Chapter 226

The Legend Begins (VI)

Cain had barely closed his eyes to get some sleep before being woken by violent Mana fluctuations. Jolting, he quickly scanned the compound and realized nobody else had noticed it. Despite the fluctuations being violent, they were actually quite dulled and well-hidden, and nobody without a higher reach of sensitivity toward Mana would feel them.

He swiftly snuck out and vaulted over the wall, running through the eerily silent streets of the city. Day and night cycle here was hard to follow, but there were still ways; gems alighted the Kingdom during the ‘day’, giving indication to the brain that it was daytime. When it became ‘night’, they would dim, but never completely go out as to faintly replicate the moonlight.

The fluctuations were coming, actually, from the Palace-- no, upon closer inspection, they were coming from the surrounding compound rather than the central building itself. The closer Cain grew the more distinct they became, but he could hardly recognize them; after all, this early on in the Tower, Mana signatures were actually barely different, and the only reason he could even distinguish Emma’s or Senna’s or others’ is because he spent so much time with them, allowing him to have a deeper understanding over them.

As such, he became more wary and careful; the fluctuations, though numbed and dulled, were still extremely potent, even ravaging. Reaching the massive, silver-tinted walls surrounding an enormous compound, the walls decorated with over a dozen watchtowers stationed every couple of dozen yards, he quickly found a blind spot and scaled it. It didn’t hurt, however, that there appeared to be no guards anywhere--notion quickly dismantled when he walked up the ramparts and saw four armored guards, likely a patrol, all lying still in an ever-growing pool of blood.

Frowning, he dipped over to the other side of the wall, landing in a lavish and squared garden of sorts, arches woven of branches and leaves connecting shrubbery-made maze connecting the garden’s independent parts. Not wanting to make much noise, he used Mana to find the way out of the maze and onto the paved garden path slightly up the slope, leading toward a wooden bridge crossing a somewhat wide stream of water.

Crossing it, he laded into the open area, his eyes veering leftward where he could still feel the fluctuations, growing larger. He daggered over and quickly reached one of the side-buildings, a massive, thirty-feet-tall and eighty-feet-long warehouse of sorts. Peaking through the ajar doors, his jaw nearly flattened against the floor when he saw to figures ramming against one another as sparks of fire and ice flew out.

The two knocked each other back, suffocating the space in-between, landing roughly twenty feet from one another before abruptly shifting their heads toward the warehouse’s entrance, meeting Cain’s gaze. The latter jolted, blinking backward immediately; just less than a breath later, a shard of ice and a sword-shaped array of flame burst out from the dirt itself and scuffed the area, partly destroying the doors.

“Whoa, whoa,” Cain mumbled, rockily standing up. “You guys are taking that hot-and-cold shit a bit too seriously.”

Rather than answer, he was forced to blink forward this time, straight into the warehouse, avoiding the sharpened icicle. At the same time, he tossed out a spatial bomb above the two of them, forcing both to duck sideways; midair, though, both also conjured up their own skills, but rather than at Cain, they tossed them at each other. Two concurrent explosions were muffled by the spatial lock that was now further reinforced by Cain. His spatial bomb spat out several dozen huge chunks of fire that adjoined the melting explosion down below, burning.

“Huh... free for all?”

Bending backward, Cain dodged an icicle while the man who sent it flying toward him was forced to dip sideways, dodging an array of fire that blurred past him. At the same time, Cain swung to the side and used ‘Infernal Starlight’, summoning an array of infernal arms that began grabbing toward both other men.

The two men wove their respective elements, one encasing himself into an iced sculpture while the other made an infernal army of his own, grappling with Cain’s. They didn’t, however, fail to toss a stealthy attack at each other in the meantime, barely dodging.

Cain made some distance and whipped out a three-feet-long sword of fire that hovered above the palm of his right hand. Space around the blade fluctuated and danced, as though it was both drawn toward it as well as repulsed by it.

//Voidflame Blade(A+)

Cast: N/A

Mana Cost: 350 per second

Cooldown: However long it takes to condense Voidflame

Use: Summon out a blade of self-contained ‘voidflame’, a type of fire with enough density to affect the local spacetime. Control exerted over it depends on the user. Can wield up to 3 Voidflame Blades at the moment; each newly summoned one, however, triples the cost for all Blades.//

Cain shuffled it through space and broke the ice-sculpted armor, forcing the man to dodge sideways with a surprised yelp; at the same time, Cain was forced to roll away awkwardly as a pillar of fire erupted beneath him and began to chase him. Blinking further to the side, he’d already commanded the Voidflame Blade to switch targets onto the other man, forcing the latter to erect a fiery coil around him.

