Agnisotra: Origin Tails

As I thought it was quite challenging to hammer the pole inside a block of sapphire. I had to carefully melt a hole in the sapphire. I couldn't use any tools for it so I had to heat my finger and carefully melt a hole in the sapphire. I tried to make the edges of the hole look decent and not ugly. I didn't have anything to polish out any mistakes. It went well for a while until I messed up a bit and some molten sapphire formed a blob outside the hole.

Aah, screw it! I hammered the pole in the block. It seemed to work quite well. The outside of the hole which had the pole in it now looked kind of messy. I couldn't grind or sand it because I didn't have anything tough enough. I just made an ornament to cover up the mess and weld it to the pole. I could make a decent ornament and it would look fancy! Nobody would see that I messed up a bit. Temperature control was easy. I could spot what parts were hot enough with my eyes. The problem was my control over fire magic. Normally delicate usage isn't needed for fire but this time it was and that's why I messed up. I finished the ornament and welded it on the handle of the hammer. It was quite heavy. I took it outside and gave it some swings.

Oof this is heavy. A couple of swings already made me quite tired. I was wondering how Gregory was planning to lug this around and swing it the whole time. But I guess that wasn't really my problem, for now. Putting the hammer together didn't take much time because all I needed to do was hammer a pole inside the sapphire. The easiest weapon I made in my life! Not having to make a hammerhead saved me an insane amount of time though. Anyways, a hammer is a hammer. I picked up the hammer, spun around on my heels while spinning the hammer, and threw it into my dimensional pocket.

I hope it didn't crash into something fragile. I did throw it into the section of heavy objects but since it's made out of sapphire it could probably smash or dent almost anything I have stored in there. Ah well, I'll find out later. I headed towards Gregory when I met Ted on the road.

Hey Agnis, are you done preparing for the investigation? More or less, I just need to check my inventory and then I'm set, did you learn anything from the townspeople about the underground or do you have to yet start asking around?

Hmm, a lot of people don't seem to know anything, Old Lady Uraya said that there used to be a city here and that a god buried it but I don't know how accurate that is. A city? Here? In the middle of nowhere? Not sure if that makes sense.

Yeah, she said teleport gates were way more common back then than they are now. You've seen them before, right? Teleport gates? What are they like? They don't have any here.

Hmm well, I haven't gone through one myself but in Kozar’qubac, the city where my tournament was there was a big arch, it was pouring unaspected magic down into like a grated slit under the arch, and as I understand some strands of lost magic are pulled through it. Some mechanism seems to be in play there which is hard to replicate and needs a rare ore. I don't know the specifics but the reason those gates are so uncommon is that the technology to make them kind of got lost. The only thing the teleport caretakers can do is replace the ore in the device that powers the teleport gate. It can teleport caravans, and loads of people almost anything with ease. Quite the sight to behold. It does need to be linked up with other gates but I don't know the specifics. I guess if that was a common thing then putting a city here wouldn't be strange. This place is quite inaccessible so it wouldn't have to worry about invaders. We are quite close to the border after all.

Maybe it is tied to those caverns you and Gregory found. Suddenly a buried city doesn't seem so weird anymore. As long as nothing is still alive in there, I don't care what is underground we have enough stuff to deal with, and adding dealing with a city to that doesn't sound pleasant. I said as I kicked a random pebble. It hit someone and I pulled Ted into another street to avoid their detection.

The thing is that she mentioned that a god buried it, sounds like quite a rocky situation. What do you know about the gods here on planet Yabia? Hmm not much, I do know there are different groups of gods, and that one group seemed to have become more active lately but that's all I know. My mother told me about the reason why there are so many groups of gods but I forgot the reason. I think there were about 8, I might be wrong about that but I do know that my mom, Felicia, and Nadila wiped out 3 whole groups because they were destroying the planet and messing with them. So, there were way more in the past.

