Chapter 142: A Very Tiresome Team
A week after the festivities, the team had made their final preparations to set out. They purchased food supplies, necessary low rank quintessence to power artifacts and rituals, and other equipment. Nara notified the Invention Society of her temporary unavailability, and the team notified the Adventure Society of their plans to head to Kallid. Adventurers could go where they pleased without notice, but it helped streamline communication if they did.
Aliyah and Sen contacted their families and bid their farewells. At bronze rank, Aliyah was now the head of her family. Her parents would rank up with cores to bronze rank later, but Aliyah would always be the most important person in her family as the adventurer.
Sen was the opposite, while bronze rank now, he was still low on the Arlang totem pole. He was doing as he was supposed to do for his family—start a team and rank up. There wasn’t much for his family to do except have him promise he’d stay safe and endeavor to do his best as an adventurer, as an Arlang, and as himself.
They set off early in the morning. It was the end of the first week of the first month—January, if it had been Earth. Sanshi was a two-season region where the weather was temperate and sunny. As they traveled north, the two seasons would morph into four.
They stood at the outskirts of Sanshi, brought there by Nara’s portal power. She uncorked her cloud flask, handing it to Sage as the streams of glittering star light coalesced. Instead of the house configuration, Nara had chosen the adaptive carriage configuration. Erras didn’t have many forms of large-scale ground transportation like RVs or land trains, so she was in suspense about what form the nebula flask would take.
After another ten minutes had passed, a large, floating boat hovered in front of them. It was a cross between a xebec and a yacht—a craft of leisure and speed. Large gleaming triangular sails of silver-white at the bow and middle of the ship. The stern of the ship had multiple floors, with an additional smaller mast on top. The boat was made of polished dark wood, decorated with accents of silver and dark blue trim. Smaller folded sails rested at the hull of the ship, almost like fins, a characteristic of some of Erras’ ships, although Nara wasn’t too familiar with ship design on Erras or on Earth. The design was of Sanshi’s and something else—beams of exquisitely crafted wood forming overhangs.
The sails rippled slightly, although there was no wind.
“This is supposed to be adaptive? Low-key?” Eufemia voice dripped disbelief. “It’s white.”
“Blends in with the clouds I suppose,” John generously offered.
“Hm, don’t think it flies that high up,” Nara said. “It’s more of a high hoverer than a true flier.”
“It looks luxurious,” Encio said, inspecting the breath of the ship, “but not unusual for a leisure sky ship on Erras. I don’t know what ships look like on your world, but this does blend in here.”
“Blends in like every other gods-damn rich person,” Eufemia sighed. “You see them coming from a mile away, but they’re never unexpected, even when then try to be. Every rich asshole looks like every other rich asshole. They just stop looking like the common rabble.” she paused. “No offense, I like being the rich asshole. It’s not a criticism.”
“None taken,” Nara said, unminding. “So, it does blend in?”
“You can’t make it look like something else?”
“We could wait another 20 minutes; I could see if it wants to come up with something else.”
Eufemia groaned.
“Another 20 minutes rather kills the excitement.” Encio said. “I like it. It’s my style.”
“Of course it is,” Eufemia said flatly.
“You like it, don’t you?” Nara teased. “Flashy but pretty.”
Eufemia clenched her teeth, turned, then jumped up to the deck of the ship with a superhuman leap, landing gracefully despite her power.
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Ability: [Martial Gift]
Special Ability / Special Attack
Cost: None
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Gain the ability to use a known special attack of a target. This may make your version of the ability higher or lower rank than the original, including losing or gaining additional effects from higher ranks. This ability has the same cost and cooldown as the original ability. Ability chosen cannot be changed until the ability is off cooldown. Chosen ability is available until changed.
Effect (Bronze): Physical strength and resistance to damage is increased.
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At bronze rank, her Adept essence abilities shifted to provide Eufemia with the necessary base to form herself into any role. She wasn’t stronger than Sen or faster than Encio, who had an entire rank dedicated to physical strength or speed respectively, but she was second place in everything. As Eufemia polished her combat techniques, she became increasingly dangerous as her own fighter and not just as somebody’s lesser copy.
