The next couple of days passed quickly. The group returned to the tavern that night, exhausted and irked by whatever they had been hunting, but free of injury. The next day they relaxed and I simply worked on my core compression, still unable to tame the mana of different elements.
The day after that we began our journey anew. There was a slightly awkward goodbye with Kristen, and she and her father even walked with us to the edge of town. She had given me a big hug but didn’t say anything, knowing it wouldn’t help the situation. Of course Liana and the rest teased me about leaving behind another crying girl as I left for another adventure.
In the mornings I’d wake up with Elric and train my [Portent of the Thaumaturge], [Intuition], [Dodging], [Bladed Weapon Mastery], and [Runedancing]. With [Runedancing] came [Compendium Actualization]. We would jog ahead on the road we intended to travel and fight with my various senses deprived. I was quickly getting the hang of [Portent] and using it to complement my other skills. It interested me that it was a different skill from [Mana Sense] and not just a pure upgrade, which Liana said was due to it being more specialized and combat focused. Typically [Mana Sense] could later merge with [Portent] but they needed to be higher level first.
After training with Elric, when the rest of the group caught up, I’d run ahead of them and do basic calisthenics workouts or train with my sword while they caught up. They easily could have caught up with me but made no effort to do so, instead enjoying their meandering pace through the plains. Sometimes Adrien would run with me and we’d go even further so he could help me practice for a longer period of uninterrupted training.
In the evenings, after dinner, Liana helped me with my mana condensing and runes. Even though she hadn’t studied runes before she was quickly finding herself as entranced by them as me and helped to polish my two twenty five rune spells. I’d also worked on creating some new sets of clothes for me with my newly acquired silk. It took about two weeks to craft and enchant the first set once we came up with the runeset for it. This meant for two weeks I wore only my slowly tightening, self cleaning set that I made a year back in Arborton. This time, the sets I was making were a bit baggy and loose with the intention of growing into them, but not so loose I’d trip over my clothes in combat or other stressful situations.
When I started [Runeweaving] on the third night the group was rather intrigued, especially our resident mage. The process was different from many other techniques in enchanting. Instead of using a stele or a type of magical writing utensil, I made a needle with [Mana Manipulation] along with a thread behind it. The struggle was that I had to essentially embroider the cloth with my mana, drawing and stitching the runes together by repetitively piercing the cloth with my constructed needle and thread. I had to repeat the process a few times and take care to ensure the rune circle was either in a perfect circle, straight line, or a perfect polygon. When I had first started, this was the factor that caused my initial failures, and why it took over two years to create one set of clothes. Now that I knew the trick and had built up the skill a little bit, I felt it went faster.
In just a week after starting the first set was complete. A purple tunic with long loose sleeves, though they tightened a bit around the wrist so as not to move overmuch, and a pair of silk pants. They both had the same general enchantments. Self repair, self cleaning, and through [Maelstrom Modification] a waterproofing enchant on the shirt, and fire resistance on the pants. I wasn’t exactly eager to test either but I was excited to see even my crafts outside of smithing would be effected by my random dice roll of a skill. It made sense though, even though my second class was definitely geared towards smithing skills [Runeweaving] was integrated into the class as well. This also meant that my [Runeweaving] projects gave experience for my second class albeit not at the same rate as a smithing project would.
My days took on this schedule, blending together. I didn’t see much growth in my skill levels, as most were already capped with the rest, but I did feel myself improving with each of them. It was around three weeks before we came across anything of interest. By the time we had reached Edderton all of the quests had been taken care of by someone from the merchant group. I didn’t mind too much.
Ever since Adrien told the story about Rhosha I had only really thought of the tournament. I wanted a chance to speak with her, and I had no doubt that Adrien and the rest had the same thoughts as me. That she likely had some link to my ‘Lost Class’. And so I had resumed my training with my colleagues with renewed vigor.
__________________________________________
After three weeks of our journey, with the days blending and never ending, we were interrupted in our travels. The trek from Edderton to the next town, Fish Town, was nearly a month journey. We were two weeks into this journey when a sand wyrm, a resident of the wastes, broached the barrier and leaked into the plains and thus into our path.
We were simply walking, with me a fair bit up road when Luka yipped at me. He sent an image of danger, real danger, far more danger than he had felt before even from Amelia who he thought of as a predator. Sky rushed back from where she had been dancing in the tall grass of the plains.
