At first, when the teleportation circle didn’t activate on time, Robert tried to say that it was probably just a complication on the other end, and that they would arrive shortly. After half an hour passed, he summoned a servant to fetch him a piece of paper. He scribbled a few things on it, and when he was finished, the paper burnt to ashes. After another half hour, there was a burst of flame in front of him, and a new scroll appeared, dropping into his hands. He frantically opened it, and when he read what it said, his face fell.
“The ship arrived,” he said, his voice unnaturally calm. “But it was empty.”
“Empty?” asked Penelope.
“Empty,” repeated Robert.
“Are they sure it was the right ship?”
“They checked everywhere. They found the room where Bianca had been sleeping. Her journal was still there. She was not.”
“What happened to them?” asked Maia.
“They don’t know,” said Robert. “I’m sorry, I need to go inside for a moment.”
Without waiting for a response, he turned and walked inside, leaving Maia, Penelope, and Elise alone with a few maids.
“Well, that’s not good,” said Maia after a few seconds.
“Is this a joke to you?” asked Penelope.
“Woah, hey. I was just commenting on the situation. Not making a joke.”
Penelope glared at the rogue, but didn’t respond. They stood in silence for a few more minutes before Maia spoke again.
“At least they didn’t find a body.”
Penelope grunted in acknowledgement, and the silence returned. After another half hour, Robert returned. After another hour, the teleportation circle finally activated. Maia and Penelope both perked up at the sight, but Elise noticed Robert’s somber expression, and before the activation had even finished, her hopes fell. When the flash of light faded, standing in the circle was a pair of armored [Personal Bodyguard]s and an elderly bespectacled [Butler].
“Report,” said Robert.
“The ship was empty,” said the butler. “Not only were the people missing, but everything of value had been taken away. There was no cargo, no passengers, and no luggage. The only things left behind were items such as the young Miss’s journal that had sentimental value, and the bodies of the ship’s guards.”
“Do they know what happened?”
“Yes,” said the butler. “Fortunately or unfortunately, they left a message behind for us. The bodies of the guards were dismembered and arranged to spell the word ‘Blood’ on the deck.”
“...I see,” said Robert.
“I have already used the emergency signal to contact your father. He should be arriving by the evening. In the meantime, I see that we have guests.”
“Yes, these are Maia and Penelope, and the rabbit is Snowberry. They are friends of Bianca’s.”
“I welcome you to the Lappin estate,” said the butler bowing. “I trust that they already have rooms?”
“Yes,” said Robert. “They’ve been here for two days.”
“We’ll be leaving now,” said Penelope.
“Pardon?” said the butler.
“We have somewhere we need to be,” she continued. “Thank you for the hospitality, but I’m afraid we need to leave now.”
“If you wait, I’m sure my father would be glad to speak with you,” said Robert. “And I believe that now, you will be able to have the Lappin family’s full support in your endeavors.”
Elise could tell Maia was wavering, but Penelope remained firm.
“We’re leaving,” she said.
“We can send someone else to coordinate with you,” said Maia. “We really don’t have the knowledge or authority to do it ourselves.”
Robert hesitated for a moment, then sighed. “I understand. Then in that case, I wish you the best of luck. Malcolm?”
“Yes, sir,” said the butler before turning back to Maia and Penelope. “Do you need any assistance packing your belongings?”
“We’re fine,” said Penelope.
“I shall await you at the front entrance to escort you out of the estate.”
“Thank you.”
Maia seemed reluctant, but she followed Penelope inside, where they quickly packed what few belongings they had before entering a carriage with the butler. The carriage took them back into the city proper, and the butler even offered to escort them, all the way to the other side so they could get to the Jungle sooner, but before Penelope could say anything, Maia declined.
“I need to let them know about the Lappins’ support,” she explained after the butler had left.
Maia guided them through the city, seemingly randomly, until they came to an open-air market filled with people and food. She paused for a moment at the edge before leading them inside toward a stand selling meat skewers. As they walked, Elise noticed that she was getting quite a few stares, especially from small children who wanted to pet her. She somewhat enjoyed the attention, but she also appreciated how Penelope made sure to keep her out of reach of the more ambitious children.
