Donald was a hard man. You had to be hard when you were living on the edge of the Forsaken Realm of the glorious Clover Kingdom that bordered the Diamond Kingdom for when those Diamond monsters invaded and took over some of the land. At which point those Clover pansies would invade the sacred Diamond Kingdom and steal the land he lived on from his wise and just king.
Not that either army stuck around much to help put the land back together after they were done.
Still, Donald did his thing and raised his sheep. Only idiots tried to actually grow any crops in a land that became a warzone every other month. Sheep could run away from big explosions, plants couldn’t.
However, Donald wasn’t tending his sheep at the moment, that was what he had fathered children for. He was walking through the woods, intent on getting in some fishing as he carried a pack full of food, fishing gear and a collapsed rod. The king might have owned all of the animals and decreed that hunting them was tantamount to theft, but he never said anything about the fish.
It was his one joy in the world.
But, those plans were cut short when the ground started to shake beneath him right as he came to the clearing in the woods where the lake was. “What the...what’s going on?” he asked right as the tremors went from something a large stampede could cause to rumbling so bad he had to grab a tree just to stay upright. “Is this an earthquake?”
In front of him, Donald watched the land rise and fall, changing at a moments notice as towers and walls seemed to just spring up out of the ground, covered in dirt and moss before they sunk mostly back into the earth again, only to have the ground split open, creating a path that led straight to an open door in the foundation of the wreckage.
At which point, the water from the lake that had been there moments before found its way down the side of the ancient ruin to create a small waterfall.
Seeing the one joy in his life destroyed, his wife long since having become a miserable old bat, Donald took off his finishing hat and threw it on the ground. “GOD DAMNIT!”
It was nearly sunset as Yuno sat at his writing desk inside his personal quarters while the talking anti-bird looked up at him with her perpetual half-dead eyes.
After listening to the bird finish her panicked story about how she spent a whole two days flying around the Clover Kingdom to check on the magic stones that were supposed to be able to revive the Wizard King, Yuno pointed out something that Secre might have overlooked after she finished talking. “Are you sure that a wild animal didn’t just make off with them?”
“Yes. I put them in places where animals weren’t going to bother them,” the bird told him evenly.
“But, you’re an animal,” Yuno pointed out evenly with half lidded eyes.
The bird’s eye twitched. “I can also talk and think about things other than how to catch my next meal.”
Yuno blinked. “Does that mean you really do eat worms, because Asta and I have a bet-”
“THAT’S NOT IMPORTANT RIGHT NOW!” Secre yelled at him. “I’m telling you, whatever organization those four mages in Saussy are working for have already collected all of the stones that didn’t have anyone watching over them. That means they have at least three, if not more.”
Still not seeing why this was so important if the Black Bulls had a stone, Yuno decided to voice his confusion. “So, what happens if they get all the stones?”
“...I don’t know,” the bird replied hesitantly. “To be honest, I’ve only seen them used twice. Theoretically, the stones could be used for a number of things. The magic they utilize is not of this world, and thus, is not bound by the normal limitations.”
With the obvious question attracting his attention, Yuno went for the bait. “So, what happened the last two times the stones were used?”
The bird took a moment to think, looking down at the ground. “The hell with it,” she mumbled before looking back at the boy. “You know that big evil skull outside your village? The one belonging to the legendary demon that nearly destroyed the world and everyone in it?”
“Are you actually expecting an answer to a question that obvious, or…” Yuno left the rest unasked.
Secre rolled her eyes. “Well, it used to be a person,” she told the boy, breaking his veneer of calm. “That’s what the stones did when they were used the first time. The second time, they supposedly violated the laws of life and death. But I haven’t seen any evidence of what they were supposed to accomplish in five-hundred years.”
His interest peaked, Yuno threw off the uncaring attitude. He knew the story of the First Wizard King about as well as anyone could. Which meant that the demon from it had given him plenty of nightmares back before he had learned to toughen up. “Do you think someone’s trying to pull off something like that again?”
“...that man did say, the end times are upon us,” she mumbled after thinking it over a bit. “And he seemed interested in killing off everyone in the village, even though it would have made more sense to question them about the location of the magic stone. Although, if they have a method for locating it, I guess they wouldn’t need help.”
Yuno thought back to what the bird had told him about that incident. “But if the stone had been hidden, it would have been easier for them to just walk into the village and grab it without anyone seeing them,” he surmised. The men Asta had encountered had gone out of their way to kill people.
While the idea of returning the old Wizard King to life no longer interested him, Yuno didn’t like the idea of letting people like the ones he heard about have their way. They were just like the man who had killed his family for no reason other than it had suited him at the time.
“So...that’s their goal? To just...kill people?” Yuno asked. It seemed rather simplistic.
Secre did the closest thing she could to a shrug. “I’ve seen people who do the same thing just because it suits them. Boys who get their grimoires and want to get revenge on bullies, or think that the girl who turned her down for years will change her mind because he has powerful magic. Then there are the kind of people who think the world owes them something and just want to hurt others to feel better,” the told him sadly. “While they don’t usually travel in packs, petty nature of such people would make them easy to manipulate.”
Yuno supposed it made sense. Sister Lilly and Father Orisi had done a good enough job raising him that such thoughts were hard for him to comprehend, but he remembered the young noble that had attacked him the day of the grimoire ceremony because Yuno got a four leaf and he didn’t. “So...what now?”
Before Secre could answer, the door banged open to admit the noble that had been a thorn in Yuno’s side since he came to the Golden Dawn. Klaus was a passable teacher, if an extremely annoying one, but the man’s inflated ego was a problem. He believed himself the superior mage, when Yuno knew that if the number of spells in their grimoires weren’t taken into account, the younger mage was the more powerful magic user.
“Yuno, the captain wants to see...strange,” he said before looking around the room. “I thought I heard you talking to someone.”
He was listening in at my door? Yuno asked himself with worry before looking down to Secre. Although he didn’t know what was so bad about letting others know the bird could talk, she sure as hell wanted it kept secret.
Then, inspiration struck and Yuno looked back up to the man with the glasses. “I’m teaching my pet to talk.”
Klaus snorted. “Ignorant commoner,” he grumbled. “You shouldn’t be wasting your time with such things. While some birds can mimic human speech-”
“Stupid Klaus,” Secre suddenly said in a much more...broken version of her usual voice. “ Klaus is wrong. Stupid Klaus, brawk!”
Keeping a straight face, which was rather easy after having to put up with Sunset and Asta’s antics for the past several years, Yuno stood up. “As you can see, I’ve made some progress.”
The man’s eye twitched. “Obviously,” he said evenly before pushing his glasses up on his face. “Now, get your robe on and come with me. The Captain has another mission for us after what happened yesterday. Try to follow orders, this time.”
Yuno did as instructed, thinking back to just last evening. Just the day before, during Yuno’s first actual mission to guard a noble on his way to the Heart Kingdom for some kind of training program, they had been attacked by a group of bandits and Klaus had told him to hold back and defend the noble Salem.
Instead, thanks in no small part from the training he had received from the wind mage back in Hage, Yuno had managed to subdue all four attackers by himself without much trouble. Then the bandits quickly confessed to being hired by Salem to kill Yuno. The noble, who Yuno remembered was his opponent in the magic knight exam at that point, was taken back to the capital. The whole thing had taken less than an hour, not counting the booking of the noble for the attempted assassination of a magic knight.
