Estallius,is comprised of nine continents. Longius; the largest and central continent and home of humans. Bestia; the southern most continent home of beastmen, demonic beasts, and demonic beastmen. Diabolosus; home of the demonfolk, and the northern most continent. Spiralous; the north eastern continent, once a barren wasteland, made into a paradise for magicians. Subterraneanous, the Western continent, home of the dwarves. Atani, the mountainous region, the northwest continent, home of powerful monsters. Elvelan, the southwestern continent, the largest Forest and home of the elves, dark elves, Cursians,high elves, forest elves, and spirits. Atlantis, the southeastern continent,the underwater continent, home of the merfolk. Hitani, the Eastern continent, the most isolated continent, home of the dragons.
In a small town, in the northwest region of longius, Boboan, in the sleeping bear bar, a man and woman are having a conversation.
“Beth, I think it’s time you retired as an adventurer. I can support us. I was finally acknowledged as a S rank adventurer and asked to be a vice guild leader.” Spoke a silver haired man in his late twenties, riddled with scars, the most noticable was a diagonal scar that spanned from his right cheek to his chin, but it nevertheless was useless to hide his charming looks.
“This will be the last mission, I just want to collect enough money, that this little one, can do whatever it wants without having to following in our footsteps, unless that’s what it wants.” Beth rubbed her swollen belly and smiled.
“Besides Sean, I have been an S rank for decades now. I’m the only triple S rank in existence. How dare some newbie S rank lecture me around.” Beth glared at Sean, then they both started laughing.
In the midst of their laughter, a loud bell rang out through the town.
Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding Ding Ding, Ding
The town went into a panic. Businesses closed early and families took cover wherever they thought looked safe. The only ones who roamed the streets were the adventurers.
“Damnit, twelves rings, this must be an apocalyptic stampede”
“I was starting to get bored, anyway”
“As long as the city stands, my family will get paid, whether I survive or not”
“Read the mood”
“I don’t even have a family”
“Single forever”
“Don’t ruined the mood with your honesty you no good bastards”
Laughter was heard for blocks. The twelve rings of the bells, determined the severity of a monster stampede. Twelve was the highest and meant at a s rank monster led a pack of other S rank or a large group of A rank or B rank monsters. Or even a monster that surpassed that
A silver haired man, and a dark skinned, light blue haired woman with pointy ears walked to the head of the group.
“Well, I guess we’re lucky after all”
“Good thing they didn’t retire”
“What are they so excited about?” A young adventurer looked confused
“Youngun’, those two are the strongest adventurers around. They’re a S rank party, with an S rank blade master, and a triple S rank spiritualist,archer, and swordsman”
“Four S ranks? How fortunate, but I only see those two”
“Fool, the dark elf, is the triple S rank adventurer. Shes the first to gain multiple classes that were S rank.”
The young lady gasped in amazement.
“ That’s Right, the strongest S rank party, the passionate duo.”
“We thought they would be retired months ago”
“She still so stubborn, while carrying a child”
“Hey Sean! Why don’t you man up take care of this stampede alone!”
“Yeah! Aren’t you tired of hiding behind a woman!”
“Yeah! Let Azaleabeth rest already”
“Shut up you bastards,she has a will of her own! This is her choice” Sean was starting to get angry
“Tell them Beth! I told you to retire so many times”
“So you’re saying I can finally rest? I thought you said I wasn’t allowed to, and that you depended on my strength to carry you everywhere. I was starting to get exhausted. Thank you everyone for finally convincing him” Beth pretended be exhausted.
Laughter once again exploded through the town. Most of the adventurers, knew Azaleabeth was forcing Sean to continue adventuring.
“So what’s it look like out there?” Beth finally decided to get serious.
The young man, was in his early twenties, but he had extraordinary sight. Seeing hundreds of kilometers away.
“Its an earth dragon,following behind a hoard of earth wyverns. Hundreds if not more.”
