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"I did," Ike replied quietly.

"Damn."

The man sat at the window. He gazed down at the wreckage of his town, his eyes dark. Rather than the shopkeep\'s outfit, he wore dark robes like the ones he\'d worn in the puppet show. As the two of them stepped inside, he looked up. "We meet again.\'

"Indeed we do," Ike replied, on guard.

"Hey, why\'d you trap us here for so long? We hate Llewyn, too," Wisp said.

He raised his brows. "Do you only say so because you saw my puppet show?"

"First off, you never said Llewyn\'s name, so clearly we know him from outside that show. Secondly…" Wisp trailed off.

"Secondly," Ike said, and drew Rosamund\'s head out of his bag. "We\'ve already defeated his puppets many times over. We\'re no friends of his. But you didn\'t trap us here because you thought we knew Llewyn, or liked him. You trapped us for some other reason." After all, when he met us in the town, he didn\'t ask us anything about puppets or Llewyn. He simply decided to trap us.

The man sighed. "I thought I might entrap you two and absorb your mana to empower my formation. It takes a lot of mana to keep the town running. The Wizard\'s Tower is a power-hungry spell. But instead…" He gestured at the barren landscape.

"What did you expect? You trapped us, "Ike pointed out.

He chuckled darkly. "I hoped you might give up, and empower my formation."

"Oh. No thanks," Wisp said.

"Hard agree," Ike said with a nod.

"I misjudged."

Ike shook his head. "You didn\'t actually misjudge, did you? You aren\'t even angry now. We didn\'t ruin your plans. Somewhere, deep in your heart, you were hoping this would happen. Or rather, you knew all along that you\'d have to do this eventually. You were just too cowardly to make it happen. We\'re the ones who did all the hard work, spring cleaning what you knew you had to clean."

"Yeah. You tell him, Ike!" Wisp agreed.

The man sighed. "Perhaps."

Ike cracked his knuckles. "So… we gonna fight, or do you just want to stand there and take it?"

"If you hate Llewyn as much as I do, then we have no need to fight," the man said.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"Oh yeah?" Ike said. He paused, waiting. As much as he wanted to beat the man\'s head in, the mage was still Rank 4. He couldn\'t carelessly attack without thinking. Or rather, if the man decided to attack, he and Wisp were the ones in danger, not the man. Ike was a newly minted Rank 3, and Wisp had recently gotten over an injury. Even with both of them ganging up on the man, their odds weren\'t great.

"You should simply return to the town. Feed my world. Then your power can nourish me and empower my plan to destroy Llewyn."

Ike rolled his eyes. "What plan? Sitting around and rotting isn\'t a plan."

The man turned. He pressed his fingertips together. "Address me as your lord. Lord Nors. It takes energy to power a Wizard\'s Tower, just as the young lady indicated. Energy I no longer have. I need yours to keep the town running. As you can see, it\'s in quite a pitiful state right now. I\'ll need all your energy to get it back up."

"And then what?" Ike asked. He\'s clearly insane, but let\'s see where he\'s going with this. I just want to see where this line of thought goes.

"And then… what?"

"How does bringing the city back help you destroy Llewyn?" Ike clarified.

Lord Nors looked at Ike, his eyes vacant. "I need to restore the city."

"Right, and you said you had a plan to destroy Llewyn. And that we\'d empower that."

"Empowering me is to empower the battle against Llewyn."

Ike glanced at Wisp. "I\'m not getting anywhere."

Wisp made a face and shook her head. "He\'s too far gone. Only one way out of here."

"Yeah. I knew it to start out, but there\'s no denying it, is there."

Lord Nors raised his brows. "You refuse?"

"Of course we refuse. Has anyone ever said \'yes\' when you asked them to lie down and die?" Ike asked.

"I suppose you don\'t hate Llewyn after all," Lord Nors droned, ignoring Ike.

Ike drew his sword. Beside him, Wisp bared her teeth and backed up.

Lord Nors swished his fingers. A blaze of silver rushed through the air. It hovered behind him, the blaze materializing into a sword. Or rather, not a sword. There was no crossguard, nor hilt, nor sheath. Merely a bare blade, its tang visible to the open air.

"I\'ve practiced for this moment for years. Decades. Centuries. Allies of Llewyn must die!" Lord Nors announced. He swished his fingers again, and the blade hurtled toward Ike.

Centuries? No way. He\'s delusional. Fully lost it. Ike raised his sword and deflected the blade. To his surprise, it flopped away, surprisingly easy to parry.

He thought back to the shopkeep. The man had the same face as Lord Nors, but he was so eloquent and well-put-together that he struggled to think of them as the same person. Our village is a peaceful one, of traders. We don\'t sell combat skills.

The sword darted back to Lord Nors\' side. Ike tilted his head. Is Lord Nors not much of a fighter? And who is the shopkeep? I thought they were one and the same. Or is it like when he puppeted Wisp?

But wait, if he\'s this incoherent, who puppeted Wisp? Who spoke through the shopkeep? Or… Ike\'s eyes widened. He turned and fled.

"Huh? Are we running? He\'s kind of a pushover, though," Wisp said. She looked over her shoulder at Ike, then shrugged and ran as well.

"That attack wasn\'t at the strength of a Rank 4 attack," Ike returned. "It wasn\'t even at a Rank 3 level."

"So…what?" Wisp asked.

"Think about it. Lord Nors is incoherent. He\'s weak. He\'s told us, through the shopkeep, that he invested his strength into the world around him." Ike cut a sharp left. He hopped out the window and onto the roof. The blade chased after them, but Wisp knocked it down. She scurried up after him, directly scaling the wall rather than running on the roof as Ike did.

Up ahead, the gables of the roof dipped downward. Ike hopped up. He ran further upward. The roof tiles clattered under his feet, pitched at a sharp angle.

The absolute zenith of the roof came to a sharp peak. Ike charged to the top. He climbed up the steel spine that crowned the tallest spire and balanced on its tip. Wisp clambered up after him, holding onto the pole by her finger and toetips.

Below them, the decimated town spread. Barren. Only a few scraps of foundation and the outlines of the streets remained. The cobbled streets wound along. With no buildings, the shape of the streets became clear.

"Oh," Wisp said.

Ike chuckled. "Yeah."