Daffodil was a very steampunk-styled city.
All the buildings were made of metal, and it had a giant wall around it. Various guards stood outside on the path that led to it, and they held guns forged from pipes and other scrap. The city constantly had steam flowing from it, and there was a massive castle of junk placed directly into the wall.
What truly stood out about the city, however, was the railroad that went through it. This caused the entire city to be perfectly split in half, including the castle and wall, as three sets of train tracks ran perfectly along the streets.
Daffodil mainly existed to serve as a manufacturing city. It worked closely with the military force of the king and created guns, swords, armor, and even mech suits for them to use. It prided itself on not having an Arcane Knight guild base near it, though it was also close enough to Rose and the ocean that the Shining Sentinels or the Mourning Stars guild could get involved if the need arose.
Sieg had been to the city before, though he never explored it. The first time he came here, he had been on an escort mission, and he, along with Bruno and Ash, had taken Farkiss here. It was hard to believe that merchant had actually been a Lung.
Oh, how far he had come. He rubbed the back of his head, getting a strange headache as he thought back to that event. Now that he was thinking about it, he seemed to be getting headaches a lot lately. A shame he couldn't go see a doctor.
"So, how exactly do we get in?" Ken questioned.
The three of them stood within the forest that was directly outside of the city, which was currently being drenched by the heavy storm that hung above. They were still quite far from the gates, using their distance as a way to study the movement of the guards.
There were way more soldiers than usual, and every place that could be accessed had patrols, including the top of the walls.
They couldn't go through the gates, the railroads, or above it. Getting inside would be hard, and they'd most likely get recognized.
"Sieg, do you know where the prison is?" Ragna questioned.
Sieg shook his head and winced when the movement caused his skull to pound. He managed to fight through the pain and answered. "Sorry, no. I never actually spent a ton of time in this place."
"Really? That's a shame." Ragna sighed. "That means we'll have to look for it. This city looks so odd, I can barely tell what's what. Ken is well known, and I draw a lot of attention. That means you'll likely have to enter through the gates on your own. You can probably pass yourself off as a normal person."
Sieg snorted and pointed a thumb at himself. "Sorry, that won't work. I'd stand out the most."
"What do you mean?"
"My mask will draw attention, and it's all over my wanted posters," Sieg explained. Also, with how bad his head was hurting, he knew for a fact he was pale-faced, sweating, and on the verge of vomiting.
"So? Just take it off?" Ken rolled her eyes.
"And do you remember what I look like?" Sieg folded his arms. "If my face is seen, people will be all over me. The curse of beauty makes my aura attract people to me, whether I like it or not. They even have to be looking at my face fully. The mask being off will be enough, and it won't be suppressed." Even in a state like he was in, people would still want to bang him. Truly, his curse sucked.
"Oh yeah." Ken nodded and hummed. "That's true. You always get me all hot and bothered whenever you take it off."
"I did not need to know that."
"Well, shit." Ken punched a tree, denting the wood. "So all three of us will be noticed, and we can't simply go in or above. What do we do? Just storm the place and blow shit up till we find the guy?"
"No." Sieg hummed and motioned toward the city with his hand. "Since all three of us are known about and any of us could get spotted, I think we just bite the bullet, and we all enter. If one person went in and got caught, the other two would have to break in anyway to save them. I think if we wear cloaks or something, we can at least blend in and try not to gain too much attention once we are in the city."
"It's getting into the city that seems to be the hard part." Ragna rubbed his chin. "I could throw us in, but the guys on the wall would notice. I could use Greenie to pretend to be a part of a train, but that would catch the guards at the rails off. We could go through the front gate, but with how many guards there are, security would definitely ask who we are. They're likely on high alert since beings like Adam or the Lord of Threads are running around."
"Great," Ken said sarcastically. "So those bastards are still causing issues for us even when they're not here."
"Yep."
Sieg glanced at the city, deep in thought, but then suddenly his eyes lit up. "Wait. I got it."
"Got what?"
"How to get in."
"Well? Are you going to share that method?"
Sieg pointed to the guards. "Can't go above, can't go through, can't come in from the sides; that leaves just one method left."
Ragna's eyes lit up, and he grabbed his fake leg, pulling it off. Greenie glowed and then went from being a prosthetic limb to being a shovel. "We go under!"
After they made that announcement, they moved closer to the city. They still remained out of sight, using hills and terrain to stay away from the view of the guards. Once they got close enough, they began to dig.
Ragan used Greenie, Sieg used his spear, and Ken fused with Yujin, allowing her to use her claws. She made the fastest progress and was like a dog, rapidly pawing at the ground and ripping it up as if she was going to bury a bone.
They couldn't use a lot of mana since doing so would alert the guards, so the process took them a lot longer than it normally had. Still, even with only a tiny bit of mana, their raw strength and desire to get the job done were so great that all three of them created a massive hole. Thanks to Greenie, they also didn't have to worry about the dirt piling up since the mimic would grow a mouth and suck it all up.
