Chapter 174: Who Fortune Favors

Ilya was bored. So desperately bored. She should’ve known better than to become a stealth scout specialist. If someone had told her the job involved lying around perfectly still for hours almost wanting discovery so that there’d be a mad chase and a spike of adrenaline, she wouldn’t have become a scout.

(That might be a lie.)

She could just imagine the trill of it. Eyes finding hers; that perfectly still moment where time froze like the stuttering breath in her chest. The space between heartbeats unspooling until the next beat was the reminder of her own pulsing life.

It had been a lie. Being a stealth specialist suited Ilya just fine. The problem was, Ilya was far too good at her job.

A hawk on the tree branch preened its feathers. She imagined she was the hawk, rustling the feathers on her back, soothingly straightening her jacket of russet brown and speckled white. She imagined enjoying the chill of emerging spring and receding winter, downy fluff warming a layer of air against her body.

Her cloak did that, but she liked to imagine it was feathers.

Her mother always told Ilya that she daydreamed far too often. Being a scout suited Ilya, because she couldn’t imagine needing to pay attention like a healer or frontliner did. That was far too much pressure. All Ilya needed to do was detect and not be detected. Easy.

Ilya thought typical adventurers focused too much on aura detection. Aura detection was risky—prod and be prodded, seek and be sought. It was far too risky to rely on aura against higher rankers. That’s why Ilya relied on physical perception.

Really, Ilya hated that she was so good at her job. Why did she have to spy on higher rankers?

Her aura was retracted. She did something special with it, mimicking her aura to resemble fauna around her. According to anyone that cast their perceptions towards her, she was a bronze rank windrider hawk.

That’s why the hawk was there, really. Better actually have a bronze rank hawk sitting atop her in case they cared to visually check. Ilya knew better than to rely on only aura: others might too.

Letting her mind wander was part of the disguise (really, mother). It introduced natural fluctuations in her aura. Something too still, too focused reeked of being controlled, like pure shadow where there should be dappled sunlight. Stealth wasn’t about absence, but about blending in.

(It’s why she currently looked like a part of the branch she laid prone on. So the hawk could sit atop her.)

There was a rabbit sniffing the wind. Cute. She wondered if a hawk found a raw rabbit tastier than cooked and seasoned meat. She wondered how she could think a rabbit cute then think of eating it, but it was cute, and it did look tasty. She supposed it could be both.

A group of four trudged across the landscape, wearing dark cloaks that dragged in the mud. She let them drift across her perception, a floating cloud in her breezy thoughts. She didn’t focus on them. There were those monsters that could sense focus: So she didn’t. Ilya let their presence and voices wash over her like the susurrus of the tides and the rustling of leaves. Just part of the scenery, nothing special.

They were approaching the monolith. They should know better, but it wasn’t Ilya’s job to stop them. All the animals, after centuries of living with the monolith, had an instinctual sense to avoid the area. The winged creatures of the sky circled around, and the four-legged fauna tread the circumference. Circles of life avoiding death.

They broached the ring of death, the boundary where the lightless ice consumed all energy. They survived.

Ilya didn’t let that surprise her. She didn’t ordinarily have a heartbeat, an ability removed that for her, and instead mimicked a fake heartbeat. She filled the spaces of her life with something other than her. Something other than an elf. With her heart beating the way she wasn’t, it didn’t stutter in surprise. It wouldn’t give her away.

Ordinarily, the roaring of the storm drowned out any voices, but a friendly wind carried it along to her. How she’d love to spread her winds and ride the wind. Let the breeze catch in her primaries, feel silken current on silken feather.

The wind was less friendly to the four figures, and ripped at their cloaks, tearing at it with a fury that anything dared stand. Ilya saw flashes of bone white. Skeletal.

Undead.

Another revelation, another calm pulse of a hawk’s heart. A sensation skittered over the forest, the aura of an undead swept by. She didn’t stiffen or scare. She couldn’t stiffen more; she was already the bark of a branch. Her hawk briefly stood straighter, flexing its talons against her bark-back. It ruffled its feathers, sensing the brush of observation on an instinctual rather than conscious level. She let her heartbeat match his, slightly rising, the pre-stages before fight or flight. A moment of evaluation: he chose neither and settled, pulse dipping back down to rest.

