Gamble

Arcadia was in a state of unrest ever since the new king had taken the throne. Demons, demi-humans and any other race that wasn't human or high elf was to be executed on sight. Though Alexander himself didn't even bother with the slums where most of the demon population resided—the royal knights would take upon themselves to cleanse their homeland from 'demon filth'.

In the castle's backyard that was previously tended by all kinds of workers was now a barren landscape devoid of life. Alexander was standing beside a withered tree overlooking the city with five knights around him.

"Why do we even bother waiting? Wouldn't it be better to just march at them head on?"

None of the knights said a word, in fact, they were simply standing around him as if waiting for orders.

'And risk losing everything?' A formless voice echoed inside his mind. It was almost as old as humanity itself. 'No, until we know for sure where that damnable sword is, we'll wait. Time is on our side after all.'

"Demonkind can't do anything about us." He turned around and motioned with his open palm towards the knights behind him. "Or them."

'That young woman, Leona wasn't it? She will prove to be more than just a nuisance to us.'

"Her? Pfft! She couldn't even land a spell on me. What makes you think she stands a chance against us?"

'If she has that sword, it'll all be over for us. Just like before.'

"What is so special about this weapon? Isn't it just a sword?"

'Remind yourself that my original body was destroyed by that same sword. A flimsy human like you can hardly stand a chance against it.'

"Please Akantor, we've been through this many times before." Alexander's right hand crackled with dark red electricity. "She won't be able to reach me. With your might and my wits combined, there is nothing we have to fear."

'Your 'borrowed' strength has its limits. Should I wish for it, your body will have nothing left but dust.'

"What? And risk losing the only anchor you have left on this world? Do you realize how many know how to commute to dragons in this day and age? I can tell you, it's not that many." He walked past the knights who sluggishly turned along and followed him. "Besides, these homunculi are your only chance at acquiring a physical body, no? I would be a bit more cooperative if I were you."

'You are underestimating me, human. I am the dragon amongst dragons, I praised your courage to commute with me, but you're nothing but a stepping stone.'

"I know that much."

Upon heading inside the castle. Alexander was greeted by a royal knight who knelt while wielding a lance.

"Your eminence."

"Speak."

"We have quelled the rebellion in the slums."

"Ho? They were indeed planning for one, I see. What about the bodies?"

"...we brought them to the castle's basement."

"Very good. Keep up the good work."

Alexander had a tint of excitement in his steps and as he made his way past the royal knight, the other knights mindlessly followed behind him which made the man wielding the lance put his left fist close to his chest with a faint whisper under his breath.

"Goddess preserve us…"

The castle basement. Previously a place to hold supplies in case of war, was now a laboratory filled with all manner of tools for dismemberment and vats filled to the brim with a semi-transparent light blue liquid.

Globules of light floated around the corners of the stone room as Alexander made his way to the pile of bodies in the middle of it. There were at least thirty to fifty individuals of all ages and sizes, not that it mattered much for him as all of them were just 'materials' in his eyes.

"Just normal ones huh?" He turned to the five knights behind him and took half a step to the side. "You can eat these."

As soon as he spoke those words, the knight's armor began to tremble as if it wasn't made of metal and instead liquified into a viscous semi-transparent gelatin that slowly crawled towards the bodies. As the five slimes reached the pile, a sizzling sound of dissolving matter echoed around the room.

"Good… good… eat and become stronger."

Slimes, or their more advanced counterpart, homunculi. Man-made 'monstrosities' that are capable of thought to a certain degree. Highly resistant to physical attacks and unusually resilient against magic. They embody the physicality of those that they eat—though the process is slow, it can be sped up by giving them more of the same kind of 'material'.

Alexander began to crackle in a malevolent laughter.

"We'll conquer the world and make it a place free of demons."

His crackling could be heard echoing in the basement room.

At the same time in the eastern continent, Leona was still practicing without the staff—destroying static rock targets created by Yuna on the training grounds.

"Hmm…" The tactician held her arm out towards a destroyed smoldering rock pillar. "It doesn't feel as straining as before. But it is still quite difficult to cast without chanting."

Yuna discreetly clapped while praising.

"Your accuracy is quite remarkable for someone that hasn't been training to become a mage."

"Thank you."

"Since you are fairly adept at hitting targets, I think we can move on to something a bit more difficult." She snapped her fingers and the rock pillars crumbled to dust. "Come, follow me."

She started to make her way to the cliff they rested on the day before.

"Alright."

After a bit of a walk, they made it past the trees and were now overlooking the big blue in front of them. The sun was right behind Leona which made the horizon look even more relaxing with the gentle chilly breeze brushing against her face.

"I'll make a target for you."

Yuna raised her right hand and snapped her fingers. The waters about fifty meters off the shore began to bubble before pillars of stone were erected from the surface. They didn't seem any different from the practice targets Leona was firing against earlier.

"Why on the ocean?"

The tactician asked.

