lilly removed the blood from her sword by swinging it down against the ground; she then re-sheathes it back into its scabbard. A calm zephyr blew through the air; all that remained was the corpses of once terrible criminals, lying and surrounded by a pool of their own blood.

“Damn... what a waste.” Jace uttered, expressing sadness and sympathy.

“My friend, don’t feel bad for these low-lives,” Lilly consoled, “I’m not that kind of being who often makes unsubstantiated claims, but just by knowing how they talk and what their attitudes were, they probably did a lot of awful and sometimes even heinous things. Having less of these pricks around is actually kind of nice.” she spoke.

“Sure, I guess,” Jason conceded, “Yet, I have this feeling that this isn’t the first, nor definitely the last time that me and you will encounter these types of people.”

“Totally,” his Darwinian friend agreed, “Now that I’ve snatched the coin bags off these guys, I’ll go ahead towards the cathedral and give you time to gather yourself up; don’t take too long okay?”

“Sure, don’t worry.” the knight said.

The ninja cat-girl went on her way, leaving her partner by himself for now. Jason approached the dropped equipment and money he instructed the goon to leave behind and put them inside his inventory via interfacing with his tablet. Just before he moved on, Jace took one more look at the somewhat grisly scene; something tells him that he’s going to encounter more and more of this during his adventures. But, no matter what, the brave warrior will keep moving forward.

10 Minutes Later...

Jason finally arrived at the front of the cathedral, but his partner is nowhere to be seen. However, Antonio and Emanuel are not here yet, so that’s a good start.

“Lilly?” he called.

“Hey there Jace.” a familiar voice responded.

The knight hears a bunch of footsteps approaching him, but the individual in question was invisible. Reappearing before Jason was none other than his cat-girl companion.

“Good to see you; so what happened?” Jace asked.

“Well, I’ve taken the liberty to scout around where our racketeers are,” Lilly revealed, “I found out they’ve stopped to have some cigarettes and sandwiches at a stand nearby here.” she stated.

“Great, anything else?”

“Besides some stupid, gross, painful, and embarrassing things I saw on the way, that’s pretty much it.”

“Umm... like what?”

“I won’t get into details because you might throw up at this, so I’ll give you a hint or few: there’s a ritual that essentially involves a toilet plunger, jars of used cooking grease, rotten mud-covered carcasses of goats, expired oysters, hot sauce, and finally... I’d rather not get into the last thing because it’s THAT disgusting.”

Jason reacted with disbelief and repugnance, “WHAT?!”

“Yeah, I swear, this part of town is home to some of the weirdest cults in the world.”

“Holy fuck, if I had a powerful gang, I’d probably find where this group of absolute weirdos are at and drive them back from where they once came!”

“And I’d probably help you on every step of the way; I’m just as grossed out as you are.”

Suddenly, the Knight and Assassin heard the clinking and clanking of heavy-sounding armor. They turned around and discovered that it was two men wearing bulky suits of mail covered in mystical runes and symbols approaching them.

“Damn it, it’s another team of Mendoza thugs; arm up and get ready!” alerted Jason.

“To tell you the truth, we’re not actually from that clan you’ve mentioned.” one of the armored individuals revealed, “In fact, we’re not even from this world in general.”

“Then... who are you people?”

“Simply put, we’re beings that were summoned by a higher power; a god if you would,” the armored being said, “Our purpose is to awaken what’s inside of you.”

And at this point, time had mysteriously slowed down to a crawl; the tablet in Jason’s belt case glowed and a floating status screen appeared before him. It said this to him:

You are now ready and primed to use Super-Techniques.

The tutorial shall begin... now.

Then out of nowhere, several streaks of red-colored energy appeared out of the sky and surrounded the knight; they quickly instilled into him. The feeling Jason had was something ethereal and nuanced, like the meaning and purpose of being powerful is not to tower and lord over those who are less significant than you, no. Instead, it’s to protect those who are weak, frail, and overall underdeveloped, so they can grow, learn from example and experience, and be as great as the ones they look up to.

The intensity of the energy gently reduced until it was no more. Feeling re-energized, Jace was ready to take on practically anything; the floating status screen then shifted to a list that has a maximum of twelve slots; four have appeared instantly in a flash of red light. They’re as follow:

Blade Sting - Level: 1, Ability Counters: 8/8 Rising Slash - Level: 1, Ability Counters: 7/7 Ground Slash - Level: 1, Ability Counters: 7/7 Tornado Blade - Level: 1, Ability Counters: 6/6

Not only that he was also given instructions on how to cast a Super-Technique:

Focus your mana into your weapon. Picture it. Put into motion.

“Before I go, my last say is that those who you hold close to, are the ones you stand up for. Always defend their honor when they need it the most.” the voice said.

Time resumed as normal; everything was the way they were a few moments ago.

“Who I stand up for...” Jason thought to himself.

“Hey Jace, I’m sorry to break your train of thought, but there are two individuals wearing suits of magic-enhanced armor that makes them immune from physical harm and the only thing is to use Super-Techniques against them,” Lilly said, “Can we do some actions, so we don’t lose our lives?” she requested, before unsheathing her chokuto and getting ready to fight.

“Oh yeah, sorry about that,” Jace responded, “Well, in this case, let’s do this.” he confirmed, then taking out his sword and shield to fight the mysterious enemies.

Let the battle of magic begin...