The stalker approached so slowly that Leo had time to glance around. Even Rize and the approaching darklings on her side moved slowly, so he had to assume that time slowed down for him. He looked back to the stalker, shifting out of the way of the reaching claws. Before it could recover, he took a deep breath and made a full body, heavy slash across the stalker’s neck, attempting to behead it with one good stroke. Time sped up all at once as soon as the blade made contact, and the stalker leapt back with a gurgling groan, clutching at its neck.
“I suppose that’s my limit from this distance.” The woman’s voice rang in Leo’s mind. “Ready yourself. We’ll give it another go when it charges for you again.”
Leo did ready his blade, but he spotted something odd. The stalker clutched at its neck with both of its clawed hands, grasping as if it couldn’t breath. It took one, two more steps toward Leo before it simply collapsed and stopped moving.
Auto Loot Activated
Items Obtained:
Darkling Stalkerwisp (C-rank, Dark)
Darkling Stalker Claws (C-Rank, Earth)
Quest Complete!
Defeat - Darkling Stalker
Reward
C-Rank Unrestricted Karma
“Did it just bleed out?” He asked the stowaway looking through his right eye. Before he could get an answer, he heard the thundering noise of yet another group of darklings rounding the corner, and scrambled toward the tree to get back up onto the building before they spotted him. He’d just reached the tree when he actually spotted them, only to look on in surprise when they all collapsed and fell mid-run, crashing over each other but ultimately falling still.”
“I see. This is their doing.” The woman said with a huff.
“Who? Whose doing?” Leo asked, head whipping back and forth to find anyone nearby. The answer literally appeared right in front of him out of thin air, as the form of Hayumi melded out from nothing before him. Her blouse and trousers stained with blood, though if the sly smile across her face gave any indication, none of it belonged to her.
“I thought you might be here, interfering from the comfort of your home as always.” Her gaze stayed locked on Leo, but it took him a split second to realize that she was speaking to his stowaway.
He heard her voice ring in his mind, though apparently it reached over to Hayumi’s as well. “I am here to observe, as I always do. Should this city ultimately fall, there are many who would benefit from knowing immediately. My contribution to this quest isn’t relevant.”
“Perhaps it isn’t, seer.” Hayumi stepped forward, moving into Leo’s space. He managed to take one step away before his back hit the wall of the building, and Hayumi reached over and gently grabbed his face with both hands, keeping their eyes locked. Her neatly trimmed claw-like nails poked into his cheeks just enough not to hurt, but just enough to give him a silent warning to stay put. “Maybe I just have something against an S rank like you sitting in luxury while poor little E and D ranks are out here fighting an army of outsiders.”
“If you had it your way, those E and D ranks wouldn’t even be there.” The seer responded. “I’m sure you were hoping the quest was A rank instead of B, but there are too many other laborers there to justify, am I wrong?”
“Who can say?” Hayumi replied. “It certainly isn’t my fault that Dumatha presented a more appealing target.”
“You knew, though.” Leo said, gears turning in his mind. “You knew the darklings were there the whole time and didn’t say anything. The only reason things are like this now is because the Eldritch Titan drew people to Dumatha. Did you really just hide it because you wanted this quest to give a better reward?”
“Ah, so that was you in the woods back then.” Hayumi finally brought her attention back to Leo. “And here I thought the seer blew the whistle instead. Not that it mattered, the outsiders in Dumatha drew all the attention I could have asked for. Even a B rank quest is worth it for me if it’s heroic.”
“Do you plan to interfere?” The seer asked. Hayumi’s head tilted, and for a moment, her sly and almost smug smile that she held for the entire conversation took on a sinister angle for just a moment.
“Leo!” Rize called, having finally finished burning the darklings rushing for her and noticing his predicament. She ran over to where Hayumi had Leo pressed against the wall.
“No. I’m not so malicious as to pluck out your eyes while you’re only watching.” Hayumi answered, glancing toward Rize. Seeing an odd blue glow, Leo glanced down to find the kitsune’s body disappearing as if being burned away by strange blue fire. “I do hope you live to see the morning. Yours is a truly splendid flame, and I want to see it burn even brighter.” Parts of her body disappeared out of sync as her head and tails burned away as well. When only her hands were left, Leo felt them give his cheeks a squeeze before they let go, and faded away as well.
“That was the A rank, right?” Rize asked. “What was she doing here? Also, is your eye okay?”
From his left eye, he could see a soft glow coming from the right side. His right eye must have been glowing in response to the seer’s magic. “I’m fine. She helped me kill the stalker so I can’t really complain.” He pushed himself off the wall and moved toward the tree. “She’s gone now, I’ll talk about it later. Let’s get back into position before more darklings show up.”
With a nod, Rize rushed back to the center of the street, while Leo climbed back up to the roof of the building and, while listening for the sounds of more darklings charging toward them, looked around at the seer’s request. “Well, I must say it looks better than I expected. If it were only the darklings you had to deal with, then I’d say you had a fair shot of making it through with the city intact.”
“Wait, what?” Just as Leo asked, he could hear the sound of more Darklings rounding the corner. He quickly pulled out another bomb and started the spell to light it, taking a couple of tries because his mind was suddenly occupied. “What do you mean, what else is there other than the darklings? How do you even know?”
“I’m speaking to you telepathically and seeing through your eye, do you think I don’t have the ability to see the future?” She replied. He took aim with the bomb, having to take more time than he liked due to adjusting to aiming with one eye. “I’m not at liberty to say. As I just explained to the kitsune, I am only here to observe.”
