Chapter 115

Cast of Iron (I)

Flames roared aboard the river, belting into rain as Senna emerged from an explosion, her hair disheveled and burned in several places, her clothes tattered, skin covered with thick layers of ash and soot. A shimmering, yet strangely bent sword carried her out and tossed her awkwardly back ashore as she rolled and stumbled, barely standing up to her feet.

Right then, a deep bellow echoed out, causing her to groan as a winged silhouette came falling from the sky, its beak wide open, a kindle of fire growing larger with each passing moment before it coalesced into a beam of flames that shot toward her. She hurriedly pooled several of her weapons together and formed a shield, while using the actual shield to carry herself away from the blast zone.

The entire fight wasn't as hard as it was frustrating; whenever she would come close or land a square hit, with hopes of comboing a few extra ones together, the dumb bird would fly back up and hover around for a while, shooting fire at her. Though Senna could go airborne as well, her agility would drop beyond the point of salvageable and she'd be entirely unable to actually dodge the attacks. So, she had to constantly dodge and dance until the dumb bird descended again, and the whole process would start anew.

She stealthily glanced at Cain who was sitting on top of a boulder, a coat of white sheen surrounding him and preventing any of the debris from hitting him. A cigarette in hand, a relaxed expression, closed eyes, and lips that appeared to be humming a tune... THAT JACKASS!!

Biting her lower lip in frustration, she summoned together a band of identical blades, having just made them out of Mana; her leveling wasn’t quite as similar as to the others -- though she would gain basic stats, her skills... were woefully lacking. As a matter of fact, save for just basic boosts to her speed, she had nothing else -- her offense was entirely dependent on her manipulating Mana at the moment and attacking.

Though Cain called it the ‘freest of classes’ with ‘unlimited possibilities’, to her it was more of a headache, especially as she lacked experience fighting -- doubly so against the flying foes.

The band of blades wove a circle around her as she tied them up with thin threads of Mana, angling them to spin around her until they were a blur, causing winds to surge with her as the epicenter. The winds slowly lifted her off and carried her up, while she used the shield beneath her feet to aim where she wanted to go.

“Wrong,” a soft voice entered her ears. “That’s not the way to fly as a Weapon Saint.”

“THEN WHAT IS?!!” she screamed back down at the ground where she saw Cain waving at her with a smile.

“Well, I don’t know,” he shrugged ‘helplessly’. “It’s your class...”

“... uggh, I swear to God, I’ll strangle him one day...” she grumbled and landed back on the ground, just in time to be squarely hit by a massive fireball the bird shot, causing her to once again be sent flying back like a kite without strings, barely landing.

“Your weapons are your soldiers,” he reminded her. “Not your slaves or whatever those people are called who carry folk on those fancy rooms or whatever.”

“A palanquin?” Senna mumbled.

“Yes! Wow, you’re so smart!”

“Shut up!”

“You think that the big birdie over there has the advantage over you ‘cause it can fly,” Cain said. “But so what if it can? Why are you even trying to fight in the air with it?”

“Huh? So the way I was fighting at first was the right way?” she asked.

“Oh, god no, that was awful, some of the worst shit I’ve seen in my life.”

“HEY!!”

“I’m saying -- don’t aim where it is,” he added. “Guide it where you want it to be. You have an unlimited supply of soldiers that you can use to corral anyone to wherever you want them. Your mistake is that you're still thinking of them as 'weapons'; they're not, Senna. They're tools. They're not just meant for attacking and sacrificing as a makeshift shield. Think of how I use the Elements," he added as a bright shield suddenly sprung around her, blocking the bird's flaming barrage. "Do I exclusively use Fire to burn things in an attack? Or Water as a shield? Or Wind just to become speedy?"

“... no.” she mumbled.

“No, I don’t -- because only morons do that.”

“You mean... everyone-fucking-else in the Tower?!”

“Precisely!!”

“Jesus Christ dude...”

“Besides, your Weapon Creation is so unimaginative it physically hurts me...”

“H-huh?”

“Why are you just creating basic swords and axes and spears and shit?” Cain asked her with a sigh. “Why not go crazy?”

“What do you mean?”

"I mean... why not created a fifty feet wide shield and then mount it with spikes in the shape of spears. There you go, you have your Vanguard. Instead of spears, why not create ballistae to shoot those spears -- there you go, now you have flanks or even rear. Instead of just creating swords, why not create several of them tied to a chakram-like shape, and have them spin like crazy? Now you have your advance force."

“... wait a second.”

“Hm?”

“I CAN FUCKING DO ALL THAT SHIT?!!!!” Senna screamed out in shock.

“E-eh? You... you didn’t know?”

“NO!!!”

“WHY DIDN’T YOU EXPERIMENT WITH YOUR CLASS MORE?!!”

“... oh my God,” she turned around and began ignoring him. “This... this is amazing. So many options... alright, I’m ready. You can take this stupid shield off.”

