A blast of water was shot at the fire, putting it out and leaving only a single cloud of steam rising toward the heavens to ever prove that the fire was even there.
"That was very rude." Shiv's dark look intensified, though the nobleman didn't seem to notice. His big nose was stuck too high for him to see much of anything other than that steam cloud, really.
"The queen is not happy with your actions, and demands your presence in the throne room this instant." The nobleman informed him.
"Yeah, yeah. I'll be there in a bit. You guys go on ahead and I'll catch up." Shiv made a shooing motion at them and set the rope on fire again.
Another shot of water doused the fire. Shiv was able to see which soldier was the culprit, this time, and gave the man a look that promised a painful death.
The noble opened his annoying mouth to say something once more, but was cut off by an explosion that rocked the entire world. Everyone turned around to see what had happened back on the other side of the city.
Everyone but Shiv. He set the rope on fire, dropped it, and walked away.
As he walked away, the rope doused in oil quickly took the fire through the gate, took a sharp left, and went up a small incline to a little pot with a plant sitting comfortably in it. The plant was a small little thing, but was a strange color and had an even stranger odor. Its appearance was perhaps the strangest thing about it, though.
It appeared to be a pile of balloons all squished together. This one had a rope disappearing right into the center of it, and when the fire reached it, it blew up. The explosion was epic, and had an incredible reach. A reach that included several more plants of similar appearance, minus the rope, in many different directions. This explosion reached these plants and caused them to explode as well. The following explosions reached more plants and spread out until the chain reaction had covered the entire city aside from the castle.
Shiv ignored all of this as best as he was able, passing a group of Briggs' men who were watching the road, just continuing to slowly trudge toward down the road. Time passed, and he felt an absolutely insane amount of power enter his soul. His expression changed sporadically, but there was no change in his pace.
When about an hour had gone by, he reached a patch of woods with a cabin nestled tightly into them. Outside the cabin were several armed, armored men and women relaxing. They nodded respectfully at Shiv when he walked through them, but he didn't notice, his eyes trained on the ground in front of his feet. He walked to the door and knocked gently.
A soft, "who is it?" made him look up and say his name with a gruff voice. The soft voice told him to enter, so he did so.
Inside, Blaze was sitting on a wide bed with Uriel's head resting in her lap. She smiled at Shiv, "Hey! Did you have fun doing whatever you were doing?"
Shiv forced a laugh and grimaced, suddenly feeling much better. "Nah, but I did destroy an entire city. All that's left is the castle."
"Great! Go get to it!" Blaze made a shooing motion very similar to the one he'd made earlier. He smiled and nodded, then left, feeling much better.
***
"Just as we thought, the castle walls are damaged, but not enough to make an assault easy. There are also a few homes belonging to nobles that weren't completely destroyed." Said Briggs, who was standing in the wreckage of the capital with Farhad and a few other men when Shiv reached him. In front of them was the castle, set up on a hill with seemingly impenetrable walls surrounding it on all sides. Standing on those walls were soldiers and guards with horrified and terrified expressions. Some were crying, others were yelling curses and threats down at Briggs' men, who were surrounding the castle, while others simply stared at the wreckage.
"Did you get a big boost in power from your part?" Shiv asked and came to a stop next to the short man and tilted his head back to look up at the castle.
Briggs nodded. He had been on the opposite side of the capital from Shiv earlier, and set a rope on fire with a torch. They had decided this was best, so that neither one of them would become more powerful than the other by an extremely dramatic amount.
"What's the plan?" Shiv asked.
"Do you have any more secret magical plants that have incredible powers?" Briggs asked with genuine curiosity. He had been understandably skeptical when Shiv had told him about his incredibly large collection of exploding plants.
"I'm honestly surprised you didn't know about those things, and that they weren't in use by militaries all over the place. But no, I don't have any plants that would have too much of an effect on our current situation."
Briggs was silent for several seconds, then began giving orders to his men, preparing them for the upcoming assault.
Shiv finally took the time to take a look at the system messages that had been trying to make themselves known for the past hour. 'Great, some more random Abilities and a bunch of levels. I'm in the Journeyman class now? Cool.' He glanced at the abilities to see if any of them would be useful in the next few hours, but otherwise didn't really care.
He didn't care, that is, until he saw one particular Ability.
[Ability: Lightning Summoner Description - Let's you summon a cloud that summons lightning that strikes the general area you want it to strike.]
'The general area?' Shiv didn't know what to think of that. Curious to find out, he activated the Ability, which was actually the newest of the new abilities he'd gained, over the castle.
He watched with interest as a dark cloud rapidly formed, and lightning began to crack throughout it. Thunder echoed with each flash of light.
Shiv ordered the lightning to strike the tallest point of the castle, and watched as several vicious strikes landed on the nearby towers and roof of the castle before a single strike finally landed on the point he had ordered. The thunder was loud enough to leave his ears ringing. The destruction was immense, with gaping burning holes appearing everywhere the lightning touched. But with each strike, Shiv felt his stomach empty more and more. He pulled some food out of his inventory and consumed it while watching the storm continue to sow destruction on the castle.
'So when it said "the general area"... that's exactly what it meant.'
Shiv kept the Ability active for the next several minutes, every once in awhile feeling a bit of power enter his soul, until Briggs walked over and asked if he was the one who was causing the storm.
"Yup."
"Knock it off. I want control of the castle before dark falls, and I don't want your lightning hitting my men." He had to yell to be heard over the storm.
"Sure." Shiv did as he was asked, and a stark silence fell.
"Head over to the group that's going to destroy the gate and join them. Make your way into the castle through there." Briggs had no trouble breaking the silence.
"Wait. Why the gate? I can make a hole in the wall anywhere you want me to, big enough for all of us to get through it."
Briggs' eyes lit up at this. "Excellent. Go over there and wait for orders from Farhad." He then gave a stream of orders to Farhad, who mentally communicated with the captains of the squads.
Shiv went over to the place he was told to, and was soon joined by several elite squads from Briggs' army. They were crowded outside a part of the wall that was completely undamaged and rested on level ground. On the wall above, Shiv saw that there were far fewer guards up there than there were in most of the other places, because the other parts of the wall had been heavily damaged by the explosions. Most of Briggs' troops were gathered outside of those spots, just far enough away from the walls that the guards up top couldn't reach them with their ranged spells.
Shiv and his comrades, however, were directly next to the wall, with a few metal mages providing cover for them from the magical attacks from above in the form of two slanted roofs sticking out of the wall above their heads.
"Shiv, go ahead and begin creating a tunnel through the wall. We are beginning our attack. Once you're through, follow the squads with you into the castle and create an opening big enough for the rest of the troops to enter through." Farhad's voice echoed in Shiv's head. Shiv couldn't respond, but he nodded anyway, and placed his hands on the wall. With all the level ups, he actually felt like he could take on the entire world.
One could say that he was feeling a little reckless.