"We need- HELP!" Arion yelled out as he lifted his hands up from his sides, causing yet another wall to form out of the ground in front of his person as a bout of acid shot towards him.
Once it struck, he launched his wall forward with a kick, slamming it into the elongated snout of the monster they'd been fighting. Using the moment it was recoiling, Arion once again built up more of the surrounding ground to lock its left two legs further in place, hardening the material so it couldn't move. The monster roared out in pain as its eyes stayed fixated on him, as intended.
"You're fine," Alexa responded, leaning against a tree as the other three in her group fought. "You're the ones that wanted to try fighting without me. I doubt some Thrashers are going to actually kill you. Just use fire or ice."
"We aren't... we aren't good at that! And they're VINEThrashers!" one of her Combatants, a Dwarf, called out while avoiding another attack. "And we only thought there was one!"
Alexa shrugged and continued her passive stance. She'd step in if need be, but that was all.
She watched on as the small man dove to his side to avoid the giant and jagged bark teeth of the Thrasher as they slammed closed where he'd been. About twenty feet long, five wide, and seven tall, the monster stood before them with one of its smaller brethren to its side as both parties fought to keep their lives.
They'd stumbled across the two monsters when heading closer to the fifth layer. They'd asked if they could advance into the Diamond's area, and Alexa had told them she'd consider it if they started fighting without her. They agreed and provoked the larger Thrasher, only to realize there was a smaller one hidden nearby. The fight had thusly reached a stalemate of sorts as they fought in a small clearing.
VineThrashers, named as such due to the fact that Thrashers had a tendency to sleep near Host trees and get ensnared the most often, had very thick hides, shorter legs, lean bodies, a mouth that split into four directions, and an extremely thick vine that connected it to a tree. The trees, called Host trees, would take on the appearance of nearby trees but would stab a tiny, imperceptible needle into a nearby monster, putting it to sleep. After, it would drag the still-living creature inside the ground by its roots and implant its will in the monster's brain like a parasite, rebuilding the body from the frame-up. When young, they were typically not too hard to deal with and docile so that they could grow, but as they got older, they'd lash out and attack anything in the area for sustenance, developing stronger and stronger venom to ensnare stronger and sometimes even multiple protectors while sapping the surrounding vegetation of is nutrients, the strongest becoming a lone tree on a hillside.
Both of these trees had captured Thrashers, the worst opponent for Combatants. They were large, slow, powerful, and hard to cut through without certain magical means. Hence, a stalemate.
The Monster cried out in pain as the Elf Combatant took a swing at the host vine with her longsword while it was distracted, still unable to find a spot she could shear through. It shot its back left leg out further than a normal Thrasher should be able to, twisting and turning it mid-air to slam the bottom of its clawed foot into the waiting Elf's shield, sending her careening toward the second Thrasher.
"Your turn!" the Elf cried out while airborn.
"AYE!" the Dwarf yelled back, leaping into the air and slaming one of his two extremely large hammers down onto the monsters snout, destroying a few of its jagged brown teeth and causing it to once again scream in pain as a blast of fire singed its eyeless face.
"See? You have some fi-"
"It just heals!" the Dwarf shouted, interrupting Alexa as Arion caught the Elf with a well-timed wall made from the ground.
The Elf landed into the wall in a crouch and lept to the ground, once again advancing on the larger beast. Arion refocused his attention on keeping the smaller one at bay.
"We are getting tired and I'm running out of ideas here! There is no way we outlast these damn things when they're working together!" he yelled.
The monster Arion was keeping busy roared loudly, seemingly in agreement with his statement, and slammed his large head into the bindings on his left leg, breaking off large chunks of stone from it. Alexa saw the Celestial curse under his breath as the monster continued throwing itself about, finally breaking free from his hold.
"Incoming!" Arion yelled out as it charged for the Elf who was just arriving at the larger one's vine and preparing to add to her previous cut before it mended.
"Watch out!" the Dwarf shouted.
