With a Saighba'an lurking about, able to appear and disappear without notice, the group's pace slowed considerably. Aelius first asked if they would like to return to the surface, but since everyone voted to continue to the bottom floor, that's what they did.
"It's coming..." warned Will, demonstrating, once again, that he could sense the Saighba'an before it appeared. The moment he finished issuing his warning, a layer of mist spread out from the ground a few meters from where they were taking a break, followed by the Saighba'an's pale figure rising from its center in a hunched posture.
"I see where the rumors come from..." remarked Angil, casually taking a bit from an apple-like fruit. He had only seen glimpses of the Saighba'an the other times it appeared. Now that he got a good look at it, he found it a little too bestial for his preferences but it had a phantasmal beauty that couldn't be denied.
Seeing Will and company sitting and staring back at it without concern, the Saighba'an tilted its head to the side. Its facial structure was a mix of human with ovine features, and though it never seemed to blink, its large, ghostly blue eyes possessed a mesmeric quality.
Transitioning from its hunched-over posture to a deep squat with its left, cloven-hoofed foot forward, the Saighba'an drew its bow to its absolute limit before releasing a vibrant, bluish-white arrow that rapidly increased in size as it traveled. Will couldn't help but note that it had aimed at him, but he made no attempt to move as the arrow impacted a barrier he and Allyson had erected together, exploding on contact and releasing a thick, frigid mist throughout the area.
As it never stuck around more than a few seconds, the Saighba'an began receding into the ground even before its arrow impacted the barrier. This time, however, a petite, raven-haired figure with a spiky ponytail appeared behind it, asking, "What's the rush? Stay a while and listen..."
Without waiting for a response, Ohta attempted to kick the Saighba'an in its shapely, annoyingly toned rear. To his surprise, his attack passed clean through its body, leaving a layer of ice covering his foot and foreleg as the Saighba'an looked back at him and completed its descent.
"Intangibility..." remarked Ohta, frowning as he stamped his foot on the ground, producing a burst of Aura that dispersed the ice covering his leg and the frigid mist that had started to swirl around him.
"You good?" asked Will, raising his voice but not shouting as he and the others observed the scene from where they were seated around a small campfire.
"Since when do I need a weakling like you to worry about me...?" asked Ohta, kicking a small stone with bullet-like speed at the invisible barrier, causing it to appear and produce ripples as the pebble fragmented into fine powder.
Following his rebuttal, Ohta borrowed a page from the Saighba'an and sank into the ground as if he were pulled into it. In his absence, Will and the others exchanged glances with one another, Allyson forcing a smile as she remarked, "Your senior disciple is...exceptionally powerful, Aiden. Can you tell us who your Master is...?"
"It's probably best that I don't," responded Will. "I don't think you or the members of your party can't be trusted, but if it became known who my Master was, people from all across Deisceart would come seeking me for a duel..."
"Implying that your Master is someone incredibly strong and famous..." mused Angil, narrowing his eyes and smiling.
"Could it be a Brave...?" asked Aelius, raising his brows as he asserted, "You and your senior disciple being Brave Candidates would explain the power you possess at such a young age..."
Though none of them knew Will's exact age, they estimated him to be in his mid to late teens. The rest of them were primarily in their late twenties, with Allyson nearing her thirty-first cycle, so, if nothing else, he was their youngest member.
Shrugging, Will adopted what could be interpreted as a telling smile before responding, "Who knows...?" and taking a sip from his thermos of warm soup. This left the members of Silver Cat with more questions than answers, but with all signs pointing to Will being an up-and-coming figure in the Astralis Kingdom, the way each of them viewed him changed on a fundamental level...
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While Will and the members of Silver Cat were resting, elsewhere in The Tomb of the Jackal King, a group of eight people sat around a fire of their own. The older members of the group appeared calm and composed, but their youngest member, a bronze-skinned boy with delicate features, red hair, and carmine eyes, atypical of a Deisceartian native, sat with his arms wrapped around his legs, his expression haggard and forlorn as he asked, "How much longer must we endure this...?"
"Asking such questions over and over only diminishes the group's morale. I'm not going to keep warning you..." said a cloaked woman with fair, ash-brown skin, red-brown eyes, and wavy, dark-brown hair that fell over the right side of her face, concealing the eye beneath. The ends of her cloak had metal loops with sharpened edges. As for the rest of her outfit, she wore a black crop top that exposed her abdomen and shoulders, loose black pants kept in place by a belt and several metal loops, and custom-made sandals formed of the same faded, white-gold material as the rest of her accessories.
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"Come on, Guild Master. Nothing wrong with letting the kid vent a bit," said a markedly more muscular woman with red-tinged brown skin and somewhat messy, maroon-brown hair fastened into a series of beaded braids. Nearly every inch of her exposed body was covered in tattoos depicting demonic figures, but her most prominent feature was her left arm. Starting from a pauldron-like junction point at her shoulder, it was completely mechanical, formed from a matte silver metal that hummed with a faint magical pulse.