The line in front of the skewer stand had at least 50 people in it, but it moved quickly, and didn’t take more than 5 minutes to reach the front. The man running the stand was middle-aged and portly, with a bushy beard and a permanent scowl on his face.
[ Chef, lvl 17 ]
“What’ll it be?” he said.
“Two meat skewers for me,” said Maia. “Penelope?”
Penelope, who had been scowling and brooding since Bianca failed to arrive, looked up in surprise at being addressed.
“What? Oh. Uhhhh, I’ll also take two meat skewers.”
“One silver,” said the man.
“Can we get them on the rarer side?” asked Maia, handing him the coin.
“Four rare skewers, coming right up,” said the man, turning to grab them off the fiery rack behind him.
Once they had their skewers in hand, they walked back out of the market to a quieter street, with Maia inhaling her meat skewer while Penelope looked confused.
“We can head to the Jungle now,” said Maia, tossing an empty wooden stick into a nearby garbage bin.
“Was the food stall owner the one you needed to contact?” asked Penelope.
“Huh? Oh, no. I was just hungry. We never ate lunch because we were planning to eat with your friend, remember?”
“Oh,” said Penelope.
After that, Penelope seemed to realize that she was, in fact, hungry, and started eating her own skewers with more gusto. Elise was stuck watching her and Maia enjoying themselves. She wasn’t actually hungry, as her changeling body didn’t seem to need much food, but she still felt left out.
Despite the news about Bianca earlier though, the closer Elise got to the Jungle, the more she felt her spirits lifting. Pretending to be a rabbit when she was actually a rabbit hadn’t been fun, but pretending to be an ordinary rabbit when she could fly, talk, use magic, and transform was even worse. It was suffocating, and she was glad that Penelope had insisted on leaving immediately instead of sticking around and making Elise be stuck in yet another important conversation she couldn’t take part in.
Penelope’s mood seemed to lighten as she ate, but by the time they made it to the Jungle an hour later, it had turned foul again. They had to flash their ID’s to leave the city in that direction, but aside from a few questioning glances at Elise, there were no troubles getting out.
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It was early afternoon, so there were quite a few people on their way into the city from the Jungle. Elise found these people fascinating. Most of them seemed to be hunters, carrying butchered carcasses out on backpacks and wagons behind them. She nearly got {Inspect} to the level cap just checking what their classes were.
There were at least a dozen different variations of “warrior”, the same of various healer classes, and at least twice that of different “mage” classes. The equipment they wore was just as varied as their clothes, ranging from the same casual clothes that Maia had bought when she entered the town, to heavy camouflage, to full plate armor like Penelope’s.
The monster corpses that they carried were, for the most part, the same three species, and they were species that Elise and Penelope had briefly studied at night while staying with the Lappins. All three were about as creatively named as the Omnivorous Cyclops Cows, so Elise had no trouble telling which was which.
There were monkeys that were nearly the size of gorillas that had fangs almost as long as Elise’s ears called Giant Fanged Macaques, frogs the size of cows with black-spotted green skin and venomous saliva called Colossal Jungle Frogs, and tall parrots with spear-like beaks called Spear-Beaked Parrots. Elise was almost disappointed at how uninspired the names were, but then again, that was probably what made {Inspect} such a rare and powerful skill. It more or less told her exactly what she was dealing with.
Once past the treeline, there was a network of diverging paths deeper in that reminded Elise a bit of a river delta. Some of the paths seemed to go directly to either side, staying near the edge of the Jungle, while the main central one went almost straight in. It never even curved, allowing Elise to see far enough that the path got dark as the tree cover got too dense to allow light in. Elise wondered for a moment how much work it had taken clearing trees to get such a straight path before until she realized that nature magic had probably made the process simple.
The three of them walked down the central path for quite a ways. In the beginning, they often found themselves stepping aside to let other adventurers pass with their spoils, but that number sharply dropped when they passed a large sign that said “Bronze hunters turn back”. It dropped yet again after passing a sign that read “Silver hunters beware”. Elise was getting a little worried at this point, not sure exactly where their group’s skills lay, but not long after this sign, they turned off the main path onto a side path.
