Chapter 423 - Unfettered Joy IV

Still encased in her icy shell, Claire shot through the sky. She was half a kilometer above the forest, just high enough to escape the river’s hands, but low enough that the creatures above had yet to strike. Compared to the mountain range, the height she flew at was barely worth noting. Even the smallest pointed rocks, the ones that stood closest to Cadria, were two dozen kilometres tall and nearly a hundred across.

The watery spirit threw all manner of spells her way. Heavy rain poured from the heavens, each droplet sharp enough to completely destroy the greenery and wildlife caught in the crossfire. High-pressure jets erupted from its fingers, cutting into the sides of the mountains themselves. Swirling whirlpools ate the landscape, leaving naught but death in their wake. And yet, Claire remained unharmed. The occasional tidal waves were the only attacks capable of damaging her shield, and the river refrained from their continued use. Not even the force of nature had enough magic to unleash them back to back. But for what it lacked in mana, it made up for in patience—much to the lyrkress’ annoyance, the sentient waterway refused to back down no matter how far she ran.

It was slowly wearing down her shield, tearing the almost-true ice with which she guarded her body. She couldn't outrun it—it followed her with ease no matter how fast she flew. Contrary to her initial assumption, it didn’t look like the sentient waterway would give up the chase.

The spirit was well aware of its advantage.

And that was why it was thoroughly confused when its sensors detected that its prey was on the verge of escape.

A frustrated frown on her lips, Claire ripped open a hole in the space in front of her and returned to the place where she had felled the fungus. In an instant, she put almost a hundred kilometres between herself and the water, all thanks to a portal too high for the spirit to reach.

Claire took full advantage of the elevated position. She stuck out her tongue and taunted her foe, making sure to enrage it even further before she finally closed the rift and locked in the distance between them.

A small smirk crossed her lips as she imagined the tantrum sure to follow—a smirk that only grew wider as she opened another portal and returned to the river’s domain, where she found its collection still sleeping.

The lyrkress wasted no time getting started. Flexing her neck, she descended upon the mob with one Boris in her uninjured hand and a second between her jaws.

First were the creatures that seemed hardest to kill, particularly those that she had yet to harvest. Jumping atop one of the giant birds—though whether it was really a bird was up to debate given its feline posterior—she slashed open throat and tore into its flesh. With the river’s presence removed, its sleep was no longer quite as hypnotic. Its eyes shot open soon after she attacked it, but it returned to rest with seventy four quick stabs to the neck before it could wake any of the others.

Log Entry 884801

You have slain a level 2024 Langgbjern Griffon Fledgling

This feat has earned you the following bonus rewards:

- 1402 points of agility

- 899 points of dexterity

- 5872 points of strength

Log Entry 884802

You have leveled up. Your health and mana have been partially restored.

Your racial class, Caldriess, has reached level 660.

You have gained 888 ability points.

Next on the priority list was a long-legged, long-faced canine seemingly carved from stone. It appeared a little harder to kill at a glance, given its tough exterior, but Claire was unconcerned. She needed only to increase her eyes’ magnification to identify the grain in its stone exterior. From there, it was an easy task. She stuck a chisel-shaped Boris into one of its natural veins and struck his rear with an equally Boris-based mallet.

The attack was half performed in jest, but it proved perfectly effective. Falling into two perfectly cut pieces, the dog delivered again the flow goddess’ voice.

So and so forth the process repeated. She gutted another vlasch, killed a snail with three shells, and crushed an ant whose body was made of lightning. She went on for five full minutes, stopping again only as the river returned to its nest, both horrified and thoroughly enraged by the discovery therein.

With one last taunt—a wave and a cheeky wink—Claire opened another portal and returned to the place where she had last abandoned it.

While her good friend the sentient river was certainly left behind again, the surrounding forests were still bustling with conflict and life in turn. The local monsters almost didn’t seem to care about the veritable natural disaster that had swept its way through the mountains twice. They continued to fight and tussle over their domains, roaring and clashing without the slightest concern for those that might overhear. For them, it was practically an everyday occurance.

Claire weighed her options as she landed in the snow. There were a few different ways to go about her exploration, few of which were bound by an adventurer’s regular means.