Shifting her gaze to the muscular woman, the Guild Master, Al-Kheim Hanabi, narrowed her eyes and warned, "Choose your words carefully, Khuvrah...there are consequences for speaking out of turn..."
Shrugging, the muscular woman, Sarh Khuvrah, smiled and retorted, "You used to be funner. Ever since you became Guild Master of Tempahsta, you act like you've a rod shoved so far up your ass it tickles your throat."
"Enough! Let's settle—!"
Interjecting before things could escalate to a full-blown conflict, the second youngest member of the group, a petite girl with a white, cat-eared hood, purple-hued brown hair, and bright green eyes, made a seal with her right middle and index fingers, blocking all other sounds but her voice as she said, "Forgive me for speaking out of turn, but don't believe we should be fighting amongst ourselves..." in a dull monotone.
Regaining her ability to speak, Hanabi spat on the ground and muttered, "Kaba..." in reference to Khuvrah. The word had many translations, but the most common were mongrel and female dog.
Rolling her eyes, stoking Hanabi's anger even further, Khuvrah shifted her attention to their surroundings, a spacious chamber that ordinarily housed the Dungeon's most powerful monster, the Jackal King, Anab Anuba. Now, it served as the group's prison, courtesy of the teleportation circle leading to it being modified to be one-way. To make things worse, the Jackal King was missing, preventing them from leaving via the teleportation circle that could typically be found in a Dungeon's Treasure Room...
As it had been several minutes since its last appearance, none within the group of eight were surprised to see a Saighba'an take shape near the far end of the room. Far more concerning was the fact it wasn't alone, a total of eight Saighba'an of varying shapes and sizes appearing as, for reasons unknown to the group of eight, the Dungeon regarded their being trapped as a threat to its survival.
"Leave this batch to me," said the only other male in the group, a tall and muscular man with pale brown skin, sharp brown eyes, sword-like brows, and slicked-back brown hair that was long on the top but neatly trimmed on the sides. His weapon of choice appeared to be a golden scepter with a spear-like head, but its true nature presented itself when he pressed the nail of his thumb into a tiny groove on the handle, causing it to grow from 120cm to 280cm, just in time for him to deflect and cut down the veritable volley of arrows loosed by the group of Saighba'an.
Though the man was able to successfully deflect or destroy every arrow, his expression hardened, the muscles of his jaw flexing as the tail of a glowing blue mark on his left pectoral, resembling a palm-sized s, grew about one centimeter in length, nourished by the icy energy permeating the air.
Ostensibly finished with their task, seven of the Saighba'an disappeared, leaving their most diminutive member behind. This was the Saighba'an who had marked the man, and though it had the stature of a child, it was the most powerful as the man had taken it upon himself to bear the brunt of their periodic assaults.
Seeing the creature tilt its head curiously, the man unclenched his teeth, struck the mark on his chest with his right hand, and shouted, "I am Tahl Fharim, proud son of Deisceart! And no matter how many times you come, I will—not—yield!"
Tilting its head to the opposite side, the Saighba'an did something no one in the group expected, grasping the center of its blue and black bow with both hands before splitting it like a pair of split-horned blades. Even more surprising, its usually impassive expression changed slightly, a faint smile adorning its face as it struck a battle-ready pose, one sword pointed at Fharim and the other angled at the ground, largely concealed by its body.
"Am I imagining things, or is this pale little nymph challenging Fharim to a duel...?" asked Khuvrah, her expression and tone full of disbelief as she had never heard of a Saighba'an abandoning its bow and taking up a pair of blades.
"I have no idea what's happening, but be cautious..." warned Hanabi, a bead of sweat forming on her brow as she wondered if the changes in the Saighba'an's behavior had anything to do with the modifications made to the teleportation circle. Saighba'an were ultimately the manifested form of a Curse, so if someone could decode the Curse's structure, they would be able to replicate and modify it at their leisure...
Unable or, more accurately, unwilling to back down from the Saighba'an's challenge, Fharim nodded in response to Hanabi's warning before taking a few steps forward, spreading his feet wide, and getting into a low stance with his left hand extended, fingers spread wide, and his spear held firmly behind him with his right.
Channeling a tremendous amount of earth-elemental Mana and Aura, Fharim's words echoed as he chanted, "O Great Andora, unshakeable foundation! Vest me with the vestige of a mountain's immovability! Rhy Dhea...!"
In response to Fharim's chant, resplendent golden armor materialized on his body, covering his chest, shoulders, forearms, waist, and calves. This was an exceptionally rare ability, combining Mana and Aura into one, but to maintain its tremendous power, the vitality of the user was irreversibly consumed. In essence, it was an ability only used in battles where defeat spelled death, one way or another.
Signaling the start of the fight and stunning everyone present, the smile on the Saighba'an's face became more pronounced as it opened its mouth and intoned, "A noble death awaits. Let us begin..." in a husky, ephemeral tone with a distinctly Tuaisceartian(Northern) accent...
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(A/N: For a better reference for a Tuaisceartian accent, think of Fran from FFXII. In essence, they have thick Icelandic accents.)