Walking through the gate and turning around the wall, heading to the forest, Gilliam decided that it was probably a good idea to help out his fellow adventurer. He has a solid shield around Cera but nothing around Rhyan.
“So, Rhyan. I am able to cast a rather solid barrier around anyone I want, I assume this is something you’d like? It should increase your defensive power quite a bit, especially in addition to your already armoured-up nature.” He smiled a bit to himself.
Rhyan sounded surprisingly hesitant. “I feel confident in my defence but... It’s dumb to not take free upgrades... As long as you don’t think it’ll drain your mana too much... I have been with mages before that waste their mana before an important job... It’s not pretty.” He sounded like he spoke from experience, but it was more a warning and a thought than denying the spell.
“I’m fine, I have more mana than you think.” Gilliam smiled as he pinged the ring to take out his staff.
Like with Cera, he channelled a decent amount of energy into the spell, through the staff. He manifested a spell circle that was dominantly yellow but had a slight tint of sky blue, it had a single rune within it which read Barrier. The whole thing collapsed into an energy field that he touched to Rhyan. He didn’t seem hesitant or scared, and let it wash over him. The energy covered his body before expanding into an oval shape around him as it faded into a glass-like substance which finally went entirely transparent and seemingly disappeared.
“Wait... it disappeared?” Rhyan questioned as he tried to touch it.
“No, it’s just transparent, much easier to use when it doesn’t mess with your perception.” Gilliam smiled. He had done some testing before and with how he made them, he couldn’t notice any changes in sight, hearing or smell. Though his senses weren’t as acute as Cera’s, at least there were no changes to him.
“And you’re sure this isn’t a problem for your Boundary? I’m not a mage but I have read some books and talked to mages, so I at least know the very base of things.” Rhyan added. He almost sounded like he was being strangely defensive in how he worded his worry for Gilliam’s mana, which was a valid thing to worry about especially since he mentioned that he had been in cases before where this backfired.
“I think you’ll find that my Core, Boundary and general spell output is a bit more than you might expect. I’ll go into detail if we form a more permanent group but for now-” Gilliam turned to him with a wide smile. “-don’t worry about me.”
Rhyan didn’t look convinced, he looked like the protective type... not just as a defending warrior but personality-wise. Which was a good thing but Gilliam considered himself at least acceptable in this department.
“In fact... while thinking about things...” Gilliam pondered it for a moment and... why did he only give the two of them one barrier? He kept a minimum of three on himself, and it didn’t cost him anything after casting it. His Boundary was free to recharge.
“I think I’ll upgrade your defences a bit.”
The next few minutes were spent casting more barriers on himself and mending his outer one damaged during the combat testing in the Guild.
Rhyan was again surprised, he didn’t seem to know the details of magic as he mentioned, but apparently, he had a decent grasp of the base fundamentals, as far as a non-mage would have.
“If... If you can stack them, why do you stop at just three?” He added at the end.
“It’s surprisingly complicated making the mana of the barriers behave when so close to each other, it increases complexity in how they ‘attach’ to you.” Gilliam made finger quotes when stating ‘attach’. “I can stack more than three but it starts becoming a problem at that point.”
Rhyan seemed to accept the explanation, though he didn’t seem entirely convinced.
Gilliam kept the staff in hand, he might be a bit arrogant in this situation but he wasn’t dumb enough to not take advantage of the tools he already had.
Walking into the forest shortly after changed the atmosphere a lot, though it was only a few steps from the sun side and into the shade, the shade felt oddly and weirdly cold. Gilliam could sense a very weak hint of mana in the air but besides that, it felt surprisingly nice.
They walked for quite some time into the forest, Savia didn’t do much but rest in her hair-nest, Rhyan and Cera were on their toes, Cera being the most paranoid of the two. Gilliam felt surprisingly calm. It was kind of relaxing walking in the forest like this, feeling confident that whatever was out there wouldn’t be worse than what he had been facing the last four years of being challenged by all sorts of Fracturians, both for sparring and also to the death.
