Magical Ascension Chapter 8

There was a tense silence between Taihou and Nahida... Flames and the pure energy of life seemed to collide in the middle of their gaze. Before I snapped my hands with an unamused smile. "Girls... No." I stated bluntly and their eyes drooped at my blunt refusal. I took a breath and shook my head with a wry smile as I continued. "So Taihou," I said getting her attention as I patted Nahida on her head. "This is Nahida and she is my summon, she is a higher-grade being with the ability to take a human form so I hope you can get along with her."

At my words, Taihou's right eye twitched and then she closed her eyes held her arm ups up to the side, and then leaned back and forward slightly as she audibly took deep breaths...

'Uhhoh... Yandere is about to explode!' I nervously giggled internally but thankfully when Taihou opened her eyes, her eyes were a dull version of her normally so bright and vivid ruby-red eyes.

"Taihou is calm Jake. Don't worry, little Nahida... You are Jake's summoned being and you..." Taihou eyed Nahida with a small hint of a teasing sadistic light in her eyes as she folded her arms under her very voluptuous breasts as her voice became higher pitched as she continued to speak. "Taihou isn't insecure about a child at all hahaha!" She laughed fakely while placing a hand at her mouth to cover it.

Nahida only smiled... But it was cold. It was the cold smile of Mother Nature watching the death struggles of an animal crying out its final moments.

Nahida nodded with that false soft smile as she spoke with no inflection in her voice. "I am truly glad you don't feel insecure about yourself Miss Taihou... You, speaking in the third person is already a sign of mental instability, but as your senior of several decades and being a tree spirit, I will be growing up in whatever shape I desire, as I raise up the ranks beside Jake during his adventures." Nahida eloquently said, all but saying. 'Just because you may be bigger now, doesn't mean I cannot grow bigger if I should choose.'

In the instant, fire bloomed within Taihou's hands. Nahida broke apart into motes of green light with those motes of light burrowing into my form as she disappeared into my soul.

I just decided to pretend I saw and heard nothing as I looked past Taihou looking for my father and I saw him give me a thumbs up before turning on his heel and leaving the door frame seeing I wasn't chewed up and eaten by whatever I had summoned.

"Well... I got my partner." I stated flatly seeing my father all but haul ass out of there and seeing the drama unfolding so I refocused on Taihou. "So I guess with being a mage now, I can go places alone now off the property," I said grinning as no longer was the ever-present Fog a curse upon my social life as a civilian.

As the higher-ranked monsters that were beyond minion-level monsters knew instinctively that messing with mages or humans with magical signatures was a death sentence.

So I was excited to get out of the house and go to the city's mega mall for mages and civilians without having to have someone chaperone myself.

Taihou pouted as she kicked the ground grumbling. "Mother has Taihou working the books for the next couple of hours so... Taihou cannot go!" She pouted waving her arms in a minor temper tantrum making me chuckle but to console her I gave her a quick side hug before speaking.

"Well at the coming of age ceremony for us new mages, I will give you my first dance," I spoke with Taihou snickering as a sadistic light entered her eyes as she obviously was thinking of something dumb like marking her territory and trying to keep Ai Hoshino away from me or something equally weird.

Either way, after letting Taihou know that no I was not in fact going to lewd my summon hours within summoning her. I was able to go talk to my mother and get the 'Ok' for me to head over to the city's mega shopping center but unfortunately, Ed was busy learning how to use his Earth Magic to build so I was going alone.

So within half an hour, I took an armored Uber equivalent to the Columbus Shopping Center. It was less of a mall and more of a series of a dozen massive solid metal pillars of glistening alloyed metal with rail guns and anti-air flak canons built into the massive towers that acted as the mage facilities, while the massive building on that was built around the dozen towers were more for the civilian side.

All the shopping for civilians and mages alike were done in the main center at the ground and first three floors but the towers were basically high-end stores only for mage activities like using magical ritual balls to help us awaken specific elements when we went to absorb a new element into ourselves like the one I used at school but a much higher grade one. Likewise, you could also get specialized rituals to help you summon certain types of elemental beings and take the stupidly overpriced teleportation to one of the major cities of the world if you had the materials to activate the systems.

Basically, the towers were for both protection for the mall with all their weaponry and magical defenses while also for the adventurers that went into the Great Lake and whatnot. My family even had a decent-sized shop selling our magical tools there as well.

