Dillie had nightmares that night of the demon. Its horrible eyes and sharp teeth haunted her deeply. She found a few hours of sleep when she went to her parent's room and slept with them. After Paley left, she did tell them everything that happened but insisted that she could sleep by herself.
At school the next day, Paley taught her more magic. They did exercises such as lifting a pen with Air magic or generating a nice breeze on their faces.
"Want to try making a runestone?" He asked.
"Yes!" She nodded excitedly. He took a small rock out of his bag and put it on her desk, beside her books.
"Put your hand on it. It helps to touch it with your entire palm." He instructed, and she obeyed.
"Now focus raw mana into it," Focusing raw mana into a runestone makes it easier to assign a spell to it because it establishes a link between your mana and the object.
"Good job," Paley observed the stone as it began to glow a gentle light grey, "Now assign a spell to it. You can either say the name of the spell or just visualize it."
Dillie nodded and assigned Konzan - the air blast spell - to it.
"You've already made a runestone before. It was the sword that I gave you yesterday. I'll buy you a better one. One that can hold more than one spell later."
"Isn't that a magic sword then? I heard they're super expensive." She finished assigning Konzan to the runestone.
Magic swords are swords made of material that is full of high-quality Unbound mana. A normal sword acts a lot like a runestone when assigned a spell to. It can only hold one spell at a time, whereas a magic sword, depending on its quality, can hold up to a thousand.
"They're like fifteen diamond coins minimum. That's about 16 Weynsoos." He said casually, "Now you want to add a condition to activate the runestone. It can be a word or something that you do to it."
"Okay," Dillie had already assigned a word to it.
"Go on. Use it." He watched as she held the runestone up toward the ceiling. She cleared her throat, hesitantly glancing at Paley.
"P-Paley," She said, embarrassed, and a blast of air shot up into the ceiling.
"Dillie, Paley, will you two please settle down back there?" The teacher requested politely.
"Sorry, miss." He apologized.
During lunch, he went to the Magic Club clubroom. The other members - Nova, Diz, Liba, Megora, and Ponna - weren't there yet.
"I hope it's not a Thursday today," He said to Mrs. Lachi, the Headmistress, cheekily.
"No, they're just usually late." She replied, sorting papers on her desk.
"What does the magic club even do?"
"They come up with ideas for new spells and magical objects. They discuss the history of magic and mages. Speaking of which, they're really obsessed with Quimnias, especially Neizin Jihwa and Manoha Buul."
"Neizin Jihwa? Which one is that?"
"The very first one."
The other members finally came in and sat down around the table. Nova handed five papers to Paley and put dice of varying sides in the middle of the table.
"Let us commence... The game." He said, and everyone began writing on the papers.
"Hm?" Paley tilted his head, confused.
"Oh, right. Ponna, could you explain to Paley?" He asked. Ponna nodded and turned to Paley, excited to have a sixth member to play with in Dungeons and Dragons.
"DnD is a role-playing game." Ponna began explaining, "You have the Dungeon Master," He pointed to Nova, "and the players. Us. We have to make characters, and Nova will put us into different kinds of situations where we have to do something to come out victorious. When there's a chance we lose, we roll the dice and see what happens. That's about it. It's better if you learn as you play." He finished.
"We've already made our characters. You can be anything you want in this game, by the way." Liba took out thirteen sheets of paper with the details of her character and her stats.
"How am I supposed to make a character?" Paley asked.
"Let me help you." Diz, the chubby one, walked over and took him through the entire process. He didn't want to have a big role in the game, asking to be the guy who carries all their equipment, but Nova made him take the biggest role of that day. The villain.
Diz ended up creating most of the character traits for Paley: A tall, menacing man with sharp blue eyes and villainous greed to conquer the world. He was a mage of Ice magic, reflecting his cold heart. Paley didn't want that role. It was as if they were mocking his natural icy look ( even though they never saw it, thanks to Bacha's Facimut Pulveris).
Ponna's character was a young, aspiring mage, kind in nature, and usually the one who helps the group through dark times. He was the antithesis of Paley's character, Divol. Diz was a beautiful elven archer who never missed a shot; unless she was hungry.
Liba and Megora were twins and both knights. Liba's character, Diana, was just kidnapped by Nightshades - shadow monsters. As a result, Megora's character, split away from the group to save her.
As Paley created his character, Nova told the story of what happened in their imaginary world since the last session. The good king of Primea ( the country their adventure is set in next ) has been assassinated, and Divol, a horrible dictator, has taken over.
Tommie, Ponna's character, carried the injured Elfie, Diz's character, to a village on the outskirts of Primea. They had come out of an intense battle a few days back. Tommie managed to stop the bleeding on Elfie's thigh by tightly wrapping a bandage on it, but small shards of a blade were still stuck inside.
He carried her to the village and begged for help. Eventually, he found a generous doctor who took her into his shack and healed her. (Doctors are just Healing Mages). After Elfie began to show signs of recuperating, he felt indebted to the kind doctor.
