System Change

Border of Cydaria…

Indria-Astrus Alliance Base Camp…

“What… happened… to… my… nephew!?” Duke Ryven’s voice echoed from his tent throughout the base camp. Inside the tent floated six people, each pinned between two barriers created by the raging commander. One of those people was Titus, the Crown Prince of Astrus, and the other five were the remaining elves from the ambush party that had set out to capture the Crown Prince of Cydaria.

Of course, Osian would have been notified of his son’s death by now. Underneath Ryven’s rage was also a shame that he let one of his brother’s sons die while under his care. No, he wasn’t necessarily under his care. Before the war began, Osian had told Ryven to avoid helping Orion too much, to let him learn and face dangers himself.

No, his brother wouldn’t blame him for the death of his son. That’s just the type of man his brother was. Put, before it came to that, Ryven had to figure out what happened so he would have a proper explanation for his brother, his king, when he came asking.

Ryven injected more mana into his skills, and the barriers and the barriers holding the six squeezed just a little bit tighter. “Answer me! Now!” All five elves groaned in pain as the barriers compressed around them.

To Titus’s credit, even with the two barriers, one at the front of him and one at the back, sandwiching him, his face remained passive, and he didn’t show any fear, and he didn’t even release a groan like the others had. The boy is vile and incompetent, but at least it seems he has some kind of a backbone, Ryven thought as he stared deep into the boy’s eyes. No… that’s not it.

Ryven snarled. The boy wasn’t putting on this façade because he wasn’t scared, no; he knew that Ryven couldn’t do any real harm to him. Doing anything extreme would be throwing away the already shaky alliance with Astrus. But Ryven had just lost a nephew-his king just lost a son.

“It wasn’t our fault. If anything, it was yours… commander,” the young man spat back.

At that moment, Ryven wanted nothing more than to just squeeze with all his might. Perhaps if the boy’s head popped like a melon, it would give him a bit of relief. But he restrained himself. “My fault? I gave you the perfect plan. Cydaria moved, just as I predicted. They were nothing more than puppets! So, tell me, how did you fail at such an easy ambush? Did you toy around with your target so long that backup arrived?”

Titus’s façade faltered for a moment, but he ignored the final question and yelled back, “oh, it wasn’t easy… commander. Apparently, you didn’t do enough research on the kingdom’s elites. No! Your nephew, Orion, his body is laying headless in a storage ring somewhere in Cydaria because you didn’t do your job… spymaster.” The boy’s words were laced with vitriol.

Ryven clenched his fist. At those words, the shame he was feeling underneath the rage and loss reared its head. He may have been the commander of the joint army, but he had also been their kingdom’s spymaster for the better part of a century. If the boy wanted to hit him where it hurt, he had achieved his goal. This outcome was completely out of his expectations. He felt he had planned for everything. Even if something did go wrong, the nine… now five elven squad members all had costly escape scrolls on them, and were prepared to sacrifice themselves to save Orion.

Of course, he hadn’t known that. And by the looks of the shamed guards, it didn’t seem there was anything that they could have done to prevent his death.

“Then tell me. What happened? What did I miss?”

“You missed a monster!”

“A monster? Was it one of their elites? Was their strength more than I calculated? Did that woman finally act? Was it Alanah?”

“No! It wasn’t no damn woman, or a human or elf! You missed a literal monster,” Titus spat. “The Cydarian Kingdom has a monster working for it. It showed up viateleportation after Orion had already used his interference skill. It just ripped open the space in front of us and ho… stepped out. It was calm, not like it was on a lifesaving mission for a crown prince. It was like it was just another Tuesday for the beast. And once it attacked, we threw everything we had at it.

“I even hit it directly with a Darkice Spike. You know how strong our Darkice Spikes are, right? How much mana goes into creating a single one of the spikes? Do you know what it did to the beast? It didn’t do anything more than tear a bit of its clothing. That’s it… not a scratch or even a mark left on its body. You couldn’t even walk away like that if you got hit with that skill. And after that, it seemed more annoyed that its clothing got scuffed than anything else.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. It used, at most, three moves the whole time. It wasn’t even that it was fast, it was just constantly teleporting and charging into our ranks. And it’s third skill… whatever it was. It didn’t even have to hit us to injure us. As long as we were close to it, and in its line of attack, whether we blocked it or not, it hit. It hit on the inside. Its attack could hit the opposite side of my Darkice Wall, and whatever it was would still reach me. I had to summon multiple walls just to get out unharmed. The beast was a thing of nightmares,” Titus explained.

“What? I’ve not heard of any monsters working with their kingdom. What kind of monster was it? Did it use the spatial element? Did its attack slip by because it was using space? Tell me, what did this beast look like?” Ryven was still livid about the loss of his nephew, but if Cydaria had such a weapon waiting to be loosed on them, he needed to get every detail he could about it.

