Sylthis felt it when Janet emerged from [Meditation]. And just as happened every time the girl did so, she felt her [Sight] quiver, as though for a moment her magically-empowered, all-seeing, barrier-penetrating eye had to peer through cloudy waters.
Darius had advised her to ask Janet for advice regarding that effect, claiming that her [Sight] might be related to the Realm of Souls, and she intended to do just that. She was just waiting until Janet was armed with a fully-functional Class, so any advice given to her on the nature of her [Talent] would yield Janet some System Credits, turning it into a mutually beneficial endeavor.
Teaching, especially expounding upon things such as [Talents] or the conferment of [Mystery], were highly-incentivized endeavors by the Guilds. Rewards were however only given for successful lessons, ensuring the quality of tutelage never dwindled, and students were not led astray.
Sylthis was almost certain that whatever Janet had to say about her eye, be that about its mana, its connection to her soul, or its manifestation in the Realm of Souls, would guide her to a leap in her cultivation.
Seriously! Janet had one day pointed out that Brian’s ostentatious display was not as wasteful as they’d all been making it out to be. In a lull after a battle where Brian had aided Janet in dispatching a bunch of locusts, Sylvia had warned her against making her spell effects too flamboyant, since it was an overall waste in terms of mana efficiency.
Janet had just tilted her head and looked at her as though she was an idiot. Janet did that sometimes, when she thought one was so completely wrong, and she was trying to be polite.
“Do you mean the way Brian inculcates his comprehension in the concept of magic’s beauty into his every move?” Janet had questioned in an explicative tone.
Sylvia had nodded, bemused at Janet's sudden seriusness. The two really were peas in a pod.
“Oh, if he failed to do that, I bet his magic would actually weaken,” Janet had intimated. “The concept of beauty and brilliance is that central to his nature.”
The girl had then explained that even inside the Realm of Souls, Brian’s soul looked like an art installation. Multifarious yet elegant, and always seeking to perfect the way it was perceived, so all eyes would see it as beautiful.
“I think there’s a mental effect in there, too. We somehow all think his spells are pretty, yet we should possess vastly differing conceptions of what that should be.”
Darius had nodded in agreement with Janet, which was all the encouragement Brian had needed to sit down in [Meditation] with a high-grade Fire Crystal clasped in his hand.
Before night fell that day, Brian made a 6% leap of progress in his Circle. At their level, such progress only happened when the advice was spot on. Janet’s careless observation had probably saved David years of research into his nature, seeing as practically everyone around him had been chiding him for his ostentatiousness.
Sylthis looked forward with bate breath to her moment of Insight. She was scared of what the girl would reveal, since her sight was very important to her, but she would deal with any surprises at that point in time.
“Morning, Janet. How did you sleep?”
“Oh, it was awesome,” she smiled her widest as her eyes gravitated towards the ant-filled canyon spanning the horizon. “I’m really bummed about the locked Skill Store though, but I think that the hunt should help a bit.
“Don’t tell me. You want to steamroll your way through First Circle,” her voice was low, and her look stern. “You know that would irreparably…”
“The foundations thing, sure, but I think I have more than enough accumulations for First Circle, at least,” she stated confidently. “I’m tired of being weak, Sylthis. I love you guys and all you’re doing to protect me, but I want to do that on my own power.”
“But power without a firm foundation would be useless… fragile.”
“I’ll have more than enough time to shore them up again. The three other Beasts Darius chose for my [Talents] are all solitary, and incredibly weak on top of that. Phase Spiders are skittish, Whistler Bats spot you coming a mile away, and Water-Treaders are solitary creatures.”
She looked towards the white walls of the canyon, and the milling wall of red spots on display in the manascape there.
“This is my only viable chance to level up quickly.”
Sylthis agreed, but for a very different reason. For a beginner like Janet, the ants were a godsend. All of them would put up a fight and help her exercise her magic, which was a thing most beginners desperately needed - a lot of practice.
There was also the fact that the deeper one went into the depression pockmarked with trails and tunnels, the more powerful the ant variants became. They pushed one’s capabilities to the limit with every step downwards, and the danger to one’s life was somehow mitigated, since only an idiot would keep climbing downwards when they became totally outmatched.
As for earning levels quickly, Janet would have to kill a lot of ants for that. Swarm creatures were a terrible option for quick levelling, since their strengths lay in numbers rather than individual might.
“So, when are you hoping to Close your First Circle?”
Janet thought for a moment, before quickly reading through her Status. “At most, a week.”
“Wow, a bit bold with our ambitions, aren’t we?” Pireus spoke from the side as he, Sylvia and Brian came into view.
