Power.

It’s a strange thing, and it comes in many forms. Mana pressure and the ability to commit violence are two of the most fundamental expressions of power in this world, but this is not enough survive. Red is evidence enough of that.

Numbers can help, but alone, it’s not worth much. It would take a tremendous number of ants to overwhelm a human, even a child. It would take at least millions, and many, many more if the human isn’t first made vulnerable.

These control collars are yet another expression of power. Even someone as weak as I am, would be able to command Red to do as I please so long as these collars function in my favour.

So, what power do I have?

What can I use to achieve my goals? First, taking over this strange community calling themselves the ‘party of the fallen’, and second, forming my own empire to contend with the Unified States and whatever other threats exist out there.

I consider this problem as I mess around with Slimey. He’s surprisingly easy to deal with. So much so that I haven’t yet needed to give him any extra commands. Adler and Saren are standing by the door, just waiting for me to give a command so that they can judge me on it, so it’s a relief that Slimey isn’t doing anything that would require me to do what they want.

For all my efforts trying to talk with him, either he can’t communicate through the support device, or he holds a grudge and is giving me the silent treatment. He does shake and ripple in fright when I try to touch him, but I guess that’s to be expected. I did earn my ‘harsh petting’ Skill from subduing him after all.

I can feel that he’s considerably weaker than before, the mana inside a shadow of what was. Power that was his, is now mine.

Which I suppose is a good answer to my concerns.

My ability to consume mana at the rate that I do is powerful, but only so long as I can find something to feed off of. From my fight with the slime I was able to gain hundreds of units of mana, and that didn’t give me much more than a little heartburn.

Red has mana somewhere in the realm of the tens of thousands, and if I had the mana to ‘borrow’ I’d be able to catch up in a week, assuming I don’t have issues. I am still going to run into issues, nothing in this world ever comes easy—even when you can cheat—but I’ll get through it somehow, and continue to grow.

Thus, my short-term goal is to find something bursting with mana that I can feed on.

Without any unfortunate surprises, class comes to its end, and time comes to leave Slimey behind. If I perform well enough in class I might one day be allowed to bring him around with me, but I don’t expect my life to follow such an easy path.

Unfortunately, my time is limited, and Red’s even more so. I am going to save her, which means I’m going to have to get strong enough to save her in record time.

With that in mind, I’ve finally managed to track down someone that I’ve been meaning to contact for a while now.

“Saya, how have these alien lands been treating you?” I ask the familiar young human. I haven’t seen her or the other humans since they were dragged, barely conscious, out of the talent testing room.

It’s a little strange to be seeing another human around, not someone nearly human, or similar to a human, but a genuinely Earth-born human-human.

“It has been quite pleasant actually. Since developing a functional mana form, I’ve encountered no other problems here.” She replies.

“Lucky you, enjoy it while it lasts.” I say, putting my arm around her shoulder and walking close by her side. “Are the rest of our Earthlings still sticking together?”

“Eh… ah, yes. We’ve taken up residence in the same building, some are having difficulties accepting the other species, especially the stranger sorts.” She replies, discussing her own issues with some small measure of frustrations.

I’ve asked Vii and Eshya to keep Adler busy to give me this opportunity, but I don’t know how much time I’m going to have.

“You don’t have any welfare officers keeping watch over you?” I ask.

“We’ve had them check on us occasionally, is that a problem?”

“Depends.” I reply, thinking back on what I’ve learned this last little while, “Do you have anyone skipping class? Or not focusing on their talents?”

“As I said, there are a few that have trouble facing the other species here. They don’t leave much. As for talents, I know a few who are focusing on something else, why?”

“Go to class and follow your talents.” I tell her firmly. I try to explain things to her and I quickly get carried away telling her everything I can think of that would possibly cause her trouble.

I tell her about the welfare officers, the monsters under the academy, the beast taming class, and what I know about the Unified States as a whole. Even severely truncated, the speech takes nearly an hour to finish, and I have to take a moment to wet my throat after.

I drink from a nearby drinking fountain; literally a big, wide, tall fountain filled with purified water that it shoots into the sky and gathers in a pool by the base.

“Kyra,” Saya says, “Thank you, I… I’ll need to go tell the others. Many are still quite troubled, but they will only get worse if someone is taken away for skipping class.”

“Not a problem, but there was something I was wanting to ask of you. I need to know if anyone knows how to make guns. Even better if they have a ‘talent’ that would help with the making of them.”

“You want one of us to make you a gun?”

“Guns. Plural.” I reply simply, “I need some help making weapons.”

She freezes up at my bold statement.