Earth wyverns, were the only species of wyvern that couldn’t fly. They were a bipedal draconic species that looks similar to a velociraptor. They had razor sharp claws that could tear boulders and most metals not reinforced with mana. They were an A ranked monster. They usually attacked in groups. They’re a troublesome monster for most parties, and could easily demolish a small town.
The dragon that followed behind, was a land dragon, not an Earth dragon. They were very similar, but an Earth Dragon was SS ranked monster, several times bigger, and had wings. If a land dragon was lucky enough, it could evolve into one, but that was a rare occasion. This land dragon was was 200 meters long, 40 meter wide, with 4 muscular legs, and veins surging with mana along them. Dragons were always apex predators and Earth dragons were the largest, and land dragons were the second largest even though they weren’t full blooded dragon.
“Me and Sean with intercept the hoard, while y’all just take care of the scragglers, if that’s not too much.”
Beth’s words irritated them even though just a dozen could destroy the town, but she acted like they were small fry.
“How dare you? I could easily take on a handful by myself”
“I could take on a dozen, easily”
“Well I could wipeout uh hundred without breaking a sweat”
“Well I guess I can let half through, since we have so many tough guys here” Sean glanced accurately at those who just spoke even though they were hidden in the crowd.
“Well my sword is kind of rusted…”
“My back is getting the best of me, I’m too old for this”
“I can only handle uh hundred.” A tall and lanky, dark skinned male with short curly hair, holding a spear much smaller than him. It was longer than a long sword but shorter than a normal spear. This was the guild leader of Boboan, Darren Field. He had an unique class, twilight spearman. He was only an A rank adventurer, but he was much stronger than Sean, he just refused to show his strength in public. Not even Beth was able to make him to go all out in an spar.
“Let’s go Beth, they’re safe here” Sean swept Beth off of her feet, aura wrapped around Sean’s body, and with a leap, he was already outside of the town. Soon they arrived on the cliff of one the canyons the stampede was coming through. Sean put down Beth slowly, and stepped back, getting ready to jump down.
“Be careful Sean, I will take out as many as possible, just don’t let any get passed you.” Beth took out a bow,from out of thin air. This was a dimensional box, a blessing from the god of space, Aether, who adventurers worshipped.
Sean nodded and kissed her on the forehead before jumping down from the cliff. Upon reaching the ground, he pulled out two blades from thin out. In his right hand welded a long, jagged edged great sword, and in his left hand held a smooth, sharp long sword.
Beth summon six spirits, a white one, a yellow one, a red one, a green one, a blue one, and a brown one. Once she began pulling the string of the bow, the white spirit began flickering, and an arrow created out of light formed on the bowstring, Beth them aimed the now into the air and released the bowstring. The arrow of light flew into the air, and once the arrow reached its peak, it began falling that.
“Sacred arrow rain!” Once these words were shouted, the arrow exploded and nearly a hundred arrows replaced it, and came raining down on the Earth wyverns. Even though so many arrows came raining down, around 20 earth wyverns were wounded, 12 fatally wounded, and 50 had light scratches. This slightly affected the stampedes movements, but soon “sacred arrow rain” was shouted several more times. Soon hundreds of arrows was raining down on the earth wyverns, even though it took several arrows to take down a single one, the arrows in the sky soon out numbered the wyverns on the ground. After a few minutes, the stampede slowed down, over 150 wyverns were killed, over 200, were injured, but that was only one fourth of the stampede, and Beth was soon starting to get tired.
Beth took out a mana potion, and downed it in one go. She then pulled the bowstring, and the yellow spirit, blue spirit, and green spirit flew to the string and turned into three arrows. Beth aimed her bow towards the clouds and fired the three arrows, and she collapsed onto her knees, panting. When the arrows flew past through the clouds, Beth shooted “devastating storm summoning”. The white clouds immediately darken, and lightning started forming strongly. Heavy rain started falling, and the strong winds came down forcing the heavy rain to come down like arrows. These rain drops might be tough to even injure b rank monsters, but it was only able to slow down the earth wyverns, yet that was all that was needed, because before the stampede reached Sean, dozens of lightning bolts struck the stampede.
