Zerine ran through the forest. Constant pitter pater of rain and rocks, along with sizzling from bits of fire landing on the makeshift shield, never ceased. The strange crackling sound of spells being cast was usually followed by screams and shrieks or the snapping and groaning of trees. Zerine’s instincts were constantly alerting her to movement all around her, which seemed about right as spells flew in every direction.
On occasion, she would have to fight using willpower combined with her knives and wielding her short sword in one hand, while protecting Varino and Kimi’s egg in the other. Each fight was increasingly becoming more desperate, but she didn’t stop running towards her goal. Finally, with a leap, she burst out from a bush to find the sandy beach stretching out before her.
Where is it? Please gods, it has to still be here, she thought, her gaze taking in the rough waves then searched in either direction down the beach.
Distant flashes far out over the ocean drew her gaze. Her eyes went wide at what she saw.
And here I was thinking the high rank fight above the island was intense, she thought.
The flashes weren't from the mana storm, no; they were from a jumbled mess of spells being cast, colliding mana, explosions, and much more that Zerine couldn’t sense or see in the brief flashes. What she could see in those flashes were hundreds, if not thousands, of beings clashing in the sky and ocean. The sheer amount of fighting made it hard to tell which were spells and what came from the man storm, so she would just say it was chaotic, which was something she was growing accustomed to. But it struck Zerine then just how out of hand things had gotten and knew that help truly wouldn’t be coming soon.
A bright flash of silver light on the horizon gave Zerine the best view so far, and she gawked.
“Is-is that a damn Kracken!?” she said, stunned.
Tentacles were lashing out from the ocean as she watched in awe. Suddenly, one of the tentacles got sliced to pieces in a move that she hadn’t even seen.
Welp, they got that covered, but as for us…
Her gaze had to be dragged away from the battle. But one thought lingered.
Is this what Esteron battles are like, but with people killing people instead of monsters?
She quickly refocused because just thinking of that made her stomach churn. Images of children and families getting caught up in something like this made her only feel worse.
Focus on surviving, she repeated to herself, then a dreadful thought popped into her mind. Am I even on the correct side of the island?
Her stomach clenched at that thought, but she moved down the shore, keeping a wary eye on the jungle, not afraid of anything coming from the ocean side because it looked like the ocean was in a frenzy and most things were preoccupied or at least she hoped.
They didn’t run into any trouble as they moved along the shore at a slow jog. Even the odd mana flares that had followed them had stopped, making Zerine hope that whatever had been following them either died or got distracted.
She rounded a rock and, to her relief, the hulking shipwreck come into view, and to her surprise, it had been shoved further onto the shore.
Perfect! Let’s hope it has weapons and supplies, she thought, her slow jog turning into a run.
Her gaze was constantly searching for any sign of the reptiles that had laid claim to the area, but as they drew closer, and she saw nothing, a smile appeared on her soot, ash, and blood-stained face. Hope rose within her, making the smile grow as they reached the wreck.
***
They had called the horde to the island, but the powerful source of energy had vanished. At least there were other strange energy sources on the island, but beings had appeared and an all out battle had broken out even their king had been dragged into a fight that lit the sky for miles.
The mid C-rank scout ripped a monster in half with its to two claws. Black blood poured out, not satisfying the annoyed Metal Head. They had nearly gotten their hands on the energy source, but for some reason, balls of light and those three had gotten in their way.
A two-leg wielding many weapons, a tiny terror of a blue elemental, and that strange glowing spider had fought and won. Then there were those annoying balls of light that had killed the C-ranks that came with the scout and distracted it till the energy source had vanished, but not before the horde had come.
It checked its senses, trying to find the two-legs essence and hissed, finding the trail had gotten cold due to the sheer number of monsters getting in its way. With a pulse of aura, it sent out groups of Metal Heads to track down their prey. Their targets should have the energy source or if not, they will just kill them and get rid of an enemy. The rest of the horde had gotten occupied dealing with the other beings attacking so it came down to the group of a hundred E through D-rank Metals Heads to get the treasures on the island.
The only C-rank on the island hissed, annoyed wanting the blood of those that had barely gotten away.
***
Zerine approached the shipwreck and peered up at the wood and metal side of the ship, wondering exactly how to get to the deck. Eventually, she found a hole in the ship's side. The ship was leaning at an odd angle, but was still roughly up right so exploring the ship wasn’t that bad. There were signs of the reptiles. Claw marks on the wood, egg shells here and there, but the ship seemed empty. Creeks and groans from the ship kept Zerine on edge, but they didn’t run into trouble.