Housing, safety, and nourishment were practically moot concerns. She could return to the inn and take long rests any time she wanted. But while such a tactic was incredibly effective, not only in terms of providing her with a chance for decent rest, she soon decided against it. Resting up in town defied the spirit of the challenge.

Llystletein Authority’s safe zone would allow her to sleep just as peacefully. Functionally, abusing it was no different from warping wherever she wanted, but the ability’s temporal restriction left it feeling much easier to accept. But with that said, she had little intention of wasting her safe zone in such a ludicrous fashion. It would be much better used in combat. She wanted to retain it as a safety net in case she needed to bombard an enemy that trumped her in close quarters.

In retrospect, the river met much of the necessary criteria. She was fairly confident that she could have defeated it if she swallowed one of Alfred’s potions and blasted the watery creature from within a protective cage, but it felt wasteful to commit so many resources so early in her exploration. While the water was certainly a fearsome predator, she doubted it was anywhere close to the most fierce around.

After all, there was no reason for an apex predator to rely so heavily on camouflage. Its weakness to ice was another point of suspicion; it was unlikely to have adapted to the mountain if it still struggled to deal with the biting cold. Even if she was to hunt it, she wanted it to be much later, after it had mutated into a Langgbjern variant.

Nodding, and certainly not justifying her reluctance to face it, Claire shook her head, stretched her shoulders, and set out in a random direction.

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___

Arciel enjoyed the lingering, iron taste that filled her mouth as she sat with the rest of the party. It hadn’t been long since Claire had departed, barely enough time for Chloe to set up a campfire.

There was a bit of an awkward mood in the air. Though the queen was content, Allegra was having a particularly hard time internalizing the outcome. She sat by the cave’s entrance with her eyes far beyond it. Her arms sat on her knees, while she rested her face in her hands. Her irritation was clear, but her concern was even clearer; the frown on her lips refused to depart.

“So? What now?” asked Jules. “We going to just sit around, or are we gonna figure out our shit?”

“There isn’t much to think about,” said Allegra. “We need to wait until the vlasches eat their fill and retreat immediately. Evidently, the Langgbjerns are even more dangerous than they were during my last visit, and we aren’t ready to challenge them. We need to head back to town and find a safer place to work on our levels.”

“Didn’t you say that you planned for something else earlier?” asked the clam. “Think I remember some shit about how the herrings were bad experience or something.”

“I did know a fairly decent place to level, but I doubt that it’s the same way it was back then if there are vlasches running around this far from their usual stomping grounds.”

“Might still be worth investigating. How far is it?”

“Let me see.” Allegra retrieved a map from one of her pockets. Carefully looking it over, she sent a series of magical pulses out into their surroundings, each a little stronger than the last. “It’s about sixty kilometres to the north-northeast.”

“Sixty kilometres doesn’t sound too bad,” said Krail. “Though it’s difficult to gauge exactly how quickly we can travel in all this snow, I’d wager that we have a fair chance of making the trek in about half an hour, maybe a little faster if we match our previous clip.”

“Yeah, not happening,” said Jules. “My ass is fucking toast. I literally roasted that shit so bad that I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be bleeding for the next goddamn month.”

“I don’t think that’s exactly how burns work,” said Chloe. “And you don’t even have an ass, do you?”

“Not this shit again,” grumbled the clam. “For the last fucking time, it’s none of your fucking business.”

“Let us set the matter of Jules’ posterior aside for a moment and consider the journey,” said Arciel. “I am fairly confident in our ability to complete it.”

“I’m not,” said Allegra. “We were only able to go as fast as we were because Claire carried two of you, and Jules, you were lucky you didn’t lose control and completely fly off course.”

“I do not believe that to be a concern,” said Arciel. “I need only to produce a copy of Claire and order it to transport us. With the little distance we need to travel, I do believe that my mana shan’t be a concern.”

“You can copy her?” Allegra furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”

“I am capable of creating a copy of any being whose blood I have ingested,” said Arciel.

“Wait, hold the fuck on,” said Jules. “So I dunno why I haven’t thought of this before, but can’t you just make the copy do that portal thing she always does and take us there instantly?”

Arciel froze. She let go of her staff, accidentally dropping it beside her as she tried her best to maintain her composure. “How strange. I do wonder why it is that I have never before considered its use.”