"How can I ever repay you?" Tommie asked.
"You needn't worry about repayment." Nova pretended to be the doctor, "But... There is something that you can do."
"Say it. My favor is yours."
"Our king has been slain- assassinated. And Divol, that horrible man, has taken the crown. He demands payment of fifteen diamond coins per month, and we peasants cannot handle at all! You seem strong, adventurer. Your friend is an elven archer, one of the last in this world. Please help us. That horrible church of the sun has denied us any-"
"Don't worry. Elfie and I shall save your country. But first, we must rendezvous with our other companions."
The agreed-upon rendezvous point was slight to the east of Primea, just outside the country. They spent thirty minutes of lunchtime meeting up and discussing how to take down Divol.
Dillie joined the game at some point as Divol's loyal servant. She watched with Paley as the others plotted to take him down.
After Tommie and Elfie met up with Diana and Claudia, they all set out toward the castle of Divol. Paley had fallen asleep, and had to be woken up by Dillie, whose turn it was now to join the game.
They all stopped at an inn to stock up on food before they approached Divol's castle. Here they met Dillie - her character's called Dillie - who wore black armor and wielded a long and relatively thin great sword.
"H-Hello adventurers." She attempted to act villainous.
"Guys, there is something off about this woman. We should be careful." Tommie whispered to the others.
"Hello. Who are you?" Claudia asked, keeping her thin sword ready for use.
"I am Dillie. You may call me a heretic, but I-I..." Dillie made her character a sexy, mature woman who used Charm along with Air magic, "I prefer the word sexy!" She finally said.
"What do you want from us? Could you perhaps be a part of Divol's army?" Elfie asked.
"Oh, I'm not just a part of his army. I am his right-hand woman." Dillie said with pride, holding onto Paley's right arm. The others backed away in surprise.
"He's sent his best!" Diana exclaimed, taking her sword out and holding it at Dillie.
"If so, then why didn't he come himself?" Elfie asked.
"Divol has a certain way of doing things." She read off Paley's character sheet, where he wrote down specific traits of his character, "Step one, show them fear. Step two, make them understand fear. And step three... Most people don't live long enough to experience step three. I suggest you run from Primea before you even begin experiencing step one." She suddenly got into the role, speaking with a mocking, superior tone.
"The battle commences!" Nova rolled a dice which determined the turns in which they would attack. Tommie attacked first, trying to hit her with a simple fire spell. Dillie didn't bother dodging and instead deflected it with her sword. She slowly pointed the tip towards him and whispered, "Konzan," blasting him into the wall with Air magic.
She looked at the others. They were petrified. "I've shown you fear now. Do you want me to make you understand it?" She asked the others. In real life, they rolled twenty-sided dice, rolling a lucky twenty. In a gang-up battle situation, Nova had a rule that if you rolled the highest number, you could either choose to use your strongest spell and have a high chance of defeating the enemy, or you could gang up on the enemy with all of your companions.
Liba - Diana - rolled a twenty and they all ganged up on Dillie with a total stat of 110 attack damage. But it still wasn't enough. Dillie activated a runestone that Divol made for her, allowing her to use his Ice magic.
"True ice." She said coldly and shot a gigantic wave of ice toward them. The others would've died right there and then if it wasn't for Tommie using his Protection skill. However, to use it, he needed to be at full mana. Since he'd already used most of it to use that fire spell, he was now on the ground, unconscious.
The others roared. Nova gave them an option to run away or stay and fight to the death. They chose the latter and charged Dillie with all their might since the gang-up option was still active.
Diana used her high agility to dodge all incoming blasts of wind, and Claudia put her sword in front of her, using her sword's skill, Shield mode (the sword emits a magic shield). Elfie stayed back and barraged Dillie with lock-on arrows.
Dillie laughed and pulled out another of the ice runes. This one was a bomb, with the activation condition being to be sliced in half.
"Did you think I only had one!?" She threw it toward them and sliced it in half with her sword. The magic from within spilled out and exploded. A spiky ball of ice came to life in the middle of the inn and grew to the size of a house in an instant. Dillie jumped back to avoid getting hurt herself, leaving them bleeding out inside.
"Hey, no fair! Paley's too powerful!" Liba complained as the bell rang.
"He's going to be the final boss of this story. Of course, he's strong." Nova said.
"What? The final one?" Megora stood up, worried.
"Don't worry, Megora. I'm not sick or anything. Me and Ponna aren't going to be in school next year, so that's why." Nova and Ponna were both in Stage 6 of school; since Lusitra wasn't reputable enough to send them to a decent academy, they were going straight into the world of work after.
"We'll miss you two," Diz said, tearing up.
"We'll miss you too." Ponna smiled, "But we can keep in touch. We can all play DnD again on the weekends."
"Hm!" She nodded. Paley felt slightly strange about being their final antagonist but decided not to speak up and ruin the moment. He excused himself and left with Dillie to his last class.