"You okay?"Shun Yin was sitting by himself outside the cemetery, brooding. Glen approached him, and when his friend turned toward him, he tossed a bottle at him. Shun Yin caught it by reflex, and then stared at the clear water swirling inside the plastic bottle.
Yeah, they still used plastic 1,000 years in the future. Maybe technology allowed them to use some alternative to fossil fuels as the ingredient for plastics. Synthetic materials could be manufactured through magic or through a fusion of alchemy and chemistry. Though alchemy was simply magic chemistry.
"Yeah." Shun Yin nodded distractedly as he uncapped the bottle and took a gulp. He lowered his gaze, unable to meet Glen"s eyes.
"What about…Angie? Is she all right?"
Glen wasn"t sure how to approach the subject. He wondered if Shun Yin could still communicate with Angelica when he didn"t summon her, and where she existed when not summoned. Probably in some interdimensional soul plane inside Shun Yin"s mana pool or consciousness. Magic was a mysterious thing. Anything was possible.
"Angelica is all right. She doesn"t like it if I summon her for nothing…or for the most trivial things. Sorry."
"Nothing you should apologize for. I understand that Angie"s not the same as she used to be. I"m not even sure if she"s still Angie."
Shun Yin sighed and scratched his head. "She"ll tell you for the millionth time that she is Angelica and at the same time she is not.
"Of course." Glen snorted. "As if I understand that."
"Anyway…" Shun Yin tried to change the subject. "How about…your cousin? How is the Porter clan reacting to Michael"s…death?"
The two of them turned back toward the graveyard, as if in unison. The funeral was long over, with the remnants of the Porter clan sobbing or acting out their grief in front of Michael"s coffin. The priest had said his prayers and they were supposed to lower his corpse into the grave…except that he was meant to be cremated.
Just as well. There wasn"t much of Michael"s body left to collect, not after Cronus Wright had obliterated the top half of his body. Without his head, they could hardly identify the body and confirm that it belonged to him by dental records or whatever. If they were relying on modern technology, that is. Fortunately, magic could do anything, and they identified him through the lingering mana signature that stubbornly clung to his body.
The two guys were dressed in dark suits, complete with a tie and everything. It was a funeral, after all, and they were expected to at least look formal. Not that Shun Yin felt comfortable in such a rigid attire, but he was too somber about Michael"s death to care about such trivial details. The person he idolized and hero-wors.h.i.+pped had died.
He had always believed that Michael was invincible. After all, what superhero story had the hero killed off ignominiously in battle? This was the guy he had been adoring and whose footsteps he wished to follow, whose back he had been chasing almost half his life. A hero he aspired to become like when he grew up.
And now…Michael was gone. Just like that.
Shun Yin was aware of the dangers of battle, and knew that the casualty rates and death tolls for combat mages were extremely high. He had heard countless stories of combat mages failing to return home alive, getting killed in the battlefield, losing their lives to monsters or enemy mages. But he never imagined that Michael would be among the dead.
The guy was supposed to be indestructible…a hero. A symbol of hope, someone for kids such as him to look up to and follow. Just how…?
"There"s not much of the Porter clan left to mourn Mike"s death," Glen said finally, snapping Shun Yin out of his thoughts. He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed, glancing back at the pitiful number of Porter clan members who were still gathered in the graveyard. Other than Glen"s family – his father, Henry Porter, and his mother – the rest were distant branch families who were now elevated as the core families because of the original latter"s demise. They didn"t have a choice, not unless they were willing to allow the Porter clan to fade into obscurity.
Furthermore…
"They aren"t holding a funeral for Angelica," Shun Yin murmured. Glen raised an eyebrow and shrugged.
"Well…technically she"s not dead. Not human anymore, no longer existing in our dimension, sort of, but still…alive. I guess. How do you cla.s.sify someone who has been fused with a spirit and can only exist in our world through the contractor summoning her?"
"I don"t know," Shun Yin admitted truthfully. His head began to hurt as he considered the various complications. "I really don"t know."
"I guess, in the end, it doesn"t really matter, does it?" Glen glanced up at the sky, shoving his hands into the pockets of his suit. "You still get to see her and talk to her whenever you summon her. It"s not ideal, but at least she"s not gone forever. Like…"
He trailed off as he glanced in the direction of Michael"s grave. The coffin was for show, because his remains were going to be cremated anyway, and then they would put the urn in front of the gravestone.
"Funerals are held for the living…to give the people who live on some closure." Shun Yin rubbed the bridge of his nose, knowing that the funeral was pretty much meaningless to the actual person who had died. However, to the people who were still alive, the ones who were grieving, it eased their pain a little.
Even that tiny amount helped a lot psychologically.