“What kind of mission?” Yuno asked.
Klaus looked back at the younger knight with a frown as he led them out into the hallway. “You’ll have to wait for the captain to give you all the details, but from what I understand, a dungeon has appeared.”
It was past dusk in the Black Bulls hideout as the day after payday party that the group held in the common room of the hideout was winding down. As was the unofficial custom, the group liked to splurge a little bit every time they got some cash and had a little celebration where everyone chipped in a little something to buy food and interesting trinkets to mess around with. The fact that they got three new members, one of which had no idea how to budget money thanks to her upbringing, meant that they had been able to afford some choice items.
However, there was one downside to the whole thing…
“Come oooooon, gimme more!” Sunset whined as she crawled over the couch in her new black lingerie in an attempt to get at the bottle of wine that Vanessa, who was also in her underwear, had her hands on.
“No,” she told the teenager firmly as she kept the bottle out of Sunset’s reach. There wasn’t much left in it, and needing a reason to get rid of the last few chugs, Vanessa looked over to the boy doing pushups on the floor. “What do you say Asta, care for a sip?”
After completing his eight-hundredth one, which was made all the more impressive by the fact Magna was sitting on top of the boy while eating his desert to add more weight, Asta looked over to the nearly-naked woman. “No way! Sister Lilly always said that alcohol is the tool of the devil!”
Sunset stopped trying to get the booze for a moment and frowned at Asta. “You’re the tool of a devil!”
Vanessa rolled her eyes. “Now, now kids, don’t fight,” she chided before a horrible realization hit her. With only three bottles of wine in her, Vanessa was just shy of sober and able to comprehend a terrible reality as she knew it was better to hold off on getting drunk tonight. Oh God...I really HAVE become the responsible one.
“Okay big sis,” Sunset said before practically collapsing on top of Vanessa, her head resting on the bigger woman’s boobs. Then, nuzzling them as she moved closer to practically wrap her body around Vanessa’s.
Okay, yeah. I’m too sober for this, she thought before finishing off the bottle of wine that she had taken from Sunset in a few gulps.
“Hey Magna, if I take your food, will you fight me?” Luck asked, centering Vanessa’s attention on the two of them. Things tended to get explosive whenever they interacted for more than five minutes.
Magna took another bite of his pudding that Charmy had put into a little bowl and frowned at the boy that looked a lot younger than he actually was. “Touch my food and die.”
The threat actually getting Lucky more excited, the boy got in closer. “Okay!” he said happily.
Sitting across the little table that Asta was doing his exercises right next to, Gauche looked up from the little picture he had made of his sister with a frown. “If any harm comes to my little sister’s mini-portrait, I’ll kill you both.”
“Hey Sunset, where’d your cute little bird go?” Noelle asked as she looked around with a box of crackers in her hand. “I bought some snacks I wanted to give her.”
The girl in question, moaned and picked herself up from Vanessa’s breasts. “That loudmouth? Pfft who knows?”
Not liking the answer, Noelle sat down on the other end of the couch. Which turned out to be a bad idea, as Sunset saw her pouting face and practically pounced on the other girl to hug her tightly. “H-Hey, cut that out!” she said while trying to fight off the inebriated redhead.
“Awww, don’t be sad,” Sunset told the Noelle as she overpowered the girl who probably hadn’t done a day of real work in her life with a body that probably worked from sunup to sun down on chores. “I still love you.”
Noelle froze to the point that Vanessa thought she might have actually been turned to stone. “Y-You w-what?” she stuttered as her face began to redden.
Despite the hilarity of the show being given to her, Vanessa felt the need to end it with a kick to Sunset’s butt that passed a shove over to Noelle. “She means as a friend, miss royal,” the woman told the other young girl that Vanessa hadn’t gotten around to really bonding with yet. “We all do.”
Instead of even getting even more flustered, Noelle continued to sit on the couch, completely oblivious to the outside world for several seconds before Sunset seemed to clear up just a bit and look at her. “Is that the first time someone’s told you that?” she asked before frowning when no response came. “Wow, your childhood was as bad as mine.” Then she fell back onto the couch, and Vanessa’s lap.
“The importance of family is important to the development of a child. It shapes everything you will come to be as a person. It saddens be to think that no one has ever said such important words to you growing up, but now that we’re friends you can rest easy knowing that you are surrounded by those who care about you.”
Sunset lifted her head and frowned. “Cut out the creepy mumbling, nobody can understand you!”
As Gorden went to get some comfort food from Charmy, who was making her way through another mountain of sweets, a spatial portal opened up and after a second of just floating there, Yami walked out of it, followed by Finral.
“Finny!” Sunset greeted the newcomer with a raised hand.
The Black Bulls lieutenant frowned at the greeting. “Clothes are off, unintelligible speech,” he mumbled before looking over to Vanessa. “Just how much booze did you give her?”
Somehow feeling guilty over getting the fifteen-year-old legal adult drunk, Vanessa crossed her arms and snorted. “It was just one bottle.”
Yami snorted. “Lightweight,” he mumbled before looking around. “Okay gang, listen up. The Wizard King’s got a mission for us that he wants our newbies on specifically. Also, we’re going to be breaking the traditional rule of three from now on as an experiment to see if teams of four perform better. Oh, and before I forget, a new dungeon has been discovered he wants us to check out.”
“Oh! Is there a dragon in it?” Sunset asked excitedly as she laid upside down on the couch, kicking her legs up in the air while everyone else became interested.
Finral looked back over to Vanessa. “How big of a bottle did you give her?”
“OH WOW! THAT’S AWESOME!” Asta said as he got up from the floor. “NOW WHAT’S A DUNGEON?” At which point, Sunset promptly threw a pillow at her little brother and missed by a good three feet.
Magna groaned. “Dude! Are you kidding me? Stop getting all excited for something you don’t know anything about!”
After letting out a groan, Noelle looked over to the boy. “Dungeons are remnants of ancient civilizations that pop up from time to time due to a magical disturbance or interdimensional anomaly,” she told him. “Sometimes, they’ve got ancient magic, riches, or something that can even change the course of human development. The last time Clover got a dungeon, we found blueprints for the camera.” To add to her point, she pointed to the little picture Gauche was fawning over.
“They’re also filled with all kinds of traps and monsters from who knows where,” Luck said, excitement evident in his voice. “So they’re seriously fun to play around in!”
Putting in her two cents, Vanessa got her baby sister upright and held her close to keep Sunset from making more of a fool out of herself. “Exploring a dungeon is like going on a treasure hunt where you can die at any second. You can see why it’s the kind of thing they would only have people like us do.”
Noelle groaned. “So the Wizard King has ordered me to go trouncing around a death trap,” she mumbled. “Guess it isn’t just my family who wants me dead.”
“So listen up!” Yami told them. “The dungeon has popped up right on the border between Clover and Diamond, so we know those guys are going to be after it too. That means you three newbies will be headed out at dawn tomorrow morning with...Luck, you’ll be in charge.”
“Alright!” the cheery boy cried out as he pumped a fist in the air.
Noelle groaned. “Well, I suppose as long as we have…” she paused and looked over to Sunset as the girl had become interested in Vanessa’s breasts, squeezing the things and commenting on their size. “...we’re gonna die.”
