Chapter 587 (2/2)

Well, no reason to be bitter about it, Tessa reminded herself, looking at her resolution.

After becoming a councilwoman, she had finally obtained a Class: Radical Scholar. She was conflicted about the Class. On the one hand, she had obtained Skills like Innovative Thinking and Powerful Memory that helped her accomplish the things he wanted. Utilizing them, along with her Calligraphy and Writing Skills, Tessa had obtained power without ever resorting to violence. The pen is mightier than the sword, and all that.

On the other hand… Tessa felt oddly disappointed. She wasn’t a Hero, she wasn’t a leader… she was just a scholar.

Well, no reason to be bitter about it, Tessa thought again while rolling her eyes.

She was about to go through line by line on the portion of the resolution that addressed the Chivalric Orders when there was a knock at her door.

Jeremy, an elderly man who functioned as the District Attorney in Franksburg, stuck his head into her office. “Councilwoman, the army is leaving.”

Her eyebrows climbed upwards. She bit back a curse as she scrambled to her feet; although it was a sexist belief, Jeremy was always aghast when she swore and there was no reason to offend him over something so pointless. “So soon? But Lucifer’s injury-”

“Healed,” Jeremy said, shaking his head.

Tessa burst from her room, loose papers fluttering with her passage. Jeremy blinked at her in shock and made to comment, but Tessa rushed away. Although she was wearing a skirt, it was a relatively loose number that flowed down to just below her knees. Even if she sprinted as fast as she could, Tessa doubted that anything… more untoward than the act of running would show.

And she needed to make it in time to this. She hadn’t worked so hard on her careful delineation of basic human rights for the military to ignore the well researched and considered definitions. And she knew that was exactly what they were about to do.

Heads turned when she rushed out of City Hall into a busy road, and Tessa was forced to slow down. But only a quick pause to listen to the surroundings allowed her to clearly identify shouting in the distance to the East. Immediately, she started power walking in that direction, nodding politely to a trio of police officers who greeted her on her way.

It was strange, the conscious part of Tessa’s mind reflected, how Perception not only increased your base hearing but also your ability to distinguish between noises. Things weren’t just louder. You could also select what you wanted to listen to more easily. Perception was where most of Tessa’s points had gone to, that and Wisdom, and she found it to be exceedingly helpful. Although she really wanted to make a more concerted effort to improve her Focus and see if that prevented some of her crippling headaches that resulted from long writing sessions.

Without pausing to check if any of the clunky looking Mana based cars were moving back and forth, Tessa streaked across Main Street and took the steps two at a time to head up into the upper-level walkways above downtown. Partially, these had been made to allow for military and defense forces to move conveniently between the wide expanses of Franksburg’s borders in times of trouble, but they were currently mostly used as the equivalent of a highway for walking downtown.

If you were moving close, you stuck to the ground level. The walkways allowed you to skip a lot of the local traffic.

There were currently plans in the works to use some of the technology from Zone 1 to make a trolley system in Franksburg, but the City Council was still barely able to figure out how much it should be taxing. A huge expenditure like that made them gulp.

Tessa reached the eastmost rallying point in time. Lucifer was there, the Hero of Franksburg, looking that weird combination of bored and surly that he always did. He made her twitch somewhat because it reminded her of meeting him with Randidly, but Tessa did her best to ignore it. And to ignore the fact that Lucifer was cut from the cloth as Randidly, in that they could act without bothering with laws.

But next to him was Commander Kimmen, a German-born individual who was in charge of Franksburg’s second army. Rumor had it that he had recently reached Level 45. His Class, Determined Soldier, made him a popular and effective leader. The two men were talking as the rest of the army, almost 1000 men and women, began to march.

Tessa bit her lips. It was hard not to remember that she was only Level 19 at times like this. After taking a deep breath, she walked forward to interrupt these two powerful individuals.