That was a gruesome end to the fight, and Mash finally understood why people were so wary of him. Seeing someone eat a corpse that way was bloody and terrifying.

[Well, I think you won.]

Priscilla swelled with pride and replied to his message with a self-satisfied response. She really wanted to wipe away her earlier mistake.

[It was simple.]

He wouldn’t let her forget her mistake, for two reasons. One was practical. That mistake had cost her, well, her life even if it was just an extra body. Sure, it was something he might’ve done, but he hadn’t, and she had, and that was all that mattered.

[Says, the one that would’ve gotten killed if she was a real human.]

[I have never and will never be a mere human.]

She was quick with the reply, and Mash couldn’t really argue with that. She was fundamentally an existence that occupied countless number of bodies. To her, losing a body was a matter of course. That knowledge should’ve stopped him from mocking her, but he didn’t. Priscilla saw it as a mistake, and she couldn’t really lie to him about her emotions.

[Keep telling yourself that. What was that magic you used?]

He had never used darkness and didn’t think it was something that could be fashioned into a blade either. Reading his thoughts, she gave him a more complete answer.

[Darkness as you describe it, is just light but warped. It was a tool meant to suck in light and mana. The more mana and light it consumed the sharper and faster it became.]

She sent him a series of images to show him how exactly she constructed it. Mash, who had been expecting something simpler, was a little taken aback by the advanced magic. He could see how it was made, and the magic she had mixed to get the effect, but it was still insane to come up with that in the middle of a fight.

[Wow.]

There was nothing he could say to that. Priscilla’s pride swelled.

[Given enough time, you will come to understand mana as I do.]

Mash grinned, imagining that moment himself.

“What is making you grin? And I believe we should go after the other pirates before they flee.”

Lisa’s question shook Mash out of his silent conversation with Priscilla. He turned to her and smiled a little awkwardly. This wasn’t the first time something like this happened, and it definitely wouldn’t be the last.

“Sorry, I got distracted. Yeah, let’s do that. Let’s split up and meet up at the fort.”

Mash knew that Lisa was capable enough to win or survive against any of the people within the city. Plus, he wanted to give her as many opportunities to level as possible. Lisa didn’t argue. Just as he trusted her to handle herself, she trusted him to have her back. She was a good judge of character, better than he was, and would know who deserved mercy and who didn’t. Mash would just capture everyone he could and hand them over to the guards at the fort. Though the captains deserved no mercy.

The two separated, heading in different directions. As he guessed, none of the pirates could match up to the pirate that Priscilla had killed. Some of them had levels over 100, but like the captain, they felt unusually weak despite that fact. While fighting, he brought up the subject with Lisa, who actually had an idea why he felt that way.

She believed it had to do with class uniqueness and power. Mash, Lisa, and everyone he really knew had ‘rare’ if not completely unique classes. These pirates didn’t, and that left them without the same diversity in skills. She reminded him about how poor her previous class was, and just how much more versatility and power she got when she upgraded it.

He hadn’t considered that before, but now it was something he should look into. If he did have some power over the class system within his world, then he should try and make it better for the people there. Realizing that his thoughts were leading him back to the things he was specifically trying to avoid on this trip, he pushed those thoughts away and focused on the pirates.

It didn’t take them all that long to deal with the pirates. In the end, they had captured a decent amount of them. To his surprise, Lisa had been surprisingly ruthless when dealing with the pirates, and she had killed more than she had captured. Lisa said that they all deserved it and that he would’ve done the same if he knew what they did. Anger was a rare thing for Lisa, and it was almost always justified.

He didn’t say anything on the matter, and the two of them just headed to the fort. As Mash had wrapped most of the pirates in wooden shackles, he doubted any of them could break easily. That and some suppression from his aura was enough to stop any from trying anything. Their captain’s deaths probably encouraged them to surrender peacefully.

The fort they approached seemed a lot larger now that Mash was close to it. The two guards he had seen fighting before, stood before the fort’s entrance. Weary expressions marred their old faces. They had removed the helms that they had been wearing earlier, and Mash saw surprisingly friendly faces. Both guards had grey nearly white hair, and narrow eyes that barely revealed deep black iris. Wrinkled accented their pale skin, giving them the appearance of kind grandparents. The man on the left had a soft expression, while the woman on the right seemed stern and neat.

