Thief of Time

“Water, water, water, water…” Lily, who was sitting on thin air, looked around and made a face. “I’m bored.”

“I’m not bored, though. We’re literally sitting down on air right now,” Claud replied, an odd look on his face. That expression had been sitting there ever since the sun went down…or rather, ever since Lily wondered if it was possible to sit down and “fly” towards the Nihal continent.

“You’ve been staring at me for the last two hours.”

“Come on. You have to admit. Sitting down like this is genius.” Claud poked her tummy gently.

“Says the person who’s been trying out every single weird pose for the past hour or so,” Lily replied. “I mean, it’s kinda in the description, right? Your Will of Freedom skill. Who cares what pose we’re in? No one, apparently. As long as I’m holding you, it’s quite fine.”

“How does this even work anyway?” Claud shook his head. “At this point of time, I’m half-sure that this world is a bit weird. I mean, sitting down while we’re flying at speeds I can’t even fathom? Really? Whew. I don’t even know how fast we’re flying right now, other than the fact that the sea and the sky are moving visibly above our heads.”

“Not as fast as the divinities, though.”

Claud felt himself sober up immediately, and he nodded once. “Yeah. Not as fast as the divinities, that’s for sure. Those guys seem to pop up nearly instantaneously, even though some of them are based in entirely different continents. We’re just rookies compared to them.”

“It’s not a nice thought.”

“Nope. Not at all.”

Claud looked around him, and then frowned. “Odd. It’s as if the area around me is under…my control or something.”

“What brought that on?” Lily asked.

“I was thinking about the skill and why it seemed so convenient. We can sit down while flying through the air?” Claud folded his arms. “That’s a bit…weird, if not outright wrong.”

“I know what you mean, but why did you suddenly think about your control or whatever?” Lily asked.

“Maybe I’m introspective or something.” Claud closed his eyes. “I’ll take this chance to examine Will of Freedom for a bit, since we’re just screwing around at this point of time.”

Lily sighed. “At least you know you were screwing around for the past hour…”

“I said ‘we’, though…”

Claud sat down next to Lily, and then began to probe with his sense. The air around him seemed to be saturated with his own lifeforce, which he had only noticed because of its unique hollowness. It was like the sleeping gas that he once dabbled with in his traps, except that the gas itself had colour but no effect. If he was in his usual condition, Claud half-believed that he could actually do something with the lifeforce that had permeated the area around him.

If that was his lifeforce, could he make it glow? That thought danced through his mind for a moment, and something seemed to change all around him.

He opened his eyes, and then grinned.

“What did you do?” Lily asked.

“It seems that the Will of Freedom skill makes use of my lifeforce, in a sense. It belongs to me, and when the skill ends, the lifeforce returns. Or maybe the substance of the skill is comprised of my lifeforce, and mana keeps my lifeforce under control.”

“Wait, so…there’s like something around us. That something is made from your lifeforce and mana?” Lily asked. “What if there’s an attack, and that something is destroyed?”

“That’s a good point,” Claud replied, before reaching out to the weird area around him. It seemed to be part of him, but he couldn’t control it fully — he could only control its movement, and—

“Oh!” Claud clapped his hands. “I get how this works now! Will of Freedom essentially suspends us in an area of lifeforce and mana that I can control! As long as you remain in that area around me, I can also encapsulate you and anything else in it!”

“And the speed issue?”

“Not sure how that works, unfortunately.” Claud didn’t let that fact get him down, however. “This is amazing! In a sense, if I can replicate and learn how to do this on my own, the skill also becomes useless, right?”

“Theoretically, but how would you learn this?”

Something like a bucket of cold water seemed to rush his mind, and Claud made a face. “That’s a good question.”

He looked out, sighed, and then blinked. “Wait. That’s…land.”

“Land?” Lily blinked. “Wait, land? We’re already at the Nihal continent?”

“Seems like it.” He gazed at the spires that seemed to connect the sky and the ground. These spires were powerful artefacts that also served as the homes for the various senators of the Nihal Senate, allowing them an incredible level of offensive and defensive capabilities as long as they stayed within the spire.

“Best to avoid these things,” Lily noted. “Those spires are a nasty piece of work.”

“Well, it’s something that allows the senators to avoid gulping down a ton of lifestones,” Claud replied. “And saves them the hassle of dealing with unruly mobs…or crowds protesting against their rule.”

He thought about Nero’s explanation of these spires and their capabilities. Apparently, those things were capable of precision strikes and granted their senator a powerful barrier as long as they stayed within range of the tower, which was pretty damn huge. The barrier was effectively impervious as long as there were lifestones and people powering the Senator Spires.

Annoyingly enough, they also had weapons that were capable of targeting people in mid-air, because flying ships were actually a thing in Nihal. Why the Grandis Empire didn’t have those nifty little things was a question answered by the existence of little things called flight stones, which for some reason appeared at around the same frequency as lifestones…

At any rate, flying was a thing in Nihal. The number of lifestones in Nihal, however, was a lot lower, presumably because flight stones existed and also came in mines. Flight stone mines also existed, and were mined by slaves, felons and people who really needed money.

“Flying ships.”

“Yeah.” Claud looked at a small formation of ships that were flying around. Actual, seaborne ships also existed, but apparently, they were usually used for huge quantities of trade goods rather than to ferry people around.

“Should we hide ourselves?” Lily asked.

“No point. We’ll just continue on…but we do need to get our bearings first,” Claud replied.

“The landing point that Nero suggested is the Nox Spire. Nero described it as a spire that was always giving out black smoke and trying its hardest to seem evil.”

“I still don’t understand why he described it as that, but eh.” Claud willed the suspended space around them to move towards that smoky spire, before gazing at the ships that were floating around it. They were supported by structures that looked purpose-built for the express purpose of holding them.

“Flying must be a mess here,” Lily observed. “Do accidents occur?”

“Probably.” Claud glanced at the shoreline directly underneath them, and then lowered their altitude. Now that they were officially in Nihal, albeit a few kilometres above ground, he could see the sprawling city that grew around the Nox Spire. It was decidedly different from the way the Grandis Emperor dealt with land and ruled his territory, since the nobles all had different ranks.

However, in the Nihal Senate, the Senators were all equals. Only the First Lord or First Lady were special; they were first amongst equals…and had a lot of resources to keep it that way.

Something called votes and suffrage was all the rage in Nihal too; apparently, citizens of the Nihal Senate could decide who to have as their leader every five years. Would-be senators would parade around their city of birth and attempt to win over the people there into voting for them, a process overseen by the First Lady or First Lord to ensure fairness, before the people voted by way of marking on papers and…something.

Nero didn’t describe the process in that much detail either, so there was no helping it.

No one noticed the two of them as they landed in a small alley.

“It’s a bit weird. We took about eight hours to travel, but there’s no one to boast about this too,” Claud observed, a wry grin on his face.

“Maybe the others when we get back?” Lily asked. “Okay, we are at least at the Nox Spire…are we staying here for the night? Or are we going to leave after a quick bite?”

Claud yawned once. “Let’s try out the inns in this place, shall we?”

“Nihal hospitality, huh?” Lily looked around the alley. “Maybe there might be exciting stuff that occurs in front of us. Like some rabble rouser, or a knight and a princess…”

“Princess Dia?”

“That’s a special princess, so not her…”

“I think her story is more unbelievable than that of a novel’s, though?” Claud tilted his head. “Nothing seems illogical at this point.”

“True…”