Chapter 4 - Athame

As I sat down, mouth full of sunnsettias, I decided to keep myself busy. It wouldn't be great for me to go out seeking conflict with a hurt arm, so practice on trees would do just fine. Due to the nature of my tesseract, it can't really be changed in shape, but it can be shrunk, and grow. Although the biggest it can grow to is around 1 foot in height and length. I summon a tesseract, and think about what I can use this for. Maybe I can use it to enhance melee attacks? What happens if I put my own hand inside it? Sticking my whole hand it would be much too risky, so I suffice to instead use a strand of hair. I drop the hair into the tesseract, and wait. It comes out the other side unharmed.

"Moment of truth, don't fail me now"

As I stick my hand into the tesseract, it feels cold but atleast my hand didn't get vaporized. I try to mold the cube, and instead of directly changing its shape, I try to shrink it down into a glove of sorts for my hand. It works, and my hand becomes coated in a deep purple energy, and becomes semi ethereal. I attempt to punch a tree, and a sizeable hole is made. 'I have a weapon now, and a powerful one at that.'

I begin to think, what could the source of my powers be from? The thing said that I would be sent to a different world, and I had created something impossible. Is this cube a manifestation of that impossibility? If so, is there a way I can attempt to recreate that same phenomenon? Probably not. This world runs on different rules then my original one, and who's to say that repeating the same phenomenon could cause something disastrous to happen? It's best to attempt to not fiddle with world rules. As I begin to walk back to the town, a shadow is present over mondestat. It is none other than the dragon, Dvalin.

I attempt to run inside the gates. I would much rather be inside the city walls than outside when tornados are present. As i enter the gates, the once flourishing mondestat that I saw before had changed. People huddled in houses, buildings destroyed, it looked like a warzone. If this much damage occurred within a few minutes of dvalins rampage, what would happen if he continued to rampage for longer? As I drew closer to dvalin location, I saw the knights of favonius scattering, helping those disoriented and in panic. I noticed Lisa, the librarian attempting to fend off dvalin with electro, but to no avail.

'I should help them. Even though I might not be able to do much, it's still worth trying.'

I repeat the motions of summoning the cube, and instead of covering my hand, I attempt to throw it while converging it into it's smallest form. A makeshift bullet. I hold 1 palm over the other, to steady my aim, and move the cube forward mentally with all of the mental might I can muster. A purple flash Zips forward, leaving a trail of purple light. It pierces through dvalins tail, and I dematerilize it immediately after to prevent the drain on my stamina. *ROAR*

Dvalin lets out a roar, and begins to retreat.

My next course of action? Go to one of the civilian shelters. I just spent quite a bit of stamina doing that attack, and I don't want to be found out by the knights. If they found out I could use a strange power in their eyes without a vision, I would be taken into captivity 100%.

I enter the shelter, and wait for the mass hysteria to pass.

[Lisa Pov]

*Sigh*

Things have gone from bad to worse. First dvalin, one of the four great winds attacks mondestat. But what's worse is that the fatui come here, and claim that they can solve our problem for us, by Killing dvalin. Although this would be a victory, it would be a temporary one. What kind of wrath would we face from Barbatos? And even if we did accept their offer, they would practically have control over mondestat. What makes it worse is that someone actuallt repeled dvalin! I personally suspect that someone with an electro vision, or delusion from the fatui intentionally stepped in, to serve as a gateway to diplomatic deals. *sigh* "I would much rather read a book than deal with this matter myself, but such responsibility falls onto me. I really should take a little break though."

[Return to 1st person pov]

It's been around 2 days since dvalin has attacked, and it turned out I fucked up my arm even more with that attack. I had to go to the church, and claim that I was injured during the attack. Thankfully, I wasn't the only one injured, so it looked like a valid excuse. I had my arm healed, went to sleep back at the inn, and spent a day registering with the adventures guild. Turns out being an adventurer pays pretty well! And quite a few commissions were related to helping rebuild a few buildings destroyed by dvalins attack. Another benefit of the adventures guild is that they offer combat classes against monsters, and humans in the case of going against treasure hoarders or the fatui. They have 5 classes. Sword, spear, greatsword, bow, and fist. They don't have a catalyst option due to the fact that using a catalyst takes lots of magical knowledge, but that's fine. I chose the fist class for a few reasons. Even if i choose to branch off in the future and learn another weapon, there's always the chance of me getting disarmed. In the event that happens ill be ready. But the main reason is that my [Quantum Coating] doesn't seem to work on weapons, only my own body. On the upside though, it strengthens the area it's applied to, giving me the ability to not worry about the disadvantage of going fist versus blade.

The instructor for the fist class was an middle aged man named Zack. He was a former knights of favonius member before he retired, and was proficient in the fist. The class is pretty empty though, with me being his only student. When I asked him why, he responded "When you use a weapon, you don't have to put your own body at risk when you clash against someone, and you gain an advantage against people without weapons. They see it as going the easy and safe way, or going the hard and dangerous way. In all honesty, they aren't wrong. I'm surprised I have any students this season."

Time passes by quickly, with me falling into a cycle of wake up, do commissions, train my fists, experiment with my tesseract, expend all my stamina, and go to bed.

This cycle went on for 2 weeks, until the next Dvalin attack.