Veraine thought her hands should be trembling, but hundreds of hours of practice in the guild’s specialized training rooms kept her wand steady. Once she finished the magical diagram and pushed a bit of mana into the wand, it used its own internal mana reservoir to charge and activate the spell.
A bolt of fire, smaller than she’d hoped and larger than she’d feared, smashed against the Snow Wasset’s side. The fire failed to catch, largely because the creature’s fur was actually made of thin strands of ice, but it did melt a section of fur the size of a dinner plate.
The Snow Wasset wasn’t the most visually disturbing creature they’d faced, but it was the most powerful to date. It looked much like a legless, white ferret, with a body thicker than she was tall. It could tunnel through the ground like it was water and had a slew of powerful ice abilities.
“Now, Daggan! Nodin, distract it!”
Daggan moved first, but Nodin was faster. Her childhood friend had put on some lean muscle since their slayer training started, but he was still scrawny compared to the brawny Daggan.
With a giggle that reminded Veraine painfully of Dyani, the speedster ran forward to distract the monster.
* Name: Nodin *Surname Not Found*
* Level: 2.1
* Experience: 41%
* Attributes:
* Mana Capacity: 0
* Mana Regeneration: 0
* Magic Power: 0
* Strength: 0
* Speed: 1
* Endurance: 1
* Vitality: 0
* Mind: 0
* Toughness: 0
* Perception: 0
* Talents:
1. You may fuel mobility-type skills with any combination of mana or stamina. Gain Skill: Fleet Foot. This skill occupies your level 1 skill slot.
2. Your body and anything on your person has reduced air resistance.
* Talent Skills:
* Fleet Foot (Unique)
* Type: Mobility,
* Affinity: Force, Mental
* Range: Self
* Cost: Variable Stamina or Mana
* Effect: Increases physical speed. Increases mental speed to a lesser degree.
* Skill Slots:
* Occupied by Talent Skill: Fleet Foot.
* Air Walk (Uncommon)
* Type: Mobility, Combination
* Affinity: Air
* Range: Self
* Cost: Low Stamina
* Effect: Allows the user to push against non-solid surfaces with their feet, granting increased maneuverability in the air. The cost of this skill is reduced if used in conjunction with a compatible mobility-type skill.
He took two steps in midair, using Air Walk, then ran up the Snow Wasset’s back toward its head. While the monster lifted its head to confront the pest, Daggan moved to take advantage of the weak spot Veraine had provided.
* Name: Daggan *Surname Not Found*
* Level: 2.1
* Experience: 56%
* Attributes:
* Mana Capacity: 0
* Mana Regeneration: 0
* Magic Power: 0
* Strength: 1
* Speed: 1
* Endurance: 0
* Vitality: 0
* Mind: 0
* Toughness: 0
* Perception: 0
* Talents:
1. The stamina costs of blade affinity skills are reduced by 25%. Your level of proficiency with blades never decreases.
2. You may imbue your blades with mana to directly cut mana constructs.
* Talent Skills:
* None
* Skill Slots:
* Slash (Common)
* Type: Attack, Melee
* Affinity: Blade
* Range: Short
* Cost: Low Stamina (Standard Use), Moderate Stamina (Projected Blade)
* Effect: Increases the cutting power of slashing attacks with a bladed weapon. Can project a cutting wave a small distance from the blade for an increased stamina cost.
* Blade Parry (Uncommon)
* Type: Defense, Melee
* Affinity: Blade
* Range: Self
* Cost: Low Stamina
* Effect: Deflects a limited amount of physical force from attacks intercepted with a bladed weapon.
He slashed at the exposed flesh, drawing blood like translucent blue gel that caused the air to fog like winter breath. There was only time for four attacks before the furry ice wyrm decided Daggan was the more dangerous threat.
Daggan ran backward without turning away from the Snow Wasset, a good thing, since it let him see the icicles that it shot at him from its mouth, and deflect them with practiced parries.
While successfully defending against the worst of the attack, chips of ice still broke off and sliced into his extremities.
“Fall back Daggan! I’ll heal you!” Veraine was already gathering mana to activate Lesser Rejuvenating Touch, but Daggan just shook his head and went back on the offensive.
“I’m fine, just give me another opening. The faster we kill this thing, the faster you can heal me.”
Veraine cursed, and cautiously moved forward to intercept him. She had no intention of wasting mana on fire spells while her friend was injured.