“Why?” She asks, “What do you want to use them for?”

“I didn’t say? I’m a combat course student.” I tell her, “I’m going out and fighting monsters because that’s what the welfare officers have told me to do.”

“That’s all you’re going to use them for?” She asks, growing a little cautious.

“No.” I say flatly, “Some of you are going to end up on the wrong end of my beast taming classes. There are a few nervous wrecks holed up in their rooms, you say? They’re going to end up victims of the welfare officers, and possibly ‘recycled’, though mana-less as they are, they’ll probably just be made into fertilizer.”

She swallows, meeting my eyes as she balls up her fists.

“Everyone can do as they want. It’s your life to lose.” I reply, “Me? I’m not laying down and waiting for someone else to decide that I’m too beastly to live. So, guns.”

“Why guns?” She asks swallowing back her panic, she was brave and strong when I met her on the ship and that doesn’t seem to have changed. “There’s magic and so much else here, what can a gun even do?”

“Rate of fire, and accuracy.” I tell her simply, “If I could grab a gun from back on Earth, all I’d need to do is ram some mana into the bullets and it’d immediately be useful for those reasons alone. Actually design it and forge it with mana and magic in mind, and then I’ll be cooking with napalm.”

“You aren’t going to get us in trouble with the welfare officers, are you?” She asks me, meeting my eyes and not looking away.

“On the contrary, I might just save your lives.” I say, “Just focus on working on the gun designs at the moment. I’ll see about getting some space in the ruins below where you can send the people who worry you. If the welfare officers ignore the beasts down there, maybe they’ll ignore a few ‘beastly’ humans too.”

“I… alright. I’ll see what I can do,” she says.

After trading metaphoric phone numbers on our not-phones, she promises to keep in contact before racing back to her own home, an apartment she shares with the rest of the human students.

Afterwards, I join everyone else for dinner and we go over our final plans for meeting with the journalism club. Just more contacts and connections to use. Knowledge and numbers that can be made into power.

“We’ll all go.” Nel suggests, “I’ve been speaking with a few others, and I suspect that the fallen listener from that secret society might be the leader of the journalism club.”

“The fallen listener, who will ask many things, I guess that fits a proper journalist.” I say, thinking it over, “But is information on the fallen really that openly available?”

“Honestly, it didn’t seem that much of a secret.” Nel says hesitantly, “People weren’t entirely open about it, but it feels more like something we’re meant to discover for ourselves, rather than something that is meant to be actually hidden.”

“So, you think we should all go? So that we can all make an impression on this person if they are indeed a part of this strange cult?” I ask.

“Yes,” She replies, “I’m sure that it would cause less issue if we all introduce ourselves together rather than having to prove ourselves separately. Of course, we have no guarantee that they’ll be amenable to such a thing, but I think it worth the risk.”

“Is everyone okay with that?” I ask.

“So long as it’s a one-time deal.” Eshya replies, “I really don’t want to be dealing with some journalism club every week. I mean, I’ll do it if I have to, but I’d really rather not.”

“I’ll follow along for anything!” Vii declares cheerfully, “I’d actually like to get a hold of a bunch of their stories if I can.”

“Alright then, does anyone know where we’re going?” I ask.

Thankfully Nel expected me to be clueless on that point and she leads us away to the club with the confidence of someone who’s actually asked directions.

“It won’t be a problem that you’re not a student?” I ask her as we head to one of the buildings on the ground, rather than on the island. Darkness is falling over the world around us, and rather few people are still walking around.

“It shouldn’t. This party of the fallen doesn’t seem restricted to students, and I’m sure that the journalists would be more than happy to speak with all of us. Our story is something they’ve already shown interest in, if you recall.”

“Ah, yes, that.” I’d almost forgotten how much interest they had in our story from among the rebels. “Adler, how much of a problem is it to tell our story through the journalist… ah what was it, a club? Group?”

“A club translates fine.” Adler says, “And again, I’m not supposed to say. What do you think the right thing to do is?”

“I don’t know, what do you think the right thing to do is?” I reply, facing her seriously.

“It’s for you to figure out.”

“And you to judge, can’t you at least share your personal thoughts?” I ask, “Clear communication is important in relationships, Adler. Our friendship will never develop properly like this.”

“What’s that got to do with things?” She asks, sounding slightly offended, “It’s part of my job. I can’t say certain things about my work as a welfare officer. I’m sorry if it bothers you so much, but it’s how things are.

“I can answer anything else, but nothing about my work including what you should and shouldn’t do.” She explains.

