The former Dead Zone was now populated by pretty, exotic-looking plants that rarely got a chance to grow in the Havenhurst due to their high requirements for mana. Janet, the area’s owner in every way that mattered, had decided that she needed her first-ever domicile to be pretty, above all else.
To prevent greedy Adventurers from making it a stop on their resource collection journeys, she had decided to let only the most extravagantly wasteful plants grow there. No, not herbs or fruits, or medicinal grass. Nothing that anyone but herself would ever consider valuable.
Pretty flowers that absorbed copious amounts of fire mana and released a sickeningly sweet perfume grew in abundance, their red blooms marking the area with their vivid colors. There also were grasses that grew into a soft bed, short trees with perfectly spherical canopies that glowed softly in moonlight, and special shrubs that attracted fireflies and other light-emitting creatures during the night.
When asked why she had not allowed any herbs to proliferate, knowing well that the conditions there were ideal for them to thrive, Janet had simply stated that the Havenhurst in its vastness held all those riches and more in excess. Her mind carried an accessible map to all those resources and retrieving them was not too much of a bother.
What she needed for the only piece of land she called her own was not decadent wealth that all and sundry would want to fight over. Rather, her wish was for a comfortable place, a piece of tranquility amidst the violence and chaos of the jungle and the wider world beyond.
Nobody had found fault with her logic. They even assisted in arranging the vegetation in a way that enhanced the aesthetic effects of the nightly glow.
During the day, the campers no longer needed stools to sit on. The grass was soft and inviting, and the whole place smelled like a high-quality meditation chamber.
"How are the kids?” Darius asked as he fiddled with a spell structure so complex, Sylthis felt an ache in the back of her eyes from just a glance. Both were sitting cross-legged upon the soft, deep green grass, and a second look would reveal that both were barefoot.
“Janet just took a stand against the locusts,” Sylthis reported, then supplied more mana to her eye so she could pick up more details. “She was forced to restrain Aurelia in one of her cocoons.”
“Are you completely certain you don’t want to help?”
“It’s just some locusts,” she replied, dismissal clear in her voice. It also might have carried an involuntary note of laconic disinterest.
“But the locusts are under the control of a nethergill,” Darius cautioned. “You know how unpredictable that mycelium can be.”
“Pshh!” She scoffed. “The one they encountered is barely a decade old. I mean, all it can reliably control is a swarm of mindless locusts. I would have been more concerned if there were some more dangerous beasts among its puppets.”
“It still managed to get into Janet’s mind,” the man in an immaculate teal suit that matched perfectly with the area’s décor pointed out. “And as you said, Aurelia is not in any condition to be picking a fight.”
“She’s just under the effect of the spores’ psychedelic effect. If her Willpower were three points higher, she too would have broken free of the status effect by now.”
Darius did not refute her claim. He did make a point to warn Sylthis to keep an eye on the fight in case the Adventurers that had been lurking about since the demon incident drew close to Janet’s battle, but he was too engrossed in the formation he was setting up to go assist her himself.
“When do you estimate that,” Sylthis asked, her eye pointedly facing away from the glowing cacophony of runic madness, “will be done? Janet still has three elemental [Talents] to assimilate, you know?”
“I know, I know. And our time here is quickly running out.”
“Mm-hmm. So?”
“Three more days at most,” Darius declared after a quick mental calculation. “It might take longer if the girls come back injured, but even that would only add one more night in the worst case.”
Three days was not too bad, Sylthis thought as she allowed herself to sink into the grass carpet.
Janet truly was a genius. All that reading she had done could sometimes prove disadvantageous, but on this occasion her knowledge had been spot on. The plants around the former Dead Zone were impressive when used in the very limited context of landscaping and beautification, but even [Identify] reported them as weeds.
[Redbloom Marigold] - this weed has been noted to monopolize all the fire-affinity mana in its vicinity. Although the plant requires abundant mana in its growth, it has no alchemical uses. Due to this quality, its presence is harmful to other useful plants, and it is advised that this plant be destroyed on sight.
Janet had taught her the plant’s only use: it could be used to perfume bathwater, the high concentrations of fire mana absorbed into its structure helping it endure the high temperatures that practitioners of her power needed to relax and unwind.
“Oh, a Gold-specked Locust just showed up.”
“Hmm,” Darius simply hummed in assent, his mind completely engrossed in the dumb teleport beacon.
Sylthis was still a little angry that Janet’s growth was being put on ice by that onerous formation. She even suspected that the reason Janet’s acquired fire-affinity [Talent] had yet to settle into a final rarity was due to the effect of the formation, but that did not even come close to her biggest problem with it.
Janet would not be leaving Norim any time soon. Amurag would never allow the prodigy he’d stuck his neck out to induct into his Guild to be whisked away without a fight.