The rest followed, leaping up with either pure strength, weight manipulation, flight abilities, or the help of others. Lawrence tossed a stack of conjured paper, which formed itself into stairs that he simply walked up, the very image of a scholar who couldn’t be bothered for physical exercise. For over a month, his senior priests had taken the combat-adverse iron ranker to grind out the last few steps into bronze rank. He hadn’t used cores, and belatedly regretted it. He had been an iron rank for many years, slowly ranking up as he saw fit between his research and his duties as a priest of knowledge. He didn’t much like the implications of his goddess thinking he needed the ability to fight at a bronze rank level. The only matter that dulled his headache was that he’d be traveling with a fellow researcher he greatly respected.
Despite his quickness and mobility, Encio lacked a weight reduction or flight ability. He hoped to find something appropriate in Kallid.
The silver sky ship did not fly too high, within range of one or two hundred feet above the ground. Sky travel was common between the larger cities of the region, and other ships traveled from Sanshi to Huxin, their next destination. The ships followed the ground path, casting shadows like dense clouds on the travelers beneath them, who made their way slowly on slower and smaller carriages.
Flying monsters were less common than ground mounters, but the southern region of Shian Union where Sanshi and Huxin were location was mountainous, and flying monsters would manifest. Nara, Encio, and now Aliyah were relatively adept with aerial combat, but the rest still struggled to ‘find their footing’.
The monsters they fought were mostly iron rank. Various monstrous varieties of birds of prey such as hawks and eagles. Others were insectoid flying monstrosities like the one Encio had fought.
Notably, a species of monster called the feyline. Small, catlike creatures with wings of blades, and equally sharp fangs and teeth. Nara would have thought they were adorable, if they hadn’t tried to rip her throat out. She still might have thought they were adorable…as long as they didn’t try to stab out her eyes.
The ship was under siege by a group of iron and bronze rank monsters. The feylines wrapped their razor-sharp wings around their bodies, turning themselves into armor piercing cannon shots with the speeds of a diving peregrine falcon.
The nebula ship retaliated. Small panels on the hull of the ship transformed into brilliantly refractive crystal arrangements. Light bounced rapidly through the miniature crystalline array, growing brighter with power until it fired of a shot that melted a hole through a feyline.
“Uh, Nara. Just a quick question. I know you’re busy. But, did you know it could do that?” John asked.
“No… I don’t think I’ve gotten around to the section of the manual on weapon defenses because I’ve been too busy planting trees and flowers.”
“Perhaps it would’ve been a good idea if you had a quick look around that part first. It’s not too late for a quick peek.”
“Does it change anything? I could disable them?”
John looked at the carnage the ship wrought on it’s enemies. It was firing with surprising precision, missing all of their allies. The team was registered as guests of the nebula flask, and its defenses would not activate against them as it would for intruders.
“Mister Aurelius, I am the one operating the weapon systems,” Sage said. “If I may, I believe the flask shares much a mind with me. The safety of its guests is its first priority. You may rest assured, as you have done so far.”
Unlike the irresponsible Nara, Sage had read the entire manual for the nebula flask and was the one operating the weapons for the ship. It could function autonomously, but manual operation increased its effectiveness. It meant Nara did have to leave a body of Sage in the ship instead of combat, but her assistance was worth it. Now that Sage had minor ability to interact with objects physically, she had put her new ability to full use, upping her assistance outside and in combat. She couldn’t carry anybody, but holding plates, switching levers, twisting knobs, pushing buttons (literal and figurations), and operating high caliber weapons were all within the purview of Sage’s impeccable service.
Encio may not have had a flight or weight reducing ability yet, but he had his ways to dominate the sky as he dominated battle. Encio’s Flicker ability wasn’t entirely suited to air combat due to its short-range restriction, but he had a few more abilities that enhanced his air mobility.
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Ability: [Rewind]
Essence: Time
Special Ability (time, movement)
Cost: Very low mana-per-second, Moderate mana
Cooldown: 1 minute
Effect (Iron): Instantly move to a local location that has been previously traversed while this ability has been active. (This ability ignores dimension and teleportation restrictions.)
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Effect (Bronze): Gain a short-lived damage bonus after rewinding. Cooldown reduced to 55 seconds.