Going into the mall, I couldn't help the small smile of all the people that were rushing around, with mages being more easily identified by their more fantasy-style clothes as we loved to separate ourselves from the common folk that never awakened, and likewise, I also enjoyed watching the civilians running around. But actually, as I was people watching I noticed a bit of a trend that made my smile lessen a bit.

I could see the clear difference between the teenagers my age who hadn't awakened, versus the teenagers who just awakened as it was just the day before, and for the kids who hadn't awakened it was clear they hadn't mentally recovered from the blow... It made me realize beyond my whole reincarnation bit and landing in a good family with whatever cosmic magic cheat I had, that I was just on the lucky side, to begin with in even awakening.

Though it was highly unlikely for me to fail at awakening with my magical lineage.

Done with my people watching at that stark mental reminder of my good fortune in this life I paused as I heard some of the flak cannons on the mall go off for a second and so did all the other shop goers... For a couple of moments, we were frozen and then a series of three bloops went through the intercom of the mall and we all in unison kept moving as the intercom basically gave us the signal that it was just an oversized weak monster that came out of the Fog in the worst place for it.

"Minion and Soldier tier monsters been popping out of the Fog more and more with the Great Lake tide deepening." I heard someone say as I decided to go into a small candy store and was checking out the mega-sized gummy bears that were literally at my hip height and weighed more than a couple dozen pounds. And at hearing those words I looked over and saw it was a couple of girls who were actually wearing my school's uniform probably for one of the last times in their lives honestly as I had already thrown mine in the depths of my closet to never be seen again.

I decided it couldn't hurt to ask how bad it had gotten so I walked over and coughed. "Yo, I went to Remembrance, as well," I said saying I went to the same high school and although I didn't know them, they actually knew me so they greeted me by name but I didn't so I avoided hinting at their name as I asked what I wanted to know. "Have the cannons been going off a lot?" I asked curiously and the two kinda bland-looking girls shared a look before one nodded with a weak smile.

"Yeah, Jake... My brother actually works on the city walls as a forklift driver who carts ammo crates for the guns and magical weapon systems," She looked around and leaned in as she whispered. "My brother said the walls emplaced guns have been running through ammo like crazy so he told me to get all the shopping out of the way as he is going to call in sick in a few hours while we go into the bunker!" She said nervously and I frowned before nodding in understanding.

"Alright, thanks for the info," I said as I remembered mother and father talking about the Great Lake's tidal patterns shifting which would lead to pocket realms opening in the surrounding area which would lead the monsters that filled the pocket realms rushing out in the countless tens of thousands.

Granted those numbers sounded absolutely horrible and they were, but typically those monsters coming out of the new unstable pocket realms may not have any way to fit into the ecosystem and would then be swiftly slaughtered by the high-ranking monsters within the Fog and Great Lake for being a major disturbance to their territory.

So let's say out of millions of monsters being dropped into the area surrounding the Great Lake and the Fog, literally only ten percent of those monsters have a chance of getting out of that area, and end up approaching the city.

But that didn't mean a flock of monsters couldn't fly out of the Fog and attack people outside their reinforced homes so with that I decided to cut the shopping trip short after picking up my family some gifts rather than sticking around to catch a movie at the mall's theater. But as I was having my purchase of some chocolate-covered strawberries rang up for the ladies back home I jolted in place as I was tapped on the shoulder.

I looked behind me and froze as two men in professional suits with earbuds placed into their ears. "Mr. Barris." The guy who clearly was the one who tapped on my shoulder spoke clearly and articulately, "The Ladies Ei and Makoto have cordially invited you for a discussion within their tower." The guard seeing the people that were previously around us and waiting in line already had whipped out their phones to record this scene spoke with a bit of humor in his voice. "You aren't in any trouble kid, the Mistresses wish to speak to you in lieu of your father in regards to business." He finished and a dozen people just tsked with boredom as they put away their phones.

Obviously, they were hoping for me to go full retard in doing some young master behavior but after a moment of thought, I decided to take the chance and nodded. "If it's convenient I can meet with them now," I said stowing the chocolates I bought into my space bracelet.

I knew neither Ei being the meathead she was, would threaten me for whatever reason unless I did something extremely stupid or insulting, and Makoto although highly dangerous with her charisma and social connections wouldn't mess with me as well... For one, all of their personal dozen-odd magical tools, be it weapons, shields, and cultivation tools were made by my father so I was almost sure this was basically going to be an apology or something along the lines.

The security guards with my agreement then escorted me to Shogun sister's personal tower.