Vegetation zipped by in a continuous blur of green hues as Janet pumped all the energy she could spare into her leg muscles. Above, birds fluttered away in a panic, clearly sensing the danger posed by the distant swarm of airborne pests that was gradually drawing closer.
If Janet had been alone, running free among the trees as she had done in her earliest days, she was confident that she would have easily gotten away. An incident where she ran tirelessly for countless miles and through varied jungle terrain to get away from a pair of Gatherers came to mind. The difference between that incident and this was that this time, a groaning, incoherent load was weighing her down.
Janet had made friends since those lonely, desperate days. Her precious friends had taught her much, and with every passing day, they gradually chipped away the calcified crust that had been her heart. She was sure as hell not going to leave behind her only agemate among them to be made the mind slave of a sadistic fungus.
The problem was that Aurelia was not in the best of states. She possessed neither the shadow mana nor the hellfire to scour away the nethergill spores that were addling her brain and inflicting deleterious status effects upon her mind. Janet could only wish that no permanent damage was done.
With that thought, Janet squeezed even more out of her waning stamina for another burst of speed. So long as she made it close enough to camp that Sylthis and Darius could make it to her and administer treatment, Aurelia would be fine.
“Hey, I told you to watch it!”
It seemed that the Nethergill was not happy with her pulling away from its minions. In typical fashion, it had influenced Aurelia to dig claws of metal into her back. By the vehemence of her attack and the violence with which she clawed her skin apart, it was almost as though Aurelia was trying to rip out her spine!
With no other choice, Janet allowed her regeneration to kick in. It was a bit difficult to direct the healing process while running, but that might just have been the nethergill’s intention. One part of her mind kept an eye out for obstacles in her crooked path through the trees, bushes, and grasses, while another made sure the regeneration did not consume all her reserves of energy.
There would be a fight at the end of the chase, whether she made it to her teachers or not. Janet needed to be fit enough so she could reap some levels from the incoming horde.
And the souls! Oh, she couldn’t wait until the locusts began to drop like flies so she could feast upon their gathered essence. It had not been very long since she last gorged herself following the incident at the Lothrian Gorge, but any opportunity to harvest hundreds of souls demanded that she exploit it to the fullest.
“Hey!” she shouted as Aurelia attempted once more to cripple her permanently. Perhaps the nethergill was attempting to have her friend deliver its spores right into her central nervous system. Either conclusion spelled doom for her, so she decided to take precautionary measures.
With a distinctly annoyed huff, she decided to trade some of her anemic reserves of mana for peace of mind. She did not stop for even a second, but her shadow rose from the ground after an infusion of mana, rolled itself into a sturdy rope, and bound Aurelia’s hands together.
As another possibility occurred to her, she bound Aurelia’s mouth as well. She was acting more like a feral beast lashing out indiscriminately than the austere mage she was, and Janet did not fancy having a bite taken out of her.
“In the name of Gaia,” she wiped away a bead of sweat from her brow. “Where the hell are Darius and Sylthis?” She had already been running at full tilt for 45 minutes.
To her front was more jungle, replete with trees that she had to weave around and dangerous beasts she had to avoid at all costs. A fight would allow the locusts to gain ground, which was the last thing she wanted.
Towards her back, a certain droning produced by thousands of constant wingbeats was growing louder by the second. The locusts did not need to navigate through any obstacles, and the wind seemed to be blowing in their favor. Despite her wishes and efforts, it looked like a fight was inevitable.
Yet her Mentor and Senior Sister were nowhere to be seen.
‘Sylthis should have been watching,’ she lamented. ‘she’s always watching!’
With the Slayers’ might, they should already have intercepted her harried flight if they had begun flying in her direction after she identified the nethergill and took to her heels to avoid a certain and painful death.
"Please, Gaia," she prayed under her breath. “Please erase Sylthis’ anger at my antics of late so she rushes to come and save me.”