She could sense that there were some parts of the ship that still had protection that kept the storm’s magic at bay, but there were clear signs of damage from the elements. Holes from beams of light, signs of scorched patches that smolder weren’t exactly uplifting to see, but at least it was shelter.
The plan was to put Kimi and Varino in a safe place, then get supplies and, hopefully, weapons, lots of weapons. The shipwreck should allow Zerine the ability to set up traps and defend the area, which, with all the sand, she hoped nothing could sneak up at her. Her guess was that whatever had destroyed the cavern probably wouldn’t be able to handle the sand and proximity to the ocean, so anything would have to come after her over land, which would allow her to make traps, and kill whatever came close with what she hoped would be enough weapons to supply a crew.
Eventually, after traversing four decks, she found what used to be the captain’s quarters. It was a mess, with papers and furniture strewn about. She found a cushion that must have been part of the chair at some point, but was now being used as a bed for Varino and Kimi’s egg.
“Now let’s do some salvaging and hopefully find some weapons,” she muttered, closing the door.
She moved down to another deck level, which was where she found the armory. On many merchant vessels from their continent, the armory was near the officer's quarters. She hoped as she approached a large padlocked door it wasn’t the types requiring a pattern to unlock.
“Also, I really hope I can pick it,” she muttered. Locking picking was not one of her strongest skills, but was taught in case she was ever locked in a room or needed to escape chains. It was just one of those survival skills that she truly hadn’t expected to need. But here she was, crouching in a shipwreck, picking a lock that she hoped would lead to the armory, using a thin shard from a Metal Head she had killed.
Twenty minutes later and several choice words insulting the padlock’s lineage; there was an audible click, and the padlock fell open. Zerine pulled open the heavy door, thanking the gods for her luck. She puled out a glowstone from her belt and its warm light revealed exactly what Zerine had been hoping for, plus something else.
Blades glittered in the light, then her gaze fell upon a strapped crate in the middle of the space. Zerine stared, confused. It looked like a freight crate, not something one should find in the armory.
“Well well well. What do we have here?” Zerine wondered, a grin spreading across her face. She looked back at the armory door and noted the extremely complex runes carved into it, and sighed. She had been lucky there were some impressive defenses to stop people from opening the door, but they had clearly stopped working at some point.
“So they had confidence that only certain people would be allowed to enter. Were they smuggling something or were they trusted with something valuable?” Zerine wondered aloud as she walked around the crate. It wasn’t very large. Lengthwise, it would reach her hip and widthwise, it was the length of her forearm. The crate’s depth reached mid shin. Without thinking much more, she put the crate into the spatial bracket, which made her pause.
Smugglers used spatial storage like hers, but could carry far more than the bracelets. So, that would mean the merchants had been told to not put it in a spatial storage or something else was going on. She shrugged and went back to the weapons around her because she had a bad feeling that time for her to prepare was running out.
Zerine began scooping up the weapons, placing them into her bracelets. She ended up throwing monster corpses off the side of the ship so she could fit more weapons and, of course, salvage cargo. She did find some broken stationary spatial storages, which was a pity because Zerine’s half of the ship had less cargo to salvage than she had hoped, but she found some crates at least. As for weapons, well, she was feeling much better about their situation.
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“Twenty crossbows and uncountable amount of bolts, some enchanted like the ones I made. Then we have types of polearms, spears, swords, armor, and shields. All of them have enchantments I can’t activate, but hey some work like what Varino made soo there is that. And then there are those, those will be extremely useful. Now to make traps, defenses and kill some monsters,” she listed. And kill some monsters she would.
***
Tristan stood glaring at the island, his gaze following Zerine. She had for a few minutes vanished from his sight, entering what proved to be an armory, but one that could conceal something from someone his rank was…concerning. But he watched, his brow furrowing as his great granddaughter proved just how clever she was. Sheilds were set up to create cover and hide traps. Even when she was interrupted by monsters, Zerine used everything at her disposal. Spears, crossbows, and polearms were used to handle the weak D-rank monsters. Zerine surprisingly handled the fight quickly and then went back to set up defenses.
He sighed, facepalming as Zerine pulled out three mana cannons, then struggled, but managed to place them so she could easily fire upon anything coming from the forest.
“Gods, how the hell did she manage to find three functioning mana cannons? And that woman is probably laughing seeing this,” he grumbled, guessing, no, knowing that his ex was monitoring Zerine.
As he watched, the girl moved around, setting up some traps in the outskirts of the forest, using the spears, ropes, and gods know what else she had pulled out of the armory.
“She really does take after both her mothers and great grandmother. Clever, a tactician, elegant but on the dangerous side, and gods damn lucky,” he muttered.
