Vitaly S Alexius

The Armorer 70. Diamondias

I walked alone through what looked like a very fanciful Art Nouveau style mall.

Highborn ladies in long, frilly dresses and fanciful hats decorated in flowers and gemstones turned my way, their faces lengthening. The maids carrying their groceries gasped noisily. A mustached gentleman wearing a monocle suddenly stumbled, nearly dropping his magic eye-piece into a white m...

The Armorer 69. Finding Nemmy

“Does Nemendias even have teachers?” I rambled, feeling somewhat annoyed at being bamboozled by the duplicates.

“It does,” Agatha replied. “The duplicates are near-exact copies of people I know personally.”

“Can this Duplication Engine just copy anyone at will?” I asked. “Make a thousand copies of me, for example?”

“No,” Agatha said.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “I could get a lot of things done if there were a thousand of me. I really want to...

The Armorer 68. The Vow-Breaker

I tiredly stared at the angry-looking professors, switching to my Astral sight. They all looked exactly the same to me for some reason, like Intelligence maxers, without any other soul threads in them. Were they somehow shielded by these damn alcoves? 

I momentarily regretted not scanning the Alchemist deeper while he stood next to me as I was too focused on the herb evaluation. The longer I stared at the eight people around me, the more fake and hollow they started to look in my S...

The Armorer 67. The Dragons

Each of the polished, black, marble walls came apart, parted brick by brick, revealing dark figures of eight people standing in dim alcoves all around me.

“Felicity Cicesore Agatha Amadea, presenting a scholarship applicant sponsored by the Amadea family,” Agatha bowed. The dais I stood on slowly rotated.

A crystal chandelier flared to life, exposing a figure standing in a deep alcove above the double doorway.

A thin-lipped, elegant-looking woman with pink eyes smiled at...

The Armorer 66. Another Applicant

“I’m going downstairs to wait for… Anniya. I need my makeup redone,” Agatha said, leaving Emerald, Voltara and I in the pilot’s room.

I turned to Emerald. The youngest princess looked like she was trying very hard to conceal the rapidly rising tide of emotions. She saw that I was staring at her and turned towards me. The armacus on her arm unlocked and she offered the gemstone-encrusted, shiny bracelet to me.

“T-take it. Do whatever you want with it,” Emerald hissed ...

The Armorer 65. Deadline

[-1 Infinite Mirror.] A System message flashed in my right eye as I gaped at the town of Lomb bathed in morning light.

I looked down. My hand pawed at the empty air. The black, purple-eyed kitten was gone. I looked up at Agatha’s concerned face.

“What’s wrong?” Emmy asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Also, your pupils went all wide and then folded back into little slits again.”

“I… I went back…” I exhaled. “I’m still alive.”

“Still...

The Armorer 64. Resonance

Why was I crying? Why was I doubting, hating myself so much? Why couldn't I control my feelings? Why did it feel like I was sinking deeper and deeper into an impossibly deep, dark, painful mire?

Surely I could fix this? Surely I could work harder like I always have, rebuild…

No. Everything is terrible. Everything hurts. I want to sleep. I want to die… no… I want to dream of paradise again.

Grogtilda’s body hurt from within, ached terribly and demanded that I...

The Armorer 63. Infinity

I grabbed a small dark pebble from the sidewalk and showed it to Agatha. “I’m going to kill this rock for you tonight. Please judge that it’s perfectly mundane.”

Her silver-blue eyes flashed as she peered into the Astral. After a minute of staring at the rock she nodded.

Anniya bid us goodnight and departed for her home. The rest of the group had entered the station, went up the stairwell towards the pilot’s room. I placed Saccy in a corner and we all went inside of her....

The Armorer 62. Shopping

After a hearty lunch, we returned to the station. There, with Anniya’s help I had completely redecorated our chimera faces.

“This is so Astral-wicked,” Emerald bobbed, admiring herself in the large mirror. “I can barely recognize myself! What kind of magic is this?”

“Not magic,” I laughed. “It’s makeup. I’m pretty good at cosplays and Anniya is a...

The Armorer 61. The Combinator

“It seems like this plan of yours is hanging on the fact that I’m destined to become Empress,” Agatha noted, biting into her strawberry crepe.

“Not really,” I said, chewing on my own coffee-ice-cream crepe pile. “It would be easier to institute Dawn into every aspect of society if you were Empress, but it’s not a necessary step.”

“It’s not?”

�...

