"Are we seriously leaving without getting any reward or celebrating?" Olivia questioned as she and Davi slipped past the village gates.
Davi finally allowed his armor to fade, and he stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Do you want to stay?"
"Not really," Olivia admitted sheepishly.
"So then that settles it. We leave."
Olivia just let out a dry chuckle. "Of course." Her smile faded as she began to walk alongside him. "Are you okay?"
Davi shrugged. "Yeah. Not the first time something like this has happened to me."
"That's sad…"
"That's life." Davi hummed. "Still want to become an Arcane Knight?"
Olivia nodded weakly. "I want to help people. I wish Garon had just asked for help. None of this would have happened if he did."
"I'm sure Garon was used to being famous in his town. Asking for help for his condition would be accepting what he was in a way." Davi said, after some time. "I think he knew that he couldn't be saved, even if he got the full potion, but he still had to do something because otherwise he'd be accepting it. Accepting what he was going to become."
Olivia glanced back at Daisy. The barrier was gone, so the two of them were walking down the path that led out of the town. The snow finally stopped falling, and everything was starting to warm up, but Olivia decided to keep the jacket Davi gave her since it looked stylish, though she'd need to get it sewn up.
"Do you think the girls will be okay?" She asked after a moment. "I couldn't tell if the parents were getting ready to off their children or embrace them when we left…"
"It doesn't matter."
"It does—"
"It doesn't," Davi said again, sterner this time. "We're not heroes, Olivia. You can pretend all you want, and you can do the right thing, but at the end of the day, we aren't the kind of people who can influence or affect an entire town."
"That's wrong, though." Olivia clenched her hand into a fist. "You might not realize it, Davi, but everyone you saved has kept their eyes on you. My village loved you, Olis' buddies were practically worshipping you, and those people in Daisy were listening to your every word. I don't think you grasp how important an Arcane Knight is. They only acted once you told them to. For better or worse, they all listened to you, and you alone."
"But I'm not a—" Davi stopped and let out a sigh. "Never mind. It doesn't matter. I help people help themselves so that I don't have to get involved anymore. Daisy is done. The people are acting, and it'll be up to them to decide what they do next. I'm an outsider. I don't want to affect them if I can help it."
He never signed up to be a hero. He wasn't even a real Knight. He shouldn't be the one to make choices like Olivia was suggesting. He wasn't a good person with anyone's interest at heart. What happened was done. Garon was dealt with, and Daisy would survive.
"How did none of the other villagers notice what happened to Garon?" Olivia asked, as if she could sense that he was thinking about the former captain. "I get that his stage of mutation was still early. He was able to hide it with a shirt, but surely his mana would have been affected. Olis made it sound like Mutants have inhuman mana. The guards could sense it, yet they still didn't notice or do anything about it?"
Davi was quiet for a moment, thinking about it, but finally he spoke. "Do you know what happens when you throw a frog into boiling water?"
"It dies?"
"It jumps out." Davi corrected. "The frog will escape the heat. However, if you put it in lukewarm water, it will stay. It'll become used to the water and like it. Heat the water up a bit, but don't go too far, and the frog will adjust. Heat it up a bit more slowly, and again, it will grow used to it. Eventually, by slowly changing the temperature, the frog will boil alive, not realizing that it's in hot water."
"Would that actually happen?"
"I don't know." Davi shrugged again. "It's just a saying. The point is, Garon was part of this community. A person doesn't wake up one day and become someone else. For a person to truly change, it requires time. Garon's mana was likely something the people got used to, since he spent so much time in the village, and the only people that could feel it were other mages that stayed near him, like the town guards. His taint would cause a change, but a small one. The descent into what he became would take time, and as it happened slowly, the people would adjust to it, not even noticing the change. To them, they wouldn't associate his mana with an inhuman feeling since they knew him personally. You don't react to my mana after all, despite the fact that everyone else does. Olis also grew used to my mana. Something is only alien to a group of people that don't understand it. To understand means to accept."
Olivia nodded, understanding it a bit. There were loads of stories about serial killers that lived in cities or towns, going about everyday life, and no one else noticed them. Garon's situation was sort of like that. It made her wonder if such a thing could happen again, and if it could, how many times had it happened before?
She was learning a lot about the world thanks to Davi.
"When I become an Arcane Knight, I'm going to use my fortune and fame to explore the world like you're doing. I want to go to as many different places as I can and make sure things like this aren't happening. I want to do it the way you're doing it, also, where you make sure the problem won't be repeated. Can you please help me get strong like you?" Olivia reached out and grabbed Davi's arm. "Please, I'll do anything!"