Zerine fought several monsters, killing two of them, then made it seem like she was retreating to only pick up a polearm that had a three-pronged spearhead. She angled it perfectly right as the final monster chasing her leapt to only impaling itself on to the spearheads. Zerine didn’t have time to rest, however, as a massive purple serpent swiftly moved toward her. Tristan fought back a smile when Zerine threw a spear with an application of willpower, which rocketed out, blasting a hole through the serpent’s body.
Zerine staggered for a moment and spat out some blood. His gazed narrowed, seeing that blood was dripping freely from her nose and even red tears came from her eyes.
Pushing it. Hmm, she already has absurd willpower. If she lives to get her crest, she won’t be comparable to anyone at her own rank when taking it into account, he thought. But we all know she won’t live for that to happen.
Over the next few hours, he observed Zerine fight quite a few monsters and soon Metal Heads. He frowned as he widened his gaze. The Metal Heads had been fighting the mass manifestations, but now around eighty of them were heading towards Zerine along with a mid C-rank scout.
Must be a variant of scout. And clearly can lead the others, he thought, sitting back in the air, putting his hands behind his head, getting ready to watch a show.
“Good luck Metal Heads, you're going to need it,” he said, giving a taunting solute.
***
Lucy was fighting monsters that had come ashore after several mass manifestations. The higher rank fighters were all out fighting a horde of Metal Heads, which left the lower ranks to deal with the monsters. Luckily, there weren’t any S-rank monsters only A and down, so this was well in hand that was till she received the emergency single from Zerine.
Lucy filled the air with expletives, which was out of character for her. But she knew they wouldn’t be able to respond in any timely fashion.
Alana appeared scowling. “We will be allowed to go once the number of monsters and fleeing Metal Heads is under control.”
Lucy didn’t answer, but simply waved her hand, annoyed, and blasted bolts of light, which tore through a group of monsters.
“Oooh okay, I take that as hurry up Alana, but don’t overdue it. We may need to teleport a healer with us if things are bad,” she said before vanishing.
Alana’s words sunk in and Lucy scowled. Balancing her use of magic and dealing with monsters quickly will be extremely annoying. She only hoped that Zerine wasn’t in dire need because as it stood right now, it would be another day till they could get to the island.
***
Thwack!
The crossbow bolt shot out. Zerine watched the bolt fly true, piercing the head of a Metal Head, which exploded into gore, killing the D-rank scout.
Zerine quickly prepared the next bolt, seeing that she had time as the weaker Metal Heads were busy killing monsters that had chased their group. There had been small groups of monsters that she could handle without being pushed back to the ship, but when the first group of Metal Heads had started to appear, she was eventually pushed back to the hole in the ship's side.
An entire row of prepared crossbows, boxes of bolts, spears, and of course the three mana cannons were next to her. She was going to save the cannons for large groups because she didn’t have enough supplies for repeated shots. Zerine tightened a strap of her borrowed shoulder armor before she drew and fired an arrow, killing a monster that had gone after her instead of the Metal Heads, which were losing the battle. Or, wait, was it turning into a bloody draw? Zerine couldn’t tell. All she knew was that both sides were tearing each other into pieces, staining the beach with green, red, and black blood.
Carefully, Zerine picked off any stragglers, or any that looked to be fleeing. She targeted any Metal Heads that looked like they could keep fighting. Zerine hoped that would be all of them because at this point she had been fighting for…how long has it been?
Before she could think more, a group of Metal Heads emerged from the forest followed by another and another. The crash of thunder drowned out monster shrieks and calls that echoed from the forest. Beams of light turned patches of sand to glass, while streams of fire lit the soon to be battlefield with a flickering orange glow.
A dawning realization that this fight could very well be her last didn’t come with the expect fear, instead a calm came over Zerine. She moved behind a cannon. These weren’t the typical stationary ones that would have been found on the second deck, but were meant to be moved to the top deck when under attack to target small boats or fast moving monsters, which made them smaller and less powerful, but more than enough for what she was going to use them for.
After salvaging the armory, she found a barrel that had about twelve shots worth of destabilized Manastones for the cannons. Manastones are artificially created crystalized mana that combined affinities that when forced together would create a directable blast of energy. Fortunately, these cannons didn’t require magic to fire, but a mechanical process. She turned the barrel of one cannon, aiming at the group of what she guessed were D-rank Metal Heads.
Take this mother fuckers, she thought, and pulled a lever back. In the cannon's chamber, a spike cracked the Manastone, causing a blast of energy to erupt out of the cannon.
BOOM!
