[Elijah Knight POV]
I was adjusting my clothes inside my earth hut, while I heard some bangs outside, quickly, after getting everything ready and taking my backpack, I ran out of the hut.
I, along with adventurers Note and Jasmine, had accepted a quest from the Guild, this quest involved destroying some mana beasts that had come out of dungeons and were blocking the entrance to a class C dungeon. And by the way, they found our camp we made in a river close to the objective.
"Elijah! Sudden Defense Formation!" Jasmine exclaimed as I approached them running.
Jasmine had her daggers in her hands, while in the distance, I could see Note fighting a quadruped aquatic beast, it was all scaly and had a disgusting face, reminiscent of a reptile. If I were to guess its class for the way Note fought, I'd say it was a B-class mana beast.
"Bring me protection and comfort! Earth Wall!!" I said, conjuring a wall of earth in the direction where there was another mana beast like that, but close to us.
Jasmine took cover on that wall and shot some gusts of wind that were created by the flapping of her mana-covered dagger blades. It didn't seem to do any damage, but it stunned the enemy.
Quickly with that, I aimed my gauntlet, that had an earth mana gem, in the mana beast's direction, hands wide open.
"Show us your fury against my enemies! Earth"spike"quake!" The earth beneath that mana beast began to shake and soon several thorns appeared, some preventing the beast from advancing towards us, and two others appeared right where it was, hitting the areas of the abdomen and one of the paws.
"Yes!" I internally celebrated the fact that it managed to be minimally offensive.
Jasmine then ran towards the mana beast that I injured and started releasing several razor winds that were hurting the enemy with depth, until after doing that several times, she managed to decapitate the enemy. That done, I looked back at Note, and he was managing to withstand his enemy's attacks with quick dodges followed by intense slashes. With his blade ending up hitting areas of the mana beast's limbs, almost knocking it to the ground.
"Amazing how he still manages to get by without mana." I thought, still remembering Note's promise, that for long 2 years he would use mana only in extremely necessary moments, to become stronger in the art of swordsmanship. There was still a year and a half to go before that promise was fulfilled.
Still, I wanted to help him, so I aimed my open right palm at him and the mana beast.
"Note! To the right!" I warned him and soon began my enchantment.
"Release your fears of collapsing! Earthquake!" I caused a small earthquake that went towards my target, the power of the attack is the same as if a layer of earth came out from under the ground, causing a collapse. Note managed to dodge it, jumping into a nearby tree, while the mana beast was affected and had its paws buried up to what would have been its knees.
Trapped, the beast tried to unleash a HydroPump in my direction, however, because it was focusing on me, Note jumped from the tree that was landing on top of the mana beast and attacked with his blade. It seemed to hit a weak spot, as after that our enemy stopped and was easily decapitated by the masked adventurer.
"It took a while to do that, didn't it four-eyes?" He said in an amused way while jumping with the blade smeared with blood, but he cleans it with a swing of it in the air.
"Well, Masky, I wanted to let you have all the glory as usual." I said with a smile as he approached me and we shook hands firmly.
"Don't get too excited! I feel like there are 3 more around here! Elijah create some obstacles so we can hide and catch them by surprise." Jasmine warned us.
I did my Earth Wall spell again, but this time creating several walls of different heights and thicknesses. As I recited the spell several times, Jasmine and Note kept climbing some trees to see the exact direction of the mana beasts.
"Elijah! On your right and front-left! They're the same race as the other two!" one of them warned me, so I focused more on Earth Walls in the indicated directions.
I could see the other three mana beasts, two to my right and one in front of me a little to the left. My two Party mates jumped out of the trees and landed on top of some dirt walls I'd lifted. Already in combat stance. It took about twenty minutes to finish them off, apparently these were more aggressive and used a lot of water attacks, as they saw two others of their species, dead. However, according to the rounds we made around, there were no more of them in the C rank dungeon entrance zone.
