"Which way is the exit?" Tetsu asked.
"You are leaving?"
"Want me to stay?" Tetsu chuckled. "I don't know why I am here to begin with, so yeah, I am," he confirmed in a serious tone.
Tetsu had covered all the pouches under a cloak he stole from a Krantz, and with Leech Over adding an extra layer of stealth to the stolen items, no one would guess he carried their entire treasury on his person, even to her eyes Tetsu looked hefty and wired, but not like someone who came to rob them during an all-out war.
"That way," she pointed, receiving a bow from Tetsu.
Except for the excessive blinking, she didn't find the intruder intimidating.
Were all the rumors about the intruder false?
The way he struggled to remove the axe embedded in the wall told her he was weaker than her younger sister, yet he became the central focus of all the Krantz, more than the supposed treasure they came so far for.
"Aren't you going to kill me?" She blurted out, asking the stupidest question swirling around her mind out of shock.
The human took a break from freeing the axe he threw, more frustrated about his incompetence than the stupid question.
"I don't kill!" He said with disgust evident on his crunched-up face. "Well, I killed two bugs I have no recollection of. Four porcupines when they wouldn't stop following. I swear they were the same ones I struggled to ward off before they forced my hand."
He went off on a rant, justifying himself as to why he did what he did. After every sentence, he scolded himself for the wrongs he might have avoided if he were smarter, patted himself on the back for the positives he accomplished, reminisced about the old days in a foreign land I never heard about, and then left with a bow and my shoes.
Even the wall slumped out of boredom or confusion, letting his axe out before he left. In a short time we... well, he spoke, no, ranted on and on about made him forget the direction I pointed toward moments ago.
"There is no way he is a threat to my little sister, let alone the king," she scoffed, got up, scoffed again to let the built-up misconceptions out of her system, then returned to her position.
The real threat loomed outside, and she would die before letting those undead claim her little sister.
A weapon makes all the difference in the world until it gets stuck in the wall, and you embarrass yourself in front of your enemy by trying to get it out to finish the job. Again! Not to kill the unfortunate soul, but to escape the unfortunate situation.
You do the casual talk, masculine dialogue, and flirt a little, even though it's an alien, all to hide your incompetence and get the damn weapon out, in the little hope that in the end, it shall all click into place.
The on-the-nose, over-the-top dialogue, the cold, cool slow-motion walk, and last but not least, a spectacular exit, one that no one sees coming. All for the entire storyline to be squashed by a stupid stat.
"Luck my ass," Tetsu frowns.
A Rune on the axe hilt pulls the axe toward another Rune on the wall with Tetsu cranking up the heat by supplying more mana and paving its path into his hand. Only then does the axe break free.
In no mood to continue the awkward dialogue, Tetsu heads to the exit. The path seemed genuine, his gut urging him to move and get the hell out of there, but a do-not-enter sign threw a wrench in the latest plans. You never tell a teenager not to do something and expect them to follow instructions. They take that as a sign from the universe urging them to take the forbidden fruit. In Tetsu's case, the door that led to the Krovath.
Tetsu never let a tie or sock ever stop him, so an enormous cross blaring the cautious red color would not deter him either.
Tetsu steps into the room, and his senses go haywire. Except for his spatial awareness, the rest of his senses scream at him, each telling a different story. His eyes conveyed he was outside, while his nose picked up a sour scent, picturing a herbal backyard. The sense of movement told they were moving, the sense of gravity urged they were still, and because of the large dining table afloat in the center of the room, the spatial awareness claimed they stood still.
Settling on the sense of space, Tetsu places the Rune [Mark] on all sides to orient himself. The room turned out to be too large for the rune to work, so he added the divine seal [eye], stabilizing his senses by denying their claims.
If the room can be categorized as bizarre, the man-child crawling around the room with his beer belly, fiddling with the transparent monitors like a newborn with a futuristic tablet, needed a new word coined in his honor.
He wore a tight outfit that latched onto his skin like spandex, ruining the royal fabric look. A pair of pink silicon gloves, a cap, and boots made Tetsu want to kick the Krantz for his horrible fashion sense. But on closer inspection, the gloves and shoes were akin to gaming gloves, albeit more advanced, and for magical screens.
The Krantz crawled around the room, accessing various functions of the castle. Each click, swipe, and drag in this room morphed the entire castle, creating or breaking it into sections. One can control every aspect of the castle from this room, and by the amount of drool left by the man-child, there were sections within this control room, each connected to distinct sections of the castle.
"How the heck did these people get all of this stuff?" Krovath jolts up by the room echoing Tetsu's voice. "Oops." He shuts his mouth shut.
"You." Krovath's voice bounces once, and the voice disappears with a simple swipe of his wrist.
'The Krantz could cancel sound?' Tetsu wondered.
"Welcome to my domain," Krovath grins.
"Oh, the room did it," Tetsu ignores him, the room demanding his full attention.
A sudden shift in the room warrants caution. Tetsu checks and finds the Runes he placed have moved closer. He was certain he never took a step, so... a quick feel of the Runes clarifies the nature of the skill. "The room shrank."
"Perceptive," Krovath grins. "Too bad though." He waits for Tetsu to ask why, but Tetsu keeps ignoring him and admiring the room instead. "Why, you ask? I shall not tell you," he guffawed.
"You already revealed your cards," Tetsu clears his ears, yawning. "Pretty dumb move, if you ask me."
"No, I didn't," Krovath denies.
"Domain, you said! I am guessing you can shrink it, and..." He turns away and pushes the wall, but the door present moments ago disappeared. "Domain," he yawns, not in the mood to explain further.
"Per—"
"—Perceptive," Tetsu completes his sentence. "Can I go now? We have nothing to do with each other. All of... well, whatever this is... Is meaningless."
"Sure," Krovath nods. "You may leave." He steps back, letting Tetsu choose his path.
"To the door on your right?"
"How did you..?"
Tetsu ignores Krovath's rants and places additional Runes on the door. Krovath pants heavily after finishing his rant, and Tetsu senses the room getting closer.
"This is a bad match-up."
"Scared, are we?"
"For you, that is," Tetsu continues with a nonchalant stare, one eye fixed on the exit.
Krovath blocked the info Rune, but Tetsu placed him at level ten, and not of the fighter or defense class, making his attribute advantage useless. The domain is unique, and as unique tags go, this one is a menace for the people outside of it, not inside. The lack of battle experience was so blatant that it stung Tetsu to accept the duel.
"Don't take this the wrong way, but let's call this a draw and go our separate ways," Tetsu urged.
"Scared, are we?"
"Yeah... of adding unnecessary corpses to my list," Tetsu frowns.
"How dare you?" barks Krovath, shrinking the room further. "If I am already here... I might as well finish the job," Tetsu aimed to collect some screens, adding them to his collection of tiles.
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