“Don’t tell me you also want me to dawdle around with that mountain of XP at my disposal.”
“Nothing of that sort, Student,” Pireus smiled as his hands made a placating gesture. “I’m just worried, and so should you be, by the way, that filling up on fire-attuned XP might skew your foundations, especially given that you’re trying to gather an even deck.”
Janet paused before she could answer. “I actually hadn’t thought of that.”
“That’s why you have teachers,” Pireus replied, then looked down in contrition, his arms clasped behind his back.
It was time to break the news.
===
“This is all such bullshit!” Janet screamed into the winds. A thin film of shadow covered her eyes, nose and mouth, protecting her from the particles of sand in the fierce winds.
Yep, she was flying, cradled like a baby to Brian’s chest. Behind the mage, two absolutely resplendent wings of flame held them aloft through the spell, [Winged Flight].
“I'm sorry, but we can’t all remain here. The Guilds hate people encroaching into their territory, and Seldorian authorities might take umbrage with a whole Party of Slayers traipsing about inside their turf.”
The wings flapped soundlessly, turning the ground beneath them into a whitish blur. To Janet’s front, the white horizon marked with points of red resolved into a craggy valley that extended so far downwards, the lowest parts only received light a few minutes at noon when the sun was directly overhead.
“Slayers only appear when trouble is afoot, Janet. News of a Party with a standing like ours would only create a panic, which might attract the religions and Guilds. That would create unnecessary tension to your continued stay here.”
Janet listened to the sound argument yet another time, delivered in a monotone by yet another adult. It did not make it any easier to hear.
Sylvia, Pireus, and Brian would be departing come evening.
Sylthis had spotted a group of Adventurers coming towards the canyon, about two days away by their speed of travel. To avoid confrontation, three of the five Party members had decided to leave for the coming weeks. They’d go towards the east, perhaps do some snooping in the cities around about Marius and his cult, and hopefully take stock of the situation with the religions.
Janet’s many, many peculiarities needed to be kept secret from that paranoid bunch of devout maniacs. The Religious Council would throw a fit if any of her eye-catching qualities were to be revealed, so the three would do some information control as they got on with Slayer Guild business.
“Here we are,” Brian stated as forwards motion turned into a slow fall. “What do you think?”
All thoughts about her new friends departing evaporated. Janet let go of the mask of shadow over her face to see…
By the blasted Spheres! To call the place a canyon was a gross understatement. The wall on the opposite side of the depression were dozens of kilometers away. As for the depth… light did not go that far down. Around halfway, white rock gave way to impenetrable dusk.
All along the denuded white walls devoid of anything green, Janet saw tunnel openings. Ant tunnels. The wall of red she'd seen from afar turned out to be one or two insects every 500 meters or so.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
The geographical feature was so big, its scale so expansive, Janet felt like another ant before its majesty.
The worst thing, though, was the silence. There was no wind, no rustling of leaves, no calls of beasts. Ants communicated by scent. Within a jungle that was always cacophonous, the eerie silence was deafening.
“So, what do you think?” Brian asked, and Janet had to peel her eyes away from the stark emptiness in front of her.
“What… how is it so big?”
In her map of the Havenhurst, the canyon was a measly dot. A literal spot that Janet had assumed to be just a few kilometers across and with a population of a few million insects. This place looked like it could house hundreds of millions, if not billions.
“The ants,” Brian replied.
“Wait a second. Are you telling me the ants ate up all that rock?” How long had that taken? The place could swallow an inverted mountain whole and still have some space left.
“Of course, not. The ants filter out specific fire-attuned minerals from the soil they swallow. Their excreta is so fine, however, that it is easily blown away as sand, or carried away by the river right at the bottom of the gorge.”
Janet had heard someone once claim that jungle fruit was all fertilized by ant poop. She'd thought it was another joke at her expense. Now, beholding the size of the place, she was beginning to see what they meant.
“Just how big is this jungle?” she asked as she leaned over the lip to peer into the gaping blackness below.
“About 300 million acres, give or take.”
That was bonkers! Just imagining the wealth of resources in the tiny area of jungle she had traversed, then extrapolating that density of wealth to an area that size... Janet licked her lips as a seed of avarice was planted in her normally placid mind.
“No wonder the canyon appears so tiny on the map,” she commented.
“Speaking of the map, why don’t you look for a good point of ingress? You wanted to begin levelling, right?”
Janet did as prompted, and called up the [Novice Cartographer] Skill. This time as she zoomed past locations marked as river basins, cave systems and even mountains, she rethought her view of them. The canyon before her eyes was thousands of times larger than she’d imagined. What did that say about the river basin that took a whole 10% of the map?
