The Third Party - Chapter 42

3rd Person’s POV (12 yrs. and 8 months old)

A water ball formed atop everyone with a radius of 50 meters and splashed on the group except for Ken who’s left dry by a translucent barrier, everyone was shocked awake and alert of the situation, they all stood up, except for Allen and Flin who were alert from the start, just soaked.

“What’s happening?” asked Riyah.

“Ken’s second phase of his sleep, we have to evade every random spell Ken conjures in a duration of thirty minutes.” said Allen.

“What?! Why?” exclaimed Icarus, and dodged a fireball, the group jumped at opposite ways from an earth pillar that emerged from the ground.

“We have no choice…?” said Wilbert shrugging.

“We have and that is to run away from this place.” said Riyah as she dodged an area ice spell that froze the flowers over. The ten elemental magic circles were each flinging spell after spell as they rotated in counter-clockwise.

Everyone understood what Riyah meant, but Allen and his friends weren’t able to inform everyone as they had separated from one another avoiding a large fire ball as it exploded the ground they were at previously.

By this time everyone had scattered, or so they are scattered, the six people who had experienced this phenomenon have scattered far to gain more space to rush through in case a large area of effect spell occurs on their location.

The others are left wondering what to do, but are painstakingly huddled with one another, which the others think to be a pain in the head, and just as they thought, their four companions along with the four adult beasts were bombarded by fire balls.

The other six could not go and help them when they too dodged one spell.

“Everyone, separate from one another so people around you does not get caught by large spells. Like this one!” shouted Saber as the fire magic circle rained down fire glaves to its surroundings.

Each one of them evaded in ways they know how, the panther siblings dashed from place to place, while the other siblings flew with wings sprouting from their back. Princess Lang along with Glen, Wilbert, Celine, and Allen ran around dodging the glaves.

The adults parried the blades that had come too close for comfort but mostly dodged them. Flin had conjured a barrier to protect himself, but still ran to dodge the glaves in an attempt to not break his barrier.

Suddenly the air crackled with electricity indicating that a lightning spell was preparing to be cast, Celine noticed the change in the air and rushed to shout at everyone as the barrage of glaves ceased.

“EVERYONE JUMP!” the group was confused but the other five did as was told, suddenly the group felt their hackles raise as goose bumps ran down their spine, and their instinct kicked in, the ones running or dashing on the ground jumped high into the air.

The four disciples and adults barely avoided the electric discharge that coated the ground with lightning then rushed atop Ken and formed a lightning ball, everyone landed back on the ground, except for the six, when they noticed that the others were standing on the ground, Lila shouted…

“Wait! Fly-.” her sentence cut short when lightning shot out from the ball of lightning ball towards the seven. They all got caught in surprise but their system could not register the attack coming and was shocked to their core with the lightning.

Cries rang out from them as the lightning coursed through their bodies, along with the residue water in their clothes made them even more sensitive to the pain. Glen rushed to disperse the lightning coursing through them with the help of his earth attribute.

Celine and Wilbert then healed each one of them so they could stand up and avoid the next attack, luckily, while they were occupied, the next spell was directed at Saber and Lila who dodged with ease since it was just a nature spell that grew flowers on the area.

“That lightning spell was so powerful, how strong is our nephew!” said Trunk, the first to recover from the electric shock.

“I don’t know, and for a human, that’s even more surprising.” followed by Coralia, the two stood up and assisted Celine and Wilbert heal their comrades, the two having already known how to apply first aid -even if they do not know the word since they were just trained by Ken-

Immediately responded as how they were trained to, thanks to the many times Ken had recreated the situation in order for them to adjust accordingly, this was when it was just seven of them.

Let’s just say Ken’s a manager and a scenario adviser.

“We might need to hurry I feel a spell coming towards this direction.” said Allen, who dashed in front of Celine and Wilbert then dashed to another location again, Celine and Wilbert nodded understanding what Allen meant.