* Name: Veraine Brightflower
* Level: 2.2
* Experience: 4%
* Attributes:
* Mana Capacity: 1
* Mana Regeneration: 1
* Magic Power: 1
* Strength: 0
* Speed: 0
* Endurance: 0
* Vitality: 0
* Mind: 0
* Toughness: 0
* Perception: 0
* Talents:
1. Your healing skills have a 25% increased effect and 25% reduced cost.
2. Any skills that directly provide stamina or mana may instead be used to directly provide health.
* Talent Skills:
* None
* Skill Slots:
* Lesser Rejuvenating Touch (Rare)
* Type: Healing
* Affinity: Life
* Range: Touch
* Cost: Moderate Mana
* Effect: Grants the target a low-level, regenerative effect with a short duration. Cannot target self.
* Lesser Mana Reservoir (Rare)
* Type: Restoration (Mana)
* Affinity: None
* Range: Self
* Cost: Gradual mana drain while at maximum mana. None upon activation.
* Effect: Provides a small pool of mana that is filled by 50% of your mana regeneration when your mana is at its maximum. When activated, this mana pool is deposited into your body’s primary mana pool. The mana reservoir must be full to activate, and any mana that exceeds your maximum is lost. The size of this mana reservoir is equal to 25% of your mana pool.
Thanks to her level 2 talent, which allowed skills that restored mana or stamina to instead restore health, her parents had traded out the Lesser Health Reservoir skill they’d acquired for her for a similar skill for mana.
The skill was charged and ready to activate to refill a quarter of her mana pool, but she didn’t intend to use it until she needed to. She wanted to keep the possibly life saving effect of restoring a quarter of her health in her back pocket.
She still had half her mana pool remaining, only having healed Nodin once and thrown out a few flare spells. Despite being fueled primarily from fire affinity mana crystals absorbed into the wand, spellcraft wasn’t cheap, manawise. The caster provided the mana to create the spell array that told the spell what to do, while the actual effect was usually fueled through external sources, like notes, mana crystals, or charged casting implements like her wand.
All in all, the made spellcraft among the more expensive skills to learn. However, it did provide amazing versatility in combat, if you had the money and mind for it.
Veraine was barely a passable spellcaster, but she’d been heavily encouraged by her trainers to pick up the skill, once she made it clear that she intended to absorb as many healing skills as possible, despite the guild’s official recommendation to focus her early efforts and skill slots on combat and defense. She could understand the strategy, since a healer was useless if they couldn’t keep themselves alive, but her worry over seeing her friends bleeding and dying in front of her, while she only had a mana bolt or shield skill, made her decision easy.
Learning spellcraft to give her a more well rounded set of abilities was an acceptable compromise, even if her spells would never be as powerful as an equivalent skill.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
She only had two spells she trusted herself to cast in combat, spark and flare. She’d abandoned the first when it proved entirely ineffective against the Snow Wasset, focusing on the more direct counter of fire against ice.
Veraine thought she was being careful, but her attention had been so focused on Daggan and the Snow Wasset’s head, that she’d completely neglected the tail.
Thin compared to the monster’s bulk, the tail was still as thick as her waist, and easily knocked her legs out from under her. The snow the Snow Wasset had conjured early in their fight saved her from serious injury.
She half expected their escort to pull her out of the fight, but no one intervened as the monster’s tail descended to smash against her. Ribs cracked, and she felt blood in her lungs.
She had no idea where her wand was, and had no time to cast, even if she did.
As the tail descended to beat her again, a blur of motion slammed into it, knocking it off course enough to land beside Veraine instead of on top of her. Nodin shifted from wrestling the tail to dragging her away.
While she was grateful for the save, she reminisced wistfully of how Daggan had saved her from a winged spider monster by sweeping her up in his arms as she was chaffed and chilled by the icy snow.
“Can you stand?” Nodin asked once they’d traveled a safe distance. Veraine coughed up blood.
“That’s a no.” Nodin looked around for their escort. “I’m thinking this would be a good time for mr. monster to get smashed by a boulder…” There was no reply.
“And I really liked that guy,” he muttered, pulling out a healing potion and pressing it against Veraine’s lips. She managed to drink most of it, past the coughing, and melted a little in relief as her ribs knitted back together and her lungs sealed the breach.
She could still feel they were out of place. Healing potions only accelerated natural healing. They couldn’t set bones, replace limbs, or even remove the blood from her lungs, but they could get her back on her feet, long enough to finish that shattered wyrm and get her back to the guild, where a trained healer could provide a permanent fix.
With a hand from her friend, Veraine got to her feet and glanced over at the ongoing fight, where Daggan was facing the monster single handed.
He zipped off to assist, while Veraine looked around for her wand. It lay discarded near where she’d been knocked off her feet. Knowing that speaking would just lead to more bloody coughs, Veraine tapped the lightning wand at her belt and pointed. Nodin got the message, and retrieved the fire wand with his usual speed before drawing a knife and joining Daggan in holding the monster’s attention.
