The Unavowed 5 (Patreon)

The Unavowed
Chapter 5

-VB-

“I lost.”

Loki winced from where she sat next to Riveria’s bed, but didn’t say anything for a moment.

“W-Well, you couldn’t have expect any of it! You saw what it did to you!”

“I felt it, Loki,” she sighed. “What did he call them?”

“The rest of the children might not have heard them. He called them ‘pain,’ ‘corruption,’ and ‘curse of agony.’”

Riveria almost scoffed at the names but held it in check because they had done exactly what they were named after. By the end of the fight, she really did fall apart because of how much everything hurt. Considering that she had blood stains everywhere on her robes, she could also imagine just how bad she must have looked underneath them before Alan healed her.

And what a portent healing spells they were, because she went from critical to normal in less than five seconds.

“How bad did I lose?”

“Well,” Loki tittered as she hesitated. “You didn’t even land a hit on him while he brought you down by literally burning you from the inside out. Honestly, it looked bad, Riveria. You were bleeding from everywhere and collapsing. On top of that, he brought out that spider monster-” Loki shivered. “-and called it a pet.”

“He’s a magician and a tamer?” Riveria frowned.

“No, he claims that he made the monster over the course of a few hours. It’s a good thing Bete killed it because you wouldn’t have been able to defend yourself.”

“You can’t mean that-”

“I bullied him into giving us the spider’s corpse. Its teeth broke regular steel, Riveria.”

“Ah.”

“Yes. Ah.”

“So what happened to him?”

Loki grumbled. “Well, he won, so I gave him the contract he wanted.”

Riveria had fallen unconscious mere minutes after the end of the fight, and, according to Loki, hadn’t woken up for a full day.

“Now that I am off the battlefield, I can see how scary he is,” she admitted. “I guess I’m not the premier magician anymore.”

“Oh, hell no!” Loki yelped. “You are not going to just give up like that! Besides, he admitted to me that he can’t ever do large area of effect attacks like you can!”

Riveria blinked before chuckling. “He’s just trying to not mess up where he sits with his employer, Loki. I’m sure he can do a lot more than I can.”

Loki grumbled as she looked away.

And then the door crashed open.

Riveria raised an eyebrow as what felt like a quarter of the Familia swarmed into the room, some tearing up and others angry on her behalf. She smiled at them, because they made her happy. Yes, she might have lost a spar, but it was just that, and it only gave her Familia members a chance to show how much they cared for her.

Yes, those flowers are nice. Thank you for the fruit basket. No, I will be fine-.

-VB-

Finn thought about what kind of a revolution the new contracted magician - wasn’t that a new concept for Familias? - would bring not just to Loki Familia but also the rest of Orario.

A magician capable of spellcasting multiple times in mere seconds, each with effect that could and would leave highest tiers of blessed magicians incapacitated.

“It’s a good thing we have him on our side,” he spoke up.

Gareth grunted. The usually jovial dwarf hated how Riveria lost, stumbling and falling in pain and bleeding from all over.

Finn understood why Gareth was not as happy with Alan’s inclusion into their Familia’s network; it was one thing to win a fight but it was another to win one by torturing someone til they collapsed, especially someone who could be their coworker and family in the future.

“I’m … not okay with him,” Ais spoke up with a frown.

“Hell no, we should’t be fucking alright with that bastard!” Bete growled from her side.

“He fixed his own mistake and Riveria doesn’t blame him for anything,” Finn played the devil’s advocate because he, as the captain of the familia, had to be cool and calm about the situation. He could be personal about it afterward, but right here and right now, he couldn’t allow himself to be swept away by the generally negative mood of the -.

“I want to fight the next monster he makes,” Tiona harrumphed.

Finn felt tension seem from his shoulder as he watched Tione smack her sister’s shoulder, and allowed himself to chuckle.

“Yes, that spider was … strong.”

Bete tsked, but didn’t say otherwise. The attack he used to split that spider in half had actually hurt him when the spider’s blood, some kind of corrosive fluid, burned some of his skin away. Alan also healed him of that.

“We shouldn’t blame him for what happened,” Gareth spoke up begrudgingly.

Finn turned to look at the de facto third in command. “How so?”

“As much as it hurt to see Riveria hurt like that, I understand why it might have turned out that way. Riveria looked fine until towards the end. Most of us didn’t even realize that something was wrong. Hell, I thought the magician was somehow interrupting Riveria’s chant,” the dwarf looked stricken with his own admission. “Think about it, the new guy probably thought he needed to go all out to have a chance against Riveria. She’s a Level 6, and he’s not even blessed.”

Finn nodded.

“Riveria also withstood one of his attacks. It came out of nowhere when he channeled that light, but she shrugged it off. If she shrugged one off, then what other attacks could she have shrugged off?” he continued. “I think that’s why he brought out the spider monster at the end. All of his magical attacks did nothing on the surface. It was time for him to bring out the big guns… but that’s more or less when Riveria keeled over from accumulated damage.”

“She was stubborn, too!” Tiona pouted. “She shouldn’t have continued chanting if it hurt that much.”

Tione bit her lips and looked at him, looking for permission to speak her mind. When he looked at her and gave her that tacit approval, she sighed in relief and frustration. “I think she was trying to scare him with her magic, but all of us know what happens when blood is pounding in our head and ears coupled with intense pain. All of you saw what happened to that rabbit Loki used to force Alan to show how his magic worked. Or works against something without Abnormal Resistance.”

“Right. That was a little … gorey,” Finn agreed.

The poor rabbit hadn’t lasted three seconds before its flesh rotted away, leaving behind only a skeleton and bits of skin and fur.

“So we’re just going to let him get away with it?” Bete growled.

“He didn’t do anything wrong per say,” Finn objected. “We’ll prohibit him from using similar magic against anyone in the familia and our allies.”

“What could he offer in the dungeon -”

“He doesn’t want to go into the dungeon.”

Everyone turned to look at him.

“Then why are we even hiring him as a ‘contracted magician’?” Tione asked.

Finn shrugged. “He’s a blacksmith as well.”

Tiona threw her hands up in surrender. “A magician, a tamer, and a blacksmith? What the fuck?!”

“Because he can make something like this,” Gareth spoke up as he pulled out a leather armor that someone like Bete might wear. Then he brought out his axe and slammed down on it without saying a word.

When he lifted his axe away…

Bete stared at the armor.

“Wait, what?”

The leather armor was cut but wasn’t slashed open through and through.

“He called this ‘durability enhancement lvl 2’. I just this armor piece with enough strength to kill a minotaur in one hit.”

Finn nodded. This was part of the reason why - as well as how frantically Alan had shown this piece off - that Alan was allowed to be contracted. Hell, Finn would have preferred to accept him into the Familia, but the man didn’t want to be “bound.” Finn allowed the events to occur as it did because it was better for him to have some control over Alan than have no control at all.

Because Alan would change Orario.

He stared at the scratched leather armor.

There was no doubt about that.