The Armorer 60. The Foundation of Dawn

“Hey Anniya! Sorry, I called you guys so late to updated on my situation… but I was a forced guest in, err... the Barony of Amadea,” I spoke into my armacus. “Everything's good. We’ll be in Lomb very soon!”

[Juni! We were worried about you! You went blank on the tracker for the entire night and morning!] Anniya’s voice resounded in my head. [We? Who’s we?]

“I’ve got the two lovely Amadea princesses with me, I want to show Lomb to them,” I said, smiling at Eme...

The Armorer 59. Above the world

The magitek, electrograv engines came to life with a purr that turned into a noisy buzz as the car-sized skyship shot off into the sky, taking my breath away. I watched the Amadea Barony get small and smaller yet, the gothic castles and gardens vanishing in the mists below.

The glider went higher and higher yet, punching right through the wall of white clouds. It reached the Stratosphere in mere minutes, having gone straight up and up and up.

I exhaled, glued to the window, observ...

The Armorer 58. Galissi

I tapped my armacus on Emerald’s and added her to my list of contacts. She called me first so that I could hear the conversation between her and her sister. That’s right - the armacus supported a multi-call function, allowing for multiple people to hear each other. One simply had to call each person from one armacus to connect the group.

[Ems?] The female voice who was presumably Agatha resounded in my head. [First time you’ve called me yourself. Did something happen?]

I elb...

The Armorer Ch 57. The Game Plan

“A symbol of change?” Emerald mulled.

I nodded.

“What exactly are you going to be changing?” She asked.

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “I’ll start with Undertown and go from there. To tell you the truth, I don’t necessarily want to implement too much radical change, I just want to steer Illatius away from the dark future timelines in which everyone dies horribly.”

“Have you told the other chimera cendai about any of this?”

“No,” I said....

The Armorer Ch 56. The Symbol

“What do you want for the dress?” Emerald asked as we walked together down a very fanciful stairwell covered in gold flowers and gemstones.

“Nothing,” I shook my head. “When I make another one I’ll give it to you.”

“For?”

“For nothing,” I said.

“Why?” Emerald inquired with a suspicious look.

“Because you’re my friend,” I said. "And I want to bind our friendship with a gift worthy of a princess."

“You literally threatened to...

The Armorer Ch 55. Taking the First Step

As we walked past far too many fanciful rooms for me to memorize, Emerald kept glancing at the maid that silently moved next to me. The Baronial princess looked like she was hoping that I would dismiss the human. Perhaps, she wanted to have a nice chimera-to-chimera chat without humans present. I wondered whether she actively disliked the servants of her mother’s palace or if she saw them as useless pieces of furniture that were getting in the way.

“Voltara is carrying my bag,” I ...

The Armorer Ch 54. The Wager

“W-why did you free m-me?” The maid whispered as she looked around Saccy’s quirkily-decorated interior filled with nets, tools and colorful hanging crystals.

“Because I need more friends,” I smiled softly.

“F-friends?” The girl blinked, hazel eyes staring at me.

“Friends,” I nodded, pointing my fingers at the Vow floating above her. “Ones not bound by Astral-Ocean abominations.”

“You can see the Vows, then?” She uttered with a shudder. “Y-yo...

The Armorer Ch 53. The Binding Threads

I stared at the Vows hanging above the two servant girls.

The enormous, alien-looking jellyfish floated through the Astral, flickering in and out of the inky black void. Gold sparks danced on the silver threads extending deep into the bodies and souls of their victims. I shuddered. These things looked truly monstrous, abominable.

I peered deeper into the Astral, stared into the souls of the maids. The colors faded from my eyes, became gray. I looked deeper yet, tracking the ripple...

The Armorer Ch 52

Pain of broken bones. 

Murky, suffocating darkness. 

Dirty, trash-filled water rushing to fill my lungs. I tried to swim upwards, but I was still paralyzed, unable to move my limbs properly, unable to reach the increasingly distant surface. Bubbles escaped from me as I sank deeper and deeper into the murky void.

I woke up with a gasp, flailing against a bed sheet. None of these things were real. The painful, all consuming darkness was jus...

The Armorer Ch 51

I moved into Juni’s body protected by the barrier-shield and opened my eyes in the Astral Ocean aka the Still Forest.

The necropolis of death was silent as always, filled with infinite bone-superstructures. Bones of dead people and creatures intertwined in phantasmagoric formations fused into dead garbage. 

I had put Dawn on beneath my nightcrawler armor, with a plan to take her with me to my Astral-hunt.

As I looked down and saw her there - she wasn’t exactly human...