It didn’t matter, though, since the blade phased through the fire and actually managed to chip the man’s shoulder slightly before the latter was able to dodge.

“Shite, that fuckin’ hurt!” the man cursed out, dousing himself in fire and vanishing, appearing behind Cain, blazing sword in hand aimed at the latter’s heart. Cain swiftly recalled his own blade, and held the handle tightly, deflecting the strike; the sheer impact, however, rocked his organs and bones, displacing them for a moment, as both he and the man were sent shuffling backward. The latter crashed through the warehouse’s wall, while Cain barely managed to stop himself from doing the same.

“Alright, alright, can we, can we all just catch a breath for a second?” Cain withdrew the Voidflame Blade, looking at his Mana: he’d barely expended 15% of his total, shocking even himself.

“Who are you?” the ice-wielding man spoke back, his features hidden in the thick shade. The other man joined right after, hiding his own features behind the fire. “Who sent you?”

“Whatcha’ mean? I just felt you dudes dukin’ it out,” Cain replied. “And wanted to check to see who has enough balls to be fighting inside the Palace compound. Didn’t know it was hot-and-cold brothers, though.”

“We’re not brothers!” both men exclaimed at the same time, causing Cain to look at them oddly.

“You didn’t answer who you are.”

“Why should I? You never introduced yourselves.”

“We asked first!”

“So?”

“So you should follow the proper decorum!”

“After you two tried to kill me?” Cain scoffed.

“You tried to kill us too!”

“That’s only after you tried to kill me! And, wait, I actually wasn’t--if I wanted you guys dead, you really think I’d be using these limp, show-off spells?!”

“... yes?”

“Yeah, I didn’t really invest a lot of emotions in that bluff.”

“There were fewer of them than this guy,” the fiery man spoke out. “And he’s made of ice.”

“... oh, so that means that just because you wield fire you’re always hotheaded--nope, wait, that’s actually exactly true. Huh. I think there might be something to Oylen’s theory on internalizing Elements most-closely bound to our personalities.”

“This is an extremely casual conversation between two people that were just trying to kill each other,” Cain said. “And now I’m participating in it two. Who are you guys anyway? You’re like... Awoken Awoken.”

“So are you.”

“But that’s ‘cause I am Awoken.”

“Oh. You’re that anomaly that we’ve heard chatter about!” the ice-encased man spoke with a level of surprise in his voice. “Damn, no wonder why you’re so strong. Spellweaver, huh? Bold. Really, really bold. I met a Spellweaver once. A pretty badass dude. Could raze a whole city in a second. Too bad he’d fall into coma for months afterwards for overdraining his Mana.”

“Ah, yes, because other Awoken just go around casually razing cities without any problems whatsoever.” Cain responded.

“Good point. Anyway, we’re done here; it’s clear we’ll have to settle some accounts some other time,” the same man spoke again, seeming to turn his head toward the other who merely scoffed.

“Ah, no, no, don’t stop on my account,” Cain said. “Keep at it. Just pretend I’m not even here.”

“Kinda hard with all that Mana brewing in your veins. Sweet Caleen, just how purified is your Mana?”

“To be fair it was like sewage water beforehand, so I’m still learning to tame it properly. Just a quick question, are either of you with the Third Prince--I mean, the King?”

“Eh? That boy? No, why? You wanna join him? I’d think otherwise,” one of the men said. “He’s just a pawn. We’re actually after the dude behind him.”

“Cy!!”

“Oops. Wait! Why are you shouting my name, you idiot?! He’s Pher!! That’s his name!”

“... I’m... I’m not even gonna ask.” Cain shrugged it off as he watched the two men vanish within their respective elements. He himself didn’t stagger around for much longer, disappearing.

A few minutes later, within the same warehouse that began to magically repair itself, fire and ice recombusted from thin air, but rather than dispersing, grew together and molded into one person that immediately cracked a wide, happy grin.

“I’ve found him,” he mumbled. “I finally found him! That was definitely him! That humming energy, that playfulness, the rampaging Mana, the ocean-deep eyes hiding a billion truths... hi hi, who would have thought by trying to bait Mael, I accomplished something much, much, much better! Hi hi~~”