Inflame (The Completionist Chronicles Book 6) by Dakota Krout (best romantic novels in english TXT) 📕

forced to cast Mend on himself twice, and his health was still down to almost a quarter when he finally reached full capacity.

Once more, he allowed his mana to flow out of him and into the barrel of slag. This time, it was fully reduced to aspects. He literally breathed easier after that, as the barrel was no longer releasing toxins. As soon as he had recovered enough mana, Joe quickly reactivated Neutrality Aura and sat down. His spell got to work on all of the bacteria, parasites, and damage that he had brought into himself by breathing in such foul air.

For a long while, Joe simply sat and rested, waiting for the opportunity to go out and damage himself for personal gain again. Then he heard a sound like rushing water. “What’s going on? There can't be a waterfall in here, can there?”

The ground beneath him shifted, and Joe realized what was happening: his rituals had dug far enough down that the surrounding piles were becoming destabilized. Joe scrambled up out of the hole he had put himself in and tried to run out of the area that was being impacted. Unfortunately, he had truly underestimated the far-reaching effects of his ritual.

He tumbled backward, barely managing to get his Exquisite Shell in place before he was buried under the landslide of his own creation.

Chapter Eighteen

Havoc paused from tinkering with his new super weapon, a mana-magnetic meteor mitigator. He tapped one large finger against his lab table, wondering what was bothering him. “Those Elves have been using meteors as their main weapon for the past six months; this needs to be my main focus. If I can use their blasted spells against them, we won't have to worry about them taking out large contingents of our troops. Oh?”

He was getting a notification? Someone had completed a quest he had sent them on? How? No one ever completed his quests, since practically everyone was entirely incompetent. Havoc lifted the corner of his mouth, allowing an open gap. A tiny rocket attached to his cigar on the table fired up, launching his main vice into his mouth at the same time as lighting the cigar itself.

“Huh. The scavenger-classed human actually pulled it off?” The Major General grumbled deep in his chest. He had been certain that particular Candidate would kick the bucket on the first day. In fact, he was so sure that he hadn’t bothered to do any of the work he had promised the lad. No matter; Havoc was a resourceful Dwarf. “He might be worth something, after all. At least he's not here demanding payment yet. Let’s go see some old friends.”

Havoc started walking, leaving behind the temporary lab that he had set up in the capital city, a personal estate that he kept for the rare occasions when he was allowed to come back. With every step he took, other Dwarves dove out of the way, scrambling to avoid garnering his attention. Weak-willed, the lot of them. He was the last person still living to achieve nobility during his time in the Legion, which just went to show how far their race had descended into passivity. At this very moment, the Elves were likely planning to storm one of their forts, and his own people couldn’t look him in the eye!

“Have you all no shame?” Havoc snarled, causing the people that had stepped aside to flee to safer areas. His hand twitched and dropped toward his pocket, and he barely stopped himself from activating his ‘personal safety’ device. No… no, that was what had gotten him banished to that empty laboratory on the border. The council had warned him: any more collateral damage, ‘accidental’ or not, and he would lose his funding.

“Hypocritical wastes of space don’t deserve to… no… deep breaths, Havoc,” he reminded himself, letting go of the orb that had mysteriously appeared in his hand. As far as he could remember, he hadn’t intentionally pulled out the device. “Old McPoundy should have everything I need for this. Easy-peasy, Elf-neck squeezy.”

Hurling himself through the crowds at breakneck speed, he soon arrived at the forge closest to the castle: the smithy of Grandmaster Iron McPoundy. Havoc wasted no time with pleasantries, kicking the door off the hinges instead of taking the time to twist the intricate metal doorknob. If there was only one thing that Havoc could complain about when it came to foremost Smith in the nation, it would be that he spent far too much time on making things ‘pretty’. Functionality was king.

However, he had plenty more than just a single thing to gripe about. The Dwarf had an entire list of grievances when it came to the metal-shaper. The main one, the big one, was that the Grandmaster always tried to play up an air of mystery and untouchableness. Havoc peered around the room, observing dozens of weapons appearing in the hands of the Smiths that had been training when he entered. Currently, the room was entirely silent.

“Hanger-ons!” Havoc bellowed to the room full of people that had only become more nervous when they realized who had entered the workshop. “Where is my little brother? McPoundy! You have five seconds to get out here before I start breaking things! I don't care how far in ‘seclusion’ you are; I don't care one whit about giving you ‘face’, or any of this other garbage that you have been picking up from hearing Elves talk! First thing I break is your anvil; next thing is your trainees! We're in the Capital! They’ll revive tomorrow, but how much time will you need to spend training them back to-”

“Hold on a moment, will ya? Murderous degenerate…” Havoc crashed into a wall as a metal-shod boot tried and failed to cave in his sternum. A bearded Dwarf built like a short defensive wall strode heavily toward Havoc, even as the latter calmly stepped forward out of the crumbling mortar he had been embedded in. “What did I warn you