"I'll reinforce them with magic, think of those pillars as enemy mages with mana protection."

"Oh, I see. So I'm supposed to go all out with my spells?"

"Use just enough force to break them." With another snap of her fingers—the pillars began to glow light blue. "I've enchanted them with magic resilience equivalent to what a normal mage would be able to pull off."

"I thought I was supposed to increase my mana pool."

"You will. I adjusted the amount of targets to be just above your mana capacity."

'Which means I won't get away with it unless I go into a light mana shock.' Leona thought as her focus sharpened on the targets. Five out of six were clumped up together while the last one stood further back from the main cluster. 'Very well… one good fireball should do the trick.'

She raised her hand towards the middle of the pillars and took a slow, deep breath. Differently from before, the mana from her body was taking the shape of multiple small light blue strings curling around her arm as opposed to only a handful as it accreted towards her open palm.

The light blue sphere of mana began to swirl around itself as it started to glow a dark blue color. Leona pictured the size of the explosion in her mind and more mana was fed into the spell, but in doing so, the heat was becoming unbearable.

"Ugh." Her scarred fingers were tingling from the scorching mana and she was beginning to lose the sensation around her fingertips. "Argh…"

She curled her fingers slightly inwards as she took part of the mana that comprised the spell and reinforced the protection around her hand.

She gathered more mana around her wrist in a ring which started to spin around her limb. With a determined shout, she launched the spell forward in a violent rush of air that brushed the tree's branches and leaves behind.

"Fireball!"

The projectile left a trail of blue flames in an arc through the air as it collided against the central pillar before releasing a high pressure wave of air as it erupted into a blaze towards the sky—transforming the stone pillar into smoldering molten rock. Leona had a smirk of confidence as she shielded her face from the air rushing past her.

However, despite the spell's power, it was still not enough to fully destroy the other pillars around it. The closest ones were about eight meters from the epicenter of the blast and were melted but not entirely destroyed, while the one further back had no signs of damage whatsoever.

After taking another look at the result, Leona brought her right hand close to her chin with frowned brows of disbelief.

The pillars began to slowly reconstruct themselves, accreting earth matter on top of the damaged parts to form anew.

"Tsk." Leona clicked her tongue as she took another deep breath. "Perhaps if I add more wind magic…"

Yuna watched from further back with a smile on her face—which shortly after noticing herself smiling, she coughed discreetly to wipe the expression off her face.

'This young woman really is incredible…' The shrine maiden thought. 'Father was really right, imagination is the most powerful weapon a mage can have.'

"Yuna."

Leona called out for her which made the young shrine maiden jump in surprise.

"Y-yes?"

She was looking over her shoulder with her arm raised as if ready to make a spell.

"Is it possible to increase the blast force of 'Fireball' through wind magic?"

"The short answer is yes. But it is extremely difficult to do so."

"Really now? Could you teach me?"

Yuna scratched the back of her head before walking beside her.

"I can try." She extended her right arm out. "Do you know how fires work?"

"Are you talking about the chain reactions necessary to make a fire? That would be fuel, heat and oxygen."

"Very well. Now I'll propose a question for you to answer your own inquiry. What is the difference between a fire and an explosion?"

"Hmm…" Leona twisted her mouth a bit and frowned her brows. "I think the main difference would be how we fuel it."

"Close, but not quite." She evoked a small orange flame on the palm of her hand. "If I were to only add fuel, or rather, mana to this spell. It would only result in making a stronger fire."

As she spoke those words, liquid-like mana started to seep through her wrist into the spell, which made the flame bigger and brighter.

Leona began to slowly nod, although her frowned brows indicated that she was still a bit frustrated.

"Right… that makes sense."

"And if I were to add more oxygen to the mix…" Her fingers curled and twisted inwards ever so slightly, creating a circular vortex of concentrated oxygen that turned the flame blue. "It would only make it hotter."

"If increasing both doesn't result in a more powerful explosion…" Upon closing her eyes, Leona remembered something that happened a long time ago. Explosive flour. The image was still painted vividly in her mind as she let out a gasp. "So if I make those react rapidly with the fire-"

"-It'll create a far more powerful explosion." Both of them said the same sentence with the shrine maiden dispelling the spell before clapping her hands. "Yes, that is exactly it. However, knowing the theory and putting it into practice are two entirely different things."

"I'm quite aware." Leona took half step forward and raised her hand towards the pillars that were now in perfect condition once again. "Here goes…"

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Time seemed to come to a crawl as she felt every single fiber of her being concentrated into the success of this spell. The warm sun and chilly breeze were no more as if she had shut off every other sensation not necessary for spell casting.

Thin strings of mana gathered from around her feet and it crawled upwards towards her chest twisting around her limbs before finally coalescing around her shoulder. However, as opposed to going towards her palm, this excess mana was flowering out of her arm, gathering more mana from the air around her before once again twisting around and returning to her limb as it accumulated near her wrist.