“Glen, please carry the princess while the rest of us try our best to heal the others.” said Celine, healing Granarados who is responding back and slowly attempted to stand up.

“Please be careful leader Granarados.” She said, Granarados nodded and fully stood up, vitality returning to his body through his call of the nature, Celine noticed green lights absorbing to his body that seemingly went and did the rest of the work to heal him.

Celine then immediately turned to Riyah who was unconscious and Princess Lang being carried by Glen, Celine went and healed Riyah as she knows that the Princess will be safe. Wilbert is now helping Icarus stand up.

“Quick! Dodge!” shouted Allen from afar. Celine, Wilbert, Glen, and Granarados heard the shout and immediately dodged the wind spell consisting of wind blades that rained down on their previous location.

Granarados, Glen, and Wilbert jumped to the sideways. Wilbert settled Icarus down to continue healing him. Icarus collected his bearings and was conscious of his surroundings, he remembered the wind blades that fell down before them and looked frantically for his sister.

“Where’s Riyah?!” he said.

“Relax, you’re sister’s fine, Celine’s taking care of her.” said Wilbert and pointed to Icarus’s back, where Celine and Riyah were. Riyah who had slowly stirred awake was being held by Celine to steady her balance, Icarus slumped his shoulders in relief and released a breath.

“There, I think you’re good to go.” said Wilbert and slowly pulled Icarus up. He then looked at Celine and the two nodded at each other. Celine released her hold on Riyah and jumped to Glen’s location together with Wilbert.

“Everyone, do your best to dodge the spells while me and Celine tend to Princess Lang.” said Wilbert, the rest nodded in confirmation and prepared to avoid any incoming spells.

The two got to work and started simultaneously healing Princess Lang up, the reason why Celine had Glen carry the Princess was because out of all the seven who got struck by the lightning, it as Princess Lang who suffered more of the impact as she was the first one struck by it.

And the two know that by being struck first by that lightning spell would sustain immense damage from the initial struck up to the electrocutes, they don’t know why but they remember that when Glen was struck by the same spell, he was unconscious for eight hours straight,

And was heaving with his body temperature going up. Ken woke up to fix the problem and told them to treat the victim of such a spell immediately or their conditions would worsen, he even warned them to not use such a spell.

Wonder what the expressions the two held while having such conversation. The two checked first the spell coursing through the Princess’s body and dispelled it before treating her condition.

The condition of the princess’s body was similar to that of common cold, and with her royal bloodline the symptoms were not severe so the two quickly healed the Princess up, but they would have to wait for her to wake up.

A consequence left by that lightning spell, that whomever was struck first shall sleep, and the duration of the sleep differs from person to person, the tougher their body and stronger their magic, the lesser the duration they have to sleep.

“Okay, Glen, just hold on to the Princess so that we can make sure that she is safe while sleeping.” said Celine, Glen nodded and the three jumped on opposite directions to avoid a fire spell that exploded the area.

Glen resituated the Princess in a piggy back ride and held the Princess’ hands under her legs to secure her to his back. Although this may be a bit too much of a position for her, if Glen refuses to secure her then his quick movements would either result in Princess Lang in a bad state or worse.

The group was doing a good job of avoiding the various spells and coping through the different effects the spell left in their wake.

Like frozen flowers, burned flowers, thick bushes, protruding pillars and many more, and at every other occasion, they would raise their barriers to defend against elements that they were strong against.

Wilbert conjured fire walls to counter tall nature spells, Celine would conjure earth barriers to redirect burst of winds from a spell, Allen summoned ice shields to defend against elemental arrows or knives, Glen would use his superb strength to jump upwards in a high altitude and land on a far location.

Saber and Lila dashed around and disappeared and appeared in smoke, While Riyah, Flin, and Icarus were running around to avoid the spells, the adults were comfortably dodging the spells by now as they were battle hardened individuals and had ease in avoiding simple attack patterns.

Everyone took breaks in awhile when needed and then moved to other locations to resume dodging.

