The Blue Mage Raised by Dragons

A severed hand peacefully floated in the air, its fingers pointing towards the ground, swaying slightly as it moved forward, almost as if it were still attached to someone’s wrist. Speaking of wrists, the severed hand’s stump was jagged, seemingly cut from both sides during its detachment. The hand was vibrant, its skin practically glowing with health despite being just a severed limb with no blood circulation. Not too far away from the hand, a dwarf was sitting on a curb, drinking from a bottle hidden within a brown, paper bag. The dwarf stared at the hand as it floated past, a puzzled expression on the short person’s face.

The severed hand stopped and turned before extending itself towards the dwarf for what seemed to be a handshake. The drunken dwarf furrowed his brow. “What in the poor-tasting prank is this?” he asked but held out his hand anyway, giving the severed limb a handshake. “Buddy, are you invisible?”

The dwarf’s eyes widened as the hand accelerated upwards, dragging the drunken dwarf several meters into the sky. “Wait!” the dwarf shouted as he ascended past the tops of the buildings within the fiftieth floor. “Dwarves aren’t meant to be this high up!” He desperately clung onto the hand, grabbing it with both arms, but the severed hand jerked and flung the dwarf away, causing him to scream as he fell from the sky. Before he could hit the ground, something crunched and caught him.

“Whoa, there,” an unfamiliar voice that sounded like rocks grinding together said.

The dwarf turned to the side towards his savior and froze upon seeing a rabbit skull grinning at him, looking down into his eyes with its hollow sockets. The dwarf remained frozen as the rabbit skeleton tugged on a bony leg underneath his body, retrieving the bits that had been crushed by the dwarf. As it did so, the rabbit skeleton looked up into the air at the floating severed hand. The dwarf stared with a blank expression as the rabbit skeleton lifted him and retrieved a tall, brown boot from underneath him as well.

Hyeonnam Tokki pieced his leg back together and put on his boot, tying some straps to his bones. Then, he adjusted the rabbit-fur coat he was wearing before fixing his cowboy hat. He placed his front, skeletal paws on his hips and looked up at the severed limb in the sky. The tower promised a very generous reward for defeating a severed hand that appeared on the fiftieth floor. So far, it didn’t look very dangerous, but the rewards wouldn’t be so great if the hand were easy to subdue. Judging by its appearance, it should’ve been agile rather than strong. Hyeonnam Tokki nodded to himself as his root bracelet flashed amber.

A large, metal, hand cannon appeared in his arms, and he passed the weapon to the dwarf. The drunkard blinked before taking the weapon, and Hyeonnam Tokki raised the cannon’s barrel, pointing it at the hand in the sky. “Fire,” the rabbit skeleton said.

The dwarf wasn’t sure why, but it pulled the cannon’s trigger, striking the hand with a cannister that shattered and coated the hand in a sticky substance. The hand froze in place, and the dwarf blinked before turning to his side. Oddly enough, the rabbit skeleton was gone; it was as if he had never been there in the first place. However, that couldn’t be true because the dwarf didn’t own a cannon, and if he hadn’t been given a cannon by the rabbit, why was the severed hand slapping towards him?

“Ouyang Feng! Block it!”

Hyeonnam Tokki’s brows would’ve furrowed if he still had flesh on his skull. That voice, he had heard it before. The skeletal rabbit’s sockets widened upon seeing a terrifying being sitting atop a throne of bones, wood, and yarn; then, he realized it was just a terrifying being sitting on a rocking chair while knitting and being escorted by a group of skeletons.

A bare-chested man flashed past Hyeonnam Tokki’s vision, inches away from his hiding spot within the shadows. The man stopped in front of the confused dwarf with a shield held out. The severed hand slapped the shield, and a massive shockwave flew outwards in all directions, sending the dwarf tumbling along the road like a leaf. As for Ouyang Feng, he was pushed back several meters until he crashed into the wall of a building, creating a series of cracks in the bricks and headaches for the property owners.

The hand flailed, flinging the viscous liquids covering it everywhere. As it flailed, it crashed into buildings, trees, and the ground, leaving a trail of devastation. Eventually, the severed hand stopped flailing. Then, it grabbed at the earth, breaking through a rock and crumbled the handful of stone and soil within its palm. It rolled around in the hole it made, using the help of dirt to remove the remaining sticky traces left on its skin.

Hyeonnam Tokki gulped. Anything that treated the ground as if it were paper was something he didn’t want to fight. The hand was slender and not particularly muscular, but it packed a punch. Ouyang Feng was the name of the Martial Lord, and his habit of showing more skin than necessary was well-known throughout the tower thanks to the popularity of Geimeo cards. If the severed hand could slap Ouyang Feng around, then the severed hand could slap Hyeonnam Tokki’s bones apart in a single hit. Even if he was an undead, it’d be hard to piece himself back together if his limbs disintegrated.

Then, Hyeonnam Tokki’s gaze shifted towards the accursed elf who had made him into the skeletal abomination wearing its own fur he was today. His skull shrank into his shoulder bones, and he remained as still as possible, but it was for naught.

“Oh?” Lindyss asked, raising her head and turning it to look at the skeletal rabbit. “If it isn’t Hyeonnam Tokki. I was wondering which summon of mine I sensed.”

If Hyeonnam Tokki still had eyes, tears would’ve come out.