With regret, she recalled how annoyed the Cyclopean’s had gotten during the demon incident. She could now see how it had been reckless of her to consume demonic flame into herself with zero consideration for her safety. Then, her unleashing what was essentially a bomb while trapped underground had roused even more consternation in the motherly woman’s heart.
Not for the first time, Janet prayed that her Senior Sister was not the kind to hold a grudge. There was a particular ruthlessness that was required for anyone whose job it was to put down threats to the Sphere, and Janet's heart shuddered at the thought of Sylthis looking at her not with kindness, but with emotionless eyes driven by mechanical efficiency.
With the hope of rescue fast dwindling from a raging fire into mere embers, Janet was forced to consider that she would have to fight the locusts on her own.
In the close-to-an-hour chase, she had kept her eyes peeled for beasts. Any blur appearing in her path was hit with a quick [Appraisal], just to make sure it was a threat she needed to evade. Sometimes beasts that could be blown apart with a sneeze came in elephantine proportions, and the reverse remained true. Just as a nethergill mushroom was barely ten centimeters off the ground, certain miniature beings could seriously ruin one’s day.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Basically, as long as her [Appraisal] returned a line that mentioned danger, Janet chose to evade. That strategy had worked well so far, but it seemed like her luck had run out.
Beside the vegetation drifting past, a gigantic blob of mottled dark brown appeared in her field of vision. [Appraisal] returned the results:
Boscage Buffalo - LV 17
Boscage Buffalo - LV 19
Boscage Buffalo - LV 11
Boscage Buffalo - LV 24
Everyone knew that solitary buffalo attacked like cornered boars, while a herd remained non-violent until provoked. That was unless there was a newborn in the herd. Then, every single member became a surrogate parent that lashed out at any potential sources of danger.
So, when Janet saw the result that read: Juvenile Boscage Buffalo - LV 2, her heart began to thunder. Behind her, canopies were dancing like ribbons on a stormy day as the swarm of locusts flew past. The sound was deafening. The swarm had drawn that close.
Ahead of her was a herd of hulking beasts that would do everything in their power to keep the newest member of their herd safe. There was no feasible way to get through the clearing unscathed.
With a sigh of frustration, and with her heart pounding with anger and panic, she turned to the left and navigated around the threat. That added more than 500 meters to her jaunt home, with the added vigilance required to ascertain that no lone buffalo were tailing the herd slowing down her escape even more.
At the end of the nerve-wracking ordeal, Janet found herself in a lone clearing populated only by tall, unyielding trees and grass that came up to the halfway point of her shins. Some of the trees were laden with fruit, and if she could have spared the mana, she would have loved nothing more than to extend some shadow constructs up their trunks to take possession of the bounty.
The thundering buzz of an incoming swarm stilled her greed. She was low on MP and stamina, and her endurance had been stretched to striking distance of its limit. She would need everything that remained for the fight to come.
As the first of the green pests flew into her sight, Janet sighed in defeat. According to [Novice Cartographer], she was still at least fifteen kilometers away from camp. She wondered whether it would have helped to sic the frenzied insects on the buffaloes to buy herself more time, but that might just have riled the earth-affinity buffaloes into attacking everything in their sight.
“It looks like we’ll have to see this through ourselves, Aura,” she spoke gently to her friend as she hoisted her off her shoulders and laid her in the shadow of a tree. The motion seemed to reinvigorate Aurelia’s struggle to free herself and claw Janet’s face to ribbons.
Futile lunges forward were arrested by thick bands of inelastic shadow which quickly formed into a restraining cocoon that left only her head free to snap futilely at the air.
The empty look in her eyes, exhausted and deadened yet somehow full of violence, almost convinced Janet to knock her friend out. The only snag in that plan was that there was no telling how blunt trauma compounded upon the status effects inflicted by the nethergill would affect Aurelia’s brain in the long term.
A quick look in the direction she’d come from showed that the sky was quickly getting obscured by a living, churning cloud. The time for action was upon her.
