“I hate politics at times like this the most,” the de facto dictator of Marscione sighed. His name was Cromwell. He loved his city, enough to take it over. He was sitting on a small chair with his elbow on a windowsill in the castle of Marscione, looking out over the wide rivers and small outcroppings of city with touches of trees spanning into the horizon.

He turned to look at Vicomte, his chief economist, personal secret savior, and a renowned noble of honor and skill who had no problem helping others at the drop of the hat. Vicomte was annoyed when others didn’t respect his experience though, like Cromwell did.

“Remember this for the next time we lose a border town. I told you the tariffs were just like casting a flame unique magic on quicksilver. Giving Dunkirk a casus belli they could show to Grun, that was a huge mistake. I don’t know why or how they flooded the city though, that's unexpected.”

The dictator rubbed his face with both hands. Just how many times was he going to make the same mistake? He would get all wrapped up in a new plan, be running around doing his best to pull it all together, then something would blow up. When everything was in trouble and his aides were slathering him with lies, he’d call Vicomte. Vicomte could remind Cromwell of every single time and would do so with excruciating detail. In the end, the dictator would silently admit he was wrong and get hailed as genius for pulling everything together in the end.

The credit was stolen from Vicomte brazenly, but Vicomte was playing this political game with many, many partners and people for years and years in trade and government. Getting credit for your work was a choice for him, and he made it carefully. Being the emergency call for when Cromwell had messed up again was good enough tender to keep his businesses flourishing and his head attached.

Cromwell was about to grumble uselessly when three sharp knocks hit the door. He motioned to Vicomte to open it, usually he had guards to order about but this was ‘personal advice’ time.

A guard with light leather armor stepped in and handed a sigil bird to Vicomte. It was silver, and had the Dunkirk mark. The guard left and Vicomte closed the door.

Vicomte gave Cromwell a look asking, ‘Hey, I can just open this right? You want me to summarize the contents anyways,’ and Cromwell understood it perfectly even without ‘Spirit Communication’.

Vicomte cracked open the bird and pulled out a long paper cylinder. He shut the bird by pure reflex and unrolled the cylinder into a strip. It was in Marscione’s language, from Baqashot. Vicomte kept a close eye on it to see if it was a forgery. Just packaged with a purposely marked Dunkirk sigil bird and being from Baqashot, the mayor of Aleppo which was currently flooded with the Dunkirk army nearby was enough of a statement. He could just toss it aside now and tell Cromwell that it’s as expected and they would have to give up.

Except the contents were staggering. Baqashot claimed he had allied with Dunkirk through the emissary Dun due to the recent economic actions of Marscione, he decided that Dunkirk was a better choice. The army was requested to come to aid in aiding the flood. Something was off there, he could see it perfectly. The army had no way to gather and move from Dunkirk to Aleppo in time unless they knew the flood was coming beforehand. However, since it was the mayor saying this that he had already allied with Dunkirk for political reasons it was clearly a setup.

Either way, Baqashot was on Dunkirk’s side and it didn’t seem to be capitulation at all. Vicomte did not know that Baqashot was indeed capitulated, but mostly through just being tired of the stress of the job and the actions of Cromwell.

“Seems like Baqashot is definitely on Dunkirk’s side. Since you forced the border towns this far already, this is the result.”

Cromwell already knew what that meant.

“So it’s war then. The cost is going to be staggering. If only Baqashot just croaked in that flood we might have just had a silent takeover thanks to that flood. I wouldn’t envy that fight Aleppo would have had on their hands, but looks like it's ours now.”

“It’s good you understood. With this, the border towns who are already being pressured by Dunkirk and your trade policies will see even more merit in allying with Dunkirk. At this rate, we’ll lose the buffer of the border towns entirely and then it’s only a matter of time before Grunkirk itself calls for an invasion of Marscione.”

“All my mistakes finally caught up with me huh? Endangering the whole future of the city-state, losing our national sovereignty,” he was tired. Vicomte couldn’t fix this.

“There is another option, sir,” as Vicomte noticed that Cromwell was at his weakest possible point he decided to unleash his final gambit. Cromwell’s pride was the enemy here, his love of the city-state he conquered with cloak and dagger tactics and his constant refusal to take advice until it was too late. Marscione may perish, but the people and culture will live on. Vicomte would see to that.

“We can surrender.”

=====

Arge was exhausted lying on the plain with a red identification crystal. With so little energy himself, he was lucky he could use ‘Hard Headed’ for no cost to him. He went over his mastered unique magics in his mind. He concentrated on his identification crystal and asked it to pull up the information, also checking his status totals and level at the same time. He was at one health.

