Hmm. This was roughly how Gwen and Lysska talked sotis, so I hoped my mimicry was passable. Still, that didn’t explain why this guy was turning the color of a boiled beet. Was he sick?
Wait— no. Red Cores didn’t get sick.
Cursed, maybe? Overheating from sheer confusion?
Bah. Not my circus, not my montarily flustered monkey.
I needed to finish this quickly, but the man was completely mute. Say sothing already. I couldn’t push the conversation myself without shattering the whole enigmatic-act I was running, and the clone’s tir was ticking away in the back of my head. Then again, I could always escalate things further and drown everything in more chaos so no one could piece together what actually happened.
Honestly, that was kind of my preferred approach.
Chaos had an uncanny talent for muddying every truth, and it had been my most reliable weapon for a long ti now.
Finally, Alexei spoke. His face was still far too close to mine, but there was sothing firr in his eyes now, a kind of grim resolve.
“What’s your price?”
…Yeah. That tracked.
I’d added the whole “price” angle deliberately. From everything I’d seen, these people were deeply paranoid. Free help from a random entity would only trip a different set of alarms in their heads. Extracting a cost— even a vague one— kept things grounded. It let their wariness stay visible, where I could see it, instead of festering sowhere I couldn’t account for.
It took more ntal gymnastics than I cared to admit, but oh-ho-ho, it worked. I think.
I smiled at Alexei and let my voice slip back into that smooth, silken tone. “Nothing you won’t be able to do.”
Truth be told, I hadn’t even decided on a price yet. What I actually wanted was information— context, history, the bigger picture— but asking for that outright would’ve cracked the image I was projecting. So I leaned into the mysticism and decided I’d sort it out later, assuming this didn’t explode in my face first.
“What are you?” he asked next.
Not who. What.
I frowned internally. Didn’t these people know elves? Were pointy ears and a condescending aura not a known archetype here? The question only deepened my suspicion about where exactly I’d landed.
“Your benefactor,” I replied lightly, “more or less. With benefits on my end as well.” I chuckled.
Silence stretched between us. He clearly wanted answers, and I was serving him a five-course al of elegant bullshit. The look on his still-flushed face made it hard not to find the situation amusing.
I imagined this was exactly how I must’ve looked to Lotte on multiple occasions, whenever she slipped into her cryptic moods and I’d desperately wanted to combust her with nothing but my mind.
Another question ca, and I dodged it just as smoothly. By then, both Curious and Terrorist were starting to strain against whatever loose control I had on them. Since it was only a simple mana construct keeping them in check, I relaxed it slightly, just enough for the savagery to bleed through.
The effect was imdiate.
Alexei cracked.
Panic crept in, desperation followed, and soon enough he agreed.
He didn’t really have a choice. Not if he cared about his Waryn brethren. And apparently, that was enough for him to sign a deal with what he likely believed was a fae.
Now that I thought about it, elves could probably pass as larger fae anyway, just without the usual wings and excessive glitter. Not that I’d ever seen an actual fae in person. But I’d read enough descriptions across different texts to know the similarities. Fae were rare, after all.
I might be able to lean into that role.
The innate nature attributed to faeries would even justify my curiosity about this place, letting it pass as sothing natural rather than suspicious. I made a ntal note to think more about it later, since that decision would shape the role I settled into here. The trial wasn’t anywhere near over yet. I didn’t even have confirmation that the first one had properly ended, though I could feel sothing shifting, like we were nearing the end.
But that was Future Jade’s migraine.
Present Jade had a deal.
I smiled and released his head. The heat lingered on his skin— so the flush wasn’t my doing. Probably. He should really see soone about that.
With that, I began the first truly planned theatrics of my life.
And gods, it was easy when all the actors were also you.
With a casual wave of my hand, I signaled Curious to stop short of skewering another Waryn. Timing was everything. This had to be dazzling. Awe-inspiring. Sothing that would lodge itself into mory and refuse to leave.
Which ant fire. Lightning. Massive explosions.
Hahaha.
Curious understood imdiately. Terrorist, of course, needed no prompting at all. That one had a natural affinity for spectacle, particularly the explosive kind. Massive arcs of thunder tore through the air. Beats of wings sent crescent-shaped shockwaves rippling outward. Thunderclaps shattered the ground so thoroughly that the terrain barely resembled what it had been monts ago.
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Darkness followed, purely for aesthetic purposes. Tendrils of shadow. Haze thick enough that all they could see were monstrous silhouettes tearing through the void, wreaking havoc just out of reach.
I conducted it all like a deranged maestro. Chaos upon chaos, tempo rising, swelling into a crescendo of pure, beautiful glorious violence.
Ahh.
The feeling wasn’t so different from real combat. Both flood you with that electric, live-wire thrill. Creating living art where every role, every disaster, was played by you… maybe I did have a natural affinity for theatrics.
Who knew.
When the display finally ended, I allowed the haze to dissipate. The darkness-wreathed monstrosities shrieked in place, releasing paralyzing roars as the scene settled.
At least the earlier flush had drained from Alexei’s face, replaced instead by a deathly pallor. He must have sensed the sheer concentration of mana packed into those shadowed abominations.
I wasn’t sure which reaction I preferred.
I smiled as I raised one hand in a grandiose gesture. Both Lazy and Curious began to glitch in place as I swept my arm upward. As if answering a command only the air could hear, a violent, violet force seized them and hurled them toward the sky.
“Begone!”
Lazy and Curious very helpfully assisted the act, propelling themselves at breakneck speed so it would properly look like they were being violently expelled.