There was also the little matter of the region’s anemic concentrations of mana. If she remembered the final conversation between Sylvia and Darius, the two had decided that if and when the opportunity presented itself, the beacon would be tied to Janet’s soul, rather than her core.
That way, it would grow more powerful as she did, its range burgeoning with every Circle she overcame. Also, since Janet’s core transformed with every [Talent], Affinity, and Mystery that she subsumed into her soul, only tying it to her immutable soul would guarantee it was permanently bound to her.
On the surface, it was a prudent choice. Digging even an inch deeper, however, a question arose: if the formation was tied to Janet’s soul, was being constructed in what was essentially a mana desert, and was constructed in such a way that it would grow in tune with Janet’s development... from what bottomless source would it be drawing the energy to do all that?
Not willing to question her and Janet’s mentor, Sylthis swallowed her frustration and returned her focus to Janet’s fight. Her Junior Sister had just taken apart four more green locusts that had tried to butt in during her fight.
As for the gold-specked individual, it was fruitlessly thrashing away at its fetters. Janet had already shredded its wings into confetti and was now slowly sawing off its appendages.
‘Good,’ she thought. ‘If it’s too much work to penetrate its armor, the best course of action is to turn it into a limbless, wingless lump of flesh that no longer poses a threat.’
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As Janet was hobbling the bigger threat, her bolts and constructs were easily dismantling the rest of the swarm. Following a stray thought, Sylthis decided to [Appraise] her.
[???] - (LV 17) Wayfarer,
‘No levels gained, again.’
If any other First Circle slaughtered as many Second Circle locusts, they would have pushed past their level cap and earned themselves some ridiculously powerful Title seen just once every century. Hell, even Aurelia had gained a level from the ordeal, and she couldn’t have been more useless in the fight if she had been a paperweight!
Sylthis sighed and shook her head, her face marked by both annoyance and concern. Her eye inadvertently drifted towards the sphere of runes Darius was poring over. If she strained her [Mana Sight], she could make out an amorphous torrent of energy, its colors shifting between red, black and gold, pouring ceaselessly into the formation.
‘I can’t wait for all this to be over,’ she thought ruefully as she allowed herself to be lulled back to serenity by the ambiance of Janet’s domain. She kept her magical sight on the fight but allowed her real eyelid to droop over and close as the soft grass pleasantly cushioned her back.
'Janet’s got this in the bag,’ she assured herself.
A quick peek at the sun revealed that afternoon was fast approaching. ‘Should I get started on lunch?’
===
The barrage was endless.
Ding!
Your party has slain [Mature Woodland Locust] – LV 24
You have gained experience
The notification was quickly pushed to the back of her brain. The unrelenting assault by the locusts allowing little room for any pauses.
Ding!
Your party has slain [Mature Woodland Locust] – LV 22
Your party has slain [Mature Woodland Locust] – LV 17
…
…
Your party has slain [Mature Woodland Locust] – LV 8
Your party has slain [Mature Woodland Locust] – LV 11
A locust flew directly at her, its mandibles twitching with unrestrained violence and unbridled aggression. It met a similar fate to the dozens of its fellow swarm-buddies. A shredding bolt took care of its wings, and tiny, needle-sharp spikes took care of the rest. Before the notification arrived with the annoying chime, she’d already shifted her attention to the next two comers.
Then, three more needed to be taken care of. After that, six additional assailants took the field, followed closely by two more. All were met with the same conclusion, at the business end of tens of shadow constructs honed into thin, sturdy spikes.
‘Just how expansive is the space within my tattoo?’ She found herself questioning Gaia’s gift as what must have been the fiftieth beast was easily stuffed into the spatial apparatus, with zero sense of strain from her end.
The thing was miraculous. Not only did it require very little mana to store and retrieve items, but the feedback was also instantaneous. As long as something was in contact with her mana, storing it only took a mental command. The same also worked for retrieval, and Janet was beginning to wonder whether it wouldn’t be a good idea to deliver explosives at range through her constructs…
How glorious such a sight would be, assailants running around like headless chickens, afraid of what horrors might emerge from their own shadows.
Anyway, fanciful thinking was not among her biggest priorities at the moment. The swarm was relentless, and a moment’s distraction would see her and Aura facing horrible outcomes.
The slightly manic grin on her face narrowing then disappearing, Janet retained a calm and pointedly disciplined control over her palms as they aimed and targeted the flying rats with exploding bolts. As for her mind, it creaked under the strain of keeping the clearing under the absolute control of her shadow constructs.
The other facet of the battle was of course her soul. As the locusts rushed headlong towards their demise, that innermost part of her reveled in voracious industry. She made no mistake; the locusts’ souls were tiny and barely worth the effort it took to gobble them down. However, there were hundreds, if not thousands of them.