“What is it Luka, can you tell?” I asked as we began to jog back towards the rest of the group. The fox shook his head and simply raced alongside me as we neared the higher leveled adventurers’. Luka yipped suddenly and urged me to dodge towards him, and without thinking I did just that as the earth rumbled and a massive toothy maw emerged from it.
“Scrrreeeeeeeeeaaaaaahhh,” The maw screeched as it burst through the packed path we strode. It writhed as it sought to chase after its prey but smelled many things, or heard many moving beasts. Adrien and the rest immediately sprang into action. They tossed their packs, regardless of anything fragile, to the side and spread out. Elric, before the wyrm could thrash in my direction, leapt forward and cleaved at its side. A red aura I had never before seen shimmered around the large man. I was growing tall but Elric still towered over me, and with the aura seemed to grow even taller. More intimidating. My eyes widened as his blade, large and heavy and sharp as it was, simply sheered upwards upon impacting the wyrms scales.
“Lios, run! Get a distance away, these things!” He was interrupted by the mouth of the tubular, wormlike, face rushing towards him. I still got the hint. I rushed backwards, not taking my eyes from the wyrm, and started to strategize in order to help the group.
As I fled, an eagle tattoo on Adriens sparsely covered torso, claiming a spot just above his heart, started beating its wings and fading before it vanished and inky black wings sprouted from the older adventurers back. Even from my distance I heard him groan and growl in pain, before letting loose a bellowing yell. He took off into the air and dropped down just above the wyrm, sword pointed down. With his full weight he drove the sword into the skull of the beast, which I started to believe would be enough to finish it, but the blade only drove in about an inch deep, stopped by the creatures heavy and thick skull.
It screeched out again and crawled the rest of the way up from the earth. It was similar to a salamander but with draconian features, aside from its wormlike head. No wings adorned the sand wyrms body. I tried to rack my brain for any information that I thought would help. As I did I started one of the twentyfive rune dances that Liana had helped me perfect so I didn’t lightning bolt myself. Flashstep Lightning Bolt, as we called it, would allow me to travel a great distance in an instant and leave a lightning bolt to drop down where I last stood. I could manipulate the lightning to land anywhere along my path, at least in theory. We hadn’t had much opportunity to practice this spell considering the risks of it.
Intuitively, I knew that lightning wasn’t overly damaging to earth based creatures but I wondered if that could still be said if the creature was soaked. If it was wet, then superheated with a lightning bolt, could it be paralyzed long enough for the rest of the party to finish it off? Or perhaps the temperature change could crack its scales?
As I prepared the first dance I felt Luka wrestling with its earth manipulation, trying to slow it down like he made me stumble during training but the creature was significantly stronger than the fox. Luka yipped in frustration at being bested again and again. Still, the boy fox didn’t relent and struggled against the earth manipulation of the larger creature.
Sky was attempting to bolster Elrics attacks by pushing a focused wind behind his arms, allowing him to move ever so slightly faster. I wondered if she was developing a haste buff skill because he was moving marginally faster with her help. It was likely not noticed by him, but eventually as she grew more adept with it I was sure it would be a great boon.
The beast roared, only tiny trickles of blood coming from its meager wounds but it was angry that its prey wasn’t simply allowing it to eat them. Its roar nearly burst my eardrums, causing me to stumble and nearly fall to my knees. It was close to breaking my focus on the dance and I was at least fifty feet away from it. As the rest of the group stumbled, it kept its mouth wide open and exhaled deeply. How it had air left after screaming so loud, I wasn’t sure, but air was not all that fled from its mouth. A torent of acid sprayed towards my friends, sizzling on Elric's arm as he barely managed to dodge the main spray. Adrien managed to dodge rather easily, flying up and over the thirty foot long salamander. He landed on its back and attempted to stab down once, twice, thrice before cracking the shell of scales.
I noticed even those relatively small wounds it had taken from Elric and Adrien kept bleeding, and that the blood was slowly siphoning towards Amelia. Elric approached Amelia who washed his arm with some of that same blood, a glowing red emanating from it as she pulled away the acid and started to heal him. While she wasn’t so great at repairing bones with her particular magic, she could easily repair flesh and muscle. Within seconds his arm was no longer sizzling and boiling, and he was ready to resume the fight.
