The Arcane Emperor-Chapter 117: Family Gathering

Chapter 117: Family Gathering

They had all sat down to eat together: Rainer, Sarah, Sophia, Kara, and Luna at one table, Amer, Furtak, Frederick, and Elelaria at another.

Lilia was playing with Tiamat over in the corner of the room while both his shadowy friend and Gunthar were still out hunting. Francis was on Earth, likely waiting to regenerate enough to bring back his extended family. Though he’d be busy grabbing a few loyal Mages from the ambient mana planet as well; such a Mana-filled planet was far too good to let go of, especially with such a force already existing.

Rainer smiled at Sarah and his mom talking to one another. His sister was in reality translating for Kara though the subject of their conversation… did Kara actually enjoy soap operas? At least it gave them an easy way to talk.

He looked over at his grandfather, a bit surprised at the enjoyment he was finding in discussing Enchanter’s Guild business with Elelaria. Life had truly dealt the ancient mage an unfair hand that forced him to be alone for so much of his life when clearly the idea of running an organization brought him such joy. He had thought Ele might be a bit worried about her role, but it seemed to be the opposite, as if she was quite glad to have someone actually interested in the running of the Guild, while being grossly powerful and technically above her.

Apparently their meeting with the Flameborne had gone well. And Elelaria took several orders for enchanted items in exchange for enchantment knowledge and a chance to inspect copies of the originals.

“Rainer!” his grandpa yelled over to him, “I need to speak with you, and bring that Fairy of yours with you.”

Rainer just chuckled and led Luna over to their table; the other three women seemed to be in their own world so it was probably for the best. Luna never really cared for television and for some odd reason his mom was sending weird looks towards his Fairy.

Frederick paused for a moment, the conversation lulling, and then pointed at Ele.

“Why is she so weak?”

“W-what?” Ele asked confused.

“Not sure how to answer that,” Rainer replied.

“I mean why haven’t you made her strong? She‘s trustworthy, no?” It may have been rude, but he’d never leave such an important cog of the wheel unchecked. Slipping into the surface of her mind unnoticed and unharming was beyond easy given their differences in strength and her lack of resistance. He couldn’t see much this way, but he saw enough to know she had no motivations that would lead to her betraying them. Expecting true loyalty would of course be silly.

“You could have at least helped her reach the second tier with how long you’ve been around her. It’s not good to have key members so weak to any threat. Most importantly, her thought process will be mired by weakness no matter how strong those around her are. Can you honestly say you’d abandon her as a hostage, you are too moral for that.”

Rainer couldn’t disagree.

“If you wish to be lax as a leader you must have good enough subordinates. She is certainly talented at management and politics, along with her perverse motivations in attaining authority, but she needs tangible power in such a world alongside that.

“No matter. We can take her with us when we are leveling our classes with your mom’s family. I’m sure that evil old man that heads Sophia’s side of the family would be fine with helping implant some power in her at your request. He’ll probably bend over backwards to befriend you, so be careful. Do not for a moment let that snake obtain a place in your heart. Consider him only a tool to be used as he will do the same to you.”

“Are you sure we should be bringing someone like that here?”

Frederick grumbled to himself before answering, “Despite his personality, he values bloodlines. He wouldn’t do anything to harm or get on the bad side of the current boon and future potential of his family, meaning you. Not to mention he wouldn’t dare so long as I’m alive. Besides, the last few decades saw all his future goals and ambitions washed away, and he mellowed out a decent amount as he came to accept his death. Without him as the focal point, others would swoop in for benefits and research. His death meant an end to it all as he lacked a successor due to several accidents.”

Ele looked between the two of them, wondering what was going on. How did a discussion on economics lead to discussing her weakness? She knew she was weak. But she was very untalented when considering Moon Elves, what could she do? And implant power in her…

“Who’ll deal with the rest of the guild meetings?” There was not only guildmasters, but numerous merchants and enchanters had requested meetings. Unlike the Mages who had various means of rapid travel over an ocean, they lacked the same capacity, perhaps with the exception of the Sea and Wolf King, which meant only their representatives were here. Everything had to go through Ele at this stage, which meant a lot of work for her to do.

“You-”

“Not a chance,” Rainer interrupted his grandfather. He just didn’t see these people as important as he used to. While there was a chance several of them could reach the 3rd Tier, Rainer had people on his side, himself included, who could approach that. Though he didn’t think he’d be taking the Trial anytime soon. Unlike others, because of his [Archon] class bonus for learning skills, and therefore titles, he had plenty of rare classes he could still get useful points from as opposed to being focused in one direction and often only having at best one or two truly rare classes.

His grandfather scratched his head awkwardly before speaking again, “I can always just send an Avatar to level with the group and then we can take her later. It isn’t as if we’ll be finishing up leveling any time soon. Does that work with Avatars?”

“Works for mine.”

Frederick snorted at that. “I’m afraid I lack the ability to create something on that level. But we’ll see how it goes.”

“Hello,” Luna chirped, trading glances with his grandfather during the silence.