Before they got far, Maia drew a knife to draw large X’s on two of the nearby trees, then wrote in the date before they continued on. Elise noticed that the nearby trees had many such marks, though much older, and all the other dates were crossed out.
They marched onward until the path was little more than a vague guideline, and then kept going, forging their own path through the thick brush as they got further and further away from the sounds of any other humans. When even Elise could no longer hear anyone else nearby, they finally slowed down, and came to a stop in a small open space between four trees.
“This should make a good spot to camp for the night,” said Penelope. “We’ll have to sleep in shifts, but I believe this area should be manageable for a lone person on watch. I came here to train once, though I was on the north side. The frogs don’t spawn till a bit further in, and the birds and apes are both manageable for any of us. They typically don’t wander too close to the human paths either, so we might not have to worry about them at all.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Maia. “We should probably set up some of those seed trap thingies you were messing with around the edges though.”
“Alright,” agreed Elise.
She leapt out of Penelope’s arms and shifted to her human form, stretching the stiffness from her limbs. While she stretched, Maia went around behind a tree to change her clothes, and Penelope started checking the straps of her armor. When Maia returned, she was dressed in all black again, and had even re-dyed her hair. It was not really much cooler in the Jungle than it had been in the city, and she was still sweating, but the sunlight was minimal, at least, which Elise assumed helped with the colors a bit.
Once the three of them confirmed that they were ready, they hid their things under some fallen leaves and between some tree roots before Maia marked the trees again and they set out hunting.
Elise stayed in her human form as they hiked, though after a short while, she got tired of climbing over roots and fallen trees and activated her wings so she could fly above them again. She was wary of the parrots, but Penelope assured her that they were weak and slow, and that based on the {Magic Missile} practice that she had witnessed, she believed Elise could take them out without issue.
That theory was put to the test about fifteen minutes into their hunt when Elise heard a cawing sound and looked up to see one of them diving toward her.
“Shoot it!” shouted Penelope.
Elise didn’t need to be told twice. She fired a volley of {Magic Missile} at it, and mentally prepared to use {Dart} when it got a bit closer. It managed to curve its path and avoid the first two of the missiles, but the third clipped its wing, making it falter, and the rest hit the slowed target straight on, turning it into a mass of bloody feathers as it fell to the ground.
[ You have slain Spear-Beaked Parrot, lvl 6 ]
She didn’t get a level in her race, or her skill, which made sense, given how weak it had been, but it did give Elise a strong boost to her confidence. This was the first time she had ever hunted without relying solely on stealth and deception, so she had worried she would be useless in an actual fight.
“They travel in flocks,” warned Penelope.
The warning was confirmed when Elise heard the cawing of a dozen or so more of them approaching from nearby. While one wasn’t an issue, she didn’t want to test her luck against so many, so she quickly descended back to the ground beside Penelope before they arrived. In the meantime, Maia had already vanished from sight, supposedly lurking somewhere nearby, waiting to strike.
The birds immediately noticed their fallen comrade and screeched before diving toward Penelope and Elise. Elise immediately fired three successive volleys of {Magic Missile}, taking out five on her own, then ducked behind Penelope as the armored woman swung a mana infused sword outward. Four of the remaining birds successfully averted their flight paths before they reached her, but the other two were not so lucky, falling to the ground in bloody pieces.
Elise felt a surge of mana to her right, and suddenly, two of the birds who had dodged also fell to the ground, dead, as Maia reappeared with a long knife in either hand. The remaining two parrots decided to cut their losses, and continued their curve all the way around until they were flying the other direction. Elise tried to finish them off with another spell, but they were too fast, and the missiles fizzled out before reaching their targets.
[ You have slain a Spear-Beaked Parrot, lvl 4 ]
[ You have slain a Spear-Beaked Parrot, lvl 7 ]
…
[ You have participated in slaying a Spear-Beaked Parrot, lvl 6 ]
[ {Magic Missile} has leveled up! lvl 41 -> 42 ]
Once again, Elise got no levels, but her confidence got another boost, as did her confidence in the abilities of the other two. They worked well as a team. If Elise had been on her own, she probably would have been fine, but it would have been more stressful, as she would have had to use {Dart} to avoid their attacks while she fought them off. It had not been a fight that favored either Penelope or Maia, as they were melee fighters against aerial enemies, but they had done their fair share, and had done it easily.