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It was impossible to travel back in time, however, moving to a location previously traveled or adopting a past state in the present was a mainstay of time abilities. Since it was instantaneous movement rather than teleportation, Encio didn’t share Nara’s weakness towards teleportation restriction, all but guaranteeing his ability would always work. Time manipulation restriction was even rarer than dimension restriction, as it was also proportionately rarer in the ability pool.
Combined with Frozen World and Flicker, Encio would leap off the side of the ship to plunge his sword into six-winged hexeagles, tearing off wings at their joins with the cutting edge of his Whirlwind Sword.
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Ability: [Whirlwind Sword]
Conjuration
Cost: Moderate mana
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Conjures [Zephyr’s Tempest, the Whirlwind Sword]. Zephyr’s Tempest inflicts physical damage. Attacks and abilities made with [Zephyr’s Tempest] have increased speed and penetrating power.
Effect (Bronze): After every attack, a duplicated attack of cutting wind follows, inflicting resonating-force damage.
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A resonating-force blade followed every one of his attacks like a mirage, cutting where he once cut. It was an awkward delay and effect in close quarters combat, since it didn’t enhance his original strike. Nara found the effect of his blade obnoxious when fighting against Encio, since it forced her to extend the duration of Phase Shift just a bit longer if she wanted to avoid it entirely, and she was punished for dodging too tightly. Since the damage was comparatively less, it was better to just eat the damage, but that sort of constant sacrificial decision added up and helped guarantee the application of Encio’s [Slowing Frost] affliction.
Encio was still mastering the new effect, although with infuriating speed that made Nara groan over how needlessly high spec he was. In his close quarters fighting style, each of his slashes became a barrage of two.
Encio was conserving mana for this fight. Aeiral combat meant he’d never have a good chance to use Vorpal Slash, and God-Sundering Slash suffered similar issues. There was too much room for enemies to dodge unless Aliyah secured them for him first. She occasionally did, but her own-trap combo fared better in the air than Encio’s relatively narrow projectile slashes.
Nara landed on the back of a larger flying monster, a gargoyle-like creature with four pair of wings and stony feathers. It sagged under her weight, unable to attack her. It was already under the effect of Entropy, as one of the more resilient bronze rank monsters in the flock that Nara was in charge of eliminating.
Around her floated two glowing golden swords, which deflected stay projectiles and cut into the back of the monster that she was standing on, applying their afflictions to the monster as well. These were Chrome’s swords, a new subsumed effect that she could use with or without him, but for this battle he stayed subsumed. When they were together, the damage and afflictions of his swords were increased thanks to Soul Legion. It also meant that Chrome could control the swords for her, instead of Nara having to manipulate another effect on top of all the other ones she was already actively managing.
“Of course, your new effect is high maintenance, Chrome.”
The swords faltered as control was handed from Chrome to Nara, and a sharp feather like a reversed arrow pinged past her ear that the swords would have normally deflected for her. They benefitted from Dream’s Wake as long as she conjured them instead of Chrome and could handle some light deflections.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry so please control them again, I’m begging you!”
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Ability: [Hand of Time]
Familiar (ritual, summon)
Cost: Extreme Mana
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Summon a [Hand of Time], to serve as a familiar.
* Has a humanoid physical form and can wield two swords that deal physical and resonating-force damage, which is highly effective against physical defenses.
* Can physically interact with incorporeal entities.
* Can move instantaneously to a nearby location. This ability has a cooldown of 40 seconds.
* Enemies damaged by the familiar are afflicted with [Deterioration].
* [Deterioration] (affliction, magic, stacking): Increases the speed at which effects that stack afflictions accrue instances. Decreases the duration of boons. Additional instances have a cumulative effect.
* Can be subsumed within the summoner’s aura, making the summoner’s aura much harder to detect and read.
Effect (Bronze): Summon a bronze rank vessel for a [Hand of Time].
* Gains two additional swords that are wielded telekinetically.
* The familiar gains increased movement speed, reaction speed, perceptual speed, and spatial awareness.
* Inflicts [Erosion of Time], [Decay of Time], and [Corrosion of Time].
* [Erosion of Time] (affliction, damage-over-time, magic, stacking): Inflicts ongoing desiccation damage. Additional instances have a cumulative effect.
* [Decay of Time]: (affliction, damage-over-time, magic, stacking): Inflicts ongoing necrotic damage over time. Additional instances have a cumulative effect.