However, their incredibly thick-looking armor broke that image. They wore armor of interlocking thick plates, that blended shades of black and red to give it an odd appearance. The many interconnected plates gave their armor a skirt, and it jingled at even the slightest movement. Mash could tell that each plate was enchanted separately. He couldn’t help but wonder what kind of benefits that granted.

The two guards didn’t have their weapons drawn. Mash had been watching them from his domain and had seen them back out of the fight once they noticed Lisa and him. Mash approached as harmlessly as he could, though there was only so much he could do while dragging a group of pirates behind him. Mash tried to wave at the guards, but the two older people didn’t reciprocate the gesture. He turned to Lisa.

“Should we just walk up?”

Lisa shook her head quickly.

“I don’t think that’s the best decision. They probably saw us fly in from the ocean.”

Mash got the point.

“Right, we probably look pretty suspicious. But we caught the pirates.”

“Yes, but they might think we brought them here. More importantly, we, have not been delicate in handling the pirates.”

Unlike most people, Lisa was always thorough in her explanations and responses. And never did she hide her thoughts or ideas. That was one of the many things he appreciated about her. That gave him an idea too.

“You want to go talk to them first. Tell them what happened and stuff.”

Mash knew for a fact that he wasn’t the best at explaining things. Lisa was better at that and had far higher charisma than him too.

“Sure. I will tell Priscilla to call for you.”

Nodding his agreement, Mash turned to regard the large group of pirates behind him, while Lisa wandered forward. The pirates, all of whom were at least a little scuffed, kept avoiding his gaze. Mash noticed some of the pirates were looking up, and he turned to follow their gazes.

He stared up into a star-filled sky. He scanned the night, looking for what the pirates found so interesting. It took him a few seconds, but he finally noticed it. Beyond even the range of his domain, some of the stars in the sky were moving. Five white specks in the blackness of the night were steadily growing larger. No, not growing larger, but coming closer. He almost couldn’t believe his eyes and looked inward for some confirmation.

[You see that too, right? Do you think it’s an attack?]

His mind drifted toward the pirates again. Maybe they had some kind of leader, and this was their retribution. Rather than feeling annoyed, he felt a rush of excitement. While the past few days with Lisa had been enjoyable, he eagerly wanted to fight something powerful. Priscilla responded by outlining the trajectory of the stars as best as she could, and he saw one was aimed directly at him. He couldn’t stop the grin that parted his lips at the thought.

Someone who could call down the stars had to be powerful. Mash stared up and counted the seconds in his head as he waited for the stars to enter his domain. After seven long seconds, the first star breached his domain. The light from the stars quickly overcame the darkness of night, shining over the city like tiny suns. Even within his domain, Mash felt like the stars’ mana flooded the world around them.

Within one of the stars, the one aimed at him, he saw a figure. He could vaguely make out the shape of a man within the glowing mana that encased him. Mash jumped to the right, and as he expected, the star shifted its trajectory to match him. It took less than a second for the stars to hit the ground. Many of them struck large clumps of restrained pirates, killing dozens in flashes of brilliant light.

Mash didn’t have the time to care for them though, as the final star approached him. Mash held his ground, an idea popping into his head at the last moment. A quick message to Priscilla was all it took to get an outline.

Darkness covered his hand like a glove. An instant before the star-man struck him, Mash intercepted the blow. He pushed the hand shrouded by darkness through the falling star to grip the man’s wrist within. The light of the star dissolved breaking apart and getting sucked into the darkness.

Mash grabbed the man’s wrist spinning and throwing him headfirst into the ground. The man flipped in the air, landing on his knees, and skidding across the stone smoothly. He quickly hopped to his feet and Mash got a good look at the man. And Mash thought he knew who this was.

Not the person’s name or personality, but the reason he was here. He looked like a younger version of the male guard from earlier. The only noticeable difference is his hair. He had long black hair tied back into a long ponytail as opposed to the guard’s grey-white hair.

“Wait, I’m.”

Mash started to explain the situation, but the man didn’t care to listen. He was incensed, his face red and twisted by rage. The man lifted a hand, firing a beam of light toward Mash. The ground beneath the beam of light turned red and orange as it began to melt from the raw heat the attack produced.

Mash confidently raised his hand; the darkness still shrouded the limb like a glove. As he did, Mash felt something. An influence of some kind that reinforced the beam of light and pervaded the world around it. The sensation was oddly familiar. The answer struck him an instant before the beam did.

An aspect!