The arid wind sending a mouthful of hot sand into her mouth and eyes was not how Mia imagined her first second spent inside the rift going.
She sputtered, pulling her turtleneck shirt up to cover her face as she tried to spit and blink the sand out of her mouth and eyes.
“Oh, you’re here,” Brent said, coming over to Mia and helping her stay on her feet. “The rest?”
“They’ll be coming in a moment,” Mia said, spitting out a final bit of sand. Her eyes hurt, every single grain of sand feeling like a nail trying to poke them out.
Helene came through next, and managed to snap her eyes shut just in time to escape the sandstorm’s assault.
Then came the rest, which left all of them sputtering and groaning in pain. They huddled down in a small circle, and Lina put up a dome of Air magic around them.
That lent them some protection from the sand and gave each of them enough time to get themselves mostly sand-free.
As Mia looked around, she saw bloodshot, teary eyes staring back from each of her companions.
“This could have gone better,” Brent said, looking around with annoyingly clear eyes. Whatever he was doing with his Ki had protected him from what the rest had to suffer through. “But it seems the sand storm is finally abating.”
It had been only a quarter hour since they entered, but that was fifteen minutes too much spent inside a sandstorm.
“I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.” Mark said, face neutral as Mia squinted at him. She had the urge to throw a handful of sand in his face.
“Shut up,” she said, squirming in place as she was reminded of the fact that her sneakers were full of sand, as were her socks, jeans and just about everything else.
Instead, as the group started getting up and futilely coming up with plans even while they knew practically nothing of how the rift’s insides worked, Mia grabbed her wand.
She had the twenty centimetre long ivory stick secured to her belt with a retractable keychain holder.
Channelling mana into the focus instead of using the pre-stored amount in the quartz, she went about casting Spectral Blade. With the wand in hand, she didn’t have to worry about blowing her hand off if she made a mistake, which did wonders to her nerves seeing as the spell circle was still quite new to her.
I could use the wand to experiment with modifying spell circles. Mia realised, thoughtfully gazing at the white stick in her hand.
She had no hopes of modifying one of the stronger spells, but a Bolt? She’d learned much from the Conjuration Lexicon and she had ideas.
That’s for later. When we’re done with these pig monsters.
The sandstorm beyond Lina’s protective dome of air was dying down, revealing a clear blue sky beyond and a scorching sun glaring down at the world below.
Mia stood, almost falling back down as the sand beneath her shifted and swallowed her legs up to the ankle. Looking around, she saw dunes as tall as five metres; the group having settled down in a little valley between two of them.
As Lina’s dome faded away, Carmilla darted up to the spine of the nearest dune and cast her gaze around. Mia, with her Spectral sword in hand, stumbled up to her.
“Well, at least we won’t have trouble finding them,” the vampiress mused with a hint of amusement and Mia couldn’t help, but nod.
Just a few hundred metres away, beyond three dunes a line of deep orange sandstone mesas rose up dozens of metres into the sky. They made for an imposing sight, stretching into the distance both to the left and the right.
They weren’t a unified wall though, cracks and deep ravines ran through them and right in front of Mia and Carmilla was a split almost a dozen metres wide.
A palisade made of sharpened ivory stood at the entrance, with curving bones poking out of the walls of the mesas on both sides like lines of teeth. Up top, gigantic brownish vines arched between the ravines, dotted with man-sized thorns on them.
Further inside, they could see carved walkways on the cliff face, with smaller furry forms scuttling about on them. Squinting, Mia saw them for what they were: humanoid boars wielding primitive weapons made of bone.
“Yeah,” Mia murmured, gripping her sword tightly as she watched on. There had to be hundreds of the monsters in that settlement.
The group crested over the dune behind them, coming to gaze at the impressive sight. They were heading in there, into that dark maw filled with monsters that apparently sacrificed souls in their dark rituals.
“Do we go in full blast from the front?” Mark asked, his grip tightening around his mace as he struggled to keep himself afloat on the soft sand. “Or try to be sneaky?”
“I don’t see any entrances other than that one,” Carmilla said, pointing at the ravine entrance looking like the maw of some long dead beast. “If we don’t want to drop down from above, that is.”
“I can’t carry Mark,” Helene said. “And you’d have to find your way down from there too. I don’t think I could fly silently into that thin tear in the ground.”
Mia nodded slowly in understanding, noticing that instead of widening the further up the ravine went, the top metre of both sides was barely a metre apart.
“Frontal assault it is,” Brent said, hefting his sword and setting off. He almost fell on his face as his armoured form sunk into the sand up to the knees, but he managed to continue moving.
Mark looked like he was swimming instead of walking as he turned his armour more sleek and with two large paddles on its arms.
The group circled the palisade and approached it from the right, pushing themselves up against the cliff face.
“Ten monsters up on top of the palisades,” Mia said, the place now in range of her Spirit Sense. “Another five up on small outcroppings on the walls of the ravine.”
“I can hear at least fifty of the monsters,” Carmilla added. “For a level 10 rift, I think that’s about half of them.”