* [Corrosion of Time] (affliction, damage-over-time, magic, stacking): Inflicts ongoing corrosive damage. Additional instances have a cumulative effect.
* Instantaneous movement cooldown is reduced to 30 seconds. Instantaneous movement gains an additional charge, with one charge recovered every cooldown period.
* When subsumed, the summoner can conjure up to 2 of the familiar’s swords, wielded telekinetically.
Ability: [Entropy]
Awakening Stone: Ruin
Spell (curse)
Incantation: “From order to disorder.”
Cost: Moderate mana
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Periodically applies an additional instance of each stacking curse, holy, unholy, or magic affliction the target is suffering from. This is a curse effect. This effect cannot be cleansed while any other curse, holy, unholy, or magic affliction is in effect.
Effect (Bronze): Inflicts or refreshes [Inescapable].
* [Inescapable] (affliction, magic): Subject cannot be affected by teleport or non-damaging dimension effects.
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Entropy doubled up on Inescapable, which her Infinity Domain ability also applied, but they had different use cases. Inescapable applied by Infinity Domain couldn’t be cleansed, while the one afflicted by Entropy could, not that it mattered for these monsters, who couldn’t teleport anyway.
Entropy passively applied instances of all her afflictions, but actively attacking monsters with attacks rapidly applied additional instances. She transformed Nirvana into a dagger form, rapidly making small, repeated cuts into the stone flesh of the flying gargoyle. She sacrificed boons with each attack, gaining resonating-force damage that let her blade cut through stone like a 1000-degree Celsius knife. All the while, she cast Astral Judgement the moment it was on cooldown. She had the mana to spare.
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Ability: [Astral Judgement]
Awakening stone: Judgement
Spell
Incantation: “Judgement of the astral.”
Cost: Moderate mana
Cooldown: 30 seconds
Effect (Iron): Inflict rending damage for each curse, holy, unholy, or magic affliction the target is suffering from.
Effect (Bronze): Inflicts or refreshes [Sunder].
* [Sunder] (affliction, magic): Negates immunities to physical, resonating-force, disruptive-force, and rending damage. This includes intrinsic immunities such as not have a corporeal form or possessing an entirely energy form. Cannot be cleansed while any other curse, unholy, or holy affliction is in effect.
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Nara never had the answer for what was immune to rending damage, but the affliction answered the question before she had a chance to see the answer. Pure energy beings, like lightning, light, or fire elementals, would have been immune. Lightning and light elementals were extremely rare, while fire elementals were less so.
Gauging it was the right moment, she transformed Nirvana back into a sword and swung, lopping off the head of the gargoyle. The body following the tumbling head, and Nara looted it before it exited her aura range, rainbow smoke drifting in the sky like wisps of vomit-inducing clouds.
She teleported high again, oriented face towards the ground, pushing off her Cosmic Path to jumpstart her velocity. She became the aerial bullet, smashing a heavy, momentum powered staff swing that crushed the internal bones and organs of another monster. She cast Astral Judgement on hard-to-reach enemies, causing their bodies to internally tear at themselves from the inside out. Spells like Astral Judgement and damage-over-time afflictions dealt damage to the whole health pool of the monster, which meant the lacked the advantage physical attacks had of targeting weak spots to finish an enemy early.
A bronze-rank feyline bulleted towards her, nearly clipping her shoulder to shatter bone if not for John’s timely Burst Shield, which exploded outward and forced the Feyline to unfurl itself from the blast.
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Ability: [Burst Shield]
Special Ability
Cost: Moderate mana
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Create a short-lived shield that negates an incoming attack and explodes out, knocking-back nearby enemies and inflicting concussive damage. High-damage attacks of silver-rank or higher may not be entirely negated.
Effect (Bronze): Inflicts [Vibrant Echo] on anyone damaged by the blast.
* [Vibrant Echo] (affliction, damage-over-time, magic): Inflicts ongoing resonating-force damage.
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The resonating-force damage eroded the plated wings. Nara thrust upwards with her extended sword, skewering its exposed body.
With her Infinity Domain, the blood that dropped towards her was curved away, and she remained spotless, although it was hard to tell through her dark blue combat robes.
