Chapter 47 (Patreon)

12:11 AM

Coil’s Base

Death’s creepy ass whistle quieting into heavy, oppressive silence, I stared down at Coil’s bloodied and crushed corpse.

It was odd, the way that killing had quickly become something I was completely at ease with - at least when it came to shitty people. Even back then, before I was dropped onto Earth Bet, I had been okay with the thought of killing. Hell, I’d beaten a few dudes damn near close to the brink of death before. But, this level of brutality was… new. Hunting a human being down like I was a serpent slithering after a juicy meal, knowing that he had absolutely no way of fighting back… and while I didn’t necessarily enjoy the process of killing him-

I did enjoy the chase, if only a little bit. 

Maybe that said something really fucking bad about me and my psyche. Maybe my powers were changing me, slowly but surely, and Immutable Form was just blowing sugary sweet smoke up my ass. Or maybe it was just the usual neuroses kicking in, and I’d always been this disconnected from the suffering of people I deemed ‘worse than trash’.

Whichever way it was spun, I guess it didn’t really matter. What was done was done, and Kaiser would be getting treatment ten times worse than this-

BZZZZ.

BZZZZ.

BZZZZ.

My eyebrows arched upwards, curious, and I glanced back down at Coil’s body.

I thought about just letting the dead man’s phone buzz its happy, abandoned little self to its operating system’s content, destined to eventually die down here from lack of charger and power outlets, but there was something about the timing that rubbed me the wrong way. He’d forgotten his walkie talkie back in his office, too desperate to escape me after I went action hero mode on ten of his mercenaries, but I didn’t need that device to know that the rest of his men were gathering to mount a counterattack.

Some would probably run after seeing what I did to the last squad, but greed could blind the eyes just as easily as pussy or fear. I didn’t have much time left.

Fuck it.

Allowing my Armament to fade away in a shower of golden light, I shoved my right hand into my pocket and used the other to call upon the ambient Aethyr permeating the musty tunnels. It hearkened my call, slithering its magical tendrils into Coil’s piss-stained pants and wrenching his buzzing phone free. The minor telekinesis was basically instinctive at this point, my control over the neutral, raw power of the Warp being fundamentally easier to grasp than even the Winds.

As I slowly made my way back down the tunnel, my footsteps echoing quietly against the claustrophobia-inducing walls, I glanced at the Caller ID.

Tattletale is calling. 

Huh. She was calling on Facetime, too - a definite and desperate attempt to get more feedback for her powers to bounce off of, not that it would ever help her with me. I didn’t even entertain the thought that she was actually trying to call Coil of all people - I made it clear that he was dying at midnight, and I sincerely hoped that my showing against Lung convinced her and every other two-bit villain of the veracity of my words. The timing was just too sus.

‘Eh… why the fuck not?’

I owed her and the Undersiders nothing, but hearing the foxy girl out wouldn’t hurt anything. I still had a couple minutes of walking until I made it to the beginning of the escape tunnel, where there’d almost definitely be a killzone up top if the mercs were smarter than your average fifth grader.

Enough time to come up with a plan.

Reaching out to the little phone hovering happily beside me, I swiped my finger across the green ‘answer’ button.

“... Avalon. It’s nice to finally meet you. I see you didn’t waste any time snatching Coil’s phone, huh?”

Sarah Livsey, or Tattletale, since she was clearly in full costume, looked exhausted - not that I could even blame her, considering just how fucking long this day felt. Her hair was frizzy and pulled back into a tight ponytail, and her bottle green eyes were rimmed with red, like she hadn’t slept in days. Even then, she forced her voice to be more lively, a small smile quirking her lips upwards. My eyes roamed over her background, wherever she was, it was too dark to see anything. A warehouse, maybe?

“Snake got your tongue, hero?”

“Nah,” I finally responded, tilting my head and willing the phone to float directly in front of me. It did so, rotating on an axis beneath the hold of my magic. “I took his, though. Put his ass on a t-shirt; just like I’m gonna do with all of his light work. You plannin’ to get in the way of that?”