"I'm fine!" The Elf called back, diving over the thick vine just as the smaller one barreled into it, slamming its jaws down on its friend's lifevine.
Alexa stood up from the tree she'd been relaxing in as the forest shook from the larger Thrasher's cry of anger. It turned away from the Dwarf's distractions and lunged toward the smaller of them, clamping its jaws down on its throat while shaking it violently.
'This just got dangerous.'
The Dwarf backed off a few feet and observed the situation carefully. As he set into a waiting stance, the Elf finished her roll and stood up, turning around to watch the scene unfold.
"Uh, Roland! What do we do?!" she called out.
"Just stay put and wait for it to end! Try to aim for the spot it bit when they untangle!" the Dwarf called back as Arion scooted a tad closer to the fight.
Alexa ripped some water from the very lush trees and plants surrounding her and solidified all of it into three discs of ice as tall as she was, sharpening them to a deadly degree as she waited for something to go wrong. Seconds later, she let the discs fly as what she was waiting for happened; the larger Thrasher let go of the smaller one, sending it careening directly for the Elf who was staring on with wide eyes.
"Ahh!" a high pitched yelp sounded out from her mouth as the beast descended on her person.
"Eina!" Roland screamed out as she disappeared from sight, mid-dodge.
The smaller Thrasher hit the ground with a loud thud and rolled over a few times, revealing Eina pressed into the ground a few feet from it, shield above her. The monster finished rolling upright, unfazed as its head turned left, eyes settling on the Elf as she stumbled around while trying to stand in a panic. She took her first step backward, away from the monster, and tripped over her large shield, yelping again as she hit the ground on her back while lifting her shield up to hide her once as the beast lunged toward her, jaw open.
Alexa let one of her discs fly the moment it leapt, having hoped Eina would be able to dodge on her own only to see the girl trip. The sliver of ice traveled through the air like a bullet, effortlessly ripping the suspended vine and causing the creature to continue on its path through the air limp, hitting the ground in a motionless heap on top of the Elf, once again obscuring her body. A few moments later the Thrasher's body began to dissolve into sparkling blue motes of mana, leaving behind a dried up husk of dead vines, branches, skeleton, and bark. The vine that had been severed by Alexa's ice quickly retreated back into the tree it had come from.
"I'm good!!" a bright and cheerful voice sounded as Eina's head popped out from the top of the large corpse, holding onto an excessively large rib cage bone.
"Well I'm not!" Roland screamed out as the larger Thrasher continued rampaging, spitting acid after the small man as he ran out of the clearing through the nearby trees.
"That's not going to help," Alexa called after him, sighing as she watched him run in circles through the trees while the beast chased after him.
"Well do you have ANY IDEAS THEN?!" Roland yelled back, small body darting to and fro. "AHHRRRGG!!!" he screamed in frustration, the vine finally going taught only to melt through the surrounding trees and reform into a long, straight leash with plenty of slack.
"Find some rocks," Alexa muttered as she rolled her eyes.
"Keep it occupied!" Arion called out as he took to the sky, launching himself across the battlefield.
He sped through the air, hands out to his sides as he formed two gigantic meat cleaver blades with ground manipulation, the edges seemingly made from stone. A few seconds longer of attacking the Dwarf and the Celestial finally landed by its lifevine, cleavers and hands raised.
The monster, whether in reaction to the yell or to the Celestial's proximity to its vine, turned on a dime and began rushing for the clearing again, but the Dwarf had taken it a sizeable distance from where Arion had landed.
"Rog- NO YOU DON'T!" Roland screamed as he ducked under the monsters tail, slamming an oversized hammer into the underside of its back left knee as it tried to run for Arion, causing it to crash stumble as its hips crashed to the ground and its shoulder caught a large tree in front of it.
