Chapter 151: Hitching a Ride
It was the first month, and the team had traveled up in latitude enough that the quad seasons returned to the landscape. The adjacent seascape had no snow, unlike the mountains further inland, capped with white. The vegetation was dry and thin, lacking the extreme vitality of the jungles of Huxin, but struggling through the winter and waiting for their rebirth in spring.
The Nebula Flask was in its sky boat form, traveling low and slow between the road beneath them and the seaside cliff.
Erras overflowed with magic, so saturated with it spontaneously manifested as cubes and monsters. The overland route to Saggia contained wonderous sights of magic Nara had not seen before.
Floating islands, suspended in the air like voxel constructions. She saw a variety of magic beasts make their homes on the floating rocks. Thin, slimmer, panther-gryphons called alserons. Not just black, but in colors of stone greys, misty whites, earthy browns, and even subdued greens and blues. Their hair feathered at the tips like Caspian, and he seemed distantly related to his species…possibly not. Wolves and panthers were not so similar, even on Earth.
They shot down from their sky nests at ground beasts like peregrine falcons, swift and sharp. With the dexterity of a dancer, shifted their trajectory to shoot back into the sky, prey in hand.
Caspian soared up together with Ensi, the two gliding freely through the air, simurgh and dragon side-by-side. She kept an eye on the rambunctious flying young teenager—for a teenager that could drive was bad enough, a teenager that could fly was a nightmare.
The other familiars sunned on the deck. Regis, Sen’s Avatar of Wrath, sprawled with legs and thick scaled fish tail. Despite its type of astral being, it was normally quiet unless it was time to fight. Beorn was curled up in a ball in a small cave made for him on the deck. Thanatos relaxed with closed eyes, his paws curled beneath him.
She saw shimmering forms beyond the tree line, mirage beasts, magical shapeshifters. They ignored the travelers, flickering between forms like an animal slideshow. Mirage dragons were the most powerful of the shapeshifters, but Nara didn’t know the differences between them and other shapeshifters. Nara could have sworn she occasionally saw a tree get up to move. Occasionally, something rumbled far away towards the mountains, sending a flock of birds screeching and scattering, but not disrupting their calm of the sunbathing party.
The land of Erras was clean; No telephone lines strewn across the landscape in jarring strings of black, no asphalt roads that cut through nature in ugly charcoal scars. There were roads, but construction in Erras had always worked with nature, not against it.
Not out of any sentimental respect for nature: It was more efficient to do so. Due to monster waves, roads and buildings were damaged every ten years. Construction that worked in harmony with nature was important for their ease in restoring them. Roads were made of magically reinforced, smoothened, and hardened dirt, molded from nature itself by earth-shapers. Cities had fancier roads and walkways, made of patterned stone and local materials.
The coastline was rocky, covered in groves of green where cliffs supported dirt. She occasionally saw homes built on rock faces or even on underside of the floating islands, often homes of a high rank recluse. Some adventurers didn’t want the expected social responsibility that came with high rank, and instead did their duty slaying monsters, but keeping to themselves otherwise. In emergencies, those houses could become shelters for the local normals, as they often had expensive array magic and a high ranker protecting it.
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The team had their first taste of a silver rank monster.
Luckily, it was a small group—the mildest version of monsters, neither the tough singular monster nor the overwhelming but weak swarm, and all of them at the weakest end at silver individually.
They were ferocious, large, rabbit-like creatures—ravager rabbits. They consumed anything—stone, wood, metal. A terror to local populations for their destructive nature. They were large and the size of small bears, like black bears. Their powerful hind legs and jumping power of silver rank allowed them to reach the nebula ship at its low cruising altitude, tearing chunks from its hull. Sage directed the ship higher, while Nara and the team engaged the rabbits.
Nara was fast, but the ravager rabbits were faster. The only reason she could compete at all was her teleportation. The rabbits ignored her nodes, either they were too hard to detect for a monster’s wild but unfocused senses, or they did not care for anything beyond attacking the living and consuming material. The nodes were one of the few things they could not eat.
