Calvin’s internal clock warned him that his Avatar would be expiring soon, in the next half hour or so.

Let’s see where our little buddy is, Calvin thought, closing his eyes.

Calvin’s little buddy, as it turned out, was still over the ocean somewhere, chasing the sun with every ounce it’s tiny little body could muster. Sadly, one of the weaknesses of the Avatar ability was the fact he couldn’t ‘size up’ his summons to allow them to travel faster.

The wasp barely had more inertia than the headwind it struggled against, and so it was only able to travel around a hundred miles an hour or so, not quite fast enough to cross the ocean in a single casting.

One of the strengths of Avatar was this: Calvin closed his eyes and manipulated his Bent, drawing it up into his skull, where it was burned away to nothing, while at the same time, Bent spontaneously manifested inside his little killing machine, available for him to manipulate.

Avatar

Atom Ant

3/54 Bent remaining.

With a moment’s concentration, his avatar, right about to expire, created another avatar with a little more than a full day’s duration, continuing on the journey across the ocean where the previous one left off.

Would you like me to try and refill your Bent, ravager? Kurawe asked.

It’s what, sixth bell over there? Calvin thought, glancing at the moon crossing the sky. Yes, but wait until an appropriate time. I want this to seem more like a regular habit of yours than a desperate need. People catch on to things like that.

As you wish, Ravager.

In the meantime, if they came across problems, Ella would most likely loan him some Bent.

Loan? You can’t exactly give it back, Elliot said.

You know what I mean, Calvin thought, running alongside Tzen and the others, retreating into his own mind as he did so, the mind-numbing running a good opportunity to settle into his own mind and contemplate his problems.

Sure, his creations were hard to dispel now, but Calvin wanted them to be extremely difficult to dispel. If he used Survival of the fittest to ‘breed’ successive generations of wasps to be more dispel resistant, he could produce a double whammy that made One’s little anti-magic obsolete.

Don’t get hung up on one thing, Calvin thought as he ran. I’ve gotta have other options as well. He needed more effective way of killing large numbers of enemies, preferably sans magic at the final destination.

Like the rods from god, except not quite so destructive.

Calvin couldn’t exactly round up that much Bent whenever he wanted, either.

Calvin’s mind kept meandering as he settled into a more casual relationship with the soldiers that were brave enough to approach him. The Bolesian hunters regarded him with an interesting mixture of fear and awe, and Calvin gradually figured out exactly how to relate with them on a one-to-one basis. It mostly involved not being angry at them when they interrupted his thoughts and treating them like their dumb questions were the first time he’d ever heard them.

“So you don’t need to eat?” the young hunter running alongside Calvin asked, head cocked..

“I don’t but it is fun,” Calvin said.

“Do you have to shit?” the one on his right chimed in.

“I don’t but it is fun,” Calvin repeated with a grin, causing the two of them to chuckle hard enough to fall out of pace with him.

Poop jokes are a human constant.

After an entire night and day of running, Clavin’s Bent began to tick up as Kurawe scraped it together for him, reaching twelve Bent just before they skidded to a halt outside the city of Shunzein.

Like all Bolesian cities, it was protected by a wall of enormous proportions, stretching fifty feet into the air and forcing a man to crane his neck to see the top of it.

The walls were deliberately smoothed to keep beasts and men from scaling it, and massive silk streamers were draped from the top of the wall, in a magnificent display of wealth, declaring in great big red and gold letters, that the Hapain clan had sovereignty over the city.

The gates were closed, and all they could see of the people were the tops of helmets pacing the wall. A few of them seemed to be clustering around Calvin’s side of the wall, possibly attracted by the hundred sweaty men and women approaching on foot.

“Damn, I’d hoped that one or more of my brother’s armies would be here,” Tzen said, scowling. “With their aid, this would be a lot more possible.”

“This is where the Hapain clan is centered?” Calvin asked, pointing. Tzen nodded. “The ones that sold the drug that took over peoples minds and made them turn against their nation?”

“Yes, what are you getting at?” Tzen asked.

“I just wanted to be absolutely sure I had the right place. Part of the royal charter is an obligation to eliminate infestations that are beyond the ken of mortal man, and I think this qualifies.”

“You think you can singlehandedly conquer a city?” Tzen asked.

“Remember Uleis?” Calvin asked.