“So, what am I supposed to teach Slimey? ‘Oh, hey little buddy. I’m meant to teach you how to act, but I don’t even know what I’m supposed to teach you, sorry, you’re going to get made into a potion.’”

“This system works, just… please try and play your part in this. I promise everything will be fine, alright.”

I let out a long sigh, looking over to her briefly, “Anything?”

“Sorry?”

“You said you can answer anything else, do you mean anything?” I ask her seriously as we head down the hall. The others are chatting, but clearly listening in to my conversation.

“Yes.” She says with all too much confidence.

“When was the last time you got laid?”

“Eh?” Adler freezes, choking out her response.

“Did that not translate? When was the last time you’ve had sex?” I ask her, “You said anything. I want to know if I can trust you.”

“How does that have anything to do with trusting me?” She asks.

“I want to know I can trust your word. You said anything, and so I’m testing you. You’ve tested us plenty already and compared to having us thrown into fights with violent beasts, I think this should be easy,” I say. It’s not my best argument, but her position is so weak that I don’t need anything much more.

“Fine.” She hisses quietly, lowering her head without looking at me, “Never. I’ve never had a sexual or romantic relationship.”

I nod. It makes sense. It’s not like I’ve had that much experience before coming here, either.

Her hands are trembling by her side and her ears are twitching here and there, but her expression remains stiff. She’s biting her lip, and seems about ready to either break into screams, or break down crying.

“Good.” I reply, panicking as she looks sharply up at me, “Not- I don’t mean- It’s good that you’re answering openly. That you’re not just trying to keep a distance from us.”

“What do you mean?” She asks, seeming genuinely confused, but calming down a little.

“What I mean is that I’d like you to open up a little. For us to get to know each other, and get along, so that we don’t get suspicious of each other and start plotting things. You know like… what’s it called? Stockholm syndrome!” I say the last before I can stop myself, but however it passes through the translator she doesn’t seem bothered by it.

“I think I get it.” She says, sounding a little less stiff, “Like you said before in the restaurant, we should be friends, right?”

“That, exactly.” I say, pulling her close by her shoulder, “And friends don’t hurt each other.”

She nods quietly, smiling slightly.

She’s a loner. I really should have pressed this point harder before. Too many distractions are stealing my attention, damn it. I’ll convert this cute little supervisor to my side, then we’ll be free to do everything and anything we want to.

When we climb up to the second floor of the building and enter into a well-lit room, I notice a semi-circle of desks with seated students vigorously discussing something. They quiet before I can make any sense of it.

In the centre of the group all is a genuinely massive young woman.

Not fat, in fact her figure seems almost perfect, rounded in all the right places, but she is big. While she’s sitting, I can see eye to eye, and I can finally realize why most of the classrooms have high ceilings and tall doors. Even setting aside her size, she’s clearly not elvish, lacking the strange atmosphere of ‘life’ that they exude, not to mention that her skin is far too leathery.

Beside her is the journalist club girl I met in the restaurant. She’s still got her eyes firmly shut for whatever reason, but seems perfectly able to see regardless. Ysalda I think her name was?

“Hello, I’m Pom. You must be Kyra, Vii, Eshya, Nel, and Adler.” She says the last with a sarcastic affection that Chip doesn’t miss, “I’m the president of the journalism club. It’s a pleasure to have you all here. I’ve heard that you have a story to pitch.”

I pass along a large sheet of yellowed paper on which we prepared our fake story. It’s humorous by design, or at least filled with attempted humour. It’s a satire interview of a supposed ‘ghost’ whose been hanging around in the ruins.

“Is this the story that you want to submit?” She asks after a quick reading, giving nothing of her impressions as she meets my gaze.

“That depends.” I reply, “When writing that, I’d thought that the underground ruins were something unexplored, and that it might be dangerous to mention them. Now, I’m not quite so sure. How much of an open secret are they?”

Adler jumps at my side, and the others glance my way in surprise. I haven’t had the chance to bring this point up with them yet.

Pom hums to herself as she watches me. I get the feeling that her silence is more for effect than anything else.

“It is well known among a certain subsection of this academy.” She says, “Those who don’t wish to know, will not hear of it no matter how loud you shout.”

“So, a more truthful representation wouldn’t end up with me being a permanent fixture in the beast taming class?”

“Perhaps, perhaps not. You’re in a curious position since you already have a welfare officer at your side.” She smiles at Adler, “You are at once closer and farther from that fate than you may think. In any case, there is a more… selective publication where your story might be told with less foreseeable consequences.”

“The fallen?” I ask, and she sighs.

“Could you please not say it so openly.” She asks.