Alexa's eyebrows lifted as the two huge cleavers began condensing over and over, growing smaller and smaller until he couldn't any further. They had started almost like ten-foot square blocks and both ended around five feet in length and three feet tall, massive and very likely over a hundred pounds each. Once formed completely, she whistled in appreciation as they glowed silver and red for a few brief seconds, the sign of him applying an enchantment. Finally, he positioned his hands as if he were grabbing the nonexistent handles and begun to swing them downward in extremely brutal overhanded chops, slamming the gigantic cleavers into the vine.
'He always was quite versatile back home. Good amount of strength for one of the Families. If he didn't need to protect them, he could have handled the smaller beast on his own, probably.'
Her thoughts continued while the Thrasher wailed out in pain, beginning to stumble and trip on its own as the Dwarf continued to stall it, striking its knees every time it tried to get moving again but never regaining its attention. Arion's final chop hacked through the vine before the monster had even come within thirty feet of him.
"FINALLY!" the Dwarf cried out, sitting back on the ground with a loud sigh while dust began to settle around their group. "Last time we fight those damned creatures without Ms. Twinkle fingers up there."
"Wouldn't have been so bad if there weren't two of them," Eina said, moving toward them while covered head to toe in roots, dirt, and dust. "You did great though, Roland. You too, Arion. Next time put those enchantments on my blade. I might have been able to cut through the smaller one's lifevine," she finished, turning to look at the Celestial.
"Next time, don't be a fool and gawk at an unexpected development, and I might," Arion replied with a sneer.
"Hey, come on. No need to be a dick; it was unexpected! What was I... wait first, it wouldn't have happened if she had helped," the Elf said, pointing at Alexa.
"Don't blame me," Alexa said, raising her hands.
"Don't blame her because you embarrassed yourself," Arion supplemented with a glare at the girl.
"Oh shut up fanboy. You and every other guy just defend her because she's sooo pretty and talented. It's bastards like you that are the reason most women don't like her you know."
"While I'm not saying it's your fault, it's definitely not Alexa's..." Roland chimed in, earning a glare from the Elf Knight.
"Typical."
"Oh shut up you jealous wench," Arion sighed out.
"Guys! It's just the battle high, can we not get at each..." the Dwarf continued on as Alexa moved away from the group.
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She felt for the bond and found Kastra just as bored and annoyed at this situation as she was. She reached out for the Fae and sent a feeling of helplessness through and got one in return moments later, eliciting a smile to trace across her face.
'At least we're suffering together,' she thought as a feeling of warmth came through, like a pair of arms wrapping around her annoyed mind.
Meanwhile, feeling Damien's side, all she could sense was anxiety, excitement, panic, and bouts of absolute joy. He was enjoying every moment of this exercise.
"Well, that's to be expected though," she commented to herself as a smile began lining her face. "I need to ask if I can pair with people closer to my strength next time. Or just demand I be put with people that I plan on spending my life with."
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"WOULD YOU STOP. FIGHTING. IN MELEE. RANGE!" Rias bellowed at him for the third time today.
Damien had just finished leaping from a tree to cut an oversized yet lean bear-like creature's head clean off, his broadsword coated with a thin layer of razor-sharp ice. Looking up at her, Damien couldn't help grinning as he responded.
"But my plan work-"
"IT COULD HAVE GONE TERRIBLY. WHAT IF IT HAD LOOKED UP? IT WAS FLEEING! BEASTS WILL DO UNPREDICTABLE THINGS WHEN RUNNING FOR THEIR LIVES," she said, trampling over the latter part of his words as he sat on the ground just a few feet from the headless monsters corpse. "AND STOP. GIVING. HIM. YOUR. SWORD!!!"
"Hey, he asked for it," the Human Combatant replied with a sly grin, holding his hands up in mock surrender.
Damien scoffed, looked away from the glare shot toward him, and began healing himself to prepare his body for the next enemies. He'd just used the last of the water he'd created in this fight, being economical since he'd already wasted so much mana, and his face held a mix between a smile and a frown at being yelled at as everyone began to fix up their various wounds, with the exception of Cedar.
"AND YOU! At any point today, do you plan on actually participating? Or are you content being worthless dead weight in the back who hits his allies as often as his damned target!?" Rias continued, her tirade in full force as Damien nodded along.
