45 The Puppet and Sword

Galahad grabbed the magic sword out of the dead man's hand and sheathed his own. It took both hands to raise the inconveniently massive blade.

'A magic sword, I would love to use this in the dungeon if it wasn't so freaking bulky. Might be best to just- Wait, stop thinking about distractions. Focus on where you are right now.' The angry fragment of his conscious brought him out of his quick-to-glaze stare.

Galahad was about to swing the bulky weapon until the giant crow dove straight at him. He dove to the side as it's magnified feet had a sharp claws swiping at him.

'Giant birds are truly a thing I guess, weird to actually meet two in the same week.' He thought while rolling underneath the table to save himself.

He activated Fury and Fyre once again, wanting to see the weak points of giant bird. The red flames lapped against the table but didn't burn it, all it did was light up his position for Croten to attempt tear apart. Luckily the thick wooden table held against the bird's strength for a decent amount of time before Galahad moved.

When Galahad peaked around a corner leg to see the crow swooping in and out of the darkness; he noticed mainly the powerful wings and lower torso were pokes with weakened spots. Meanwhile the claws and beak shined as a very clear danger zone.

Once the gaint crow flew up high to gain some momentum, Galahad looked down at the summoner of the ground. Arma was standing there with a face scrunched up in rage, his eyes shut and leaking long streams of tears.

He would have looked no different than a young children having a crying fit, except he leaked out small puffs of green sparks with each twitch or heave he let out while crying. Galahad was somewhat mesmerized and in horror as the sight unfolded.

Arma was covered in all the standard weaknesses you'd see in a small child (The kind I'm not going to think of writing since I'm not a sociopath that would go into detail). Not a lot of strength showed except for whenever the green lights danced against his skin, then the weakness would disappear for a brief moment and slowly return.

Galahad watched trying capture every detail he could into his mind while trying not to die. 'It's incredible, he's barely ten years old and his manipulation of energy is so complex, it outmatches my mana tethers or support skills by a long shot. It's such a wonder that his class can summon something so massive.'

He kicked his legs quickly to moved from the spot that instantly became obliterated by the massive summon's weight. Croten has flown up a few dozen meters before divebombing the table and splitting the whole section apart, nearly crushing Galahad.

'And apparently so powerful.'

The boy let out another scream and Croten reeled himself back up, ruffling it's feathers and flying back up into the darkness. Galahad watched the two react with one another, trying to witness the power that drew Croten and the boy together.

He stared intently for a few milliseconds before a new message came across his view in a very distracting point in time.

[ Bonding between realms detected. Do you wish to see the connection with Fury and Fyre? ] [ Yes ] [ No ]

Galahad confirmed yes and suddenly a new layer of colors filtered across his vision, he saw everything in a very green tinge instead of grey.

The connection between Arma and the bird were invisible until now, Galahad was able to watch bright green flow of energy shift from Arma and straight to various points along Croten. The flow exploded from the spots that sparked from Arma's body and flew into dozens of little points across the bird, seemingly mending all the black holes that grew like spots.

Galahaf would have kept watching and dodging for as long as he could, but the familiar bell of the timer began.

[ 3:01 ] . . . [ 3:00 ] . . . [ 2:59 ] . . .

'Damn it, I was hoping to learn more before having to deal with this stupid limiter.' Galahad grumpily thought and raised the two-handed Claymore for the first time to intentionally maim.

He was against fighting at first realizing he was a summoner, because it wasn't every day that Galahad would meet a summoner. They were extremely rare among humans and even more among other races. Galahad wanted to learn a bit more, especially since he was going to pick summoner class the next time his class levelled up to another.

[ 2:43 ]

Croten circled overhead twice before diving at the enemy. Right when the giant crow was going destroy another section of the table, Galahad dove out from underneath it. The red fire spinning around him as he kept rolling away.

Arma saw this as his chance, so he pulled out a small hunting knife and was going to pounce at Galahad, until Croten screamed out in pain.

Arma looked back at Croten to see Dante's sword piercing through his left wing. Galahad had propped it under the table to stab the giant bird as it smashed into the spot he originally hid under. A quickly improvised trap that the summon slammed itself into.

The pierced hole spewed a strange black sludge on the ground and a few black feathers floated gently to the floor. Galahad watched as more energy surged out of Arma and started going straight into. The connection of this supposive realm energy flowed one-way, from Arma to Croten.

Suddenly Arma's face was drained of blood and he stumbled over mid run. The amount of green sparks his body emitted was doubled.

[ 2:39 ]

It took Galahad more than instant before finally understanding the relationship between the summoner and their summons. It was like an oil lantern and a flame, the summon would burn brightly until it ran out of oil. Hopefully forcing a bigger flame could snuff how long it lasted.

'Oh gods, this kid is facing the same issue as me. He can give off a huge amount of power, but only for the amount of time he can hold it. It seems all I have to do is shave time off his clock first.