Davi also reached out and flicked Olivia on the forehead. "Don't be all dramatic. I already told you a while ago I'd help." He said anticlimactically. "I can't help you with your magic, but we can start by building your physical strength and stamina. Mana is connected to that, so the more fit you get, the better your magic will be, and it'll help you out a lot since you need to avoid casting spells when you can. You can start by building up some muscles in your arms, legs, and stomach, and once you have more muscles, I can teach you how to use a dagger since you seem to like that weapon."
"Where do I start?"
Davi tapped his foot down. "Row Shadow Vault." His shadow expanded, and out of it a large, fancy-looking carriage lifted up and dropped to the ground, shaking the forest floor. The carriage was sleek and painted red and gold. It looked brand new and very, very expensive. It also looked very heavy. Davi patted the side of it. "Drag this carriage!"
"You really are insane, huh?"
"You don't have to lift it, just drag it. The wheels will make it a lot easier!" Davi gave an emotionless thumbs-up.
"That's not possible!" Davi reached up, and his fingers stabbed into the wood. He got a good grip and then casually dragged it behind him. "Oh, screw you! You're an Arcane Knight; you're practically superhuman!" Then she stopped. "Wait! I just remembered!" She began to go through the pockets of her coat.
"What is it?"
"My phone!" Olivia pulled the cracked object out and held it in the air as if it were special. "I've been dying to know what your stats and other stuff are!"
"My stats?" Davi tilted his head.
Olivia let out a soft giggle, and she casually leaned against the carriage Davi summoned. "I keep forgetting you're an old dog. Okay, so how to explain this… This is how my father told me. The king of Estiria has a type of magic called Circuit magic. He's one of the oldest and strongest humans alive since he's the direct son of Haru, and using his magic, he created one of the strongest Magitech companies in the world, Sini Corp. With his Circuit magic, he brought humanity forward into the age of Magitech, and is the reason grimoires are all online and how we can buy spells so easily."
Davi nodded, and he stared blankly at Olivia's phone screen as she showed it off to him. He felt a little weird because her screensaver was some Arcane Knight lady in a very weird pose. There were dozens of different apps across her phone, none of which he recognized, but she eagerly showed some of them off to him.
Olivia scrolled over to a blue box that had a colored sword in it, and she clicked on it. Her screen changed and went to a brightly colored webpage that had dozens of different Arcane Knights featured on the front page as well as hundreds of chat boxes and sections labeled as 'quests'.
"This is the Knight Page. It's how people can follow their favorite Arcane Knights and also request them for missions." Olivia explained. "You can hire a specific Knight, each one having their own price, or you can create a general mission that will be sent to the guilds and then, in turn, given to the Knights. When you make a quest or mission, it creates strands of mana that connect the Knight to you, which lets them find you more easily. You have to let them know what the mission entails, and the guilds will determine what the cost of the mission will be and the fee you have to pay to get a Knight to help you, as well as the strength of the Knight needed. So if you just need to slay a few weak monsters, it'll be cheaper than paying for a Knight to come and stop a dungeon. You can also use this app to follow what missions the Knights did and what their rating is. A lot of Knights also post updates on this site, so you can see their day-to-day life."
Davi gave a nod, following along for the most part. "I see. And this is all working thanks to that king guy's magic?"
"Yep!" Olivia's grin grew, and she clicked on the search bar. "Watch what happens when I look your name up!"
"I don't think that's a good idea-"
Before Davi could stop her, Olivia typed the name out and hit enter, but instead of being directed to Davi Hawker's Knight Page, something else happened. If you were to look up a name that wasn't in the system, like a fake Knight, you'd be told that person didn't exist. Part of her had been expecting that to happen, since Davi always acted so weird, and she had a theory that he wasn't actually a Knight, but instead of getting the usual page, something weirder went on.
Olivia watched as her screen flashed black, and a series of error messages went over her phone. Then suddenly she was logged out of the app. She looked up at Davi, her eyes wide.
"I can explain?" Davi said awkwardly.
Olivia shook her head. "Bruno told me about this once. Some Knights, especially the really strong and secret ones, don't have official pages. At first, I thought you might have been a fake, but now it kind of makes sense! You're actually a super secret Knight, one of the members of the Black Hand, aren't you!"
Davi blinked, clearly taken aback by what she said. Then he shrugged. "Yep. You got it. I'm a… Super cool, whatever thingy you said I was. Yep."