They did this for nearly twenty-two hours. That was how long it took until they finally made some progress.
The ground below them cracked, and Ken was the first to fall. Dirt and stone collapsed around her as the floor gave out, and she let out a loud yelp, falling quite a bit before her back crashed down onto the sandy floor.
She groaned and turned herself over. Yujin separated from her and rapidly used a healing spell. "Are you okay, Lord Yuan?"
"I'm fine." Ken scratched under the spirit's chin and smirked. "I've been hit by way worse." Then she looked around and studied where she had landed. As she did that, Sieg and Ragna both remained up. They had slammed their digging tools into the wall and were hanging from the downward tunnel, also examining the place Ken had fallen into.
She was in a miniature gladiator-like arena. The ground was made of sand, and it looped around in a circle. There was a series of stone walls around her along with gates to cages that were wide open. Above her was a glass dome, which had been shattered, and past that was a massive stone room with various chairs and thrones scattered around.
The entire place was underground and stretched out for quite a while. It must have taken up a large portion beneath the city. Further up, directly above the shattered glass dome, was the tunnel they had created. Sieg finally dropped from it and landed in front of Ken.
Like her, he looked around the arena. It was familiar. Memories of his time here flashed through his mind, and he recalled how he, Bruno, and Ash had teamed up and battled tons of monsters.
"I had a feeling this place would be here." Sieg grinned before the pounding in his head made his smile fade.
"You've been here before?" Ken stood up and dusted herself off. "Where are we?"
"I don't know the exact details, but I know it's beneath the city," Sieg explained massaging the side of his head once again. "I was once drugged and taken here. This place serves more or less as a betting arena. The rich would come here and make bets on how long they thought someone could battle the monsters they trapped."
"Something like that actually exists?" Ragna finally dropped down and connected Greenie back to his kneecap, standing on two legs once more. "I always thought that was some cliché plot. You're telling me the rich actually did that?"
"The rich of this place did," Sieg stated, shuddering a bit. "They were all psychotic and got off to death and other gross stuff. Luckily, I was saved by an Arcane Knight who happened to be nearby. He's actually the same guy who recruited me."
"Lucky you." Ken continued petting Yujin and grunted softly. "So, now that we're here, what do we do?"
"Well, we can probably find a way back up," Sieg explained. "I bet there are stairs or something that will lead us through a building. We can make it out onto the street, and then from there all we need to do is look around and try to figure out where the prison is!"
"Sounds easy enough." Ken nodded. "I guess you being a rich guy's plaything wasn't so bad after all! It really worked out!"
"Don't phase it like that…"
Using a bit of mana, they jumped through the shattered dome and made their way out of the arena. Above it was a massive stone platform where all the rich people had sat, and further up was the throne Biggie had been in.
There was a set of stairs near the back that led up. Since he had been knocked out, he really didn't know where the stairs went. After all, the Knight who saved him had simply busted a hole through the roof and came down to arrest everyone.
That hole was now gone and had been mended, but everything else was still destroyed. It looked the way it did when he first fought in it. He could still recall the shock on everyone's faces when his lightning arrow plunged into the dome and shattered it.
"I wonder why they bothered to fix the roof but not block this area off?" Sieg muttered. "There aren't any guards either."
Truth be told, he had expected that their coming down here would alert the guards, but the place was empty. His plan had been to knock the guards out as soon as he could and stop them from radioing the police or military. If that failed, then he, Ragna, and Ken would simply go nuts and start rampaging until they found what they were looking for, but it seemed as if that was unnecessary.
For once, lady luck was on their side.
"How odd?"
"Let's not look a gift horse in the mouth!" Ken declared. "Come on!" And with that, they began to head up a flight of stairs.
None of them even noticed that, behind them in the arena, the sand slightly twisted and an eyeball formed from the ground.
"Hehehe. It seems I've caught quite the interesting prey."
Someone had spotted them after all.
***
So much had happened to her in such a short amount of time. Susie was starting to wonder if she was cursed. After all, strange event after strange event seemed to occur.
First, her mother and she got stuck in a terrible landslide that nearly killed them. She still didn't know how she survived that, and since it happened when she was a kid, she always pictured a dragon saving her. Of course that was nothing more than a childish dream.
After that, her mother died. For some reason, her mother was born with an unstable core. It was something no one noticed until it was too late, and it killed her. She had watched her own mom burn away and become nothing more than ash.
Then she got that same fate. Her core had shattered, and her fire began to eat her own body. This event was followed by her father being killed and her great enemy, Davi Hawker, declaring that he was the one who did it. Also, her best friend was now a mutant and only had a little longer to live.
She trained a bit, but her body simply couldn't keep up with it, and the stress on her core was too much. Just when she thought she'd change again, Davi shows back up, kicks her ass, teaches her how to use her golden core, which she apparently has, forces his weird witch-girl fetish onto her, and then gets her locked up.