Hehe, who knows maybe one day we’ll kick the asses of some that remain. Hmm, I hope we'll never get to deal with any of those. Anyways let's see if Gregory is done.

We rang the door to Gregory’s house, well actually it was Pietro’s house but that's just a small detail. No answer… Do you think he's still in full focus mode? Probably.

How did you get him out of it the last time? Uhm, it may or might not have involved a lot of water.

You are pure evil. Any other way to get him out? Hmm. I can try something. I took a bottle of liquid shadow vodka out of my dimensional pocket.

Oooh, I haven't had any in a while! Thanks! Hey back off alcoholic! This is not for you!

Aww, just a sip! I popped off the cork. I made sure it made a loud pop. I heard some rummaging and the window opened.

Is that?! Liquid shadow vodka! Gregory jumped out of the window at the bottle I was holding. I froze a lid on the bottle and put it back in my dimensional pocket.

Aight, we collected Gregory! Let's go!

Just a sip! If I didn't know any better, I’d think you two were brothers! I walked towards Raishin’s hut dragging the two alcoholics that were hanging onto my legs. I didn't make it very far though.

Yoo guys back off! You’re heavy! I thought I could be cool and drag you back to the hut in a cool and composed manner but you guys are seriously heavy! You really think and say useless things from time to time! I'll let you be cool in trade for that bottle of liquid shadow vodka! The two alcohol addicts got up, brushed off their clothes, and tried to get some of that liquid shadow vodka while we walked towards Raishin’s hut.

He doesn't seem to be home. Oh no, what did he get himself into this time? Oh, there he comes. I caught a lot of food!

As usual only meat and no fruits. Good, chuck it into my dimensional pocket and we’re ready to go. Raishin chucked the food into the dimensional pocket I opened and we went to the manhole Gregory indicated as being closest to the pink broccoli that he saw.

This is the first time I visit the sewers, anything I need to pay attention to? Yes, you need to dress lightly, don't forget shades and sunblock, might also want to wear bug repellant. Gregory smacked me.

This is not a holiday! Haha, but this is the first time in a long time we have had a proper adventure with the four of us!

What about when we hunted the PB? That didn't count! He was dead in no time! I mean a thrilling adventure that puts our lives on the line! Yeah, I can't believe you called that disappointment of a PB an adventure!

Ok, calm down adventure junkies! I'm not sure if I'm too happy with the “put your life” on the line part. It will be fine, it can't be as bad as that dungeon I did, right? I think you just jinxed us. Oh, crap now we're gonna die! Raishin started to act dramatically as always. He should give theatrics a shot.

Guys calm down! Somehow, I'm the only one who hasn't been in the sewers but seems the calmest. It's exactly because you haven't been down there! There is so much water down there… That is to be expected though… You’re so silly Greg.

Ted facepalmed and pointed at a manhole. Is this the hole we dive into? You really couldn't say that differently? Are you having dirty thoughts, Ted?

I don't want to hear that from you! Hey Greg, I think we need a really strong shadow cloak. I said as I looked down.

Yeah, I can feel it from here. We might want to speed up our escape plan if this keeps going on it will leak out of the sewers and affect the people in the town. Charlize already got hurt but more might follow. Is there any way you can manipulate this so it won't be as harmful?

I can but since the source will keep pushing out more and more it might be more efficient to just nuke this tree. I made some anti-nausea potions so when push comes to shove Agnis or Raishin can vaporize that tree. Raishin also suffers from nausea? Hmm, not really It did at first but I just shifted from magic to real electricity so it does not affect me! Now that you mention it, I haven't seen you activate lightning magic in a long time. I guess if you can create energy from thin air, I guess it doesn't matter much if you can use magic or not you can just do whatever you want, I guess.

Yeah, but since it would be quite suspicious that I didn't create any magic circles, I just made dummy circles with household magic. I'm shocked, you had me fooled. I'm also amazed that you came up with that by yourself!