“Might be too late. Adler’s already here with us. She’s already well aware of ‘the party of the fallen’.”

“It is no matter.” Pom replies, “But I would ask that you not speak about the party so openly.”

“It’s no matter?” I ask, glancing over at Adler who seems as confused as I am.

“Not at all.” She replies, “The welfare officers aren’t as much a bother when you know how to deal with them.”

“You know their rules? You don’t have to worry?” I am suddenly much, much more interested in their little group.

“Now, now, calm down. You still have yet to earn my trust.” She smiles down her nose at me, “So what do you have to say about the story.”

“I’d like to offer you that first story for open publication, but I have another for the more limited print.” I explain.

“Good, good. When will you have it ready by? People are always so interested in special stories. Especially by those who walk the dangerous paths.”

“The dangerous paths?”

“Oh? I said that?” She’s clearly pretending and making no effort to hide the fact. Perhaps there’s another entrance into the underground ruins. If there’s safer paths, then it would make sense, as most students here aren’t the most competent at dealing with beasts.

“How long of a story are you after? Would the audience appreciate descriptions of the beasts we faced? All of which we defeated with the proper decorum,” I add, giving Adler a smile.

“Beasts? Yes, you and yours are of the combat breed, aren’t you?” She smiles as she mumbles thoughtfully, “All the better. Neither length nor violence is an obstacle to a good story.”

“A few days then.” I reply, “Should I message it to you?”

“No. Such matters are best dealt with in the more physical realm. To tell you the truth I don’t fully trust the messages system, I’ve tried to contact the creator through the help function but I’ve not once received reply.

“Who knows what nature of business he gets up to, reading every message that catches his eye, or whatever else he does.”

I can assure you he’s too busy not doing his job to get any spying done, but best not share that particular titbit.

“So, are you interested in joining the club formally? Your fluffy story was well enough written, though I might have someone teach you how best to abuse the translators before you’re given your next task.”

“I’m not sure I’ll have the time, but what’s this about abusing the translators?”

“Your skills with language are of no real matter once you’ve been equipped with a translator. In fact, among first and second grade civilisations like mine, it’s common for children to be equipped with translators. The end result is that there is no actual proper language any longer.

“Singing lessons are taken rather seriously just to keep one’s voice healthy because of it. If these devices were to suddenly stop working, I fear for what would happen. We’d all lose our ability to communicate entirely.”

I blink a few times.

She’s claiming to be speaking gibberish, or more accurately her own unique language. I’ve heard stories about close siblings who develop their own language to use between them, but this is the next level.

Everyone who was given translators as babies, are now speaking their own fully fleshed out languages that no one else would ever understand. It’s absurd and makes my more chaotic self so very tempted to find some way to shut them all down at once.

“In any case, was there anything you would like to know about this club, or this academy?” She asks.

“Anything?” I ask, and Adler jolts to awareness beside me, glaring my way.

“You may ask anything.” She replies with a smile, “Though I will decide whether or not to answer.”

“Are you the listener?”

She smiles vaguely, “If you bring in that interesting story of yours, you might earn my trust enough to find out.”

“What of the scholar, the smith, and the songbird?” I ask.

“The latter two you can find through little enough effort, so I won’t interfere. The former… what should I say?” She thumbs at her chin in thought, “Look for someone who knows beasts better than any other and will speak on them for hours on end when not interrupted.”

“The bestiary studies teacher?” Vii asks, perking up, and earning a disappointed sigh.

“Too easy. I was trying to make it difficult enough that you wouldn’t figure it out in a moment, but without leaving you running about bothering people all day tomorrow.” She shakes her head in disappointment, “I’ll have to work on it.”

“Do you have a collection of your old reports and stories?” Vii asks, bouncing in place with eagerness to dive in.

“Not accessible to you as of yet. Keep on your path and you’ll find what you seek.”

“Join the fallen whatever and I can look in your library? Got it.” She says, writing a few notes in her little red book.

“Are the first years like this every year?” She asks one of the other members who shrugs without much concern.

“No sense of mystery to them…” She sighs, and waves us away, “Go, go and come back with a proper attitude and a good story.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Stats & Skills

~Mana Form:

Current goal: Develop your mana form.

Current mana density: 395 units

~Mana distribution:

Skin: 21%

Muscle: 8%

Mind: 13%

Cardiovascular: 8%

Misc.: 3%

Efficiency: 53%

~Skills:

-Mana drain touch

-Mana skin

-Mana shield.

-Mana surge strike

-Mana surge kick

-Flame burst

-Fireball

-Infused delayed casting

-Harsh petting

-Chaos dance