Galahad looked for his non magic sword and grabbed it off the ground as soon as the magic one came loose from Croten's wing, clattering very loudly.

[ 2:33 ]

The giant crow's wing almost fully mended in an instant, so it flew straight at Galahad, who braced himself for the imminent collision. Croten was only a few feet away before he exploded into a large cloud of green mist, dousing Galahad with it before returning back to his own realm. It felt strangely cold as it passed against his red flames, making his body shimmer with a red and green for a moment.

'I guess this kid was already overworking his powers all day. Probably because he was out looking for people to kill and loot.'

Galahad stopped covering his head and looked around the pavilion. Food and drink was sprayed everywhere, Dante's body still laid sprawled out, and the wood fragments were everywhere. Most of the table was now gone and Arma was only standing still with his head staring at the dirt, his mind seemed to go numb to the whole situation.

Galahad took a few steps away from the boy, not fully sure if he could trust that Arma was out of the strange realm energy. He was only giving himself some spacing before realizing he backed up into Dante. Whose hand suddenly latched onto Galahad's ankle.

The sudden and cold grasp of Dante's hand against his leg nearly scared the shit out of him. Galahad was still a bit high-strung from the fight and frigid water. The fact Dante was alive enough to grab him was enough to make him jump.

He looked down to see Dante's ghostly face whisper words at him. He repeated over and over until Galahad finally nodded in confirmation.

Dante mouthed 'let him live.' until he died for sure. Galahad checked his breathing had stopped just to be safe. As he checked, Dante's information window popped up.

[ Dante Aristolla ] lvl. 43

Battle Class: Viking

When he turned to see where Arma went, the boy was gone. Only trace he left was the black crow feathers and sludge that came from Croten, but even that started to slowly dissolve into a green pool of liquid that evaporated as quickly as it formed.

Galahad waited a few seconds before finally deactivating Fury and Fyre, not wanting to get surprised again. The red flames disappeared and the timer stopped at [ 1:55 ].

"Looks like I still have some oil to burn, unlike your little child friend." Galahad looked at the for certainly dead Dante and began inspecting his body for loot.

The giant man wore an impressive bear hide and carried a glistening black sheath that was way too small for the magic weapon. Unfortunately that was the only thing he carried on his person.

'Damn it. As much as I wanna snoop the rest of the camp, I need to get back before James wakes up. Also I need to figure out how to hide this until I sell it in Diagon.' Galahad lofted the magic claymore up to inspect such an expensive looking weapon.

Galahad wanted to take the weapon and use it for himself in the dungeon; but he was intelligent enough to not try and use it as his main choice of weapon.

It was bad enough that he fought with a common sword, something he wasn't truly used to. It would have been a nightmare to try and expertly wield a weapon that was half his weight. He had had a few lessons with the short sword, the one he used to carry until the bent metal stick was transformed into something too useless for fighting.

Galahad was starting to think about pricing for such a big magic weapon, until the blade started glowing red hot and began shrinking down from a four foot long claymore to a two-and-a-half foot long backsword. The whole structure seemed to change before the blade returned back to its light-blue sky color.

Galahad nearly felt his intestines drop when the blade was changing, thinking he broke it. It wasn't until it stopped changing before he realized what the magic weapon was doing.

'Holy shit, a magic lightning sword that also manipulates its own shape. I'm keeping this.'

He let a mischievous grin spread across his face as the blade sung while being sheathed into his belt. Suddenly the lose of mana orbs wasn't super painful anymore as he wore two newly decent weapons on his pants.

*****

Galahad stepped out of the skeletal remains of the pavilion tent, only the embers of the wooden frame seemed to hold it together, ready to collapse at a moment notice. He was about to run out with his new sword ready to attack, but something was off.

No one came in to stop Arma or attempted to shoot slow moving arrows at him amidst all the fighting. Only the leader and boy had been present, so why did no one else show up? Galahad only pondered the idea while quietly trying to exit the camp.

He only made it thirty yards before getting discovered.

"Well, maybe you would serve as a better lieutenant than their fallen leader." Said a female voice behind him. The cloaked figure stood behind Galahad with only grey light showing from beneath the hood.

Galahad turned and only gave her a looked mixed with criticism and confusion. "Do you like to stand behind people and announce yourself with a rhetorical question?"

The cloaked female made an ugly face he couldn't see. She was clearly irritated that this man would dare act so childishly against one of the high ranking officers in the Royal of New party. Her shift in postured proved to Galahad that he definitely struck a nerve.

She tried to hide it by keeping silent and making gestures with her hands. After a few quick points and waves, everyone else in the camp emerged with grey lights faintly dancing within their pupils.

Galahad looked around and was only mildly surprised. He figured out what this mysterious was as soon as he saw her eyes and connected them to Dante. "You're a Magician class Puppeteer. I'll admit, you have yourself a pretty interesting class."