Hehe, I have my bright moments too! And to fool your enemies you have to fool your allies! I think that's how it went; it doesn't seem like I fooled Agnis though, but he probably didn't pay attention to it. Yeah, I should've noticed sooner, if you want to use magic it seems Gregory made a lot. I count 13 in my dimensional pocket. I got fooled by Raishin… Snap out of it Greg!

C'mon Greg, we're waiting for your shadow cloak! Ah right! We got shrouded in a black mass of darkness. It felt a little bit as if we were wrapped in a dense gas and it felt a little bit cool. It had some slight dark purple highlights on it. Gregory stomped on the ground and sent the manhole flying with earth magic.

Heh, I always wanted to do that. We jumped into the sewers. I froze the water down there solid to make Gregory a bit more comfortable. Raishin acted as a lightning bulb by holding his hand up and creating a bright flame. Gregory and I can see perfectly fine in the dark but Raishin and Ted can’t.

Hmm, haven't seen any green sewer rats in a while, Agnis? Going off heat signatures there are none close by; I can't go by magic signatures with this dense magic flow interfering down here.

Follow me. I looked around but all I could see was just a single sewer line, similar to my route toward the dungeon two days ago. I saw the place where the barrier ended and behind it, the line transitioned into a cave corridor. The cloak around us became denser and denser as we progressed, probably indicating that the imbalance in the magic composition was getting more extreme.

Ok, this is the closest spot we can go where I feel it would be safe to continue without any defensive measures. We stopped about 10 meters away from the exit of the corridor. We could see pink-purple light coming from the room up ahead.

Do you think illusions would work on a tree? Hmm, a trick-a-tree-t will always be welcome. We ignored Ted’s poor attempt at a pun and discussed how a tree would be tricked by an illusion.

What I'm saying is that a tree doesn't have any sensory organs for me to fool with the illusions! But your illusions don't affect sensory input and outputs, do they? Didn't the nine-tailed illusions interfere with reality?

Well, yes, but the induction is triggered by a sensory trigger someone observing us or me speaking or making a sound or touching someone will trigger the altered reality. I generally use observation because that's the easiest to pull off. After all, I don't need to trick people that aren't looking at us. So then go touch the tree!

But we don't know if that's gonna work and besides I’ll be illusionless until I reach the tree! Well, good thing you’re fast as fuck, now go on induce that illusion! I'll weave some defensive magic for you in case you get into trouble! Gregory pushed me into the cave as he said that and started preparing defensive magic.

Ugh, I’ll get you for this! I shot back as I sensed the tree lock onto me.

Uh hello, Mr. Pink Broccoli! We are just here to do ehh an ecological survey! We just want to take some samples here and there and maybe also vaporize you that's no problem, right? I dodged an enormous pink spear made out of leyline energy that got shot at me. This thing is fast!

I guess that is a, no? About 14 pink spears get formed out of the branches of the broccoli as if it was blooming but instead of growing flowers, they grew 10-meter-long killer spears that flew at me at about Mach 1. Yeh, these things are stupid fast! Whoa look at him go, those things are fast though, it is good Agnis volunteered to test it out.

I didn't volunteer! I dodged 5 spears flying at me. I fired up my tail dynamo because I didn't know if I would need more speed in the near future. The sonic booms these spears made sounded quite rhythmic.

Hey Greg, Before I attempt to put this broccoli under an illusion, can you try to remember the tempo of these spears? The sonic booms they make sound rhythmic and it feels like there is an attack pattern. A rhythm? Do you think this might be a puzzle like you encountered in your dungeon run?

Perhaps, since then I can't shake the feeling that anything that is old as fuck likes puzzles in some kind or form. I kept dodging the spears and listening to the sonic booms. And then I realized it wasn't a real rhythm, the sonic booms which were in different frequencies sounded like they were forming songs that would act like a voice stringing it together it sounded like it was speaking in some old language. It was one of the languages that Tero gave me. That is why I felt some familiarity or rhythm in them.