Sister Lilly, as it turned out, was wise well beyond her years.
This was the realization on Sunset’s mind as she let out a little whine when Finral’s portal spat them out within sight of an ancient ruin that looked as if it had been barfed from the ground rather than just fell down into it. Not even the fact that her cutie mark showed on top of her breasts thanks to Vanessa adding it to Sunset’s hot pink outfit that sparkled a little bit cheered her up. If anything, the tiny bit of magical sequins just made the thing give her an even bigger headache that despite what Charmy had assured her, coffee wasn’t helping with.
A warm wind blew through several trees that had been knocked over, Sunset didn’t much care that the skirt she had on was uplifted. That is, until someone opened his dumb mouth. “GAAAAAH! SUNSET, COVER YOURSELF-”
Fist met face and she glared at her little brother after knocking him on the ground. “SHUT YOUR DAMN MOUTH! I’VE GOT A HEADACHE!”
Luck laughed at the display, each sound coming from his mouth a jackhammer to Sunset’s skull, at least until she spun around and shook her fist at him.
A second later, Noelle got up close to the girl and talked softly. “Shouldn’t you have worn some short pants under that or something?”
Not in the mood, Sunset turned to glare at the girl. “At the moment, I would prefer to strip naked and run in there with nothing but my little boots because of the light reflecting off my dress. But, since that’ll offend your royal sensibilities, I think I’ll play through the pain.”
Noelle gave her a nervous smile as her eye twitched. “Thanks.”
With that, the group was off on a new adventure, each step making a reverberation inside of Sunset’s brain that had her wishing there was some kind of spell to…
Sunset blinked as they made it to the entrance. “Once second, I gotta pee,” she said before backing off and running around the corner until she was out of sight. Then, after readjusting her mana until it was a close approximation of the water element, she raised her hands to cast a healing spell on herself and lessen the effects of the alcohol withdrawal to the point where it was a dull nothing in her skull.
Two minutes later, she walked back out to the entrance where everyone was waiting. “Okay! Let’s get going, to adventure!” she said, thankful that magic had provided her with a solution.
“So...peeing cures hangovers?” Asta asked.
Noelle groaned and hid her face with her hand.
And with that, they were back on the adventure…
The entrance to the dungeon wasn’t anything special. Luck led the way into the dark and cramped hallway it opened to while Sunset followed, creating a small flame so he could see. Everyone behind her was nearly blind thanks to it being the only light they had.
On and on they walked for what felt like half an hour, long after the light from the entrance had been cut off. And when she finally got bored with the lack of anything, Sunset tapped the boy on the shoulder. “Okay so...aren’t there supposed to be traps, monsters and...stuff?” she asked. Although her only reference was a book called Daring Do that came out a week before her relocation, Sunset didn’t think diving into what most would consider a death trap would be this dull.
“Oh no,” Luck told her as he looked back at the girl with his perpetual smile that went from overly friendly to downright spooky, depending on his mood. “This is just the entryway. The real dungeon is on the other side of the wall. It feels like it runs in a circuit all the way around the place. I was just making the rounds to see if anyone might have beaten us here. That way, we can follow their trail and fight them right off the bat when we catch up to them!”
Sunset blinked. While the idea of a confrontation might have made sense, as Diamond could have sent people the night before, and chasing after them would mean any traps had either already been triggered or marked, the fact that there might have been an ancient and powerful magic hiding in the dungeon that could wipe them all out wasn’t forgotten by the girl either. She might have been drunk the night before, but the girl had been a power mad filly in her youth. So, she tended to remember things like that.
A second later, Sunset slammed her fist into the wall next to her and blew it out with an approximation of that flaming fist spell Mereoleona had demonstrated for her. With the stone knocked away, light came pouring in and Sunset “Oh look, a way in,” she said in a monotone voice. “I bet some nasty monsters heard the noise and will come running.”
The look on Luck’s face brightened up way too much for Sunset’s liking. “Really? You think so?” he asked excitedly before leaping through the opening while laughing like a madman. “Come here monsters! Come out and play! I wanna kill you!”
Noelle walked up to the edge of the hole and looked inside as Luck continued to jump around, making all kinds of noise. “That guy is supposed to be in charge of the mission?”
“Even I’m worried now,” Asta added.
Sunset groaned as she felt another headache coming on and stepped into the real area of the dungeon. As soon as she did, the not-unicorn felt the bottom of her stomach fall out at what she saw.
The inside of the dungeon was a massive mess of chambers, with a ceiling that went far beyond what should have been possible, based on what they had seen outside. While that would have been disturbing enough on its own, Sunset saw upside down stairs and water running up the walls, making the whole place look like a painting Celestia had shown her once, where the artist who painted it had reportedly gone insane. What it also told the magic expert was that some nutcase had decided to mix spatial compression magic with point of reference gravity, turning the whole place into a mess overflowing with mana that hung in the air so thick that it looked like bits of light from blue fireflies.
“COOL!” Asta yelled as he jumped through the wall and fell a few feet, making Sunset wince. Just because her hangover symptoms had been muted didn’t mean they were dealt with completely.
Noelle was next into the oversized chamber, taking her time to look around while getting more and more nervous. “How is this even possible?”
A second later, Luck landed right next to her. “It looks like the mana is warping the space in this area. There’s way more than I detected outside! The air’s crazy thick with it. Haha! I can’t wait to see what kind of monsters a place like this spawns!”
Finally following everyone in all the way, Sunset looked around without really focusing on anything in particular. “Okay so...anyone actually have a plan for finding what this place is supposed to be guarding?”
“Uh…” Asta replied before he began to walk around while looking at all the insanity.
He got a total of three steps before Sunset felt a surge of magic and reached out to yank him back by his robe’s hood before a mass of spikes that were more part of the floor than hidden rose up out of the ground to try and skewer him. “Asta! Be careful!” she scolded him while her heart tried to slow down after nearly leaping out of her chest.
Maybe we shouldn’t have brought him, Sunset told herself after seeing her baby brother nearly die.
“Thanks Sunset, that would have really stung,” he said with a little laugh.
Sunset’s eye twitched at how easily the boy had thrown off the near death experience. “No! That would have killed you, moron!” she told him.
Despite the seriousness of her tone, Asta gave her a grin and waved away the girl’s worries. “Oh come on, it wouldn’t have been that bad.”
“Yes it would have!” she snapped back at him before calming down a bit after taking a deep breath. “Asta, you need to listen to me. You spent years building up your muscles and that may help you survive a few beatings with a sharp icicle like in Saussy, but it’s still just flesh and bone keeping your organs safe. Mages have mana flowing out of them creating a protective shield. I could probably drop Noelle off a five story building and she’d have some major bruises, but be mostly okay. You’d have broken bones at the very least!”
Luck made another one of his inhuman jumps over to them. “Oh come on, you’re worrying a bit much. Asta would have been fine.”
After giving the boy another glare since he was supposed to be the responsible leader, Sunset took in a deep breath. “Look, I’m not going to discount the possibility that your anti-magic may blunt some of the damage cast at you from certain spells. It’s a good possibility. But I honestly don’t know and don’t want to try experimenting with something like that. Because if it isn’t the case, then you’d die,” she said before pointing towards the mass of spikes that had just grown up out of the ground. “But stuff like that? That’s a physical object. Anti-magic or no, it will kill you!”