And since he was still here...
As he was musing about things he had done in the other world, Cera tugged at his coat.
“G... Master... There.. is something over there...” She was staring into the woods, her eyes locked onto something and her ears focused towards it, her tail was adorably floofed up having Gilliam need a second before snapping back into the reality of things.
“Oh, yeah, exactly where? I can’t see anything.” Gilliam tried to look but... there was just forest and plants. He tried to focus on the rough area she was pointing but still nothing.
Suddenly she turned around, facing behind them. “Behind us!” She shouted as she took to hiding behind Gilliam. Turning around he looked into the oncoming creature, a large, very werewolf-looking beast had jumped towards Cera, probably seeing her as the easiest target.
Rhyan acted on reaction and had his shield at the ready, protecting himself as he was stepping in towards Gilliam and Cera perhaps on instinct. Gilliam briefly mused that this was a good man to have even if his defending prowess might not be always needed.
Gilliam flung out his hand as a dominantly yellow circle with a single rune flashed in and out of existence, the energy field it formed as it collapsed reached out the distance between Gilliam and this creature and instantly connected them both. The same moment it connected them, Gilliam closed his open hand into a fist which stopped the incoming creature in mid-air. It let out a momentum-breaking growl before, failing to struggle free it let out a confused-sounding growl.
Cera moved around and took to hiding under Gilliam’s coat by walking around him and entering it from the front, she was standing under it next to him and was shaking with fear. He expected something like that to happen, given what they were hunting, he’d have to consider her being in the scary situations later.
Rhyan stepped in and took a defensive position behind Gilliam, seeming to accept that he had control in front of himself he decided to defend the blind spots.
“What do we do, should we run for it? Fight?” His voice wasn’t stressed, more just in the moment and needing to know what to do.
“Nah, we got this.” Gilliam stated, perhaps a bit too calmly as he could feel Rhyan’s ‘you fucking what’ look on the back of his head. Or perhaps it was just in his mind.
Gilliam moved his hand in a slow pulling motion that had the immobilized Dreadfang float over to him, as the creature was somewhat taller than him it ended up with the Dreadfang’s legs dragging along the ground to have him in an almost kneeling position.
He twisted the animal around, inspecting his teeth, his claws and just in general acting like he was checking out the paint job on a particularly large doll.
“Yeah, I feel fine with these, they are strong and have decent claws and teeth, but nothing special compared to most Fracturians.” He mused to himself.
“Oh, so you fought them as well?” Rhyan commented. He had stated before that he fought them in the invasion, though Gilliam had never explained anything about his own doing with them.
“Yeah, quite a lot of them as well.” He didn’t lie, but he withheld a staggering amount of detail. He also supposed it was probably not the best time to mention that his girlfriend was one of them...
“What should we do with this one?” Gilliam asked, using his staff to point at the helpless creature in his magical grasp.
Rhyan looked like he was having an internal discussion for a few seconds, Gilliam was kind of just wondering. The Dreadfang itself had changed its snarling or attacking expression to one mixed with fear and panic.
If he let it go, it would probably come back to attack them again.
“I can kill it quickly.” Gilliam commented. It was the most logical way in his head. Anything else gave way to potential further attacks.
Deciding to not put this burden on Rhyan’s mind, Gilliam decided to just get that over with. Rhyan might be the kind who has problems taking out enemies after their surrender or are bound. Gilliam felt that he was a bit more pragmatic on that topic.
Stretching his hand out had the Dreadfang float through the air some distance away. Gilliam proceeded to then clench his fist tightly together in a powerful pulse which had a wet and meaty squelch sound from the area the Dreadfang was moved into, this was followed by the sound of something large and fleshy hitting the forest floor. Then silence.
“Right, let’s keep moving.” Gilliam commented casually. He didn’t consider this a problem at all. Though in hindsight he should have done it cleaner as they were worth money split up in parts or something.
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Rhyan didn’t comment and looked to be more on guard than before. And though it made it a bit hard to move, Gilliam let Cera stay under his coat and walk next to him for now.