For emergencies, and her situation very much fit the bill, Sylthis had prepared a kit with which to improve her chances of survival. Healing potions, mana potions, generous amounts of food, medical supplies, hygiene products...
For the fight ahead, she needed to be at full tank. Without hesitation, Janet retrieved two mana potions that could restore 500 mp each and downed one of them.
As the pure, affinity-less mana cursed through her system like a flood, Janet activated the two Skills she knew would be instrumental to keeping herself and Aurelia alive.
[Construct Zone - Shadow] roared to life. The additional mana from the potion coursed into her shadow and flowed into all the shadows in the clearing, driving them up into an uncontrolled frenzy. Constructs of every shape and size began to whip out against the nearby space.
Before too much damage could occur, Janet activated [Shadow Authority]. The thousands of shadow constructs instantly came under her command, with the Class Skill helping to ease the burden that such an effort exerted upon her mind.
Immediately, the entire clearing, along with a bit of the area covered by the fruit trees beyond, became crystal clear in her mind. A mental image, like a three-dimensional map drawn in shades of well... shade, resolved itself in her mind. All the blades of grass, every leaf, every insect, and fleeing bird was just one mental command out of reach.
With just a mental command, she could easily have leveled everything. That would be the fate of the incoming swarm.
With the entire battlefield squarely under her control, Janet proceeded to other preparations. She downed a health potion and instantly felt better as the HP she had destroyed with demonic flame was restored. It was a shame, though, that the potion did nothing to restore the soul matter she’d spent to heal the injuries Aurelia had inflicted.
“It’s no big deal,” she whispered to herself as she unlatched her dagger. “The locusts all have souls. It’s not that big a loss."
Mature Woodland Locust - LV 22 (Frenzied)
“Second Circle, then,” she sighed. It did not look like the battle would be easy.
The locust did not hesitate to drop from canopy height, its clacking mandibles poised to scythe her head off. Luckily, it was one of the unevolved, green-tinged adults.
When it got in range, Janet gathered a fraction of a point of shadow mana in her palm and waited for the short instant it took for ambient mana to rush in and fill up the shadow bolt. She activated [Empowered Shadow Bolt] just as the bolt left her palm, injecting the bolt with the runes that would amplify its final explosion.
With a broad smile, Janet watched as the locust’s wings were shredded into ribbons by rampaging shadow mana. Its flight turned into an uncontrolled spiral, with the locust flailing about in a panic.
Janet’s eyes harbored no mercy for the helpless creature. Sharp, needle-thin constructs made of hyper-compressed shadow coalesced from the shadows under the grass, greeting the locust’s underside at the end of its gravity-aided journey.
Ding!
Your party has slain Mature Woodland Locust - LV 22
You have gained experience
Janet quickly used her control over the area’s mana to store the locust corpse that was perforated in 100 different places into her runic tattoo. The locust itself was useless, but she needed the battlefield to remain obstacle-free so her constructs could remain unencumbered.
It was also a resource-efficient way to ascertain that a creature was indeed dead. Unless specially constructed, spatial storages could not admit beings with an active soul inside them.
She also couldn’t tell whether the nethergill mycelium could control corpses as some varieties of fungi were known to do. For safety’s sake, every kill needed to be eliminated from the battlefield.
Another two locusts attacked, and with decisive attacks, they too found their way into her storage. Janet also made sure to put the only useful parts of them, their souls, to good use.
The souls were the same tiny size she expected from swarm insects, but fortunately, there were hundreds more locusts heading her way to donate themselves to her voracious maw of a soul.
As more and more kill notifications rang inside her brain, all her apprehension disappeared. In its place, lust for battle shone through, powered by her everlasting hunger for souls and unbridled rage towards the trio of the precocious nethergill mycelium, her absentee caretakers, and the blockhead locusts that had allowed themselves to be treated like mental sock puppets by what was essentially a food item.
Despite the odds, Janet found herself looking forward to outlasting the horde of airborne pests. She had a lot of anger that needed purging.