The undead didn’t even bother disguising themselves or making themselves invisible. Ilya thought they should know better (again). Ilya was a professional, on a commission assigned to her by the royal family. Ilya wanted to be lazy, but the pay was generous, so Ilya was thorough.

Ilya thought that priests of a god should be more thorough than an adventurer paid in coin, but what did she know? She wasn’t a priest. (Evidently, money could buy quality where faith couldn’t. Ilya wanted to count herself as quality.)

“…ugh, I hate the cold…”

“You can’t feel the cold.”

“Bones have nerve endings.”

“You’re an undead skeleton not a living skeleton!”

The voices warbled on the wind, and Ilya heard them like she would chatter at a champagne party: unimportant and uninteresting. She’d process it later when she was safe.

“Quiet!”

“Nobody is around, Dross.”

“High Priest!” he snapped. “You will refer to me as High Priest or not at all.”

“…”

“…I know what you’re thinking. I’m not a pretentious snob.”

“…”

“Talk!”

“…You said not to refer to you.”

A frustrated sigh carried across the wind.

“Set up the blasted device. Let’s get this done for the week.”

Ilya didn’t bother sensing what rank they were. She couldn’t, at this distance. At bronze rank, her physical perception far surpassed her aura detection, especially with her four-fold perception. If she tried to sense what rank they were, she’d be detected. Far better not to. No, it didn’t matter what rank they were as long as they never found her.

An odd black metal device was placed onto the frozen ground. The metal was smooth, but it had angular edges and jutting components. The bottom was a stand, which the figures quickly secured to the ground with bolts.

It was ugly and unaesthetic, a scar of black on monochrome. Ilya preferred the forest and its wandering shades.

A cylindrical shape rotated, increasing in angular velocity and whirring with the sound of energy. Something was charging…

…It did not charge very fast.

Ilya contemplated extensively if crystal bees existed, how crystal honey would taste. Would it compare to crystal sap? Did crystal sap taste good? Maybe there was an untapped market there?

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As she mused, the device finally fired: With a sharp blast, a highly concentrated, high velocity, but extremely small projectile pierced towards the monolith, streaking with an offensive glow of orange in that monochrome realm, devoid of color and life. The light waned as the projectile approached, but it still impacted the monolith with a small crack.

It didn’t actually crack or anything, but Ilya didn’t like that sound. The storm drowned it out, so her hawk didn’t react; the forest maintained life as usual. Another hawk had joined it on her bark-back. A female. Maybe a lover? It was good that another hawk came; she didn’t even have to call it, like the first one. It looked more natural. She could even have the first hawk leave, and keep the second one. Maybe have both leave, and call upon a squirrel. She thought she’d like a coat made of squirrel fur, but then she’d feel bad for calling the squirrel.

The device was detached from the ground, wrenching massive screws up from the steel sturdy permafrost. The figures were careful not to touch the main part of the device, instead interacting with its casing and legs.

“…Can’t this process go any faster?”

“The whole point is to go undetected, idiot. Small adjustments, until we’re ready. Besides, we can’t use the solar condensate canon too often.”

“They’re really stingy with the cartridges.”

“Well it’s not like we can make them!”

“Just because the vampires can’t handle the sun doesn’t mean we can’t.”

“Ugh. This isn’t about the vampires. Did you have to mention them?”

“…can we just go? I’m cold.”

“You’re not cold, Toby.”

“I am!”

“If you were cold, you’d be dead!”

“I am dead!”

“Please…just stop. All of you.”

“Ohhhh big baddie high priest deigned to use please.”

“My most beloved god: Why did you accept them?”

At least, once they passed the boundary of the storm, the group stopped bickering. They broke into a run across the mud and delicate green grass, thankfully away from where Ilya laid, her heart never stopping its real-false act.

She’d have to get this information to the royal family and Adventure Society, but first she’d wait, just to be careful. Ilya could never be too careful.