Frederick chuckled, “I see you are strong at least.” He wouldn’t do something as rude as use mind magic on his grandson’s companion, but it was easy to see the absurd flame inside her even if, in general, she didn’t seem particularly imposing.

“Luna is quite good at burning things.”

“I can see that.”

Rainer blinked rapidly as he listened to their weird conversation. Luna would certainly be hard to deal with having only magic at your disposal. But how did he know that? Could he sense her Flame?

“Why does Rainer’s mom look at me so funny?”

“Ah, Francis tricked her. She thinks you are much more mature than Rainer due to your age and are perhaps taking advantage of him,” Frederick had reasoned that a separate race would have different age standards. And that Francis was being intentionally vague about Luna in his stories. Luna was also technically responsible for much of the early danger Rainer faced, which was another point against her. Where as the similar point to Kara bringing danger made her tragic, it made Luna seem calculating.

But it wasn’t hard to see even without a peek into her mind how utterly enamoured she was with Rainer, so it was now most surely a joke from Francis. Especially since Francis learned of Sophia's empathic abilities, he’d know no lasting damage would be done the moment the two even shook hands.

He also up-played any danger rather than downplaying it like any proper son would do when he told stories to his mom. His goal in making future problems for Rainer was clear and promised to be entertaining the next time Rainer was involved in something dangerous.

“Oh… should I play into it?” Luna thought that was pretty normal for this family. Kara was going about it all wrong by acting overly friendly. Of the weird TV-shows Kara watched - Luna never understood the appeal of it - she knew Kara hated soap operas due to all the infidelity, so talking so positively about them was a complete farce.

Plus, Rainer was the one taking advantage of Luna all the time. It was only fair to trouble him.

“That would be proper. But it’ll be over the moment she touches you and feels how much you love Rainer. Her empathy magic is not something she can easily control.”

Luna nodded happily, her posture suddenly shifting and a serene look covering her face.

Rainer got a flash-back to how Yulia looked, and shook his head as he headed back to his own table, his grandfather seemingly done with the conversation as he went back discussing the items sold during the auction in relation to this world’s economy.

“The Spatial Rings didn’t sell as well as I would have assumed, perhaps their small size was too much and that they’d lose prestige the moment such things could be sold to the world again, so that factor was gone,” Ele spoke.

“Oh, did you make them?” Frederick asked, looking at the Devil next to him. He glanced over to the Goblin when the Devil made a weird expression. Frederick couldn’t wait to meet all the races of this world… and their females. At his age, uniqueness became more important than raw attractiveness and he was sure the women of these two races would be very unique in his eyes.

“I am only a beginner, they were made by your grandson,” the Devil said as if the words had to be forced out of him. He didn’t bother to explain he had joined the Guild at almost the same time Frederick came to this world.

“He what?!”

Rainer looked back at his grandfather’s yell. Who then only coughed awkwardly as he pretended it never happened. He knew his grandfather was considered a grandmaster enchanter, so the shock that his 20-year-old grandson could do something he couldn’t must have hurt.

He could already tell, looking at his grandfather, that his Aura wasn’t Arcane-based. The odds of creating a skill like [Arcane Sight], and improving further were quite low, explaining why even after so long he couldn’t create a Spatial bag, one of the ‘simpler’ spatial items of Earth and a well-kept secret of a clan of enchanters.

“See, Francis could have prepared him for that. Being a Nvos is about messing with people,” Luna said, partially to him, partially to herself.

Rainer only nodded, looking forward to eventually see her talk with his mother, half-dreading half-excited for whatever resulted of it. Though her Nvos comment reminded him he still hadn’t asked Luna to marry him. He’d find the right time.

Arturius frowned as he took in his new surroundings. In the background, Rainer and Sarah greeted family they’d never met awkwardly.

The idea of world-traveling had always brought him a child-like excitement, even as he passed a millennia of age, but the experience itself proved quite bland. A flash of darkness and there he was. Though that blade…

A shiver passed through him. Were his years of power consolidation and training useless to defend against an attack of a 20-year-old? How could he possibly deal with both that silent teleport and that blade? One or the other would have allowed him to at least put up a struggle, but combined… Had they not been related, he would have felt far more depressed. Instead he was elated.

He glanced at the 5 members of his family that came as the first batch. A total of 11 of them would be heading here eventually. A combination of low fertility - even when aided by nature magic - married out children, death from magical experiments, and different branches leaving home meant their clan was quite small.

He looked over to his great-great-grandson, or he supposed a ‘clone’ of him. Just what was that frightening energy inside him?

“Art,” Frederick said tersely, the man coming up to ‘greet’ him.

The shriveled old man only gave a mocking smile in return. He never liked this old Arcane thing hiding behind the youth of magic. It was most certainly not envy and anger that he would never share his secrets for it.

“Rick,” he responded, knowing how much the nickname annoyed him.

Art’s eyes drifted towards his latest experiments, how they had changed so abruptly… He coughed painfully when he tried to use his mind to see deeper. That damn Fredrick… it was just a harmless look. How did he improve so much since last time… Ah… the system...

