OLIVIA ⬛⬛⬛ *CRACKLE! CRACKLE! KRAKATHOOM!* Olivia ran through the streets of Mathema like a woman possessed. Wreaking havoc across every Imperial contingent she came across, lightning followed her path as she relied on Tesla's ever-encompassing presence to deal massive damage on the enemy while despite being outnumbered by at least a hundred to one. She knew that Her Sister would no doubt disapprove of her current tactics, but if it worked, then why bother changing it? "If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?" *KRAKATHOOM!* "AAHHH!!!!""IT BURNS!" With a smile on her face and blood on her blade, Olivia uttered her Sister's own words out loud as a reminder. Lightning crackled behind her, screams of her fallen enemies saturat

OLIVIA ⬛⬛⬛ "So Lord Iron truly took care of the problem?" Olivia held her breath as she found herself taking in the state that the young Num was just found in. Broken, battered, and bleeding all over, Tesla had clearly taken a beating of a lifetime as her head lolled in her unconscious state, her face marred with cuts and bruises as her white hair was stained brown with dried blood. "Damn... I guess the ranking in the Prime Thirteen's not a joke, huh...""Lord Iron's the Sixth, after all. Lady Static's the Thirteenth..." "Fuck..." Olivia swore under her breath, her teeth gnashing as she watched the Imperials gawk at her fallen friend. "How the hell do I get her out of there safely..." The warrior Den tuned everything out as she focused on the unenviabl

Plans upon plans upon plans. I feel like I'm repeating myself whenever I say that I'm obsessed about things going right, and if not, to have plans to be able to properly react to the failure. Fool-proofing something small was easy. Doing it again for something on the scale of a war, however, was a completely different beast. The number of variables at play, hundreds to even thousands of moving parts to look over and take into account. The time, the weather, morale, even individuals that might have other ideas and could stray from the plans put into place... It was so much to think about that hours or even days of pouring over the relevant information wouldn't be enough to take everything into account into one's plans. And even if you think you somehow managed to achieve this impossibility, there will always be something so monumentally out of left field that could just absolutely destroy any and all plans along with its sub plans and

Fiiiineee... You win, my precious Ica. The stuttering that ensued at the back of my head was like a soothing tune as I looked over my work. The communication arrays were gonna stay, as would the Essence storage runes at strategic parts of the palace grounds. Hmmm.... Wouldn't the communication arrays be two-way anyway? So why even bother with surveillance runes like last time? My hand moved to remove the minor additions I added on the dirt parts of the grounds, leaving me with more space to work with in terms of... well... anything, really. What kind of runes would even work on shaky ground? Dirt couldn't hold anything beyond the basic types of runic arrays. Anything more complex than a three-layered circuit would blow up instantly from the strain. I could maybe run- wait... why not just do that? The charcoal streaked across the outskirts of the pa

I don't even know what's happening anymore... "Huh... That looks far too complex even for you, Crimson," Phillipe snarked at my work. Technically Anne's as well, to be honest. "A square rune with that many parts? I don't think that'll work out in the long run." "You and me both," I rolled my eyes with the sarcasm of an overflowing dam. "Seriously, why are you here?" "You're being annoying." I raised an eyebrow at the blunt delivery of his oh-so-important announcement. Giving him the best sarcastic inquisitive eyes I could muster, I let out a scoff as I began whatever this talk was going to end up as. 'Right behind you there.' You always are, Ica. "And?" Phillipe smirked at me as if he knew exactly what I was thinking, "You're wasting