“That was you!?” Tzen erupted, gathering attention from the others

“Shhhh,” Calvin shushed, glancing around. He was just starting to get these people to open up to him with poop jokes, if they knew he could glass entire cities, they would be afraid of him again.

“Yeah that was me, It’s a bit of a state secret though.”

Tzen’s surprise faded. “Turning a city into glass isn’t the same as conquering it.” He said dryly.

“You think I don’t know that?” Calvin asked. “Trust me, I learned a few things after that, and I would much rather not kill innocent people if I don’t have to. I’ve got an idea that should work to both separate the culprits from the innocent and rid ourselves of the threat.”

“By all means,” Tzen said, motioning for him to continue.

“Thank you,” Calvin said, rolling up his sleeves.

Ah, that would do it. Calvin thought.

Shaping.

11/54 Bent remaining.

Calvin created a massive plane of Abyssal steel, standing twenty feet high and wide, it was surrounded by a funnel-like length that would focus the blast toward the city.

Calvin cleared his throat.

Trait doctoring

Frequency

10/54 Bent remaining.

“Testing, Testing…There we go.”

Calvin’s voice blasted out of the impromptu loudspeaker at a volume that forced those around him to clap their hands over their ears.

“Greetings citizens of Shunzein. This is the army of the Forty-second imperial prince, and we are here to cleanse the corruption that has taken root in your city. When the walls come down, Please form two orderly lines. Civilians who have never taken Unity line up to receive full pardons on my left, and everyone else line up to my right for orderly disposal. Thank you.”

“That was your plan?” Tzen asked, taking his hands off his ears. “That won’t accomplish anything but inform them that they’re being attacked.”

“It’ll let the citizens know we’re willing to –whoops, forgot to turn the thingy off.”

Calvin dismissed the spell and faced Tzen. “It’ll give a few people a reason to surrender. That accomplished something, didn’t it? I know finding a citizen in the city that‘s still alive and hasn’t taken Unity is a long shot, but I really don’t want to miss them.”

Tzen shook his head with a half-smile. “Well, how exactly to you plan on having the wall ‘come down?’

“Let me do some quick math…” Calvin said, staring at the wall.

M*necraft debug menu

The material of the wall was displayed as well as its height in easy to read chunks.

Calvin spent another Bent to fly up and check the width of the wall, which was two meters deep.

Okay, the density is 2515 kilograms per cubic meter, then we multiply by the height, width, and the kilos to pounds conversion…

Calvin motioned to the wall angrily. “Did you know that a one-meter slice of that wall is a hundred and eighty eight thousand pounds?”

“Stone is heavy. Does that mean you can’t do it?” Tzen asked, crossing his arms.

“Pfft.” Calvin snorted. “Just have to get creative.”

Calvin scrapped his plan of having the wall melt into a staircase that he would ascend with pomp and circumstance and focused on maximizing effect.

Calvin targeted eight one-inch thick slices of the wall, curved in such a way that they would slide away from the wall, causing the entire thing to create a ramp out of the former wall.

Trait doctoring

Viscosity

8/54 Bent remaining.

There must have been some kind of enchantment that was intended to stop just such a thing, but it only held against Calvin’s Bent for a moment before he punched through the resistance like a sharp blade through leather, enacting the changes on the stone.

With a grating rumble that shook the ground, stone slid away from the wall, which then collapsed on top of the sliding ramp, creating a rough pile of rubble where once was a magnificent wall.

“By the divine beasts, you are a force to be reckoned with,” Tzen breathed.

Calvin decided not to tell Tzen that he’d been going for a clean ramp with cool spires sticking off the sides and just accept the adoration.

“You can tell by the look on his face, it didn’t work the way he wanted it to.” Learner said with a mischievous smile, obviously her human half being a brat.

“I admit nothing,” Calvin said as arrows began to rain down around him, split like rain around an umbrella as they impacted against his Beli Ma.

Calvinian Summoning

Chimera

Atom Ant

7/54 Bent remaining.

Calvin summoned a hundred Battle-Form Kurawe, complete with monster organs and the know-how to use them.

“Kurawe, assist Tzen in conquering Shunzein, obey his orders, and try to minimize casualties on our side.”

“Yes Ravager,” the hundred nondescript Uleisian men bowed before turning as one to face Tzen.

“What are your orders, Prince?” Kurawe asked.

“You’re not going yourself?”

“I said I would give you generous support. Not do everything for you,” Calvin said with a smile.

“Just a hundred men?”