I'm sorry Agnis if it has a pattern or rhythm, it is too long for me to figure out the pattern of it. Yeah, sorry I just now realized what it is that I noticed, don't you think if you string the sonic boom sounds together it's like something is speaking?

Hmm, not really, the sonic booms are too far apart to sound anything like a voice. Yeah, I can't understand it well though, it seems to be a language I know but it's like in a weird pitch and the booms are too far apart. I'm going to see if I can make it go faster. Hey! Are you sure that is a good idea? Making it go faster means that it will shoot way more spears at you!

Raishin, start making a lot of energy and feed it to me in case I need a strong shadow wall to save Agnis! On it! Ok, let's see how fast I really can go! I noticed the number of spears it shot at me seemed to be constant, always 14. Gregory noted that when he was here it shot 4 at a time. The reason for the difference in number is unclear. I'm just assuming it is proportional to the magic output. The golems in the dungeon seemed to react to magic too. Hmm? I was more or less invisible in the dungeon because I don't circulate magic so why am I not invisible to the tree? Maybe the shadow cloak Gregory has on me converts the dense magic here and turns it into something harmless. So basically, I'm a magic beacon. There is no helping it I either get my magic corrupted or I'm like I have a big magic signature saying: I'm here! Hit me! If I increase the power and efficiency of my tail dynamo my magic will rise.

I'm starting to become a bit nauseous but it is still manageable. I circulate some nature energy and push it away. I never went past this point with my tail dynamo because firstly it was unnecessary and secondly, I have no clue what to do with the excess energy. I remember when I first tried this when I was on potato peel duty, after I finished peeling the potatoes, I still had a boatload of energy left and it kept being converted in speed and sturdiness. At least it protected me when I crashed into the steel wall. Anyway I don't have that problem now I can just turn the excess energy into a nuke and blast the tree. I spun my tails faster and instead of the standard 2 or 3 tails that I spun I went at it with 4. The lightning crackled and turned deep purple. The purple lightning, I normally created was normally light purple close to blue but this one was dark and dense.

Whoa, guys look! He might shift his lightning to the next stage! What is the next stage?

It is red, but the difficulty in maintaining and controlling lightning spikes hard after dark purple, he might be better off keeping it dark purple. If he's gonna go for a nuke to vaporize the tree he won't need any of that though! He could just blast it with red lightning! Wouldn’t that be bad for us? Hmm, I've only seen Raishin use red lightning briefly, it wasn't that bad to defend against. If it's red lightning he goes for that is fine if he uses the energy to nuke it with fire then we have a problem. The tree reacted to the spike in magic. I could get way more out of this dynamo but as I vaguely hear my buddies say I was better off not having the lightning shift to the next stage. I had to waste a lot of energy to make sure that wouldn't happen. The nausea was creeping up on me and going red would definitely make it unbearable. The spears shooting at me numbered 36 at this moment. I was zipping about.

Going at this speed required a lot of energy but what I was producing was leagues more than I needed. I would have to start attacking or I might explode. But first. I closed into the tree and threw a lightning punch at it. It blew a hole in the trunk but since the trunk was huge it would probably not do much to the tree. But that's fine I just needed to touch the tree. I fired up my illusions. I had plenty of energy so I could afford to use a 7 layered illusion. Normally in fights, you need to worry about not spending too much energy but at this moment I needed to find ways to spend it because I either would explode or the lightning would shift to red and the energy cost might flip on me and it would require more than I could produce to keep it up.

I activated my illusion! I don't know if it will work on the tree so be cautious! Aight let's move out! Raishin, can you keep an eye out for Agnis? Depending on the situation we might need to nuke the tree so we need you to be ready when that time comes. Normally Agnis is in charge of the timing but it seems he has his hands full now so you gotta adjust to him.

