On the way back, Jenkins was teasing Chocolate. He found it amusing that the cat loathed water and baths but had no aversion to liquid food.
Perhaps understanding the word "bath," the cat suddenly sprang to life, squirming restlessly against his chest.
Jenkins had no choice but to take shelter under the awning of a nearby shop. Setting his umbrella aside, he used both hands to wrangle the feisty cat.
The rain, which had been falling all day, showed no signs of letting up, and Jenkins was already soaked to the bone. He could have dried himself with his fire ability, but since he still had a ways to go, it would have been a pointless effort.
After finally managing to soothe Chocolate, he was about to pick up his umbrella and head ho when a strange sound echoed from the distance.
It sounded like an explosion, but the torrential downpour muffled it so much that he couldn't be sure it wasn't just his imagination.
He hesitated for a mont before lifting his head and scanning the area. Faint spiritual auras flickered in the rain, but they seed to be several miles away—too far to be the source of the peculiar noise.
"How strange," he muttered. "Did I imagine that?"
Muttering to himself, he was about to scoop up the now-docile cat and continue on his way.
The cat, half-snuggled against Jenkins's chest, cracked open one eye and lifted a soft paw to scratch its cheek.
"ow~"
With a nimble leap, it scrambled onto Jenkins's shoulder, where it perched and stared up at the sky. Even from this vantage point, its head barely reached Jenkins's eye level, giving him a perfect view of its large, limpid amber eyes.
"Damn it," he thought. "How could I possibly describe a cat's eyes as 'limpid and innocent'?"
Jenkins gave his head a sharp shake. For a fleeting mont, as he'd gazed into Chocolate's eyes, he thought he'd seen sothing terrifying.
But the feeling was quickly forgotten. Following the cat's gaze upward, Jenkins spotted specks of fiery red darting through the clouds.
"What in the world is that?"
His monocle materialized silently over one eye. Through the Eye of Reality, Jenkins could see a flock of crow-shaped figures, each radiating a faint blue aura. Their spiritual glow was incredibly weak—weaker even than a Stray Butterfly, let alone a powerful aberration.
"What are those things?"
As Jenkins watched in confusion, the crows began to swarm together. Their faint blue auras converged, and a brilliant orange fireball abruptly materialized in the sky.
"Huh?"
Boom!
The fireball summoned by the crows plumted toward the ground, though not in his direction. He was certain now—this was the source of the sound he'd heard before.
The sound of its impact was lost in the downpour, but that didn't make the fireball any less real.
"What in the world is happening?"
The fireball had struck in the sa area as the faint auras he'd noticed earlier. Peering through his monocle, Jenkins was surprised to see it was a combat squad from the Church of Ocean and Exploration. He even recognized a few of the mbers.
"So the things in the sky are the enemy," he concluded.
He was certain.
So Enchanters could fly—that much was clear from the displays he'd seen from Alexia, Hathaway, and Miss Bevanna.
But not all Enchanters possessed that ability; in that respect, the playing field was level. From what Jenkins understood, most Enchanters capable of flight were level seven or higher. Below that, there were no learnable flight abilities. The only way was to gain the power through a unique personal epiphany, just as Hathaway had.
Therefore, even though the flock of fire crows wasn't flying particularly high, the squad on the ground couldn't mount an effective counterattack.
They were stuck dodging on the ground, at least until an Enchanter from the Church who could fly arrived to help.
"Fire-breathing crows on a rainy day," Jenkins mused aloud. "Today is certainly turning out to be interesting."
Jenkins muttered to himself as he stared up at the sky. He glanced toward ho, hesitated, and then set off in a different direction.
He made his way to the city's grand clock tower. After lting the lock on the door with a burst of fla, he climbed the dust-laden staircase to the top floor. He shoved open the trapdoor and stepped out onto the highest point in the city.
He had no intention of summoning his unicorn. After all, he had a date with the girls later, and causing a commotion might make him late.
The rain imdiately began to drench him. He glanced back at Chocolate, who was prudently hiding inside the tower, refusing to co out, then tilted his head back to look at the circling fire crows.
They clearly hadn't noticed him, still preoccupied with their attack on the squad below. For so reason, perhaps a limit to their flight altitude, the crows never rose above the cloud layer.
"Twin..."
At his call, a shadow wreathed in black smoke materialized behind him. This ti, however, the demonic figure didn't solidify imdiately. Instead, it writhed and shifted like modeling clay.
Last week, when he'd borrowed that chess piece from Dolores, the ice archer he'd summoned had given him a new perspective on his Twin Demons ability.
Twin Demons, much like the Frozen Archer Chess Piece, summoned a phantom that reflected the user's essence. The key difference was that his was always imbued with demonic fire. In the past, Jenkins hadn't been powerful enough to truly appreciate how his own strength could influence his abilities.
But he was strong enough now. And after the insight he'd gained from the ice archer, this was the perfect opportunity to experint with the true power of his Twin Demons.
"My soul's essence is life," he thought.
As the thought ford, an aura of life surged into the shadow behind him. A suit of equally phantasmal vine armor instantly wrapped around the ferocious demonic figure.
"And then there's death," he continued his train of thought. "As much as I hate to admit it, Mr. Augustus was right. Perhaps I truly am close to death, seeing as both my body and soul have experienced it."
A gray current of decay flowed from his own shadow into the phantom. The demon's form remained largely unchanged, but Jenkins sensed the power of plague infusing it.
"And machinery," he mused. "I still don't understand it, but the power of gears and chanisms manifested last ti with the ice archer, too. Could the chanical power represent my previous life—the one I lived as... Jen? But why steam power, not electricity?"
A dazzling, silver-blue light began to flicker where the demonic phantom's heart would be. Its rhythmic pulsing shone like the final warning light on a steam bomb about to detonate.
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