Thief of Time

“Well, in the end, it’s just me hurling some attacks at this Spire. There’s really nothing complicated about this, right?” Lily asked. “Too much complexity is also a problem.”

Claud bobbed his head. “That’s a good point. I mean, I like the direct approach too.”

“The very direct approach,” Lily corrected. “To be more specific, the approach where you hurl a blazing spear of mana at your targets. You seem to be getting the hang of obliterating enemies with that. Your kill count is very impressive.”

Chuckling once, Claud looked at the Spire. “Well, then…I’m at your command.”

“Alright! Let’s start by flying to it. That point will do.” Lily pointed at a random patch of wall.

With Will of Solitude and Will of Freedom activated, it was quite easy for them to waltz right up to the Spire’s walls, and Claud examined the structure carefully. Unlike its exterior appearance might suggest, the Spire was actually made from metal; the paint job on it only made it resemble bricks. In fact, Claud had the feeling that this Spire’s very structure was made by rolling up a very large sheet of metal.

“Well, this is…unexpected.” Clad glanced at Lily, who looked quite excited. “Um. Your expression is a bit off, you know!”

“I rarely get to pit my explosives against metal structures!” Lily pulled out a bunch of packages, which she promptly stuck onto the walls. “One, two, three…hmm. Should I stick a few more on anyway, or call it a day? It’s hard to say…”

“Wait, we aren’t demolishing this structure!”

“…Can we?” Lily turned a set of googly eyes to Claud, and his heart trembled. There was something about those eyes that made him unable to say no, but...he really couldn’t agree.

His heart twisted as he shook his head. “We can’t.”

“Oh.” Lily beamed. “Alright, then! I’ll just replace these with smoke-emitting ones instead. We’ll just shake the tower with one bomb, and then let the smoke scare everyone else. Should I make it very loud too? Well, it’s just a stress test, so making it nice, loud and visible should really be the objective here…”

She fiddled with the packages again, and Claud tilted his head. “Huh. You didn’t swap them out.”

“Yeah. All I have to do is to adjust their burning levels,” Lily explained. “It’s all about volume burned at once. For instance, if you want lots and lots of smoke, you want the burning to take place under imperfect conditions; low air, lots of material, and an increasing volume to burn over time. These produce a steadily growing column of smoke that draw a lot of people.”

“Okay. What about sound and force?”

“They have similar conditions, but if there’s an outlet for force, it ceases to become an issue,” Lily replied. “Only if you enclose rapidly burning black powder and not leave significant openings would you get force. You don’t really need much; all that’s needed is a small space. The only ones that need me to add things are light; if you want a really bright flare, you need certain ingredients.”

Claud bobbed his head. “The one I remember making only emits lots of smoke…”

“The art of explosions is very profound.” Lily fiddled with the packages one last time, and then nodded. “Alright. Take us away!”

Without any warning or noticeable force, the two of them retreated rapidly from the Spire. One minute later, there was a small burst of orange light, and hundreds of loud, cracking sounds filled the air as the tower shook madly. In that instant, vast blue light surged up from the foundations of the Spire, enveloping it in an eggshell of mana. The eggshell trembled, releasing pulses of mana throughout the entire city.

Bells jangled as soldiers took to the skies in small flying ships, crossbows at the ready. Mana too enveloped these ships, protecting them from attacks and granting them an advantage over their grounded opponents.

“An enemy has attacked the Spire,” a voice droned on and on as the flying ships fanned out rapidly, emitting lights that lit up the streets, revealing thousands of people fleeing from the Spire. “This is not a drill. I repeat. An enemy has attacked the Spire. This is not a drill. All civilians are advised to seek cover and to call for help if they spot any suspicious individuals…”

“Not bad,” Claud judged. “This is quite…the impressive reaction time. In other words, an attack must have happened not too long ago.”

“The divinities, probably,” Lily replied. “After all, they did adopt an aggressive stance at the beginning, only mellowing out later. It’s also possible that a Spire Lord attacked this place recently.”