Looks like the safety for the identification crystal kicked in when he went all out casting ‘Stone Self’. He figured he was closer to mastering it now, but was disappointed with a brief scan of his list. He didn’t level up. Arge wished this thing talked to him, he heard that sometimes people with a good connection with their stones could hear when they learned new skills or spells.

He didn’t know that the only reason why was because it was embedded on the top of his gloved hand all the time.He wanted to keep it in his view. Many adventurer’s had the same misconception. Without extended skin contact and using the energy of the body directly at the same time this was impossible. It was something you had to intuitively discover for yourself.

“Argh...”

He groaned face first into the ground, playing dead in the grass. He had always wore dark clothing for his line of work, even when Slo kept complaining that it was dumb because the whole city was lighter colors. He didn’t want to tell her that it also made it easier for ‘Tingere Tenebris’ slip him into shadows. That was a strange quirk of that skill.

Of course that included blackening the shine out of his gladius which he lost and his shield which was still attached to his arm.

“Huh?”

As Arge’s mind was wandering again he saw a new skill. In addition to his usual mastered ‘Hard Headed’, ‘Ground Anchor’, ‘Free Anchor’, ‘Cowardly Retreat’, ‘Ardis Claddagh’, ‘Gladium Scelestam’, ‘Tingere Tenebris’, and ‘Sword Spear Shot’, there was another category.

‘Arts’.

Were he in better condition to be able to smile and jump around he still wouldn’t but a smile grew wide in his heart and he was face down in the plains hoping an army wouldn’t notice him.

He had heard of ‘Arts’. Earlier when he heard that red-brown haired girl say she had ‘Parry Arts’ he was interested. That was his first time hearing of that one. He always dreamed of having one, although many would be fine with just ‘Tingere Tenebris’ alone.

It was his day, finally. The name was perfect too. He wondered if because he was joking around in his mind during that fight with Timothy he was able to finally make this an ‘Arts’, because he certainly put the time in to get ‘Haggle Arts’.

He examined the ability closely. It was difficult for him to focus on it in his mind but after asking for a description several times over he was shown it.

A several part ‘Art’? This looks a lot like that red-brown haired girls spell. She had seven boxes, and said ‘1st Open’ so he assumed that all the other boxes had things inside too. This isn’t a spell though. ‘Arts’ and mastered unique magic could be used independent of the identification crystal. Plus, ‘Arts’ were highly valued and were often uncastable even with an identification crystal. It was thought that ‘only that person could master that ‘Arts’’ but that wasn’t the case.

‘Haggle Arts’ had four parts, Give In, Distract, Proposal, and Close. Apparently all of them were separate ‘Arts’ that comprised ‘Haggle Arts’. He heard that this was another specialty of ‘Arts’, you could get a few strong abilities just from getting one ‘Arts’. While he was ecstatic as someone like him possibly could be, a Dunkirk scout rode over on what looked like a giant pangolin. They were known by Arge as Pholidota, and it came with a sneering scout on the top.

Arge didn’t see this, as he was playing dead. Maybe he can get an ‘Arts’ for that if he does it long enough?

“There’s some corpse over here! I’m searching it!”

He called over to a nearby scout riding another Pholidota. The main force was thundering forward in the distance on all manner of heavy beasts, including a few Pilosa here and there.

“There doesn’t seem to be any blood, he must have drowned and got washed out by the flood, that was quite a sight, this is why I like the army. Never have to fight out here in Dunkirk either, boy did it ruin my day to see that dispatch order.”

He was monologuing as he felt like this was a chance to complain to someone who couldn’t talk back. The guard patted down his clothing and pulled out some money, undid the shield, and then pulled out the gloved hand that was hastily stuffed under Arge’s chest using a quick combination of ‘Free Anchor’ twice on each hand and then pulling them together so that the glove with the identification crystal would flop under his chest. Artfully done, he praised himself, although it felt like he detached one of his shoulders from the socket doing that. ‘Hard Headed’ kept the pain away.

“Huh, you’re still alive, this crystals red. Well, guess I’ll just kill you now then. Sorry about this, you know, war.”

Arge was now sweating. His quick and brilliant plan had failed. From the start, he thought, wouldn’t he flip him over anyways? Time to go to ‘Haggle Arts’. It was at this point that he would have died if he hadn’t spoken to someone with ‘Arts’ themselves once. The easy way to activate them was to just act like you did when you got them, like you were just doing it normally, and the effect would then activate and be greatly enhanced.