"We have to get the cores of these mana beasts to confirm with the people that we finished the mission." Jasmine ordered, me and Note to go together to get the mana cores.
"Hey. This one looks different." Note said as he took our loot and I approached him.
We would have found the mana cores of the 5 enemies, they were bluish in color, representing the affinity of the water element they had. But one of them, which Note caught our eyes, was a darker blue, looking like there was a slightly black layer inside.
I was staring at that anomaly, feeling a headache gradually increasing, making me walk back a little with my hand on my head, for some reason, I could also hear screams coming from nowhere, which made me go further away from the mana core. My companions looked at me strangely.
"Are you okay, Elijah?" Note said worriedly, Jasmine was like that too.
"I am. I think I spent too much mana for today... Let's notify the guild and get the reward." I said, I didn't want to talk about out of nowhere hearing screams. And I bet they would say that same excuse in response.
"Fine. We can use that earth element beast mana core we defeated a few weeks ago to recharge you faster" Note reminded me of what had happened.
"No need, I'll get it naturally." With my answer, we headed towards the nearest teleport portal.
Arriving at the guild, young Flamesworth went to inform us of our success in the quest and deliver the items that proved it. Meanwhile, I sat next to my masked companion at one of the reception desks, adjusting my glasses as I felt the gaze of a few people around our table.
"Hm... Why are they staring at us?" I asked low for Note.
"Must be because you got grade B without showing anything and I got grade A, all in the same day." he answered me, while polishing the blade of his sword. I just agreed with a long sigh.
After a few minutes, Jasmine came to us with a small bag containing money and leaving it on the table. Note saw that and looked at her strangely, I did the same, after all the reward for this mission was a maximum of 5 silver coins and in theory, that amount didn't need a bag like that.
"The reward increased a total of 20 more silver coins due to the strange core we found. Due to the lack of silver coins they are having at the moment, and because I want the reward right away, we were given 10 silver coins and the other 25... They were put into the same value in bronze coins." She said in her usual neutral voice.
"10 silver coins and 250 bronze coins? Okay..." I said thinking about the real amount that was inside and we decided to share it between us. I kept the 10 silver coins in my backpack and the other two kept the bag of bronze coins inside the Note's dimensional ring.
"Hmm..... But what about that weird core?" Note asked.
"It was delivered and they said they would study it." Jasmine said and soon we were returning to Beast Glades, now we would have basic training, no missions or dungeons at the moment.
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[3rd Person POV]
It was a Friday afternoon, Kaspian Bladeheart was inside the office signing some paperwork. His gaze was fixed on what he was doing, but was soon distracted by a slamming of the door and a familiar voice speaking.
"Boss! I need to talk to you real quick, it's about permission for us to call in some mages to analize a thing." It was the voice of George, an Augmenter who works in the guild as a class examiner and weapons tester.
"Mages...?" Kaspian spoke quietly to himself, but then looked at the door again, "Come in, George. And explain to me why you would need something like this out of the blue..."
George went to him and handed him a small wrapped cloak, inside it were 5 mana cores of mana beasts, all blue, only one of them had a dark aura around it. Kaspian saw it in mild shock and looked at him closely.
"Would that be four mana water beasts and one anomalous mana beast?" Kaspian asked.
"They came from the mana beasts that were causing trouble entering a C-rank dungeon. The one in the quest we made available a week ago. According to the group that accepted the quest, all five mana beasts were of the same race, the owner of this strange core seemed to be the most aggressive." George replied as he watched that anomaly from afar.
"Okay. You can take the four common ones to our sales wing. This one will stay with me, I'll take it to a specialist." With the guild owner's answer, george took the other four mana cores and left.
"What a situation...." Kaspian said to himself with a sigh and among the papers he picked up the one talking about the mission that had been completed, he signed proving the conclusion and then wrote what was found.
As the hours passed, Kaspian began to feel a strange sensation around him and looked at the mana core enveloped in the black aura. Thinking that was the reason for that sensation, he wrapped the core inside a thick cloth.