However, who was grieving for Michael? Both his parents were dead. His sister was now a spirit, appearing on Earth only when Shun Yin summoned her. The only people who truly mourned his loss were probably Glen and his parents. The branch families didn"t know Michael, weren"t close enough to him to truly feel any pain. They were somber, not because they were devastated over his loss, but because they recognized the significance his death had on the future of the Porter clan.
It would be a long while before the Porter clan could truly reestablish itself as a force, as one of the ten Great Families of the Global Federation.
"What will the Porter clan do from now on?" Shun Yin asked. Glen shrugged, hopping off the small set of stairs leading into the entrance and gate of the graveyard.
"Who knows? Dad will figure it out. As of now, he"s the acting head of the Porter clan." He grimaced. "I don"t envy him."
"Doesn"t that mean you"ll succeed him as the next clan leader after he steps down?"
"Ugh, I don"t want to think about it."
Shun Yin smiled, seeking a little comfort in Glen"s usual behavior. He reached out and patted his shoulder rea.s.suringly.
"You"ll do fine."
"I doubt it."
"Trust me, you will."
He then leaned back and stared at the distant sky, his mind momentarily blanking out as he struggled to process the reality. Now that Michael was gone, he didn"t have a role model to follow. Well, he could always follow the stuff that Michael Porter did while he was alive, but eventually he would reach the point where he caught up with him and even overtake him. At that moment, he would be at a loss at how to proceed from there.
No. it was meaningless to continue following along Michael"s path. That was Michael"s path, not his. He would have to forge his own route.
"What about you?" As if on cue, Glen inquired. "What do you plan to do from now on?"
"…I"ll have to find my own path, I guess."
Shun Yin raised a hand toward the sky and pondered for another second. He still wanted to be a hero. He still intended to become an ally of justice, saving others from danger and villains. That had not change.
The question now was…how would he become a hero? What sort of ally of justice would he become?
If he followed Michael"s route, he would just be a counterfeit. A "hero" who hollowly clung to a beautiful, albeit fragile ideals that others had set out upon him, only to find them all shattered the moment he reached the point where his predecessor had died. That route wasn"t impossible. Even if he pursued Michael"s vision up to the point of his death, he could think about where to proceed from there. He could just worry about the future after he got there, not before.
He realized that Glen was still staring at him quizzically.
"What do you mean?"
"Now that Michael is gone, someone has to pick up the slack. I"m not saying he can be replaced, but the world needs…heroes more than ever. Allies of justice." Shun Yin clenched his right fist and stared at it. "The Dark Church isn"t the only villain in this world. People will still need to be saved. I"ll save them in Michael"s place."
"Hey, you don"t have to do that…" Glen began, but Shun Yin shook his head.
"No, don"t misunderstand me. I"m not doing this out of some misguided sense of responsibility. I"m doing it because I want to." he smiled as he tilted his head back and stared at the sky. "Ever since I first saw Michael defeat those robbers almost ten years ago, I always aspired to be an ally of justice like him. I always imagined being a hero, saving people"s lives and defeating villains."
"You are a hero," Glen told him quietly but firmly. "You"ve saved my life so many times. And your actions against the Dark Church and the a.s.sa.s.sins Guild undoubtedly saved countless lives. If you didn"t stop them from activating their device, Vermillion City…no, the world would be doomed."
He took a deep breath.
"You also saved me, Mr. Stuart and Mr. Yuan Dao from that a.s.sa.s.sin couple in the mountain. You and Angie both."
"If I had been stronger, Michael might not have died."
"It wasn"t your fault."
"I know," Shun Yin agreed. "I"m not stupid enough to blame myself for his death. But at the same time I understand that there are ways to prevent that. I"ll move on and grow stronger from this experience rather than mope over it."
Glen looked at him in surprise, and then smiled.
"Yeah. You"ll be fine."
"You too."
Shun Yin rose to his feet, and the both of them departed from the cemetery. As they strolled toward the bus stop, something occurred to Glen.
"I know you said you want to become an ally of justice, but what do you want to do specifically? How does one become a hero?"
"I don"t know. I"m planning on becoming a mercenary like Michael, taking on missions, going into hot combat zones and saving people." Shun Yin thought for a while. "Maybe I"ll go on a journey and travel the world."
"A journey?" Glen"s eyes widened. "What about school? Do you plan to drop out?"
Shun Yin laughed. "Of course not. I plan to graduate properly. There"s still a lot I can learn." He scratched his head. "Well, I inadvertently caught ahold of the spirit summoning thing that your dad and his research students are working on, but even so I think there"s plenty I need to learn before I go out and explore the world." He pondered further. "And I plan to attend university as well. There are quite a few magic universities that specialize in teaching combat magic."
"If you want to get into them, you"ve to work hard!" Glen warned.
"I know. It"s not going to be easy, but I"ll strive to fulfil my dream." Shun Yin raised his hand toward the sky to display his resolve. "I"m not going to let anyone down…with Angelica by my side, I"m going to save everyone I can, and hopefully never witness another person dying in front of me ever again."