Although she was tempted to hold onto her skill a little longer, especially since she wouldn’t be able to use another healing potion for several hours, Veraine activated Lesser Mana Reservoir to refill a chunk of her depleted mana.
With that, she barely had enough for what she was planning. At least that’s what she hoped.
This time, she paid careful attention to the entire wyrm as she drew the spell array for a larger and stronger version of her flare spell.
“Incoming fire!” she yelled, waiting for her friends to react before forcing every bit of stored fire mana out of her wand. The wand shook in her hand as its enchantments were overloaded, but it still managed to activate her spell before shattering in her hand with a flash of fire.
Veraine shook the larger splinters free as she watched her engorged flare spell barrel towards its target like a cannonball. It struck with impressive force, actually injuring the Snow Wasset instead of merely melting off some fur, and exposing an enormous area to Daggan’s and Nodin’s attacks.
She collapsed from a combination of physical injury and low mana, trusting her friends to finish it off. A shadow loomed over her, and for a second she feared it was the monster’s tail, ready to smash her to paste.
“Well done, Ms. Brightflower. The boys should make quick work of it from here.”
“It’s Veraine, Lord Flintheart.”
“And it’s Taka, Veraine.”
The pair exchanged friendly grins, though Veraine’s was colored with pain and exhaustion.
“Why didn’t you intervene when I got smashed?”
“Did I need to? Your team had you covered from what I could see.”
Veraine could technically argue that point, but her lungs, ribs, and scratched up skin wanted to.
“We’ll have to head back to the guild for me to get healed, instead of finishing our mission.”
“True, but the guild expects complications, especially with trainee’s. They’ll have teams ready to take up the slack. Teaching you kids is the real goal, not any specific mission. And from what I saw, you learned an important lesson.”
Veraine knew what was expected. She stood up, beating back the dizziness and pain, before reporting. In the background, the Snow Wasset let out a desperate cry like a chittering hiss.
“I should’ve trusted Daggan when he said he was fine. And I should’ve paid better attention to my surroundings. If I’d watched out for the tail, I wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”
Taka nodded and scratched his chin.
“I’d say that’s a fair assessment. How do you feel about casting that fire spell at the end?”
Veraine’s instincts said he was fishing for fault, but in the weeks traveling together, she’d learned that Taka was as likely to point out things they did well as mistakes, so she gave an answer closer to the truth.
“It was a sacrifice. Obviously it broke my wand and knocked me out of the fight, but it gave my team the opportunity to kill that thing. I wouldn’t have done it if I was in better shape, if I could’ve held out and helped longer, but with my weakened state, I think it was worth the cost.”
“Agreed.”
Veraine very pointedly did not sigh with relief.
“Not every fight can be won without risk, some fights can’t be won at all. If Daggan and Nodin were low on resources or injured, I would’ve said it was a mistake. But in the situation, I think it was a good call.”
“However, I also would have accepted a call to retreat. There’s nothing wrong with coming back fresh, or asking for help when you need it.”
Veraine resisted saying that Nodin had asked for help after rescuing her. She knew the point of these supervised missions was to get used to acting on their own in a safe situation. The opportunity would be wasted if Taka interfered at the first sign of danger.
Off to the side, the Snow Wasset gave its last wriggle and died, releasing an enormous amount of level 4 experience. Veraine could absorb it all the way from here, though she mostly relied on the connections between the team’s slayer medallions.
Those were more than a mark of membership and rank, they served as loot pendants, information gatherers, trackers, and even allowed newly absorbed experience to be shared and distributed in predefined amounts.
Most of their team, meaning everyone but here, had decided to funnel the majority of experience into Veraine to increase their survivability, which she’d agreed to only as long as they were the same level. Now that she was level 2.2, and the others were 2.1, she was only getting a fraction of the experience.
Even so, a level 4 mana node guardian had plenty of experience to go around, enough that she directed half of it into her interface. So much, in fact, that the residual condensed itself into a pair of pale blue crystals. Taka gently pushed her towards them.
“Don’t let me stop you. The loot is half the fun.”
Veraine stumbled, but recovered and managed a slow, dignified walk. Daggan and Nodin practically skipped over, spirits nearly glowing with absorbed power. Both of them were full to the brim with experience and at the edge of advancing.
“Come on, Veraine, tell us what they are,” Nodin whined, hopping from foot to foot. Neither of them had interfaces of their own, they were too expensive, at least until they all finished training and started making money.