“We need fifty kills for the Quest,” Brent reminded everyone. “We’ll see how easily we can clean this rift out, and if it’s not too dangerous, we can run it as many times as needed to get the quest completed for everyone. If not, we destroy the core and look for another one.”
Wait a second, how the hell did Brent complete this quest and get his armour? Mia thought for a moment, casting an incredulous look over him as he inched towards the shoddy palisades. Questions for later.
“Okay, Lina is on anti-air duty, I think a bunch of the bastards are going to drop on us,” Brent said, his voice a whisper that still made it to their ears with ease. “Carmilla, Mark, can you open up the gate?”
“Sure,” Mark said, while Carmilla just nodded.
The two slipped forwards and up under the palisades. Everyone quieted down as the sound of snorts and grunts that were apparently the main way of Boarling communication was all that remained in the air.
Mark struck first, his two metre long mace swung in a wide arc before its head blasted right through the waist-thick bone spikes jutting out of the ground.
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That opened up a wide enough path for them, so Carmilla didn’t even bother doing anything other than drop-kicking another spike down to the ground to widen the entrance.
The girl landed in a crouch, and as a cacophony of loud snorting and screeches spoke of the alarm of the monsters, the vampiress shot off.
Mark went in after her, a loud sigh of relief let out as his feet touched the hardened sandstone of the ravine’s floor. One of his gauntlets shifted into a tower shield as he swung his mace about with one hand, splattering a Boarling across the walls.
Brent went in next, sword snapping out left and right to cut down two of the guards who’d been standing around the palisades.
Lina’s tendrils of Air snapped out, slapping a trio of Boarlings out of the air and sending them out into the desert.
Mia startled, a yelp escaping her mouth as one of them landed only a handful of metres away from her. Her hand tightened on her sword, then her Familiar pushed its fuzzy head up against her cheek.
She calmed down instantly, taking a soft breath as the Boarling scrambled to its feet. If it had a weapon once, it was gone now. Alas, it was one and a half metre mass of muscles and tugged tusks and sharp-looking nails on its furry hand.
Helene raised a hand, lightning dancing between her fingers, but Mia was faster. She swung her Blade and somehow managed to catch the monster right across the neck.
Just as its head separated and a fountain of crimson blood burst out of the open wound, Helene’s attack landed and seared the wound clean, along with the insides of the monster.
Mia pointed at the other two Boarlings as she saw Lina step through the entrance, hands waving in the air. The blonde was doing slapping and waving motions, which made wispy white hands form out of her dispersed Air mana and slapped around the Boarlings trying to get a drop on the front liners.
“Kill them,” Mia commanded, her index finger going to the next dazed Boarling. The Familiar bolted off her shoulder, the wind of its passing making Mia’s hair flutter.
Mia turned, noting the screams of pain cutting off behind her as she stepped over the broken bone spikes.
Helene came in a moment later with twin sets of lightning arcing over everyone’s heads and blasting into a line of Boarlings up on a ledge carved right into the cliff face.
The monsters seized up and dropped down, smashing into the ground around the group with one smacking into the wall as Lina slapped it away. Which probably saved Mia from embarrassingly dying from a corpse falling on her head. She gave a thankful nod to the blonde, who returned a small smile before going back to work.
Brent fell behind, coming around to take up his spot as the rearguard behind Mia and Helene. As for Carmilla, well, Mia couldn’t see the girl, but she heard the screams from up ahead so she guessed that was where she’d went.
Now inside, Mia could see how the Boarlings lived. Ledges crisscrossed the walls, ladders and stairways were placed all around and the large thorny vines breaking out of one wall and burrowing into the other served as bridges between the two sides.
Smaller tunnels had been dug into the walls, nearer to the bottom, even entire visible halls had been opened up that had Boarlings rushing out of them.
The monsters shook their ivory spears above their heads, roaring in their guttural tongue. Mark was out in front, his mace now smaller to not be unwieldy in the tighter space as he bashed in head after head with ease. None of the attacks coming his way made more than a scratch on his now spike-covered armour.
Mia glanced at the Combat Log, and it was as she’d suspected.
***
[You have killed: Boarling Warrior - lvl 6]
[You have killed: Boarling Warrior - lvl 6]
[You have killed: Boarling Warrior - lvl 7]
***
These monsters were the chaff. The fodder, the trash mobs before the boss of this rift.
The thought made her pause. Thinking of this in game terms could be unhealthy.
Mia huffed, letting out a breath as she grabbed her wand and cast the rapid-fire Bolt variant. Game or not, the terminology fit eerily well, so there was no use in tiptoeing around the fact. The only thing she had to make sure of was to refrain from dissociating.
This was reality, her new reality and not a game. She only had one life and she would not waste it.
“Protect me,” Mia murmured to the cat atop her head. “Original orders are still active, but you can kill anything in retaliation to an attack that isn’t the six of us. Every monster is free game.”