More and more Nara found herself on the front-line, defending the team together with Sen. It wasn’t her role, but the team did not have another front-liner. She was not as sturdy as Sen was but fulfilled the role of an evasion tank well enough. Eufemia additionally joined the three at the front, leaving John, Encio, and Aliyah as the backliners.
As she fought more and more powerful monsters above her rank, Nara learned to adjust her parries. They were slighter, focused on redirecting power than stopping them head on. Dream’s Wave did a lot of work to eliminate most of the damage and momentum of anything she actively intercepted, but using some finesse went a long way in easing the impact of higher-rank blows. Her experience with fighting heavy hitters like Graff, Sen, and Vallis had finally pushed her to a competency where she was no longer struggling with every blow. All aspects of combat came more naturally to her, and Nara was able to gauge which blows could be parried and what needed to be evaded or dodged with teleportation.
With new rank came new aura effects. Nara’s was the least impactful, offering only increased resistance to boon dispel with a stacking Tranquility boon. Aliyah’s and John’s auras offered the team something generally more useful.
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Ability: [Archmage’s Decree]
Essence: Master
Awakening Stone: Paper
Aura
Cost: None
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Enemies within aura suffer a slight mana drain effect. Gain the drained mana.
Effect (Bronze): Allies have increased resistance to mana drain. The effects of mana recovery and regeneration effects on allies is increased.
Ability: [The Strength of Life]
Essence: Life
Awakening Stone: Might
Aura (cleanse)
Cost: None
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Allies within your aura have increased [Power] and [Recovery].
Effect (Bronze): Ally healing abilities have increased effect. Allies within the aura are continually cleansed of curses, diseases, magic afflictions, poisons and unholy afflictions. Toxins are purged from the air within aura.
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At iron rank, John only had three main cleansing abilities: Cleansing Lifeblood, Grand Renewal, and Dawn of Creation. Cleansing Lifeblood was low impact but could be used repeatedly, while the other two were high impact but with extremely long cooldowns and high costs. The passive cleansing effect of his aura wasn’t particularly strong, but it would slow down the insidious crawl of afflictions when it came for them again: Nara had a feeling it was inevitable.
The impressive jumping power of the rabbits meant that the team couldn’t maintain an effective frontline, but a strong frontline had never been their best tactic. Aliyah flew out of reach on her Arcane Constructs, creating traps and casting spells from the safety of the sky. Encio was faster than the ravager rabbits, even if they were a rank higher than him. If the team was a bit later in rank, Aliyah may have challenged herself by staying near the ground level, but a silver rank fight at their level was a little too challenging to use anything but the safest strategies.
The team utilized their multiple teleportation abilities to disrupt the enemies in the same where their mobility had disrupted them. A quick Juxtapose with the right timing from Aliyah caused a rabbit’s powerful hind leg kick to smash into another rabbit, briefly stunning it with the impact.
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Ability: [Juxtapose]
Essence: Magic
Awakening Stone: Balance
Special Ability
Cost: High mana
Cooldown: 1 minute
Effect (Iron): Swap the location of two allies and/or enemies. You must be able to see both subjects of the spell. If an ally resists or otherwise prevents the effect, this ability is negated but the cooldown is reduced to 30 seconds.
Effect (Bronze): Enemies affected by this ability take additional damage from all sources for a brief period.
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The team followed up on the increased damage window, unloading what damage they had onto the rabbit, wearing it down significantly but still not killing it—This was the resilience of silver rank.
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Against higher rank enemies, Encio had to take a slower approach than his usual burst. He utilized his two weaker attacks, Sword Wave and Fragment of Time. All of iron rank, Fragment of Time had been Encio’s weakest ability. It did very little damage and had very little impact. He hadn’t intentionally disregarded it, but it was one of his last abilities to cross the threshold into bronze rank. For an ability set that could cleave his opponent with one move, it was always his worst option. Against the monsters of silver rank with vitality and resilience on par with monolith trees, the two abilities became his best options.