“Oh...okay,” he said after a sobering moment. “I’ll uh...be careful then.”
Then, without even another second passing, Luck pointed to a symbol drawn on the ground. “Hey, there’s another one!” he said before leaping right on in. Before it could even activate, the boy with the lightning fast reflexes jumped away in time that a geyser that would have knocked the unfortunate person underneath it up onto the ceiling shot up hot nothing but air.
As Sunset groaned, Asta took out his sword and cut into the water, destroying the trap beneath it while Luck hopped around, triggering three more of the things in their general vicinity.
“Well...at least he’s setting them off so that we can find them,” Noelle said to try and quell Sunset’s building anger while Asta cut the traps down. “And now, we can just have Asta poke the ground in front of us to disable any more.”
Yeah, but will that work when we’re on the ceiling, or will it send us crashing to the ground? Sunset wondered as she looked up at the ‘floor’ above them.
With all the traps around them gone, Luck landed back in front of them and looked around for a moment. “Now, let’s see what we’ve got,” he said before closing his eyes and standing perfectly still.
Sunset blinked. Oh right, Vanessa mentioned that he’s got an impressive mana sense, she told herself. According to her big sister, the boy’s detection range was longer than even a wind mage’s; Yuno included.
After a few seconds, Luck turned to look up at an upside down doorway that wasn’t connected to anything. His smile got a little too wide before his grimoire flew up in front of him. “Lightning Creation Magic: Holy Lightning Boots,” he said, jumping up into the air before the spell was even finished forming. “Hey guys! Something’s popped up on my radar. So...go ahead and take care of the dungeon on your own. I’ll see you when it’s all done, okay?” Then, he rocketed off towards the door Sunset had seen him looking at without bothering to land.
Noelle’s mouth dropped. “D...did he just ditch us?” she shrieked as the boy’s gleeful laugh echoed out of the hallway he disappeared into.
Lotus Whomalt readjusted the circlet on his head of black hair with the three diamonds that marked him as a commander while he waited for the three underlings that were his men to finish clearing the traps in the area they had landed in. The air was a bit warm for the long, white coat he wore, but the protection enchantments it offered were worth a little sweat.
He would just need to wash himself off before heading home, or his girls would get all upset that their father wanted a hug upon coming through the door.
That is, if I make it home, the man thought to himself as he looked over to the fourth companion that had been assigned to him for this mission.
Dressed in a furry black cape atop of a nearly skintight suit of white that revealed his chest and the diamond embedded in the center of it, Mars looked like a fit nineteen-year-old man, if one were to ignore the three diamonds sticking out of his head beneath all the spikey white hair. However, spending five minutes with the man would creep anyone out.
He made no smalltalk, had no emotion on his face, and barely even breathed. The only sign that he was even a thinking person and not some kind of illusion was the fact that he would respond to orders and questions, usually with single syllable answers. Even his grimoire was creepy, a stitched together thing of white and red that was supposed to be a mix of his own magic book and another trainee’s that he had killed.
How the mages of the Diamond Kingdom had accomplished such a thing, Lotus didn’t know.
He didn’t want to know.
Asking questions in the Diamond Kingdom caused people to die from natural causes. Usually, from an overdose of iron in the heart.
While getting the treasure was important, he knew that the real reason they were here was to test the kingdom’s new type of soldier. If a man without any will of his own could be called that. He was more like a weapon than anything else.
And since Mars was a thinking weapon that was made only to kill things, Lotus didn’t want to be anywhere near him when he went off since he had no idea if the young man would stop until everything around him was dead. “Okay. This is where we split up. I’ll hang back while you go on ahead.”
Ten minutes into her first dungeon crawl, Noelle was afraid that things were going from bad to just boring. Asta was taking the lead, moving his sword around like he was a blind man with a cane, testing the ground in front of him while Noelle followed him and Sunset kept looking up, down, and all around.
Unfortunately, because her focus was mostly on Asta, it meant that was what her mind kept going over in her head, along with Vanessa’s totally wrong observations. Not that he wasn’t more amiable to be around than most everyone Noelle had ever met in her life, but...
Taking out another trap at the bottom of some stairs that were next to a fast flowing river, Asta moved on ahead. “Yeah! This place is no match for the future Wizard King!”
“Well, his enthusiasm is nice...I suppose,” Noelle commented to herself more than anyone else.
Sunset looked back down at her. “Hm?”
The reminder that there was someone else who could hear her made Noelle jump. “GAAAAH!” She spun around to face the other girl. “I mean, you know a-as an acquaintance and stuff. I mean, he is a commoner, after all.”
“Uh…” Sunset replied as a confused frown crossed her face. “Noelle, what are you going on about?”
Before she could come up with an answer that did involve putting on her usual airs, as Noelle understood Sunset didn’t like such things, a strange monster erupted from the river near Asta. Oh thank God, something’s trying to kill us.
It was a plant of some sort, with a large bulb at the top that opened up to reveal itself to be man-eating version of a fly trap with a pit of digestive juices bubbled at the bottom of the things ‘flower’ while vines that acted more like tentacles came out from underneath the base of leaves that could have doubled as blankets because they were so large. Asta slashed at the vines, and jumped back in time to avoid being grabbed a moment before Sunset raised her hand and flash fried the thing with a wave of her hand.
If the redhead hadn’t been her best friend, Noelle might have felt a little jealous.
Then, she blinked and smirked. “Awww, were you worried about your big sister?” she asked before turning around to look up at one of the doorways that opened up to just empty air. “That’s so sweet! Now, come down here and give me a hug.”
There was another mage in a Golden Dawn robe standing there with his grimoire open and glowing with wind magic. He actually flinched a little at the semi-command. “Don’t be silly,” he told her evenly.
Behind him Noelle could make out two figures, but there wasn’t enough light to see their faces. “The Golden Dawn?” she mumbled.
“OH, HEY YUNO!” Asta said as he raised his arm and gave them a wave.
“Hey Yuno, I was thinking, we don’t have any family, right? But we do have a lot of great friends, so I think we should take them and the ones we meet later, and make them our family.”
“Something wrong Yuno?” Mimosa asked as the two of them walked behind Klaus, down the cramped hallway that they had busted into after finding what, according to the Golden Dawn members who had scouted the area around the crumbled landmass, was one of several entrances into the dungeon.
Ignoring the girl for the moment, Yuno focused his senses even more to double check if what they were headed towards what he thought it was. Half an hour since the mission began, Yuno had begun sensing a very familiar source of mana.
Anyone else who felt it might have just put it off as another mage and left it at that. While there were several people who could tell another person’s identity by their mana when they were close, Sunset’s had a very distinct feel to it no matter how far away she was. A little worry entered the back of his head.
While Sunset could certainly handle herself and whoever else it was that traveled with her seemed powerful enough, curiosity combined with the odd thought that there might have been a very small chance that she would fall for a trap had him looking in her direction. “I’m sensing some powerful mana coming from that direction,” he said as they came to an intersection.
“Well, best to avoid it then, we’re here to-”
Yuno reached into the hood of his robe and grabbed Secre, making the bird let out a squawk before he tossed it down the path he could feel Sunset’s mana coming from. “Drat. My pet bird is escaping,” Yuno deadpanned before Secre managed to right herself in the air and turned around while flapping her wings to glare at him. “Come back girl.”
