Let Him Go

*Burp!*

Magnus set down the now-empty can of coke on the table. The 'conference room' was silent apart from the noises he was making. It was the time where the sun was supposed to have peeked over the horizon if not for the never-ending night.

In front of him, scattered many pieces of paper, most of which had no more space to write even one more letter. The writings being compressed onto each white surface all emanated a faint silver glow, and collectively, they caused the paper itself to glow.

Magnus held one of them up. He snorted.

'If this ain't the most powerful paper in the world, I don't know what is,' he thought.

By now, his [Language of Magic] had reached Level 3, soon approaching 4. He could now write '+4 Strength' on a medium and not have the system automatically downgrade it even once. For HP and Mana, he could now bless a maximum of six points. The expiry date of the blessing had also been increased to two weeks, and the mana consumption decreased to 140 points per blessing for attributeless mana.

It was good and all. But the problem was, what kind of medium could he use next? For practice, these papers were enough. But they couldn't be brought into battle, obviously. His initial effort to use undershirts had worked, somewhat. But the blessings' expiry date was soon approaching. Should he get planks of wood on which he could carve his blessings, then?

'Whatever. I'll think about it later. Now,' he thought as he opened the full window displaying tabs of Protagonist screens, 'What do I do with these two empty slots?'

After the whole ordeal the night before, Magnus had leveled up twice. The amount of hellhounds TJ had slain earned him a total of 7840 DP, and Cerberus' defeat 400 additional DP. The success of TJ's Objective then gave him 540 DP. After that, Summer's slaughter over the horned tigers granted him a total of 2080 DP. Her contribution to the defeat of the mutated tiger gave him 80 DP, and the byakko 200 DP. The girl's completion of her Objective then gave him 620 DP, and her learning [Deadly Growth] gave him an extra 300 DP.

He peeked at his Status Window once again.

[Status Window

...Divinity Level: 10

DP: 2820/10000

AP: 1000…]

So that brought him to this moment, where he had two empty Protagonist slots. However, he still had no idea whom he wanted to assign this role to.

'We can't choose just anybody, either,' Magnus 2.0 spoke up. 'As we have learned, after reaching Level 10, we can only gain a new Protagonist slot every four levels. And after Level 20, it will be every six levels, and so on.'

Magnus contemplated for a bit about this. However, his mind drew a blank. He didn't have a single idea at the moment. That might change in the future, though. Who knew? Maybe he would find just the right person.

'Whatever. It's already good enough that our Level is advancing steadily. This will slowly lift the capping I have over the amount and quality of my blessings. And more importantly, at least now we don't need to worry about not having enough AP to alter events like Key Moments. Hopefully.'

'Hopefully,' his copy echoed.

As soon as both of them said that though, a bad premonition washed over them.

'Ah, shit. I hope we didn't just jinx it,' Magnus thought.

He then heard footsteps coming from upstairs. From the sound of it, it was his father. The man must have known that he could find his son in the 'conference room'. That was where Magnus spent most of his time, after all.

And sure enough, the door creaked open, revealing the barely woken Markus.

"Good morning, dad," Magnus greeted with a smile.

"Morning, son." Markus then took a seat across from his son and pulled out a bag of garlic breads out of his Inventory. "You will be going back to the camp this morning, right?"

Magnus nodded. "Yes. Which is why everybody's training schedule will be pushed back for a couple of hours. But don't worry, dad. I won't take long. And I'll leave it to TJ and Summer to protect everyone while I'm gone."

"Alright, then. Don't forget to have breakfast."

Magnus grinned hearing that. He lifted up the empty can of coke. "I already have."

Markus just sighed and shook his head in response.

– – –

"No, no. You gotta do it like this!" Magnus said as he twirled his finger, creating a small bubble of water out of the air. It was the minimized version of [Bubble]. Why minimized? He was trying to teach people how to cast the spell, not show off.

Standing before him was a row of soldiers numbering over ten, all of whom possessed water element as either their only affinity or one of their affinities. He had just asked one of them to try out the [Bubble] skill, but the man had failed. So Magnus had to demonstrate it one more time.

Around the Butler Field camp's training ground he was currently in, there were seven rows of soldiers, two of which consisted of the most people. These were the fire and wind element sections. Positioned a bit further away were two groups who had the least people; these were the light and dark element sections. And then the rest were inbetween in terms of numbers.