“... alrighty,” Cain shrugged, withdrawing the Elemental Shield and wondering just how she got by so far. He genuinely believed she was just lacking in the imagination department which was why he said nothing of it until now, thinking she’ll reach the same conclusion on her own.

It seemed, however, that his most basic explanation was more than enough -- as the very, very, very simple style of how she fought was upturned immediately. She quickly realized, however, that the bigger and more complex a weapon... the longer the creation and the more Mana is expended. And, in case her maximum Mana couldn’t create her desired idea in one go... she would be unable to create it at all.

She saw it as a challenge, however, rather than start to complain; she took his advice on the shield, but revamped it a bit -- rather than wide, it was tall, concave at the center with a squared protrusion there hiding eighteen nocked spears that would shoot out the moment the square was opened. The shield’s edges were lined with metallic extensions set at a forward angle, almost like a roof’s gutter.

She hid in the shield’s shadow, though appeared capable of seeing everything; it was then that Cain noticed a reflective surface at the very top of the shield, almost like glass, realizing she was playing with optics and Mana a bit, sending the image the ‘glass’ picked up to the similar one standing at her eye level, on the inside of the shield.

However, as the shield was made with limited Mana, it was hardly the most resilient thing; Cain suspected that it would crumble in a few attacks, at most, though he also suspected that was all she needed.

True to its nickname, Cain mused, ‘Dumb-beaked Firebird’, dove straight at the shield, head-first, aiming at that square that screamed ‘a target’. The future was easy to predict, yet Cain still found himself surprised. The spears did fire off the moment the bird's beak hit the square, but only a portion of them tried to lodge into the bird's face; nearly fifteen flanked the sides of the bird's neck and wound around the top, locking its head right against the shield with the clever use of Mana-inforced ropes.

The bird cried out in panic, flailing its wings to try and fly off, but was unable to gain proper balance with the way its rather large body was twisted. It was then that Senna appeared on the top of the shield, a grin plastered on her face, and heaved off with a pike in her hand, aiming straight at the bird’s brain and easily piercing it, cutting off any further cries.

The shield dissipated right after as she ran out of Mana and she stumbled back, falling awkwardly. Cain charged Wind and easily grasped her and helped her land. She was wheezing and was clearly tired, but there was a massive smile on her face as she stared at the fruit of her labor.

“Good job,” Cain walked over and patted her head gently, glancing at the bird. “If I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I’d have suspected somebody helped you.”

“... somebody did help me.” her expression dropped for a moment as she glanced at him askew. “T-t-t...”

“You can do it.” he edged her on with a smile.

“... thank you...” she whispered in a low voice, turning around and trying to hide her flushing cheeks.

“Sorry; honestly, if I’d known you were so moronic when it came to your class, I’d have advised you sooner.”

“I--I’m not moronic!!” she exclaimed. “The Skill says ‘Weapon Creation’!! How the hell could I have known a full-blown fucking watchtower can be considered a weapon?!!”

"... oh well," Cain shrugged. "Hey, can you create around thirty super round and heavy cannonballs and pile them right here?"

“H-huh? Why?” Senna asked curiously, though did what she was asked.

“Well, you had your fun,” Cain grinned, cracking his knuckles. “But now it’s my turn.”

“Eh? There’s another boss here?”

"... it's cute that you think that bird was a boss," Cain smiled and caressed her hair gently while Senna's cheeks flushed. "There's literally like sixty of them within a thirty-mile radius."

“...!!!”

“Anyway, look at him,” Cain pointed forward, Senna’s eyes following right after and landing at the figure standing on the other side of the ‘river’. Clad in thick-seeming, wholly jet-black armor with even darker fumes of smoke billowing out and a pair of crimson gems alight within the spiked helmet, the figure appeared extremely threatening, yet also somewhat clumsy. There were a pair of swords lodged in the flaming scabbards at his waist, though the main feature had to be an extensively long cape that looked to be at least twenty feet long, dragged along the soot-covered ground. “Tsk, the bastard’s still as scary as ever.”

“You... you fought him before?” Senna asked.

“Yeah, right,” Cain rolled his eyes. “By the time I actually could, the dude’s been dead for years. Anyway, you should stand a bit further back.”

“Will you be going all out?!” she asked excitedly.

“What? No,” Cain replied indifferently. “I’d be needing to face like ten of these dudes to do that. I’m not some super-skilled guy, butterfly,” he added with a helpless smile. “While I could kill that guy in one spell, why would I do that? While I still can, I wanna try and improve without the risk of dying. Besides, there’s something that I’ve been itching to test out ever since I fought that skelly.”

“What?”

“Hepta-attunement,” Cain elaborated, taking a deep breath and slowly lifting off to midair. “And whether I can achieve it without going into Super-Saiyan mode and breaking my body until it’s barely alive.”