The building of the Primordial Knights Guild branch is massive and not all that far from the Black Tower where the Enforcer lives.
That building is made entirely of so sort of whitish tal and glass. Multiple tall trees tower even over that huge manor, and there are pretty gardens nearby.
At first, I’m about to think how wasteful all of this is, but then I realize sothing. Wouldn’t creating a building like this take just a few days for soone with enough power and skill in sothing like [tal Manipulation], or at least whatever that material really is? The sa goes for the trees. I already saw Sophie grow an entire tree from a tiny seed in just a few minutes when she was practicing.
That would also explain why what I suspect to be the other guild branches are equally interesting. There is a big wooden pyramid, another tower nearby that’s about as tall as the black one dominating the city, a circular building with a myriad of windows, and a tree growing from the middle of it.
We find ourselves being let into the building that houses the Primordial Knights without delay. Weslin just sends a bit of mana to the gate, and it opens automatically. And imdiately afterwards, a few people co to welco him, all of whom I can only assu are locals.
I asked Weslin before, but it seems like any guild worth a damn employs plenty of locals to take care of upkeep, trading, organization, and that kind of thing. anwhile, attendees fill the positions of leadership, deciding the direction the guild will take next while learning from the attendees who led it for a few years and are about to leave the tutorial, or from locals who can share so information.
Overall, it seems to be a system that both sides are comfortable with, to the point where if I asked soone why it is like this, I’m sure I would hear sothing like, “It has always been that way.”
From the mont we enter, everything moves quickly. Within minutes, I’m standing with Weslin in front of the guild branch leader, an older and massively built human. He towers over us in a way that makes wonder if he might not be part velnar.
At this point, I don’t even have to ask why, even though the Primordial Knights are supposed to have the most demons, I’ve barely seen any. These maniacs are surely crowding the deeper levels of Beyond. The sa goes for the local demons.
Weslin and the guild branch leader seem to know each other well and waste no ti getting caught up with one another. They talk for a bit, but in the middle of that conversation, the door opens and a lynthari in ssy clothes looks over the room.
When his eyes land on , they stay there. The crazed-looking lynthari pays no attention to anyone else in the room and charges straight at .
“You should have told he was here!” he hisses, his fangs showing.
His clothes are in an even bigger ss than his hair. They're still the sa white with a mix of blue, like the other people from the Primordial Knights, but stained with red and black liquid, torn, and even burnt in places.
The branch leader seems used to it. “He’s a mber of the Primordial Knights, so you know what that ans. Behave.”
To my surprise, he lies, we haven't even gotten to the contracts yet.
“You! You an man! Did you wait to inform until he beca a mber on purpose?” the lynthari complains.
“Obviously. And I’m warning you. Nyssa’s going to want him on the 4th floor, and Weslin seems to like the guy, so once again, behave.”
“Sure, sure,” the disheveled lynthari scratches his chin with stubble and walks around .
The entire ti, he doesn’t even bother talking to . Instead, he observes . There are even so blatantly rude checks that I fend off with ease, but that doesn’t seem to bother him too much. He continues with modified and even more probing ones. He even puts on so round glasses with dark purple lenses that hide his golden eyes and continues to stare at .
So far, he hasn’t tried to touch , but I can see how much he wants to from how his arm and fingers keep twitching and sotis almost reaching toward .
“I see. I see. Interesting. What the fuck.”
He fixes his glasses and makes another, slower circle around .
“This is weird. This is even weirder. What the fuck. Oh, so it's like that!”
The branch leader continues to look at , as if expecting to react, but so far, I just stand there, not that bothered. More than anything, I’m a bit curious.
“What the fuck. What the fuck. How? Broken, twisted. So weird.” Tʜe sourcᴇ of thɪs content ɪs novᴇl(ꜰ)ire.ɴet
When another circle around stops, he puts on another pair of glasses over the purple ones. These ones are bright yellow, with lenses as thick as my finger, and inscriptions are etched around their edges.
“WHAT THE FUCK!”
“Please, don’t swear so much,” the branch leader tries.
The Doctor just glances at him and shakes his head. Then, for the first ti, he reaches out to touch . His finger, his arm, stops mid-air, held there by my [Redistribution].
In a quick reaction, he attempts to do sothing to push through it, and a weird barrier flickers around his skin. But instead, I just use more mana and brute-force through that weird thing he’s placed around himself.
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“Tsk,” he says and pulls his hand back, and I let him. Then he pulls a cute little scepter from his clothes and starts waving it around .
The mana stones at its top light up, and the glasses he has on light up as well.
For a mont, he stands there in sheer shock.
“There are six good reasons you should be dead, and ten more lesser ones why you should be either in pain, dead, or crippled. How do you continue to exist?”
"When you hear people say it that often, it just turns into background noise," I say.
His ears twitch, and he smiles in that way only lynthari can, the kind that shows their fangs in full beauty. Slowly, he takes off both of his glasses and puts them away.