“Maybe it has something to do with the goddess of order?” said Chloe. “I remember Claire citing her as one of the reasons we weren’t able to teleport straight to Cadria.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “Now, in fairness, if we are capable of teleporting, then I believe we are also capable of following Allegra’s suggestion and leaving whenever we please. Shall we take a vote and determine our way forward?”

“No point,” said Lana. “Claire was right. We need experience.”

Looking around the fire, Arciel found everyone in agreement. Even Allegra, who had been hesitant throughout, slowly gave a nod.

“I guess it can’t hurt if you can do the thing that Claire just did,” she said.

“It is unanimous then.” Grabbing her staff, Arciel rose to her feet and started to chant. She did so fairly leisurely and focused her efforts on minimizing the amount of mana consumed.

A fake Claire rose from beside her bloody throne as soon it manifested. Oddly, her expected humanoid form was replaced with that of a tiny snoose, but paying it no mind, Arciel commanded her to open a gate. Though there was a bit of an unnatural pause, the artificial servant soon did just that. Wrenching half a million points of mana away from the squid, she grabbed the space in front of her and tore it right open.

“Is this the correct location?” asked Arciel.

Allegra stuck her head through the portal. And after taking a few seconds to scan her surroundings, stepped the rest of the way through. “Almost,” she said. “We’re not quite there, but she’s brought us close enough.”

Following the rabbit’s loose affirmation, the rest of the party grabbed their things and marched through the gate. Arciel was last to enter; double-checking the cave for any leftover belongings, she rose from her throne and crossed the rift with a smile.

“Thank you, Claire,” she said to the copy.

“Mreep,” it said back.

Arciel blinked. She hadn’t ordered it to reply, and frankly, she hadn’t even known that it was possible for her copies to make any sounds at all. She wanted to investigate further, but the gate closed before she could and severed her connection to the magical construct. She would have to cast the spell again if she wanted to learn any more, but such an act was little if not a waste of mana.

“Where are we going, exactly?” asked Krail. “As far as I can see, this patch of forest looks the same as every other.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be a greenwood elf?” asked Chloe. “You can just ask the trees, can’t you?”

“I’ve tried that already, but they’re not cooperating.”

“What do you mean?”

“Trees are like people. Each has its own personality. In an ordinary forest, the vast majority are highly cooperative and are willing to extend their aid. There are a few that will take a little bit of coercing, typically the older specimens. Very rarely, you’ll run into what we call a silent, which is a tree that remains completely unresponsive, even if you try to bribe it with fertilizer and sugar. That isn’t to say that they can’t hear our voices, they just refuse to listen.”

“And all of the trees up here are like that?” asked the maid.

“Yes. It’s unfortunately looking like I won’t even be able to activate my racial magic, not that I use it much to begin with. Allegra’s spell is more likely to be successful, given that it functions off of a completely different set of principles.”

“Quiet,” said Allegra. “There’s a large group of monsters to our right. Stay down and stop talking.”

Following her orders, the group swerved past a number of similar roadblocks before finally arriving in front of a peculiar set of trees. They were a little bit taller than the others in the area, and their needles were closer to a dark blue than the emerald that the other evergreens featured. The magic that they radiated was awfully suspicious, but no more so than the arch that their branches came together to form.

“This is it,” said Allegra. She approached the suspicious trees and knocked on their trunks in turn. A layer of frost started to spread from the point of contact after about ten seconds of stillness, slowly at first, and then rapidly enough to cover the towering evergreens in a single breath.

Between the two was a faint veil of magic. It was barely visible to the naked eye, only very narrowly distorting the world around it.

But it was certainly there.

“This portal leads to a trial produced through the joint efforts of Rikael and Builledracht,” she said. “In the past, it was the place I used to go from level 800 to 950, but that was almost a thousand years ago. I don’t know how much it’s changed, but there is still a chance that it’ll make for an excellent training ground.”

“Whatever the case, there is little harm in a cursory examination,” said Arciel. “Let us proceed.”

Without hesitating for a moment, the queen stepped through the portal and sought the dungeon beyond it.

There was no other choice.

With how slowly her levels came, Claire would never let her live it down if she didn't beat her to a fourth ascension.