At first, the soldiers were skeptical about Magnus' capability to control a diverse quantity of elements. It was one thing to witness his overwhelming powers involving one or two elements. It would be a different story if he could do the same with all the other elements, while showing the same amount of quality of the skills. But how could they have guessed that Magnus had not one, not two, but five element affinities?

Apart from fire and darkness, he could easily and effectively wield mana carrying the attributes of all the commonly-known elements.

Well, except for the few rare elements, but that was a story for another time.

He was about to tell the same soldier who had failed casting [Bubble] to try again, before Summer's panicked voice rang in his head.

'Magnus! Tyler is…I don't know what's wrong with him! My healing skill isn't working! Matt suddenly showed up at the front door, and…uuh, of course we were suspicious at first, but—'

'Okay, babe, calm down. I'll be there soon.'

Magnus turned to Trevor Cain, who had been supervising the training, and quickly said, "Sorry, but something just came up. I gotta head home now." He then cast [Gale] and took to the sky without giving the soldier the time to respond. Magnus did glimpse a slight irritation on the man's face, though.

However, he couldn't care less about that. On the way, Magnus opened TJ's Protagonist screen before activating his POV. Once the window showed the scene perceived through TJ's eyes, he could see that TJ's perspective was low, close to the ground. The guy was kneeling on the asphalt in front of the apartment. Magnus could also hear him struggling to breathe.

From the corner of the screen, Victoria could be seen flying over and landing near Matt. The crazed guy was caught off guard and didn't have the chance to defend himself before Victoria attacked him with a [Wind Breath]. Matt was pushed back several meters and was about to retaliate before roots burst out of the ground beneath him and coiled around his calves. The guy was now trapped in place.

"Oh, you guys learned some fancy new skills, I see!" he shouted, his mouth broadened into a mad grin.

"What did you do to my son?" asked Victoria. Her voice sounded more like a growl instead of a speech. Her expression was cold and tinged with a threatening look from her eyes.

Matt giggled before saying, "Oh, you know. Just the good ol' assassination by poison. Nothing too complica—AARGH!"

All of a sudden, Owen had appeared behind Matt, his hand wrapped around the teenager's neck while the skill [Decay] started to destroy his skin cells. Matt had failed to detect the man's presence, all thanks to Markus providing him with an extension of his [Subtle]'s range.

"Undo what you have done!" commanded Owen.

Matt struggled to speak. However, his grin returned before he half-whispered, "No can do…sir. Only way…is if Magnus…let him…go…"

At that moment, rough wind churned up all the dust in the area and blew everyone's hair away. A second later, Magnus landed near TJ. He glanced over his friend currently clutching his chest and grimacing in pain.

Magnus 2.0 had peeked at TJ's Status Window and saw he still had many HP left, although it was slowly dropping by the second.

Matt's eyes lit up. "Oh! Here comes…cough…the hero—"

*Burble!*

Magnus waved his hand before a water bubble formed around Matt's head, shutting him up. This prompted Owen to let go of the boy's neck and step back.

Magnus then launched himself toward the Matt and as he arrived near him, he cancelled [Bubble] before casting [Hook, Line, and Sinker] twice. A rope made of water formed on each of his hands before he whipped it at Matt. Midair, the end of each rope grew into the shape of a hook that soon fitted itself around Matt's wrist. Magnus then imbued wind element mana into the rope, turning it into ice that rapidly traveled toward the hooks. The hooks suddenly tightened around Matt's wrists.

"What are you—" Matt couldn't even finish his sentence before the ground beneath Magnus' feet was covered with a thick layer of ice that quickly crawled toward Matt's feet. [Siberian Might] now provided the platform for the ropes to anchor themselves to. So Magnus let go of the ropes and planted them on the icy ground, effectively locking Matt's hands in place.

His feet were paralyzed by Summer's roots while his hands couldn't escape the sturdy cuffing of Magnus' ice.

"Poison, you say?" Magnus asked. While everybody was internally freaking out, Magnus looked calm. Too calm. It was like a seemingly calm ocean that hid furious undercurrents. "And for him to be cured, I have to let him go?"

"That's right. Let him go or he dies."

The statement implied Azrael now knew that Magnus was an Author, and TJ was his Protagonist. "So you told him."