The display of power might have worked, as they weren’t attacked anymore for quite some time until they neared what looked like a clearing in the forest. Cera pulled on Gilliam’s clothing a bit before they entered, muttering something about hearing a lot of breathing from that direction.
The clearing was surprisingly large and seemed to have been deforested manually, the remaining stumps had telltale signs of teeth, claws and brute force being used to tear them down. A group of Dreadfangs also stood in the clearing, where one was much larger than the others.
Where a Dreadfang was a bit taller than Gilliam, about a head or two, the larger individual in the group was easily twice the height of Gilliam as a whole. His body was filled with scars that had healed a long time ago and he could best be described as a hulking beast of a creature.
“Ah, I assume that’s the one, then.” Gilliam commented dryly.
Rhyan looked like he was ready to run, Cera seemed to be in the same group as him. Gilliam couldn’t blame them, this creature looked terrifying. Though, that was compared to most non-Fracturian creatures he had seen. Though the common Fracturian didn’t look as terrifying as this creature, there were plenty of higher-strength individuals who looked way more dangerous.
This was almost looking like one of those lines of people vs another line of people-style wars from history, something that disappeared for several reasons in actual combat. He knew some of that was some honour or procedure thing... or something, perhaps he didn’t know. But the point was that he wasn’t the honourable sort and he didn’t plan to wait for something to happen either. Letting them act first would just make things harder, so rather than waiting for anyone to act, or anything specific to trigger a mass movement, Gilliam took the first step.
Extending his hand towards the massive creature he manifested two spell circles, the larger of the two had a dominant colour of sky-blue with hints of yellow streaks, a single rune reading Vacuum. The smaller one was almost entirely yellow with two runes; Lock, Target.
The magic circles were present for only a split second before they collapsed and disappeared, at the same time what looked like a glass-like orb of air formed around the head of the Alpha. The creature panicked immediately as the sphere puffed a mist of air outwards, based on the reactions of the monster, and the possible nature of a vacuum spell used like this, this air might have been from its lungs.
Panicked scratching at the sphere hit nothing, attempts to get the thing off its head did nothing. It trashed around causing chaos and accidentally hurting several normal Dreadfangs in the process.
Cera chose not to even look out through the cloak she was hiding under, but Rhyan looked at it with a certain level of fear in his eyes.
“A... are you... strangling it?” There was some discomfort in his voice.
“Yes, no matter how strong or resistant you are, as long as you need to breathe this is a good way to do it. He can’t give any orders like this and if they wanted a body, I’ll give them a body.” Gilliam responded honestly, but glancing over to Rhyan he saw a certain expression of disbelief in his eyes.
Gilliam assumed this was just due to the nature of the way he was doing this, or seemingly not caring. And though he did understand the thought behind it, strangling was not a good way to go, but he couldn’t care that much. He quickly learned that you do what you need to in actual combat, honour or consideration of your enemy gets you stabbed or worse.
During this thought, he was wondering if it would have been a good thing to take out the 20 or so normal Dreadfangs that were now in considerable confusion, due to the way their leader was acting.
“Rhyan-” Gilliam started, he wanted to confirm. “There is an active culling on the Dreadfangs, right? While we’re here, we shouldn’t just leave without taking out some of them?”
He had already decided to do his part in the culling but felt that it could be nice with a little confirmation just to make sure. In case they were a part of some food chain or something.
“Ye-” Rhyan had started answering before he had thought about it, halfway turning his head towards Gilliam but keeping his eyes on the group of Dreadfangs. “Yes... If we are able it’s expected of us that we take out as many as we can. There is a standing reward on them if we can prove that we have killed some.”
This was all Gilliam needed. It was also a proper time to take advantage of his training in the Fractured Lands. He got great use of the Aether dart spell he made back then, but his lacking master of magic only let him cast a few darts at a time. He had improved this substantially since then.
