We mages had been training our magic control since we started and met because of it. Meditating and all that was done.
I held both my hands out and from my two doll like hands lightning crackled dangerously.
Around the mermaid, clean water was circling her making a dangerous sharp blade that spun around her.
“I’m ready,” she said.
“Fire at any time. I will send mine just as it reaches,” I replied.
The mermaid nodded and spun in a full circle. This caused the water to follow her movement. If I compared this to water bending from an old cartoon several years back it should be easier to understand. The graceful spin ended in a sharp swing of her arms horizontally.
The water circled around her and when she swung, half of the gathered water separated and flew at the open king clam.
I needed to time my attack just right. The water needed to still be in its blade when I fired or the elemental combo wouldn’t work.
An elemental combo was like any natural thing that reacted in a certain way with something else. Water with lighting is one example. Another would be flash freezing something with ice magic and rapidly heating with an intense fire. It would cause an even greater explosion as the ice rapidly heated and released oxygen from the breaking of the water molecules.
As the water blade began to reach the king clam, it began to close the shell. This was bad because the shell had lightning resistance which was a pain since until then we had been having an easier time.
I needed to wait but it didn’t take long. The ridiculously sharp water blade reached the pinkish meat inside and began to cut it. That was the cue for me to fire and I did just that.
I spread my hands making several bolts of lightning to shine in between my hands. I then aimed it forward and the lightning shot from my hands and flew right into both sides of the water blade. Though the water was ‘clean’, it was only to the point where it was drinkable. Because of that the lighting traveled with ease though the blade and right into the main body of the king clam electrocuting it.
The clamshell closed soon after, but the HP was already 0. The massive damage from lightning magic couldn’t be underestimated. It’s considered the most offensive of the magic systems if you focus on it.
Since I only have water and lighting magic, I can’t do much but train.
“Hahaha, now that was fun. Let's return to the chief to tell him the coast is clear,” the siren said.
“Why not first remove the two still intact shells which can become a shield for a tank we find later on,” the mermaid said.
“Why don’t you butcher the damn thing,” he complained.
“I’ll interrupt the love comedy here and do the work before it escalates,” I said jokingly.
“what love comedy?!” the two shouted.
They were the first people in a long time that I could joke around with. I still couldn’t get those looks Nathaniel gave me out of my head but until I could work up the courage to speak with him in real life, I had keep working on getting better in game. I lost a lot of my own self confidence so I had to remake myself as someone… hopefully better than I was.
“Go clean up the others we hunted today before they rot. The lesser shells are something the village can use for shields and maybe commodities.” I pointed to the other clams nearby.
Yeah for the moment living a simpler life away from my father was the best thing for me.
Techno PoV
I was in the draconian village staring down the two chiefs who were grinning mischievously. The draconian one was given a helmet so he could hear me.
“i will not take them with me.”
“You will because you deserve our biggest treasures.” The tiger chief grinned.
“i will not go with him! not even dead!” Annabeth shouted.
“You will because it’s already been decided,” the draconian replied to his daughter proudly.
“Man, I love it when Techno gets screwed ov—urg,” Bulk started to say but a large slightly red fist hit him square in the face making him collapse with a loud crash.
“If you want to get screwed that much then the next time I make a body for you, I will make a small puppy and put you in that and leave you to Nova,” I coldly said.
“I was kidding please nothing but a pathetic body like that!!” Bulk begged from the ground.
That was said to everyone that had the helmet and Nova as well. Hearing she would get a puppy after getting all her weapons and Proto taken away make her two eyes shine dangerously. A shiver could be seen going down Bulk’s gears and he understood his place.
“I really don’t see the problem with taking our daughters.” the draconian chief said.
“I already have enough crew members and don’t need more.” I replied.
“I see no magician or scout. Both our races fit the requirements if trained a bit in that direction.” the tiger chief said.
I really hated those two old men. I really wanted to screw them over big time for that but because of all that was going on, I was out of most of my ammo.
I’ll just make a note of it for a later date.
“I also think the same Techno, why not just accept the girls? These two will probably tell the girls something like they will be exiled or something if left behind and left to protect themselves,” Victor said.
The two girls turned pale and the old men frowned before looking away. It seemed he hit the bull’s eye on that one.
It really pissed me off seeing that. I was once again one-sidedly made to take troublesome people. First it was Gaia making the gnomes come aboard and flipping me. Now these old bastards and they planned to use such a cheap thing like that to make me sympathize.
I got annoyed to my limit.
“ahhh!” I roared in anger. “Do what you want!!”
I turned with both bodies and left everyone behind. With Menthol reaching the clockwork scrapyard in two days, I wanted to have bargaining chips with that damn hag so I could set these guys with at least a single ship to survive.
