PART 1

The ship began moving towards our next destination.

Back in my room, I think about the conversation I just had with Nelton. That he wants to work with me or for me is not a bad thing. Now I only have to figure out whether he means it. Someone to backstab me isn’t what I am searching for.

I also wonder about the rock resource zone. Until now the most I saw of this world were fairly explainable. Like I don’t understand it, but nothing was so out of my imagination that I just came up blank. The airship was a minor blow in this regard, like it isn’t the first time I see something man-made fly, but the resource zone hit me in this regard a lot more than I thought it would.

It felt like going into Disneyland as a kid or finding your favourite novel or film world. Simply fascinating. I am now more than ever motivated to explore this strange, fascinating and sometimes very frightening world.

I am not going to lie, the last couple of months flew over me a lot and I just passively accepted a lot of things This experience helped me a lot to get a grip on this new world.

With everything good comes unfortunately some bad. I officially can scrap some of my plans and gadgets I wanted to make. A gun in a normal sense wouldn’t make a lot of sense.

*BOOOOOOOOOOOOM*

The cabin is shaking with me falling into the floor. Rapidly I stand up and make myself combat-ready. Whatever this was, it didn’t sound like a turbulence.

With those thoughts, I make my way towards the upper deck.

+++++++++++++++++

While moving rapidly on the corridor, I make my defences ready and not a second too early as a black dark disc-shaped projectile hits my shield. Luckily, it did get deflected enough that it only grazed my arm. Not the best outcome, but better than having it sticking in my stomach.

Coming to a halt, I recast another armour spell and search for my opponent. At the end of the corridor stays a black-robed guy.

He chuckles evilly. “So someone survived that, it seems that you are better than those trashes from before” Then he releases some type of concealment spell and I catch the sight of multiple bodies in different states of dissasamblence. A gruesome sight I hadn’t noticed while rushing down the corridor.

Being encouraged on my silence the guy continued to speak. “So another unexperienced guy, how lucky of me” he said looking very casual and relaxed. At least he looks down on me, something I can very much appreciate. “Has the cat got your tongue? Whatever better finish you off before someone steals you, my darling” Then laughing like mad he sprints towards me while holding a black dagger.

A surprise came across my face. He would be the first mage that wanted close combat. The ones I saw until now preferred playing tower defence. Surprised but not hesitating, I also charge in his direction preparing some of my gadgets.

“I see, an artificer” He then removes a violet scroll from his robe, ready to use it. Having no idea what that scroll is used for, I toss out a grenade accompanied by a flash-bang. Then retreating and covering my eyes.

*Puchi*

I feel a stabbing pain on the sides of my ribcage with searing hot blood running out. Being a bit dazed from the wound, I fall on my back.

While being a little bit dazed, I see the black dagger approaching again. This time very ungrateful, I flail my arms in the hope of achieving two effect. First that he thinks that I am vulnerable and to make my armguard ready. He wounds me again on my left hand, luckily the hand where I don’t have the armguard. Then he makes some distance from me which puzzled me for a second, but then I felt my left arm going numb.

“Hay, so you noticed, too bad this is the end of the road for you, you seem to have some good stuff on you, I will make sure to enjoy everything,” he said while laughing manically. I don’t believe that he is sane. Wait stop, that isn’t what I should think about. I raise my arm to shoot the armguard. He doesn’t even flinch, so sure in his victory. Then I fire the projectile. It luckily hit and the poison is rapidly going into his bloodstream.

This time, his face change quite a bit. “What poison is that? WHAT IS IT” He screams the end while wailing in absolute pain. I use this time to fish out a weak antidote potion from my amulet and drink it. At this time, I only can hope that the poison is of a common variety, else this all-purpose-anti-poison potion won’t help a whole lot.

After 2-3 minutes, I slowly regain back my freedom of movement and after another 2 minutes of praying that none comes across the corner, I recover mostly. I still feel somewhat stiff, but I can move.

Now I inspect the corridor and my attacker. Close to the stairs are the bodies of the other apprentice from my faction and then there is the corpse of the attacker. His skin is green now.