There was a pause as she narrowed her eyes at me, her smile flickering into a frown that almost immediately disappeared. “Coil had over fifty mercenaries under his control. A few would leave instead of risking a fight with you, the Trump: Fuck Off that just turned Lung into gold - which, by the way, makes no fucking sense. But his base - I’ve been there. It’s a tight underground space, not much room to move, and you’re… primarily a Mover, Blaster, and Shaker - right?”

Judging by the wry confidence in her tone, though not enough to be considered arrogance or smugness yet, Tattletale was probably leading up to something. Not a ‘something’ that would do much to change my mind, but I was, at least, willing to see where this random ass side-quest was planning to go.

“I’m primarily every fuckin’ rating on the board,” I replied simply, bluntly, and she clicked her teeth. “But continue, lay it on me. I hope your lack of ‘no sir, never sir’ to my last question is answered soon, ‘cause I don’t have much time to chat.”

Wherever she was sitting, Tattletale adjusted her position, bringing her phone closer to her face as her voice turned lower and more hurried. “Fine, Mr. All-Powerful; I propose a mutually-beneficial agreement. Posterize all you want, but we both know fighting damn near fifty mercs with Tinkertech weaponry is something you don’t wanna risk-”

“More like thirty-nine, actually.” I interrupted coolly, waving an idle hand. “Killed one guy that bumped into me when I was heading into the elevator. Took out a squad after I found where Coil was hiding. So, doin’ the math, if Timmy had fifty jelly beans and Tommy kicked his ass and stole eleven-”

“That’s not- didn’t you say you don’t have much time?” Tattletale groused, her little small all but buried in the deepest levels of Hell as she glared at the camera. “Is this how people feel when I fuck with them? Because it’s not fun.”

“Look, I’m gonna keep it a bean-”

“Ugh.”

“If you’re wanting to collaborate on taking out the rest of the mercenaries for something as foolishly lopsided as ‘fifty percent of Coil’s financial assets and resources’, I’ll just help us both out right now and tell you it ain’t happening. I don’t need your help.”

There were muffled voices in the background on Tattletale’s side, sounding like they were coming from another room, and she glanced away from the camera for a moment to hiss an annoyed ‘shut up’. When she looked back, the frown on her face was noticeably bleaker. She licked her lips, eyes moving left and right as she scanned my features for something, anything to grasp onto.

But I stayed ice cold, my features not flickering in the slightest.

Tattletale is desperate. Tattletale is frustrated. Tattletale is wary. 

“So you’re going to, what… just freeze us out completely? Kill our boss, take all of his money, resources, information network - that’s wasted potential, Avalon, and you know it. We can work together. You get the majority of the liquidity and free pick of all of his dirty little secrets. I just want-”

“Information you can use to gain leverage elsewhere, since I just made Brockton Bay too unpredictable and risky for the Undersiders. Maybe a bit of cash too - so you can plant roots in a better spot, and the other members in your ragtag group can figure out if they’re stayin’ with or jumping ship. Am I getting close?” I finished for her, halting in the middle of the tunnel. The ladder back up to Coil’s office was maybe a hundred or so feet away, but Hidden Intuition was wary, warping my own cognition of the world in order to superimpose a bright yellow caution sign in front of the entry point.

It was silent. Too silent. 

They were almost definitely waiting for me.

“... You’re a Thinker now, too? That’s supposed to be my thing.” Her voice was quieter now - not necessarily weaker, but it was clear that my reading of her and my overall attitude towards the entire situation meant one thing and one thing only; I had full control over everything here, and what she gained was completely at my mercy and grace. 