"Why is this thing bothering me so much...?" He wondered, putting his hand on his head and feeling a slight dizziness, would he leave work early.
While this was happening.... Luz and Claire were together in the training room of the Bladeheart residence. They were doing light punching and kicking movements, so that Claire was getting used to the "half and half" style she had learned from Luz. At the moment, she still needed the boy to initiate this style.
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"Very well! You can speed up your kicks." the mentor said, still disguised as Diamond, adjusting his mask.
"All right!" the disciple took a long breath and started to do light combos of kicks in the air, but soon she accelerated the frequency of the attacks, with her right leg agumented in fire and left in wind.
"Argh! This is getting too dense!" the girl complained with the kicks getting even faster and forming a kind of warm aura around her, due to the two elements.
"Kukuku. Okay, stop." The boy said and soon she stopped falling sitting on the floor. Lying there and panting from exhaustion.
He soon took a bottle full of water and offered it to his disciple, but she did not raise her hand to take it. Then he let out a sigh and put the bottle in her mouth, that moment made him embarrassed and slightly ashamed.
"You're not a baby and I'm not your babysitter." He said, the shame making the mask's distorted voice slightly comical.
"But my uncle said that I am now your responsibility while you are here." She said it playfully, but ended up coughing a little and soon gave up on teasing her mentor, taking the water bottle and drinking it herself.
"Okay. When you feel good, start training the 'fusion' of the wind and fire elements in your augmented body. As a reward for the hard work you did in our first week of training, I'm going to make you a dessert." He said getting up and going to the door.
"When I get back here, I hope you've made it. From what I've analyzed, you have an 80% chance of being able to do this today, if you stay focused enough. Understand?" continued to talk to improve the girl's spirits, and it seems to have worked. So he left the training room.
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[Luz Leywin POV]
Leaving the training room, I went directly to the kitchen area, eventually finding some maids there, they looked like they had prepared the dinner that we will have that night. They noticed my presence and bowed, I did the same to show respect that Kaspian's employees were treating me well.
"Mr Diamond, excuse the question, have you come to dinner early? Or have you come to see if the food is good for Miss Claire." she asked with a smile.
Of course some of them would have asked that, this whole week I kept coming into the kitchen to regulate and ask them to cook specific things, good nutrients and even a better diet than her uncle had thought of. But today my idea was to slightly skip this diet for my disciple, she deserved it.
"Actually, I came to cook. Claire has been making a pretty good training in just a week, so I wanted to congratulate her on making a dessert recipe I've always enjoyed. Is it okay to have me in the kitchen?" I asked, the maids seemed to giggle and accept that I was there.
I went looking for the ingredients, asking them when I couldn't find them, in reality I had 4 desserts in mind, but from the items they had in the kitchen at the moment, only one of them could be made. I picked them up and left them all on the table in the center of the kitchen, starting to prepare.
"Hmmm... Besides being a great mentor and companion, do you cook? Boy, I feel like the women of this world would want you to showcase." Sylvia said teasingly in my mind, as I felt the eyes of the maids, who were staring at me like some sort of prize.
"Well, it was to be expected that they would look at you like that, after all, no one in this house knows that you are only 10 years old, your disguise is that of an elven adventurer around 20 years old. No?" Zalgnity spoke in my mind, remembering that little detail again, I could hear Sylvia laughing at his comment.
"Hmm.. And how are you guys in there? From the way you interact, I think you're being good friends." I thought, talking to them, as I shredded some chocolate bars using a knife, doing it very quickly.
"I'd say we're really getting along pretty well. We've talked about a lot of things around here to keep the boredom out while you're training the redhead girl." Zalgnity said.
"Yes. And I think it's fate that is helping with that. Your friend here reminds me of a person I loved before I left him for some trouble." Sylvia spoke, making me blush slightly with them being like that on my mind, so to not get in my way, I turned off our mental connection temporarily.