[Spell Gained: Mental Probe lvl 8/10]

[Skill Gained: Mind Manipulation lvl 8/10]

[Skill Gained: Soul Manipulation lvl 6/10]

He rolled his eyes at Frederick’s smug look. How unfair was it for someone with no formal training to surpass him in Mind Magic to such a degree? And not only that, but Rainer had seemed to notice his light skimming but wasn’t sure what it was. Frederick had saved him some face it seemed, likely unintentionally.

The tiny peek of what he got from Rainer showed trying to enter his mind uninvited was all but a death sentence. Was it the influence of this ‘system’ that made his Soul so ludicrously powerful? If the system could increase energy pools, then it certainly strengthened the Soul, but that didn’t come even close to explaining this kind of strength and quality of Soul.

The explanation of it bothered him quite a bit. Sophia’s younger sister often played such things ever since her talent was found lacking and she was free from family responsibilities. The declining of their clan meant he had no reason to push for a marriage deal for her either. That would only help whatever clan she married into consume them after he died.

Worlds that ran off of similar principles seemed too unbelievable. Perhaps a system-less world was even less believable to these people who were born here.

When he had spent nearly all his clan’s resources to implant two powerful seeds of life in Sophia to let her quickly have children without defect - her raw talent for all three trees of magic of their clan had surprised them all - he had expected greatness when merged with the Nvos line. Mage talents rarely skipped generations after all.

Instead… he got two facsimiles of greatness. One with a great talent towards Arcane and Runes, but a lack of anything towards Mana. Had Frederick not pushed so hard beyond reason, the boy never could have become a Mage. And he was still sure that Frederick was the one who stole the Pure Seed of Ether from him and then likely gave it to Rainer. He supposed he could let it go given the current end result.

And then there was the girl. A powerful sign of Mana had descended at her birth, and yet she had absolutely no talent for anything other than Mana, including using it to cast Magic. She was like the most powerful and efficient battery on Earth that couldn’t work with any electronic device.

It was as if the world mocked his generations and generations of genetic effort. Producing two children that were both unrivaled in talent and yet technically useless. He had no more seeds of life, so the chances of either them producing children while Art was still alive was quite low and those may even be worse off.

But it seemed fate had bigger things planned for them. He had never enjoyed being proven wrong so much. One traveled worlds and the other stole Mana and ripped apart powerful Mages with ease. No matter what their relationship, they carried his blood. However distant, they represented the path of his clan was not wrong. It was unfortunate they were not truly his and it would be impossible to get them to have a child together due to their modern beliefs.

And it seemed his twilight of life would be lasting a bit longer for him. 200 years of life for passing a measly Trial…

“Can we go level now?” Sophia’s younger sister asked excitedly, breaking the awkward mood as the two sisters reunited after decades of separation.

Art glanced over to the side only for his crinkled eyes to widen. Was that a Dragon? Though the sheer pressure he felt when Francis looking over to him, got rid of any ideas about it - not that he would have risked his life angering his family’s new benefactor in any case. What had Frederick told this clone about him? And why did the world just flash grey with no one else seeming to notice it?

Rainer glanced around the group of 17 new classers, 4 being from the Mana-filled world and the rest being his family. Luna had helped them all choose classes they wanted, as many had ended up with strong, but non-combative classes they had no interest in.

[Human, Female, Sun Mage lvl 1]

[Title: None]

Despite the simple ‘mage’ title, his mother’s class had a 100% bonus and wasn’t to be underestimated.

[Human, Male, Arcanium Mage lvl 1]

[Title: Patchwork]

He had talk with his grandfather, and found out while he didn’t have anything matching [Arcanist], [Arcanium Mage] granted a high level of efficiency and power when casting magic and using the Arcanium to enhance it. It also had a similar skill-gaining bonus as [Arcanist] but only for skills related to the Arcanium.

Rainer didn’t pay much attention to everyone else’s classes, which were just various Fire magic related classes - though a few had Nature magic… he hadn’t been aware of a such thing - or high-level versions of other elements from the guests from the Mana-filled world.

Apparently in the most common spoken language, his translation skill said their planet was also named Earth. In fairness, it was likely a wide-spread thing for a planet’s name to be related to the word ‘ground’ or ‘soil’.

He Void-walked everyone not far from Gunthar’s cave, not wanting to surprise his family with the Undead. Ignoring the possible dangerous reactions, he also didn’t want anyone to hurt Gunthar’s feelings with a poor reaction. Just telling them his friend was an Undead didn’t prepare someone for dealing with a sentient, talking skeleton.

He brought them here partly because he wanted his mother and grandfather to meet Gunthar, but also because no one took him seriously when he explained how dangerous some monsters could be. The number of times he had to rescue Gunthar, and wasn’t even able to kill the monster either, was staggering. While Gunthar was also not acting careful, it still showed the danger here.

He grinned as he walked forward, everyone else falling behind. A true base of power on this world wasn’t far away. Even if his goals laid far behind that. The power of a Divine Avatar made him feel more than just that the experts of this world were inconsequential, it made him feel this world itself was too small.

Would it be an true academy of magic if it only existed on a single planet?