The Black Hand was a rumor that had been spread around by a few cities. It was unknown if they actually existed or not; many doubted it, but some claimed they were real. A Black Hand was a Knight who couldn't be found on the page because they did missions only for a select group of people, and their job was to remain unknown. They were more or less assassins.
Normally, the thought of traveling with an assassin would scare most people, but for Olivia, it only made her more excited and hyped. "Now it makes sense. Bruno told me you guys are constantly going on secret missions. That's why you're never around to get rewards and why you always stalk off. It's also why you don't know how Magitech works because you guys get all your orders from birds!"
"We do?"
"That's what Bruno told me." Olivia shrugged. "He said Black Hand people are anti-tech and old-fashioned because they're always going into the hardest dungeons."
Davi decided not to point out the fact that he used guns on several occasions, and his favorite item was a music box.
Olivia shook her head and got back on topic. She scrolled through her phone once more. Next to her messenger app was the grimoire app. She hadn't gone into it in a while since everything had been so hectic and crazy.
In a bunch of the stories she always read or listened to, LitRPG was a common trope, and in those stories, people would have a system that they could level up with and upgrade themselves. The grimoire app was not like this. It did show off stats and other things, but leveling up wasn't something a person could just do.
"This is the grimoire app." Olivia clicked on it, and her entire screen turned black. Davi stared down, suddenly interested, and he watched as writing began to appear across the cracked phone. "No longer do we use books or pages. Everything is all at the press of a button." Olivia whispered.
The screen showed off a few icons that all had various phases next to them. Up at the top, there was her name, that being Mary Olivia Lot. Next to it was her age, eighteen, and next to that was her balance amount, which was a measly two-digit number since she hadn't actually earned any money.
Next to her balance amount was a money icon that was up in the top right corner. If she were to click on it, it'd take her to the market. There she could sell or buy things, such as magic spells, potions, weapons, or monster cores. She had nothing to offer or buy, though, so she ignored it.
Down below was where the real exciting stuff was. There were four boxes that would each take her to a new page if she clicked on them. The first was listed as Stats, the second was Core, the third was Spells, and the final one was Skills.
"This is my grimoire page," Olivia said softly. It felt a little weird having Davi look down at it, since it was such a personal thing. The only person she let look at her stats and other stuff was Bruno. "It's pretty easy to understand, I think. Stats show how good you are at basic things; Core is what type of magic you have and the schools you're good with; Spells show the number of spells you know and how close they are to evolving; and Skills is pretty much everything else."
Olivia took a deep breath, and she clicked on Stats. The screen changed and now showed a jumble of words and their grade next to them. They were the small, pathetic level they always were. D in Mana, C- in Endurance, C in Strength, C in Efficiency, and A in Resistance.
"The lowest grade you can get is a D- and the highest is an S+." Olivia explained. "In a lot of books, people get numbers and other stuff, but in real life, we use grades. Mana represents the amount of mana you have, Endurance is how durable your mana is and how fast it recovers, Strength is how strong your mana can become, Efficiency is how much of your own mana you can control and how good you are with your spells, and Resistance is how well you can ignore outside effects and dungeons. Each grade is ten times stronger than the previous one. So someone with a B in Strength is ten times stronger than someone with a B- in the same category."
"Do these really matter?" Davi asked, making a face. "Like, does a person with the higher stats just win?"
"I guess if the difference is big enough, then yeah, but for the most part, it mainly comes down to how you use what you have and the hand you were dealt when you were first born." Olivia shrugged.
"And do these stats change?"
"If you're rich, then yes."
"If you're rich?"
Olivia sighed and shrugged. "Life isn't like a video game. If you want to get your grade higher, you have to put in the work. Remember how I said each grade is ten times stronger than the last? Well, if you want your grade to go up, you have to become ten times stronger in whatever category you're trying to improve. That means you'd need to get ten times the amount of mana you have or regenerate your mana ten times as fast for Mana and Endurance. Alternatively, if you have enough money, you can take this type of Core-improving medicine that can be found in the item shop, but it's hella expensive and usually doesn't work, so you have to spend loads of cash just to maybe increase one stat."
"But if you do put in enough hard work, you can improve yourself naturally?" Davi questioned.
"Sure, but be ready to bust your ass." Olivia snorted and exited the stat box. Next, she went to Core.
Every mage had a Core within them that was dependent on who they were. Her core was a Blood Core. Davi would have a Shadow Core. The ranking of a person's Core determined how easy it was for them to naturally improve, since some people could grow a lot quicker than others. The drug she had talked about earlier would temporarily boost a person's Core grade, which in turn would allow them to power up quicker, though it only worked for a bit and would be harder to increase the more it was used, so in the end, hard work really was the only way to get better, unless someone was a Noble who could just spend a seemingly infinite amount of money to grow.