The bird rolled her eyes as Yuno jabbed at the opposite direction he was standing with a finger, then turned around and flew away as Yuno walked after her.
“Oh no!” Mimosa cried out in genuine fear as she ran after the bird. “Come back girl, it’ll be okay! I have some yummy seeds for you to eat!”
Klaus fumed at the two knights as one of them chased the bird and the other just followed her down the hallway at a much slower pace. “THIS IS HIGHLY IRREGULAR!”
When they finally did reach the end of the tunnel, Yuno managed to get his grimoire out in time to see Sunset fry the plant creature with a burst of mana that was much too concentrated and powerful to be taken for simple mana manipulation. As smart as she was, the girl’s tendency to forget that she was supposed to need the magical book strapped to her butt was going to get her in trouble one day.
Well, I guess I was worried about nothing, Yuno told himself before Secre went back to her resting spot and the redhead spoke up. “Awww, were you worried about your big sister?” Sunset said before she turned around and smiled at him. “Now come down here and give me a hug.”
“Oh, do you know that woman, Yuno?” Mimosa asked.
“OH! HEY YUNO!” Asta called out from down below.
Klaus made a disgruntled noise. “Ugh, members of the Black Bulls? What are those scum doing here?”
After a second of thinking how bad it would be to get anyone he knew together with Sunset, Yuno closed his grimoire. “If they’re Magic Knights-”
“Yuno,” Sunset called out sweetly again before her face took on a frown. “I said get down here. Now do it before I make you!”
Yuno gulped. “-we should probably say hello,” he told the rest of his team before jumping out into the air and letting the wind guide him down to the ground.
A second later, the young woman had her arms wrapped around his waist and let out a laugh while Yuno tensed up a little from her breasts pushing up against his body. However, there was something a bit different about them than he remembered from previous experiences. “You’re uh...wearing…” Realizing what he was about to say, Yuno cut himself off and hoped he wasn’t blushing too much.
Sunset took a step back. “You like it?” she asked before twirling around a little that made her skirt fly up a little bit. “I got it after my first payday.” Then, her frown appeared again and she lifted his robes to look at his clothes. “Which is more than I can say for you! How are you still wearing this stuff?”
As she began to examine his clothes like Sister Lilly used to do, checking for holes and making other comments, much to the boy’s embarrassment, Mimosa finally came to his rescue.
“Oh my Yuno, who’s your friend?” she asked before looking past Sunset and gasping. “Noelle! It’s been so long, not since the Royal Banquet, am I right?”
The girl with the silvery hair gave a very forced smile as she looked away from the cheery young woman. “Mimosa...it’s been awhile.”
Asta stepped towards the strawberry blonde girl. “You know each other?” he asked the Noelle girl.
“Yes...just a bit,” she admitted rather reluctantly.
After a second, Mimosa giggled. “Oh, stop playing around,” she said before looking over to Asta for a moment to answer his question. “Noelle and I are cousins. Our mothers were sisters.” Then back to Noelle. “I heard that the Black Bulls can be a little uncouth, are you doing okay in that squad?”
The Noelle girl’s eye twitched. “I think that’s what I could be asking you,” she asked before her tone changed to one of a superior talking down to a lesser. “Can you actually keep up with the elite members of the Golden Dawn? I heard Uncle had to pull some strings to get you in, after all. You are a bit dim for them.”
Sunset blinked and looked over to the girl with little frown.
“I’m doing fantastic! Everyone I meet is so nice to me and I can wield my magic knowing they will always support me,” she said while covering a giggle with a hand before opening her eyes and looking a little guilty. “Oh my, I shouldn’t have phrased it like that. I’m sorry, I remember how much you struggled to control your magic. Has that gotten any better?”
While Noelle’s expression changed from one to superior to something more like a cringe, Sunset looked blinked and mumbled to herself almost too low to hear. “Oh my God, she’s Cadenza.”
“...yeah,” Noelle replied evenly, which Yuno understood was anything but that.
Mimosa smiled. “That’s so great, it’s so wonderful that we’re both finding our footing as magic knights!”
It was at that time Klaus finally caught up to the group. “Yuno! What did you think you were doing, coming down here to speak with this riffraff?” he demanded. “We should not get involved with these…” He took a moment to look at the girl with silver hair. “People.”
Yuno pointed to the redhead. “Because she told me to.”
“Hello!” Sunset greeted him with a raised hand. “Who’re you?”
“Foureyes the Rude,” Asta supplied for her.
Klaus let out cry of shock. “FOUR EYES?” the man with the glasses demanded. “AND YOU THINK THAT I’M RUDE? DO NOT SPEAK TO A NOBLE IN SUCH A WAY, COMMONER!”
So much for not involving ourselves, Yuno thought to himself as the temperature around him went up a few degrees.
Despite the fact that his start in the Golden Dawn had been less than perfect, Yuno was a little thankful that Sunset hadn’t ended up there with him. In his mind, he could already picture how such things would have turned out…
“STOP BULLYING YUNO, YOU JERKS!” A somewhat misshapen figure of his big sister shouted as she proceeded to pummel and humiliate every single person that looked at him the wrong way. By the end of the first day, there would have been a pile of beaten and battered Golden Down knights with her standing at the top.
Unfortunately, the teenager's mind had another vision that quickly followed the first…
“Hey Yuno, let’s take a bath together,” Sunset, who was back to her usual sexy self, said before she grabbed him by his robe to pull the poor boy into one of the private baths. The clothes were off both of them a second later, and Sunset licked her lips before pushing him into the water, then ending up on top of him. Her soft, sensual skin that had no business being on an orphan from Hage pressing up against every inch of his body before she bent down with her red, uncracked lips to…
“You know, if that gets under your skin, I’d hate to see how you perform in a combat situation,” Sunset said, graciously popping Yuno’s thought bubble before it could go any further.
He tried to pull away, but Sunset held fast and took things a step further when he latched onto Yuno’s arm and pulled it between her breasts as she stepped closer to him. “Maybe we should all go together. I don’t want my little brother under the command of someone who can’t keep his cool in a fight,” she said before looking over to Yuno again. “By the way, did you guys run into a blonde kid on your way in? Tends to be surrounded by sparks of electricity?”
Yuno looked down at her as he focused on the conversation. Not...her body. “No.”
After that, he took in a deep breath.
“Ah yes, I was told that there would be another team of four mages for this mission?” Klaus cut in. “Where is your leader? Surely, he didn’t up and run away, leaving the three of you to fend for yourselves?” Judging by the man’s tone the remark was more snide over concern. “Or did he fall victim to a trap spell? Humph! You Black Bulls are worse than the city watch.”
“OH YEAH?” Asta yelled. “WELL THE WIZARD KING DOESN’T SEEM TO THINK SO. He gave us a star on our first mission!”
As Yuno blinked in confusion at the declaration, Klaus took a step back. “What? You lie!” he said.
What’s so important about a star? he wondered as Asta and Klaus yelled back and forth at each other, with topics ranging from the choice of dress when it came to their respective captains, to the hairstyle each of them had. And this is way past involved.
After they were both out of breath, Klaus gave a groan and turned to the members of the Golden Dawn. “Alright, enough of this idiocy,” said the man that was yelling before Asta started as he adjusted his glasses. “I’ll show you the difference between the top magic Knight squad in the country and the one who doesn’t even deserve the name. Mimosa!”