I continued to prepare things and I continued to feel the women there watching me from behind, when I turned to get something, they pretended they were doing other things. My god, is it so hard to find a wizard who cooks, is strong and careful? From the way they react to me, it seems like the answer is that this is super rare or something on that level.
"Excuse me, but what dessert are you making, Mr Diamond?" One of the maids came to ask me, I didn't look at her, but answered.
"It's going to be a bunch of little chocolate cakes, with stuffing inside. I'm making a cake batter that's soft enough that no matter how many times I reheat it, it stays soft."
"And what would that stuffing look like?" Another maid asked, but my gaze didn't leave what I was doing.
"Hmmm... The final product will have a creamy chocolate and strawberry filling. The idea is that these cakes are served hot. So that the filling melts out when someone bites. To accompany this, I prefer some icy fruit creams or just a normal milk cream."
"Ooh!" All the maids said in surprise.
"Want us to help by making you some drinks to go with it?" the first maid asked.
"No, thank you very much- uh...wait.. Actually, could you make me some fruit juice? I'm having a great idea here." I said, finally looking at them, underneath my mask was a wide smile.
"Okay!" They said in unison and went to help me.
After tidying up in the kitchen, I returned to the training room to see Claire almost reaching a perfect blending state of wind and fire around her own body, but unlike the way I do, she was still using every mana channel connected to her skin. I gave her a light punishment for not using the method I taught her, making her exercise with her fire mana at its maximum, thus turning into resistance training.
It was 7 pm when I allowed her to stop that workout and let her out of the training room so she could shower. Her body was warm enough that normal people couldn't touch her skin without getting burned a little. So I was also leaving the training room, when I went through the corridors, I ended up seeing Kaspian, holding his bag and something wrapped in a cloth, I had a bad feeling when I saw that, as if something strange was happening.
"Mr.Bladeheart, is everything alright?" I asked worriedly.
"Uh... Yeah, I just had to get here earlier, people there ran out ahead of schedule and I had nothing else to do. Why the question?"
"Well... I just wanted to know where you found this." I said pointing to the object in his right hand. He looked confused, so I said more "That's.... what's in your hand, surrounded by the cloth. I feel like I know the energy that's emanating and it's quite dangerous. Could I take a look?"
"In my office" He said just that and we went together to his office there at the residence.
Entering it, I could see that the decor was more reminiscent of the Guild building than the rest of the residence. We stood in front of each other, with the desk between us, and then he put the cloth on top of the table and opened it.
"This is..." Zalgnity spoke in my mind, I could feel his agony, it was the same agony I felt.
My eyes widened seeing that beast core covered in a dense aura of corruption, it wasn't incredibly dense to be a source but it was enough for me to know that whoever corrupted this mana beast corrupted it for at least obey orders while still maintaining its original nature.
My hands started to shake a little as I put them right into that core, I hadn't seen anything like this in years and years. I could count on my fingers the number of worlds where someone could reach an advanced level of "corruption magic", besides me.
"Is everything okay? Is it a bad sign?" Kaspian told me, it seemed he could read my surprise.
I took a deep breath, realizing one thing, this wasn't absolute "corruption magic", it felt more like a lesser version. My initial fright made me and Zalgnity not understand this, but now it was clear, this was an imitation.
"It's just a bad sign depending on where the owner of this mana core was." I finally answered him after calming down and getting back to my seriousness about the situation.
Kaspian soon gave me some papers, it seemed they were already specified from the quest that resulted in the encounter with the mana beast. There was the location, the adventurers who made the mission and the specifications given by the adventurers. My gaze shifted between the paper and the guild leader as some thoughts entered my mind.
"Apparently this was in a single mana beast, being that it was a set of 5. And they originated from the nearest dungeon there, but the distance was too great for them to go out by themselves... That is... "
"Did someone take them over there?" Kaspian asked and I just nodded.
"And by the way, not only that. But the person who did it, didn't seem to focus too much on having control over them, since it was only one out of 5.... But leaving them next to another dungeon...? It's like they want hide something..."