Sean watched as the stage has been set for him. Even though there was over 200 hundred wyverns left, his objective was the Earth dragon (land dragon). He would leave the rest to Darren. A powerful aura exploded out from Sean,then it compressed around him then divided into a frosty, light blue aura around his left side and an ominous dark aura around his right. He kicked off the ground, and leaped into the rainstorm. He came crashing down on earth wyverns with his jagged edge great sword covered in his ominous black aura. The great sword ripped through several wyverns like paper, the black aura covering the sword exploded out, creating a small area of darkness(this would be a domain, one of the qualifications to be an S ranked melee class), that blinded and confused all the wyverns. This created a panic inside the domain, and the wyverns bumped into each other, scratched each other, bit one another, they attacked anything near, and moved without care for their own wounds. Sean was unaffected by the chaos that ensued,as he calmly walked forward, ripping any wyvern in his way with his great sword, as he made a path out of the domain.
The domain stayed In place, as long as the adventurer had enough mana to maintain it. Mana was the core of everything in Estallius, but mage classes used the pure mana around them, and used their own mana to control and manipulate this mana, while melee classes absorbed the mana into their body,and concerts it into aura. Aura is less volatile, and more compressed than ordinary, but that didn’t make it more powerful. Normal mana was more fluid, while more volatile,it had a greater effective range and could even get stronger at a further distance away from it’s host in the right circumstances, like an environment with the same element. Mana and aura have their own advantages. The epitome of aura was the domain.
The domain could only contain 50 wyverns, but the wyverns were constantly running into it, and fighting each other, and only a handful of wyverns had made it past the domain of darkness, and most of them was injured, either by the earlier attacks or by another wyvern. Sean swung his left arm, as his long sword covered in the frosty light blue aura sliced through two wyverns. The cut was clean, and their was no trace of blood coming from the wyverns, even though they were cut into two halves.
Sean walk through the wyverns, slicing them with his long sword and ripping them apart with his great sword. Even though wyverns were running past him, none of them turned around to attack him, because they feared the the land dragon more than this standing piece of meat. Sean was deflecting stray lightning bolts that came near him, with his aura, into the wyverns. Sean was doing his best to conserve as much strength as possible, as he knew the Earth Dragon would be a tough fight without Beth, and he knew he couldn’t take out as many wyverns as Beth could, so this was the best option.
Sean soon made out of the stampede, and finally saw the dragon. He let out a sigh of relief after seeing the dragon didn’t have any wings, so he knew he had a chance of defeating this land dragon. As if knowing what Sean was thinking, the land dragon let out a loud roar, that shook the canyon. This terrified the wyverns so much that, even those trapped in the domain stopped fighting and ran with all their might.
Confident in his chance of victory, he charged forth and stabbed his long sword into the land dragon’s frontal right foot, freezing it, as large icicles formed around the foot, and an aura of frost surrounded the foot and covered the ground around it, immobilizing this foot. Sean left his long sword in the dragon’s foot, and his gripped his great sword both hands, the darkness aura covered his body completely, and it reached it’s peak, as it was no longer split in half, along with his ice aura. Sean stabbed his great sword into the abdomen of the land dragon, and ran forward, dragging his great sword along, cutting the dragon from it’s abdomen all the way to its tail. The dragon roared in pain, and started stomping it’s free legs repeatedly. This started shaking the ground, and caused a landslide from both sides of the canyon.
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Sean withdrew his great sword from the dragon’s wound, and ran to the center of the dragon, to use it as cover. The dragon immediately dropped to ground, as if it knew what Sean was planning.
