57 – Smite with the power of the sun

Melina scanned the horizon, her keen eyes missing nothing even as her mind wandered. Her cultivation had mostly recovered from whatever was holding her back, her constantly growing worldviews—expanded by sheer osmosis because of Ishrin’s presence alone, and even more so by his and Lisette’s active help—had allowed her to regain the spark that had dimmed in her core so long ago. Yet, sitting at the peak of Tier 6, she knew that breaking through to the next realm was anything but simple.

In fact, that was all that she knew about Tier 7. That it was not easy to reach. Which did not tell her much, given that all tiers after the first were hard to reach, each harder than the previous and in whole different ways. Ishrin had been reluctant to share the secret of overcoming the bottleneck in her power, and for good reason. It was the same reason why Lisette was seeking external means of increasing her power rather than a simple step up the tiers.

Sure, one could be helped along the path of cultivation by learning of somebody else’s revelations. But in doing so, one would inevitably tie themselves to a path that was not their own, forced to depend on external revelations and insights to progress further. On top of that, eventually the cultivator in question would reach a roadblock that could not be overcome in any ways, his core and soul full of power from a path that was not their own, and was not fully compatible with them.

Thus, everyone sought power alone, even if they were not alone in their journey. Ishrin, she was sure, was doing all he could to help—unlocking her foundation through the power of words and actions and questions alone was more than she could ever pay him back, and it was not even half of it. But no more than that. She had heard him grumble about rituals and missing ingredients for yet another power-up he planned on giving them, even more free gifts, but something in her gut told her that what she really needed was an insight onto the nature of Tier 7, and not another half-step while still being stuck at Tier 6.

Thus, she pondered and mulled.

It just so happened that her eyes tracked Ishrin’s movements as she did. She saw him disappear inside the covered cart together with the merchant. He emerged after a few minutes, still chatting merrily with the other man, but she could see that his whole mood had shifted. The merchant did not seem to be aware of the barely concealed rage behind Ishrin’s eyes, blinded by greed as he was, but she knew the expression well. Ishrin had seen something inside the wagon, and if her gut was right then that something had to be connected to the awful fairy dust business that Lucius was conducting in Obscuria.

She tried to think nothing of it, especially because her senses picked something up, moving in the tall grass about a hundred meters from their position. She whistled, and the two heads of her companions turned almost in unison to look at her. After a brief exchange, a communication done entirely with their hands in the coded language Ishrin and Lisette already spoke and that Melina was only now learning, she saw Lisette get up from her post and slowly let the caravan outpace her. In the meantime, both she and Ishrin extended their senses to cover for the blind spot.

There was a flash of magic, a blur as Lisette moved much faster than mortal eyes could ever hope to see, then the woman was back as if nothing had happened. Save for a small crystal in her hand, still dripping blood, which quickly vanished in Ishrin’s inventory. Melina was learning a storage spell from a scroll, as was Lisette, but neither of the two had yet managed to make the complex Tier 6 spell work. In fact, Melina did not feel bad about it at all, since not even the gifted Lisette with all her interest and talent for all things relating to spatial magic, seemed to be able to make heads or tails of such spell—a spell not even Ishrin used, preferring the much easier and simpler, as well as more powerful, god-given inventory skill.

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“Very quiet today, isn’t it?” The man sitting beside Melina said.

“Oh yeah, very.” She said.

He nodded, adjusting the reins of the two beasts. She felt a pang of disappointment when she thought that the man sitting next to her would never appreciate the work that she and her team put into defending him and the rest of the caravan, from spotting the monster to communicating, coordinating with each other and outright killing it in a matter of seconds. But such was the kind of work they had chosen to use as a cover story to get into Semiluminal.

The hills rolled by. The trip was going to take three days, as opposed to the single day they would have taken if they had gone on their own, even accounting for their usual frequent breaks and leisure hunting detours. Time seemed to never pass, and the sun hung in the sky forever, taking ages to slowly approach the horizon and color the sky orange. But eventually it did, and the merchants made camp and prepared to cook dinner.

“Little change of plans.” Ishrin, who had been in a sour mood the whole day, pulled the rest of his party to the side to talk in private, under the canopy of a lone great oak at the edge of two tilled fields. “You keep the caravan safe tonight while I take a little… stroll. Okay?”

Both girls knew very well what his stroll would entail. They weren’t against it, but they had their reservations.

“Alone?” Melina cried out. “You are only a Tier 3. I don’t care if you can punch two Tiers above your weight, you’re still a Tier 3.”

“I have some tricks.” He said with another wink.

Melina seemed to deflate. She wanted to say more, but he was being stubborn and uncooperative. Plus, he was the leader.

Lisette came to the rescue, if just for personal reasons. “Didn’t you say that places like Obscuria are good training grounds for me? Melina too, I would guess.”

“I take it back. Too dangerous for you.” He said, as if he had not just dismissed two Tier 6 adventurers, one of which a former guild master, as unable to defend themselves. “We don’t know what Lucius might be capable of. Here’s my idea. If I go in alone, I can sneak a kill shot before mister lizard even knows what I’m up to. I will trigger an explosion—”

“An explosion?” Melina asked out in outrage. Hering such ludicrous ideas emboldened her to speak against such a plan. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Hear me out.” Ishrin said, but she cut him off.

“I’m hearing you out.” She said, and she was stern and proud as she did so, like a mother with an unruly child. She was confident enough to even go back to previously conceded points, hoping to eke out a small victory for herself: “you are not going alone.”

“I will. That’s non-negotiable. I need you two to say here.”

She deflated again, all bravado gone in the face of a direct order. “And what’s the plan?”

“Basically,” Ishrin drew something on the ground. “This ritual opens a rift in spacetime to the core of the sun, effectively blasting the entire palace with million-degree plasma and utterly annihilating everything below tier… I don’t know, maybe 13?”

“Ishrin!”

“No, no, no, wait. There’s more. See, the nice thing about this is that I added a feature that limits the spread of the plasma, so that it only hits the palace and nothing else.”

Then she caught him smiling like a silly idiot as he explained the plan, and sighed. She punched him in the shoulder, making him flinch in mock outrage.

“You dare?” He cried out.

“Thanks,” she said after she managed to control her laughter. “I needed that. But seriously, what the real plan?”

“I am still going alone,” he said, and his face was serious enough that she could question whether what had just happened was real or just a figment of her own imagination. Perhaps she was sleeping under the tree, making up plans and strategies in her dreams. “I will sneak into his palace and kill him while he’s vulnerable. He is killing pixies, Melina. I won’t let him.”

The tone of his voice conveyed finality. She nodded once, sharing the sentiment, and he was gone. She was left alone with Lisette, exchanging small talk that still felt awkward and agreeing on who should take first watch. Neither of the two, she knew though, would be sleeping tonight. One out of worry, the other thinking about all the exciting ways Ishrin could dish out justice and revenge to the lord of Obscuria.