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Ability: [Fragment of Time]
Essence: Time
Awakening Stone: Glass
Special Attack (combination)
Cost: Very low mana and stamina / Moderate mana
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): The next attack leaves a magic duplication of the attack, frozen in space and time. When an enemy is damaged by the duplication, it is destroyed. Duplications can be destroyed by attacks. Duplications inflict a small and fixed amount disruptive-force damage that is not proportionate to the attack duplicated.
Effect (Bronze): Trigger all fragments to launch themselves towards a target for moderate mana cost. Consecutive fragment damage increases damage of subsequent fragments. All fragments are destroyed regardless of whether the fragments damage their target.
Ability: [Sword Wave]
Essence: Swift
Awakening Stone: Magus
Special Attack
Cost: Low mana
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Create a projectile of cutting energy.
Effect (Bronze): Energy blades become wider as they travel.
Ability: [Double Strike]
Essence: Swift
Awakening Stone: Potent
Special Attack (combination)
Cost: Varies
Cooldown: 5 seconds
Effect (Iron): The next instance of damage and non-damage affects inflicted is duplicated. The mana cost is equal to the mana cost of the mana cost of the special ability used in combination with this ability.
Effect (Bronze): Can be used a second time, with a use regained every cooldown period. Both uses cannot be used on the same attack or ability.
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With Double Strike, he was creating two fragments of each attack. With his whirlwind sword, each attack already had another resonating-force duplication. It didn’t count as an additional fragment, but it did apply his racial ability, Accelerant, an additional time.
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Racial Ability: [Accelerant]
Enemies damaged by your special attacks are inflicted with [Slowing Frost]. You gain an instance of [Fire Accelerant] for every instance of [Slowing Frost] you inflict. Instance limit is determined by the [Spirit] attribute.
* [Slowing Frost] (affliction, magic, stacking): [Speed] and [Recovery] attributes are temporarily decreased by a small amount. Additional instances have a cumulative effect.
* [Fire Accelerant] (boon, magic, stacking): The [Speed] and [Recovery] attributes are temporarily increased by a small amount. Additional instances have a cumulative effect.
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Thanks to Encio’s other Racial Ability, Quick Mind, increasing his Speed attribute also increased his Spirit attribute, which increased the damage of his subsequent fragments, incentivizing Encio to attack a his highest speed to maximize his damage.
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Racial Ability: [Quick Mind]
[Spirit] increases as [Speed] increases. Learning speed is increased.
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Encio was creating an illusory wall of transparent attacks frozen in time and space, like someone had stopped time and thrown up hundreds of knives. The Sword Waves were stacking Slowing Frost and Fire Accelerant, and Encio’s speed kept pushing up higher and higher, and his attack speed continued to increase. He was untouchable by the rabbits, and they didn’t have the good sense to try to destroy the literal glass flak cannon he had created for them.
Then, he activated Eternal Moment, rapidly triggering Fragment of Time as many additional times as he could, fragments obscuring his own vision with how multitudinous they were in the air. Upon exiting, he activated the second part of the ability, and the frozen fragments joined the flow of time, shooting towards Encio’s target.
Aliyah smoothly followed up, binding the rabbit in place with Binding Light so that every single transparent fragment of shattered time buried itself deep within the monster.
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Ability: [Binding Light]
Spell (thread) / Conjuration
Incantation: “Bind with light.”
Cost: Moderate mana
Cooldown: 30 seconds
Effect (Iron): Bind a target with threads of light. Can only be used where in locations with light. Has greater effect under strong sources of light.
Effect (Bronze): Threads of light inflict continual disruptive-force damage and a burst of disruptive-force damage when broken.
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The monster died a pincushion of glass shards, as if the glass from an entire high rise had shattered and buried itself into the monster.
The only drawback was that Encio could only designate a single target for this ability at a time. With a sigh, he began to work on another fragment cannon. Thankfully, the mana cost of the combo was low, exchanging speed for efficiency, and was one he could repeat without issue with his team’s cumulative mana regeneration bonuses. At least at the end of it all, there was still a spectacle waiting for him. Gods forbid his abilities had no spectacle.
