258 Setting the players

Ellie finally woke up from her slumber and found herself on top of a table inside an abandoned cabin that seemed like it was about to fall at any second.

"What...? Where...?" she whispered.

"Oh!! She's awake!!" Claire commented. She was holding young Lance in her arms and staring at Ellie while she was sleeping.

"Claire...? What happened? Where are we? Where is the fire guy?" Ellie asked while gazing around and realizing she was inside a cabin.

"A lot of things happened while you were sleeping..." Claire commented.

The curly-haired lass then shared with Ellie about the recent events, the Gluttony demon destroying the East temple, their group escaping from him, and meeting with Xadi, Lance, and Eclipse.

"All that happened while I was sleeping?? How long was I out?" Ellie wondered.

"A couple of hours... Do you have your strength back?"

Ellie began to open and close her palm to get a feeling of how much power she had recovered.

"A bit... I think... I don't think I would be able to fight another Myriad right now... But I can surely kick a demon or two..."

"That's great to hear... We are going to probably need as much power as we can get right now..." Claire commented.

Ellie inspected the cabin again and realized that besides Joseph who was sleeping on the table as well, there was nobody else there.

"Where are Detra and Dia?"

"Detra said she wanted to teach Dia how to fight since she is also someone that has terminal fire inside of her body..." Claire explained.

"Teach Dia how to fight?? Is she crazy?? What if Dia turns into Mia again or something??" Ellie gasped.

"It's not like we have a lot of options right now though... Without miss Evlin and her friends, we are kinda lacking in the power department..."

Ellie jumped out of the table and moved towards the door, "Where are they? I need to see what Detra is doing!"

"Ah! Wait! Ellie!" Claire tried to stop her but the young mirror mage just stormed out of the cabin and almost got hit by a lightning bolt.

"Jesus!!! What the hell was that!!??" she cried while breathing heavily.

She looked outside and saw that the sun was about to set over a large open grass field filled with hills, and running around it, Detra, Xadi, and Eclipse were doing everything they could to try and strike Dia with their attacks.

"Ugh... Detra..." Ellie mumbled.

She continued to watch as Detra launched a flying icicle at Dia, who managed to dodge it with one leap to her left.

Xadi came after carrying a piece of Joseph's shield and unleashed a blast of electric magic to scorch her, but Dia was faster and simply bent her body to evade it.

Ellie was astonished by that scene. Dia was basically dancing around these three like a kid playing dodgeball.

"How in the world is she doing that...?"

Claire approached Ellie and began to watch the fight as well, "I'm not sure... But take a closer look at her..."

Ellie followed her advice and noticed that Dia had some kind of red aura circling her body.

"What the heck is that??"

Claire tried to clear up Ellie's confusion, "Detra said it is some kind of result from being reset by you..."

"What does that mean?"

"She said that after being reset, Dia managed to get a little bit of your power into herself, the same way Marcus got power from Detra when she was a goddess..."

Ellie continued to watch and saw both Xadi and Detra launching a barrage of icicles to strike Dia at the same time.

The girl realized that she could not escape from that and began to concentrate while preparing for the impact.

Suddenly, her entire body began to cover itself with metal, just like Ellie and Marcus would often do when using their holy weapon ability, except Dia's metal was completely red.

"No way..." Ellie whispered.

"Detra said that Mia is basically your champion now..." Claire noted as the two watched the rain of icicles attacking Dia from all possible sides but not leaving a single scratch on her.

Xadi, Detra, and Eclipse finally took a break and gazed at Ellie who had awoken.

"Ah! Young miss! You're up!" Detra commented.

"Detra!! Detra, what did you do to Dia!!??" Ellie screamed as she came running down the hill and approached Detra's side.

"Hey, don't blame me! You're the one who used a divine power on her! She's your responsibility!"

"But... How?? How did..."

"Young miss..."

"!!" Ellie flinched as she felt Detra changing the tone of her voice.

"You know what's going to happen, don't you?"

"..."

"Another battle will soon come... And we need to be ready for it when it arrives..."

"Another battle..." Ellie whispered with a weak voice.

Ellie looked at Dia who was just staring at her metal skin acting as if she could barely recognize her own body. She would occasionally give a few knocks with her fist on her forearm to hear the sound of metal colliding with each other.

"This is so weird..." Dia whispered.

Ellie just looked at Detra again with a heavy glare, "You really plan on putting Dia on the battlefield?? She's finally free from her previous life! Let her have some peace!!"

Detra stared at her with no emotion on her face, "What peace...? If we hadn't escaped from the temple, we would have turned into ashes by now... The demons are attacking, Kunucker is hunting us, and the gods are not going to help us this time... I'm not going to just wait and let our enemies come and end our lives... If I have a weapon that I can use, you better be damn sure that I'll be using it!"

"But... What if she turns into Mia again??? Or maybe something worse??"

Detra lifted her head and looked at Dia who was now trying to make a song with the noise coming out from her metal hitting each other.

Detra took a deep breath and began to calculate the odds of this clueless child becoming the mass murder that Mia used to be, "Guess we will just have to take the gamble..."

Part 2

The king of Greyart was sitting on a table with all of his guards approaching his surroundings in order to keep him safe, but the young man knew that their effort was pointless.

No matter how hard they tried, there is no way they would be able to stand a chance against the creature that was sitting inside that large room.

He looked around and stared at his guests around the table.

The king of Silverdale, an old man with grey eyes, chestnut skin, black hair, and an unfinished beard. The queen of Whitamus, a young lady with long blond hair with a few white strings of white here and there and beautiful blue eyes, and finally, the princess of Paleteanois, with her short brown hair and green eyes, who was representing her sick mother that could not afford to com himself.

Together, they all represented the four royal houses that ruled a corner of the globe, the kings and queens of the east, west, south, and north.

They all had royal attires with long capes, jewels on their clothes, large crowns above their heads, a group of guards to stand by their side, and a heavy look of uneasiness stamped on the faces while dripping cold sweat.

All four were staring at the strange man who organized this gathering. An individual with wild white hair, orange eyes, and sitting on top of a large red dragon while eating grapes and gazing at the ceiling lost in his thoughts as if he was trying to guess if it was going to rain tomorrow.

On top of the dragon's head was a green girl that was hugging her legs sitting on the beast and tried to avoid eye contact with anyone. At least, that's what it looked like at first, but upon looking closer, one could see she had no legs, and instead had vines for her lower half like an octopus.

The dragon himself was just resting its chin above its claws while sleeping peacefully under their gazes.

Knucker finally finished his meal and dropped from Wrath to approach the table as well while taking a seat.

He noticed their expressions and almost felt like smiling at the situation, but his mind was focused on something else, on his prey that had managed to slip past his fingers. He needed his prey back in order to prepare for the threats of the future.

But even he wouldn't be able to search all over the world for her now that so much of his power had been used to transform the six demon leaders and one demon dryad into half-dragons.

He needed to rest, and he needed to re-organize his plans. But he couldn't just stand still while his prey continued to run free. He needed someone to chase after her while he would go into a recovery process.

"Ladies and gentlemen... I'm afraid that I'm going to require your services..." Knucker commented while slowly gazing at every single one of them until he stopped at the king of Greyart who would not stop glaring at him, "Thank you all for coming on such short notice... But I'm afraid that this reunion will have to be brief... I'm just not in the mood to play this as I wanted right now...

I'm gonna need you all to put out a bounty for someone very special to me... Someone who needs to be found as soon as possible and brought back alive no matter what...

I need you to tell the whole world to bring me the crossbow mage, Evlin..."