“If this is right,” Janet began skeptically, “There should be a staircase about ten kilometers that way.”
Brian once more picked her up and flew her over to the indicated point on the monotonously droll landscape.
Sure enough, in the white rock was carved a meandering staircase that welcomed the pair on their descent towards the abyss. There were no railings, and there seemed to be bites taken out of the steps that were not so terribly eroded they looked like loose soil. Looking to the side, however, where the way down was a sudden drop-off, into the blackness, Janet just swallowed and followed Brian downwards on the hazardous steps.
“How long until we even find any Fire-Ants?” Janet asked. “This place is so huge!”
As if to answer her question, the skittering of a hundred pointy feet echoed through a tunnel to her left. The staircase was carved into the rock, so in some places it cut across tunnels and tunnel openings.
Janet unsheathed her dagger, clad it in mana and activated [Cutting Edge], all in a single move.
A quick peek into the tunnel revealed one large ant, half a meter in height. Its eyes were trained on Brian and her, its body still and unmoving. The only sign that it was alive was its flickering antennae.
The skittering of feet came from deeper in the tunnel. The stationary sentry’s job was only to relay the presence of threats. And since the insects communicated by scent…
Janet let her dagger fly. With a satisfying crunch, she heard the carapace on the ant’s head crack. Unfortunately, there was no notification of a kill, so Janet stepped closer and drove the dagger deeper with a single stomp as the ant was trying to shake it free.
Ding! You have slain [Red Ant - LV 4]
Experience acquired
The level was too low, but Janet's goal in sight, she followed Brian as his pace accelerated.
“Why are we running? The ant’s levels don’t seem that high.”
“They’re not, but if we waste any time we’ll be dealing with a thousand of them, followed by another wave of weaklings, then another… by evening we’ll have fought a million of them without you actually gaining anything.”
In some places Brian had to levitate her over dilapidated sections of the staircase, but all in all they were making good progress.
Every third sentry they came across received a dagger to the head. Sometimes she killed them in one stroke, but other times she had to deploy a few [Shadow Bolts]. The ants grew stronger as they descended the stairs, and Janet's method of estimating the average level was by their kill notifications.
Janet took all the bodies with her.
“I think this should be a good place,” Brian peered into a gloomy tunnel that was five meters wide and high. The walls were marked with signs of past battle, and Janet even saw a discarded arrowhead and an rusty, pitted axe head on the floor.
This was a staging ground for battles against the insects, and Janet could see why it was preferred to the earlier narrower tunnels. Here, a warrior could freely swing his weapon, a mage could fire spells with abandon without concern about injuring their party, and most crucially, the sound of skittering feet was deafening.
Here, multiple tunnels converged. They would funnel the Experience Janet’s way.
“Prepare yourself,” Brian cautioned as he traced a spell formula into the air and summoned a floating ball of fire that seemed to erupt into petals and sparks every time Janet looked at it. It did a great job of lighting up the tunnel.
Weirdly, the ants that came to answer the provocation looked enthralled, their eyes glued to the flame as though hypnotized.
Janet did not waste any time. [Shadow Bolt] after [Shadow Bolt] flew into their midst, breaking the ants’ reverie by taking out their comrades. Or was it sisters?
Behind her, Janet’s shadow divided into three constructs. Janet began infusing them with mana, and attracting ambient shadow into them to make them sturdier and more deadly. If the ants became too much to handle, she’d use them to disrupt their advance.
Ding! You have slain [Red Ant Adolescent – LV 10]
Ding! You have slain [Red Ant Adolescent – LV 14]
…
You have slain [Red Ant Adolescent – LV 11]
Boost to Experience gain for killing a higher level enemy
The first wave gave did not earn Janet even a single level even though she had killed about 10 of the ants, all between level 10 and 14.
“Why are they all this weak?” Janet asked as she collected all the bodies into storage and gobbled up the fast-dissipating souls. It was odd. the souls were tiny, even tinier than the magicless Beasts Janet had slain in her earlier days in the jungle.
A sinking feeling was beginning to cloud her enthusiasm.
“I presume all the notifications said Red Ant?” Janet nodded. “Then the Fire Ants should be on their way. Be careful with those. They’re larger than their unevolved brethren and can actually deal fire damage with their mandibles.”
Janet took the advice to heart when the next dozen ants, which were bigger and covered with shinier carapaces, came barreling into the tunnel.
Her [Shadow Bolts] were less effective against the more magically-fortified carapaces, so Janet went into second gear.