However, these seconds were precious. Adrien was unable to fully distract the beast and, in an effort to help, I used [Compendium Actualization] to build a water blade spell, a simple single circle spell that allowed me to coat my sword with water that could be launched as sharp waves of energy. I launched all three of them into the beasts face, trying to pull its attention from Liana. The blades splashed relatively harmlessly across its eyes but still gave it pause for a fraction of a second as one of its scaled paws moved to swipe the liquid from its face. It let out another roar, this one of pure irritation but not powered like the previous one. I wondered briefly if that one had used mana.
In that fraction of a second where it was distracted, Liana cast a spell that created illusions of her and Adrien had another tattoo fade, this one a large beast of which I was unfamiliar. From his arms, though, sprouted massive black paws with claws at the ends. He didn’t use the sharp claws but instead used his added strength, flexing and working the new shadowy muscles, to continue chipping away at the meager wound he had already started. It looked like he was attempting to cut into the beasts spine.
Elric returned to the fight moments later, backing away then lunging back into the fray to keep its focus on him. I was unable to properly watch them, the sand wyrm’s head and elric’s blade moving faster than my eyes could perceive. Liana cast another spell, causing spectral chains to fly from the earth and wrap around each of its limbs.
Using the chance, The others struck out with renewed exhalation. I finished my first dance, Flash step Lightning Bolt, but held onto it. It took a portion of my focus to maintain the rune circle and not activate it, to not pour the last bit of mana into it, but I held it. And I danced another dance, another water blade. After attempting to dig deeper into my knowledge of the wyrm, I realized that fire, wind, lightning, water and earth were inefficient against it on their own. I also realized my initial instinct was likely correct, that this was likely the best way for me to aid in this fight especially after seeing how my water blades simply splashed against it. It wasn’t so much immune to magic, but the elements did little to threaten it. Water or ice would typically be the best bet against a sand wyrm, but my magic was still far too weak to really harm it aside from my apprentice level spells, of which only one had the potential to cause damage.
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And so, I flung water blades at it from a distance keeping careful not to strike anywhere near Adrien or Elric. Liana saw what I was doing and, surprisingly, joined me, hosing it down with a spell. This had the added benefit of making it hard for it to move, the ground growing muddy under its feet.
Frustrated, it turned towards the mage and started to build up another acid breath. She was behind it to its left so it had to turn a bit to face her. Noticing this, I called out to Elric and Adrien, “Step back from it.” Before finally activating my larger spell. At this time, I was nearly unable to hold onto the spell for much longer. I fed the rune circle the final bit of mana. In a burst, I flew beneath the wyrm barely comprehending the speed with which I was moving. I had to reach an arm out and aimed towards the space next to Liana, not trusting myself to be able to change directions if I needed to. I grabbed onto Liana and pulled her out of the way as, a mere half second after reaching her, acid splattered behind me. Some of it still caught onto my armor, melting the metal, and the back of my legs. I screamed out as the brutal acid struck me and only faintly heard the sound of my lightning bolt clashing down onto the soaking sand wyrm. It shrieked, and its scales cracked, but I paid it no mind as I let go of Liana several meters from where I had grabbed her. I collapsed onto my stomach as I felt the acid eating into my back, having already melted the metal of my armor.My legs burned as well and I vaguely heard Amelia rushing towards us.
I writhed on the crisp grass, the acid slowly burying itself deeper into my body and my muscles already aching from the strain of moving beyond my limits. The muscles in my legs had torn horrendously even before the acid struck me. Not to mention my shoulder being dislocated from catching Liana. Thankfully our group had a healer even if they could do little with broken bones.
A cooling sensation removed the searing pain, a pain so great my resistance couldn’t keep up with it. My vision went dark with bright stars hiding behind the lids of my eyes as my mouth opened in a silent scream. My back was healing as she used her skills, and then my legs. She had to use my own blood to restitch my skin, to rebuild the parts of my body that had been torn into by the beasts acid. It was a deeply uncomfortable, and painful, experience despite the soothing sensation that came from the blood that covered me, that helped heal me. My back and legs ached and itched profoundly.
And then I was sitting up as my tattered silk clothes rewove themselves as they siphoned my mana. I quickly ran backwards, taking up a distance once more, as Liana and Amelia refocused on the wyrm. I had done what I could for now, and if I remained near I’d only distract our mage and healer.
At this time I noticed the gouge that Adrien was creating had expanded and that the wyrms hind legs no longer moved. Elric was slashing relentlessly at its neck, precision guiding his greatsword to the same spot with each swing of the heavy metal weapon. Blood flowed out from the wyrm, hovering in the air and pooling together. Some of it condensed into sharp spikes and launched into the beasts hide, but even that struggled to pierce the scales.
