Since circumstances were slightly odd, I took more time formulating the message for Sir Kalman than I normally would. Usually, it was just a message asking if he needed to say anything.
Ultimately, I found there was sufficient space to clearly convey my message, and more.
“At the Order due to circumstances. Harold asked for an update on your current status to save time.”
While the spell could reach pretty much anywhere, it took time to get a reply- and that wasn’t particularly affected by distance.
“Good timing. Could use reinforcements. Prefer you and companions with small escort of elites from Order, if possible.”
I delivered the message to Harold, as well as consulting with the rest of our group. “I’d like to go help, if we can.”
Midnight agreed, obviously. “It’s good for us to keep in good favor with one of our few allies in this world.”
Kendrux was next. “I’d prefer to go straight back… but I also understand the need to support your allies.” Obviously she also spoke for Olim and Evans. Err… that was, Evans and Warble or whatever. If this were a diplomatic process- which it was not- that would have put the nay’s ahead 3-2.
“The Brigade can’t afford to lose this connection either,” Swiss Arms commented. “We need to aid him.”
“Your friend needs help?” Zeb asked. “Then Fluffy and I will help!”
“I’ll support you,” Khithae said finally, “But I’m going to be pretty ineffective in this world without there being any sort of technology…”
“You can learn something new,” I said. “With points! Defensive stuff is good, like Energy Ward. That should be an option for pretty much everyone. I’m sure Artificers have some other things that don’t require getting deep into combat.”
“I’ll look into it,” she nodded.
“Alright let’s gooooo~!” Zeb began running around in circles.
“We still have to let Harold prepare an escort,” I pointed out. “And we should probably inform the Brigade we won’t be coming back immediately.”
Kendrux sighed. “Well, I guess we’ll be coming along with you then. Can’t let you end up getting killed and losing our way home.”
“Glad to have you aboard,” I said.
-----
The Order of the Lion very kindly provided wagons since the vast majority of us had never ridden a horse before. Zeb hadn’t seen a horse before, and was very excited to meet a new animal, to the point she nearly got stomped on as she startled one. Even though she was a Beastmaster, still being level 0 kind of hindered her there.
“Oooh, what’s that?” Zeb spotted another kind of bird as the carriage was moving along.
“A bird,” I replied.
“What kind of bird?”
“Don’t know,” I admitted.
“What’s that?” Zeb asked.
“That’s a bush.”
“Oh. I thought it moved.” Zeb’s head was constantly swiveling. “What about-” she stopped frozen in place with her paws perched on the side of the wagon. “Everyone calm down!” she shouted, making us all less calm. “Don’t scare away- aww, it’s gone.”
“Don’t scare away what?” Midnight asked.
“I thought I saw… a squirrel,” Zeb commented conspiratorially.
“Okay?” Midnight said, clearly confused. I could tell he was at least trying to get along with the Bunvorixian, but didn’t understand her thoughts.
“A squirrel! They’re so rare!”
One of the paladins with us- I think she was called Sarpedon- commented on that. “I didn’t see it, but if you mean squirrels in general… there are a great many of them. I suppose there are some rarer kinds, though.”
“Zeb,” I realized what was missing. “Other places just have squirrels.”
She was stunned by that revelation. Then she nudged Fluffy, who was next to her. “Did you hear that Fluffy? It was a squirrel! I’ve never seen one before. Have you seen one before?”
“Mars doesn’t have squirrels,” Kendrux commented.
“... I’m sorry for your loss,” Zeb said, inclining her head.
“We just… never had squirrels,” Kendrux said. “It’s not like they got wiped out. Maybe some things did, but we didn’t share a biosphere with Earth. Or any sort of… how would you say it… world parallels?”
“I thought that was a thing with type-F worlds,” I commented.
Swiss Arms showed why she was a big shot in the Brigade. She knew things. “Cross-dimensional inspiration is a well known feature with type-F worlds, but parallel convergence with far flung planets isn’t unheard of either. Though I imagine if you looked at their genetics the ‘squirrels’ of Bunvorix would be very different from the squirrels here or on Earth as cats and dogs are from Celmothians and Bunvorixians. They might not even be the same genetic system.”
I knew most of that, and could have put it together myself given time. Probably. I was going to chalk it up to only having a year and some experience with alternative worlds. All of that seemed normal based on my first experiences, but I supposed it was weirder to have cat and dog shaped aliens than for them to be something like Jim. Or at least as different as Martians or whatever.
“Do we know what we’re going into?” Midnight asked.
Sarpedon had an answer for that. “Sir Kalman was investigating some incidents the nearby hill dwarves had reported.”
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“Didn’t you say it was a day and a half?” Midnight asked.
“That’s nearby,” I pointed out. “In fact, everywhere else you’ve been that would be like half an hour away at most.”
It also meant we would get to recover all of our mana and sleep. That would be nice.
-----
We spent the night in the cozy confines of the Shelter spell, since that let us travel however we wanted instead of having to stop in a town along the way.
Shelter was good, but pretty cramped with that many people. It made me consider getting the Extradimensional Mansion spell, next time I had a lot of spare points. Or maybe I could figure out how to cast it myself? It would be kind of like Storage and Gate, and kind of like Shelter. It seemed like a worthy investment of time… later. And it would probably take a lot of mana for me to get it right.
Or I could just get better at the Shelter spell and try to make it bigger. It was difficult focusing on different aspects I wanted, however.
As we were nearing the last stretch, Zeb spotted something. “Look! A weird lump in the ground!” She turned to Fluffy. “Do you think it’s a burrowing friend? Let’s go find out!”
The two of them jumped off the wagon instantly, and by the time I got somewhere I could see they were nearly at the ‘lump’. It was moving, creating clear ripples in the earth above it without actually displacing anything. That certainly wasn’t any sort of natural burrowing. “Be careful!” I said.
