The lake was incredibly deep, and it took us many hours to cross, crocodiles and some even less liked individuals tried to eat us, even a natural-born zombie among them, all of which were easily disposed by my teammates, their blood joining the waves, even as occasionally fish fell in my face, the climb to ascend on the other side another challenge that we mastered, until we eventually stood, our clothes muddied until I decided to cast purify and cleanse on all of us, leaving every single one of us shining.

“Tell me, Bony, how did you just channel that? I was something of a prodigy, gaining the arcane gaze trait and everything, but even I could not channel that many spells at once.”

A smile split my face, the pride radiating off me as I concentrated on the way I subtly influenced the world around me.

“I am a bearer of the elemental trait and got the Hero trait unlocked, so I might be a bit more of a prodigy than most.”

Ember raised his yes, a bit surprised at the combination.

“Most mages and other casters I know consort with demons to some degree, how did you kill one that early in your life?”

Slowly, I turned around again, moving to follow the titans steps once more, even as they had become hard to observe from this point onward, we at least knew the way towards its goal.

“Now, we need to run a bit, I don’t think it will be easy to make up for the lost time that easily, it has been walking for one and a half years, and while it probably stopped at every opportunity to grow, it can’t have been that many. They said the titan had taken a month for this one, and unless there are at least twelve of these spots in our way, we are probably a bit late to the party.”

With this, we ran. No spell we knew was particularly good to increase our mobility, and thus our movement was dragged down by the wizard, at least until he cast something to increase his own speed, tripling the movements his frail body could make as we left just about everything else in the dust.

Most of the next two weeks was quite event free, only the change in seasons making itself felt as the world quieted down.

We would need quite a while to reach the mountains at this point, the amount of utility spells we kept up passively increasing every day, until we traveled in a bubble of heat, any colds we got quickly dispelled, and our feet cleansed when we stepped in a puddle of mud.

It was during this month that we accidentally fell for a bear trap, the cold iron closing around my leg and forcing an agonizing scream to escape my lips, which was followed by a group of green creatures about my height jumping from the nearby bushes, their obviously infected and poisoned weapons hard to dispel the poison from as the others went into a defensive stance, their leader approaching, his skin red instead of the classical green and horns hovering above his head.

“They’ve got a monster.” I commented, still trying to reach the button to undo the trap I stumbled into.

“I am a barbarian with taurean ancestry, my body refined to the third degree, do you think any of you vermin could stand in my way? Simply leave one of your snacks behind, and we will let him go, I’ve got the keys to his lock right here.” He said, dangling a rusty keychain before us, only for Pale to blur and Ember to do blast everything with a ball of fire, Pale pulling on the keys while everything around us was incinerated.

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“Damn, that didn't go as planned.” She stated, only the monstrosity remained standing, the other goblins doing their best to survive the burns.

Thus, I dematerialized and slowly moved towards him, his weapon passing through me as I put just about every curse I knew on him.

Diarrhea, afflict, Infuse potential, you get the picture, and it was not a pretty one. When he buckled over in pain, the infused potential launched him right into the ground, where Pale buried her leg in his neck, my grin splitting my face in a most unnatural fashion as I forced him up.

“There are a lot of questions I could ask you, but there is something more important than that.” I told him, my leg still shredded from the trap as my tongue wrapped around his head, a quick disinfect making him healthy, but still weakened, before I pushed the appendage through just about every facial orifice I knew of, the guy suffering until his brain was dissolved completely.

“There is a city a bit north-west from here, so right along our path, I guess. And I bet they’ve got something to tell us about the titan.”

Slowly, the goblin monster’s corpse rose, Ember looking a bit shocked as he witnessed my particular brand of being fucked up.

“Sorry you had to see that, the trap made me hungry, and nothing better to eat than an enemies brain. I should probably invest into some tentacles during the next part of growing up.” my conclusion simply baffled him, while Pale made sure to kill off any witnesses, her face as passive as usual as we headed to our next target.

Quickly, we moved towards the City, fast enough that we only stopped when an arrow landed a bit before us, forcing us to halt as every guard seemed to look at the two hooded and masked figures, with only Ember exposing his head, the guard questioning us on our intentions as they stared us down.

And, for the first time in quite a while, there was no way for me to solve this problem with violence, thus forcing me to be a bit more subtle.

“We are but travelers on our path to slay a titan.” I announced, all of them laughing until they realized we were serious.

“Look, we’ve got a total of at least ten refinements among us, and nothing to lose we haven’t risked already simply coming this far. If you don’t plan on helping us, that is totally fine, we are just here to ask for information and restock a few supplies.”

Reluctantly, they let us in, until a boy in yellow clothing dashed towards us at a speed that left the sonic boom come behind him and a strong wind to blast all our faces.

“The lord wants to see these people, immediately.”

He gave us the directions and dashed away again.

“Damn couriers, they got a standing order for that kind of situation, right?”

All the guards nodded, before we were shown the way to the cities lord, where we immediately went.

As we entered the greeting hall, we were quickly escorted towards the local lord, a spindly guy with way too much silver and black allover his room, basically screaming villain in some form.

“What brings a group of fully armed, robed and masked people into my hall?”

He asked, absolutely confused at our presence, until a nearby advisor reminded him.

“You are here on a quest for hunting the titan? Finally, someone mad enough to try what my army failed at so spectacularly. We managed to place a tracker, so we can give you that information, though you would need to do me a small favor to gain our support.”

I decided then and there to fuck this guy over, just because he talked down at us like that.

“If you help me get rid of a gang in my streets that my guards and wizards are somehow unable to track, you will have our full support against that vile monstrosity.” Like any self-respecting person, we simply turned to leave again, the mage to his right trying to stop us with some geomancy that I quickly counter spelled.

It was annoying how someone this obviously desperate to get rid of some people thought merely saving his own ass would be enough of a reward to kill someone.

When the guards forbid us from leaving, we simply stood there, waiting as an advisor caught up with us.

“His highness offers a new deal, if you are willing to mention the terms that need to be fulfilled for you to solve this problem.”

I grinned, and the others probably did too, as the guards let us pass.

“We will return tomorrow to continue these discussions. We have been walking for quite some time and feel tired.” Thus, we headed to an inn we had seen on our way there, renting a room for each of us with the coins we had taken from the dead that somehow kept appearing wherever we passed through.