“If you’re gonna keep looking through my eyes, you can at least tell me that much!” Leo said, as loud as he dared to keep darklings from hearing him on the wolf. He didn’t hear anything from the seer for several seconds, as he lit, aimed, and tossed a couple more bombs.
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“You are quite impudent for an E rank.” She finally said. “But fine. Make your way to this city’s center when you’ve dispatched the darklings currently hounding you. I was going to let this be the kitsune’s problem, but if you’d like to act as cannon fodder for her, be my guest.”
Leo hoped she would elaborate a little more, but he guessed he had to be glad she gave him anything at all. “Thank you, was that so hard?” He said. She didn’t respond, but Leo felt the odd sensation of his mana shifting, like when he went to cast a spell and had to decide how much mana to put into, but without him actually casting anything. It pulled for more than he’d normally use for the flame on his finger, feeling more like what he did when he used Combine. He also felt like he could resist the pull, but in that moment decided not to.
Just then, he felt his vision return to his right eye, but he could tell that both of them were definitely glowing now. He checked his status, seeing that he’d gone down by about 25% of his mana, only leaving him with about a third.
Clearing out the wave of darklings took most of Leo’s remaining bombs. He only had a handful left, including the four C ranks. Not hearing any oncoming darklings, he scrambled down the tree and ran over to Rize. Wincing at the feeling of the air that sizzled around her from the heat of her near constant onslaught of flames.
“They’re both glowing now.” She remarked, wiping away sweat from her forehead.
“Yeah, I know, don’t worry about it, it’s fine.” He said. “We need to get to the main square. There’s something up and I’m almost out of bombs.”
“Did you see something on the roof?”
“You could say that. I’ll explain it later but we need to get out of here.”
“Can you explain something on the way?” She asked, finally sheathing her sword.
“Right, okay- about Hayumi…” As they started making their way toward the city’s center, Leo started to explain what he’d just learned about Hayumi and the seer, finally mentioning that it was the seer looking through his eyes that made them glow, but focusing on Hayumi’s intentional hiding the darklings position in order to minimize the number of laborers present when they actually attacked.
“So, she planned to keep the darklings a secret until they actually attacked?” Rize summarized. “I can’t imagine what it would have been like if all this happened while no one was prepared."
“She was probably banking on there being more Laborers than there are.” He said, noting Rize’s twitching ear. “The whole situation with Dumatha pulled away a lot of people, so it ended up working out for her in the end. She just wanted to make this quest as high a rank as possible, and it ended up being B.”
He had to wonder what counted toward changing the rank of a quest, there were dozens if not hundreds of Laborers in Dumatha at that moment, did that change the rank of the quest to defeat the Eldritch Titan? Having that thought, he remembered that Layne told him to call him if Normouth ended up actually being attacked. He’d forgotten to, in the midst of everything, but while he ran through the city and wasn’t engaged in active combat, he pulled out the smartphone and sent a text, thinking that Layne probably wasn’t in any position to take a call right now.
To: Layne Blackburn
Leo: We are under attack
Leo: I’ll let you know if I live
Satisfied, he stored the phone away. Soon after, they rounded a corner to take a straight shot toward the city center, and started running over the bodies of dozens upon dozens of darklings. His auto loot, which had been going off constantly finally capped out the darkling claws he had at 100, and didn’t seem interested in collection any more unless Leo intentionally prompted it to. This pile of bodies continued into the city center itself, where Hayumi sat on the edge of a large fountain grinning at their approach. Leo could spot another woman standing nearby, who also glanced in their direction.
“My, my,” Hayumi said, once they were in earshot. “Abandoning your post? Did you finally get cold feet?”
“Ran away with our tails between our legs.” Leo joked, gesturing to Rize. “At least she did, she’s got one for both of us.” He’d lost any desire to talk to the kitsune seriously after learning about what she tried to do.
Surprisingly, that joke got a chuckle out of her. “Perhaps your tag-along decided she wanted to see more of the city?” She asked.
Before Leo could respond, he heard a loud rumble from the edges of the city. Moments later, he heard a collection of horns blaring out from that area of the wall. The signal that something had breached them. Something huge, by the sound of it.
“Oh, perhaps she gave you a premonition?” Hayumi mused. “For free, at that? That’s pretty rare for her.” Without waiting for Leo to answer, she turned to the other woman in the square, who’d started making her way over to the fountain. “Well, Kazato, it seems like we’ll have something more challenging than the stalkers after all.”
Name:
Leonell Bolden
Stats
Title
-
Fortitude: E (0/10)
Class
Mixer
Reflex: E (0/10)
Element
-
Intellect: E (0/10)
Total Rank
E
Intuition: D- (0/10)
Status
Health 90% Mana 30%
Vision Sharing, Barkskin (D Rank)
Will: E (0/10)
Skills
Combine, Auto-Loot, Appraise, Storage
Luck: D (0/10)
Skill: Combine
Mix different raw materials into a new item. You choose the shape of the form. Final form is affected by rank and element of materials.
Store Combine results into a mental guidebook that grows based on Intellect rank.
Skill: Auto-Loot (Mixer)
Automatically separates mixable materials from slain creatures. If the [Storage] skill is active, automatically places loot into storage space.
Skill: Appraise (Mixer)
Look at a creature or material and gain information on them. Information includes: Rank, Element, Class, Statuses, Titles. May have difficulty appraising creatures of higher rank, or creatures hidden by another skill or effect. Skill affect boosted by Intuition Rank.
Skill: Storage (Mixer)
Creates an inter-dimensional storage space that only you can access. Storage increases with Total Rank