I turned my gaze back to Alexei and spoke calmly. “These foolish beasts have no understanding of the laws of mana channelling and… Irony. One does not channel such… voluminous quantities of mana mid-performance without expecting a critique.”
I snapped my fingers once just as they were far enough.
A mont later, they detonated high above in the sky. Even at that distance, the shockwaves slamd into everyone present. I raised a shield over those already bleeding, and while the impact rattled them, there was no serious additional damage.
The faces around drained of color as the realization set in. They had just witnessed a very real, very terminal fate narrowly miss them.
Maksim’s eyes were fixed on . There had always been contempt there, when I wore the priestess’s face, but now there was sothing else entirely. Horror. Reverence. …Definitely both.
“Are you all planning to keep staring at my face,” I asked, voice sweet, “or would you like to save your bleeding brethren as well? I am not a dic.”
The shock broke. My words snapped them out of it, and they moved at once, limbs jerky and frantic as they rushed to tend to the wounded.
I paused, then casually plucked a vial of green liquid from Alexei’s belt using a thread of mana. He didn’t react in ti. I uncorked it, took a delicate sniff, and felt my ticulously crafted expression curdle into imdiate, profound disgust.
“Who brewed this literal regurgitated forest floor in a bottle?” The words almost tore through my facade.
Alexei froze at the sudden shift in tone.
Gods. It felt like soone had thrown every ingredient they owned into a pestle and decided that was good enough. A glance around told they all carried similar vials, which ant this was their standard stock.
I sighed, made a few rapid adjustnts with [Transfiguration], and introduced a reactive agent refined from the frozen Leviathan’s blood. Then I handed the vial back.
“There. Nearly two hundred percent more effective. Also, it won't insult your intelligence just by existing. I require an audience with the degenerate who created the original.”
Alexei swallowed, then nodded. “He’s our only alchemist, so… hopefully the revered guest won’t be too harsh on him.”
“I make no contracts and swear no oaths,” I replied airily. “Now pour. Directly onto the wound.”
He did.
The reaction was imdiate. Flesh knit together before their eyes, the wound visibly regenerating. Alexei stared in open amazent, his disbelief written plainly across his face.
I looked away and reford another vial on the spot, snatching it mid-drop as Maksim was about to pour it down the throat of another wounded Waryn. I handed it back after giving the sa instruction.
Curious and Terrorist had avoided anything vital, but they’d still skewered them deeply enough that those low-grade, low-effort bottles of green sludge would barely make a dent. Honestly, chewing on damp moss with water would’ve been more effective.
Whatever.
Soon enough, all the bleeding Waryns were stabilized and visibly better. It wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t fast, but it worked. A proper healing potion from would’ve fixed them in an instant, but for an improvised setup, this wasn’t terrible.
Lazy’s tir was nearing its end, so I nudged her with Observer’s Suggestion and ordered her to drag nearby monsters closer. The goal was simple enough: give everyone sothing else to focus on and dull the scrutiny before it sharpened again. I felt a wave of profound unwillingness from her and nearly ntally swatted her. She complied anyway, weaving mana to haul confused beasts toward the camp. It was a task that offended both their dignity and her own.
I expelled Curious into the Shadow Dinsion, and she already knew what that ant. She replaced Lazy the mont her tir expired, buying another seven minutes.
Good enough.
Alexei’s deanor had shifted. The raw fear and mistrust were still there, but they were tempered now, layered with sothing closer to reverence. He remained wary, though, which was exactly what I expected and wanted.
He already knew I’d been the one who saved them yesterday, but there was another question pressing at him.
“That explosion you used against those abominations,” he said carefully. “Was the revered guest the one who dealt with the Fog Leviathan yesterday as well?”
I tilted my head. “Perhaps. That’s beside the point.” Then I pointed toward the center. “Go. Take the remnant now.”
I’d already tried to claim it before starting this whole performance, and I simply couldn’t. Sothing about my system was off, and the more I thought about it, the more concerning that beca.
I might possess what these people called an [inventory], and I might even be able to use it to collect that golden prize. But unlike my skills or mutations, I wasn’t familiar with the sensation at all. There was nothing to follow and nothing to probe within my core or body.
I had felt sothing when the Leviathan died, but it was fleeting. Too brief to latch onto, though it was probably related.
Looks like I’d need to go on a bit of a killing binge if I wanted to get used to that feeling and pinpoint where this so-called [inventory] actually resided.
Task added for the future.
“I’ll claim it with a price when the ti cos, but for now, it’s yours to use,” I said. Framing it as a loan mattered. I’d already made up my mind about that. Gifting was bad. Fae never gifted things in stories. They always extracted sothing in return. I needed to breadcrumb them into that assumption without ever spelling it out.
Let them co to their own conclusions.
The wariness was still there, but at this point it didn’t matter. They’d accepted their situation for what it was, and Alexei and Maksim stepped forward together toward the remnant.
It was Alexei who reached it first.
Up close, the floating golden sphere looked even stranger. There was barely any mana leaking from it at all, no pressure either, no weight, just… presence. The mont Alexei’s hand touched it, the sphere began to swirl violently before collapsing inward and sinking straight into the center of his chest, enveloping his core and vanishing without any dramatic flourish.
Alexei froze.
Then his face twisted into sothing that looked disturbingly close to glee as he stared at empty space, his body trembling slightly. Right. System interface. I almost leaned forward out of sheer, habitual curiosity— I wanted to see it too.
A mont later, he moved quickly and pulled sothing out.
Resting above his palm was a miniature Leviathan. Serpentine, dark, and icy scales, its body coiled in on itself as if asleep.
“It’s an artifact…”
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