The wyrm was slowing down, and we could all see it. The loss of blood and loss of its rear half was driving up its fatigue, and it was panicking. It thrashed back and forth, throwing up mud and dry earth. Some of the sand beneath it had evidently turned to glass when the bolt of lightning connected, and as it turned to try to assail Elric I saw a scorch mark on its side along with a deep cut. It seemed to be protecting that side now, knowing it was weakened by my attack.
Despite knowing it likely wouldn’t accomplish much, I stood and made a rune circle for the lightning blade. I then held it and added a water blade spell, holding both despite a growing headache. I launched first a trio of water blades and one struck the charred scales causing the wyrm to shriek in rage, as it swiveled its head in my direction. The brief distraction allowed Elric to stab deeper into its neck, and that allowed me to launch the three blades of lightning mana at the soaked side. They were much weaker than the bolt that I summoned with the other spell, but when they impacted, the beast jolted and stiffened momentarily, the water helping the energy to spread and stick around a moment instead of immediately dissipating. When it froze Adrien cleaved the same weak spot and Elric finished slashing into its thick wormlike neck and a torrent of blood sprayed from both wounds. The group backed away as the wyrm weakly struggled again, its claws lazily reaching towards Elric before it shuddered and collapsed.
I heard the ding but didn’t have any visuals pop up, aside from audio cues for kills I had turned off my notifications during training. Otherwise a feeling of euphoria flooded into me. Even with [Mana Sense] I couldn’t see anything but I surely felt it. My fatigued body seemingly woke up briefly before remembering I was supposed to be tired. Panting, I collapsed onto my ass and caught my breath. My headache had grown worse, and I could tell I was nearly out of mana. The rest of the group took a few moments to breathe as well as Amelia walked around and made sure our wounds were fully healed.
“Lios... I think your armor may be...” Liana said from a few feet away from me. I slowly pulled the armor off, wincing as the jagged edges caught on my skin and tunic, and realized it hadn’t been repairing itself. Once it was off I used [Arcane Analysis].
Martyr’s Lorica Segmentata:
This armor, crafted by its bearer, was destroyed in an act of martyrdom, in an effort to save its wearers friends.
I sighed a bit. The armor had saved me, but it seemed I took more acid to my back than I had thought. It was much stronger than me, or my low leveled gear, and as such easily destroyed the armor. I used [Mana Sense] just in case to see if the self repair runes were still active but found them absolutely destroyed.
“Alas, it is destroyed. But well worth it.” I smiled up at Liana and waved a hand nonchalantly.
“Thank you Lios, I’ve no doubt that had you not pulled me away...” Her voice quivered and she trailed off. The others in the group started making their way over. Adrien looked perplexed as he walked towards us, musing on a dozen different thoughts. Elric simply looked relieved as he realized both Liana and I were okay.
“Have ye checked your notification yet?” Adrien asked as he neared us. I shook my head. “Do it. Elric and I will skin this beast, I feel as though you’ll likely have use for the scales? Mayhap you could use one of the fangs as well. We will divide the spoils fairly, so worry not Lios. Liana, can you check if there was a quest for a sand wyrm available?”
With that, he and Elric turned back and indeed began to butcher the monster. As they did Liana opened the notification she got and gasped a bit surprised. “Wow, its been so long since I last leveled up... I guess a level one ninety beast would do that.”
Curious now, I allowed the notifications to appear.
You have aided in the slaying of a Lesser Sand Wyrm LVL: 191
Along with that were a number of level up notifications. I smiled wide at the gains in levels, and grimaced at [Pain Resistance] gaining eight in this one fight. Alongside it, [Bladed Weapon Mastery], [Runedancing], and [Mana Manipulation] recapped as the level of my class rose to 57. [Intuition] had also risen by three during the battle, likely due to my insight with wetting the wyrm and superheating it to weaken its scales, and my use of the flash step to save Liana from the wyrms acid breath.
