Alex surveyed the rest of her party. A few days ago, Lilith had deemed them strong enough to split into two parties, and it had been decided that Raphael, Vithi, Emily, and Alex would be on a team, while Thiala, Judy, and Lilith’s parents would compose the other. Everyone had agreed that Thiala was somewhat emotionally unstable at the moment, and that it would be best for her to be with people who had some experience with taking care of children.

They didn’t want to split up Lilith’s parents either, so it worked out pretty well, in Alex’s opinion. That aside, they were currently trying to figure out who would be taking what role in their party.

“We need balance!” Vithi said enthusiastically, whapping the pointer against the whiteboard. Neither of those were here before. Did she get Lilith to make them for her? “We need at least one person to be our vanguard, taking hits and keeping heat off of the people in the back. Then, we’re going to need support. Does anyone here know any healing magic?”

“I do.” Emily replied.

“Anyone else?” Vithi waited a moment before picking up a marker and writing “Healer: Emily” on the board. “Alright. I, unfortunately, don’t have any of the skillset required to be in the front. It’s kind of hard to get any good practice in that sort of stuff while you’re trapped in a lamp for a few thousand years. So, I’m going to take the role of offensive spellcaster. Anyone have any objections?”

There was silence.

“No objections, then. Alex, Raphael, are either of you able to take a role in the vanguard?”

Raphael tentatively raised her hand. “I…think I can.” She said hesitantly. “I think my new Class will be more helpful up front anyway.”

Alex patted her head absentmindedly. “I’m better at close quarters stuff anyway, especially with my Racial Class bonuses.”

Vithi wrote “Vanguard: Alex and Raphael” on the board. “How well can the two of you take hits?” She asked.

“I…haven’t tried it yet but I think my Class will let me take a few.” Raphael replied, craning her neck and sticking her head up to prolong the pat as Alex tried to pull away.

Alex acquiesced and brought her hand down again. “I’m no good with it. I try not to get hit, as a rule of thumb.”

Vithi wrote “Tank(?)” above Raphael’s name. “What’s your Power looking like?”

“21.” Raphael said. “My Classes so far haven’t given me much growth in Power. Most of the growth goes to Defense, Magic Defense, and then sometimes Magic Power. I think I know a couple of spells that will temporarily increase someone else’s power, though.”

“Alright. What about you, Alex?”

“56. My growths have mostly been in Power and Speed.”

Vithi nodded sagely, writing “DPS” above Alex’s name and erasing the “(?)” in “Tank”. “Alright, so, party balance isn’t bad. Emily and I will support from the rear while the two of you distract them from the front. Raphael, make sure to cast those buffs on Alex whenever they run out, and otherwise just focus on keeping the enemy’s attention on you. Alex, you just hit them wherever you can, try to deal the most damage possible.”

“We should also try and figure out what Classes we’re going to take in the future to optimize this.” She said, erasing the board, then writing “Fire Mage” at the top. “I’m in Fire Mage right now, and I plan to keep taking all the fire options I can get. Djinn are naturally good at fire magic, so I want to emphasize that as much as possible.”

“And if we come across an enemy resistant to fire?” Emily asked.

“I’ll have to switch to some other type of spell. I know others, they just won’t be as effective. Do you have any attack spells?”

“Yes. My Class is Light Mage right now, and that gives a few damaging spells. They’re not very good, though.”

That was unfortunate. Magic classes tended to give the users some predefined spells, but those were more examples than anything. They just stuck the words into the user’s head and didn’t actually explain any of the meaning behind them, so even if a novice could use the spell, that was it. They couldn’t use that to build a new spell or modify the existing one until they knew a bit more.

“Any other ones?” Vithi asked hopefully.

“Not much more than basic elementals shots. That’s all we had time to learn in class before everything happened.”

“Right, I’ll have to teach you, then. What about support spells?”

“I have a lot more of those. I feel like I’ll be better served providing benefits to everyone else rather than dealing damage directly.”

Vithi tapped her chin. “Alright, we can work with that. What are your options for Classes after you finish with this one?”

“I’ve already taken Maid, but that only helps whoever I’m serving, not anyone else. I can look into taking Healer, but I don’t have another other explicit options for support Classes.”

Vithi wrote “Light Mage” on the board, and “Healer” underneath it. “That’s fine.” She said. “Can’t expect everything to work out that easily. What are you two taking?” She asked, looking at Alex and Raphael.

“Transfiguration Mage!” Raphael said enthusiastically. “I’m trying to research this sort of stuff for Lilith, so I’m not switching to anything not related to it!”

Vithi frowned. “I’m sure it’ll be fine to take some other classes that’ll help you tank better. Lilith will understand.”

“Don’t wanna!” Raphael replied obstinately. “This is good enough!”

“It’s good, but it could be a lot better. Our lives are, potentially, on the line here!”

“Vithi, this isn’t like a game.” Alex argued. “This is also a lifestyle choice. This might not be the most efficient route, but we can’t just make someone’s choices for them. You know that better for anyone.”