I didn’t get a thrill out of icing the girl out. She was pretty cool when I met her back at that pawn shop, if a bit nosy and in your face. However, as dramatic as it sounded, I wasn’t that same somewhat naive guy from back then. The Grimoire was deeper than just an overpowered magical tool to me now - it was, quite literally, my soul, and that soul grew with each and every perk I unlocked within those metaphorical pages. My growth was swift and relentless, practically meteoric at this point with my latest acquisition, and Sarah Livsey simply couldn’t keep up.

She - and the Undersiders at large - were just not on my level. I didn’t need to negotiate.

But, even then, it wasn’t as if I couldn’t see where she was coming from. I could respect the hustle, at least.

“Listen,” I murmured, gesturing for the phone to get closer so that I could grab it. Something in my voice must’ve alerted her, because she jolted to attention, forcibly schooling her dejected face into a mask of indifference and intrigue. “I’ll think about it. Message me ‘TT sends her regards’ on PHO so I can have your handle, and we’ll go from there. ‘Ight?”

“Heh… that’s the best I’m going to get, huh? I can tell you already know that my powers don’t work with you for whatever fucking reason, so I won’t bullshit you - this freaking sucks. But sometimes you have to take losses, and I didn’t survive this long by just giving up. I’ll be in contact, Avalon.”

The call ended before I could even respond - something Hidden Intuition dredged up as her desperately wanting, in some way, to have control over our little exchange. It was a petty and small move by the clearly agitated girl, but when someone with as big of an ego as Tattletale was basically rammed in the ass for an entire ‘negotiation’, pettiness was to be expected. I let it dissipate over my countenance like water down my back, since I had infinitely more important things to worry about.

Like the kill zone I was about to walk in on.

As I continued walking forward, activating Arcane to make my presence muted and insignificant, I began gathering what little amount of the Winds that I could sense within the tunnels. There was a rich presence of Chamon and Ulgu due to the fact that I was underground and in a dank, stinky tunnel near the sewers, but there was also the heavy presence of Shyish - drifting both from Coil’s corpse dozens of yards away, and from the lair upstairs. It tasted like ash and rot on the tip of my tongue, disgusting and vile, but this was the Wind I decided to draw upon the most.

I knew a decent amount of spells for each Wind of Magic, and the Lore of Death was no different. There were multiple ways I could think of to handle a potential kill zone scenario. I could use Shyish to flood the office above me with decaying mists, eating apart and withering any human up there without magical protection, regeneration, or enhanced Brute durability. I could also use Ulgu to ensnare their minds with illusions and weakness, similar to the Fury spell I used on the mercenary earlier, and rip into their numbers during the chaos. 

Mages were the fucking best because we had options.  

The spell I mentally decided on, however; The Icy Wind of Death… it did neither of those things, but it didn’t need to, being a wide-ranged AOE that would practically turn my enemies into fearful, frozen sheep waiting to be slaughtered. If I was the living death hunting down scum like Coil, why not continue to run with that motif, at least for the rest of the night? I wouldn’t feel bad killing these men. Coil mainly hired the worst of the worst - pedophiles, rapists, murderers, and if there were decent people amongst them, I could only hope they decided to flee before becoming another statistic.

The ancient words came to me as I hovered up towards the hatch, the taste of Death growing stronger and stronger in my mouth. The heavy, dark, oppressive miasma of Shyish clung to me like a feathered coat, drifting off of my shoulders and hands in thick, noxious purple clumps of smog, but I held back on that final word that would bring the magic fully into reality. 

Mana coated my fist, a bright and luminous golden that seemed to be sucked up by the Death energy shrouding my form, and I exhaled softly.

‘All aggression, no hesitation. Let’s go, Jay.’

I could do this.

My magical energy was dense, potent, and plentiful - the result of multiple perks that passively enhanced those exact qualities. Putting too much mana in my limbs when utilizing Magic-Enhanced Attacks ran the risk of blowing my fucking bones and flesh apart with explosive aplomb, though, so I had to keep the amount I used beneath a certain threshold that matched the durability and strength of my natural body.

Fortunately, I had a decently tough foundation.

BANG!