"I'm just trying to hel-"
"WELL STOP FUCKING HELPING THEN!" she screamed as she moved deeper into the forest, slicing off a large chunk of the beast's paw and tossing it in some form of spacial storage as she began looking for the next poor monster they'd kill. "Only contribution you've even had was the damned amateur stealth enchant and that seems to have backfired if anything!"
Damien watched her go and waited until she was a sufficient distance away before turning to his new best friend, Ranger.
"Is she always so angry?"
"No way. She's usually quiet. I don't know what the hell is happening right now," he replied in a whisper with a bit of terror in his voice. "Do people usually get this mad at you?"
"I don't think so..." Damien replied as they both continued after their monster of a captain. "I think I'm pretty likable," he finished with a shrug.
It was around midday now, and they were on a rampage. The group hadn't taken a break yet but had already culled through over thirty encounters. He almost felt bad for the creatures at this point... and Cedar. The Celestial barely could keep up with their captain's pace, let alone being able to contribute properly.
At least all of the monster's death locations were being marked with some tracker Rias had been given. Merchants with escorts would be in later to collect the bodies and raw materials for food, armor exporting, and low tier Alteration practice.
Rias had dragged them through the fourth layer and into the fifth almost immediately. The monsters had taken a noticeable increase in hostility and violence, yet at no point did Damien feel like he was in actual danger. Something about the way Rias moved always made him feel like she was one quick step away from being in front of him or anyone else in the group with her shield. In fact, the only time he didn't feel like a coddled child was the times he'd done something risky, and she'd screamed at him after each instance.
"I mean, even I wanted to yell at you when you thought it was a good idea to draw one of the Thrashers off of her out and through the trees. You're a MAGE, Damien. I was sure it was over for you when you actually turned around and grin-"
"Stop. Stop. We don't need to reminisce on that."
"'Well, that was eas-AHHHH!' I think is how it went?" Ranger jested, mimicking a stance Damien had taken earlier with his hands self satisfyingly placed on his hips.
"How was I supposed to know the stupid leash would just melt through the trees! We haven't gotten to that creature in Ms. Dewitt's class!" Damien argued back. "Bullshit-ass stupid big tree alligators," he muttered under his breath.
"Well, whyyyy do you think this class is supposed to be taken in later years, genius boy?" Ranger responded with a smirk. "You're supposed to have taken that class already."
"Oh wh-"
"Stop talking and get up here!" Rias yelled from in front of them. "And give him the freaking sword back. If you step into melee range again, I'm going to knock you out quicker than you could even THINK to defend yourself," she threatened.
Damien closed his mouth and sighed, handing Ranger his sword. The young man immediately sheathed it and shrugged.
Their group continued onward in a rather relaxed fashion as Damien moved up to Rias and spread out his mana sense. He'd been working on a variation of the sense all day, a sort of echolocation version of it that detected vibrations, but was still having an extremely hard time using it when moving. It was a branch of earth magic and the general mana sense, but it was hard to sift through all of the feedback he received from it unless he was completely still, so moving around like this while using it was liable to give him vertigo. That, and a glare if he bumped into Rias again.
Needless to say, he kept his mana sense up instead as they continued at a leisurely pace, finding it returning no movement of any kind.
'Weird... nothing is...'
"That's odd," he decided to voice. "I'm not even getting birds or bu-"
"Stop," Rias demanded, holding out an arm to him as she halted her movement.
Damien had already frozen a half second before she had. The oddity in his sense had thrown him off. The only time a forest went silent like this was during a natural disaster or when a predator roamed near, and there was not a cloud in the sky.
"It's Prowlers."
Damien's face dropped its grin at her whisper. Her eyes were flitting back and forth in concentration while her mind no doubt worked and a million miles a minute to try and figure out some sort of life-saving solution.