“Their power isn’t quite on par with a true Legend, but they should tear through Veterans like a Bokker through a paper door.”

Tzen glanced at his men, then at the Kurawe clones.

“Creatures, you will form a vanguard and assist in pushing into Shunzein proper.”

“Understood.” Kurawe nodded, forming a line facing the rocky slope that used to be the east-facing wall. The top of the pile was swarming with Hapain soldiers trying to form some manner of defensive line on the rough ground.

“Gentlemen,” Tzen said, addressing his troops. “I hope you enjoyed that lovely stroll through the woods, because now we get to the hard part. The Hapain clan is in league with the monsters nipping at our heels, manipulated into weakening our country to make it easy pickings. They are a gangrenous limb that must be amputated if we are to survive. This battle isn’t just for me, it’s for your family. Your parents, your children. If we don’t stop this rot here, every one of them will die! Are you ready!?”

“RAAH!” The beleaguered hunters gave a wild cry of enthusiasm.

Not a single poop joke. Plenty of similes, though, Calvin thought, taking mental notes.

“Line up behind the Elder’s summons and prepare for the fight of your life!”

Calvin felt a tap on his shoulder and glanced over to spot Ella bouncing on the balls of her feet, looking at him expectantly.

“What?” Calvin asked, glancing at her eager demeanor, like an animal that can’t wait to go outside after a long winter. Calvin had to harden his heart.

“No, you can’t go, I need someone here to protect me if I run out of Bent or get disabled. The last battle we were in made that perfectly clear.”

Ella wilted somewhat, until Learner called from Calvin’s other side.

“I can keep an eye on him.” Learner said. “While I understand the necessity of it in this instance, inter-human violence sickens me.”

Ella’s eyes lit up, and she glanced back at Calvin wordlessly, eyebrows raised.

“Fine, you can go kill people,” Calvin sighed, motioning for her to leave. Ella pinched his cheek before heading up, joining the line of people charging up the rocky slope into the waiting arms of the Hapain clan.

Even from here, Calvin could tell Tzen’s men were outnumbered by a large margain, fifty-to-one at the very least, with the way the little line of people faded into the background of the massive, debris-filled ramp topped with soldiers.

Between Tzen’s mercs all being veterans at minimum, and Kurawe safeguarding them, Calvin wasn’t too worried.

“Learner, I’m glad you’re the one guarding me, because there was something important I wanted to talk to you about.” Calvin said, turning away from watching the battle, the ring of steel against steel barely crossing the distance to him.

“What’s that?” Learner asked shyly, her dark skin reddening nearly imperceptibly.

“I wanted to see if it was possible to isolate the weakness to beeswax in my blood and use it as a weapon.”

Like someone had entered her mind and flipped the one in control, Learner’s posture became neutral, the natural cracks in her mental state sealing up instantly.

The eldritch creature was in control.

“That’s an interesting question. How would we go about doing that?”

“I was thinking take some of my experimental beeswax, run my blood through several filtering mechanisms and see if we can produce a marked increase in the energy displayed when the substance makes contact with beeswax, indicating the effect has been concentrated, if not isolated.”

Learner tilted her head and gave Calvin a genuine smile, a few of the natural cracks reappearing in her mentality.

“That sounds fun.”

Calvin slipped his laboratory off of his belt and turned the vial upside down, dumping the teaspoon of undifferentiated matter out onto the grass.

Calvin’s wagon of supplies and all of his workbenches and tools appeared in the middle of the field, just a few hundred feet away from where Tzen was struggling for his life to take the city away from the enemy clan.

Calvinian summoning

Chimera

Atom Ant

6/54 Bent remaining.

“I almost forgot,” Calvin said to the hundred Kurawe standing around him. “Could you grab all the monsters nearby and feed them into this flask?” He asked, handing the closest one his. “A few thousand would be best, but try not to completely remove a species.”

Kurawe raised a brow.

“Emergency Warp.”

“Ah. As you wish, Ravager.”

The hundred Kurawe dashed out into the forest while Calvin faced the battlefield and smelled the Warp drifting toward him on the wind.

This might get Tzen his next Break, Calvin thought as he and Learner approached his bloodwork bench.

Calvin sat down and watched the fight progress while Learner slipped an Abyssal Steel needle into his vein, slowly filling the nearby vial with purple blood.

“And seriously, don’t try and taste it this time.”

“I already blocked my olfactory, so we should be safe this time,” Learner said, humming as she worked.