me - well, turns out negotiations have failed. he did not even listen to what I was offering to him. I almost died due to him expelling him. that was pretty rude.
right now I have a cast on my hand, covering the broken bone that was the result of crashing into the ground. I have to thank Stephen and his hot-headedness for that. he did not change even after all this time. phantom was the one that brought me back to the hotel and placed this cast on me. my regeneration is still not there or this would have healed in a couple of seconds. thankfully, my ability to heal is still greater than others, so I can heal this in a couple of days. until then it is going to be a pain to deal with this mess.
phantom - does not matter, he would not have trusted you normally anyway. you have gained a reputation due to the fifth emperor.
me - I know, but he used to be a friend. I did not want him to be my enemy. now what do we do, you have warned the enemy of our presence. I should not have gone for a negotiation.
phantom - this is not the forest, where the beasts we hunt keep lazing about, reacting only when a threat appears. them becoming ready for you, is a good thing for us. after all he will be focusing on you.
me - Stephen has lived through a couple of wars, he is not that stupid to suffer from tunnel vision. you can not ambush him even when I distract him.
phantom - I did not question you on your hunts, now don't question me when I am on an assassination. this is my field.
me -fine, if I lose my soul due to you messing this up, my death is on your hands. okay, I am going to my room, this hand is going to kill me one of these days.
(after a few minutes, in my room)
I collapse in my bed, completely exhausted. the physical pain does not affect me too much. it is my soul which has been affected. you see, my contract with the third emperor is unique. in the contract, the third emperor can punish me without any worry, by harming my soul. ever since my return from the academy, he has been regularly piercing my soul, causing immense pain to me. I think it is punishment for trying to talk with the chancellor.
if he knew that I revealed myself, he would have dissipated my soul completely, making me lose most of my memories at best and at worst being destroyed completely.
well, I can't really complain. after the mess that I caused during the bloody banquet, I would be quite surprised that I was allowed to live anyway.
well, I do wonder what phantom is planning. she is a smart one, but I have to be careful, after all. we are at the precipice of a war after all. it will be better if I am very careful when I act. I really underestimated just how much the fifth emperor is in support of the third emperor. to think that even somebody like Stephen, who placed himself as far away from the politics of the capital as possible knew of it. no wonder this kind of civil war is happening. fifth emperor could be said to be a reason as to why no war happen in such a way. otherwise, after the fourth emperor messed up the empire, it is a wonder that the emperor held any form of order.
well, my job is to make sure that this infighting doesn't cause any more of a mess. kind of hard when everybody sees me as the nobles lackey. well, I won't be revealing my identity too much, or my identity will completely ruin my work. the monster always worked so effectively because he was not a part of either faction.
(a couple of days later.)
well, phantom has left me in my inn for the last couple of days, hiding and preparing for something. she is not saying anything to me because, well I have a tendency to get captured and I am in enemy territory, so being careful is better.
I have been working and I have achieved some level of understanding about my ability. it is a transmutation ability, but it can only change the structure of a body. a structure of wood is made to change in such a way that it gains joints and a basic bone structure with the wood becoming somewhat muscle-like. all of that is an instinctive result of me using the mana. even now I am familiarising myself with how I am doing it, but once I understand how I am doing it, I should be able to freely change the structure of the materials.
for now, a muscle structure and the balloon thing are the only things that I can do. it is not too bad, but it is kind of hard blowing up the size. I need to precisely blow it up to a certain size, too much and the material will burst, not able to handle the mana, and too little, it will be too thick.
thankfully I am in a rural zone with a lot of trees or I would have run out long ago. well, still, the armour is progressing quite nicely, its present thickness is about the thickness of a leather armour, with the strength of a heavy iron armour and that is only using wood, you can see how useful my ability is already.
well, I need to learn how to actively change the structure of a body. right now, I rely on my own strength to move that armour. if I could somehow add a couple of hundred trees to it do you think that I can move it by an inch?
I have an idea as to how I can combat that, the very same idea that the necromancers use to deal with it, a pseudo skeletal network.
they use their mana to link, a part of their soul with the skeleton. thousands of such links and they can move the armour much like a puppet moved by a puppeteer.
I don't have the kind of mana needed to make such a move but with enough time and the ability to change the structure of a puppet, I can make something similar to this. once I do that, maybe I can pilot armours that are large as mountains, but for now, I need to focus on other things.
among other things, my sculpting skills are getting better with time. well, I actually quite satisfied with this new body of mine.
well, I have to do something that will most likely put me in some kind of trouble.
phantom has told me to meet her at a place near the borders of the academy. from there maybe we will be sneaking into the Academy maybe, though I don't know how that brat will kidnap the crown. I don't want to deal with Stephen. he is a lazy, but egoistical man. he must have at the very least doubled the guard in that place.
(about half an hour)
with these thoughts, I make my way to the meeting place. let's hope she has a good way of breaking the wall or I will be dead. the third emperor is not very forgiving. well, I am already at the designated place, waiting for her to appear.
the place is pretty well chosen, a small hill near the Academy. this particular hill is full of caves. since it is right outside the area it is not particularly well guarded. I am presently hiding in one of the caves in this place.
I do not like to be this close to the enemy. Stephen is pretty annoying to deal with, he is a paranoid enemy. he will be very careful and that is the main reason that I did not want to reveal myself.
well, I have decided to take her help and I will have to follow her plans, something I would rather not regret. she is a smart brat.
suddenly I hear a noise near me. that noise is pretty familiar to me. it is the sound of the walls opening. it is a pretty silent noise, but I have heard it many times, so I won't be mistaking it. which means that either we have been discovered or I have been made into cannon fodder.
either option does not bode well for me. well, I will have to hide. I make my way into the caves, deeper and deeper into it. I don't dare to go too deep into the caves. I have no idea about how deep the caves are and I could get lost. I can fight individual soldiers from the armies, even from the still army. the still army in general has a power level of class 2. but against hundreds of class 2 what can a class 3 being even do. not to mention the few leaders that the army has who are also class 3. well, let's just hope phantom does not come here. there is no point in losing most of my allies now.
I have been captured many times, though I don't want to get caught now. turns out regeneration really did make life very much easier. well, I am still not caught, but I can feel them already, coming close to me.
I make a turn and find myself in a dead-end. this is what I was scared about. I don't really know the maps of this place, so I don't know where to go. it is a somewhat largish cave, with stalactites at the very top. well, I can't retreat backward, because that is where the enemies will be coming from. I will have to fight in this place. I will be defeated but at the very least I can fight against the enemy and make them suffer some losses. I will also get to test a couple of my new devices.
I have been creating many devices in the last month, most of which I will be getting to test today.
the very first one is the remote control explosive bombs. it is a simple device, a combination of my puppets and sensory seals. I have placed sensory seals in the bombs. the instant that a man steps on them, I will know and I can explode the bomb from far away, quite safely. puppet mana seems to be even more useful than it seemed to be before.
well, I can't really complain too much about all of this. well, time to get captured I suppose. well, I don't want to be captured that easily. what will happen to the prestige of the immortal if that was the case?
a soldier steps into one of the traps present in this place and had his led blown up. the explosives that I had are not that harmful, they are just meant to immobilize. paralysing powders would have been better, but I have to make do. nobody will die, that much I can guarantee.
that will attract the ones in the other areas. this cave system is not that complex, so they will be coming to meet me quite quickly. well, I think that is for the better, after all, I have somewhat of an idea as to what she is planning to do and to be honest it is a good plan, but she still does not have the habit of adapting, something you need to have in this ever-changing world.
well, time to get serious.