A streak of mana roared out, annihilating the D-ranks with a massive blast, carving a line of destruction into the forest.
Her ears rang, but she didn’t have time to think. She picked up a crossbow, aimed at a brute who had burst through the jungle. These crossbows were meant to pierce armor and adding enchantments’s well, the results were impressive. A bolt blasted a hole through the brute’s head, splattering blood and grey matter over the beach.
Quickly, she tossed the crossbow aside and picked up her bow and began firing shot after shot. The mana cannons seemed to be some sort of signal. As she had feared, the mana flare up from the cannon attracted attention. Like moths to a flame, more Metal Heads and monsters appeared, luckily. She never thought seeing a group of monsters would fill her with hope, but today was full of firsts, apparently.
The monsters and Metal Heads fought, letting Zerine keep firing arrows. She still had to kill some that got too close with a spear or swords, or whatever happen to be close. For one spider Metal Head, Zerine used a staff that used to be a spear to beat the thing to death. Bodies accumulated, and Zerine had to clear them away to keep shooting her arrows. With a grunt, she shoved aside a corpse of a brute so she could aim and fire a mana cannon at a group of D-rank monsters and Metal Heads.
BOOM!
The cannons attack gave her time to reload the first cannon. These were of a newer design, something Zerine had read about. She opened a breech and shoved a fist size crystal into the cannon. After that, she wound up a crossbow, leaving her with ten prepared crossbows.
“Holly hell, this sucks,” she grunted.
Click!
The crossbow was set for another bolt, which she promptly slid into place. This bolt had runes etched into it. From her cursory glance figured it was some sort of fire and electricity enchantment that required energy that she didn’t have. It was annoying, but she figured some of the boxes she found would require energy, but was grateful for those that didn’t.
“How did everything go so wrong?” she muttered, aiming carefully.
Thwack!
A bolt shot out, blasting a bolt through yet another brute’s head that a group of those evil puff balls had distracted. Seeing how the little puff balls were a great distraction gave her a new appreciation for just how annoying they were. She was aiming with her bow when an aura washed over her. The aura suppressed her, but Zerine ignored the exposed and weak feeling.
“Fuck, now what fresh hell,” she muttered, already moving to a cannon when her instincts screamed, and she dove.
The wind howled over her head, followed by a crashing sound and the entire ship shock as something tore a hole straight through it.
Zerine’s head popped up, sand flowing off her as she looked around. She found one cannon was gone, another looked damage and the last one, thankfully, was intact. She scrambled to her feet, splinters and more sand fell away. Her heart was racing. She hadn’t even felt the mana used in that attack, so it probably was a peak D-rank, which would quickly be a dead peak D-rank. She was already moving behind the last cannon.
When she aimed the cannon, a chill went down her back and cold sweat spread from what she saw. A massive scout had appeared in the forest. A trail of destruction leading to it from whatever attack it had used. The flickering light didn’t give Zerine a good idea of what variant or many details at all, but she still pulled the lever once the barrel lined up to the Metal Head. In the brief time of the cannon firing, Zerine could have sworn there was a swirl of darkness being formed in front of it.
BOOM!
But something was off as a blast of air far larger than anything before knocked Zerine back, sending sand flying from an additional explosion. Her ears rang, but then a sound so loud it vibrated through her entire body shattered the air. Then something popped and silence fell. A trickling sensation went down Zerine’s neck and she just knew that she would need some real healing attention.
Her balance was thrown off, causing her to stagger when she tried to get to her feet. Despite feeling off, Zerine aimed and fired her bow at several monsters that somehow hadn’t been blown away from the explosion.
The forest near the shipwreck was burning, shrouding the area in smoke that would get cleared quickly just to come back as the winds from the mana storm and ocean blow. In a brief gap of smoke, she saw the massive scout on its back, its spiky legs thrashing in the air. Despite seeing that the evil thing was alive, Zerine couldn’t help herself from grinning even when blood dripped from her nose. It probably looked crazy, but she was well past the point of caring. Sure, she was terrified, but part of her mind was still coming up with backup plans to flee. Even with all that, it felt great knowing that a crestless could make something probably peak D-rank nearly die.
Her attention snapped to the forest as vague shapes in the smoke moved towards the ship. Casually, Zerine picked up a crossbow and fired it in the direction of the still writhing scout, before aiming with her bow at monsters.
The sand shook, and Zerine’s gaze flicked back to the scout peering through the smoke. She still couldn’t hear, which only made her racing heartbeat the only thing she heard, and it was only getting louder and faster. It felt like it doubled when she saw the scout was missing.
Then the ship’s shaking made Zerine whirl around, looking up as something exploded through the deck at her.