Plus, it was able to somehow teleport into Orion’s Displacement Barrier. His skill level isn’t close to my own, but it should have at least been at level 10. With that, plus his intelligence stat, nothing should have been able to get in. Ryven was going over everything he could think of in his head.

No… that’s not right. If we’re talking beasts, a Void Beast could have broken through. Displacement Barrier may not be able to block that. It also seems like the attack Titus is talking about could have been one made from void energy. That element is mysterious.

Ryven fidgeted with the storage ring on his hand. Inside contained the corpses of the two Void Beasts he had killed during the last year. One of them was vicious, even saying a few words to him before he trapped and beheaded it. Could the Cydarian Kingdom have control over a Void Beast? And not just any Void Beast, but an intelligent one with strength on par with myself or Osian? He shuddered at the thought. Still, he waited for the boy to continue, to either confirm or, hopefully, dispute his suspicions. But the boy only stared at the ground silently, in his own thoughts.

“Well? Spit it out. Give me its description. It’s not fast, but elusive, and it charges and uses some type of defense ignoring skill. But what does it look like? We need to know. Maybe Orion’s death wasn’t for nothing. This information could be vital to the war effort.” Ryven commanded.

“Well… it… it was…” Titus started, his eyes meeting Ryven’s own, but as soon as they connected, the boy shifted them back to the ground and closed his mouth. It didn’t seem like he was going to be able to get anything else out of him.

Was it that terrifying? What could make a Crown Prince like him so… scared? But he doesn’t look scared, though. What is it? Is that shame on his face? Why was he perfectly fine explaining everything else, but falters a describing the beast? Seeing that he wasn’t getting anywhere with Titus, Ryven shifted his attention to the five elves he had dangled in the air, crushed between the two barriers.

“Elmar!” Ryven commanded.

“Yes, Sir!” The man tried to snap a salute on instinct, but failed to with his arms trapped. Ryven loosened the barriers around the man, allowing his arm free so he could complete the salute.

“What was this beast? Do you know? What did it look like? It seems the prince has lost his ability to speak,” Ryven asked one of his own soldiers. Maybe he could get more out of him.

“It… uh… she… seemed to be a companion to someone in the Kingdom of Cydaria,” Elmar said.

“A companion?” Ryven asked for confirmation. That complicates things. If it’s a soulbound companion, and has such strength, then what about the person… she… is soulbound to?

“Yes… sir. And she didn’t seem to put the Crown Prince Edward in her eyes. In fact, she seemed quite rude to the crown prince. I think… she even started to call him… Little Sparky.”

“Wait, she could speak?” And she wasn’t respectful to the crown prince of the kingdom? He didn’t say it, but everyone could see he was surprised. Even in Cydaria, disrespecting the royal family was a big mistake.

“Uh… yes, sir. She used two communication crystals. One to send the message, and one to transmit it out loud.” Elmar explained. “Oh, and when she arrived, Edward seemed as shocked as everyone else. He mumbled… something about a companion and the name Derek.”

“That’s interesting… but, once again. What did the beast look like?” He wasn’t lying. How the beast communicated, how it reacted to the crown prince, and the fact it was a female were all interesting things, perhaps even vital information, but it seemed that everyone was having a hard time describing the beast itself.

Wait, what the man said just seemed to spark a memory for Ryven. That name, Derek. Derek Hunt? Could it be? That’s the man that Sabrina seemed to have an unusual fixation on. If it’s him, though, wasn’t his pet-

“Um… sir… she… she was a bunny.”

***

Raid Dungeon…

At the same time…

“Why are you here?” Derek asked Silvi. Everything else was interesting, but she had just killed multiple elves, then she showed up in the dungeon, all the sudden. We’ll have to talk about that skill later. I can’t believe it could bring her from outside to inside the Raid Dungeon, one with a time distortion, no less. And what about the warnings on the skill? Her storage ring still seems to be intact. Derek shook the thoughts out of his head and focused back on the companion who hadn’t seen him in around a year.

Instead of answering, though, a body appeared on the ground between everyone-a headless body. “No, that one’s no good. Let’s use this one.” Silvi’s voice chimed from her crystal and the body disappeared again, then another one appeared. This one was of a female elf. “Looked too much like a human without a head,” Silvi said as she stared at the body in front of her, then looked up at Derek and met his eyes.

Derek frowned. His companion was staring at him with her ears laid back and an almost begging look in her eyes. Why is she giving me puppy dog eyes? Derek’s own eyes narrowed in turn at Silvi’s antics.

“Silvi, what are you doing?” Derek asked.

“This is an elf,” Silvi stated the obvious.

“Yes?” Derek replied. What is she getting at?

“Can I eat it?”

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