I really didn’t know why I was still going to do anything for them but I guessed my connection with Gaia would help out. Also adding two more races to the nation didn’t hurt. One was a tailoring race and the other was another magic race that is excellent with fire magic.
Nothing to lose and everything to gain when I could extort more stuff off Gaia for it.
I stayed in the ship the rest of the time we were on Menthol.
Annabeth PoV
“Ahhh! this sucks majorly!” I roared internally
I was so pissed off that I had to go with that insensitive bastard. Seriously, not only was he against it, when I was asking not to go, he was encouraging it.
The normal script would be for the person that gained the companions to make them want to go. Damn I hated it, the group was too weird.
I gave up eventually and packed all my things which wasn’t much.
After I moved everything into that shitty ship, I laid down. Greer was lying face down looking my way as well.
“This sucks, the girl doesn’t let up on the petting,” she groaned.
“At least you get to feel good getting petted,” I replied.
We both sighed and then I brought up a menu box.
On it was something awakened had. I pressed the final one which said ‘log out.’
I felt my body lay down and fall asleep as my vision went black before appearing again in a large oval capsule used by the players.
I pulled the inner helmet of the capsule and made the lid rises after pressing one of the buttons.
The room I was in was an employee's workplace. Now what kind of employee would play a game. Obviously every one of those capsules were for the GMs of LIFE company.
Each race had a GM somewhere hidden among the NPCs and had a special NPC character so that events that happened to them could still trigger quests.
I exited my capsule and soon after I saw one farther down open. From it was a
familiar pretty girl that looked more like a 12-year-old than the 19 years she actually had. I myself was only 18 but we were hired as GMs because of our love for role playing, and we were professionals in acting. Those two requirements were needed for GMs since we needed to be able to like and do both so that we weren’t found out by players.
I walked over to the pretty girl and we walked together out of the room. Both of us were mentally exhausted from the ordeal.
We walked in silence and headed to our rooms. We needed to sleep, and the company offered dorms for GMs since we needed to spend long hours in game.
The GMs had special characters like I mentioned. Even when offline, an AI would take over. It had the same personality and all our recollections for what had happened. When we next logged in we gained the memories of what happened during the time we were off. That was why we had nothing to worry about being… abused, since the AI were just like us.
As we entered a kitchen room, we found several men inside.
They were watching TV and when we looked, we paled.
All the men were holding back their laughter.
“So… how is… your new crew? Pff!” one of them asked holding his laughter in which didn’t last. They all started laughing which caused veins to appear on my head.
“Shut... up, you old bags of bones. Those weird bastards are just as bad as you all,” I shouted at them.
“Oh, come on, you’re with the Clockwork Crew now.” He chuckled after over emphasizing the title. “You should be... happy.”
He was saying things that were pissing me off. I had already mentioned how I wanted to make the draconians be recognized as the strongest race in Etheria but after what I saw that day and the last few game days I could only say that clockwork were the race of power or maybe it was just Techno’s crew that was too strange for their own good that made them strong.
“Anyway… ‘Greer’… how do you… like Nova’s petting,” one of the men asked.
The little girl next to me went beet red and I could only sigh. The girl was extremely shy around too many people but in the game, she was better since she became a tiger woman. They were more open with their own family so she got along well with them and opened up in game but in real life she was as timid as always.
We tried to ignore the laughing and got some food. We looked at the TV which was showing our video footage. This was the annoying part about being a GM. You had no privacy except when you needed to do your business… all kinds of business. Especially nighttime kind.
It was strange to look at it from a third person perspective since the view changed from Techno’s point of view to Bulk then Nova. Each caused their thoughts to speak as if they were actually speaking so we could listen. Nova was really strange, but when we saw her point of view, we finally understood her strangeness. She had censorship, so monsters were less frightening to her, robots looked just a little bit more like a toy than you would want them to and her weapons looked like actual toys.
It was strange knowing what was real then looking through her eyes and seeing a child censored world like that.
The tiger men looked more like cat people which explained why she called them kitties and Menthol actually did look like a giant old man instead of an intimidating giant black golem.
I couldn’t help but sigh seeing that the girl wasn’t crazy like her brother. Still the two clockwork were really strange. Not only that, to take on the shape of Asura and Yasha, he was brave. In Etheria, those two are considered rogue demons that have lived thousands of years. I could already tell it was going to make many weird events happen for them.
Before we could leave the kitchen, someone came and told us that the boss was calling for us both.
We were a bit worried. Unless we had to do a special task, we were never called for.
We followed the messenger and entered the room.
Sitting at the desk at the back of the office room was an elderly man that had a refined aura about him. He looked to be in his mid-70s and had gray hair already. He was the boss of the GM branch of LIFE company, Wilson Gokin.
Wilson saw us enter and put down a paper in his hand. “You two are the ones with the characters, Annabeth Redscale and the tiger beast man race princess… when were you named?” he asked.
