Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (151/?) WiP 1

Author’s Note: Hey everyone! Here is the Work in Progress for Chapter 151 I hope you guys enjoy! :D The revised version for Chapter 150 will be releasing tomorrow some time before the full release of Chapter 151! :D

Dragon’s Heart Tower, Level 23, Residence 30. Local Time: 2020 Hours

Ilphius

In my nineteen years of existence, I had taken advantage of everything my birthright had offered me. Travel being one of them.

And in my years of travel, across the seas, beneath the earth, and even deep into the Nexian midlands… never had I encountered such… perversions of intelligent design.

Frustration took hold as I observed each and every… structure, each object and every enigmatic shape that defied both common sense and spat at the conventions of civility.

For what was at first simple geometric forms portraying a people without art, heritage, and culture, proved to be something else entirely. Because within these unassuming constructs was intelligent design. Purposeful, masterfully crafted, and dare I say it — impossibly pristine metalworking that could only have been the work of the greatest of master blacksmiths.

These were not the hallmarks of a newrealm.

And yet, what was most frustrating, is how little they did with these technical abilities.

It was as if they’d taken the life out of living, or the color out of a painting. As if they’d mastered the practical, if only to lose sight of exactly what those practical skills were meant to serve.

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Kamil

…

…

…

I’d never felt more awake.

The Academy was a chore.

My whole life was a chore.

There was no novelty, no spice, only the same song and dance drifting off into a nascent echo ad infinitum.

Such was the status quo.

Such was the past, present and future.

Such was it all… but not here.

Not in this room.

For within these four walls that molded noble after noble into the same biscuit-cutter molds, repeating the same lines, and rehashing the same roles… was a spiteful rebuke which spit vinegar into a crusty old canvas.

It was a stain, an ink blot, one that thrummmmeeedddd and nipped at the local manastreams, ejecting and pouring so haphazardly excess currents with no rhyme or reason.

These structures were garish, plain, holding no thought and paying neither lip service nor deference to standard conventions of beauty nor civility.

Instead… what they bore was a utilitarian fervor. The likes of which should have been born from poverty and lacking, but not here.

These constructs were too perfect to have been born of a poverty stricken peoples.

Which meant only one thing… they chose to embrace it.

The earthrealmer had already been a highlight of my days, the color in a monotone canvas that I woefully craved.

Her… nest only added fuel to that flame, satiating and further inspiring the passion of life I hadn’t lost, but simply never had.

I almost instinctively regained my colors because of it.

But alas, this entire mission was one of some misguided fanaticism.

Perhaps one day I could be here on… different terms.

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Ilphius

Two structures stood out amidst the rest. 

A tent, and a gun-metal blue rectangle that stood wide and tall above the rest of the boxes present. 

Indeed, it seemed as if the two were intertwined in some way, pipes and thick rubbery tubes connecting the two together as an umbilical cord would.

In fact, the closer I got, the more it was clear that there was a spell present.

A spell of silence.

I let out a hiss, eager to walk past its meager area of effect, as I got closer and closer towards what drew the most of my attention — the newrealmer’s tent.

Surely there had to be something hidden within. Some revealing diary, or perhaps a tome of secrets.

Surely there was—

A series of soul-piercing noises erupted from seemingly everywhere. Shrieks, warbles, and whistles which could only be likened to the souls of the eternally damned screaming through a thousand brazen bulls. 

I fell to the floor, clasping the sides of my head, before I felt several spindly steps approaching me in every direction.

“WARNING! DANGER! DO NOT APPROACH FURTHER.” 

“COMPLIANCE WILL BE IMPOSED WITH THE USE OF FORCE!”