‘Haggle Arts’ Part 3rd, Proposal, he muttered in his mind and spoke up croaking a bit.

“You already took my money, I’m dying anyways. Just leave me alone.”

He wasn’t dying. The Health number on his status also went negative, which meant that your condition would likely head towards death if nothing was done. The security measure that caused magical overload to occur would be useless if it injured them past a the point where they could recover on their own. The thinking was that you could carry them back just fine if they needed to make a last stand, and if they really wanted to do a suicide attack they would have to at least shrug off the magical overload.

However, the scout seemed to buy it.

“This money isn’t enough for your life, throw in the shield too.”

The scout already had the shield in his hand though. It was like he was buying it at a store. This was a effect of the ‘Arts’. Normally, a person on the exact verge of almost dying would stop there. However, Arge was who he was and was excited. He also couldn’t feel pain thanks to ‘Hard Headed’, and was used to Chel’s excellent healing magic in the first place. This was his normal.

‘Haggle Arts’ Part 1st, Give In, he intoned.

“You can have 1 rukh for my shield. That's as high as I’ll go.”

“1 rukh for your shield? What a steal. I’ll take it!”

In this case Arge was selling the price of the item which he redirected to his life instead of the shield. The scout would get one rukh, and Arge would get his life. After all, the scout was just searching a corpse in the first place. Arge really wanted to steal the Philodata and his silver armor and use ‘Haggle Arts’ to mimic him to seize a chance to slip into the city during the attack but he couldn’t figure out how. Arge, to repeat, was not a thief. He had never stolen anything. He had haggled however. If permission is given, isn’t it fine? That’s how he thinks. This was merely a desperate time he thought, he would have had to do that if he was able to move at all. ‘Haggle Arts’ granted him the grace to finally live this philosophy to the fullest but-

Just how far can ‘Haggle Arts’ go?

A burning desire to see the full strength spread in his heart. He could talk, so he could haggle.

He wasn’t going to use ‘Tingere Tenebris’ in the Philodata’s shadow. Actually, the truth was that it hadn’t even occurred to him at this point since he was drunk on his new ‘Arts’.

‘Haggle arts’ Part 4th, Close.

“Here is your 1 rukh.”

He focused on himself when he said the word ‘here’. His physical body. As if he was making a transaction with the scout. The scout thought he was buying a shield at a store. The store was a corpse. The corpse was offering 1 rukh for the shield. The shield which he believed was a corpse was now his. The scout pocketed 1 rukh from the coin sack and put the actual shield back onto the corpse and returned the coin purse. These were items that he was not buying.

‘Haggle Arts’ had the scout completely confused as to the reality of the situation.

The scout lugged the shield up. It was extremely heavy. It must be a really good shield.

“Thanks mister corpse, with a shield like this, there’s no way I’ll die in this war!”

The shield was the corpse to him, so he was looking at it on Arge’s arm.

He pushed Arge onto the Philodata and then hefted himself up onto the beast. He thought it was best to keep the shield stored on the back since it was so heavy.

Arge’s plan worked beautifully. There was one final part though.

As the scout urged his Philodata forwards the scout he called to earlier pulled close with a questioning look.

“Why are you carrying the whole corpse with you? Weren’t you just going to loot it?”

“It’s my shield.”

“You can just take that shield off you know? Did the sun bake your brains?”

‘Haggle Arts’ Part 2nd, Distract, thank you for your business.

“I’m a shield,” Arge said, thinking of the shield on his arm.

The other scout made a face of realization.

“Oh, sorry about that, I didn’t see how big the shield was, that’s really strange. Maybe I’m thirsty.”

He pulled out a canteen as they were racing off the plains in the sun. It was cool outside.

“Nah, no problem. Hey, if you want to borrow this shield just let me know okay?”

Many wondered why there was a crazy scout carrying a corpse around on the back of his Philodata. Some just assumed he went mad from going into battle. When even a general heard about it and sent someone to check it out and report back, he told him

“It’s his shield.”

====

In the center of Aleppo Aschyli and Cosimo were jumping from roof to roof making their way in a semicircle toward the Adventurer’s Guild. Cosimo assumed that Aschyli wasn’t the type to ask questions of strangers but she was shooting ahead of him with her stage magic and and chatting people up left and right. Well, she was chatty, he did have to agree. He began to wonder why he didn’t like her when he saw her making friendly chat on a main central area. It seemed like her personality and even appearance changed when the stage magic was active. Cosimo wasn’t feeling tired at all as he easily carried Slo through the air jumping roof to roof. Aschyli flew on by and motioned for him to stop.