“Yeah.” Claud paused. “Or maybe someone was copying us and trying to see what their emergency reactions are like. At any rate, I expect this to be one of the better results. Their arrangements are good, but it’s nothing you or I can’t break, so we can relax.”

“Are we heading to the Nihal capital now?” Lily asked.

“Kabir shouldn’t be affected by one of our tests here,” Claud replied. “And given that we’re using Will of Freedom, the only real danger here is actually just getting lost or something.”

He chuckled. “That’s impossible.”

“Alright, let’s go! I want some supper at the capital. It’s fine, right?” Lily asked. “I mean, we did exchange for some Nihal dollars.”

Claud jangled the bag of coins in his pocket, which was currently serving as a bed for the three little meeplings, and they woke up blearily. Making a few meeps in protest, they rapidly returned to sleep, and Claud made a face.

“Bleh.”

“What, you wanted to wake them?” Lily asked. “Why?”

“They should see this too…but whatever.” Claud pulled out the map that Nero had given him, and then examined it once more, under the pale flickering light of his mana. All he had to do was to match his bearings correctly, and after taking reference points from both the Spire and a relatively tall tower, the two of them sped off.

Along the way, they came across even more Spires. All of them, however, seemed to be spaced quite evenly apart; the major territories all seemed to have similar sizes. In other words, there probably wasn’t a formal hierarchy in which some Senators were better than the others, unlike the nobility and peerage system in Grandis.

“Quite interesting, isn’t it?” Claud asked.

“I wonder how things evolved to this point,” Lily replied. “After all, isn’t it natural for the strongest person to consolidate all power within themselves? Emperor Grandis and Supreme Saran managed to control politics and dictate it from an absolutely superior position.”

“Mhm. Maybe too many mid-ranked folders survived the Third Godsfall,” Claud suggested. “And while one of them was stronger than the others, the others, if they joined hands, could defeat the strongest of the lot. After all, Grandis himself forbade anyone from increasing their strength beyond a certain limit. He probably had all sorts of…”

Claud fell silent for a moment, and then shook his head. “Anyway, as I was saying, he probably had artefacts to determine if there was anyone breaking his rules.”

“Okay, but why didn’t he come for us?”

“Probably because he was…busy.” Claud fell silent again. “Damn. I think we got really lucky. I never thought about it this hard, but since those laws prohibiting nobles from rising to a certain level exist, there needs to be an existing detection and enforcement mechanism as well.”

“…What do you mean?” Lily asked.

“Maybe we got really lucky or something, because we became mid-ranked folders during times of turmoil,” Claud replied. “Otherwise…”

He drew a line across his throat. “Maybe that’s why we rarely hear of hexa-folders or something. However, since the Emperor was troubled by the Fourth Godsfall, he probably couldn’t spare the time for us. It also helped that we didn’t exert our full power often, until we matured into our strength as a hexa-folder.”

“I think you missed out a very important point,” Lily added.

“What point?” Claud asked.

“We spent around two years to become hexa-folders,” she replied. “I know how things work in the Empire’s bureaucracy. Things just get stuck in there. Two years…well, some reports can roll around there for that long. Even if they are important ones.”

“Like us.”

“Well, I don’t think they detected us,” Lily replied. “I mean, you can’t tell how many circuits someone has until they use it. And everything we go all out, we’re almost always in Presence Nullification or Will of Solitude.”

“True.” Claud let out a sigh. “Well, I hope the others…”

“They’re in Moon territory,” Lily replied. “Emperor Grandis is not going to strike there…”

“Let’s hope so.” Claud gazed at the gigantic Spire that dwarfed the ones he’d seen so far. “Let’s hope so…”

Kabir, the capital of Nihal, was blazing in the night, a light that sought to repel the primordial fears of humanity. What did it hide, in the shadows beneath the lamp?

As Claud willed his way forward, that question danced in his mind. For now, however, instead of jumping into the fires so recklessly, he needed to collect information.

Time was needed.