Locust Slayer – A Title in the Bane Series. Upgradeable.

You have slain 1,000 locusts, at least 100 of them in one hit. In the process, you have developed a surefire method to bring about their demise.

Every attack against locusts will deal 5% more damage.

An aura of danger emanates from you, directed at locusts. They will instinctively avoid your presence.

Janet loved the sound of that. She really liked the idea of locusts giving her a wide berth.

The beasts were mindless. Literally. Their Intelligence was nearly non-existent, so they attacked anything that felt like food. Their food-radar was also so fine-tuned, they could track a fresh sprouting of mana grass hundreds of miles away.

And as a fount of Experience herself – the very substance that stimulated growth of the soul, beasts without any sense of self-preservation tended to see her as irresistible treasure.

Any being that had a shred of intelligence knew that the energies they sensed within her were obtained through combat, so they kept their distance. Not so for intelligence-deprived swarm creatures like locusts.

“Perhaps I should collect more of these Bane Titles,” she mused out loud while sharing the Title’s description with Aurelia.

The other girl read the text, surveyed the field where green hemolymph was still seeping into the ground, then she threw an aggrieved stare at Janet. “This is so unfair. Where is my Title?”

“I’ve been routinely killing locusts for months now, you know?” Janet explained the difference between the two of them. “This swarm barely makes up half of all the damn insects that have accosted me for no reason. If anything, I deserve an even better Title based on the fact that I’ve suffered more harassment at their hands.”

“I guess you’re right,” Aurelia sulked. “But just you wait. The next Bane-series Title will be mine.”

Ignoring the naked ambition in Aurelia’s eyes, as well as the milling crowd of locusts above them that seemed not to understand that they were in the middle of a battle, Janet’s mind jumped to a certain question.

“By the way, Aura, what would one need to do if they wanted to acquire something like a [Bane of Humanity] Title?” If the result was the beings listed there avoiding her like the plague, it looked like a worthwhile avenue to look into.

Rather than give an answer, Aurelia threw her a side-eye filled with suspicion and just a tinge of fear. “Why would you ever ask that?”

“It’s just a hypothetical.”

“Why would you want the Title anyway?” she continued. “Such Titles always get flagged by the Almanac, so anyone that even gets close to the requirements gets a bounty placed on their head.”

That explanation sounded familiar. A worldwide bounty picked up by the churches and the Guilds…

“Has anyone ever gained the Title?”

Aurelia did not need to think, as though the answer was right at her fingertips. “A man nicknamed ‘The Demon’ did it about 800 years ago. He slaughtered an entire empire, supposedly to root out an unseen threat to the Sphere.”

“An entire empire?” had her dead and hopefully completely extinguished soul-stealer of a sire been that productive? How had they managed to put him down if he carried that much soul power with him?

“Yeah.” Aurelia shuddered; the thought of the ancient slaughter too horrid for her imagination. “Way, way back when Norim was united under a central power.”

“I thought it was under a central power now.” she asked, alluding to Lord Amurag and his continental council.

According to what Aurelia had read from some classified documents that her parents poorly hidden, Amurag had only united a fraction of Norim nobles under his banner. The nobles in question belonged to families that had historically risen to power in the vacuum left by the empire.

It was the reason why in an effort to solidify his power, the Continental Lord was always scouring his dominion for talented individuals to take under his banner.

Ironically, that persistence in solidifying his power base had led to a meteoric rise of the once fallen continent since the people at the top were actually there by virtue of merit. While most powerful but archaic Sects and Societies in the wider world were gradually decaying, Norim was on an upward trajectory.

“You should take a look at this.”

“No wonder the stupid Quest has nobility as a reward. He’s trying to separate the chaff from the crop, isn’t he?”

“Janet, pay attention! The locusts are up to something.”

“Huh…” she looked up, and immediately began cycling her mana in a desperate furor. She’d seen the patterns of mana before, right before a certain ant-filled canyon was blown into the sky. She was not keen on dying again.

“Quickly use [Construct Zone] to enclose us in a barrier,” she directed Aurelia as she worked as fast as she could to do the same. “Make it as thick as you can.”

