We ventured into the forest. Even the B Ranks were tense as we navigated the maze of trees. The scouts did their best to steer us clear of the monsters, but we were slower in the thicket and the monsters had our scent. Dryad lemurs began harassing us, tripping people up with vines, latching onto people’s bodies with their sharp claws, and throwing toxic shit.
“Run till you hit the clearing. We’ll cover you,” Bailey ordered, magic swirling in her palms. Bentley kicked off a tree and cut down a few lemurs; I turned my head away from them to pay attention to where I was running. Fortunately, this was an environment I thrived in. My mana sensing skill was incredible at picking out the lemurs and the trees they were controlling.
Benny kept pace with me to watch my back, so I was able to give him directions with arrows pointing where to go.Fire was also effective at killing the vines, but the trees were made of heartier stuff.
At least I won’t accidentally burn down the forest.
Meanwhile, Benny cleaved through lemurs launching themselves at us. I was covered in a truly shocking amount of magic lemur blood and guts. As we ran, we heard a scream to our right. It sounded like the human party. I quickly pivoted, and Benny begrudgingly followed suit.
“Do we have to?” He moaned.
It’s what Nymia would do.
He didn’t have a response to that one apart from a sigh. We found the humans besieged by more lemurs. One of the party members was trapped in a thick wall of vines; the other two weren’t having any cutting through them. I could sense more and more lemurs being attracted to the sound of the humans cursing and shouting.
No clean options. Quick and dirty seems most practical.
I started charging fire in my hands, and Benny got the message. “Incoming fire!” he shouted.
The two humans dove out of the way as I engulfed the third in flames, along with three lemurs. It was only a quick burst, so the lemurs were injured, but not dead. However, I had managed to burn off the vines. Part of the human’s flesh came off with it, accompanied by a disturbingly familiar charred smell that threatened to pull me into my horrid memories once more.
Focus!
Seeing that they had mobility again, I left them to their devices. I wasn’t exactly expecting a ‘thank you.’ Fortunately, it wasn’t too much further to reach the clearing. We stepped out to see the friendlier C Ranks, who had already made it out.
I really should try to learn their names.
Before long, the rest of the party emerged. I did my best to ignore the human party as they glared at me. I had more important things to deal with. The hum in my heart got stronger as we got closer, and eventually we found our target. It was the mouth of a cave with some bandits standing guard. The scouts came back saying they looked incredibly worn out, like they hadn’t been sleeping.
We waited until dark to make our move. It was good fortune that the bandits seemed worn out because we weren’t fairing much better. Adventuring without a healer was not for the faint of heart. Corby had quite a few cuts and bruises; though it was not as bad as it could’ve been considering how reckless he’d been acting. The human I burned was struggling to use one of his arms. The other party was surprisingly fine, which bumped up my evaluation of them. I was about to force myself to talk to them when we heard a monumental thud, like the mountain was collapsing.
Good money Nymia did something crazy.
I looked over at Benny, and he clearly agreed.
Looks like Nymia started without us. We need to get moving.
That got confused looks from the C Ranks, but Bailey and Bentley knew how to roll with the punches.
“You heard the lady; move your asses,” Bentley hollered, sending the team scuttling to grab gear.
Bailey leaned over and I heard her whisper, “They couldn’t hear her, dumbass. She didn’t say anything.”
“Shut up; you know what I mean!” Bentley whined.
I didn’t have much need to prepare, so I spent my time restraining Benny from running in ahead and getting killed. He growled and struggled, but he didn’t argue the point.
Fortunately, adventurers are good at getting ready at a moment’s notice. Before long we were heading towards the cave as fast as we could without giving ourselves away, which was particularly hard for Benny. Our mobile hitters surged in front of us into the mouth of the cave. I heard a shout of confusion, followed by eerie silence. The party ran past the corpses of the two bandit guards and advanced in.
It didn’t take long before we found the source of the thunderous boom. The remains of a large wooden building were scattered around a chunk of the mountain that had collapsed onto it.
Nymia’s work no doubt.
We didn’t have a lot of time to marvel at her work, though, as we heard shouting from multiple directions. On instinct, Benny and I headed to the same tunnel. The sound of shouting had been masking the sound of the fight. As we stepped into a clearing, Nymia was bleeding from her stumps and one leg. She was bruised to high hell and looked utterly exhausted. And she was surrounded by bandits with a ravenous rage in their eyes. Neither of us broke stride. Benny crashed into the wall of human filth separating us from Nymia cleaving two of them apart in one swing.
Nym just grinned, like everything was normal. “Hey, guys. Missed you!” Seconds later, she was ducking as a bandit tricked to swiped at her. She spun around and kicked him in the face. His axe went flying; Nymia leapt up and kicked the axe down, launching it into the bandit’s gut.
“83,” she muttered. She seemed out of breath.
I couldn’t just stand there and marvel at her, though. Two bandits were now charging at me. I didn’t really have a lot of options fighting in tunnels. Couldn’t make things explode without risking the tunnel collapsing. Couldn't use fire because it would destroy all the oxygen.
Thank Amy that Nymia doesn’t have fire magic.
Instead, I had to channel arcane magic into concentrated beams and pierce through them, it required a lot more focus than just letting the construct fail and explode. I got a clean shot into the head of one, but the other got too close. I tried to flip him as I dodged his slash, but he just elbowed me in the face.