Manifesting three spell circles in the air, which remained there for a solid second, Gilliam channelled them through the staff which had them glow up a bit angrier than before. The main circle was almost entirely yellow with a single rune within for Dart. A smaller circle with two runes for Target and a single rune representing the number 20, and one in between those two with the rune for Multiplicate. He channelled a considerable amount of mana into them, especially the Dart one before they collapsed into one field of energy. In Gilliam’s mind, the target circle had allowed him to ‘tag’ targets, 20 in this case, he picked the first 20 targets he could see except for the Alpha and activated the spell.
The field of energy in the air pulsed and as it did the vague field transformed into 20 crude dart shapes before pulsing again and rocketing towards their target at frightening speed.
The Dreadfangs had taken note of the glowing energy with the humans and seemed to try to ready themselves, but at these speeds, there wasn’t much that could be done in the sense of dodging or deflecting anything. The darts ripped straight through their targets, splattering blood and gore as they continued hitting whatever was behind them, be that rocks, trees or other Dreadfangs.
The whole ordeal was done in less than two seconds, and once the chaos calmed the Alpha had died from lack of air as well, leaving only carnage across the clearing from the young mage.
“Ah, that’s good, a simple job.” Gilliam smiled as he started walking towards the bloodbath he had created.
Rhyan’s mouth was agape and Gilliam could feel Cera shaking under his coat. In his mind this was a normal reaction to what he was doing, so he let them handle this in whatever way suited them best.
“Savia?” Gilliam called out into the air as he started untying her from his hair, he didn’t continue until she was in his hands and had woken up a little bit more, looking at him with a questioning look. “Can you go get Thregar? The man in the building we spoke with? Just tell him that we have his Alpha.” He smiled at his little friend.
She got up on her tiny legs and nodded rapidly. She took a few seconds of looking around where they were before just disappearing from his palm.
Gilliam looked back at Rhyan, who had recomposed himself but still looked like he was in disbelief at the carnage. Gilliam overheard him muttering to himself how come Gilliam was just an Iron-rank.
“Oh, they couldn’t give me a higher rank as a fresh recruit, but if I keep taking combat jobs I expect to rise fast enough.” Gilliam replied to the comment seemingly not meant for him before smiling wide.
He wanted to sit down as they waited for Thregar, but as someone was hiding in his coat that became somewhat problematic. So, for now, he opted to stand letting her have her little safe space.
Rhyan was working on processing things, Gilliam let him walk about and ponder as it didn’t take too long before Thregar arrived with Savia, though his expression was a mix of excitement and scared before his vision returned. After that, his expression was all disbelief.
“Y... you managed to take out this many?” He didn’t sound like he entirely believed it. His eyes scanned back to Gilliam and his party. “Without being hurt?”
“Well, yes, I’m bringing the Alpha with me when we leave, but I thought to get someone in charge to validate the others so we don’t have to lug them all around.” Gilliam smiled. He did consider putting some of them into the ring but, even if he emptied it he couldn’t fit the big boi over there.
“Wait... You got the Alpha?” His eyes scanned through the carnage before it landed on the different fur of the leader. Walking over he had a quick investigation. “I... I don’t see any damage to it... How did you manage to take it out?”
“Oh, that was simple-” Gilliam shrugged. “-I just pulled the air out of his lungs and let him thrash about until he fell. For the others, I just used a group-targeting spell.” Almost like it was the most common thing ever. Though he knew he was cheating with this. Normally you would need to focus to keep the vacuum around his head as he moved or expand the field to compensate, but he was able to just attach the spell to his target negating all problems. As for the rest of the group; he knew he was not the only one who could do this but perhaps one of the few that could do it this easily.
Throgar looked around again. “Well... we’re going to need more guys to process all of this. Can we borrow your familiar for that?” Casually pointing at the hovering creature.
“I don’t see why not. It’s up to her but I assume she’ll be compensated for the work?” Gilliam smiled, giving Savia the final say in this.
“She... she’s deciding?” Thregar sounded confused as he looked at the wide smile of Savia.