"I had to. But don't worry. He's the only one who knows, and he has made sure no other gods are watching us right now."

Magnus ignored Matt and turned around to approach TJ, who was grunting while desperately casting [Lesser Heal] on himself. The healing skill clearly wasn't working; Summer had tried it before.

"Stop, you're just going to waste your mana," Magnus told his friend.

"It fucking healed the knife wound, dude. But the fucking…poison…"

Magnus glanced at a throwing knife laying beside TJ. Crimson liquid stained half of the blade. 'So I guess Matt covered the blade with poison and threw it at TJ. TJ pulled it out and Summer tried to heal him but she was only able to heal the wound itself, not the poison that is already in his bloodstream.'

Magnus put a hand on TJ's trembling shoulder before casting [Big Spark]. As he expected, it didn't work, either.

'What kind of poison is it that not even my potent healing skill can purify?'

'Hey, I can try narrating something,' Magnus 2.0 suggested.

'Right. But I have a feeling it might not work.'

Magnus 2.0 felt the same way, but he proceeded, anyway.

ʳ As Magnus desperately wished for the poison in TJ's body to disappear, miracle happened and his friend was immediately cured. ʴ

Magnus 2.0 didn't even bother with the wording and a more sophisticated narration. But to his and his original's despair, the system suddenly spoke up.

[The host does not have sufficient Authority Points.]

'Fucking knew it! This is a fucking Key Moment, isn't it?' Magnus cursed.

'I had hoped our recent level-up had given us enough AP.'

'Apparently not. System, how much AP for us to heal TJ?'

[1060 points.]

'MOTHERFU—'

'What if we just do as Matt said?' his copy quickly interjected.

Magnus soon followed his copy's train of thoughts. So he then asked, 'System, you said you were slightly superior to your copy. Does that mean I can steal a Protagonist from another Author?'

Both Magnuses were thinking that once Azrael claimed and cured TJ, Magnus could still get his friend back using the system.

[It is possible. However, there are a few requirements that must be met.]

That was the answer Magnus needed to hear. He let his copy gather more information about said requirements from the system while he himself began inquiring Matt.

"Hey, tell me, how is he going to cure TJ?"

Matt grinned, thinking that Magnus had taken the bait. "Once Tyler becomes his Protagonist, he'll have enough power to completely get rid of the poison infecting his soul."

For other people, that didn't exactly answer Magnus' question. However, Magnus could instantly piece it together. 'Enough power' meant AP, 'completely getting rid of the poison' meant narrating TJ into a cured state, and 'infecting his soul' explained why even [Big Spark] hadn't worked. It was a poison for the soul, after all.

Curing TJ would certainly cost Azrael a ton of AP, but apparently the god thought it was worth it, since he would be investing in a powerful Protagonist.

If Azrael was able to cure TJ by splurging his AP, then all Magnus needed to do after that was get TJ back using the system. It sounded risky, but that seemed to be the only option—

"Idiot," TJ suddenly said between gritted teeth. "Don't you fucking dare think about it…"

It appeared that TJ could guess Magnus' intention. "But dude, you're—"

"Shut the fuck up. I've got this."

"What? What do you mean—"

Magnus couldn't even finish his question as TJ's body suddenly plopped down into a fetus position and started convulsing. Magnus then sensed a familiar Aura emanating from his body. There was the Aura of dark element mana, but it was mixed with something else. It felt like…abyssal energy?

"Tyler!" Victoria shouted after seeing her son's condition worsening. "Magnus, what's happening to him?"

"Uuh, I-I don't know…"

Magnus may be powerful, but he was not at all versed when it came to matters of the soul. He knew his healing skill wouldn't work, but he decided to use it on TJ, anyway. He hoped that it could at least alleviate the pain, even for a little bit. TJ had sounded confident right before he went into this state, so maybe the guy knew what he was doing, despite how he looked right now.

Nobody knew about it, though. Including Matt. He laughed before shouting, "See? He's dying because you're refusing to hand him over! His death will be on you, Magnus!"

And as if Fate agreed to the guy's deranged words, TJ abruptly stopped convulsing. In fact, he had stopped moving at all. His chest was still; TJ wasn't breathing.

'No. No, no, no. This can't be.'

Hoping that he was wrong, Magnus quickly checked his friend's pulse.

It was silent.