The girl took out her light-orange grimoire to begin casting a spell. “Plant Creation Magic: Magic Flower Guidepost,” she said before there was a bright glow and a giant flower the size of a small table with red pedals sprung out of the ground to unfold in front of her. After a moment, a magical image was displayed above it, showing the interior dungeon in its entirety.
The display actually made Sunset dislodge herself from Yuno to jump over and take a look at the thing, an action Yuno more than understood. Despite her personality, Mimosa was no joke when it came to her support role. The girl’s healing spells were able to close holes in people that should have killed them in seconds, with one not even needing her to stand around to do it.
“Wow, a three dimensional projection of the entire area,” Sunset commented as she examined it before looking over to the girl. “Does this just use a refined mana sense, or do you use some kind of medium, like microscopic plant fungi and other spores in the air to conduct your mana and feel things out?”
Mimosa just gave her a completely blank stare. “...I have no idea what you just said,” she replied before blinking and looking back to the map. “Sir, I’ve got a full map of the area and can probably find the treasure room from here if you give me a moment.”
In the three seconds that it took her to talk, Sunset had been staring at the image, making Yuno let out an uncomfortable groan. One of the things he really admired about the redhead wasn’t just her intelligence, it was the speed at which she could process and recall information that she had bothered to commit to memory. After just looking at Mimosa’s map for just three seconds, there was no doubt in Yuno’s mind that she had already memorized the layout of the place and found what Mimosa hadn’t even begun to search for yet.
“So it’s up up, down down, left right, left right,” Sunset quickly said to herself before looking back to the two Black Bulls. “Asta, put up your sword and secure your book, we’re going!”
Asta blinked as he pulled up his grimoire to sheathe his weapon. “Uh, oh-okay,” he said before following the girl’s orders.
“Hey!” Klaus yelled. “That’s our path to the center of the dungeon! If you think that you can-”
Completely ignoring the man, Sunset took in a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Mana Skin” The mana around her flared for a second before condensing, “followed by…” followed by a much larger stirring that caused her hair to whip about despite there being no wind in the dungeon. All of the ambient mana in the area followed towards her, into her, and then around her. “Mana Zone.”
Caught off guard by the display, Klaus took a step back while his cape whipped around, like everyone else’s gear. “W-WHAT IN THE WORLD!”
Sunset opened her eyes to reveal that they glowed white with an otherworldly light before she moved over to her little brother as fast as he could blink. “Hey Yuno,” she said with a voice that reverberated inside his skull before yanking him down with a strength a girl half his weight shouldn’t be allowed to possess. “I like Mimosa, you should totally try and get with her!”
Of course, much to Yuno’s embarrassment, the mana flowing through her made whispering quite pointless. Which meant that Mimosa let out a squawk of an embarrassed shriek before stepping back to cover her hand. “W-What?” she asked with a blush covering her cheeks.
Then, the redhead with the hair that was starting to look especially bright gave her little brother a messy kiss on the cheek and left a bit of moisture that actually felt like it burned a little before she flipped over the Golden Dawn members to land a little behind her own squadmates. One of whom looked resigned to a terrible fate, and the other of which seemed to be so out of it from the shock that her pigtails were standing up.
While Asta groaned and reluctantly wrapped his arms around Sunset above her shoulders while he stood behind her, she simply picked up Noelle in her arms and held her close before there was another explosion of mana that left a trail, showing Yuno which door she had flown off to, from which Asta’s screams could be heard. “THIS IS WHY WE ALWAYS HAD YUNO FLY US AROUND!”
Shaking off the shock, Klaus looked around. “W-WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?”
Yuno forced himself to adopt an even, half-lidded expression. “Yeah, my big sister can use some weird technique that lets her channel the mana in the area to greatly boost her abilities.” Secre had tried to teach it to him as well, but...it hadn’t gone so well. Apparently, you had to be a natural genius at figuring stuff out backwards to make sense of the bird’s teaching.
She was really bad at it.
“Oh, I’ve heard of that before, it’s Mana Zone, right Klaus?” she asked.
The man pushed his glasses back onto his face as he regained his composure. “I’ve seen Captain Vangence use that technique you spoke of, and that most certainly was not it.”
Yuno shrugged. “Eh. She kind of figured out a version that worked for her.”
“Y-You don’t just figure out one of the most complicated and intense mana control techniques!” Klaus sputtered.
After holding up a finger to help him point something out, Yuno shared his thoughts with the noble. “I said, kind of.”
Looking like he was seconds away from exploding, Klaus continued to bark orders. “Nevermind that!” he yelled before spinning to face Mimosa. “Is there a shorter way to the treasure room that we can take? I can drill through the rock if need be.”
Mimosa blinked, then looked back down at her map. “Actually, the route Sunset mentioned doesn’t go anywhere near the center of the dungeon.”
Luck finished off the third diamond mage that was wearing the right set of clothes before he turned to the final one that dressed differently than the others while holding onto the underling by his face. The room he had run into them in was a good place for fighting. With water flowing everywhere, blocks of stone coming out of the walls, unless it just floated there in the mana, and numerous dips in the floor.
Despite being unconscious, the man’s body continued to twitch since Luck had conjured his Heavenly Thunder Gauntlets to increase the power of his strikes, the oversized gloves wrapped completely around the man’s head. “Awww! Why is everyone with you so weak?” he asked before tossing the mage away. “If you’re the strongest opponent, then you should be fighting me.”
The man who had introduced himself as Lotus sat on some of the rubble the previous fight had created with his open grimoire wrapped in a black glow. “Well, what kind of leader would I be if I didn’t let my men get a turn in combat? Thanks for not killing them by the way. It takes too long to train up newbies these days.”
“Well, if I killed everyone I beat, then there’d be less people to fight the next time,” Luck told him happily.
Lotus took a minute to rub the hair on his chin. “And you went and showed me your magic too,” he said before looking down past the boy’s oversized loose tunic and down to his boots, then over to his arms. Both of which were covered by items created from Luck’s lightning, made to look like plate armor. “You enhance your speed and attack power with lightning magic. Quite a nice choice.”
His excitement building, Luck licked his lips before he went back to smiling. The anticipation was almost killing him! “And what kind of magic do you fight with?”
“My aren’t you eager?” he said before standing up. “Instead of going after the treasure, you came after me.”
Luck held up a hand, cracking with power. “That’s right. Now let’s fight!”
After thinking about it for a moment, the man spoke again. “I think I’d rather,” he said before turning away from Luck as he made to run away. “Beat a hasty retreat!”
The idea that someone could run from him on foot got a gleeful laugh from Luck before he leapt into the air and flew at Lotus. “I don’t think so!” he cried out before going after the man faster than anything on land could hope to run.
Not even bothering to cast a spell, the man turned and threw out his hand. The next thing Luck knew, the world had gone black for a second, and then he came out into the light again, his nose detecting traces of being clogged for a moment as he landed on a wall of the uneven room. When the boy turned, he blinked. A smokescreen?
That didn’t explain how Lotus had managed to dodge, though. Even though Luck hadn’t been able to see, his attack should have connected, and easily. What just happened?
“It’s not that I don’t understand you being upset,” Lotus went on. “Nobody likes their kingdom being invaded. But we are running a bit low on resources where I come from, and I have three little girls to feed.”