Yuna's eyes slowly widened in disbelief as the azure fireball began to swirl around a second smaller orb inside of itself made of pure mana and air. The air around her was shimmering from the intense heat; her shoulder length blonde hair was being sucked towards the fire as it was pulling all air around her into the spell.

The orb of fire was becoming even more intense but she showed no signs of pain despite the skin of her fingers beginning to melt. Yuna had to intervene.

"Leona! Release that spell now!"

Her voice snapped the tactician out of her trance and she instinctively used a powerful blast of wind to launch the spell towards the targets. At the same time, Yuna stood in front of her and extended both hands forward. Light blue hexagons quickly formed in a semi-circle in front of them.

Leona's eyes instinctively moved from the shrine maiden towards the pillar that she had shot the spell at and there was just about half a second where she noticed the azure fireball making contact against the rock.

The orb touched the target and in a blink of an eye, everything became too bright for her to look directly. A few seconds after she closed her eyes, she heard the sound reverberating through the air and shortly after that, the actual shockwave came and snapped the trees around them in half.

"Ugh!"

Yuna grunted as part of her mana shield was disrupted due the sheer force of the impact. The intense heat was making the grass around them to smolder and catch fire despite being green. Part of the cliff was destroyed from the blast and the pillars that were supposed to be targets were now completely gone alongside part of the waters below which made the ocean wash the shore with water anew.

The shrine maiden let her right knee touch the withered grass below her. Her breathing was rugged and shallow.

'I wasn't expecting her to pull it off the first time…' She glanced at her trembling right hand as her thoughts ran wild. 'If this was actual combat what would I-'

"Yuna! Leona!" A male voice rang behind them. Robert was back—carrying a crystalized left arm on his right hand. "Are you two alright?!"

His daughter looked over her shoulder and gave him a slight nod. Leona on the other hand was still looking around her—overwhelmed by the sheer firepower she had discovered within herself. With the trees snapped in half, smoldering dry grass, as the still ringing sound of the explosion in her ears, she was in all sense of the word, shell shocked.

Robert approached her and looked in her wide open eyes as he motioned with his left index finger pointed towards his left ear.

"Can you hear me?" Leona's eyes slowly turned to him, but all she could perceive was him trying to speak to her—nothing else other than the low ringing sound was heard by her. Robert then shifted his focus to Yuna. "Let's stop training for now, you two need to take a break."

"...understood."

He snapped his left fingers and the fires were suddenly snuffed out. He raised the crystalized arm and with another snap, made it vanish with a distortion in the air as if it was sent to another plane of existence.

With Leona blankly staring at him, he shook his hand in front of her but she kept staring past him as if she saw a ghost.

"Hmm… this isn't good…" He gently placed his arm behind her back and another underneath her knees before lifting her up. "If anyone asks, tell the others I'll be taking Leona here for a few hours. If I don't treat this now it'll be problematic later on."

"Yes, father."

He turned around to leave but not before looking at his daughter over his shoulder.

"...and I'll have to speak with you about what happened here later."

She bowed down while swallowing dry.

"...I understand." He snapped his fingers and vanished out of thin air. Right after that her knees gave out as she fell on all fours on the grass. "I've failed them both…"

She punched the ground with a tight right fist. Meanwhile, back at the secret laboratory, Robert placed a visibly shaken Leona sat up on the table in the middle of the room full where he had different vats filled with testing subjects as well as the three women in suspended animation.

He placed his left forearm and swept the things that were on the table before pulling a wooden crate from underneath it and putting it in front of himself.

"Right… so I'll need a syringe, needle, alcohol and mana…" He quickly went through the assorted items, a metallic syringe body, a thin needle and a bottle of whiskey. He separated them on top of the table before realizing. "Tsk… need to disinfect it…"

He made a sphere of water on his left hand which quickly began to create small azure fires that coated the sphere's surface in a blaze. In a very short span of time he had a floating body of boiling water.

He lowered to the height of the table before tossing the metallic syringe and needle inside of it. His right hand then started to glow light blue up just before his elbow and with no hesitation at all, he dunked his entire arm inside the ball of boiling water. He assembled it both after drying it out with wind magic while discarding the water he had used on the floor.

A quick glance at Leona showed she had no signs of recovering any time soon.

Robert flipped the syringe on his hand and without showing any hesitation, stabbed himself on the left forearm before pulling out what seemed to be a golden colored liquid, aether.

"There." He then cleaned the needle with whiskey and flicked the needle with his right finger and pushed the syringe upwards until some of the liquid came out of it. "Good, no air." He then turned to Leona, who still didn't seem to react to anything. "I'm not giving up on you just yet."

He dumped the rest of the whiskey on her right arm before tossing the empty bottle inside the crate and held her forearm with his right hand. He slowly inserted the needle in her vein before injecting the concentrated aether into her body.

With the bright concentrated mana coursing through her veins, Robert left the empty syringe on the table and held her right hand with both of his. His eyes began to emit a golden glow.

"Let's see what your inner world looks like."