With that done, Mia held her sword at the ready, but pointed her wand at a number of Boarlings rushing out of a tunnel to her right.
The spell circle glowed at the end of her wand, then broke and sank into it with only the core of it still glowing at its tip.
She flicked her wrist, more for show and because it felt cool than because she had to and with a mental nudge, a finger sized pink pebble shot off and burst right through the first Boarling’s eye, going right into its brain.
It only went in the front, but didn’t have enough power to blast the back of its head out too. These things had tough bones. She’d have to aim at the heart or neck instead of the head to kill if she didn’t have a clear shot at the eyes.
The monster fell and Mia flicked her wand again, another collapsed with half of its face mushed then another and another. Mia felt the cat leave its perch in her hair twice while she dispatched the group of ten Boarlings of that tunnel.
Once she was done, she turned her head and saw another five collapsed on the other side, having crawled out of a smaller tunnel she’d taken for a … sewage dump.
With a shrug, she stepped on ahead and followed after the rest. Helene was up next to Lina, shooting off miniature bolts at every Boarling the Air mage had disabled, but not yet killed while also throwing more powerful chaining attacks into a tunnel up on the walls every so often.
Brent followed a step behind Mia, shaking his head slightly. “I suppose I won’t get much to do in this rift, that cat of yours is … scary.”
Mia scratched the small pink cat lying on her head, paying some special attention to the back of its ears. It purred, the sound resonating into her skull pleasantly.
She’d always loved cats, and there were few things that could make stress drain right out of her than a ball of fur purring in her lap.
“It’s cute though,” Mia said, flicking her wand left and right and expending the last two charges of her spell into two Boarlings that were only now standing up after having been blasted into the walls by Lina.
“That it is,” Brent agreed easily, scratching his chin as his gaze took in the battlefield. “Nothing above level 7 yet. Worrying.”
Mia nodded, upping her alertness at his serious tone. She reactivated the same rapid-fire Bolt and followed after the two other mages, flicking off mini Bolts left and right.
She fell into a rhythm, her Spirit Sense kept track of every monster around and she barely even had to hesitate between shots. Monsters dropped in droves, not all dying from the first mini Bolt, but all stumbled at least, which made them easy pickings for a follow-up headshot.
Alternatively, Mia revelled in the chance to use her Spectral Blade whenever an injured Boarling got closer to her. The sword was unnaturally sharp, its magical edge shearing through muscle and ligaments with ease, only slowing when faced with the tough bones of these boar monsters.
Still, as she lunged forward with easy grace and her blade pierced right through the heart of a Boarling, she grinned. It had been on the wrong side of its body, in the right of its upper chest, but she’d heard its frantic heartbeat clearly enough to locate it.
Her movements had been guided by nothing, but instincts and the vague understanding that the pointy end of the blade goes into enemies. Still, with her higher thinking speed and borderline superhuman speed, that was enough for these brutish monsters.
Resolving herself to annoy Brent into teaching her the basics later, she hopped back, flicking her sword to the side as the monster collapsed. She jumped back again as the next Boarling threw a primitive bone javelin her way.
Her Familiar snapped it out of the air, crashing into it almost as soon as the projectile left the monster’s grip.
Mia threw her sword, sending the spell circle wrapped around her wrist like a bracelet into a spin that the blade mimicked a moment later. It soared forward like a spinning disk of arcane death.
It sheared right through the Boarling, then continued into the tunnel behind it and bisected another two of the monsters before Mia recalled it. Stupid monsters. They should have made the tunnels wider.
Her grin widened a touch, her breathing heavy and heart thundering in her chest. She’d never thought herself an adrenaline junkie, but there was something in fighting with skills and magic she’d earned that had her enjoying it far too much.
The feeling of relief that washed over her whenever one of the monster’s revolting presences faded into nothingness as they died couldn’t be discounted either. It pleased the Fae part of her immensely to end their blight on the world with her own two hands.
“Incoming,” Brent’s voice snapped Mia out of it and her expression turned serious. The man wouldn’t be calling out just more level 7s. “Form up.”
Carmilla came jumping over a line of Boarlings up ahead that were swarming at Mark despite Helene’s constant bursts of chaining lightning bolts.
“Big ones are coming,” the vampiress said as she landed with a slide next to Mia. “They got shamans protecting them, I couldn’t get through their barriers without risking myself too much.”
The ravine had been thinning for a while now, and up above and to the front Mia could see the two sides meeting and melding together.
Right under where the ravine ended was a tunnel opening that was more like the opening to the burrow of some gigantic animal. It was dark, with only flickering torchlight illuminating its cavernous insides.
Out of its mouth stepped five Boarlings half again as tall as the rest and wearing ivory armour from top to bottom. Behind them, three lanky monsters wearing leathery robes stood, hunched over gnarly staffs made of the miniature version of the thorny brown vines.
The three shamans had twisted wrong mana curling around them, writhing as if in pain from their mere presence.
Mia felt at the monsters and narrowed her eyes as she spoke.
“The five in front are level 9 and the shamans are all level 10.”