On the Core page, it had several other lines of text with their own grade next to them. The first was listed as Blood Core, which was her overall grade. It was a C+. After that were the different schools of magic and the grade she had in them. She had a B- in Alteration, a C in Destruction, a C in Enchantment, a B in Conjuration, a D- in Illusion, and a D in Restoration. Overall, she wasn't good with any of the schools but was at least decent with Conjuration and Alteration, which was why she mainly used spells that would shape her blood.
"This is how you can see what spells you're able to learn and which ones will be best for you." Olivia exited that and then went to the third box listed as spells. "Once you know what kinds of magic you're good with, you can go to the market and look up all sorts of spells, but they're usually pricey, depending on what you're trying to buy. In the box listed as spells, you can see all the different spells you know, in case you forget them, and you can also see how close a spell is to evolving. When a spell reaches its max mastery, that means it can evolve and become a stronger, higher-level version."
Once again, the screen changed, this time showing off a massive list of spells that seemed to be in no particular order. Davi raised his eyebrow as he stared at them. Olivia wasn't joking when she said she bought a lot of spells.
Row Blood Knife, Row Blood Dagger, Row Blood Shortsword, Row Blood Longsword, Row Blood Blade, Row Blood Scythe, Row Blood Bolt, Row Blood Hawk, Row Blood Chain, Row Blood Flower, Row Blood Cat— The list just kept going on and on. Most of the spells were just the same thing but worded slightly differently, like knives and daggers, and next to the spells, it showed off the schools of magic they fell in, many having multiple schools, like all the weapons, which were both Conjuration and Alteration. There were also actual numbers listed for each spell instead of a grade.
Each number was connected to a digital bar that showed how close it was to reaching the top. Some spells, like Blood Knife or Bolt, were at seventy percent, while others were listed below ten. Some spells were also listed in categories Olivia wasn't even good with and had likely never used, like Row Blood Rabbit, which was listed as both Illusion and Restoration and had a measly two percent next to its evolution meter.
"A lot of spells in the market don't have their school listed next to them when you go to buy them," Olivia said sheepishly. "So some of these spells I bought thinking I'd get to summon a cute rabbit minion to fight for me, only to learn it was just an illusion and not the real thing. Also, when you buy a spell, it is based on the creator as to what the spell's intent is. That's why I have so many knife spells, since everyone has a different view on what a knife is to them, and the size kept being wrong or weird, leading to me buying knife spells. Once you do buy a spell, you start off as a total noob with it, having your meter be zero, and you have to learn how it works the hard way unless you can also afford a guide or help book with it, which I never can. That's why Blood Scythe is my highest and strongest spell. I created that one all on my own."
Davi blinked, clearly overwhelmed, causing Olivia to giggle slightly. She clicked off the spells list and went to the final box, the one listed as Skills, which was thankfully a lot smaller than the last one had been.
"Skills are all passives, and they basically are everything that doesn't have to do with spells or stats," Olivia said as her list came up. "I have a few."
There were a handful that popped up as the box opened and the page shifted. Olivia had Knife-Wielding, which was grade C; Scythe-Wielding, grade C; Poison Resistance, grade A; Venom Resistance, grade A; Hand-to-Hand, grade D; Sprint, grade D; Stamina, grade D; and lastly, Quick Regeneration, grade B+. That last one had been ranked as B before she met Davi, which meant she had gotten beaten up so badly by Garon that her healing factor had actually leveled up a bit.
"And that's pretty much everything," Olivia said, exiting out of the skills section. "A grimoire is unique to a mage, just like their mana and magic type are. It's a useful tool for seeing how much you've improved, but it isn't like an actual leveling system or anything." She sighed. "That would make things way too easy."
Davi rubbed the back of his head, still totally lost, but he forced a nod. "I guess I understand."
He had no fucking clue what anything he had just seen was.
Olivia's smile grew, and she twisted the phone around. "You want to see yours?"
"Isn't it your app?" Davi raised an eyebrow.
"It's magic. Whoever opens the app will be taken to their own grimoire, since it's all done through the king's power." Olivia giggled. "Come on. Click the app, and it'll bring yours up. I'm dying to know what secrets you're hiding."
"I don't know…"
"Please."
Davi let out another sigh and nodded. "Alright. Fine." Gently, he reached out and clicked the screen. "Here goes nothing."
The phone screen turned black…
And then in a bright white flash, Davi suddenly found himself standing in an empty void.