“Damnit!” Sean gathered his aura around his legs,crouched than propelled himself towards the dragon’s frontal right leg, using the leg that was covered in frost and icicles as cover from both the dragon’s torso and the landslide. The dragon roared in anger as it’s attack on both ends failed. Even worse it’s body was used to shield the human, and it was even stuck under the landslide it caused. The dragon squirmed as it attempted to free itself, but the more it squirmed, the angrier it got. ‘This insect is making me squirm! How dare it’
Sean took the opportunity granted to him, but the dragon’s own action, to grasp his long sword, than pulled it free from the dragon’s foot. Sean put away his great sword, than pulled out four throwing knives, placed in-between his fingers in his right hand. Sean began releasing a frosty aura, and imbued this aura around his long sword and four throwing knives. He moved underneath the dragon’s neck, and swung his right arm in a clockwise motion, as he threw the four throwing knives. The knives four different spots, one between his legs in the ground, one into the dragon’s front right leg, one into the dragon’s neck, and the final one into the dragon’s front left leg. Sean used the aura he infused into the knives, to create an ice domain, that enclosed everything between them with what they were touching, with the exception of himself. The domain even started encroaching along the dragon’s torso.
While domain was expanding along the dragon, Sean took this chance and began slicing at the dragon’s jugular with his long sword. Constantly slicing the same spot,what originally began as a knick on the dragon’s neck, was not forming into a deep wound. The dragon roared as mana exploded from it. The mana blew the rubble from landslide away, shattered the ice domain, and even knocked Sean dozens of meters away. This mana not only freed the dragon, but it was the beginning of the land dragons evolution. This wasn’t a rare phenomenon, but most monsters evolve during battle with a fierce enemy. But for a dragon to evolve in such a circumstance was nearly unheard of, because either a dragon wouldn’t meet an enemy that could put it in such a situation or the adventurers who attacked one, was in such a large number, the dragon wouldn’t have a chance to.
Mana radiated from the dragon, it’s body began growing larger, the wounds quickly became scabs, the dragon had a horn forming out of the mana. A horn and wings was the key feature of true dragons. This dragon didn’t grow wings, it wasn’t become a earth dragon, but a land dragon king. A mutation that was weaker than a earth dragon but could use mana, but didn’t have a breath attack.
The dragon roared, “Foolish ant, you helped me evolve, but you dare to bite me? How ignorant!” Dozens of spears of earth started forming,then flew towards Sean. Sean had finally stabilized his footing, and put away his long sword and withdrew a halberd,and his aura started turning a metallic gray color. This was Sean’s final element, metal, he barely used it because he had less control over than his other elements, even though it would be more effective against the Land dragon, but he hasn’t created a domain for it. Sean did have a certain mastery over the halberd but not other polearms. This was one of the benefits of being a blade master. It was less common than swordsman who focused solely on swords, blade masters would use most bladed weapons with high efficiency, and they usually used multiple at once.
Sean covered the halberd in his metallic aura, and smashed the spears of earth. Before he finished destroying them,the dragon’s front right foot came and smacked Sean into one of the canyons. Sean got up and spit up some blood. The dragon began to smash Sean into the cliff, but a red arrow came an hit the dragon in the right eye, then the arrow exploded. The land dragon king looked up, then a red and white entwined arrow hit the dragon in the same spot as the first arrow, but when it exploded the flames covered half the dragon’s face, and the flames didn’t disappear.
Beth was panting, she used a majority of her mana, and the mana potions couldn’t give her new mana, it only increased the speed she regenerated it. The three spirits had long returned, but her stamina wasn’t what it used to be, because how far along in her pregnancy she was. Normally using her mana as much as she had, would induce labor, but she was using a large portion of mana to maintain her condition. Normally it would be impossible for a mage class to do this, but as she was a swordsman, she could use an aura as well, but with her understanding of aura she was using mana in a similar fashion, to keep her condition maintained. This was very wasteful use of mana, but she couldn’t use aura and mana simultaneously, and she could control the spirits using aura, so this was the best she could do. The six spirits were no long around, but two small human spirits were beside her. They were two intermediate spirits, one of light and one of fire. She had contracts with six spirits kings, and she long surpassed other spiritualist. The second strongest spiritualist, only had a contract with one spirit king. Having a contract with two intermediate spirits would even be praiseworthy, not as difficult as making a contract with a spirit king, but very few were able to do it. So having six contracts with spirit kings, have made her acknowledged as the strongest spiritualist. If she was in her peak, let alone a land dragon king’s stampede, but even a earth dragon’s stampede would be child’s play. A spirit king was weaker than a true dragon, but 2 spirit kings could work together to beat a true dragon. So she could take on several true dragons normally, but when she became pregnant it became difficult to interact with the spirit kings, because spirits could be controlled with mana but were made of ether, and intermediate spirits and above, released ether, and even though it was life energy, it was a form of energy that was difficult for normal people to withstand, and that’s why it was hard for most people to have a contract with intermediate spirits. So she was concerned about the baby being affected by the ether.