The fervor in her voice convinced Aurelia of her seriousness. Without asking for more clarification, she drew all the mana from her core, fed it into the Skill template, then directed the produced tendrils to merge into a dome that separated them from the air.

“Do the ground as well. And eliminate any gaps in the barrier.”

“What?” Aurelia turned to look at her in confusion.

“The spores. They’re microscopic, remember?”

Like she’d heard the reading of her notice of execution, Aurelia’s face paled. She hurried to extract even more mana out of her core. In three more seconds, the floor they were standing on was covered by a flat, airtight sheet of glistening metal.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

A metal that would turn into a bomb if either of them developed a sweat or a sudden sneeze, Janet had realized.

Before any such eventuality came to pass, she lined the barrier both outside and inside with a double film of shadow that she compressed to be as thin and as impermeable as possible.

Then, the ground began to tremble as hundreds of Third Circle-adjacent beasts detonated their cores. Using [Mana Sight], Janet noted a nimbus of black powder drifting onto the trees, the grass, and even the shadow barrier she’d erected.

“This doesn’t make sense,” Aurelia gazed at the same scene with her brow furrowed. “Why would the nethergill dispose of its main assets?”

Janet dropped her [Mana Sight]. She allowed her awareness to withdraw from her immediate surroundings until its coverage was a pinprick in her brain. Then, she expanded it to suffuse her entire soul.

As she suspected, every single soul was gone. The locusts had not just detonated their cores. Their souls were gone too, dispersed in the moment of their death.

Oddly enough, she noted tiny glowing flecks of soul matter drifting together with the spores, providing a tiny energy boost at the moment of germination before the fungus could draw upon the ambient mana.

“What in Gaia’s name is going on?” she exclaimed while explaining the situation to Aura.

“Instant germination?”

“Yeah, and since we’ve been spewing mana all over the place for two hours on end, the clearing is full of the stuff. I think we’ll have a full-fledged mycelial mat in minutes.”

“Can’t we burn it out?”

“You mean burn it with fire spells?” Aurelia nodded absentmindedly. Her senses were glued to the horror show outside. “Fire spells that use mana?”

As the reality of their predicament dawned on her, Aurelia fell into deep thought. She began to massage her forehead.

The two of them were mages, and their most potent weapon – their only weapon in this case – had been very effectively neutralized.

Yes, they could burn the developing mat of fungus or slice it apart with wind blades to create a path of escape, but any option they could think of involved mana. They would only fertilize the nethergill if they went that route.

To distract herself from the cruel reality, Janet activated her [Mana Sight] and gazed outside. In the soup of varied mana affinities they’d strewn all over the clearing, spores were bursting apart, then dark, hair-thin roots emerged that stuck to the first surface they encountered.

Whether that be tree bark, a leaf, the discarded locust carapaces, blades of grass, the ground, even the fruits Janet had been saving for after the fight was done. A hair-like carpet of black fluff was burrowing into every surface at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Nethergill Mycelium – Extremely Dangerous

At least the System was spot-on on that front.

“We can’t just sit around and do nothing,” Aurelia said as she brushed strands of hair from her shoulder. She was done ruminating.

“What do you suggest?”

“Let’s throw everything we have at the nethergill. Skills, spells, potions, anything we got.”

Janet really wanted to be that proactive, but all the aforementioned contained mana. They would only feed into the fire and dig deeper into the hole they’d been forced into.

“Your shadow!” Aurelia pointed out in that naïve optimism Janet admired so much. “It’s antagonistic to life, so it should kill the fungus, right?”

She shook her head, but Aurelia continued. “But you already proved that it can kill the spores when you eroded its hold on my mind!”

Eroded was the operative word. That solution took time, and these spores were different. That all were supercharged with soul matter.

In lieu of a reply, she simply pointed to the barrier keeping them from becoming one with the nethergill, directing Aurelia’s [Mana Sense] to the outside layer.

“I’m having to replace the shadow every few seconds. As long as it’s made of mana, the nethergill can burrow into it and feed…” her hair whipped onto her face as she turned to look at her friend with starlight in her eyes.

“You’re the answer!” she shouted and grabbed her shoulders with a bit too much force, making her shrink back in pain.