“Someone gave me a nickname to call me by, but I think it officially became my name after I was made to join the Clockwork Crew,” she timidly replied to our superior.
The man nodded then looked from one paper to the next.
“Well then, we have an assignment for you both. From the records, it seems the young girl Nova has educational problems and is getting spoiled. The first part of your assignment is to properly keep the girl from getting dangerous from the environment. Censorship can only do so much. The second part, is that we want to try to at least open up the leader Techno. He trusts only his sister to truly speak with and won’t talk with anyone else. You should try to befriend him and open him to other people,” Wilson said.
“So in other words you want us to make him like us?” I asked.
“It’s Alexandra yes?” he asked.
I nodded.
“You need to be friends, nothing more, if it goes beyond that then it’s not my fault but your own,” he said.
I nodded understanding the meaning of what he said.
“Alright I guess I’m fine with this right. Sarah, anything to add?” I asked.
“One question, why are you worried about this boy?” she timidly asked.
“He is part of a rehabilitation program for juvenile convicts. He will remain inside of Etheria for seven real-life years which is the time he has before his time is up. He also had a mental breakdown when he was in prison from an accident his family suffered, it caused him to become a mute to everyone but his family,” Wilson replied truthfully.
We were shocked to hear that. Because of the texting he did to speak we thought he was just a recluse and didn’t want to talk but to think it was like that.
“If I can help a bit, I will do it. I don’t know about Techno, but I can help the girl. I have a little sister her age, so I know how to deal with them,” Sarah said.
“Are you pushing Techno off on me?” I frowned at her.
Sarah, a joking look appeared on her face. “You did look interested in the Yasha body.”
I turned bright red as I wished I could strangle the little brat.
“Enough! You don’t need to split the jobs. This is a long-term assignment, so it doesn’t matter who does what. Time will tell what happens anyway. For now, go rest. Menthol will be reaching the clockwork scrapyard in eight hours and three game hours after it enters the scrapyard, it will reach the capital. You can have a full eight hours of sleep. Now go before you lose more time,” Wilson said not having the patience to play along.
He waved us away just that.
We returned to our rooms and got ready to sleep. It would be a long duty. To think, GMs assigned to look after two races had to babysit a mentally broken jail bird and his sister who had the innocence of a child but with weapons made for killing that she thinks are toys.
We jumped in bed exhausted and instantly fell asleep. We simply had to wait and rest well.
Wilson PoV
After the two girls left, I waited a bit before I picked up the phone. I punched in the number for a colleague who held great interest in the boy. Enough to ask me to do this for a single boy.
“Yes, it’s me.... Yes, Warden Pierce, I had two of my GMs look after them. Yes, the girls are his age and don’t seem to completely hate him. I think given time and a small gradual increase in the number of friends and crew he will eventually open up. We have seven years to try to make him better so we can go slow for now,” Wilson said.
After a bit more I hung up. The warden in charge of the boy was quite the nice man. Normal wardens would treat brats like brats but to see him curious about a possible fraud case was unique I would say.
Still it was none of my business. My pa
rt was managing the GMs, if I simply moved one or two to help heal the broken mind of a young man then I would do it since two GMs wouldn’t be missed in a company that has over 500 operating under their control.
I hung up soon after and thought about the young man they asked about.
I brought up his game achievements which made me raise my brows in surprise.
“Hoho so Pierce is interested in quite the adventurous boy. To do so much in so little time. Quite the boy.” I started chuckling as I read through his information. I decided I would watch the boy for a while. It would be interesting to see how far he would go.
CHAPTER 16 Willpower
Brock PoV
After the recent events, I saw that my own usefulness was tiny compared to the others. I could gather ore from the earth and use earth magic but it wasn’t really powerful since most of the monsters we had faced were earth-based creatures.
It was because of this that I was in the clearing where Menthol rose up out of the ground.
“Hey Menthol! Can you hear me?! I need to ask you something!” I yelled and waited for a response. Soon I felt the ground shake a bit and at the center of the clearing a black golem appeared. It was much smaller and my size with the same kind of model which was the human like golem.
“You called me young golem. What is it you need?” he asked.
“Well… I don’t know if this is rude or not, but can I have a small part of your guardian's body or your core? I want to get much stronger but I don’t know how besides trying to assimilate part of a powerful being,” I said.
I bowed deeply to a perfect ninety-degree angle.
“So it was this. It’s been a long time since a golem asked for it. You know that other golems couldn’t normally handle such huge changes happening to his body?”
I lifted my head and looked up. He was smiling while looking at me.
“Others?” I asked confused.
“Yes, I’m sure you know this, but I’m probably one of the oldest mortal beings on this planet. The only older people are the gods and they were all sealed up after the war because everyone feared their power after the human goddess went wild. Now as for those who asked me before. They became abominations and I killed them because they couldn’t handle it,” he said.
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