The Armorer Ch 50

“When I feed on a person, I automatically assemble, visualize their future akin to a massive tree. Every major decision they will make spawns a multitude of branches forward. If it’s a branch leading to the person’s death, the branch is cut off, dark. If it leads to a longer-lasting, more magical future it is bright and vibrant.”

“Uh-huh,” I mulled. “And my future?”

“You don’t have a f-freaking future anymore! That’s the problem! You… you really broke me! I...

The Armorer Ch 49

The first order of business was the enormous bag of trash that dominated a corner of Grogtilda’s room. It had to die. I slashed the bag open, pulverizing it. The contents within it spilled out noisily. I vanquished them too, turned everything inside it into white silica dust.

It took me a while to precisely stab each item to death. Some items were tougher and required multiple stabbings. Murdering garbage took a lot of focus too, but with each new kill I was getting better at it, gett...

The Armorer Ch 48

As Lic and I reached the steps leading to the gate, the crowd around us dispersed, clearing the way. Everyone present felt the pulse from my armacus, was terrified by it and quickly cleared the way for the highborn lawmaker monster who owned their lives.

“I will wait for you at the steps, go on,” Lic said, nudging me forward.

“Sure,” I said, stepping closer to the spooky gate. Did Eunice find one of these Inarian gates somewhere in the Chasm and modify it, weaponi...

The Armorer Ch 47

“I don’t understand,” Lic looked at the cracked bowl in my hand.

“That’s a self-cleaning bowl,” I said. “I can push my mana into it and see the magic hexagrams that are responsible for cleaning it light up.”

“What?” Lic gasped. “You can see… magic?!”

“Mhmm,” I nodded. 

I put the bowl down in front of me, pulled a notebook out of Saccy, pushed a bit of mana into a rune at the base of the bowl and started to sketch the shimmering hexagr...

The Armorer Ch 46

"Oh?" I tilted my head, staring the rotund woman down. "Then pray tell, who do you think I am, mom?"

"A highborn mageling! One of the upworld bastards from Nemendias that broke my legs and cast me down here!" She snarled. “Just do what you came here for and leave! Stop torturing my poor husband!”

"Nani!" Lic yelled, slamming his fist onto the stove. "Stop! It is her! It has to be! She's cooking with me just like we used to! I’m not drunk today - I can see that she’s our Gr...

The Armorer Ch 45

“Lic, have you lost your blithering mind?” Grogtilda’s mother barked from behind a wall of junk.

She must have felt the warning-pulse of the armacus, because she fell silent.

“M-my apologies, your esteemedness, my husband is a drunkard and an imbecile,” she stammered. “He can’t tell the difference between a lawman and a…”

Lic and I had finally circled a ceiling-high pile of garbage. I stared into the blue-tinted, bloated face of a very rotund, brown haired ...

The Armorer Ch 44

I stared at the scene before me in amazement. A gargantuan cavern sprawled out in all directions with basalt stalagmite and stalactite columns as tall as skyscrapers supporting a distant, dark ceiling. Waterfalls came down from high above, breaking apart into mist and adding to the moisture hanging in the air. Pale Chasm clouds rolled between the stone columns, lighting the cave up from within.

The Armorer Ch 43

I received my Dawn-dress from Antoine in just three days. The artificer smiled widely as he handed her back to me. I noted that a set of my gems was now made into an extremely elaborate metal and glass necklace covered in runes and attached to the top of the dress.

“That looks nice… do you think you can make more of these?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” Antoine nodded. “The first one was hard to make, but now that I know exactly what to do it'll be easier.”

“What di...

The Armorer Ch 42

[Constable of Lomb Township] A blue window shimmered in my right eye.

I lowered my armacus down, pointing it away from Lambert.

"Got the hang of the Identify spell?" Lambert smiled.

"Yep," I nodded. 

I was wearing the body of Grogtilda, having moved my soul and one of my armaci to her after the early morning meeting at the Artificer. Juni’s body was now in Still trance, resting inside of Saccy.

We were sitting in our favorite crepe cafe. I pointed the arma...

The Armorer Ch 41

I had spent the rest of the day and the night carefully sewing the Dawn of Aeromancy poster to one of the old dresses that I had purchased from one of the Lomb second-hand shops. Thankfully the old poster was painted atop a thin, soft canvas, so it worked just fine if it was a bit folded and warped out of shape atop the front of my body. I had no idea how I would connect one of my crystals to power her yet, so I had to push a bit of my mana into her about once every ten minutes, which was mil...