"Hide something...? But... I still don't understand, what kind of magic would be able to guide mana beasts like that? And on top of that affect mana cores in such a strange way?" He spoke confused by the situation.
"I don't know, but it's likely that somehow, the person filled the beast's mana with so much mana, that it ended up taming it extremely forcefully." I lied, I couldn't talk about "corruption", not yet.
"Is that possible? If it were, many people would have bonds using this method."
"It's possible. But there's also the element of luck that the mana beast doesn't get destroyed or goes out of control due to the excess mana exploding in its channels." I continued to support the lie, creating that logic.
"I see, so if it was put there by someone, there's a chance something very sinister is going on inside that Class C dungeon." Kaspian said already taking a scroll, but I stopped him.
"Yes, but.... It doesn't seem to be that important to someone just for 1 anomalous mana beast. There is also the chance that this mana beast is not obeying anyone and doing it on its own, while being followed by 4 more of its species." I was giving alternatives.
"Hm.... If it's not something to be making with top priority... Then..." He glared at me.
"Okay, I'll go there to check the situation. But I'll ask you to make a backup team that will only enter the dungeon if I ask for help, and I'll do it in a week, which is when my 'vacation' period ends." I answered him and then we shook hands.
I kept that core with me, with the excuse that I would analyze it more, but in fact, I planned to consume all of his impurity to make my "Corruption Will" more powerful. Maybe I would have a chance to unlock one more stage of my mana core, as happened in the auction house accident.
After that I went with him to the dining room, where Claire was already sitting smiling and the maids had already left the food on the table. We ate, Kaspian asked how the training was going... Same things as usual, but with an extra...
"Excuse me Mister Bladeheart... Mister Diamond prepared a dessert to please Claire for having accomplished so much during just one week of training." One of the maids said after we finished eating.
With that said, two maids came up to us with trays that were set on the table. As they lifted the tapas from the trays, they revealed plates with the small stuffed cakes and cups filled with white cream. Claire's eyes were bright, while Kaspian's was surprised, but only for a few seconds.
"I hope you like it, I went to the kitchen to prepare this dessert with the maids. What you're seeing is a cupcake filled with chocolate and strawberries, while what's in the cups is a icy milk-based cream that you can put on top of the cupcake as much as you like." I said getting up and bowing to everyone there, then sitting back down and lifting my mask a little so I could eat.
Claire was the first to taste it, her eyes brightening even more, pouring some of the cream on top of the cake and tasting more and more. Kaspian on the other hand, after the first bite, only smirked as he looked at me, it seemed he didn't like the idea of putting the cream on top of the stuffed cake.
"This is amazing!! I'm going to want so much more!" My disciple said as she finished eating one cupcake and went to another.
"It's really really good. What's the recipe?" Kaspian said, having only eaten one.
"Fine. That's the 'gotcha'... I'll only give you the recipe if Claire gets better by the end of next week." When I said that, I saw a sadistic smile coming from Kaspian, understanding the way I was doing to motivate his niece. Claire, on the other hand, kept shifting her gaze between me and the second round of dessert she'd just gotten, she seemed to have a cute, poor look on her face, but that didn't affect me at all.
"You know. If you want more of this, you're going to have to work a lot harder than before." Her uncle reinforced what I had said as he got up and left the table.
"D-diamond! Please!!" She said begging.
"You've heard, and I made few units in this batch. That is... You only have 3 more cupcakes now, while your uncle has 4 more... Treat yourself well and train hard." I had a sadistic smile on my face and soon after I lowered my mask completely.
"O-okay! I-I can do it! I can do it!!!" I could just hear her voice getting excited as I turned my back, walking to my room, thinking back to what I talked to Kaspian about earlier.
"This is going to be intense.. Won't it?" I thought.
"You told him you're going alone and a backup team won't come until you call, so... We can go 100%." Zalgnity answered me, I could feel he was smiling a lot, as he always likes to see me using the full potential of my current body.