I heard the lock snap like a candy bar as my fist slammed into the thick steel hatch like a mana-coated missile, nearly tearing a fist-sized hole straight through the metal. It shot upwards at the speed of a bullet, crashing and embedding itself into the ceiling, but I’d already teleported up and into the air over the hole I’d just made.

“Shit, he’s here!”

“Shoot him!”

“W-what the fu-”

“Fire!”

“Älørey.”

All at once, we spoke - but Arcane twisted the squad’s perception of me, making them second-guess themselves on if what they were seeing was actually happening right in front of their very eyes, and that brief moment of indecision was all I needed to release my spell.

What happened then… well, it wasn’t called The Icy Grip of Death for nothing.

The Shyish surrounding my body fwooshed outwards like a tidal wave of necrotic, deathly black and purple poison, filling Coil’s office almost immediately with its heavy presence. Even then, it wasn’t so thick as to blind me from what was happening. Tendrils of death magic twisted through the miasma like snakes, lunging for the screaming mercenaries. Gunshots rang out, bright blue bursts of laser shots gouging holes into the walls and ceilings as panic and fear firmly set in at the sight and feeling of Death, quite literally, surrounding their mortal forms.

In the next instant, the room went silent.

Seven men hovered in the air, choked gasps attempting to force themselves out of their throats as those same tendrils coiled around their necks and chests, robbing them of their breath - and, in one or two cases, their consciousness. The spell didn’t just end in the office, however; beyond the large steel door I had torn apart, there were shouts of alarm and even more gunshots. There had to be at least another couple dozen people beyond the office. Maybe more, maybe less.

Why everyone thought they could defeat everything with bullets, I didn’t know, but their lack of creativity would make an extremely dangerous scenario significantly less so. I controlled the battle.

All around my body, materializing in glimmering busts of golden mana, seven spears made their debut - each one pointing directly at their respective targets. There was no time for further thinking. I’d made my mind up before even coming to Coil’s base in the first place.

You make your bed, you gotta lie in it.

The spears shot off like arrows, motes of mana trailing behind them as they shot straight into the stunned mercenaries’ chests. I flew forward, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were dead - because the aura of death was growing even stronger now, the icy miasma like hoarfrost on my skin. The magic was nearly too thick for me to even see through, but I barely even needed to use my sight. The screams and curses were enough.

“Fuck! T-they’re not fucking dying, man!”

“Where is Avalon?!”

“I can’t- ack! I can’t fucking see!”

“FUCK THIS!”

Pandemonium. Actual chaos. There was a definite limit to how many people the spell affected. The ones screaming were the ones not being restrained and choked out by the death magic, and those were the ones I went after. With their vision obscured, it was as simple as teleporting towards the voices and lopping through their panicked forms with wide, powerful swings of my spear. I could hear others fleeing, either throwing their guns away or shooting wildly behind themselves as they ran, but they weren’t my main prerogative.

The ones who fought back were.

In the end, I managed to finish cutting through the rest of the mercenaries just in time for my spell to fade away. 

Two minutes. 

In just 120 seconds, I killed roughly fifteen men in the atrium. 

My ‘Coat of Authority’ was riddled with a few bullet holes, the cloth singed and charred where the lasers managed to pierce through and tear into my flesh, but the pain wasn’t horrible - probably because I immediately began channeling Healing as soon as my brain registering the fact that molten-hot energy had just ripped into my skin. At some point, the fight had genuinely become a blur of motion; my right arm swinging and stabbing with skill and poise that would dazzle experts, and my left hand either healing my body or turning the mercs into spasming wrecks as I utilized copious amounts of Spark.

 One man was left, gasping and stumbling as he staggered towards the staircase. I had no idea how he was moving with a foot-long laceration tearing through his lower back, nearly snipping through his spine, but I could admire the tenacity. The golden spear that had started to form right behind his neck faded away, and, covered in more blood than I was truthfully comfortable with, I made to follow him up-

The Grimoire shifted, a new light brightening up my soul.