“Has anyone ever asked why we are doing this anyway?” asked Riyah to no one in particular as she dodged an ice spear flying in her direction. Allen who heard her shrugged beside her. Riyah stared at him.

“We don’t know, we’re just doing it.” He replied and jumped to the side to avoid a fire rain.

“Then why not go away from this location to let all these spells die out.” She said repeating her point from earlier, back-flipped twice, avoiding earth spears. Allen pondered on her words.

“We can’t.” he said, sidestepped to the right as a fire surge passed through.

“Why?” asked Riyah, confusedly, and dashed to the left to avoid a big water ball.

“We’re trapped in a dome.” said Allen, Riyah’s face contorted more in confusion. Allen looked at her and said…

“You can go ahead and see for yourself.” he pointed at the top, Riyah followed his finger and looked at the sky but she saw nothing, she looked at him again in confusion.

“Go fly up.” said Allen, and both jumped backwards as a lightning spell with a fixed radius erupted to electrocute the area. Everyone had avoided the spell finely.

Riyah summoned her wings and flew just high up the tree line, she didn’t feel or notice anything different so she looked down at Allen in a questioning stare.

“Fly further up!” Allen shouted. Riyah pushed herself higher and about 250 feet high up into the air she collided with an invisible force because she didn’t expect there to be something that’d block her way, thus her speed had made her collide with the invisible barrier.

She shook her head to get rid of the dizziness and felt around the barrier. It is here, she thought. Whenever she would touch places of the barrier it would appear in the color of white, the property of the barrier that would condense as to show itself to the intruder or the trapped individuals. She looked back down to her friends and flew down.

She avoided three fireballs on her way before landing on the ground, retracting her wings.

“Do you believe me now?” said Allen who jumped towards her location, while dodging an earth spear. Right about now, the field looked deformed as the spells had ravaged the once serine looking place, except for where Ken is sleeping.

“Yes, but is there really no other way to stop this?” asked Riyah. Allen shook his head. Riyah sighed dejectedly.

“Isn’t this pointless, what’s there to gain just by dodging spells.” just as Riyah had said that, a bright light flashed atop Ken’s sleeping form, the group shielded their face with their hands to not get blinded by the burst of light.

When the light had subsided everyone looked up to see a magic circle devoid of runes and patterns, just two circles vertically placed where the bright light had occurred.

“Well, it’s about to get interesting.” said Allen, he positioned himself in a stance as if he was about to enter a fight, with his blade pointed at the center, the other four did the same as well, leaving the adults and the other three confused as to what they are doing.

Glen just widened his stance, for with the Princess on his back, what he could only do was to avoid the upcoming attacks.

“Ready yourselves, it’s about to start!” shouted Allen. His old group of friends responded in a yell to signify their approval, the rest just looked lost.

It was fifteen minutes after now, another fifteen to end Ken’s bad sleeping habit.

-Inside Ken’s subconscious fifteen minutes earlier-

“Oh, so this is what I had missed.” said Ken and read the contents of his healing spells.

[ Healing Spells.

Level

Grand Healing Magic: Restoration 1

Healing Magic: Rejuvenation 1

Healing Magic: Regeneration 1

Healing Magic: Heal 3

Passive:

1. Heal: if user is bleeding, it stops after an hour if out of combat.

2. Regen: if wounded, able to heal a portion of the damage after rest.

3. Manual Input: able to directly influence the spell’s effects to the user’s desire. ]

“A little more and this is going to become an actual game skills.” said White, thinking how absurd his host uses game settings into his spells.

“No worries, it’s not even like I’ll be able to read out my passives when conscious.” said Ken cheekily. If White has eyes right now, it would have rolled into the back of his head.

“And besides, the features are going to be very fun.” added Ken. I know my host has balanced both his good and bad qualities through whatever he did, but this, is a nightmare to his enemies and a blessing to his friends, White thought watching at Ken’s almost sinister look.

Ken swiped the page to the left after smiling to himself.

[ Sword Style/ Spells.