He kept the nonchalant attitude as he unsheathed the blue backsword. Trying to still get a feel for its abnormal weight.

'But you can't do much with something like this.' He thought while watching the possessed bodies stumble a little with each step. Before leaving Teramore, he read overall every rare class that was classified with various skills and a specialty to their own category. Puppeteers were still a vivid memory in the back of his head.

For each class; there are Commons, Uncommons, Rares, and Uniques. The less likely to appear were anyone with a unique class, they normally would have been the first of their kind or individuals that unlocked a special class of their own.

Puppeteers were rare, but that just meant it the chance of being one was of a few thousand magicians, nothing unsuspecting or highly advantageous about them if the someone was well informed of their powers.

Luckily Galahad spent the last few weeks in Teramore trying to study anything related to the strange abilities the Black Orb gave him. He knew exactly what to do. His only issue was implementing the plan scraped together in the back of his mind.

Without warning, Galahad swung the magic sword straight at the Puppeteer, but his aim was horrible. Not only was the blade far too heavy, but the lightning bolt had a surprisingly large amount of recoil. The bolt shot over thirty degrees in the wrong direction and hit a random possessed bandit.

Who this asshole think he is to try and kill her as she amassed her power over the bandit camp? She snarled at him and all the grey lights in the darkness were growing brighter. That was Galahad's cue to run.

*****

Galahad ran through the obstacles of tents and dying campfires to gain some distance between the mob and himself. He wished he focused more on projectile based weapons now that he looked back at his mistakes.

'Oh man, Trista would have had a field day trying to throw her daggers at this weirdo.' He thought after dodging a possessed bandit who attempted to ambush him from a tent. Three times he was jumped by a bandit laying in wait, none of them were remotely close to getting him after acting so misconstrued.

The reason they were all so clumsy and slow were due to their bodies being taken over by a foreign entity. The cloaked woman's powers could only control a fragment of power the bodies once possessed. A puppeteer may have seemed like an overpowered class, but the universe likes to keep adventure classes at a balance if someone were to learn of her weakness. The only exception seemed to be whatever was happening to Galahad, he was breaking through the expected rate of growth.

He made his way to the outskirts of the camp and quickly found himself near the river, he grabbed a very large rock and threw it into the river just before the possessed bandits showed up. By the time they saw his fakeout, he was already inside another empty tent.

He hid while they began searching the river, each possessed body began scanning the water, assuming he dove in to runaway.

"Fuck!" She shouted loudly at her minions. "Follow him down the currents, he cannot escape."

'I can't let him truly leave this time, no one can know what is happening here. I should have taunted him with more mana orbs, I could have used his strange obsession with them to my advantage.'

She was completely unaware that Galahad was sneaking up from behind until she heard the magic sword rip through a bandit's chest just behind her.

Galahad dove out once he was spotted with the sword reeled back, while in the air he activated Fury and Fyre. He took a page out of Dante's book and simply let go of the weapon as he collided with the cloaked female. Using the distraction of possible lightning was enough to throw her off.

His momentum carried himself right into a hefty backhand, he felt his knuckles nail her jaw and cheekbone with a brain jarring amount of force. She flew backwards while blacking out and made a big splash into the freezing river.

As soon as she hit the water and was started getting pushed downstream, the grey lights disappeared from the bandit's eyes and they collapsed dead on the spot. The battle was finally over and the entire camp of bandits was devoid of life, leaving Galahad the winner and destroyer.

*****

Galahad walked all the way back to the carriage to find James still asleep in his sleeping bag. All the cinders in the campfire were black, not even any smoke was left in the ashes. He threw a large tent bag full of gear into the cart and stacked a few other supplies on top to hide them. The horses seemed agitated at Galahad's return, making small neighs of complaints.

James turned over at the sound of Galahad moving a few things around and didn't fully awaken until he saw him step back into the sleeping bag.

"Mmmrph, where did you go?" He mumbled in a sleepy voice, "You're covered in a lot of dirt."

"Went to go piss, fell in a muddy ditch." Galahad bluntly replied as he pulled the cover over his body, clearly not caring about the dirt seeping into his bag.

His tone matched the story he quickly made up, but he was grouchy because of the sleepless night and lack of mana orbs. He may have gained a lot of new gear and a magic weapon, but the risks were hardly worth the reward. He lost count of the amount of close calls he had fighting the Fangs of Nyt, only just to see the barrel explode right in his face.

For now he wanted to sleep but and hope James would leave it at that.

James blindly accepted the lie as he sat up and stretch, "Well since were both up, we might as well head out. We can make it to Bluewalk before the sun sets if we go now." He yawned the last few words.

The last thing Galahad wanted to here after staying up all night annihilating and pillaging an entire camp. For the first time since in a long time, he skipped his chance to sleep.