As Long As You Mean It (Yuki Yuna is a Hero - 400 CP): You don’t have time to waste to make long chants during a fight in the battlefield. There are many other things to worry about, and long chants shouldn’t be one of them. Actually diverting your attention to reading something for a long chant can be deadly in the battlefield. Luckily, though, you don’t have to worry about that. As long as your words carry the spirit of the chant, you can easily substitute any long chants for ceremonies or spells for a few time-cutting short phrases. Also helps if you’re poor at memorization.

A wry grin twisted my lips, carving into my blood-flecked cheeks, and I calmly wiped my face with the back of my hand. “Coulda led with that, Grimmy. Woulda been nice in that fight.”

Yoink.

“Huh?!” The slowly fleeing mercenary twisted around, pain warping his features, and his dull brown eyes widened dramatically at the sight of me calmly walking towards him with my hands in my pockets. “L-listen, man! Please, please don’t… I, I have a wife. And kids! And-”

I pulled on Hysh, pressing its radiant magical energy into the panicked man with pure willpower. Amongst all the death and destruction, the hideout was nearly bereft of the White Wind completely, but my will and talent with harnessing the Winds were strong and persuasive enough to finagle just the little bit needed for Healing Light.

However, instead of speaking the language of High Elves, I decided to test out the perk I’d just gotten.

“... Clean yourself up, bitch - you look like shit. Healing Light.”

It happened immediately.

A burst of shining golden light pulsated from the man’s body, nearly sending him to his knees from the sudden shock and relief. He sagged down, face going slack with shock as he gawked at me. In that brief second, I teleported behind him, gripping his assault vest with Aethyr magic and wrenching him upwards just enough to get a good look at his back.

He hissed in pain, mumbling out some bullshit I didn’t care to listen to.

“You’ll still need stitches I’m pretty sure,” I hummed, taking a step back in order to tilt my head and get a different look at the laceration. It was still kinda deep, but not nearly as bad as what it had just been - the lack of full healing almost definitely came from the sparse Hysh in the bunker rather than any loss of potency with not speaking a full incantation. 

That boded… extremely well.

Magic from The Elder Scrolls - or, at least, the beginning spells… they didn’t really have verbal components, just somatic gestures and the knowledge and understanding of just what the fuck you were doing. The Winds, however; they were a completely different beast. Most of the spells I utilized with the Winds were multiple times more potent than Novice-level magic from The Elder Scrolls. Those spells required somewhat lengthy incantations in either Magick or Anoqeyån - whichever one I was feeling at the time. 

Being able to toss them out by just saying some edgy one-liner or just the spell’s name? It changed things completely.

“... Thank you? I- I don’t understand. You’re not killing me?” The mercenary took another step back towards the staircase, his hands twitching by his sides. It was extremely obvious just how badly he wanted to get away from me, not that I could blame him at all.

I did just get done slaughtering his friends. Though their deaths were their own faults.

“I didn’t murder the fuckers who ran away during the fight, did I?” I snorted, waving a hand dismissively. He flinched harshly at the movement - probably because I did the same thing when summoning big, fuck-off golden spears. “Your boys died ‘cause they decided to try and ambush me. You’re just tryna get back home, right?”

“Yes! Yes, I am. Thank-”

“You’re not a pedophile, right? Or a Jeffrey Dahmer?” I narrowed my gaze, staring deep into the frightened man’s eyes.

He grimaced, genuine disgust darkening his face. “Wha- No! I-I just did this for the benefits!”

He is telling the truth.

“Cool,” I nodded my head seriously, permanently adding the mook to my ‘do not kill’ list. “Then do me a favor, homie - take me up to Coil’s main office. The one with the fancy computer and big, dramatic ass safe.”

“Uh…T-that’s on the second floor, near the armory. Are you sure you can’t find it? My back is still-”

Evil Eye activated, sending another pulse of healing light through the man’s form. He staggered to the side, gripping the wall with his blood-covered fingertips as the laceration went from ‘needing stitches’ to ‘rub some dirt on it and you’ll be fine’. I simply watched, vaguely and distantly amused. 