Level

Sword Style: Dance of a deathblade 2

Sword Style: Precision Strike 2

Passive:

1. Sharp: user’s weapons gain a certain amount of attack damage if near other weapons including weapon made spells of about 1% up to a cap of 50%.

2. Weakness: has 0.01% chance to find weakness of target.

3. Edge: has a chance to cause distortion through bleeding. ]

“Do I even have to say anything for this one?” asked White. Ken smiled at him unembarrassed or ashamed of his passive effects and swiped to the left.

[ Momentum Spells.

Level

Momentum Magic: Flight 3

Momentum Magic: Guided Object 2

Passive:

1. Increase: continuous movement on the same direction increase movement speed up to a cap of 30%.

2. Flight: flying spells or means are easy to use.

3. Enchant: enchantments gives a 10% burst of movement speed for 1 second. ]

“Do you really wish to be some kind of character of a game.” said White, sketchy on the effects of the ‘enchant’ passive.

“Of course, you realized that just now?” replied Ken.

“Nevermind.” said White. Ken shrugged and swiped to the next page.

[ Memory Spells.

Level

Memory Magic: Shared Moment 2

Memory Magic: Practical Application 1

Passive:

1. Picky Choice: memory spells are only applicable to people deemed as friends, companions, or close to the user.

2. Adaptive Memories: the memory shared is digested in a fast pace.

3. Blank Slate: memories are of distinct feature, illegal use of memories by the user causes memory loss. ]

“At least there’s something that will hold you back.” said White.

“Oh, the last one? Hmmm… Fair enough.” said and swiped again. Look at this guys, despite being all this he calls that setback fair? White thought.

“You know you’re thoughts or clearly your mood is decipherable for me even here you know.” said Ken.

“I do, and I know that it makes no difference but talking to myself helps when you have a clearly absurd one.” replied White, indicating Ken’s trail of thought.

“Ahaha, peace.” said Ken holding out a peace sign, he swiped to the left.

[ Protection Spells.

Level

Protection Magic: Mix Barriers 1

Protection Magic: Barrier 3

Passive:

1. Shields : any type of shielding spell casted on the user except his own spell is doubled.

2. Defenses: 0.01% is added to defense for every rise in the attribute strength.

3. Cap: if the user holds ‘shields’, defenses are added by 50% of total defense of the shield. ]

“Exactly when do you use shields?” asked White.

“I don’t know maybe the time will come?” replied Ken, White was quiet for a moment pondering, sensing his friends shift in mood Ken scratched the back of his neck sheepishly and made a peace sign, then swiped the page again.

He’s made that peace sign again, thought White, confused as to how he should feel, perplexed or ridiculous.

[ Enchant Spells.

Level

Blessing of Mother Nature: Nature’s shields 2

Blessing of Beastial Instincts: Focused Senses of the Wilds 2

Blessing of Sharpened Process: Arcane Assist 2

Enchant Magic: Multiple Copies 2

Enchant Magic: Haste 2

Passive:

1. Reinforce: enchantments doubles the duration of any buff or debuff if the target is already enchanted.

2. Add: additional enchantments do not hinder each other’s effects.

3. Manual Input: able to directly influence the spell’s effects to the user’s desire. ]

“Surprisingly the first three spells doesn’t start with your iconic ‘Enchant -or any other element- Magic’ phrase.” remarked White.

“Yeah and I don’t know why.” said Ken, suddenly drifting into thought as his face reminds White of someone craving for food, but a serious one.

“I think we have checked all of the spells I have, let me check up on the other tabs. Open Talent Tree Tab, or more like recheck.” said Ken, he dragged window with an outline of a tree with five leaves in front of him, and he touched each leaf for the description and the names to show up.

[ Talent Tree.

1. Manipulation Intellect: use whatever information to User’s advantage.

2. Flash Reflex: able to respond to stimulus in nanoseconds.

3. Cultivation: allows increase in both magical and physical strength/ power.

4. Adaptation: ???

5. Boundary: ??? ]

“I’m still unable to access description about my other two talents? Why?” Ken looked at White at his side.