Ilya wasn’t known for speed. She was known for success.

She waited.

Only when she was sure, did she move the barest bit.

She impressed upon a piece of paper the information she knew with magic. It’d be littered with random observations, even everything Ilya didn’t actively process, but that was the point. She’d was the sensor, not the analyst. A recording would be made of her experiences, but she couldn’t do that herself.

She didn’t even have to write it down, and she continued to lay still, the bark of a branch. She pressed the paper into the real bark beneath her. She thought of the specific tree in the grounds of the castle, the paper subsumed into the tree, sending it to its destination.

Well, now Ilya didn’t need to make it back alive. She’d like to, of course, but she’d at least keep her reputation of a 100% success rate (iron rank doesn’t count). That was nice.

Ilya debated how she’d return to the city of Kallid. She thought, today, she’d like to be a hawk.

Ilya stretched her wings, her primaries catching upon ever-present storm winds cast off from the eternal storm, and she flew.

*****

Sen had claimed Intrepid Heart, but even he thought their party was getting ridiculous in terms of weapon versatility. Nara had a shapeshifting weapon, which, while low in instantaneous power has made her all the tricker to fight. Eufemia just copied all other weapons. She was no weapons master, but chose the right weapon for the right job—why use a sword to break a wall when she could use a sledgehammer?

Once he gathered the materials needed to upgrade Intrepid Heart to bronze, Sen began his testing.

Sen could conjure as many barriers as he wanted, within a limited surface area and range. The surface area was enough to shield a few people at a time, although taking damage from multiple sources simultaneously was a quick wall to accidentally overextend himself, no matter how defensive his abilities: he’d have to be wary of area attacks. They served as an extension of his self, shouldering blows for someone or something as they remained protected behind it.

The ability to expend mana or stamina instead of suffering health damage was an extension of the maximum damage he could shoulder on behalf of others, although he’d have to be careful to balance his resources. Just after Nara, however, he was probably the next best in the team at using all three at a controlled pace. Few others wanted to expend their health as he and Nara did, except perhaps Encio, who could selectively take hits with Moment of Oneness and Immortality.

The iron rank effect, while initially unimpressive, was a great synergy with Sen’s abilities. His armor conjuration, Armor of the Immovable, was a simple, reliable ability that provided a variety of resistances, and would continue to rank that way until gold, as it was known.

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Ability: [Armor of the Immovable]

Essence: Zeal

Awakening Stone: Armor

Conjuration (armor)

Cost: Very high mana

Cooldown: None

Effect (Iron): Conjure heavy but flexible armor that confers strong physical protection and additional effects.

* Increased resistance to harmful dimension and teleportation effects.

* Increased resistance to harmful high momentum effects.

Effect (Bronze): The armor confers additional effects.

* Increased resistance to resonating-force damage.

* Increased resistance to harmful dispel effects.

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Since the barriers adopted Sen’s resistances, they also had lost their inherent weakness to disruptive force damage, as verified by Eufemia. He would not gain that resistance until silver rank with his armor, so still fared better against the barriers than other damage types, but not any better than other less common damage types, like necrotic or lightning.

Additionally, the damage suffered to the barriers would trigger Sen’s passives, Karmic Warrior and Building Wrath.

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Ability: [Karmic Warrior]

Essence: Balance

Awakening Stone: None

Special Ability

Cost: None

Cooldown: None

Effect (Iron): Gain an instance of [Agent of Karma] when subjected to damage or any harmful effect, even if the damage and/or effect was wholly negated.

* [Agent of Karma] (boon, holy, stacking): The [Power] and [Spirit] attributes are temporarily increased by a small amount. Additional instances have a cumulative effect.

Effect (Bronze): Gain an instance of [Good Karma] when healing others, cleansing others or suffering damage. Enemies that attack or take offensive actions against you are inflicted with [Bad Karma]. So long as any enemy has an instance of [Bad Karma], you have [Karmic Sacrifice].