He reaches his hand toward , as if to shake mine. “Nice to et you, I am…”
I halt that movent as well. “There is no way I would fall for that.”
“Tsk,” he sighs and gestures at the branch leader, then at . “I want him unconscious so I can examine his body!”
“I won’t be doing that,” the branch leader disagrees.
Once again, that crazed lynthari seems annoyed and makes another circle around .
“Listen,” he says, circling again, fingers twitching like he’s resisting the urge to grab a scalpel. “You are either a complete ss or sothing pretending really well to be one. Either way, I want to cut you open.”
“taphorically,” the branch leader adds quickly.
The Doctor waves him off. “Fine. taphorically. For now.”
That weird-ass lynthari sniffs the air. “You don’t even feel right. There’s no harmony to your mana signature. It’s like… soone chewed it up and spat it back out in your shape. So many things compounded to make such a gloriously fucked up body.”
He tilts his head at and mumbles, “Has soone been experinting on you? Did you get possessed? Or were you born like this? No, wait, don’t answer. I want to guess.”
He pulls out a notebook, flips to a page full of cramped symbols and ssy diagrams, and starts sketching sothing while occasionally glancing at . “Are your organs where they’re supposed to be? Can you confirm? Do they move on their own?”
I stare at him.
He blinks. “Rhetorical. Mostly.”
Then he starts making strange clacking noises and activating so kind of skill. I feel incredibly small and weak soundwaves wash over my body and then bounce back toward the Doctor. He repeats the process, this ti using an array of tones, constantly shifting the pitch and frequency of the sounds he's making.
I look at him and then at the branch leader, who mutters with a shrug, “He does this sotis.”
The Doctor suddenly looks up, wide-eyed with excitent. “Can I borrow your left arm? That pale one? Just the outer layer of skin and a few bones. I’ll return it.”
“How many shards?” I ask.
“Ugh. So greedy.” He taps his temple with the end of his pen. “But your mana doesn’t echo like a normal person’s. And why the hell is there so much of it? Rookie, what is your exact stat distribution? Did you go by the golden standard? Are you following the ancient ways? So strange school I don’t know about?”
He eyes my chest thoughtfully. “If I could knock you out for ten minutes and do a non-lethal incision, I bet I’d learn so much.”
“Please try,” I reply.
His ears twitch in amusent. “You’re fun. I hope you don’t die too soon. Well, not like you have much to say in that. Oh, maybe you do. You can obviously make it co quicker.”
He cackles and scribbles a few more things down, then spins on his heel, talking to himself. “Nyssa will praise again for letting her know how much she would want you after I heard about that black mana. Yes, yes, yes. She’ll love this one. Show that black mana.”
“Nope.”
He pauses.
His eyes slowly drift back to , wide and blinking, like his mouth had outrun his brain, “…Wait. Did I ask that of you out loud?”
He snorts and taps his forehead, his tail swaying. “Stupid mouth. Always skipping ahead. Can’t be that rude!”
Then he leans closer, just slightly, just enough to narrow the distance, his voice lowering into a strange mix of wonder and unease. “But how can I endure? There’s a signature. Very faint. Not exactly present, but pulling. Like a fucked up mana soone dressed up in fake mana skin and forgot to give it a na. Have you ever had people get headaches just from standing too close to you? No? You probably didn’t notice.”
He twirls the pen between his fingers and glances at the ceiling.
“See, once, once, long ago, I read about a field researcher who claid she’d t soone like you. I wish I still had that mana stone where it was ntioned. It wasn’t mana she saw. It was… collapsing. Consuming. Dominating. Sothing she didn't know how to categorize.”
He looks at again, a smile twitching.
“She wrote that it was a form of mana black as a night sky without stars. Compressed. Hungry. Like sothing that had forgotten it was supposed to cooperate with the world.”
He shrugs, casually flipping through his notebook. “She’s long dead, that researcher I an, so it's not like I can ask her more. I don’t even know her na, and all the other mana stones turned to ash when I started reading them. But she did talk about her pet fish in the one that endured. Apparently, it was very cute.”
The branch leader sighs. “Get to the point, Doc.”
“I don’t have one,” the Doctor says cheerfully.
He leans back and tilts his head at like I’m a magic puzzle box that hasn’t decided if it wants to open or eat him. “Have you ever suppressed sothing so hard that the suppression itself started leaking? Because that’s what this feels like. Like there’s a door. And it’s locked. And behind it is sothing that eats keys.”
Sothing about that sentence is very fascinating to . And the more I observe this man, the more curious I get. He might be crazy as fuck, but there are things I can sort of pick up on and almost understand.
The others in the room seem to be annoyed, and it’s possible I would be as well if I’d known this creepy lynthari longer than a few minutes, but for now, he represents sothing new. And I’m curious.
He giggles again, the sound high and bright and just a little too sharp.
So I ask, “How much could you really tell if I let you examine sothing?”
That shuts him up. Imdiately. His ears twitch, his eyes narrow, and his tail freezes mid-flick.
Then his grin widens slowly.
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