Zeb, of course, was not the careful sort. The very earth itself came up and punched her in the snout, sending her tumbling as she tried to sniff it. Fluffy responded aggressively, but he got a mouthful of dirt and rocks, which I wasn’t sure was effective. Certainly not enough to stop the thing from also slamming into Fluffy, knocking him back not nearly so far as Zeb.
“Ow!” Zeb said. “Guys it doesn’t smell like anything and I don’t think it’s friendly!”
Sarpedon and the other paladins were moving into position, a couple riding into position while Sarpedon herself stopped our wagon and hopped down.
Midnight and I had very similar thoughts to most of the others, and our bursts of mana came just behind a flurry of laser beams from the Martians and Swiss Arms. Midnight had more conservative thoughts- using our new Water Blast spell- while I cast Sonic Lance.
All told, it was blasted to bits almost immediately. Fortunately, it didn’t have the audacity to try to pull itself back together.
“What was that?” Swiss Arms asked. “A bunch of living rocks?”
“Pretty much,” I said. “They’re a sort of earth elemental. I think that was a small one? Pretty weak, too, since it was probably half dirt.”
“... Not its fist though,” Zeb said. “Oww…”
“Here,” Sarpedon said, bending down towards her. “I can heal you.”
A few cracking and popping sounds indicated that Zeb had actually been quite conservative with her complaints. Then again, she didn’t have class levels nor was she traditionally in any sort of combat roles. Well, she might be level 1 now? It was really easy to get early levels, if you actually did anything. And being punched probably counted. If not, Fluffy biting the thing probably did.
“Thank you,” Zeb said. “Umm, can you also heal Fluffy? His belly hurts!”
Sarpedon nodded, the light reflecting off of her helmet. “Of course. We don’t have unlimited mana, but we can manage that.” She turned towards the others, “Anyone spot anything else?”
“Seems to have been a lone one, captain!”
“Alright. We need to remain on the lookout.”
I saw Evans fiddling with his gun as everything settled down. He seemed to be thinking.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Well, I thought powers would be… more. I kind of did something but I didn’t seem that different?”
“That’s what happens when you’re level 0,” I said. “You need to grow and develop abilities. Even active stuff will be weak at that level. You’re working with level 1 or 2 abilities at most. You need upgrades and stuff.”
“Ah, I get it,” he said. “It’s one of those powers.”
“Growth type,” Kendrux nodded seriously. “I mean, take a look at this guy. In a year he went from knocking down small time crooks to dimensional travel.”
“He’s an exception,” Sarpedon commented. “Normally it takes several times as long, even with dedicated effort. Unless you get into battles quite frequently.”
“Which he does,” Kendrux said. “Well… I don’t have to push things too much. Same with you two. Remember that you were already plenty good members of my operation.”
“Thanks, boss,” Evans said.
“So,” Kendrux said once we were moving again. “Did we overreact to that?”
“It was new,” I said. “So we didn’t know how strong it might be. But it was probably a bit excessive.”
“I guess we can’t exactly charge our weapons here,” Kendrux frowned.
Khithae and Swiss Arms both reacted behind her, but she didn’t seem to notice. Well, I suppose Swiss Arms had to be somewhat self powered, and recharging other things seemed like legitimate utility. It wouldn’t be weird if Artificers could power various sorts of magic or tech, either.
“From what I remember,” I said. “Nobody mentioned any specific weaknesses of earth elementals. Just that they tended to be durable against physical attacks. Still, we can try out a few things if we run into more. I think Midnight and I should test some of our spells. And Zeb… I think you should avoid them.”
“They’re just a bunch of rocks,” she said sadly. “Not a friend.”
“Captain Sarpedon,” Swiss Arms addressed the woman. “Are these the threats the hill dwarves spoke of?”
“All we heard was that they had spotted monsters in their tunnels,” she said. “Not much else.”
“We could contact Sir Kalman again,” I said. “It’s not that expensive…”
“We’ll find out soon enough, I think,” Swiss Arms replied. “It won’t change our tactics much at the moment.”
-----
We had either the fortune or misfortune to come across another relatively small earth elemental. Midnight ended up being bait to draw it out of the ground, as he was the most agile of us. Zeb was fast but had minimal combat experience, and Fluffy was a mole. We certainly didn’t want the horses to be targeted, so Midnight ended up as the best choice.
When the pile of rocks and stuff rose up, I shot it with Water Blast. It was actually rather effective, staggering it with the force of the attack and tearing away small rocks and clumps of dirt. I tried a Firebolt next, and I felt that wasn’t particularly effective. Maybe if I concentrated on just fire.
The earth elemental was still chasing Midnight around, but he daringly darted in to use Shocking Grasp, swiping with his paw. The effect was… extremely disappointing. I guess that happened when you attacked something made of the ground that didn’t have a nervous system. For the sake of testing, a few more Water Blasts took the thing down. Five total, to be precise. Maybe I could have targeted critical areas, but I wasn’t quite sure what those would be. Blasting out its torso worked, but would it cease to function if I just ripped off an arm?
Which meant that if Sonic Lance could take down one of that size, it would be far more efficient. At the moment, it was about the same cost as three Water Blasts. Given the power increase for stronger spells, I thought that would likely be the case- but as it had only been used along with a bundle of other attacks, it wasn’t clear how effective Sonic Lance actually was. I’d try one on the next undamaged one we found.
Either way, whether this was the problem that Sir Kalman was called for or not, it clearly was a problem and not just an isolated incident. They were a bit weak, but we would probably run into a larger one that should be worth decent experience. Whatever Sir Kalman was dealing with should be good, either way.