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Nymia and Benny were great tutors for physical combat, but there was only so much they could do in a couple weeks. I stumbled backwards and decided to forego strength and accuracy for a quick and dirty alternative. I channeled my magic into a cone in front of me, knocking him back and eating a massive chunk of my mana. He splat against the wall, and I was able to land my headshot.
“Ooh, I love it when you do stick magic!” Nymia hollered as she ducked and weaved her way through enemies.
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at her. I had once explained to Nymia that I wasn’t actually melting through them, but rapidly channeling solidified mana into them, she still didn’t get it. So I said it was as if someone took a stick and moved it so fast that it went through someone’s head. She might not know f=ma, but she still knew how stabbing worked. So now she called it ‘stick magic.’ I was a little afraid that her calling it that too much would give me a skill or class for stick magic.
The enemies were quickly thinning, with Benny doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Still, Nymia had really taken to her new class, and she was flinging swords, axes, and spears all around as she scavenged them off the dead. But she was getting slower and slower as the fight went on
I was taking out a few more stragglers when I saw a massive bandit wearing armor fancier than you’d expect from a bandit pushing Benny away and charging straight into Nymia, splatting her against the wall, coughing up blood.
“Oh, hey, Beefy Boy. Were you itching to get choked out again? Didn’t realize you were such a masochist.” Nymia mocked. She spit out some blood.
The bandit–apparently we’re calling him Beefy Boy– didn’t respond with words; instead, he tried to swing at Nymia with a hammer. I landed a pinpoint shot on his head, but it just bounced off his head.
How high is his fucking Vitality?!
My shot worked as a distraction, though. Nymia skittered out of the way before Beefy Boy could swing down at her. Frustrated, he ran at me, instead. I dodged his swing, but he managed to backhand me off my feet.
My head rattled and I was seeing stars. I groggily looked up and saw him approaching when I heard Nymia shouting. “Corb! Axe, full speed!”
Beefy Boy was ready to swing when he suddenly dodged to the side, dodging a giant axe flying at him. He smirked.
He shouldn’t have.
Nymia plucked the axe out of midair with her feet and kept the momentum as she chopped off one of his arms. Beefy Boy looked down in confusion, while Nymia chastised herself.
“Damn, I was aiming for the head. Your turn, Corb.” She used her foot to toss the axe back to a now-charging Benny.
Benny caught the axe and swung it down. Unfortunately, Beefy Boy wasn’t distracted by his missing arm for long, and he was able to parry the strike with his hammer. But he was clearly off-balance. Benny kept swinging at him and every strike that was parried was met by another kick from Nymia. It was such beautiful teamwork.
Still, the guy wasn’t going down. I got back to my feet and started channeling mana. If a ‘stick’ wouldn’t do the trick, I’d just throw a damn tree at him. I put all of my mana into this massive overcharge. I couldn’t shout at them to move or waste the mana to signal them, so I just had to trust they would know what to do. As the mana pulsed around me ready to burst out, Nymia shouted. “Turnip!”
I took that as a signal and let it burst forth. The cavern flooded with blinding light. When it died down, I saw Beefy Boy’s head was gone, along with a massive chunk of the wall behind him. All three of us collapsed in exhaustion. My head was splitting from emptying out my mana tank. But even still, I couldn’t resist the urge to cast a question as my mana recovered.
Turnip?
“Yeah, they’re gross as fuck, so obviously that means to run away,” Nymia said. “Nice move there. That was one big ass stick.”
I laughed, then winced from the pain. Nymia and Benny crawled their way towards me, and we all cuddled together propped up against a wall, Nymia in the middle. I rested my head on her shoulder. Glad to have you back, 🌪️.
“A tornado ?” Nymia asked.
Your nickname.
“I love it.” She nuzzled her head into mine. “You know what else I love? You guys. I’m gonna kiss your faces now.”
She said it so nonchalantly that I barely even registered it before she leaned in and planted a deep kiss onto me, making me melt. Then she drew back and leaned over to Benny.
“Permission to snog?” Nymia asked with that mischievous grin on her face.
Benny folded; the past week had been too much for him to handle. He weakly nodded and Nymia planted one on him. I felt this sense of relief. My love didn’t have to invalidate his or hers. Instead, we just fit together with even more love.
We barely had any energy left in us to move, let alone fight, so we had to leave the rescue efforts to the rest of the party. We just cuddled together, feeling so bizarrely at peace in a room full of corpses.
That was just par for the course with Nymia. She was a tornado given form, and I was prepared to ride those chaotic winds forever.
Name: Beakim
Age: 23
Species: Succubus Lv. 65
Class 1: Arcane Mage Lv. 50 (maxed)
Class 2: Researcher Lv. 13
Stats:
Strength: 143
Dexterity: 143
Vitality: 142
Perception: 148
Intelligence: 470
Mana: 370
Willpower: 154
Free points remaining: 0
Class 1 Skills
* Arcane magic Lv. 40
* Arcane Resistance Lv. 40
* Mana Sense Lv. 33
* Delicate Spell Weave Lv. 40
* Magic Conduit Lv. 40
Class 2 Skills
* Book Nerd Lv. 13
* Book Sense Lv. 13
* Speed Reader Lv. 13
* Experimenter Lv. 13
* Avid caster Lv. 13
General Skills
* Magic Adept Lv 50
* Stealth Lv 40
* Socially Competent Lv 40
* Calligraphy Lv 50
* D.O.O.M Lv 30
Species Skills
* Burn!
* Love Me Tinder
* Demonic Mark
* Beauty Standards
* Don’t Put that Out