We started hiking together, after an hour or so (my arm from Mezu’s breakfast had fully regrown not too long ago) we split up. Dodger and I continued on our own and I kept an eye out for anything.

“So how far is your aura? You can see right?”

“Yeah, aura and mana. Most of my legs and arms are cleared out.”

“I can tell. How long have you been learning?”

“I started on the twentieth floor.”

She grinned “and you’ve made it this far already, nicely done.”

Now that we were closer, and just hiking, I had more time to look at her markings. They weren’t glowing at the moment, but they were almost completely black and seemed as if they were raised slightly away from the unmarked parts of her skin.

“Alright, pay attention we should be entering their hunting grounds soon.”

It was weird hearing Sailhin’s voice from the device in my ear. I rubbed at it a bit, annoyed.

She was right though. I heard a group of them moving in the woods a bit of the ways to our left.

Dodger heard them too and pulled her axe off. We headed off in that direction and crouched for a moment in the bushes seeing a group of five. I looked at all of them and tapped her pointing at the one with the horn.

She gave me a thumbs up and then signed “who?”

I shrugged.

She pointed at herself, and I signed, “understood.”

I gripped my sword and together we leaped out of the bushes at them. She took down the one with a horn quickly, and I sliced the head of the one I got closest to, off.

Sailhin was right, even though Dodger was there, two of them came for me and one went for her.

I blocked one of their swords and kicked the other orc away from me. I pushed the orc’s blade away and swung with more concentrated aura this time, cutting through the blade and his neck in one slash.

I stabbed the other one in the chest as Dodger landed her axe in his head.

“Not bad.”

She looked at me, her eyes squinting slightly.

“Thanks?”

It was our first time actually fighting together. I hadn’t paid a whole lot of attention to her while we were fighting, so how could she? I guess she was just commenting about the fact that I didn’t really need her help for the second one.

“Since your blade is only sharp on one end, don’t waste your effort covering the whole thing with your aura. Just put it straight on the edge.”

I tilted my head slightly. The order I normally did it I covered the whole blade, then concentrated it to the edge. If I only put it on the edge at first, would I have to then concentrate it by putting more out?

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“It’s more efficient, and the more you do it the easier it will be to concentrate it there in the first place. I just take the amount of aura it would take to cover my entire axe and put that in the space along my sharpened parts. Just practice it a bit while we walk.”

She turned and started off. I followed her and held my blade out.

Edge only.

It flared out to the entire blade though. I took it back and tried again.

It only took me two more times but the amount I put out was not enough to condense into anything useful. I thought about slowly increasing the total amount but keeping it in that location.

I was about to start but Dodger tapped my shoulder.

She held a finger to her mouth and pointed off to the right of us. There was a group of five hunters, and a large boar fighting.

“Food” she signed grinning.

Yeah, we’d been hiking for a bit, I couldn’t say I wasn’t also getting hungry.

She didn’t wait to get closer and just charged forwards. I went after her, I really wanted to get this new order down before we fought again. Didn’t seem like it would happen but it’s not like this fight was going to take a while either.

She didn’t go for the one with the horn, so I did. Just as it was being pulled up to the orc’s mouth, I slashed through it and surprisingly it’s head.

Did I already manage to do it? I don’t think I had any time to even think about concentrating my aura on my edge.

“Quartz! Get the last two I’m going after food!”

Dodger shouted.

The other two were already on me, ignoring her completely. They both had bows that they tossed to the ground charging at me.

One was just a few steps in front of the other one, I went for that one first. I slashed through its abdomen and ducked as the other one swung its fist at me.

It was practically standing over me, so I jumped up and my head connected with its chin. It was a weird feeling, something hard crumbling and giving way underneath the weight of my head.

I landed and finished the job, slicing its head off. I wiped my blade off and put it away looking around to see where she had gone off to. I saw her aura moving towards me behind a tree. I kept an eye out for her until she came out from a large hole in a bush where I guess the boar had run through.

It was being dragged behind her and she was grinning.

“It’s nice and big, I think it’s small enough to fit in my new storage bag.”

She pulled a small pouch out of her boot.

“We can’t eat now?”

“It’d take too long to cook. And I kinda just remembered that neither of us have mana.”

She started shoving it into that impossibly small pouch. In the end the whole boar was inside, and we kept on hiking.

We came across three groups, with about four or five orcs per group. After we were done, we heard from Sailhin again.

“Alright, Lefty and I have made it to the wall. Quartz and Dodger, you guys need to get the remaining orcs and then we’ll let you know when we see the reinforcements go out.”

Dodger put her finger to her ear.

“Got it.”

“I can locate them for you if you want?” Dot offered.

“We’ll be fine.”

I followed her off. We picked up our pace though and ran through the trees. Getting them to send reinforcements was kind of the point so we didn’t need to be quiet now, I guess.

We came across a group of three. None of them had bows. I took the one with the horn out while Dodger took the other two out with a single cut. Had she been doing it lazily earlier?

“Trees.”

I looked up and saw one of the orcs fire an arrow.

I cut it out of the air and jumped towards him. I wasn’t sure I’d make it, so I put in a bit too much aura to support my legs and flew too high.

I caught the branch above its head with my stomach and the air was knocked out of me. I still managed to grab onto it but could hear Dodger’s laughter from below. The orc grabbed one of my legs with its free hand and I kicked with my other.

Its hand released and I looked down to see its almost headless body fall down to the ground.

I moved to hang off the branch from my arms and jumped down to the one below me to catch my breath a bit. Dodger was still laughing by the time I got down from the tree.

“I can’t believe you missed that badly.”

“Let’s just get the others okay,” my face burned a little.

A horn rang out, and Sailhin was back in our ears.

“You were too loud, now it’s not just the knights coming out.”

“It’s fine, now we know where the other group is.”

We did?

She took off and I followed. It wasn’t long till we caught up to four orcs running off uphill. We chased and overtook them easily.

“Great! The horn is fine.”

She held it up and put it to her lips and blew.