CHAPTER 20 - A SUSPICIOUS AMOUNT OF RATS (1/2)

I awoke the next morning to a particular pink potato rubbing me affectionately.

‘Mmm, papa…’

Groggily tilting my body upwards, I pushed my half asleep child off the log and yawned. It was a beautiful morning. The little rays of light that filtered through the forest’s canopy reminded me of my garden back at home.

Thanks to a space magic spell that Kearan casted over us every night, monsters were never able to attack us while our camp was set up. However, that was a different case when it came to travelling. He explained to me before that he had to specifically mark an area out for the spell to work.

‘Ahhhh.’ I sighed in pleasure as I emptied a skin of water over myself. Another benefit of being a potato: you needed less water to shower.

Kearan, who had just finished stowing away the sleeping mats, looked at me weirdly. “Stop wasting our water. You’re a potato. You’re naturally dirty.”

I-I-I had no words. The audacity of this boy! Naturally dirty? What kind of reason was that? Humans were naturally dirty too, then. But before I utterly crushed this poor child’s pride, I remembered the conversation I had with Jay last night. And what these people had been through.

Damn it, since when was my conscience so powerful?

‘Yeah… Sorry.’ I said meekly. It wasn’t just out of guilt. For now, the group seemed to have accepted me- Winter and Jay especially so. Kearan, however, I didn’t have much progress with. I hadn’t forgotten the threats he made just a few weeks ago.

Kearan raised an eyebrow and pursed his lips like he wanted to say something, but he hesitated and sighed instead. “Come on, now. I’ll show you a thing or two about killing monsters if we run into any.”

I beamed in delight and literally flew to his side in excitement. ‘Really?’

Apart from the… untimely event with the boars, I hadn’t actually used my skills and magic for combat. Although I had slain them, I had managed to knock myself unconscious for a week and severely damage my body in the process. Really not something I was looking forward to repeating.

Also, Winter hadn’t talked to me since yesterday’s magic incident. Jay, Raul and even Verity had reassured me multiple times that she wasn’t doing it on purpose. It was one of her quirks, apparently. She was a perfectionist and wouldn’t move on until she had answered the question. The question here was; What in the hell had I done that day?

The answer remained a mystery. Not only did they not know what it was, they didn’t even have the slightest idea.

I’d overheard Winter and Mox- the two brains of the group, chattering away about it this morning. An orb shaped spell was not uncommon, but the one I had created was not particularly aligned to any element- except darkness. The orb was black, after all. Its properties were even stranger. However, whatever it had sucked into its core had disappeared without any trace, and that dark magic was incapable of doing such a thing.

This led them to believe it had something to do with space magic. But once again, spatial manipulation could not move objects without someone controlling it, which I definitely was not at the time. Even gateways to private dimensions- which could only be summoned and controlled by extremely high classed space magicians- were out of the question. A gate had a ring shape to it, and objects could only travel into it through one direction.

It was also a vacuum that sucked whatever was around it in, not distinguishing any elemental types. Since no living beings were sucked into it, they had no way of knowing whether it damaged these objects and where they went.

Mox revealed that his skill ‘Forewarning’ had activated the moment the sphere appeared, which meant he had been in immediate danger. That was why he’d tried to interfere with it by shooting a blast of air, but that hadn’t had any effect. It was only a few minutes afterwards that the skill had deactivated, which meant the danger took that long to pass.

I shook the thoughts out of my head and returned to reality. Honestly, this wasn’t something I should’ve been worrying about, anyways. Whatever magic it had been, it was still magic. And that was the first time I’d done anything of the sort in my life.

So, with that thought in mind, I widened my non-existent smile and stared at the trees, dirt, and red sand ahead of me.

One kilometer to go, and it was time to kill some monsters.

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I was jerked to my senses the second time today by Kearan opening the saddle bag’s flap obnoxiously loudly.

The first hour we spent travelling, I sat in his lap, excited.

The second hour we spent travelling, I still sat in his lap, excited.

The third hour we spent travelling, I decided to produce some potatoes in the privacy of the saddle bag.

The fourth hour we spent travelling, well, I was probably asleep by that time.

Now, you may be wondering. Why did it take so long to travel just a single kilometer?

