Despite his newfound speed it still took Caspian a full hour of constant movement before he saw the city walls, fortunately he didn’t feel the need to rest or relax as if the concept of fatigue was unable to apply itself to him.
“Aren’t the walls rather large?” He muttered; the city was surrounded by a stone-like material that towered at least fifteen meters tall. Even the fortresses he had seen in his ‘past-life’ as he now referred to it didn’t have walls as tall as this city.
They looked intimidating even from a distance and that feeling only grew as he got closer to them and he began to feel dwarfed by them.
Ignoring the feeling he made his way towards the city-entrance gate, without thinking he tried to simply pass straight through only to feel an eerie feeling lock onto him, but before he could react.
“Halt!” He felt a blast of power forcefully stop him in his tracks, although he felt no pain from the blast, it was uncomfortable to have his own body forcefully stopped with his momentum.
In front of him was a guard that he hadn’t spotted before, he was in armour and aiming a spear towards him. He was certain that the eerie feeling that was still locked onto him was coming from this man.
‘How strong is he?’ He communicated his question to the system, sending out the message with his consciousness.
[While your consciousness would not be damaged your body will shatter from any direct confrontation]
‘This is only the guard of a city-gate, how weak am I here?’ However, before he could lament his own personal weakness he was interrupted by the guard once more, “State your business or die!” He said coldly.
It seemed that if Caspian so much as stepped forward or didn’t answer immediately, he would strike to kill without hesitation. “Caspian Flynn, travelling explorer.” He said simply, his nonchalant attitude however seemed to put the guard on edge even further.
Without another response the guard thrust his spear forward trying to pierce him through the chest and kill him in one motion.
Caspian quickly jumped back, his agility carrying him just outside of the attack range of the guards’ spear, “Calm down! We can talk about this!” He shouted trying to diffuse the situation, his face was flushed with panic as he dodged several strikes just barely each time.
‘Who attacks someone for stating who they are?!’ He complained in his heart as the guard ignored his remarks and continued to try and kill him, enough time had passed for the commotion to gather a small crowd of people wanting to enter the city and those living within it.
Several minutes passed by like this with them going back and forth, Caspian tried several times to try and land a few hits of his own but every time the guard would retreat just enough and then rebound like a snake with his spear.
‘Dammit, Apocalypse Store!’ Caspian gritted his teeth and willed for the store to appear, without hesitation he used his limited AS to unlock ‘Fireball’ suddenly a wave of information filled his mind; complex symbols and equations all combined to form the a finished ‘Spell Circle’ in his mind that symbolised his mastery of the spell.
His short lapse of concentration during this time gave the guard just enough time to launch an unavoidable attack at him. He tried to dodge but the spear still struck straight through his shoulder sending a wave of pain to his consciousness.
However, with the spear in his shoulder it was the perfect time to strike before the guard could pull it back. “Fireball!” He shouted as he raised his hand to aim it at the guard, a raging red and orange ball quickly formed at his fingertips before launching itself directly into the guard’s chest which sent him flying into the wall of the city.
Hssssss….
The fire that had impacted the guards armour gradually flickered out of existence as it became raw mana that assimilated back into the atmosphere.
“S-ir Mm-age” He croaked through the pain as he stared at Caspian, Caspian ignored him as he ripped the spear from his shoulder which put him in an agonising amount of pain that had him fall to one knee. ‘Dammit why does this hurt so much?!’ He shouted at the system in his mind for an answer, his body could run for an hour without feeling fatigue, yet he was still able to feel pain something which didn’t make sense.
[It’s different to what you are thinking. Because your body is made from aspects of The Control Space it will not feel the need for sleep, to eat or the fatigue that a normal body would. However, due to the connection with your consciousness the body will send signals directly to your mind to simulate the senses of a human body. Do not think yourself invincible simply because you are no longer ‘human’ in the traditional sense]
‘Noted.’ He thought as he grunted in pain, the marble body had given him a feeling of power that his past-life body had never possessed but when finally faced with those who possessed true power his own strength was nothing more than an illusion.
He looked up only to see the guard kneeling in front of him despite his wounded condition much to his confusion, he also noticed that the onlookers to the fight had also started to kneel as they looked at him.
“I apo- apologise sir.” The guard said to him while lowering his head, Caspian could see his entire body shaking but whether that was from fear or that he was forcing his body to stay upright despite his wounded condition was unknown.
“Huh?” He said in confusion as he stared blankly at the guard, “Please kill me sir I deserve death!” The guard seemed to mistake his confusion for annoyance as he attempted to grab the knife at his waist and stab himself.
Caspian reacted faster however despite his wounded state and snatched the blade from his hand, “What the hell is wrong with you? Attacking someone out of nowhere like that!” he shouted in complaint now that the guard finally seemed ready to talk.
“I’m sorry, Sir. I didn’t know you were a Mage, Sir.” He hurriedly said, not daring to look up to face Caspian as he spoke in a deferential tone.
“But why did you attack me?” He was truly confused over this point; he had done exactly what the guard had wanted him to do yet he still tried to kill him without any further questions.
‘Are you really playing dumb?’ The guard complained in his mind but didn’t dare voice it as he kept his head lowered, “Sir gave me a last name and called himself an explorer, Sir must know that only Nobles and Mages are allowed the honour of a last name, I thought that Sir was lying because you look neither like a Mage or Noble.” The implied meaning behind this of course being, ‘It’s your fault that I attacked in the first place!’
Realisation dawned on Caspian as he heard this, it was a familiar practice that even some places in his past-life enforced to divide a Kingdoms Hierarchy. Caspian hadn’t thought about such things and had simply given his name naturally as he had when he was a Prince.
“I-…” Caspian was about to speak but was interrupted by the galloping of hooves coming from inside the city, three well-armoured men quickly separated the crowd that had formed with their horses.
“Jackson! Why are you kneeling?” One of the men shouted at the guard on the floor, Jackson trembled before hurriedly explaining the situation to the man who seemed to be his superior. As soon as he had finished the three men hurriedly dismounted and kneeled like him, “We welcome Sir Mage to Novatus City!” They each echoed with their heads lowered.
‘Is the status of a Mage really so high in this world?’ He couldn’t help but wonder as he looked at the kneeling crowds with interest, he was under the impression that if he asked someone to kill themselves in front of the crowd, they would happily do so.
“I want to rest.” He said simply, it wasn’t an order, but they implied it as such; one of the men motioned for him to use their horse before he followed them into the city. As soon as he left the kneeling men and women resumed their day-to-day lives as if he was never there to begin with.
“Novatus City…” He muttered as he looked at the familiarly styled buildings, “I guess human architecture doesn’t change much even across worlds huh?” He chuckled as he followed them towards a mansion in the centre of the city.
Thanks for the chapter
This last sentence.. even in our world the architecture changes a lot when you look at different countries etc. but they all have one thing in common and we like square rooms. =]