Scarlet

Both Emily and I decide to avoid Lost’s team, which is the only team with us representing Yggdrasil here. Because dealing with a mental magic user is not something I wanna have to do.

So we’re just gonna leave her to the other teams to deal with. Or I guess hope that she comes to our tower and finds Belle’s lovely mental barriers.

Most likely she’s going to avoid our tower though, since Belle is basically her natural enemy. Which works out considering that Lost is probably the most dangerous Guardian here for me.

I completely ignore Emily’s flushed face as I sprint through the forest while holding her in a princess carry because the girl is too slow compared to me. Our current destination is actually the tower belonging to Aquatic Pride, mostly because we know they’re down a member thanks to us, and for a little payback.

And in Denise’s case, some plain satisfaction.

We, or rather I keep running through the forest jumping from tree to tree while making as little noise as I can until the base of their tower – one styled with their school’s animal, a large squid, above the doorway – enters my line of sight at which point I lower Emily to the ground. Then we both move closer to the edge of the trees without leaving the tree line.

I close my eyes for a second, focusing on the sounds coming from the tower. And when I open them again, I type on my terminal for Emily to see, ‘Sounds like there are three of them here.’

She nods and we both focus on the tower again.

If I had to guess, Shifter probably left on his own to find some lone students to take out in the forest. And the other missing one is obviously the dead Shadow Blade.

Which leaves their leader and supporter, Ace, whose name also happens to be Ace, their healer known as the Songstress, and their second hitter, Falling Sun, who are all still in the tower.

I quickly tell Emily that through my terminal before narrowing my eyes on the tower.

None of them are very good at perception, that job having been delegated to their stealth focused team member. So there shouldn’t be any issues with getting in.

Actually, I think their worst decision during this round, and the one that probably knocked them out of the running overall was sending their stealth Guardian off to shatter another core right away. A very risky move, that if it had succeeded, would’ve been worth it.

But it didn’t succeed.

I pull Emily back behind the tree when I hear one of them stepping out onto the balcony overlooking the forest from the tower, holding the poor girl who’s even shorter than I am to me to better hide us behind this rather narrow tree until they go back into the tower and I let go of her. And once again, I ignore her flustered appearance as I tell her through my terminal, ‘Get ready to go. We won’t be climbing the tower through the outside this time.’

She visibly relaxes at that, apparently not having enjoyed our little trip up the tower before or the training we did afterwards. But it was too little time to get it to a point where we could reliably do it in a stealthy manner, so it’s best to just sneak in through a window and charge through.

The team’s leader, Ace, has a strange card-based power that lets him randomly draw cards from a deck. It’s one of the most bizarre magics in the world since all getting new inherent skills does for him is basically let him do things like separating the deck into different types of decks for different purposes, giving him new cards in the deck, letting him reshuffle, and various other oddities like that. But in exchange for the unreliability that it gives, the cards are often quite powerful. Just like rune magic.

So in the end, dealing with him will be a matter of surprise, speed, and luck.

The Songstress on the other hand will be annoying to say the least. Since her magic is, of course, music based. Literally called song magic. And she is able to use some rather powerful skills as long as she sings. Although the songs just automatically comes to her when she uses her skills, so she doesn’t have to memorize them or anything like the rune magic users.

Falling Sun shouldn’t be an issue though. He’s basically just Denise but focusing solely on enhancement magic with his inferno magic instead of splitting between ranged and enhancement.

And judging by what I hear, Ace and Songstress are both up top, leaving Falling Sun at the second floor. Second instead of first likely due to the windows on the second floor which are exactly where that Shadow Blade guy entered our tower from.

Falling Sun should be at the stairs to the third floor on the second floor. Which means we’ll have to deal with him.

I smile slightly before looking at Emily to find that she’s finally calmed down, no longer beet red.

Is she going to get embarrassed over every little thing I do that requires contact? Because that would be a little bit annoying in a combat situation.

Although in hindsight, it’s not that bad since it’ll likely mean she won’t try to touch me. Because combat is one thing. Outside of combat is another.

“Was wondering why you seemed perfectly fine with physical contact with that kid in the other Fracture you saved a while back, and with Emily when you help her,” Tar mutter, and I nod, confusing Emily in the process. “It looks like you just don’t actively think about the physical contact in those situations, so it doesn’t bother you.”

Hmm, guess you can think of it like that. Probably.

Anyways, I open my terminal to tell Emily, ‘Ace and Songstress on core floor, Falling Sun on second floor stairs. Plan is to go through window. You ready?’

She immediately gulps at that but nods with a confident look replacing the very brief flash of fear.

Glad she’s finally getting over that near death experience she had in our first Fracture. It seemed to have made her a bit squeamish for a while and afraid to get into the more dangerous situations.

Now then.

Time to take this tower!