Wandering Storm
Chapter 3: Preparations

In the next morning, Damian woke up early and had his breakfast, then he came to the tower again. This time he went to another yard different from the previous. Arrived at the place, he saw another line just like yesterday.

“Guess lots of people are either ambitious or patriotic.”

Stepping into the yard, Damian noticed that this one is much bigger than the other, and there were about a hundred people waiting there, not counting the guards and official. It was still early, so he found a spot to sit down and wait until the beginning of his first day. More and more people gradually came into the yard, Damian saw the bulky man, the quiet assassin girl and the orange mage came in, but he didn’t wave them or call them, and they seemed not to saw him too.

At 7 o’clock. Dong! The sound of the bell signaled the time had come. All of the recruited gathered at the yard and slowly formed 10 rows, similar people tended to group together, like mages stick with mages, or barbarians like that bulky man also found themselves a line.

“About 200 in total huh, Given that there are 7 days of recruiting, maybe about 1500 people would participate in this raid. Isn’t this pretty hasty, how would those who recruited in the later days fare?” Damian wondered.

“Good to see all of you here, and surprisingly, none of you ran away.” The noble man from yesterday was also the one to give speeches today. “I’ll keep it short, you will be divided into groups according to your speciality, warriors will go to the 1st building, archers the 2nd, assassins to the 3rd and mages to the 4th. You will be given roles in the raid and work to perfect the plan until the day comes. Now, disperse.” Once again he spoke in a monotonous yet commanding tone.

Damian guessed who the noble man was, since such figures usually enjoyed their life in more peaceful places and even fewer went out and participate in military matters like this.

He followed the rest of the mages into the 4th building, which gave of a more potent magical waves than the 3 others. He was the only brown robed here, so some other mages glanced at him from time to time, perhaps guessing what could an apprentice be doing here, and how he could pass the assessment.

Inside the building, the mages saw 2 figures standing, one was the blue robe female mage who assessed them yesterday, the other was the purple robe man whom Damian had met when he tried to get into the city, the one who checked his rune stone. Without the hood, the purple robe face could be seen, he was of middle ages, he had long brown hair neatly tied, but the staff that he wielded when they first met was missing.

Noticing that the recruited mages had lined up, the woman spoke “Welcome back, I see that none of you had deserted after hearing the news. Very well, let me introduce first. As many of you have known, my name is Sonia, some call me the nickname Chilling Rays. And this is Mister Cain, also known as Graviton Lance.”

From her introduction, many voices started to rise up, although they had known who the woman was and had guessed who the man could be with the patterns on his robe, none couldn’t be surprised when Sonia confirmed the identity of Graviton Lance. Except for Damian who had no idea who they were and simply amused by the reaction of the crowd.

“Alright settle down, actually there should be one more purple mage join us, but she’s currently having some affairs, so we shall meet her later. I and Mr. Cain shall be the leaders of the mage department in this raid. Mr. Cain will be in charge of the green to indigo mages, and I’ll be taking care of the red to yellow.”

The mages nodded in unison and quickly split into 2 groups, they followed the mentors into the designated areas. Including Damian, his group had 12 members, 1 brown, 5 reds, 4 oranges and 2 yellows. Seeing that the peers kept glancing at him, Sonia spoke up “ Despite being in different ranks, all of you are equally under my command.” She pointed at Damian “Although this young man is only an apprentice, he has finer control of elemental magic than all of you.”

Mutters once again rose up in the room, some discussed that it was impossible for the apprentice to have better control than them, some disregarded control in casting and power should be the focused aspect. But there was one mentioned that Damian might be hiding his true abilities, as apprentice’s robe wouldn’t reflect the mage’s true power.

Damian raised his hand in the middle of the noises, Sonia saw that and asked what he wanted to share. He nodded in appreciation and spoke “Although I may have finer control according to Miss Sonia’s assessment, my firepower is only the level of apprentice really. You can confirm that with Miss Sonia.”

The noises quickly died down. Sonia spoke again “Alright, enough wasting our time. I’ll be giving you information and telling you our roles now. Some of you may have already noticed, all of us here are mages who can control lightnings, and our job is to defend the raid team, or should I say the raid army.”

‘So that’s why I was picked’ Damian came to realization.

One of the yellow mages raised her hand and asked, her hair was black and had a little tint of silver, her face was rotund and a dense layer of freckles could be seen. “Ma’am, if all of us here were chosen because we can control lightning, shouldn’t we invite Madame Elveth instead of Sir Cain. Although I would not dare to disregard his knowledge and fame, isn’t he known to be focusing on gravity?”

“Nice question, Elaina, although Sir Cain is the master of gravity magic, his control over lightning is nothing to be simply ignored. As for Madame Elveth, she was the one who was busy at the moment.” Sonia calmly replied.

Having satisfied the curiosity, she continue “Our job in this operation is solely to defend the army. Because our target is Zergish, the creature who’s on the peak of lightning magic. Even if we all try our best, we can only mitigate a tiny bit of its power, but we don’t have the luxury to chose now right? Therefore we are recruiting in mass in order to compensate, using quantity to offset the lack of quality.”

After that, she gave them their tasks and directed them to work on artifacts and magic circles. Damian obliged and joined a group of 3 consisting of him, a yellow mage, and an orange. They were designated to work of some sort of large orb which operated like the Faraday cage when activated.

During his casual exchange with the group-mates, he learned about Elveth, although the other 2 looked down on him since he was an apprentice and didn’t even know who the Lightning Fairy is.

Elveth Hysta, the Lightning Fairy, is the current most powerful lightning mage available on the continent. Ranking in the top 40 of the world, she was revered across nations. She was also one of the only 3 purple robe mages on the ranking list, together with Avant the Infernal and Felicia the Incubus Witch. Despite all that, she found herself lacked fame and decided to join into this raid to improve her image and ranking, or that was what the rumors said. The Empire was lucky to “hire” her with a price relatively cheaper than the average that a purple mage would charge.

‘So many endgame characters already? If this was a novel, only in the very late part of the story that stuff like this would occur.’ Damian mused.

So aside from thousands of participants and powerful artifacts and weapons, big shots like Lord Hidain, Madame Elveth and Sir Cain would also be there to stop the unholy beast. Such line up might seem to be overkill, but this was a raid of an unholy beast, so it was best to prepare was much as possible.

The day was over and they bade farewell before leaving the building. Sonia stopped Damian and asked “How was it? Did you have any difficulties working with the senior mages?”

“Thank you for your concern, ma’am. I was able to keep up and help them a lot with my… fine control… So they gradually accept me as a teammate.”

“I see, that’s good to hear. Alright, you should go home now. Goodbye.” Sonia smile, but her eyes didn’t match it.

“I’ll take my leave, ma’am.” Damian bowed and went out.

‘Such a waste, he would just pee himself or die on spot in the raid. But at least he’s helping building the artifacts’ Sonia mused.

Back at home, Damian sighed. Then he had a light dinner, a quick hot shower and went to bed.