“We good to go now?”

The mercenary rubbed his back, wincing ever so slightly at the sting, but when his hand came back not covered in blood, an awed expression formed on his face. Gritting his teeth and straightening up, the man gave me a firm, decisive nod. “Yessir, Avalon! A-and for what it’s worth, I was already on duty when you made the announcement. I would’ve left otherwise.”

His piece said, the merc briskly started walking up the staircase.

That didn’t make me feel much better, but I’d already made the decision to simply, well, go with my decisions. 

With an eternity lying ahead of me and infinite universes to explore, the amount of men I would end up killing was… unquantifiable. That was simply the reality of it. So I refused to bellyache over what could have or should have been.

Ten toes down.

“Well, I’m happy you gave up at the end. Would’ve sucked for your family if I ended up killing you.”

The mercenary paused, almost tripping over his own feet.

“... Yeah,” he swallowed, resuming his previous pace. “I’m happy I’m alive too.”

.

.

.

After a brief stop to drop dozens of Tinkertech rifles, ammo boxes, and assorted armored vests of all shapes and sizes into my Dimensional Inventory - which got a wide-eyed, nearly disbelieving stare from my enemy-turned-tour guide - I ended up in Coil’s office, which was multiple times larger than the much tiny one on the lower levels of his hideout bunker.

Combing through everything was easy… mainly because I couldn’t actually get into the man’s fucking computer. Honestly, I doubted we even needed to kill him in order to rob him for everything he was fucking worth - Cassie had already hacked his systems weeks prior, after all. But, I did not trust the Undersiders to not turn this place upside down once they were sure I’d left the scene, so I didn’t want to leave anything to chance.

I dropped the entire fucking computer set-up into my Dimensional Inventory. 

In a way, it was a good way to test the limits of that particular power. Fitting his desk inside had been near impossible to do once I activated the Inventory - the corners of the blue ‘rift’ it created started flashing red as the desk’s width slammed against it, which probably meant that there was a definite physical size limit to what I could place inside of it. However, when I turned it sideways and shoved it in, the damned thing slid through as smooth as butter. 

It was bottomless, not boundless.

After the computer and desk, which I assumed held most of the really juicy shit, I resumed searching the rest of his office… and that’s when I was, more than anything else, extremely happy with the fact that I had a perk that turned me into a magical detective. There was no ‘big safe’, but… there was a little black security box, hiding in plain sight. 

It was directly beneath his desk, hidden behind a panel painted to look like the rest of his floor. The panel had been straight up glowing a light blue when I really started to scan the place for hidden shit, and ripping the box out was as easy as leveraging my natural (read, magical) strength and taking it. Inside were a bunch of documents bundled up beneath no less than four plain-looking debit cards. Thirst For Knowledge made parsing the information ridiculously easy, turning complex numbers and terms that I’d never read before into simplicity itself through context clues and plain common sense.

The meaning of these documents?

It was simple: Coil was filthy fucking rich.

They were accounting ledgers, going back years, from when the late supervillain first founded his construction company, Fortress Construction. The company itself wasn’t mentioned too much since it was owned beneath his civilian identity, Thomas Calvert, but it laid the bricks to the foundation of what had to be the biggest ‘fuck you’ to the IRS since Wesley fucking Snipes. Millions of dollars laundered through oddly lucky investments in the stock market, spread out enough in both time and variety to keep things high-value and clean-looking. Fortress Construction comparatively did not make nearly as much money as his stock investment schemes, but it didn’t have to - Coil had his hand in nearly everything high risk and high reward. 

Properties, business shareholding, cryptocurrencies, the stock market… honestly, it boggled my mind. Without his powers, juggling half the shit he had going on would have been literally impossible, but Coil made it work.