* [Bad Karma] (affliction, retributive, holy): Suffer a small amount of retributive, transcendent damage when making an attack or other offensive action against anyone without the [Karmic Sacrifice] boon. Additional instances have a cumulative effect.

* [Good Karma] (boon, holy, stacking): Bonus to [Recovery]. Damage from enemies with [Bad Karma] is reduced. Additional instances have a cumulative effect.

* [Karmic Sacrifice] (boon, holy, heal-over-time): Gain an ongoing healing effect, with strength determined by the amount of [Good Karma] you have accrued. This effect immediately ends if there are no enemies suffering from [Bad Karma].

Ability: [Building Wrath]

Essence: Wrath

Awakening Stone: None

Special Ability (boon, holy)

Cost: None

Cooldown: None

Effect (Iron): When suffering damage or using a special attack, gain an instance of [Wrath]. Greater damage suffered grants or greater damage dealt grants additional instances of [Wrath]. This effect ignores the reduction of your damage reduction effects. You can gain [Wrath] from execute abilities, even if they are not special attacks. Instance limit is determined by the [Spirit] attribute.

* [Wrath] (boon, holy, stacking): When using an execute ability, consume all instances to inflict additional transcendent damage and reduce the low health threshold of execute abilities. Additional instances have a cumulative effect.

Effect (Bronze): When consuming instances of [Wrath], gain instances of [Wrath’s Respite]. Instance limit is determined by the [Spirit] attribute.

* [Wrath’s Respite] (boon, holy, stacking): Increased resistance to damage. Mild ongoing healing effect. Increased resistance to damage scaling of low health or injury. Additional instances have a cumulative effect.

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While Wrath’s Respite was not particularly important against monsters, as few had effects that increased against damaged enemies, except some varieties of blood-feeders, it was critically important against essence users. As one who wielded an execute ability himself, he had always been wary of their effects being turned against him, and he had no ability to save himself at low health like Encio had.

Additionally, the bracers did not block the effect of Guardian’s Retribution, his aura.

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Ability: [Guardian’s Retribution]

Essence: Wrath

Awakening Stone: Shield

Aura (retributive)

Cost: None

Cooldown: None

Effect (Iron): All allies within aura have increased damage resistance and increased resistance to afflictions.

Effect (Bronze): When allies within your aura are attacked, enemies suffer a slight retributive transcendent damage. This effect does not apply to you.

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It was curious, Sen mused; he had been given an awakening stone of the shield at iron rank for the express purpose of awakening a shield ability, like one of John’s, but had awakened an aura instead. Now, some years later, he inadvertently chanced upon what he had sought. For all of his defensive capabilities, Sen did not have the ability to protect all his allies at the same time. He could teleport, he could move at incredible speeds with Momentous Sprint, and he could return a wave of projectiles and magic with Return to Origin. Guardian’s Retribution had seemed a conciliatory prize, taunting him with what he had wanted but could now possess.

He could now, at a cost. And Sen was more than happy to have it.

*****

They’d stay, in the meantime, for Aliyah. They would keep looking.

While Sen was experimenting, he distantly registered that Eufemia was complaining about how once again, the two wealthiest team members were the ones who had somehow found their pieces of equipment first. How it was entirely unfair that those born with a gold spoon somehow kept having gold spoons shoved into their mouth (“You’re a loudmouth, Encio, so I know you can fit many.”), and that fortune should favor the bold, not the inordinately wealthy.

Sen pointed out that he himself was not particularly wealthy: his family was. Rather, Nara surpassed him in personal wealth. Eufemia said that was bullshit, that he’d never understand the struggles of the poor and weak, and to keep his gold-coated mouth shut, so he shrugged while she and Encio got into some sort of playful shouting match that bordered on flirtatious, although Eufemia seemed to intentionally cultivate some sort of vague sexual tension with everyone she was around. Sen thought it was her way of being friendly, because she certainly didn’t do it with anyone she thought better belonged in the trash to be incinerated.

He picked his battles; Encio may have been willing to bleed on the verbal battlefield with Eufemia, but he was not.

(It was not because he wasn’t very good at it, although that was also true.)