She still had not registered the possibility, going from her uncomprehending look.

“My shadow’s getting eaten by the spores,” she pointed out sadly. “But even if it had a million years, mycelial threads could never burrow into a metal!”

Simple logic dictated that something had to be really hard to pierce into metal. And fortunately, the soft, mushy mushroom was simply too delicate.

To test her hypothesis, Janet allowed a tiny section of her barrier to dissipate. Spores landed there in droves, before bursting apart and spreading thin fibers to try and get a holdfast.

“What are you… oh!” Aurelia’s eyes found the site of her experiment. “Ooh!”

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“A rolling ball.” She proposed while her lips morphed into a broad, wide-toothed grin.

“I was thinking more along the lines of a vessel constructed from your metal, carried upon rollers of shadow and pulled away from this nightmare by retracting constructs attached to the trees.”

Aurelia was very keen on rolling inside a ball of explosive metal, so Janet had to reason with her with growing frustration. Wasn’t she meant to be the reckless one?

A long discussion ensued, in which they accounted for every variable and point of failure in their plan.

Their plan of survival hinged upon Aurelia’s metal. At the same time the ground, trees, and even the air were all moist in places. A single drop would see them pulverized into powder by the object of their salvation.

To combat this, they decided to create a box out of earth, rolling by on wheels of compressed stone. The layer of earth would shield the metal layer below from any water or stray cinders, sparks or droplets.

Beneath the earth would be a layer of shadow. While the fungi could eat through it, it was a slow enough process that Janet could easily keep it under control. From the shadow, she would extend rope constructs to pull the vehicle along.

Under the shadow would be metal, and under that yet another layer of shadow, this one thicker and better padded since the trip would be very bumpy. Aurelia was the only one who could cast earth magic, and her constructs never really came out completely circular.

Some fifteen kilometers away, a one-eyed woman standing over a lit stove began to guffaw. The nauseous expressions as the girls drove their makeshift carriage around boulders and trees brought a tear to her eye.

She had been in many a fight, but she’d never seen such a creative use of construct magic. True outside-the-box thinking.

A mere hour ago she’d been mad at Darius for stalling their mission. She had been too starved for excitement and adrenaline.

Now, she was glad that the delay had brought about such an amusing sight.

Looking at her Mentor, she almost dropped the stirring spoon. That impromptu locust massacre had provided enough XP to almost finish his infernal formation. It looked like their jungle-trotting troupe would soon be proceeding to more exciting exploits.

Sylthis couldn’t help but wonder; had the events of the day really been a coincidence? Darius had implied that he needed the cooperation between the two teenagers to deepen, and the challenge had been just the right fit to drive the girls’ relationship in that direction.

Not too much threat of death, but enough to force them to use most of their Skills in tandem.

It had also reawakened Aurelia’s desire to explore her seemingly dangerous [Talent]. In the incident, the two inadvertently exterminated dozens of hog families including their young. Not to mention their unintentional decimation of an ecosystem due to the sealing properties inherent to Aurelia’s magic.

It had been an understandable shame to see her cower from her power, but the silly smile she wore as she directed Janet’s driving efforts revealed that she was beginning to accept her remarkable magic as a part of herself.

Another source of her suspicion was all the incongruencies in the fight. Nethergills were sentient, but their intelligence was only at the level of a child. They threw tantrums when threatened and gorged themselves when food was abundant, but puppeteering beasts in waves and causing spontaneous evolution in a species? That was unheard of.

Not to mention, locusts could spit acid. They also possessed rudimentary wind magic that activated when they gathered in swarms. None of that had been utilized in the fight. Almost as though the nethergill had never intended the girls much harm, but instead was intent on pushing their limits as far as possible.

Still, suspicions were just that. Suspicions. And the girls had come out better for the experience, so she dropped the issue and returned to her cooking.

‘Nethergill mushrooms, huh… the mycelium will be fruiting soon.’ She’d once learnt a recipe from a shamanistic tribe that was said to bring enlightenment and communion with the mystical.

Her smile turned wicked. She couldn’t wait to see what the girls would do once they were baked out of their minds.