“There’s no need to go to the Guild. They have camp on the roofs setup. A passing friendly dragon is helping. I found one over there. Looks like the act is already over. Let’s go.”

He followed her without complaint. ‘Act is already over’, guess they were out long enough for the people to organize. That dragon, it became harder to doubt it was anyone but Timothy, probably helped that along quite a bit. He figured he would help where he could though, he did just acquire some sort of body enhancement.

At the back of his mind he was worried about how he was becoming comfortable with Aschyli.

Cosimo reached the camp as Aschyli flew to talk to one out of a bunch of serious looking people handling a bunch of flying mechanical birds. He marveled at the sight as they glittered in the sun. About evening? It’s still light out. It looked like they were out for quite a bit.

He saw the dragon slash Timothy shooting off into the distance. He thought he would stop at the city limits but he skimmed straight over the wall. Where is he going? Cosimo wanted to ask someone but there was just an intimidating mass of metal birds and people casting spells. He waited on Aschyli. Cosimo hefted his body, checking to see if ‘Mediocre Force’ was still active. He flexed his left arm and felt the energy flow, then he flexed his right-

Oh wait he’s still carrying Slo. Couldn’t he drop her at the medical tent? He felt bad about leaving her here but he didn’t know when she was going to wake up, after all he had been jumping around through the air and she didn’t budge at all. Cosimo started to wander around. There were a few people carving the alabaster off a nearby dome capped building with some magical light and molding it into makeshift cots. He thought that it would be rather tough to lay on, so what was the point? That was until he saw someone using a green light on the etchings. They were pulling out vines from the alabaster. Then they handed they stacked the vines into piles near some others who were molding it into cots with more magic. He was amazed. Briefly forgetting that he had to put Slo down, he walked over to a young lady who was using a green light to pull on the strands etched into the alabaster.

“Hey, I’m from the country. That looks awesome, what are you doing?”

She looked up.

“Uh, hi. The cots are over there.”

Cosimo realized was she meant and walked off embarrassed. It was a failure. Was it all the years of acting that he completely forgot how to be a normal person? It actually was just Slo on his shoulder, but he wasn’t aware of that. It was much harder to change than he thought, even in another world. He felt a sense of foreboding as he laid Slo down carefully and put her hat under the cot to safeguard it. This was just like before.

Aschyli came calling. He thought people would find it strange that someone with such a strange magic was flying around but then he remembered where he was. People were flying around everywhere.

“Hey. Dragon went to go stop the oncoming army. Some old guy here said, ‘If he just buzzes them a little from the sky that might frighten them off.’”

Cosimo figured Timothy wasn’t invincible. From their short time together he didn’t seem to be hot headed at all.

Cosimo had no idea he was wrong.

=====

The army was shining in the distance as Timothy flew towards them.

“Is that a magical flying pilosa?”

“No way that’s a dragon.”

“Sir, should we retreat?”

“From that? It looks like a pilosa grew wings. Probably some experiment gone horribly wrong. What fearful magics hide in Aleppo…”

“Marscione has the Monodons, they are pretty smart. If we had to invade by sea, no doubt they would be the biggest threat. Wouldn’t surprise me if there was a breed of pilosa out there somewhere that was intelligent too.”

That was one guy in the corner with glasses talking to his friend. Yes, he was wearing glasses under a silver helmet riding a philodata.

“Well, I’m not stopping this invasion just for a magical flying pilosa.”

“What’s it going to do? Tongue us to death?”

A great flurry of discussion had broken out. No one was really impressed by what was coming at them. Although they were in low spirits thinking about how the war was basically over with the entire city flooded, the novelty of a flying pilosa coming at them brought joy to their hearts.

A certain scout raised his shield with a grunt.

“Defend yourselves men! He’s probably got some sort of magic that lets his tongue slice you half!”

Everyone around him, who thought that Arge was honestly a shield thanks to ‘Haggle Arts’ had a good laugh at that. No one was taking the pilosa seriously.

The soldiers further out, who thought that the corpse that was just being carried by a crazy soldier and were unaffected by ‘Haggle Arts’, had a good laugh at him. They weren’t taking him seriously.

Of course, at this point Timothy got a little mad as he saw them laughing at him as he flew in close from the top and began circling around. He couldn’t even a single one of them readying their weapons.