Oh yeah, and then her town got blown up by a freaking nuke; most of the people she knew died, and a group wants her dead because she has apparently altered their stupid fanfic! Then she gets forced to join the Phoenix Flight guild, gets her ass kicked for a full month by the Captain, gets shoved in a dungeon, ends up having a huge fight with some stupid horse guy, loses several of the people she was starting to like, and then she's expected to go back to living a normal life as if nothing's wrong!
Yep. She was one hundred percent cursed.
Susie massaged her head and squashed down the headache that was starting to form. "How are you feeling?" She reached out and gripped Hannah's hand.
The two of them were in the Oleander hospital. Most of the girls who had mutated had been placed there and couldn't leave since their mutations had progressed in ways that made normal living difficult.
Hannah had recently gained snake-like fangs, and they were constantly producing a small amount of venom. She hadn't yet gained the venom resistance or immunity, however, and so she was effectively poisoning herself. The use of her lower legs was completely gone, and most of her sight had also faded.
Despite the pain she was in, Hannah smiled and squeezed Susie's hand. "I'm better now that you're here."
"Oh, stopppp. You'll make me blush." Susie giggled before her look grew serious. "How far along do you think you are?"
"Some scales are growing in, and my toes are starting to fall off," Hannah said bitterly. "The doctors say my sight and legs will return once my body gains venom immunity, but that just means I'm one step closer to becoming a monster. Soon my legs will fuse into a single tail, my arms will fold in, my neck will stretch, and I'll be a snake." She let out a fake laugh and shook her head. "Haru, that's such a shitty way to go."
"I'm sorry." Susie squeezed her friend's hand harder. "I'm so sorry…"
"It's fine," Hannah lied. "I mean, so far I have it better than some of the others. Did you hear what happened to Clair? Her mutation caused her to become cold-blooded, but she didn't gain the ability to absorb heat. She froze to death in the middle of the night."
"That's awful."
"Being a mutant sucks. As it turns out, there's a whole luck factor involved. You have to get lucky that the wrong parts don't change first. I'm a little jealous of that Sieg guy or that Falco who are in your guild. They both got good mutations. Well, I guess there aren't any good mutations… They share the same fate I'll have. We're going to become monsters, then we'll be killed, harvested for parts, and devoured…"
"I'm not going to let that happen to you," Susie stated, shaking her head. "Hannah, I promise I will find a way to save you."
No one had found a way to solve magical mutation.
Not even the guy who broke all the rules of mana, Davi Hawker, could do it.
Hannah gave a weaker smile. "I'm glad you're in a guild. It must be awesome being a Knight."
"Well, I'm not exactly in it." Susie awkwardly scratched at her cheek and laughed. "I mean, I never took the Knight exam, and I'm not recognized as a Knight. More like they're babysitting me."
"Oh. That's true, I guess. You're going to take the test, though, right? It'll be here in a few more months."
Susie opened her mouth and was about to answer, but she suddenly stopped. Would she take the test?
Being a Knight had been her father's dream. Her dad always talked about it, and he had taken the test so many times but failed. Eventually, he gave up and just settled for being a guard and told her it would be up to her to become a Knight. She and Hannah both discussed it, and they always dreamed of it. It was basically every child's dream, but…
The flashes of the Pantheon guild went through her mind. Was being an Arcane Knight really something she wanted to do with her life? They didn't seem as great as they were hyped up. In fact, they didn't even seem that strong. It was weird. Something just felt off.
"Susie?"
Susie shook her head and forced a smile. "I'll consider it, but only if you take the test with me."
Hannah weakly chuckled. "Yeah. Sure thing."
They chatted for a bit longer, mostly just catching up and pretending that everything was fine despite the fact it clearly wasn't. Once that was done, she stepped out of the hospital room and was surprised to see someone waiting for her.
"About time." Alice Ward blew on a pipe and exhaled a wave of smoke. "I was starting to think you and the little lady in there were going to get down to business with how long it was taking."
Susie frowned at the crude woman and took a cautious step back. This lady before her had a familiar face. She had been one of the people who was at Daisy when it was attacked by the Lord of Threads. The woman had also been one of the people who allowed Daisy to move into Oleander, which was something she appreciated, but that didn't mean she would simply trust this person so easily.
"What do you want?"
"Oh, so hostile." Alice motioned with her hand and fanned it in the direction of Susie. "Relax. I just have a simple favor to ask of you. You do kind of owe me since I helped your people out, right?"
"... What do you want?" Susie asked again.
Alice rolled her eyes. "Since the Phoenix Flight guild is tied up, I need someone else to run an errand for me. You're decently strong and aren't technically part of their guild, so you're not on house arrest like they are. That means you'll be perfect for what I got. I'm willing to pay also."
"Sorry, but I'm not interested-"
"Two thousand Bells."
"When do we start, boss?"
Alice laughed and then clicked her tongue. "Good. You got the right mindset. First, though, there's a test you need to take."
"A test?" Susie asked, puzzled.
Alice smiled. "How old am I?"