I move closer and inspect the guy again. He has short brown hair with no beard or moustache, a straight nose and a unibrow. Expect his now green skin, he looks very unremarkable. I put on gloves and remove all of his valuables from his person, then I move to the other corpses and unceremoniously loot the, putting the valuables like scrolls and potions and some miscancellous stuff into the amulet and their ID amulets I hang onto my robe, the amulet of the attacker hangs on the other side of my robe. His amulet as somewhat different, black and it seem like absorbing light. Interesting, but I heard about the material. Not something useful but good looking. A low-level material. Making sure that everything else is in order, I continue my way towards the deck, this time a lot more cautiously

PART 2

I didn’t meet any other enemies on my way to the deck, or they didn’t wish to engage me after seeing the foreign amulet hanging on my belt. Anyhow, I made my way to the deck and what I saw was equal part terrifying and wondrous. Four persons fought in the air dozens of meters atop the deck. If I had to compare their fight, I would call it a photoshopped version of a mock battle between cruisers in the orbit of earth, but different. The man in the middle was stationary and was defending against the other three they surprisingly didn’t thrash talk like my opponent, but were fully fixating on attacking the middle guy, who I noticed was on my side. Not a very good discovery. Two were going full out on attacking the man in the middle while the last was watching out for any kind of counterattack. The situation on the floor was in comparison much better, we were much more numerous than the enemy and we are holding out pretty good. Deciding to join the fray, I go to the left side of the boat and join some other apprentices.

“Attack the middle section or defend, but try to stay alive,” said a hideous looking guy with surprising good intentions. Following his remark, I went to their group of 7 and focused on defence and waiting for any opportunities that might arise.

While doing the defending, I also notice the massive amount of magic thrown around. The spells might seem weak, but the sheer amount of them made the magic consumption much higher than the high-end fight above our heads. Lucky for us, the ship's defence shielded us against any leftover power from their battle. The enemy used in majority dark and shadow kind of magic, what came out the most was their equipment, they used a lot of it in their gadgets and stuff. That dark stuff from the enemy amulet.

Anomalies came with the massive amount of magical discharge. Not very strong yet because the strength of the spells used weren’t that strong, but some of the anomalies close to the official mage fight looked a lot more frightening than those. Some looked like balls of electricity, some looked like kinds of fire elementals, while the extreme ones had something to do with space and/or time. Can’t tell with my lacking expertise and time.

Continuing on the fight, I use a chance to throw a grenade flashbang combo into the mix with somewhat mixed results. 2 of the enemy got killed in the rain of other spells, but the others were doing fairly well, the guy closest to the centre of the explosion looked like nothing had happened and simply shrugged it off, after which he attacked a lot more frequently into my direction.

I calculated my chances of surviving this group fight and the chance I calculated weren’t very rosy, thus I did what every competent football player is good at, I faked an injury.

Lovering my shield, I waited until one of the more explosive spells came my way and lowered my shield.

*BOOOOOOOOOM*

An explosion rang into my ear, while I also exploded a smaller fireball in my face. Strong enough that I looked wounded, but not strong enough to overcome my slowly growing resistance to magic.

*Woosh*

I flew back a couple of meters and got hit against the railing on my side. Looking as pitiful as possible, I slowly made my way to the small base my side build for the wounded.

“Here is a potion and there is a bed, have fun” one of the Medics? said and pressed a potion in my hand while pointing to an empty bed. Not having to tell me twice, I lied on the bed and swallowed some of the liquid and did a nice trick I learned a while back. With the help of my soul tendrils, I can enclose a liquid in my mouth and then teleport it into my amulet. Something I am sure normal people won’t be able to do. I mean normal in a sense of a normal apprentice.

While lying a strange thought overcame me. I learned and read that there are three ways to power, but I have seen a suspect little amount of decent squires or knights. Not on the boar except as servant and not in this fight. Either their legacy got cut off or they are simply more inferior than mages? I mean, I wouldn’t tell their people that being a knight sucks in fear of losing useful servant.

Back to my situation, I take another sip from the potion and this time I don’t use my amulet to store it. The warm feeling overcame me as times before and I experienced the miraculous wonders of alchemy. A concept back on earth I would scoff at. Another fascinating facet of this world.

Some spells came dangerously close to my position, but luckily, some people are tasked with defending the base.

*BOOOOM*

Another explosion and a lot of wood flying around. A person emerged and was furiously flying towards the mage level fight in the air. In one Swoop, he nearly incarnated the whole the enemy mages. He is a level higher than the other mages and I don’t know what they used to distract him.

“Retreat” shouted one of the three mages and managed to barely defend while most of their forces retreated into what is basically a flying saucepan and they hurriedly left, but not without leaving a volley of spells as a goodbye gift. After a sigh of relief, I relaxed a bit and sat up on my bed.

“Everyone, the other mages are going to hunt the enemy's left inside of the ship, while those that managed to kill some people should go the Henry to exchange the shadow amulets for rewards. Because of the situation, everyone gets double the rewards” The guy who rushed in the end said.

Some people cheered, but a lot more were downcast. The attacks from that mage destroyed most of the shadow amulets on the ground. Luckily I had one. With that I made my way over to the Henry guy, eagerly awaiting the rewards