[Race]
Human
[Class]
[Bladedancer] lvl 57
[Class Skills]
[Bladed Weapon Mastery] LVL:57
[Runedancing] LVL: 57
[Dodging] LVL:53
[Intuition] LVL:48
[Mana Sense] LVL:54
[Mana Manipulation] LVL:57
[Rune Compendium] LVL:51
[He Who Wanders] LVL:3
[Runesight] LVL:39
[Compendium Actualization] LVL:6
[Secondary Class]
[Wayfaring Craftsman of the Tumultuous Maelstrom] LVL: 11
[Secondary Class Skills]
[Runesmithing] LVL:11
[Runeweaving] LVL:11
[Ephemeral Forge] LVL:9
[Runic Inscribing] LVL:9
[Maelstrom Modification] LVL:4
[Arcane Analysis] LVL:5
X4 Unavailable
[General Skills]
[Running] LVL:45
[Meditation] LVL:33
[Twin Pact] LVL:57
[Distant Recollections] LVL:25
[Cooking] LVL:22
[Pain Resistance] LVL:37
[Training] LVL:57
[Portent of the Thaumaturge] LVL:23
[Syncopate] LVL: 26
X1 Unavailable
Unfortunately, my other skills had not been used during the conflict and so didn’t level up. That I had gone up five full levels was also surprising, and it made me wonder what my contribution in the fight had been. Ether, as Liana explained during one of our nightly magic lessons, was the energy that we contributed to experience. It was what gave us additional stats and helped us level up. When a party fought together, the system decided how much each party member earned based on what the creature had and how much they contributed or risked during a conflict.
I whistled slowly as I looked at the gains and smiled back at the party. Amelia came to join Liana and I as Liana flipped through the journal they gathered quests from. It was a magic item that was essential for adventurers who couldn’t check in to the guild regularly. It allowed for groups or individuals to claim a quest while remaining remote.
“Was that the spell you and Liana worked on?” Amelia asked me as she approached us. Luka and Sky were following behind her, both panting but sending me satisfied thoughts. They hadn’t been a direct part of the conflict but even still they earned enough contribution to level up as well.
“It was. I need to work on my control of it, I barely was able to pick her up. If I hadn’t been able to guess where she was I fear I’d have just tackled her.”
“Aye. It worked this time, and with more practice it’ll work again, but it still seems a dangerous spell. I could barely track you with my enhanced eyesight, I can only imagine what you were able to perceive while moving.” The foxes both trudged over to where I sat and promptly curled up on either side of me, hiding their eyes from the light with their bushy tails. “You did good Lios. Truly. That was impeccable timing.”
“There was no quest for this beast, it must have recently broken out. It appears that the average level has risen once more in the Wastes.” Liana said loudly enough for the boys to hear. “We should set up a camp down the road, away from the corpse.”
Begrudgingly, I stood and with me the foxes. We followed Lina and Amelia as they silently walked up the path we were walking prior to the wyrms interference. We quickly set up a camp for everyone and started a fire, and within the hour the boys arrived with the hide and some meat from the beast. Adrien wordlessly set a bundle down beside me.
I didn’t look at it just yet as everyone settled in and Elric hefted a spit of wyrm meat over the fire to slowly rotate. The smell as it started to slowly roast over the fire was divine, especially as Liana started to season it with a few herbs and salt and pepper she had bought in Kinnesville.
“Kid, ya did well. I was worried when you called out to us but your spell really helped give us a second to pierce that writhing bitches hide and scales. Good work.” Adrien said in his damned accent. It took a few moments to process what he said but then I grinned and raised up a fist in victory.
“Tis what I’m here for, bossman!” I laughed, then quieted down. “I would be remiss to let the opportunity for growth pass me by.”
“See! Its always about getting stronger with you! You train all day every day and only have a mind for strength!” Liana lamented.
“If he had half a brain for anything else he’d have stayed with that Kristen lass.” Elric laughed.
The conversation devolved quickly from there, pulling our focus from the beast that had given us so much trouble for a few minutes. After we ate, I took stock of what Adrien had given me from the beast. I had enough scales to make into a full suit of armor but the hide itself was thin and weak. It might make for suitable and soft clothes if properly treated, but I had neither the means or desire to process it. Instead, during the first watch I was keeping with Amelia, I carved the undamaged scales off of the hide and set them aside in a pouch. To my surprise and joy, I was able to store the scales in [Ephemeral Forge] as they were considered a material for smithing. The brown scales needed to be cleaned yet, but were hard and difficult to break so I felt they’d make fantastic armor.
Along with the scales I had been given a fang and several claws. That, and a vial of the acid it breathed out. I was unsure what to do with the acid, but the fang I already had some ideas for. Namely, either a spear or a dagger.
After a few more hours I finally went to bed, ready to continue the journey.