The enemies from the air, their once dominance in the sky overturned by the team like the home team losing to the away team. Thankfully, there were no fans of the monsters to disappoint. Encio’s aerial fighting style came in cycles, dashing outwards with his sword to cleave apart enemies while his long-range abilities were on cooldown. He’d return to the sky ship with Rewind, then resuming tearing apart the flying fiends from a distance.
The rest of the team unleashed their abilities from the deck, Eufemia with her long-range light rays dealing impressive damage for a cheap ability. The light rays could bend and chase targets, a bronze rank effect that strained Nara’s common sense of physical reality.
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Ability: [Light Ray]
Essence: Light
Special Attack (light)
Cost: Low mana
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Fire a piercing ray of light dealing heat and mild disruptive-force damage.
Effect (Bronze): Light rays can home towards targets for a short period of time.
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“It’s magic light, not real light,” Nara chanted to herself as a Light Ray bent towards a gargoyle that had tried to sidestep it, piercing through it’s neck with a smoldering hole. It didn’t die, but a follow up Sword Wave from Encio finished it.
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Ability: [Sword Wave]
Essence: Swift
Special Attack
Cost: Low mana
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Create a projectile of cutting energy.
Effect (Bronze): Energy blades become wider as they travel.
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Aliyah fought similarly, firing bolts and beams of magic at all those who approached. For now, she remained on deck, instead of adopting the Cirque du Soleil acrobatic performance she had been practicing with Nara before the celebration. Remaining in place afforded her more precision and control in a battle where more allies teleported through the air. Her exploding traps rocketed the air in exploding shockwaves like cannon fire, knocking enemies back into the waiting blade of Nara, or bisected out of the air by Encio and Eufemia.
Sen covered the deck, hammering opponents into the deck with his heavy staff, cracking the nebula construct with his overwhelming power, which shortly reformed itself in a swirl of sparkling nebula clouds. Nara would need to give it more cloud quintessence later to restore the lost material. The rest of their flightless familiars defended the deck with Sen. Thanatos lanced enemies with black flame, and Lumi with her rays of light.
Lawrence reluctantly aided the team in their battle. He launched paper that stuck to enemies, weighing and slowing them down as their own blood coagulated and added to their weight. Some became so heavy they flew with exhaustive, thumping beats, dropping out of the sky entirely when they could no longer support their own weight. Some lived through the hundred-foot fall, condemned to a slow death, while others exploded into paper on fatal impact, adding to Lawrence flurried storm of white and red. A hundred feet was well within Nara’s aura range, and those enemies were looted too, even as they were reborn into Lawrence’s paper projectiles.
As Lawrence’s mass of magic paper grew, so grew the capabilities of his abilities. Paper constructed themselves into mimicries of other monsters. White origami feylines bulleted into other monsters, cutting into them then pasting their paper makeup onto their bodies like glue. His ability set revolved around generating paper, accumulating paper, and expending that paper in his attacks. All abilities sets had combat applications, and this was how Lawrence applied his. Physically. To his enemies’ skin. Some even suffocated, paper forced into orifices they shouldn’t belong.
“Lawrence… are you sure you’re a non-combatant?”
“Nara, due to your origins, I assume you may not know all essence ability sets have varying degrees of combat applications. Now, you know.”
“Do you only get this cheeky with me, or do you talk like this with your goddess too?”
“I would never disrespect my goddess with such an attitude.”
“So, you’re disrespecting me?”
“No. Did I give you that impression?”
“You know Lawrence, I get the feeling you’re upset with your current assignment. I’m not the one who put you here. Your goddess did. You’re not upset with me, you’re upset with her.”
“I am not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I am not,” he said, a massive spinning shuriken of paper bisecting a monster into fluttering scraps of white, self-censoring the gore.
“Nara,” Sen said, “Please stop irritating the already irate priest? I understand you possess a different view of religion, but please attempt to be respectful.”
“He disrespected me first.”
He paused. “Then go right ahead.”
Lawrence stopped for a moment, staring at Sen. He had pegged Sen Arlang for the upright, righteous kind of person, staunch and unwavering. Every so often, Sen threw him a personality curveball.
Sen sensed his disbelief and explained with a wry grin. “We’re on the same team. I will prioritize her over you.”
The team wasn’t serious; they were just messing with Lawrence. But Lawrence felt that the next few years of his life would be very tiresome indeed.