Yeah. Same.

For some reason, Kearan thought that it was necessary to walk beside our horses in case any monsters appeared- and to everyone’s disappointment, none did. On top of that, he had us crouched the entire time, causing us to walk literally slower than a snail. To be fair, though, they had never visited this part of Oblivion before, and had a right to be cautious.

But come on, man! Just when I was actually excited to hunt monsters for the first time! What bad luck.

Thankfully, though, it seemed as if that luck were about to change.

“The horses are reacting. Get ready.” Kearan said softly.

The first thing I did was take in my surroundings. Thankfully, the terrain hadn’t changed much and we were still in the red sandy biome. My area of awareness’s radius was barely fifty metres, so I couldn’t see whatever creature was approaching. I doubt it would’ve helped, though. Another area of knowledge I had no experience with was fauna. Apart from the domesticated animals that were common in Terralica, I couldn’t recognize any of the monster species.

Verity had already tied the horses to a tree and were now in a defensive formation surrounding it. They weren’t messing around like last time, that was for sure.

“June! This is the first thing I’m going to teach you about killing monsters.” Kearan said while he faded into the background.

“Every monster has at least one weakness. Whether that be a point on its body or an element, it’ll definitely have at least one. That’s why it’s incredibly important to be able to recognize a specific type of monster before going into combat.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I gulped. That… was a problem.

“All of us here have memorized bits and pieces of information, so we can cover the majority of the types of monsters in Oblivion around Terralica. That was why we were so confident with those horned boars. However, the further we get away, the more the monster species vary, and there are probably some we’ve never seen before. That’s why we travelled so cautiously after we left the first forest biome.”

‘A-alright.’ I stuttered. It looked like this guild wasn’t happy-go-lucky, after all, and had actually come prepared. ‘So I attack the monster’s weak point. Got it.’

He spoke again, but this time his voice was to my left. “Now, usually this would be self explanatory, but in your case, it’s really not. Since you don’t actually have a body and can’t handle a weapon well, you have to find another method of attacking it. You’re an abornamilty, and using that weird magic you showed us yesterday might do us more harm than good, which is why I suggest putting it off for now.”

An idea popped into my head.

I did have a method of attack.

Granted, I’d only done it once- and that hadn’t even been intentional.

And then I heard the rumbling.

It wasn’t the same as before, when the boars had come.

It also wasn’t just from one direction.

It was louder.

Deeper.

And coming from everywhere.

“Mox!” Verity called from my right. Her hands covered her eyes, but she was craning her head forward, as if trying to see something. “Raggles! At least a hundred of them surround us! Less than a hundred metres away!”

A hundred metres? How could she see that far in this kind of environment? Also, weren’t her eyes closed?

Unless… She was using a skill.

Up to this point, I hadn’t actually seen anyone apart from Kearan use any skills. I’d only seen them use magic up to this point.

Skills transcended logic.

If magic was an impossibility that had no explanation, G’s skills took that one step further.

If anything, it made a little sense that an archer like Verity was using a skill that enabled her to see through objects.

But I had another question. Why was she telling this to Mox, instead of Kearan? Wasn’t Kearan supposed to be the leader here?

“Raggles.” A voice said from beside me, almost causing me to squeal in surprise.

‘Hell, Kearan, you almost gave me a heart attack.’

“It’s not like you have a heart anyways,” He said as his body became visible. “Raggles are a small monster that have similar features to those of a rat. They are scavengers that travel in packs. Unlike rats, they have incredibly sharp teeth and hold a sack of poisonous acid in their tails. Usually, they don’t pick fights with humans, nor have such large numbers. Strange.” He seemed lost in thought for a moment, but brushed it off.

“They don’t have any mildly dangerous features apart from their claws, teeth and tail, so just stabbing or crushing them will do. Their strength lies in their numbers, though, and with this amount, it’d be best to keep our distance and use long range spells instead of close combat. Can you- right. You can’t do magic. Do you have any AoE skills? Do you even have any attack skills in the first place?”

‘AoE?’ I’d never heard of the term before.

Kearan sighed. “I forgot you weren’t used to these common terms. AoE stands for ‘area of effect’, which refers to an attack that will damage an area or more than one target at once.”

