Mila
Entering into the Kimali Mountains on the Carium Galaxy Cluster’s capital planet, Mila realized two things. First, she shouldn’t have asked to go alone just because the mountains only had monsters up to D rank and she wanted to use her full skills. Second, she shouldn’t have thought, just because she was deep into the Territory of the Violet Mountain Sect, that she would be safe from cultivators.
Two D ranks had followed her ever since she left the Violet Mountain Blessed Land, one human female and one human male, but there had been many other cultivators heading in the same direction as well, so she hadn’t thought anything of it. There were even five other D ranks heading to the Kimali Mountains, as it was a great place to find natural resources.
These two, however, it was quickly obvious were directly following her and, given the way they were moving, it wasn’t to ask her a question.
“Isaiah,” she immediately sent, “get Epecteos and head to Toril with him. It’s unlikely, but I might need his help to run away from the Violet Mountain Sect.”
Isaiah and Epecteos had a telepathic bond when they were on the same planet due to their master apprentice relationship, and Mila could telepathically talk to Isaiah due to his Servant Knight skill, so sending Isaiah with Epecteos was the best way she could quickly talk to Epecteos if she needed to.
Running away from the Violet Mountain Sect, however, was an act of last resort, so Mila first tried something else which was only a bit dangerous. She used the power of her healing skill to stop her own heart for a second and then to heal herself back up. And, over the next few minutes, as she headed deeper and deeper into the mountains, she did this quite a few times.
Morse code wasn’t a thing in the wider universe, but there were other similar codes, and Mila had repeated the code for ‘someone is hunting me with the intent of taking my life’ three times with her own vitals.
Given the Violet Mountain Mark on her right arm, which monitored her health at all times while she was within the Carium Galaxy Cluster, her message would have definitely been sent to the Violet Mountain Sect, so it was likely someone would come and save her. But, if not, she’d have to reveal some of her power and run away on her own.
From the skills she could see the two following her use through her Sensory Domain skill, she was pretty sure they were assassins and, given they were following her, she was almost certainly their target.
They were using stealth skills from almost a kilometer away, however, so they didn’t think she’d spotted them. And they were likely wary of what would happen after they killed her, so they were perfectly fine with waiting for her to move deeper and deeper into the mountains, which allowed her to buy time.
With Sensory Domain, she could also see in front of her as well, which could have allowed her to move through the mountains without any fear, but she didn’t speed up. What she did do, however, was try to determine what detection skills the two had.
Only one of them seemed to be tracking her, the female, and she seemed to be following her movements with her eyes, which meant her detection skill was likely vision based. But it couldn’t be a pure vision skill, as the mountains were forested and there was no direct line of sight.
The male she could quickly determine had a hearing based detection skill as he tilted his head every so often and reacted to the sounds in his environment yet not other factors, but it took her more observation to figure out the woman’s skill.
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Still, it wasn’t that difficult. For a few seconds, Mila thought it might be a weaker grade version of her old Life Death Detection skill, but then she quickly threw that idea away as her stopping and starting her heart would have been detected if that were the case.
With that line of skills eliminated, however, the woman’s actions only made sense if she had an X-ray vision type of skill, and that type of skill could easily be beaten by stealth.
This meant Mila could escape from the pair at any time she wanted, and that allowed her to relax.
Best case scenario, the Violet Mountain Sect sent someone to save her. Second best case, she entered into one of the mountain range’s cave systems and used stealth to lose the two assassins inside.
Unless something went very, very wrong, she wouldn’t need to summon Epecteos to the Violet Mountain Sect’s capital planet.
About three minutes of traveling later, Mila’s Sensory Domain picked up a five man squad of D rank core disciples of the Violet Mountain Sect approaching at rapid speed, a group which would almost never be found in the Kimali Mountains. And their group found the two assassins before the assassins noticed them. So, as one of the group broke off from the other four and headed toward her, the remaining four confronted the two D ranks who’d been hunting her.
But they weren’t quick enough, and it seemed the assassins were under contract magic with some very, very strict conditions, so, before the Violet Mountain Sect members could even ask a question, the souls of both assassins began to burn and, within the next two seconds, they were dead.
“Sarra, are you okay?” The D rank who came up to her was Farrah Fillior, a human healer and one of her teachers in the Violet Mountain Sect.
“I’m fine.” Mila stopped when Farrah appeared and took several deep breaths, allowing the tension she’d been feeling to leave her body. “Thanks to your teachings, stopping my heart a few times is nothing.”
A few minutes later, the four other D ranks arrived, one of the warriors carrying the bodies of the two assassins, and the leader, a human male and one of the most powerful D rank mages of the Violet Mountain Sect, asked, “Is Sarra okay?”
“She’s fine.” Farrah smiled at him. “She’s my star pupil after all.
“Who was after her?”
The man, whose name was Xander Rogar, frowned. “All signs point to the Guild of Blood. It seems someone has put a hit out on our little talent.”
“A hit?” Mila was incredulous. She’d barely done anything at the Violet Mountain Sect. Why would someone want to kill her?
But then she remembered she’d recently learned Orianthi Hewin had broken through to D rank, so it made a lot more sense.
She wasn’t going to suggest Orianthi herself, however, as that would get needlessly political, but if she was already being targeted it was about time to try and find a way to leave the sect.
“Who would want to kill me?”
“Not sure?” Xander looked at her a little more closely. “Do you have any enemies?”
“Everyone I knew died and then I was trapped on a monster world for a few years before being rescued by my ancestor and joining the sect. Not to mention no one I knew before I joined the sect had anywhere near enough wealth to hire D ranks, let alone from an assassin organization.”
“How did you spot the assassins, by the way?” asked one of the other members of her rescuing group, a half jinn warrior. “They were about a kilometer away from you and under stealth.”
“I’ve been training my hearing in the War of the Chosen.” Mila had already come up with her lie. “And I’m good at concentrating. They didn’t fully block the sound of their footsteps after we entered the mountains and I’d heard the same footsteps since leaving the sect. I wasn’t absolutely sure they were following me, but it was a possibility and I was pretty sure they were D ranks, so I decided to send a distress signal just to be safe.”
“Good judgement, Sarra.” Farrah patted her on the back. “You would have been dead if you hadn’t.”
“Yeah.” All the others nodded.
“So, what would you like to do, Sarra?” Xander asked for the group. “You’re a valuable talent of the sect, so the five of us would be willing to help guard you as you work to level up. But the training would likely be worse with us around, as the sense of danger would be gone.
“Would you like us to guard you or would you prefer us to bring you back to the sect?”
Mila thought about it for a few seconds, and she was about to ask for them to guide her back to the sect, but then she received a message from Isaiah and she realized that would be a very, very bad idea.
“I need to level up quickly to help with the War of the Chosen. Would a few of you mind guarding me? I doubt I would need all five.”
Internally, however, she was starting to think about how to flee the Violet Mountain Sect altogether, as, given what Isaiah was sending her, it seemed everything to do with her relationship with the Violet Mountain Sect was about to start falling apart.