They were finally nearing the shore. Caeden watched the twenty-foot waves of the Starry Sea crashing into the beach with interest. Before leaving his home, he had never actually seen the sea that surrounded every landmass in existence. He had heard stories, of course. In fact, practically every story he was told as a child featured a description of this strange water and its magical properties.
It was still amazing to see. Watching the seawater cross over the land as the waves made their way to the beach, suddenly losing their stunning vistas of swirling galaxies and sparkling nebula for the appearance of normal water the second they crossed onto land. Apparently, the water also lost all magical properties once it was removed from the sea, not just its mystical appearance. No one knew why or how it all worked. It just did.
"Damn, that's really cool!" Erik was suddenly next to him, leaning far over the banister running around the deck, "I didn't check this out that much the last time we were in the air, but this is pretty neat. Hey!" He turned to look at Caeden, green eyes sparkling with mischief, "Race you to the shore."
With a waggle of his eyebrows, Erik threw himself over the side. They were still over the sea but very close to shore. Erik might have had a hundred yards to swim, an easy distance. The fall wouldn't be a problem either if he properly infused his body.
Caeden cursed. "Damn it, Erik!" He quickly tried to figure out what he could do before his friend managed to get himself killed. Starved for options, Caeden decided to use his most recently gained ability. He manifested Sharp over his left hand, lines of red energy darting into existence and swirling around each other. Folding them together, his shroud sigil appeared, a bloody knife floating in the air over his hand.
Thick bands of shroud, like red streamers the width of his palm, began rolling off his hand, arm, and chest before feeding into his sigil. A second later, the flow ended, and his sigil split into two knives which became four and then eight and so on, until he had a hundred floating around him. At the same time, each one morphed into a different shape; each invariably took the form of a common household tool with some kind of sharp edge.
Not waiting a second, Caeden sent a wood saw and a crowbar flying after Erik. They flew at incredible speed, easily catching up to Erik's falling form. The saw positioned itself under Erik's feet at Caeden's mental instruction while the crowbar hooked its curved end into the sash of his robe before both began to haul the man back up to the ethership.
By the time he got there, Erik had a massive pouting frown on his face. "What gives, man? You didn't have to come, but why'd you ruin my fun."
Caeden flicked Erik right between the eyes, putting a bit of Physical Enhancement shroud into it; his fingers briefly turned gold with purple accents. He wanted to make sure it hurt.
"Ow! What'd I do to deserve that?" Erik rubbed his forehead.
Caeden rolled his eyes. Erik's Stitch shroud had latent healing properties. He was perfectly fine within a second of the blow landing. "Because you almost died, you idiot. You live in enough danger; stop making it worse."
As if summoned by his words, there was a shout from further up the ship, and a large barrel came rolling toward them at speed, bouncing enough that it most likely would have brained Erik in the head if it had landed. Instead, without looking, Strands of white formed between the barrel and the floor as Erik stitched it into place.
"What's this about danger? It's just the sea."
Caeden stared hard at Erik's face, looking for any sign that his friend was messing with him. Eventually, he decided Erik was actually serious. "You really don't read or pay attention at all, do you?"
"Hey! Not true!" Erik protested, still standing on the saw and hooked on a crowbar.
"Anything not fighting or medical-related." Caeden amended.
"Oh! Then yeah, I don't listen to shit." Erik nodded casually.
Caeden withheld the urge to strangle his scrawny neck. "Well, it may interest you to learn that not only does the Starry Sea completely nullify shrouds in all their forms, but it also contains…creatures."
"...Care to clarify that?" Erik looked slightly concerned now.
"Not really. Anything from the land that goes into the sea never makes it out. People, boats, whatever. Some claim they've seen giant creatures in the waters from etherships, but there's never been real proof. If they're real, they only exist where the Starry Sea starts to generate waves, where the landmasses transition from islands to continents. But it's a fact. If you went into that water, you weren't coming out. The waves alone would have smashed you against the shore without access to infusion. An ability you would have when the sea sucked all your shroud out of you." Caeden stared hard at Erik, making sure he got it. For his part, the normally cheerful man was looking very contrite.
"Oh."
"Yeah, oh. Idiot. Stay in the boat from now on."
"Ok."
Caeden finally let Erik down. During the talk, they had made the final stretch to the city they were meant to dock with. Looking over the side of the ship, Caeden wanted to get a view of where they would be landing ahead of time. The view was not at all what he expected.
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The city itself was built into the base of one of the giant mountains that seemed to be the most common landmark on this continent. Caeden could see dozens of tall rocky behemoths just from where they were at the shore. Most likely, the entire landmass was primarily mountainous terrain.
Most of the buildings were made of stone, which made sense for a mining continent. There was very little wood being used as construction material. He would guess most of it went to heating homes and businesses. He had noticed as they entered the continent's atmosphere from the utter neutrality of the air over the Starry Sea that this was a relatively cold continent.
Everything was built of muted grey, but there were flashes of color with accents of beautiful gems and other finery added as accents to some houses. Again this made sense. Caeden assumed the miners must come across metal and gems as often as they did ether, but the shrouded would have no interest in those items. After all, they were things some could make piles of with a wave of their hand. It was only the ether that held shrouded interest. Which meant the unshrouded could do as they pleased with everything else they dug up. Thus it was used to accent homes and even clothing.