“I don’t know either, must be something with the update I made, and with all the different and useful information stored in your memories of your past life which is enormous,

It will be hard on pinpointing which type of information I used for you to not see the description of your other two talents.” replied White.

“Hmm (holds his chin with his right hand), I do have many experiences when it comes to designing systems, nah, I shall not dwell on this any longer, Open Concept Window.” another window opened beside the talent tree window, the other windows accessed by Ken are still open.

[ Concept.

Concept: concept of contained blackhole.

Concept: concept of revealed mana pool.

Concept: concept of mana recognition.

Concept: concept of concealed presence.

Concept: concept of enhancing.

Concept: concept of cultivation.

Concept: concept of teaching.

Concept: concept of Buff or Debuff.

Note: other types of concept are available to be added to the roster. ]

“Ooooh, nice feature.” said Ken.

“Ugh, this was what I was afraid of, you’re oh so flexible ability.” White remarked.

“Yeah, you’re right, but isn’t there no need to worry?” said Ken, smiling at White’s direction.

“I suppose, Yes.” replied White. Ken proceeded to arrange the four windows opened in a big square where all four windows are situated, and admired his handy work.

“I’m so good.” said Ken.

“Don’t get all prided up of this now Ken.” replied White warningly.

“Yes master.” said Ken jokingly, but still held truth in his words.

“Aren’t you not gonna open the other four windows?” asked White. Ken looked at him and back at the four windows.

“Nahh, this would suffice for now, besides opening the quest, notification, customization, and map windows, will just clump up my view.” replied Ken.

“Seriously?” said White, frustratedly. “Ugh why do I even bother. Wait won’t you at the very least view the other quests or missions added?”

“There are too many missions to even count, and they provide small mastery points. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, I want to create a page of the regression of mastery points, can you do that?” asked Ken.

“I can, but I won’t make another window, let’s go with another page, I’ll put it on the last slide of the skills/ spells window.” replied White. The skills window showing the spells of enchant, swiped to the left to reveal a blank page that is slowly filled with words and numbers.

{ Mastery Progression.

1 – Level 1 (1 pt.)

200 – Level 2 (40 pts.)

600 – Level 3 (32 pts.)

1200 – Level 4 (20 pts.)

2500 – Level 5 (20 pts.)

5500 – Level 6 (20 pts.)

Note:

– numbers indicated first are the numbers needed to level up a skill, numbersinside the parentheses are the points given for every successful execution of the same spell ten times.

– skill mission points are directly incorporated to a skill of the corresponding skill mission, additional mission points that do not correspond to any type of skill are free to be used by the user as they wishes. }

“There, how’s that?” Ken read the contents of the note for the second time and nodded his head at White’s notes.

“This is good, and now I understand why it was so hard to level up all the spells and skills, but I don’t have any qualms, I just need to exert more effort, and more effort, means more training.” Ken smiled to himself while White sighed inwardly at Ken’s eagerness to train.

-Fifteen minutes after-

“Have I said that we need to carry Ken back to camp?” Flin who was beside him nodded.

“Yeah, why?” Flin asked treading the flowers carefully as to not trample on them and avoided a lightning bolt by jumping to the side, remembering how right as everyone was about to fall asleep, Allen had given out instructions what to do once this phenomenon was over.

“Just wanted to make sure I had mentioned that earlier.” said Allen. Flin raised his right brow in question, he shook his head and proceeded to mind his own business.

“Quick question, how do we carry Ken exactly?” asked Flin to Allen in the midst of dodging and the chaos around them.

Allen drifted into thought while dodging spells, either by back-flipping, side-stepping, cart-wheeling and other all kinds of evasive means, nah just kidding, Allen just avoided one spell before coming to a conclusion.

“We’ll have to ask him.” said Allen pointing at the sleeping form, now Flin’s even more confused. What if we don’t have to carry him anymore? Flin thought.

——-