‘Ah, right.’ I said softly. That lined up perfectly for my attack.

“Fifty meters!” Verity shouted once more and nocked an arrow in anticipation.

The thundering grew louder and louder as I untied the now-large leather bag where I stored my pre-produced e-potatoes.

There were thirty three of them, each small enough to fit in a human hand.

It’d have to do.

Gently, I levitated the top one out of the bag and held it out in front of myself. Unlike other objects that I struggled to even move up and down, I felt like I could fly the e-potato through a maze without any major difficulty.

Just like my own body, it was many times easier to control. I wondered whether it was because it had once been a part of me.

I had no more time to think.

[Generating new quest…]

[You have received a new quest!]

___________________________________________

Path Quest

Kill Raggles

In this world, strength and experience is everything. To gain experience and strength, you must partake in combat. It’s time for a challenge, isn’t it?

Kill Raggles: 0/15

Rewards: First Ascension + Additional faith for every additional raggle slain

Penalty: -5 Faith per person present

___________________________________________

A new rank quest? So soon? I was ranking up like crazy these days. Hopefully, with my new and improved attack method, killing raggles wouldn’t be too much of a challenge. But the quest rewards had changed this time. Instead of ‘progression to next stage of path’ like it usually would be, there were the words ‘First Ascension’.

I was eager to find out what it would hold.

Grinning to myself, I looked to the edges of my vision where the raggles had begun to appear.

The first thing I saw were their eyes.

They were orangey-yellow with a vertical slit as the pupil. Nightmare inducing. The worst part about its eyes was that they bulged halfway out of their sockets, exposing disgusting red veins. Dark purple fur covered their entire body apart from their abnormally large claws. They barely resembled a rat. Their teeth glinted in the light, their sharpness unmistakable. But the strangest thing about the creatures were not their teeth or claws, but their tails.

At the tip of it was a semi-transparent sack, filled with some sort of green liquid. It was probably the acid Kearan was talking about.

It would be dangerous if these creatures got close.

Thankfully, the rest of the party seemed to agree. Everyone except Verity had dropped their melee weapons and taken up staffs and other items used to perform magic.

‘Alright.’ I said to myself, and moved the e-potato I was carrying about a metre away from myself and the horses. Unlike last time, I wouldn’t make the mistake of jumping into things unprepared.

‘Now how do I make it explode? Don’t I just think about it? Now let’s see… What was the name of the skill again? It was something like xera transfer or-’

Boom.

My non-existent mouth dropped open as what was left of the e-potato drifted down slowly in the form of ashes.

Verity turned around and sucked in a deep breath. “Oi! Are you stupid, potato?! What do you think you’re doing?! We’re on the same side, dumbass! If it weren’t for Cherry, I’d have mashed you into an unrecognizable pulp a long time ago!”

‘Sorry.’ I mumbled, once her verbal onslaught had concluded.

But speaking of Cherry, where was she? I hadn’t seen her since the raggles had shown up.

‘Papa! Look at my friends!’ A familiar high pitched voice sounded in my head.

‘Cherry? What friends? It’s dangerous-’ I said as I turned around.

What I saw made my jaw drop to unthinkable levels.

My little potato child, innocent and sweet looking, nestled in a grass patch a few dozen metres away. However, that wasn’t the thing that shocked me. Behind her was what looked to be an overgrown sunflower, its stem branching off in several directions, each one imprisoning a raggle. It formed a wall that protected her from the wave of monsters behind her. Each stem wrapped around the creatures such that their movements were restricted. At a first glance, it might have not seemed as important, but on a second it was obvious that the plant had expertly tied up these raggles as to stop them from tearing apart the sack of acid in their tails. Those that slipped through were immediately lifted up and crushed by an invisible force before falling dead back onto the ground.

In such a short span of time, she’d managed to increase her plant magic and telekinesis to such a high level. If there were such a thing as a prodigy for a Gifted, she would be it.

‘H-h-h-hey…! Y-you s-stay safe there, ok Cherry?’

’Of course!’ She replied cheerfully.

‘Ahhhh.’ I sighed. Why was I even worrying about her in the first place? She was obviously a lot more damn powerful than me.

Anyways, it was time to kill some monsters. For real, this time.