But then, a cheer broke out. One soldier, who was seriously hoping that he could just go back home and was in a good mood thinking that they would just act as aid to the flooded city, stood up on his philodata and began to cheer.

“Pilosa! Pilosa! Pilosa!”

His smile grew as he thought he was in such a ridiculous situation, but people started to feel it too. Why not just chant along? The general looked out at his army as they started cheering.

“Pilosa! Pilosa! Pilosa!”

He was old. He’d been through many wars. He had a faced etched with a permanent scowl. He smiled at them.

“Just what kind of battle is this. We’re marching on a city you know?”

He gave a laugh.

His aide who was no fun at all wanted to say something. He gathered up the courage after he realized he really was the only one thinking this at all.

“Sir, don’t we have to shoot it down?”

The general went back to his regular look.

“Seems that pilosa captured the hearts of everyone within a second. Remember this, you’ll never see something as ridiculous as this again in your life.”

=====

Timothy gave up a little seeing the spectacle as he still made passes over the troops. He wondered what was the point of him coming here.

Arge was being held up at the sky and Timothy and him caught eyes for a moment.

Timothy initially was disgusted but he saw the state Arge was in and instantly regretted everything. He then asked himself, imagining Willem, ‘Well what are you going to do about it?’

His tongue shot forward and looped around Arge. In the end, he wasn’t someone who could ignore someone in pain. He didn’t know about Arge’s ‘Hard Headed’ ability which could nullify pain, but even if he did he already didn’t regard him as much of a human being.

“This is just for myself at least,” he said to himself. He slapped Arge onto his back and flew off gaining altitude.

====

The cheering got louder before it finally subsided. There were yells of:

“He’s taking the corpse to the underworld!”

“Maybe he was just hungry?”

“That wasn’t one of us, where did he come from?”

“General, he’s attacked, should we shoot him?”

“That’s that corpse that crazy scout picked up to use as a shield, don’t be silly.”

“My shield! It was such a bargain too!”

“Pilosa! Come back here and give this man his shield back!”

====

Aeschyli and Cosimo were in a sub slash boat that was jammed straight into one of the alabaster domes present all over the city. If you took a boat, turned it upside down, flattened one side and added a deck, curved the other, it would look something like that. Basically just a sub. They were generally pretty small, the standard size was made to get under the low bridges of Aleppo after all. Whichever one was first, Cosimo didn’t know.

“Ah, someone’s behind this massive door. I’d need at least Act 2 for this. Can you save me the energy Cosimo?”

She had extremely good senses. This was why she asked him to go take a bath when he was under the effect of ‘Carpe Scaenam’.

“Can’t you use that flashy spell of yours for free yet?”

He jammed his hand into the door. Thick white colored metal. Didn’t even look silver. He made his hand into a spear and concentrated. One thing at a time. He pushed against it, then activated ‘Mediocre’. It softened like tofu. Surprised by the strength of the effect which wasn’t the same as the other buildings and subs he had bore through, he fell straight down with his head aiming for a wall.

“Gobo Contract. 2nd Open. Snowdrop Minuet.”

He froze in midair. Righting himself, he thanked Aeschyli and noted she was wide-eyed as usual, but it seems like her voice was losing strength. Getting over the shock he pulled up an unconscious man and jumped up with him. As they were crawling out, he had to say it.

“Seems like you’re getting tired. This could get dangerous if you continue on, go on and head back. Looks like the worst is over anyways.”

“You could tell? I’m not used to staying in high energy mode for so long. But if you say so-”

She had him dead to rights at this point. She wasn’t tired at all, but she was on stage so playing a role was normal. The pilosa was within her grasp.

If Cosimo had ‘Soul Communication’ and chose to read her at this point her dark designs would be quite adorable to him.

He watched her fly off with her third open, which sped her up.

Leaping towards the next building he felt limitless energy, a result of his ‘Average’ ability. Thinking he might just join up with the next group, he saw Timothy coming in and Cosimo waved as if flagging down a plane.

“Hey!”

He felt the vocal muscles in his throat and directed ‘Mediocre Force’ into them. He had no idea if that would work, but it was worth a shot.

“Timothy!”

The pilosa heard him. Although Timothy was disappointed that he didn’t get to fight a human army head on, there were still two mysteries left. Cosimo’s identity and what caused the flood of Aleppo.

Timothy, with Arge still on his back, cast read with ‘Soul Communication’ on the tiny Cosimo.