Vithi stopped in her tracks. “R-right.” She stuttered. “Sorry. I got a little excited and forgot. You’re fine, keep on doing what you’re doing.” She told Raphael. “What about you, Alex?”

“I’ve taken Blade Dancer. I always liked swordplay, so having an opportunity for it to be viable in actual combat was sort of a dream come true for me. I’m pretty rusty, but that’s getting better now that I’m actually using a sword to fight.”

“Perfect.” Vithi said. “Could I ask you to keep picking things up along those lines?”

“Was planning on it anyway, so sure.”

“Alright. Everyone go get your gear and meet in the main room of the training area in 10 minutes. We’ll do our first fight as a party then.”

“Hey, since I don’t have any gear to pick up, can I follow you?” Raphael asked Alex.

“You don’t even need to ask.” Alex said, smiling. “Even if I’m sleeping, you’re more than welcome to come wake me up for anything.” The girl deserved that much, after the way she’d grown up. Affection was better late than never, and Raphael was still just a kid.

Raphael buried her face in Alex’s waist, but wasn’t quick enough to hide the blush that was rapidly spreading across her face. “Thanks.” She whispered.

“Don’t mention it.” Alex replied, stroking her hair.

Once Raphael had extracted herself from Alex, the two made their way back to Alex’s room.

“So, why don’t you have any gear?” Alex asked as they walked.

“My Class doesn’t work well with it. And, once I get my Messenger Form it’d become pretty pointless anyway.”

Alex tilted her head. “Messenger Form?”

“Oh, right, grandma said people who weren’t angels aren’t supposed to know about it.” She grinned impishly. “But it’s not like she can stop me from telling you. When angels get powerful enough, we get this transformation we call Messenger Form, because it’s what a lot of us used to use to talk to humans. It’s a big, scary looking thing that makes us more powerful, but takes a lot of mana to keep going. You know the stories of angels being like, flaming wheels with eyes and stuff? That’s Messenger Form.”

“Oh, is that where those stories came from? I just figured it was people from Earth having inaccurate recollections of the war or getting one specific angel’s abilities mixed up with the rest of them or something.”

“No, they’re real. I remember grandma complaining about it, she said always made sure to get rid of any official reports about Messenger Form, but by the time she realized humans had put it in a holy text it had become too big of a thing for her to be able to get rid of without drawing attention to it.”

“Huh. How close are you to getting that?” Alex asked, opening her door.

“Pretty far away, but that’s not surprising. Only a few people have actually gotten their Messenger Form, but I’m hoping this new system will help me get there faster.”

“I’m sure it will.” Alex replied. “That’s the exact kind of thing it’s supposed to be for.” She opened her closet and then opened a chest inside, pulling out a set of leather armor and a sword in a sheath. “So, why not use a weapon or something?”

“Well, I’m not very good with swords and stuff, and I have a few spells that’ll like, give me claws and stuff, so I figured it would just be easier to use that.”

“Do you know how to properly use those in a fight?”

“Um…no.” Raphael admitted. “Just figured I’d use some of the martial arts they taught us and instead of punching and kicking, I’d use the claws.”

Alex began to strap on her gear. According to Lilith it was pretty nice stuff, generated by the dungeon with a bunch of enchantments, but her identification Skill wasn’t high enough to see all the details, so she was just taking Lilith’s word for it.

“I suppose that’s good enough for now. We’ll have to find some way to teach you more about this, though. Maybe Siph will know something? We’ll have to ask her later.”

“OK!” Raphael said cheerfully.

Once Alex had got everything on, she opened the door and motioned for Raphael to follow. “Ready?”

---

Elenoa followed Baern into his workshop, eager to see what he had made. Apparently, the last couple weeks had already helped to get him past a couple of things that had previously been blocking the progress of his research. They passed through several different security checks Baern had set up, and after a solid five minutes they were finally in the cavernous area he used to store things he wasn’t actively working on.

The first thing he had her look at was the one that he had been working on for the longest, a weapon that, originally, would have been used to finally push back the monsters arounds the cities of Haven, clearing more land for people to use and allowing them to finally escape the tight confines they had become accustomed to.

It was a large, spherical object made of a sleek, black metal. She wasn’t sure which metal, and the detail didn’t really bother her. She trusted Baern to choose the most suitable one for the job, so what it actually was mattered little in the grand scheme of things.

It was floating a couple of feet off of the ground, staying perfectly still in the air.

“Watch this.” Baern said gruffly, hefting a small chunk of metal and tossing it at the sphere.

Elenoa watched in fascination as the metal approached the sphere and then, when it was about a foot away, emerged from the opposite side of the sphere, continuing its trajectory like nothing had happened.

“We’ve managed to set up a permanent exclusion field around the whole thing.” Baern said proudly. “Anything that comes close, even magic, will exit out the other side. Unlike most enchantments, it takes Mana to keep it running, but it makes whatever’s inside practically invulnerable as long as it’s up.”

