I responded casually, not understanding the seriousness all of them seemed to be exuding. “Oh? Neat. I’ve never actually seen one before.”
Liz stared at me with eyes wide, asking “How the hell is that even possible?!”. Interestingly enough, I think that this was actually the first time she had addressed me directly without having Mike be her middleman. To answer her query I just shrugged and said, “There weren’t any where I was living before. So what’s the big deal? Can’t we just avoid it and carry on?”
This time Mike and the merchant joined Liz in widening their eyes and letting their mouths hang ajar. Fortunately, I had someone who somewhat understood that I was relatively new to all of this in Ash, who explained, “You see Mr Bear, elementals all have a core to them. For this one it’ll probably be some kind of rock or clump of dirt that’s been especially infused with mana. What the big deal is is that that core can be used just like Spectral Quartz, with one major difference. It can also force your soul to familiarize with a specific concept. Again, for this elemental, that’ll most likely be the concept of Earth or Ground. A lot of adventurers would commit unspeakable acts to get their hands on one.”
The other three shot a glare her way, as though trying to tell her to stop telling me how valuable it was, so that they could get their hands on the core themselves without me trying to interfere. I asked what I believed to be the most pertinent question: “So how do you kill an elemental? I take it my knives are useless?” The merchant nodded and said, “There are many ways to kill an elemental, but if you’re trying to keep the core intact, then your best option is something that’ll weaken the soul. That will force the elemental to retreat into their core, which you then lightly damage, and fuse to your own soul. I think that whoever manages to force it to retreat into the core gets to keep it. Agreed?”
Nods of affirmation came from the other three, and I raised my hands in the air. “I don’t really have anything that can target the soul right now, so I guess I’ll just watch you guys to see how it’s done. I don’t really want the core anyway, since earth magic isn’t really something I’m trying to specialize in.”
Sighs of relief came from four mouths, while Ash simply knit her eyebrows together and tightened her lips. If I had to guess, she seemed to be nervous at the thought that I wouldn’t be helping with the fight. To assuage her worries, I leaned in and whispered to her, “Don’t worry, I won’t help with the hunt, but I’m not just gonna sit back and let you die on me. Worst comes to worst I’ll play a little defense.”
That seemed to work as she visibly relaxed. The rest of my party started figuring out the formation they would use to attack, understandably split between trying to work together for safety and trying to give themselves a chance at the core. I would be standing out of range, but close enough to observe everything, ready to teleport in and help out if required. After a few minutes, everything was settled, and we started making our way towards the odd disturbance, ready to hunt an elemental.
The elemental was strange to observe. There was no real central body, nothing specific to target, and by all accounts, it seemed like just a normal patch of land. There was one fairly major distinction though, in the fact that it was moving. The ground was rolling around like waves, dirt and rocks whipping through the air like there was an invisible tornado there. By looking at what was moving vs what was stationary around it, you could almost picture an invisible circle with a 10 yard radius, that domain being the ‘body’ of the elemental. And in the dead center is where you would find the core, the rock or clump of dirt that somehow got infused with too much mana and gained a consciousness at varying levels of intelligence.
Everything seemed fine at first. Because physical attacks wouldn’t work, they mostly focused on running around trying not to get hit with flying rocks. To prevent themselves from getting in each other’s way, Liz took the sky, while the other three each had their own 120 degree field they were allowed to be in. They were dodging all of the debris flying around while inching their way closer, trying to finish everything in one hit so that they could preserve their mana. The rolling waves under their feet forcing them all to use magic to keep themselves just above the ground, putting them on a timer, as apparently, most people can’t just keep fighting once they empty their mana pool and often actually just pass out. That certainly explains some of the weird looks I’ve received over these past couple of months.
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The way they each fought was also rather interesting. For example, one would think that with Liz’s wings, she’d specialize in either wind magic or maybe storm magic. However, instead, she specialized in water magic, with her plan being to forcefully erode the main body with a high pressure stream once she got close enough to guarantee a hit. She kept hovering high in the air, then folding her electric blue wings tightly against her body, diving quickly down towards the center, which somehow the elemental noticed and responded to by throwing rocks at her, forcing her to veer off and loop back around to where she had started, the strain and tension demonstrating itself on her face through her knit eyebrows and sweat.
Michael, also counter to what you’d expect from a fox, was like a standard vanguard fighter with an almost elegant looking warhammer. He seemed to have some kind of sixth sense for danger, most likely his innate magic, allowing him to shift his position before rocks even started going his way. I had heard that the kind of magic he specialized in had something to do with plants, some kind of nature magic maybe? I wasn’t sure how he intended to use it to attack the elemental, but it was admittedly incredible to watch him walk calmly yet swiftly back and forth, side to side, flying debris landing all around where he had been just seconds previously, sometimes avoiding death by less than an inch.
As expected from a rabbit, the merchant was extremely fast, but not all that good at changing directions, so he inched closer in random bursts of movement too fast to really see. He would stop, let the elemental target him with whatever the hell it was using to see, then once the attack was sent out, the merchant would zoom off horizontally, using diagonal lines so that every dodge brought him just a little bit closer to the core of the elemental. Supposedly he had some kind of pure soul attack he was planning to use, though he was rather private about the specific details of it.
Ash was by far the most surprising. Given her disposition, I thought that she would mostly be a healer, or maybe some kind of other long range fighter. On the contrary, she was only a little bit slower than the merchant, and a little weaker than Michael, and was apparently an expert in hand to hand combat and using knives. Not that that would be much use against an elemental, but according to Michael she was quite terrifying against any sort of flesh and blood opponent, so I guess I would have to try and spar with her during watch, see if she had any moves she could teach me. And as for her magical specialization? In an ironic juxtaposition with her colorful personality, she used light and dark magic, specializing in concealment. She was a textbook assassin build for Christ’s sake.
However, due to this world’s low advancement in physics, her concealment spells had no effect on me. She was concealing herself from the standard visible spectrum by bending the light she could see around her, but she couldn’t see in infrared. Fortunately, it seemed that the elemental couldn’t either. Actually, come to mention it, it doesn’t even have eyes, so I have no idea how it’s locating everyone. Maybe some form of echolocation through the earth? But then why is it noticing anyone if they’re all hovering over the ground?
Invisibly, and silently, Ash calmly made her way straight towards where the center of the disturbance was without being targeted once, ran her mana through her knife, and stabbed forwards. The knife had the image of a snake carved into it, which allowed her to inject her own mana into an object, similarly to that syringe I had attempted when making the vampirism enchantment I had on my knives and scythe.
No.
And this is where everything turned wrong. Ash’s mana was expunged from her too quickly, and while it was destabilizing the elemental, it was destabilizing her faster. In a second, she had started collapsing, completely drained of all energy.
No.
The elemental, now fully aware she was there, rose several large stones around the center up in a wave, getting ready to crush her to death.
I SAID NO.
Before I could form a conscious thought, I was there. I had teleported between Ash and the stone wave.
Use mana to push her away as far as you can.
The teleportation had drained my mana.
Stored mana.
In the blink of an eye, two knives flew from under my cloak. One caught Ash in the shoulder, stabbing into her and pulling her back as I shoved her with my hand, sending her flying away, giving her what I hoped was a comforting smile. The second one flew into the rocks, as I activated one of the first enchantments I had ever made, and one I had never had an opportunity to use in combat. In less than one second, I had teleported here, threw Ash away, and ran my mana through the bomb engraved on my flying knife, grateful that I had made it just in case. The next thing I knew was a light too bright to exist, a sound so loud it almost seemed silent, and a shock slamming into my entire body before darkness descended, and I knew no more.