No, what surprised him was the people running through the streets being chased by masses of dark scurrying forms. There were people seeking cover everywhere he looked as dark forms swarmed the streets in droves. They appeared to have arrived in the midst of a monster attack. "Shit!"
"LILY, CAT, TROUBLE!!!" Caeden boosted his voice with Physical Enhancement, letting it boom across the entire ship. Erik, who was standing right next to him, briefly had blood leak from his ears before they formshifted to look like bundles of white string in the shape of ears. The bleeding stopped.
Not bothering to wait, Caeden leaped over the side of the ship just as he had instructed Erik not to do moments before. Seeing as his incarnation was still out, Caeden commanded the saw to move under his own feet, taking him in a controlled fall to the ground instead of the explosive landing he would have made just using Physical Enhancement. "Come on!" He shouted behind him, hardly having to wait before Erik followed him down.
Even as he descended, Caeden gave his incarnation, Toolset, a command. 'Kill all the monsters.' Instantly a rain of household objects, from a bread knife to a stapler were flying past him at great speed. The second one encountered a group of the small dark-furred monsters; it would explode into action. The knives cut, the crowbar bashed and stabbed, the stapler shot an endless supply of staples at high speed.
There were one hundred tools exactly in his incarnation, and they spread out throughout the city, wiping out swaths of the tiny monsters with prejudice. The only one not joining in was the saw, still supporting Caeden's fall. Once he touched down at a reasonable speed, that changed. The saw shot off to follow his command, causing carnage along the way.
Caeden had deliberately dropped down near another batch chasing a woman carrying a small baby and pulling a toddler along as fast as she could manage. That wasn't very fast, considering the child's speed. She had only a few moments before the ravenous swarm caught her. Luckily, Caeden was there.
"Speed form." Caeden instantly transitioned using one of his Physical Enhancement mnemonics, the words leaving his mouth along with a puff of golden, purple-tinged smoke. His body rapidly transformed, maintaining the same stature but becoming golden with purple accents as his physique shifted to that of a champion runner from his normal broad-chested, broad-shouldered build.
In the same instant, he drew his shrouded weapon from where it was clipped to his sash. Forged Infinity was a hilt-shaped object with primarily gold coloration. Where Caeden's fingers rested, there were eight purple buttons. In the seams between the buttons were red accents. Clicking one of them, the hilt underwent a rapid transformation, unfolding into a dagger as a dial along the back went from 000 to 003. Another click, and the weapon split in two while the dial changed to 031.
In the next instant Caeden's form was a blur, traveling through the crowd of monsters like they didn't exist, leaving slashed bodies in his wake. Along the way, Caeden's enhanced perception allowed him a moment to observe the monster more closely. He wished he hadn't. They were rats the size of a baby, each looking heavily diseased with open pustules leaking sickly green ooze. Chunks of fur were missing from oily black coats exposing angry red skin.
Reaching out with his aura sense, Caeden assessed the creature. Plague Rats, was the response. Monsters that bred like crazy and were chock full of virulent, magical diseases. Things that died from the diseases they brought nurtured the rats, growing their numbers until they would go into a feeding frenzy, forming obvious swarms like the one Caeden was seeing now.
While horrifying, the information provided no real insight as to an easier method to defeat them. They were fragile things that barely required his attention to slaughter in droves. They were no threat to him at all. They couldn't even hurt him as he was now. In golden body, his skin was its own suit of armor. Their finger-length teeth couldn't even dimple his skin, let alone bite through it.
The same could not be said for the unshrouded.
Caeden breezed past the panicked mother to fast for her to even notice more than a golden blur after he had killed all her pursuers. Stopping briefly at an intersection, he was confronted with a dilemma. Down two of the four streets were more swarms pursuing other victims. Down one, a lone man; down the other, an older couple. Both were very nearly overrun. Caeden, for all his speed, could not be in two places at once. Head to choose.
Or he would have, if not for the backup that arrived at that very moment.
The man was separated from his swarm by a wave of ice that blocked the entire street before sweeping back and covering hundreds of rats in a foot-thick layer of frozen water. The older couple were saved by the sudden appearance of an entire phalanx of ghostly soldiers with wispy white bodies and glowing green, fiery eyes.
The owners of both attacks followed soon after, Lily riding down from above on an icicle shaped like a board, and Cat on the back of a spectral pegasus.
"What's going on? We just got here!" Cat shouted indignantly.
"Cat, we need a full army! It's a swarm type!" Caeden shouted back.
Rolling her eyes, Cat spoke, wispy white smoke with small flares of green fire drifting from her lips. "Spectral Army."
Appearing all around her on every available surface was a force one hundred strong of different specters. Cat wouldn't be able to arm them as she normally would, all her weapons being locked in the cargo hold of the ship. Luckily, her specters were strong enough that they wouldn't need them.
As one, her specters turned toward their mistress and saluted. Her orders were simple. "Kill every monster in the city." And they were off, soldiers, assassins, archers, even the tiny workers. Every single one was enough to fight the rats. And they all went to work.
Lily merely shot him a glance before they exchanged nods and went back to it. No doubt Erik was around somewhere wreaking havoc as well. Along the journey here the four of them had devised basic strategies for how to deal with certain categories of monsters. The plan for swarm types ended up being rather simple. Spread out and kill as many as you can.
So that's what they did.