Nara’s slowly ramping damage bonus began to shine, once enough instances of Vulnerable and Boundary’s Scorn stacked up that her afflictions were consistently getting through their silver rank resistances. Encio had expended all of his work for the past few minutes to slay a single monster, but Nara was making substantial progress on all the rest, together with Sen, Aliyah, and Eufemia.
Thanks to the new effect of Shard of Mirrors, Eufemia’s fighting style had evolved into a formless, unfixed one that constantly shifted into new weapons. She was a Swiss army knife, a tool for each situation, to dismantle a fight into her victory.
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Ability: [Shard of Mirrors]
Essence: Mirror
Awakening Stone: Blade
Conjuration (weapon)
Cost: Moderate mana, variable mana
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Conjure [Silver Gleam, the [Shard of Mirrors]]. [Silver Gleam] can take the form and abilities of any known conjured weapon ability. Duplicating a conjuration incurs the mana cost of the original conjuration. Without a conjured form, [Silver Gleam] functions as a dagger. Attacks made in the base form inflict [Mirror Distortion].
* [Mirror Distortion] (affliction, magic, stacking): Mana costs are increased. Suffer increased damage from modified abilities and abilities effected by boons. Additional instances have a cumulative effect.
Effect (Bronze): [Silver Gleam] can maintain three active forms. Switching to a different active form does not require mana.
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She could ‘save’ up to three weapon forms with Silver Gleam, and constantly switch between them in the fight. Against the ravager rabbits, she primarily used a pair of gauntlets she had copied from another bronze rank adventurer in Sanshi. She abused her instantaneous strength as well as the bonus effects the gauntlets provided her, grabbing pulling, swinging, and punching the rabbits with gauntlets of hard conjured metal. She kept the high mobility rabbits in check even better than Sen could, her chosen abilities adapted perfectly for the situation at hand. Whenever she had a chance, she swapped to Horizon’s Edge, slashing for a chunk of rending damage and increasing the stacks on the rabbits. Together with Nara, the two progressed the ramping damage of her afflictions faster than she could have by herself.
With each counter blow, Astral Return stole health and mana from the target as well as inflicting the Astral Retribution affliction. Since the monsters were silver rank, the damage boost of Astral Return was substantial. She was ripping and tearing through the monsters with each swing or bludgeoning them with staff blows. The staff allowed Nara to simultaneously block and counter in one fluid motion, and it was a weapon that grew on her the more she fought.
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Ability: [Astral Return]
Essence: Balance
Awakening Stone: Focus
Special Attack (boon, magic, combination)
Cost: Low stamina
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): A slightly enhanced attack. If used shortly after avoiding or negating an instance of damage while using abilities, the attack is enhanced with additional damage, even if the damage is not entirely negated or avoided. The type of damage enhancement matches the damage dealt by the weapon used. Additional damage is proportional but not equal to damage avoided or negated. Enhanced damage rapidly decays. Can be combined with other special attacks, adding the damage enhancement to that attack instead.
Effect (Bronze): Damage dealt with [Astral Return] inflict an instance of [Astral Retribution]. When used against targets with [Astral Retribution], steals a small amount of health and mana from the target.
* [Astral Retribution] (affliction, holy, stacking): Suffer increased damage from execute abilities. Additional instances have a cumulative effect.
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All of this culminated in an execute attack that had become so powerful it ate away more and more of the monsters with each blow, eventually surpassing Sen’s and Encio’s most powerful strikes.
She was using it whenever it came off cooldown, and Eufemia shortened her cooldown whenever Blessing of Readiness was once again available.
At long last, eight silver rank ravager rabbits had died. Most of the corpses had disappeared, annihilated through transcendent damage from World’s End. Against higher rank opponents, execute abilities grew more effective. Enemies could suffer more damage without dying and executes scaled on the level of injury.
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[Ravager Rabbits] have been looted.
* 80 silver spirit coins
* 800 bronze spirit coins
* 8000 iron spirit coins
* 80,000 lesser spirit coins
* 8 monster cores (silver)
* 200 rabbit quintessence (silver)
* 300 hunger quintessence (silver)
* 1 parcel ravager rabbit meat (silver)
* 3 pelts ravager rabbit fur (silver)
* Awakening Stone of Hunger
Loot has been automatically added to your [Astral Domain].