Roger! Meanwhile, Ted and I will deal with these. I was busy wasting energy and zipping around but I could still see that the tree seemed to have formed some weird pink broccoli-like creatures. They were about 2 meters tall and seemed to be made out of a weird mix of magic and ley line energy. Huh, I thought those two energies didn't like to interact, guess I was wrong on that. Or well I'm sure I'm not because the information that rushed into me about leyline energy stated such, there might be a special condition where that is not the case. I noticed that Raishin was attacking the pink broccoli. It seemed to completely ignore Raishin and only shoot at me.

The added magic signatures of my buddies seemed to have increased the spears to 92. The booms were closer but still too far from each other to make out of anything. It wasn't Corund, it was the other language I found in the dungeon. Not the primal one but the one that was in the treasure room with the primal language and Corund. I needed it to fire more spears so I could hear what it was trying to say. I couldn't afford to gather more magic though; the red lightning and nausea were bottlenecking me here. I would just have to make our power generator do some work.

Yoo Raishin! Holy shit Agnis don't stand next to me! I'll get hit by a spear! I grabbed Raishin and dodged a spear that landed right where Raishin and I were standing.

Ugh, my heart! Whatcha want? Raishin imbued himself with purple lightning and started dashing about also dodging spears since I was kind of sticking close to him. I need you to make an obscene amount of energy.

We're going to nuke the tree?! Well yes and no, first I want to know what this tree is saying so we need a lot of magic and after I find out then we nuke it.

Does it need to be magic though? I think so yeh, sorry. I took 3 of Gregory’s anti-nausea bottles and threw them at Raishin. He caught 2 and dropped 1.

I knew your accuracy was bad but to think you also can't catch... Why are you wasting my potions!? I heard Gregory shout from the other side of the room.

So, want a wind nuke, a fire nuke, or a lightning nuke? We dodged more pink spears which numbered 114 now. I could see that Raishin was having a hard time with their speed so I took more distance from him.

Let's go with a fire nuke since I'm going to use a lightning element. Let's try to make the fire and lightning combine and make the fusion element I've heard my mom talk about. The main elements of magic are water wind fire earth lightning dark and light but there are subgroups under those or some extra ones that are formed by combining them. Magma could be either seen as a subgroup of earth or a fusion of fire and earth. The fusion of lightning and fire is called well uhh Fusion. Basically, it will create an effect compared to what happens inside a star. So, if you pull this off well you can make a mini sun. My mom sometimes uses Fusion to vaporize foes when she doesn't feel like fighting, she mostly used it on enemies she deemed as a pain in the ass to fight though.

Hmm sounds risky, I love it! Ted and Greg might give us an earful though. Let's deal with that problem later, our current problem is this pink broccoli.

You don't think this pink broccoli has a chance at surviving an attempt at Fusion element magic right? None of my attacks seem to really do anything. If it can we have a serious problem. Because the nausea that sets in after we fire that off will be ugly.

Ugh, I hope this potion of Gregory works. I dashed away and started chucking lightning bolts and electro balls at the pink broccoli. As Raishin said it didn't seem to do much to it. It even seemed to regenerate some of the damage. Raishin started to form his fire nuke. I could store energy in my tails but I had no idea what would happen if I did that while also generating energy with them. I didn't want to try any risky stuff so I just kept speeding around and throwing lighting attacks. 256 spears and it started to become crowded with spears, I needed to watch out that I didn't come near my buddies or in a position where any spears would get aimed at them. If the spears would double, I would probably be able to hear more clearly what this tree was saying. I just had to hold on till Raishin gathered up enough magic. The only limiting factor was his nausea. I got a good chunk of energy and managed to convert it to nature energy. I chucked it at Raishin. His complexion started to become pale but after getting hit by this It seemed to get better.

Thanks. I would probably have to repeat this in shortened intervals to make sure he didn't interrupt his cast. I had quite a busy role here.