The three constructs of shadow behind her slithered forward, tripping up legs and stealing the ants’ forward momentum, allowing Janet to pelt them with even more bolts.
Ding! You have slain [Fire Ant - LV 15]
Ding! You have slain [Fire Ant – LV 15]
…
Ding! You have slain [Fire Ant – LV 15]
Boost to Experience gain for killing a higher level enemy
You have reached Level 10
Once again, Janet collected the bodies and the souls.
“Wow… these things are really weak, huh?”
It was the difference between a boar and an ant. Although they both could be at the same level, one could easily dispatch the other 10 times out of 10. Swarm animals, especially of the insectoid variety, had really low thresholds to leveling up, and thus were pitifully weak.
“It seems like I’ll have to kill a hundred thousand of these before I get to LV 20.”
“Even more when you take into account that Darius’ presence will lower the XP gain even more than I am.” Just dandy. “But the situation should improve somewhat when you get to the Second Circle variants. I’m told those can spit fireballs and cast rudimentary joint spells when in groups.”
What the hell was that logic? The insects gave virtually zero XP and yet were so difficult to defeat?
“Instead of trying to level up as fast as possible, I’d recommend you learn how to utilize the Skills described in your Skill Store,” the fire mage recommended.
“What?”
“Rip their shadows away and use the resulting construct to crush them. Try infusing your mana into their cores, and make it as damaging as possible. Bind their shadows so your bolts damage all of them at the same time,” the man counted on one hand, his gaze drilling into Janet's eyes.
Still, Janet couldn’t see how that would help her. Her goal was to earn levels. Even if she mastered the Skills before actually managing to buy them, wouldn’t all that effort just be wasted? A Skill template was pretty much fixed, right?
Brian scoffed at the question.
“Janet, look around you. You have in your palm the perfect test subjects! They have very poor control over their mana, and their cores are the size of a berry. If you one day want your Skills to work against a real attacker, a competent one with a purified, well-defended core, your Skills must at least work against an ant.”
When the next twenty ants entered the tunnel, Janet decided to go with the suggestion. Brian was a mage, schooled enough in life and battle to know how things really worked. Also, his ball of flame still stood as insurance in case the insects broke through, ready to roar into action and roast the insects to a crisp.
She let go of two of her constructs, then used the final one to connect her shadow to the group’s collective one cast by Brian’s ball.
Binding the two was easy. Shadows combined all the time. The difference this time is that Janet forced their magical weaves to combine, like smooshing two spiderwebs into a single tangle of inseparable threads.
For the first time, the ants seemed hesitant to approach. Their steps became slower, and their antenna bobbed around in what she took to be fright.
Janet capitalized on that moment, pulling with her core and mind at that tangled weave.
Her first try was a failure. Instead of ripping the shadows apart, all she managed to do was drag the ants into a ball of flailing limbs and clacking mandibles. The ant bodies were so light that the slight pull had bundled them up.
In that shape, the ants' shadows were now even more connected.
Janet tried the move again, this time focusing on tearing the part of the combined ant shadow colored by her mana away from the rest. First, she supplied her construct with more mana aimed at getting a better hold of the intangible mass...
She succeeded. As her pull rent apart the construct, she felt the gossamer shadows unravel one by one. The weaves came apart.
As Janet pulled away her shadow, mana leached from the ants’ cores like blood from a hemorrhaging artery. What Janet had done was the equivalent of tearing a gash into the flimsy balloon that was the ants' structural weave of mana.
In less than 5 seconds, the lively ball of aggressive ants was transformed into a pile of unmoving bodies and a cloud of fire mana dispersing lazily into the ambient flows. Their death had been silent, and nigh-instantaneous.
Few creatures, if any, could survive without mana, and Janet had just discovered a way to rip apart the membrane that held that energy inside their forms.
Brian took a series of quick steps backwards, stopping only when his back was against solid rock. His ball of flame flickered, then blinked out, plunging the tunnel into the darkness of solid shadow.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah…” he sounded breathless. “I just wasn't expecting the effect to be that severe, or that they would die that quickly.”
Janet wordlessly agreed with him in the suddenly dark tunnel. Even she was taken aback by Shadow's effectiveness. More than ever, she was excited to plumb the limits of her element.
Still, although that mess of a magic effect had earned her a level, it was yet too sloppy. She'd need a lot of practice if she was to mold it into actual magic rather than the bumbling attempt it currently was.
It was lucky, then, that more ants presented themselves so she could try again.
"Could you cast the spell one more time? I don't think I have the mana to affect a shadow this large."