And outside of Tinkertech equipment, mercenary funds, and the relatively minor amount needed to get his hideout up and functioning… the fucker had just been sitting on it.

A little bit over 160 million dollars, just collecting interest in four separate bank accounts scattered offshore. For someone like me who grew up broke, struggling in vain to make shit shake for me and my family… it was enough to nearly knock me on my ass. I’d killed over 25 men today and barely felt more than minor lingering doubt and sadness, but hit me with 7 zeros and I’m tossed completely off my game.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed, I had cleared out pretty quickly after that. There were no other secret cubbies with damning evidence of every cape in the city, or a strip of mysterious paper with Number Man’s phone number scribbled across it. Everything else had to be on his computer. Coil was stupid in many ways, including leaving behind evidence of his tax fraudulence and secret identity inside of his super evil villain’s lair, but apparently he wasn’t stupid enough to keep receipts of everything.

But that was fine. I didn’t need - or even really want - that sort of stuff. The money had always been the main draw to going after him. Not even just for me, either; the chances of the currency working in other worlds was very low, especially since Earth Bet had different US presidents. Rather, it was for Invictus. I’d always wanted to be a sugar daddy, and blessing the homies with new apartments, more resources for their tinkering, Hell - even a brand new hero team Base of Operations to truly stunt on the lesser peons like New Wave and Faultline's Crew… that was the type of shit that got me horny.

Emotionally horny, that is. My love language was gift giving and words of affirmation.

And so, after looting the fuck out of Coil’s base, the greedy dragon was officially awoken inside of me.

The time was 12:35 on the dot. I felt bad, being late to my date with Kaiser and his groupies, but the night wasn’t over by a fucking long shot.

There was still one man I’d promised death upon tonight, and he was still at large. 

As Clairvoyance took me into the dark sky and began leading me out of Brockton Bay, following along I-95, there was only really one main question drifting inside of my mind - next to the obvious ‘where the fuck is Kaiser going’ and ‘do I kill Othala or hand her over to the PRT’.

That question was, of course…

‘Heh… I wonder how much cash the Medhall Corporation makes.’

And the answer was, of course...

Yes.

__________________________________________

Perks Accepted:

As Long As You Mean It (Yuki Yuna is a Hero - 400 CP): You don’t have time to waste to make long chants during a fight in the battlefield. There are many other things to worry about, and long chants shouldn’t be one of them. Actually diverting your attention to reading something for a long chant can be deadly in the battlefield. Luckily, though, you don’t have to worry about that. As long as your words carry the spirit of the chant, you can easily substitute any long chants for ceremonies or spells for a few time-cutting short phrases. Also helps if you’re poor at memorization.

100 CP remaining.

A/N:

A bit of follow-through on the Coil chapter! Avalon's working overtime, so he's immediately heading towards Kaiser next... who seemed to have fled the city while Jason was busy securing his loot? Shouldn't be an issue, honestly.

The convo with Tats had to happen. She wasn't going to just stick her head in the sand and ignore her boss dying, so she -successfully- deduced that it would take Avalon about ten or so minutes to properly kill off Coil. Knowing this, she decided to try calling in the hopes that she could finagle some sort of deal or partnership to get a piece of the Coil Empire pie.

Didn't work out like that. Jason doesn't really owe them shit. But he's willing to discuss something after this is all over and done with. Maybe.

And as for Coil's funds and documents? I BULLSHITTED, MAN. I know the dude's filthy rich, I just didn't know how rich, so I decided to just eyeball it and edit it based on feedback. If it's too little or too much let me know - it's not like a lot of money will break anything. The dude's a fucking wizard.

Hope you all enjoyed the chapter! I had a fun time writing it, and the new perk should make magic scenes a lot easier on me since I won't have to account for long incantation times anymore hehe! That was a sexy ass roll.

Catch y'all later! Next chapter will 'prolly be from one of the Empire cape's POV, if not Kaiser's POV, as they're set upon by a vengeful and greedy Avalon.