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“Staves are pretty useful. I can execute an enemy and block something else at the same time.”
“It is a choice for a steady warrior,” Sen said with pride.
Nara didn’t know if he had chosen the weapon for himself, or if he had grown to like it. Sen’s searing cold had all he needed—a heat blade or a cold shell. It allowed him to use less lethal options and alter his strategy for stronger opponents. While Sen’s ability set was a relatively standard brawler, his abilities all had the vestiges of versatility that Sen espoused and practiced for himself.
A greeting flare of aura altered them to a friendly a duo of silver rankers, and one iron ranker, who now started their approach after the fight had ended. Nara had detected them long ago—they weren’t trying to be stealthy—and after determining they were non-hostile, ignored them for the rest of the fight. A body of Sage otherwise had kept an eye on them, which one of the silver rankers had noticed but likewise ignored, realizing it was just a precaution.
“You guys pulled through in the end, nicely done!” a beautiful dark-skinned human woman said, flashing a strong smile.
“Thanks for looking out for us,” Nara said.
“Eh~ It was unnecessary meddling on my part. Traveling around these parts without a silver rank guard is risky though, what are you guys doing?”
“We are headed to Saggia,” Sen explained.
“Saggia, huh, are you alumni?” she asked.
“No, we are not,” he denied. “Are the two of you alumni of Saggia?”
“He heh. It would have been exciting to be scouted into one of the prestigious Academies there. Buuuut, I’ve made it here all on my own,” she said, posing with her hands on her hips, evidently proud of her claim.
“With me getting you out of trouble,” her partner said, narrowing his eyes, never to let himself go underappreciated.
“What are partners for, eh?” She slapped him on the back, receiving a glare in turn. Her partner was a tawny skinned elf, the usual for these parts. “I’m actually traveling to Saggia with my little brother here. I want to see what I can do to get him in.”
“Sis, I don’t need any fancy academy. I can do it just like you!” her little brother protested.
“Drew. I’m silver rank, you’re not going to dig a hole in my pocket.” she spoke more softly to her younger sibling, her smile something bittersweet from her own memories of hardship and close calls. “And I’ll feel relieved if I know you’re safer. Doing it on your own is risky, Drew.” She turned back to them, “I’m Miranda, by the way. My grumpy partner is Anders. And of course, my adorable little brother Drew.”
He grumbled at being called adorable. Older siblings could not help but embarrass their youngers.
The team introduced themselves in turn. Encio used a fake last name, Onai, since in the Tier-Media his family was well-known. Sen didn’t bother. His family, while they had many, many golds, didn’t garner nearly as much attention as a family with an active politically participating diamond ranker. The Arlangs were more or less a large family known for adventuring. They were a powerful family, but with so many Arlangs around few bat an eye.
“Actually, since we’re traveling in the same direction, could we hitch a ride?”
“Miranda. We have vehicles,” Anders said sourly, gesturing to their skimmers.
Miranda rolled her eyes, “Sure, we have vehicles, but we don’t have an absolutely awesome super cool flying ship, now do we?”
Miranda looked at her younger brother, who was shorter than her. He tried to hide it, but his eyes contained the innocent light of adolescent curiosity.
“I don’t mind,” Nara said. “You three are welcome aboard. I can store your vehicles too, if you’d like.”
“You’re the owner of the ship?”
“Captain Nara, at your service.” Nara saluted, although the real captain was Sage. She was more like the useless owner of the company who claimed fame while a real know-how ran things.
The three boarded. Sage appeared, introducing the amenities of the ship to their new guests. Drew was young, just 14, one of the youngest essence users Nara had seen. He had reached the age to absorb essences at the lower end of the spectrum, unlike Sen, who was at the higher end; a bitter circumstance for Sen, but one he found turned out well.
With their new guests aboard, the team settled in for the next seven hours the trip to Saggia would take.