He heard Ranger finish sidling up behind them and looked over his shoulder, seeing a grim look on his face as well. Looking further back, he saw no Cedar. As if on cue, coming in at the perfect moment to add to his apprehension, a ping of intense warning and danger pinged out from Kastra.
"We need to get the hell out of here, now," Damien demanded, grabbing the frozen Rias by the arm and trying to move back toward the way they'd come. "Maybe-"
He took one step in the opposite direction and his arm went taught, Rias not moving an inch. Looking to her eyes, he expected to see fear or some kind of insanity holding her in place, but instead, he found resolve. A resolve to see something through. A resolve to die.
He knew leaving wasn't going to help, but his first instinct had still been to find their instructor or more classmates. Rias, on the other hand, had immediately elected to fight to the death, the only logical conclusion when being put in this situation. Damien let her go and lowered his body into a crouch, touching his hand to the ground. He sent a few pulses of vibration into the ground from his hand and felt them return after running into their own obstacles, showing him the terrain layout. Detailing to him three large cats moving in on their location, beginning to encircle them from about fifty feet away.
When he glanced up and did a casual sweep of where they should have been with his mana sense, they weren't present.
"I agree," Rias eventually said with a chuckle. "Unfortunately, we won't be given that luxury. Unless Layla gets here soon, this is where we die."
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"So it's a type of barrier?" Kastra asked Layla, flitting beside her as she watched Damien and Alexa's groups filed into the forest.
Once they were out of sight, her face slowly reverted from one of happiness to one of indifference as she sighed. In an attempt to distract herself from their absence, she felt them through the bond and began to examine the first Layer of the forest.
"The Layers? Yeah. Some genius found a way to allow everything in but trap the big boys at certain levels, like gates that only let weak things through. Great way to train," Layla stated.
"I like barriers. Am I allowed to examine them?"
"Sure, just don't go tampering with them. Smallest attempt could get ya kilt. Best be takin your group in now, they look anxious to go."
Kastra glanced over at them with an impassive face and they all shrunk back a bit, confused at her complete and total shift in personality. She waved them forward impatiently with her hand and began floating in after them. She might hate the job she was given, but this was the price for being allowed to be here with those she loved. It was necessary.
"Don't be a bitch to them, please. It's Reinal's fault I had to remove you from the boy's side," Layla spoke up. "It won't happen again."
Kastra turned back to the instructor and shrugged before slowly heading back in the direction her charges were going.
This is how it always was when Alexa and Damien left the area. People, even the battle crazed maniac of a Kreel, treated her trepidatiously. As if she were a ticking time bomb that would go off without their being around. It wasn't irritating, something about it just felt lonely to her. She was treated with respect as a representative of her race, not her own person. The only ones at this school who didn't bother to treat her as such were Gallion, Lemshire, and people that were insulting her.
Them, and those she loved.
She shrugged off the thoughts that threatened to consume her mood as they moved into the forest and began exploring at a healthy clip, the group of Combatants eager to get their first kill. A few even suggested they split up until they came across their first monster and found it more than a little challenging to end. Quick, camouflaged, and possessing ground manipulation capabilities, the small four-armed creature had seriously injured one of the members of the group. It ended up taking away more than a few minutes of their exploring just waiting for him to heal his arm. They'd asked Kastra to heal him, but it was her job to observe, not help, so she'd told them no.
Her group never really got their act together as they went on, either. They'd started out disorganized, bumbling about and taking no precautions during fights and up until this point in the day had continued using such brutish tactics. Undisciplined, untrained, not used to working in groups... Kastra felt like this exercise was a waste of time. Of her time.
Layla was sure to have her reasons though.
"Alright let's take a break!" the only Minotaur in the class demanded, halting any more forward progress. "No point in continuing on if we get tired."
The other three students nodded and slowed down, dropping their weapons and bags to the ground.
Kastra flit to a nearby tree and felt Alexa checking on her through the bond. Noticing that brought a bit of life back to her face. At least one of her loves was thinking about her at the moment.
"Let's head deeper in after this!" the male Dresmyr called out.