Luck launched himself at the old timer again, only to barely miss anything important before he leaped up to attach his boots to a column in the room. “Yeah, I don’t really care about any of that,” he said as he looked at the blood from a scratch that had been left on the other man’s cheek. “I just want to fight strong opponents.”
The stronger the enemy he fought, the more happy mother was.
“You’re a real piece of work kid,” the old man told him as his smoke continued to flow around the room, obscuring more of it from view.
Not that Luck cared, he could sense exactly where his opponent was standing. So, he launched himself into the smoke that the mage could apparently see just fine through, because Lotus dodged a second later as Luck blew a crater into the ground. “Hey, it’s no fun if you just dodge my attacks, fight back!”
Another leap attack hit nothing but air, and then old man Lotus started talking again. “Oh, I recognize that insignia. You’re a Black Bull. You know, I fought your captain,” he said before pulling back the shirt under his coat with its low V-neck cut to reveal a large scar. “He even gave me this little memento to remember him by.”
Getting a little excited this time, Luck’s smile widened. “Oh wow! You fought Captain Yami? Now I really want to beat you up.” Captain Yami never let Luck fight him, no matter what the boy offered the older man. It just wasn’t fair!
“It wasn’t really a fight. I wet my pants and ran as fast as I could after he just grazed me,” Lotus assured him.
Luck sucked in a deep breath to prepare for another attack and...felt his heart let out one massive beat that hurt his chest before his legs suddenly became wobbly and his arms felt heavy. “W-What the?” he mumbled before stumbling backwards.
After a second, Lotus let out a long sigh while he started to get a little blurry in Luck’s eyes. “Yeesh! Took you long enough, kid.”
Again Luck launched himself at the man, who moved out of the way, almost in slow motion.
“Sorry kid, you’re just too slow for me,” Lotus told Luck as he stumbled forward, his head starting to hurt. “Now, down you go boy. Deep into the abyss.”
What is this? A spell? I don’t remember him casting anything, Luck told himself as the world became more blurry.
Lotus went to stroking his chin. “Well kid, you’re done,” he told the boy. “You see, while you were fighting my men, I cast a spell that filled this room with a smoke too thin to be seen by the naked eye. Then, I just had to wait until you breathed in enough of my weakening magic for it to activate. I’m sneaky like that.”
As Luck fell to the ground, he began to feel...excited.
“Sorry kid, but this is what happens when you run around on your own without any friends to back you up,” Lotus told him before he began to walk away. “Since you spared my men, I’ll give you a slight chance to run away. These dungeons tend to collapse after the treasure is taken, so if you can recover in time, you might make it out alive. Next time, bring a companion or two with you when you get into a fight.”
Fighting to try and get more air, Luck did his best not to listen to the man’s words.
Because if he brought someone else to help him…
Focusing his mana, Luck pushed more of it into his two spells. Increasing his speed and power, causing the boots and gauntlets to become more refined, more powerful and deadly. With the increase compensating for the drain to his body, Luck leapt up at the man again, managing to rake him across the back and get through his cloak before landing in front of him as his armor turned the world around them blue. “It’s been a long time since I had a fight this interesting.”
“Win,” Mother’s voice told him. “Win. Keeping on winning, Luck.”
...Mother wouldn’t love him anymore.
Mother reached down and slapped him. “YOU MISERABLE LITTLE CHILD!” she yelled at the smiling boy. “Stop smiling like that! Get mad, cry, do something normal for a change!”
Luck smiled up at his mother.
He always smiled at his mother.
He smiled at everything.
Smiling was good.
So he smiled.
Always.
“WHY WERE YOU BORN A DEFECTIVE FREAK?” Mother yelled before raising a hand to strike him again.
And then, there was a flash of light, and Mother was on the ground, trembling.
“Whoa, no way,” Luck said as he took a step towards Mother.
He smiled at her.
Mother trembled.
He raised his hand.
Another flash of light.
And Mother was asleep on the ground.
Luck walked down the halls of his school in Yvon. Listening to the others.
Always smiling.
It was shortly after his village’s annual magical combat tournament.
And he won!
“My God, that little boy, did he beat a noble?”
“This has never happened in all the years of this school’s magic tournaments!”
“Regular people don’t win against nobles.”
“Oh man, I’ve been giving that kid a hard time too.”
“He is so creepy, the way he smiles all the time.”
Yes. He smiled, all the time.
He went to see Mother.
“You beat a noble using your magic?” Mother asked.
Luck nodded.
Mother moved.
Luck tensed.
Mother...hugged him. “Oh Luck, that’s fantastic. I’m so proud of you! Most people like us don’t stand a chance against nobles. But you’re special. And you’re going to win again, won’t you? Just keep winning Luck. Nobody will ever help you in this world. You have to do things by yourself.”
“I’ll do it Mom, if it will make you happy,” he told her.
With more mana piping through his system to counteract the weakening magic, Luck leaped at the smoke mage again.
“Win,” Mother told him.
“Jeez kid!” he said as he ducked into his smoke to avoid being attacked. “Despite being hit with my magic, you’ve only gotten faster and stronger.”
“Win,” Mother told him.
Luck chased after the man. “I can’t lose!” he told himself.
If he lost, Mother wouldn’t love him anymore.
He chased after Lotus through his smoke some more, almost catching him.
Almost winning.
Almost…
Lotus ran through his smoke screen again.
Luck chased after him.
And then…
“Smoke Creation Magic: Binding Cross Ribbon!” the man cried out before the smoke around him increased.
Luck blinked as he felt something tug at his legs. Then at his arms. A mass of smoke, solid smoke wrapped around his body, hardening further as it lifted him up into the air and holding him there as it spread up to his mouth. As the spell completed, Luck found himself unable to move.
After the spell was complete, Lotus let out a sigh before reaching up to scratch his cheek. “You know, I had hoped to avoid using this spell. It really does a number on my mana reserves,” he said before moving his hand down to rub his shoulder. “Still. I got responsibilities to tend to. Be seeing...well, since this place will definitely be coming down around you now, guess I won’t.”
Luck didn't pay much attention to the man, though.
Win. I have to keep on winning.
Luck was smiling.
It was raining.
Mother was gone.
Mother was in the ground.
Luck was standing over the ground that Mother was under.
“From what I heard, she just up and died.”
“She was under a lot of stress.”
“Left her kid behind too.”
“He must be heartbroken.”
“No, he’s a freak.”
“His mother’s dead, and all he does is smile.”
Fifteen...Sixteen...Seventeen...Sunset counted as she blazed a trail through the dungeon.
With her enhanced mana senses from being in her zone, Sunset was able to feel the hallways ahead thanks to all the open air being so full of mana. She took corners quicker than would have been possible and moved through the maze that made little sense as it looped back around and forced her to go higher and higher before heading down again, then alternate turns to keep going in the same general direction.
When she finally got to the next large chamber, Sunset came to a stop at the entrance to let Asta off and put Noelle down. “Are you both okay?” she asked before marking the count in her mind. Twenty seconds of power expulsion. That left plenty of time for fighting.
For how long fights were supposed to last, at any rate.
Noelle’s legs shook, making Sunset hold her gently. “Ugh...that was…” she stopped talking and moaned before looking over to Sunset with a frown. “What’s wrong with your voice?”
The question made Sunset groan. “My-ugh, not you too,” she mumbled before frowning back at Noelle. “There’s nothing wrong with my voice!”