Meanwhile at Boboan’s gates, Darren had an aura that was swirling with four different colors at once, holding his spear. Normally even manipulating two auras was extremely hard, but he had weaved four together so easily. This was one of the factors that made it difficult for Beth to make him go serious, even with the spirit kings. The twilight spearman was a class that require someone to have two classes that had opposite attributes, and mastered the skills in both, and to have at least two elements that clashed and was able to combine them. Darren was originally a heavy cavalry spearman, which was an advanced heavy armor offensive class and the aegis spearman which was a rare advanced class, it was a light armor defensive mage class. The aegis spearman was superior to a magic swordsman, because it required advanced knowledge of spells and formations, and could create defensive spells using formations. Darren four elements were lightning, wind, fire, and water. Fire and water opposed each other and wind and lightning had an unique relationship, they could be combined but it took more effort than normal. While wind strengthened fire and water strengthened lightning. This was once they were weaved together, they strengthened each other exponentially.
Darren easily wiped out, the slightly over a hundred wyverns. “That bastard left more than he agreed. I’m gonna check on them.” In a flash Darren was gone. Lightning and wind were both elements known for their speed, while fire was an element that could be used in burst to increase speed temporarily. Darren had managed to maximize his speed by combining these aspects. Darren soon had the land dragon king and Sean in sight. Darren brandished his spear in front of him, and when Darren stopped, the land dragon king was behind him. The land dragon king trembled as it was covered in holes in an instant. From it’s legs to it’s tail, there was numerous holes underneath it. Sean was even more shocked, he knew Darren was stronger than him, but he didn’t know the gap was this huge. He could wound the land dragon, but he doubted he could injure the land dragon king.
“I’ll handle it from here. Just go back to Beth, and take her back to the town, we never know when she could give birth.”
“You’re r-right. This took longer than we thought, this must’ve been tough on her.” Sean gathered his remaining aura, and left.
‘Damnit, this dragon was supposed to wear them out even more. Can’t have her giving birth to that half bred abomination.’ A hooded figured appeared on the same cliff as Beth. The figure pulled out a dagger and ran towards her, but before the figure even got close, the two spirits turned towards the figure and released an array of light and fire magic at the figure. Even though they were weak magic, it was a large number of them. The hooded figured did it’s best to dodge, but it was struck numerous time. When Beth looked to see what was happening, another figured stabbed her in the back, and three more hooded figures charged at her.
This enraged the two spirits, and the began spinning around Beth. The light spirit was healing Beth while encircling her, while the fire spirit was releasing a large amount of heat, and which quickly became a wall of flames, that started spreading out into the surroundings. In an instance the figure that stabbed Beth was nothing but a pile of ashes, and the wall of flames crashed into the three figures. They were luckier than the first one, as the flames weakened by the time it got to them, but two were half burnt and the third kept going, as he a resistance to flames. This hooded figured pulled out a chakram, and covered it in a red aura as it threw the chakram at Beth.