They traveled a bit further into the forest, fending off another small flock of the parrots before encountering their first monsters of another species. The moment they saw the monkeys, Penelope, marched forward, her sword raised, straight into the enemies.
“Let me have them,” she said.
There were about five of the monkeys in the group they encountered, and they howled and screeched when they saw Penelope, then ran to meet her in battle.
The first monkey to reach her was nearly cut in half by her first swing. The second lost its head. The third managed to reach her with its claws, but they scraped uselessly against her armor, and she swiftly turned to stab it in the stomach. The final two jumped on her from either side, but Penelope poured mana into her body and armor, rendering their attacks useless.
With a powerful twist, she threw one of the monkeys off and a dozen feet away while stabbing the other. Unlike the birds, the monkey did not seem to realize or acknowledge the danger, despite seeing four of its kind dispatched so easily. It screeched again and pounced.
Penelope left her sword still inside of the other and met the final one barehanded. She caught it midair, holding the man-sized monkey above her head before slamming it on the ground. She then proceeded to beat it to death with gauntleted fists. Its screeches of anger turned into screams of pain, then quieted until all that was left was the sound of Penelope’s heavy breathing.
She stood up, took a look at her handiwork, then retrieved her sword before returning to Elise and Maia. As she walked toward them, Elise sensed a faint mana emanating from her, and with every step she took, the blood and grime seemed to vanish from both her armor and sword, leaving them spotless by the time she arrived.
“Feeling better?” asked Maia.
“A little,” said Penelope.
Her dark mood hadn’t lessened since fighting the monkeys, but Elise could see that some of the fire in her eyes was gone, and now she looked much more tired than before.
“What do we do with the bodies?” asked Elise.
“Leave them,” said Penelope. “They’re not worth that much, and we can’t carry them all. They’ll be picked clean in a couple days anyway. We’ll grab a couple birds for dinner tonight.”
They continued the hunt for another half hour, taking out one more small troop of monkeys and a flock of parrots before they were all running too low on mana to continue, and decided to head back.
They spent the rest of the afternoon recovering, then practicing their skills like they had at the Lappin estate until night fell, and it was time for bed. As promised, Elise made a small perimeter around the campsite where she planted her {Vicious Bloom}s. Fortunately, when planted, the skill didn’t take any mana to maintain, so she was able to fully surround them without issue.
They spent the next four days much the same way, alternating between hunting and practicing skills. They didn’t talk much, but when they did, Maia was doing most of it. She was actually a gifted storyteller, and by the end of the five days, Elise had come to look forward to the nightly talks where she’d share anecdotes from shenanigans she had gotten herself involved with while working with Otto.
Elise earned only a single level during this time, which she found a bit disappointing. It was better than nothing, but it felt slow. Then again, for the first time, she was fighting against monsters who were just straight-up weaker than her, and she was fighting in a team, so reduced experience made sense. She half-wanted to go deeper into the jungle to find the monsters’ Greater variants for tougher fights and more experience, but she knew they couldn’t afford any real risks until they met up with Hans.
On the fifth day, they did not go hunting, instead staying at their campsite, practicing their less destructive skills as they waited for Hans to arrive. He made his appearance at noon, descending from above. Just as Otto described, he was unmistakable. Elise had seen a few Ainar around the city, but none with wings as pitch black as his.
“Maia,” he called. “We finally get to talk face to face!”
“Hans!” said Maia, standing up from her meditation.
The man between the wings was no less striking, though not for the same reason. He had a handsome face, but most of it was covered in scars. He still had both of his eyes, which Elise considered a miracle, considered how many times he seemed to have been slashed across the face. She stared at him with mild curiosity for a few seconds before she remembered to use {Inspect}. When she did, she couldn’t hide the widening of her eyes.
[ Sidhe Duelist, lvl ??? ]