“Excellent work.” Elenoa said. “What’s providing the Mana?”

“That leads me to my next leap.” Baern replied, an uncharacteristic look of excitement on his face. “You’re familiar with how djinn lamps work, right?”

“Yes. The djinn is forced into a contract with an inanimate object, and then forced to store Mana inside it constantly. Correct?”

“Correct. We’ve been trying for years to replicate it under different circumstances, but it never quite worked out. Usually, without a constant connection to the person providing Mana, the Mana would just leak out over time.” He reached into a pouch and pulled out a flask of purple liquid. “After the Shift, alchemists found they were able to create potions that would restore mana to whoever drank it.”

“Your point?”

He walked to another part of the room, motioning for her to follow. He interacted with a terminal, and soon the floor in front of him opened up, a stand holding a large block of purple ice rising up from below.

“This is frozen Mana potion.” He said, rapping a knuckle against it. “And, unlike other materials, when you put mana in here, it stays in here. And, also unlike other materials, it seems to have a maximum capacity. I’ll spare you the exact details since they’re not important, just know that if you put too much Mana in the thing shatters and becomes useless.” He punched in a command to the terminal again, and the block of ice went back into the floor, replaced by another block of ice, this one pierced by several wires which hooked up to a display. “This gadget will tell us roughly how full the block is, and in our little tank we’ve hooked it up so that it’ll cut off access to the reserve before it gets to a dangerous level of Mana.”

Another set of inputs, another pedestal. “And this is how we get the Mana out of the ice.” He said, picking up the beaker contained within. “When Mana potion evaporates, the Mana stored within is dispersed into the surrounding area. And, when condensed, the gas retains the property that allows it to store Mana without retaining any of the Mana it used to hold. So, you evaporate the potion, get the mana, and then turn it back into the potion.”

“We found that, when storing Mana, it’s not evenly concentrated, instead gathering towards the bottom of the material. It’s why you have to drink most of the potion if you want it to have any significant effect. So, we have a sort of conveyor belt linked up, bringing “empty” liquid to the bottom of the main tank, freezing it while it’s in contact with the tank and connecting the two, and then unfreezing that portion and taking it away to be evaporated once it’s full. We even managed to set it up so that it only brings in a new set of liquid to be evaporated when needed, improving the mana efficiency greatly.”

Elenoa rubbed her hands together. “Well done.”

Baern, glowing with pride, put the beaker back and lowered the pedestal, then moved back towards the prototype tank. “You may be wondering how we get into the tank, and how we shoot out of it.” He said, prompting a nod from Elenoa. He tossed her a small remote, containing a single button and a square chunk of ice below it. It was cold to the touch, and she looked at it curiously.

“This was a little tricky to put together, but it works wonders. You put your finger on the ice and charge it up with Mana. When it’s full, the ice will retract into the remote, and then you press the button and it’ll teleport you to the inside of the tank. You have to be within 10 yards for it to work, and to get out we’ve got a similar button inside the tank that’ll let you out exactly 5 feet in front of it. This is the only way to teleport inside the tank while the exclusion field is operational. Each remote is keyed to the individual tank, and any other attempts to teleport objects in will be blocked by the exclusion field at the expense of Mana equivalent to however much the teleport cost. But the tank can hold about 50,000 Mana, so unless it’s been running for a while it should be effectively immune to attempts to get inside.”

“Now, the hard part was getting the firing mechanism to work. We eventually ended up placing another field inside the guns that would teleport whatever’s fired directly in front of the exclusion field, which is a bit of a mana drain but the only thing we could really do. We’ve got a few regular guns set up, but we also have another tube the operator can fire spells into, and they’ll come out of the front just like gunfire would.”

“I’ll give you a look inside later, but don’t worry. The cockpit is stabilized, and the “front” of the tank can be rotated around at will. There’s no openings when firing, so no one should be able to tell what way the tank is “facing”. We’ve still got a few bugs to work out but expect it to be operational within the month.”

Elenoa grinned. “And the other matter?”

Baern led her back to his terminal, which he used to bring up another pedestal.

This one contained a silvery sword, which he reverently took off of the stand and handed to Elenoa.

“This, by all rights, shouldn’t have worked.” He said, slightly awed. “But I did it. You’ll have to test it on Winston, but…it should be effective.”

It was long with an almost wood-like grain on the blade that, on closer inspection, was actually a multitude of tiny carved magic arrays. She went to rub a finger down its length, but withdrew the moment she made contact, the tip of her finger burnt horribly. Cold Iron. Alchemical Silver. Regular silver. Devil’s Copper. She could have spent probably ten minutes just listing all the materials that went into this one little sword.

They all had one thing in common – they all were the weakness of something. Baern had, somehow, managed to make a weapon that would be especially effective on just about anything that had a material weakness.

So, what would it do to something that, however miniscule the effects were, however much they were counterbalanced by other races’ strengths, had all those weaknesses?

She couldn’t wait to find out. Soon, very soon, she would have the tools needed to begin her fight.