“If either of them are Ice Blade, I call it,” Daggan said as she sheathed his sword. He’d been itching for something more interesting than the bread and butter skills, Slash and Blade Parry, that his trainer, Paunch, had insisted he take. Paunch wouldn’t be pleased if Daggan took anything except the common skill, Thrust at level 3, but Veraine could hardly throw stones. It wasn’t like she’d taken her trainers’ skill recommendations.
“It’s not like any of us can use it right now. No harm in waiting until we get back.” Despite her words, Veraine was just as curious. She eagerly scooped them up with her uninjured hand and identified each skill.
The first was the same one that Daggan had gotten scrapped up defending against.
* Icicle (Common)
* Type: Attack, Ranged
* Affinity: Ice
* Range: Medium
* Cost: Low Mana
* Effect: Conjures and propels a large icicle or a group of smaller icicles at a single target.
Icicle was the stereotypical ranged ice attack, like Flare was for fire, or Spark was for lightning. Common, but useful enough that they’d have no trouble finding buyers.
The second skill was far more interesting.
* Frost Mane (Very Rare)
* Type: Defense, Conjuration
* Affinity: Ice
* Range: Self
* Cost: High Mana (Initial conjuration) / Moderate Mana (Repair)
* Effect: Conjures a set of ice armor over the user. The design of the armor may be set upon initial absorption of the skill, and may not be adjusted afterward. The default design of the armor is a heavy coat of fur over the entire body. The armor drains mana as needed to repair any damage. The user may conjure the armor at will, and toggle the repair function on or off as needed.
That was a spectacular piece of loot. Anything at or above ‘rare’ rarity was expensive, thanks to inexplicable cosmic forces of supply and demand, but when the skill was this useful, the price skyrocketed.
Frost Mane was similar to the uncommon skill, Ice Armor, but with the added bonuses of customization and passive repair. In a fight, with danger on all sides, having armor that repaired itself without input from the user was a literal lifesaver, especially since repairing the armor would always be cheaper than reusing the skill.
Veraine told her friends about the skills, leading to a good natured argument about what to do with them. She wasn’t surprised that both of them were fine selling Icicle, since it didn’t fit with either of their fighting styles, but she was very much surprised when the pair came to the conclusion that, instead of selling Frost Mane for an absolute fortune, Veraine should absorb it herself.
Their argument was that she needed additional defense, something she couldn’t exactly refute, given how she’d needed Nodin to save her. It didn’t help her case that Taka, who had joined them at this point, agreed that she should invest in some personal defense. He didn’t insist on this skill in particular, but he listed a slew of options for other defensive skills or types of armor with solid enough explanations for how each would assist her, that even she started to be convinced.
Her determination to only absorb skills that could heal, or otherwise assist her team members was cracking just like her ribs.
She had plenty of time to consider her options, since killing the Snow Wasset was only half of this mission. The ice mana node had become visible after the guardian’s death, a growing sphere of white, blue, and silver light, releasing ever increasing quantities of ice mana, now that the Snow Wasset wasn’t alive to drink it down.
“Stand back, kids,” Taka said, approaching the node with a piece of artifice, a ball made of overlapping plates of a dozen metals. They needed no encouragement to keep a healthy distance. Destroying untethered mana nodes was the most important job a slayer could get, since they were what produced monsters.
After all, it was easier to plug a hole in a boat than continually bale out water.
Taka reached out a hand and jerked it up and a spike of black stone stabbed up through the ground to pierce straight through the node.
Instead of cracking, the node deformed and twisted as its color shifted from light blue tones to solid black as it sucked down everything nearby. The snow went first, spiraling down the dimensional drain, but rocks, earth, and even a couple uprooted plants soon followed. The ambient mana went anemic as it too was claimed.
Despite how close their escort stood, his clothes barely rippled against the sucking force.
He tossed the metal sphere, which was sucked towards the collapsing node like everything else. Unlike everything else, the sphere didn’t disappear into whatever place the node sent everything else. Like a plug in a drain, it floated at the center of the visual distortion, which settled down to a corona of darkness around it, like black fire. The node still pulled in mana, which squeezed past the magical obstruction, but far less than it had before.
“And that’s how you seal a node,” Taka said casually, like they all hadn’t just seen a patch of reality rip like an old shirt, “It’ll be ages before you’ll be called on to do it yourselves, and you should probably do it from further away, but it's important for you to see how it works, not just hear about it.”
The three of them had dozens of questions, which Taka had time to answer, since the sphere wouldn’t finish sealing the node for a while. According to him, nodes actually sealed themselves much faster without the artifice, but the guild decided that waiting a few hours to ensure the nodes was sealed was preferable to a few minutes of a burgeoning black hole consuming everything around it.