Digested, usable soul matter – she still had not decided on a better name for it – accumulated at a snail’s pace, but Janet was well aware that it was going to be a long, long fight.
If her mana reserves dried up, she had mana potions to tide her through the shortages. There were even one or two emergency stamina potions in case her endurance bottomed out.
But those were external resources. Potion intolerance was a real, terrifying phenomenon. With her 300 MP, she could only refresh about 3,000 MP from potions before her core gave out. It would literally collapse from the fatigue of repeated cycles of exhaustion and replenishment, at which point she’d have to wait for days before it recovered back to working order.
The same was true for stamina potions. Abuse of the remarkably pure potions that left almost no impurities in the body would without fail result in total failure to produce any more energy. In short, a collapse of her cells’ capability to generate energy.
Unlike a collapsed core, when the cells eventually gave out, the person would be as good as dead. The brain relied upon energy, after all.
For those two reasons, Janet was being very careful to ration both those resources. Her [Shadow Bolts] mostly consisted of a speck of shadow mana from her core inflated to the brink of explosion by ambient energies, while the mana within the constructs scattered all over her [Construct Zone] functioned more like malleable balloons of mana. Very little was wasted as Janet manipulated their shape and form.
The only concern, then, was her mental resilience. [Shadow Authority] was a great Skill that helped lower the load upon her brain by automating most of [Construct Zone’s] functionality, but still, she needed to juggle Skill activation, enemy detection and tracking, and most crucially, enemy containment and elimination.
Her Willpower was like tempered steel, but a mind could only do so much. Very likely, mental exhaustion would be the deciding factor in the fight’s outcome.
Just as Janet was getting into enough of a rhythm that she could afford a little distraction, a gold-specked locust, the same that Aurelia had identified to be an evolved specimen, came to play. Janet knew very well that if it got within spitting distance, she had no way of dealing with it without trading injuries.
Three shadow bolts left her arms in quick succession, but this locust was nimble enough to evade them.
‘Wait, locusts can maneuver that well during flight?’
The bolts did not go to waste, however. The field was dense with frenzied locusts all trying to get a piece of her. As they exploded, the bolts took with them at least two pairs of wings and helped destabilize the flight of another three locusts.
All five were easily dispatched with needle-thin jabs into their innards through weak points in their armor.
To deal with the evolved specimen, Janet decided to go against logic and get a little wasteful with her resources. Rather than wait for one of her bolts to miraculously find its way to the beast’s wings, she would play dirty. This was life or death, after all.
On the ground, she tracked and found the golden locust’s solitary shadow. A quick activation of [Shadow Bind] linked the shadow to the Construct Zone, giving Janet almost preternatural knowledge of the locust’s every move through [Shadow Authority].
‘That’s another nod for useful Class Skills,’ she celebrated with a slight pump of her fists.
Normally, she would have just funneled her mana through the shadow and into the beast’s system. The slight demonic taint and caustic shadow within it would slowly corrode its internals to a painful, gruesome death. Today, though, she needed to be more conservative.
With better tracking, it only took three more tries to shred the gold-specked locust’s wings apart. It was then that the next problem presented itself. Its carapace was almost thrice as hard as its brethren. Trying to pierce through it would take too much time, and even as she considered her options, four green nuisances were already cutting a beeline through the air toward her.
Snaky shadow constructs disrupted their flight, giving her enough time to shred apart their wings. Hundreds of precise perforations into their soft parts then ended their reign as threats.
Janet naturally made sure to gobble up their souls before clearing their carcasses from the battlefield.
‘There!’ she exclaimed internally as an idea occurred to her. She did not need to directly engage the locust. It was powerful, yes, and within seconds it would have covered the distance between them with its sturdy appendages, but not if those limbs were taken apart.
With a grimace as her head began to throb, Janet sealed the locust’s movements. A dozen loops of rope-like constructs held it in position, then six [Empowered Firebolts] blew off its limbs at the joint. To prevent any surprises like nethergill-aided regeneration, Janet made sure to twist off the charred remains of its limbs so all that was left were poorly cauterized stumps that oozed stinky green blood everywhere.
Threat averted; she left the limbless, wingless, yet impeccably defended lump of the former locust to wriggle futilely on the ground.
Ding!
Proficiency threshold achieved.
[Shadow Authority] has improved to [2/10]
+1 SP
‘At least something resulted from this needless fight.’
The improvement helped alleviate some of the strain on her brain, but she was already operating her mental faculties way too close to their limits. A better tool would not help the exhausted farmer recover from their fatigue.
As such, although the transmission of mental commands was smoother and the constant load of information upon her brain was processed more efficiently, the exhaustion that had already set in just compounded the longer that the battle raged on.
“I sure hope there are no more surprises in this fight,” she sighed.