"Agreed. We've been doing great so far," replied the Minotaur in a gruff tone. "No reason we can't keep this up."
"Yeah! We c-"
"No," Kastra interrupted, causing the Dresmyr and Lamia in her group to flinch.
"No?" the Minotaur asked. "You don't get to dec-"
"You are all way too unorganized and haven't had to fight more than two creatures at the same time as of yet. If their strength stepped up, I'd have to step in to bail you out constantly. No," Kastra stated with finality.
The four students looked around at each other before the Minotaur stood up and glared back at her.
"It's not your choice. Plus, you don't know that. It could be fine."
"You're willing to risk your life on the chance it could be fine?" Kastra shot back, scoffing.
"Well... if we scout first it wouldn't be based on chance..." the female Dwarf she'd interrupted earlier responded.
Kastra thought about that for a moment and smiled. Perhaps that would give her some time alone actually.
"You're right," she responded with a smile, surprising them. "I'll go scout since it's too dangerous for you all, though."
They looked at her skeptically for a moment before the Dresmyr spoke up.
"Well... if you go, who's going to be our safety feature? Grum here may be ok with you taking off but..." he trailed off after motioning to the Minotaur.
"That's easy. Just stay put where you are. Nothing will come bother you as long as you stay within-" Kastra imitated drawing a circle with her small right hand and one appeared, a hundred feet in diameter easily, in the ground around their group, "this circle. The ward I just set up should repel everything from coming this way. I'll be back in five!" she finished, darting further into the forest before they could protest.
She'd feel if they left her barrier and head back right away, but for now at least, she was free of babysitting. She danced through the trees, avoiding the small creatures and monsters hiding on the branches, while blending in with her surroundings and searching for the closest barrier.
The forest was dense and packed with all kinds of life, deadly and not. The canopy made it pretty dark but every two hundred feet or so, there was always an opening that let in a ton of light, making it relatively simple to see where one was going at all times.
"Just how much fun is he having," Kastra asked to herself with a chuckle after stopping on a tree to check in on Damien.
She looked down and found a Host tree, older by the looks of its lifevine, set in the middle of one of the clearings and about twenty feet away from where she stood. The Tree had captured a Werebear to use as a protector template. It would probably be a great fight for her four charges to humble their attitudes.
Kastra was just about to head back and get them when she felt a fluctuation in the nearby ambient mana. She jumped up and headed towards it, spreading her mana out while creating a ward to detect life forms centered on herself.
Neither returned much information until she began to near the sixth layer, upon which she felt something humanoid in stature enter and exit her ward almost immediately, as if it knew it had been seen. She considered chasing it but terminated that thought, instead aiming further in for the other stationary fluctuation.
Flying in a cautious manner and keeping her senses taught, she came upon the barrier. Gently, she lifted her arm and probed it with her fingers. When nothing happened, she began to examine it in more detail with her mana.
"A gate of sorts? That seems..." she spoke aloud, before realizing what she was looking at and feeling her heart grip tight in her chest.
It wasn't a gate or a doorway of any kind. It was a tear.
Kastra felt panic grip her chest as she quickly patched the hole with a ward of her own creation, sending danger signals out to Damien and Alexa. Once done with that, she quickly lifted her hands and began crafting a message with.
'Tear in the sixth layer.'
With a flick of her wrist, it was off to Layla and she began flying at full tilt toward Alexa. While she was the more versatile of the two with her water magic, Damien was definitely much more lethal and should most likely be able to protect himself, or have a higher chance of it. They both knew Alexa was the priority, even if their lives were dependant on one anothers.
Suddenly, an extremely loud booming sound rang out from Damien's section of the forest and her path changed in a heartbeat as she flew as fast as her wings could carry her to where he was some fifteen miles away, on the complete opposite side of the forest from her. If she wasn't being kept level-headed by how calm and collected he was, she'd have risked teleporting inside of a tree or the ground to get there immediately.
Right as she'd arrived within two hundred feet of him, she felt his consciousness disappear from the bond.