“Yeah, don’t bother, she doesn’t seem to get it,” Asta said before he drew out his sword and looked down below them as the diamond mage raised his hand at a trapped blonde kid. “Oh crap, Luck!”
Not wasting another second, Asta leaped out of the entrance and down at the boy before swinging his sword into the black mass of smoke behind Luck, cutting into it with his anti-magic and making the spell disperse. “Okay Luck, let’s get him!”
The blonde boy fell to the ground shortly after Asta. “No!” the boy told him in a fierce tone that made Asta take a step back before Luck looked back at the Diamond mage. “I have to do this myself! It doesn’t count if I don’t do it myself!” Then, he took off at the mage at a speed that seemed way too slow for someone like him.
Sunset groaned at the sight. “Ah damnit,” she grumbled. “I knew he was crazy, but practically suicidal isn’t something I was ready to deal with.”
“So do something already!” Noelle told her fiercely.
After taking in a deep breath to keep her cool and focus. “I’d love to, but channeling mana like this takes a huge toll on my body. The more magic I use, the more strain it causes. As long as I don’t cast spells or move too much, I don’t have a problem, but when I do use magic, it’s like burning a candle.”
Worry showed on Noelle’s face. “Is it dangerous?”
Probably shouldn’t have given her an analogy where the item turns into a pile of goo, Sunset told herself. “No. But it does make me really sore afterwards,” she assured the girl. “It’s one of the reasons I started exercising.”
Noelle blinked before a smile crossed her face. “In that case, it’s probably best if you don’t do anything,” she said before leaping down to where the others were, leaving Sunset standing there, completely confused.
Huh? the redhead thought to herself.
Down on the floor, Luck launched himself the diamond mage again to no effect, as the man simply jumped out of the way and counter-attacked. Which made Luck jump into the air and spin around to go after him again, coming too close to dodge before the smoke mage let loose another blast.
An attack that would have hit if Asta hadn’t gotten in the way to strike it with his sword before he turned back to the blonde lightning boy when Luck started to protest. “YOU GO AHEAD AND DO WHAT YOU GOTTA DO LUCK, BUT SO WILL I!” he yelled at the boy. “And means not just standing by when a friend is in trouble.”
“I have to beat him on my own!” Luck told Asta, who was already running after the smoke mage before Luck had even finished talking. “If I don’t-”
“SORRY, BUT THAT JUST ISN’T HAPPENING!” Asta yelled as he cut into the mystery mage’s smoke, breathing a little of it in before chopping through another blast, followed by three more.
Okay yeah, now I know what I’m doing, Sunset thought before leaping down to stand behind Luck as while Noelle moved out in front and drew her book to simply stand there with a menacing scowl on her face.
She reached up to touch him on the shoulder. As close as Sunset was, she could tell there was some kind of spell running through him, centered in Luck’s lungs. “Luck it’s okay. You did good.”
The boy spun around. “You don’t understand!” Luck told her as he smiled at the redhead a bit too widely. “I have to win. If I don’t win and do it on my own, then Mother won’t love me anymore!”
Sunset blinked at the boy’s words. They weren’t the same but...how many times had she been a little filly, stressing over things like test grades, knowing that Celestia would get rid of her if she proved to be a waste of time.
Which...in the end...she did anyway.
Sunset grabbed the boy and ignored the lightning magic around him as she pulled him in close while taking a step back, pulling him off of his feet so he fell forward and rested his head beneath hers. “You idiot,” she told him. “Real family doesn’t attach conditions to the love that is given.”
“...what?” the boy asked.
After taking another breath. “I’m talking about your family, stupid. You know, the Black Bulls?” Sunset told him while wishing Vanessa was here. She was so much better at this kind of stuff. “Do you really think any of us are just going to abandon you if you get in over your head during a fight?”
Luck’s smile mostly disappeared. “...you won’t?”
The fact that she actually had to tell the boy that made Sunset nearly flinch, but she kept herself together. Losing focus when she had a ton of mana flowing through her was dangerous. “Actually, I think Magna would like it if you fought a little less around him.”
“That’s...I don’t...then...I won’t be alone?” he asked.
Good God, what happened to this kid to make him like this? Sunset asked herself.
“OF COURSE NOT YOU IDIOT!” Noelle yelled at Luck before she flared her mana and looked at the smoke mage as he retreated to a higher level of the room that was a bit out of Asta’s reach. “And you! You’re outnumbered four to one. But our guy isn’t hurt and yours are still breathing. Since this dungeon straddles the border between Diamond and Clover, I can’t really treat it as an invasion. Take your goons and go home, unless you want to mess with royalty!”
Luck broke out of Sunset’s embrace before he turned around and leapt over next to Noelle. “You know...it does sound a lot more fun to fight together!”
Sunset...blinked. Take what you can get, damnit. Just take what you can get, she told herself.
“YEAH!” Asta yelled.
After examining the area, Sunset surged her mana to spread it out over the area and push away the magic that was already floating there. “Don’t count on letting whatever crap you managed to sneak into his lungs to work on the rest of us. I’m already neutralizing it.”
The diamond mage reached up to rub his oversized goatee. “Hmm...good point. And it doesn’t look like my area affect spells we be of much use now either, with your mana flooding the chamber to interfere with them,” he told them. “Smart move.”
...really? Sunset thought as she blinked. I had no idea I could do that!
Although, it made sense. Human magic wasn’t concentrated in one place like a unicorn’s. It came from both inside and outside. If someone already controlled the mana in an area, the spells of other mages would have been affected as well.
“Okay then, I know when I’m beat,” he told them as he raised his hands before tendrils of smoke came out of them to wrap around the fallen mages like tentacles that pulled their unconscious bodies close to him while pages began to turn in the grimoire floating in front of him. “Smoke Creation Magic: Hustling Lazy Car!”
Sunset blinked as the man’s smoke reshaped itself to become an odd mix of a train engine, complete with smokestack, and a carriage that he set his men down in. It...made her a little nostalgic.
The man took another look at the assembled youths, then focused on Sunset for a second longer. “Kids today, I tell ya,” he mumbled before getting in the miniature train engine himself before the smoke stack actually started producing exhaust as it sped away.
...on the side of the wall...over the water.
Okay so...not the same thing as a mini-train, she told herself.
After the man left their sight, Asta looked back to the two girls. “We’re not gonna fight him anymore?”
Sunset let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding, then cut off the mana flow. Almost immediately, her muscles began to protest the strain they had been put under, and she reached up to rub her sore shoulder before sitting down on the floor to give her legs a rest. The damage hadn’t been too bad, but Sunset doubted she would be working out come tomorrow.
“Heck no!” she spat at the boy. “Just...give me a minute to rest, and we’ll get going.”
After a whole three seconds, Asta rested his sword on his shoulder. “Alright, next stop, the treasure room! We’ll beat those Golden Dawn posers yet!”
Noelle groaned. “Are you kidding me, we should probably just head out. With a map of the place, Mimosa has probably already led them to the treasure room.”
“NO WAY!” Asta yelled. “WE CAN’T JUST GIVE UP AND LEAVE!”
“Yeah!” Luck quickly agreed. “We still got that other guy to fight!”
The other three members of the group blinked as one before turning to look at the magic knight with the longest mana sensing range. “What other guy?” they all asked.