The chakram was cut In half before it was even halfway between the figure and Beth. Sean had appeared. Meanwhile, Darren had a blade of aura, that covered the blade of his spear, and the aura was longer than the whole spear. Darren was in front of the land dragon king, but it was laying on the dragon, it’s legs have been chopped off, without it being able to do anything to this person, but stare them. All of a sudden, Darren heard a loud roar from Sean. Darren finally started to get serious. In a flash the dragon was decapitated, and Darren headed to the sound of the roar. When he arrived, Sean was panting over three corpses, but he was surrounded by four hooded figures. One with a great sword and one with a rapier stood in front of him. A mage was behind Sean, but the spirits were countering the mage’s spells and giggling. On the opposite side of Darren was an archer, and a skill one at that since Sean was pierced by three arrows, two in his right arm, and one in his left leg. These four hooded figures gave off a presence equivalent to s rank adventurers, so it made sense Sean was struggling.
“I’ll take care of the rest. Just protect Beth” Darren appeared on the opposite of Sean, and deflected three arrows with a swipe of his spear. Darren vanished and appeared behind the archer, but what was weird was that, even though he was gone for a split second, the spear was dripping with blood. The archer turned around after hearing a gurgling sound, and his eyes widened. The archer saw that this spearman, not only standing behind him, but his spear was carrying mage. More accurately the spear was stabbed through the mage’s throat. Bleeding profusely, the mage attempted to scream for help, but before he could even make a sound he was dragged behind the archer. In what was quicker than the blink of an eye, Darren went in two different directions, he weaved through the magic the spirits and the mage was firing at each other, stabbed the mage, than rushed off behind the archer, but the archer and the mage was the only who knew this.
Darren decided to take out the range classes first, and the mage was a wildcard, Darren didn’t want to risk destroying the cliff once it realized they were in an unfavorable situation. He aimed for the throat to prevent it from calling for help. Darren next went behind the archer, archers are weaker than the other classes, but they had heighten senses to compensate, so he figured the archer would be alerted of his presence behind it, and would be distracted by him and wouldn’t be able to fire more arrows at Sean and Beth.
The archer turned around completely to face Darren and jumped back, while nocking three arrows and covering them with wind aura and released them, in one swift motion. Too bad this was a futile attempt at surviving, as the moment the arrows were released, a spear pierced through his left eye.
Darren now wielded a spear, that carried a mage and an archer. At this point they were both dead, the mage survived longer than expected while the archer’s death was immediate. Darren radiated his combined aura around his spear, and like that, the two ranged classed assailants where a cloud a blood. Darren figured most assassins would rather die than reveal any information, and it would sicken him to have to bury those who attacked his friends.
The other two hooded figured finally noticed something was off, as the constant clashing of mana between their teammate and the spirits had stopped. They failed to see the mage, they frantically looked around, they didn’t even see the archer, but they saw the spearman in the area the archer was,and the cloud of blood around him. They both lost the will to fight, this variable not only threw off the balance completely, he even took down two of them without giving them a chance to fight back and disposed of their bodies. So it had to be a huge gap in their strengths. The archer was the fastest between them, and he didn’t even have the chance to flee, so they just both dropped to their knees.
Before Darren could finish his assault, all five of them were in a different area. This wasn’t simple teleportation magic, there was neither any side effects which even the most powerful mage’s couldn’t get rid of nor way there were any signal that it was activating, this is a reason teleportation couldn’t be used offensively, you could escape before it activated. They were all shocked. Not only were they in an unfamiliar area, they were surrounded by thousands of people, most of them were at least A rank or better, but the rest were scholarly looking individuals, either mages or pure scholars.
No one knew what going on, but all of a sudden the sky darkened. Then a huge eye tore a whole in the darkened sky.
“I have summoned powerful adventurers, Mages, and knowledgeable figures around the continent, in preparation of an entity that would raze the the continent to the ground. I have gathered you…”
“Where are we?!”
“What are you planning?!?”
“Let us go!!!”
“I’m scared”
The eye was rudely interrupted, and it was irritated because they were asking questions that it was answering. The dozens of people who interrupted the eye, heads all exploded.
“Don’t interrupt me again. But before I say any more…”
A powerful pressure crashed down on everyone.
“Welcome to the abyss”
At that moment, a woman began screaming, and soon after a baby’s cries were heard.