Penelope and I rushed back to the carriage to grab our weapons and change into our training clothes. Mom arrived and pointed out some specific set of her vials that would hopefully resist the acid. I packed them all in a tiny bag of holding I had. It was a little pouch that only held a cubic foot of material, but was only a few inches wide. I put my coin pouch, a few sandwiches, some water skins, the vials, and an emergency healing potion mother supplied me. That filled the bag more or less to capacity.
Bags of holding were absolutely awesome, they weighed more than a normal bag, the tiny pouch I had weighed about a pound, but they never increased in weight. They were fairly easy to make, except that even the smallest bag required a D grade monster core. Which meant they were all worth at least a few gold, nothing for the Halcroft family, but a significant expense for a commoner. They were useful for shipping goods, but making ones big enough to be really powerful required grade A cores, which made them worth hundreds of crowns.
Bags with D grade monster cores were a single cubic foot of space, C grade were 5 cubic feet, B grade were 25 cubic feet, and I didn’t even know how big A or higher cores were. The one Farva was putting our shopping in was a C grade core. I had been supplied with a D grade bag that I could keep personally, but C grade bags were generally used then returned to the manor.
Riza was waiting impatiently outside the carriage for us to join her. “Keep Lady Shalia here in town, we should be back by nightfall. If we aren’t send message to the manor.” Riza was talking to Gregg, our carriage driver.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Mom asked.
I gave her a steady look then huffed. Mom was not a combatant, yes she could use a crossbow, but she was just not interested in fighting in the least. I would have liked to say that about myself too, but that was before I started training with Penelope. I liked fighting, it was fun. “I have to do this… for us.” I said, trying to instill my meaning into those few words.
Mom put her hand to my cheek. “I just worry you are pushing yourself too hard.” She pulled me into a hug. “Don’t get hurt…” She sighed.
Penelope was standing next to us and my mom reached out to her too, pulling her into the hug. “You either, your mom would kill me.”
She released us. “We’ll be careful.” I assured her. “Love you.”
“Love you both.” Mom said.
We walked up to Riza prepared. Penelope had her real spear rather than her practice one. She had been gifted a beautiful weapon on her 12th birthday, but hadn’t been able to really use it yet. I had my blunted Sukeshi. Fortunately I could create a very sharp edge with my Radiance magic. I had practiced Radiant Blade quite a bit, and found that it made an extremely sharp blade, sharper than any unenchanted metal. It could even cut through magic technically, but I had to overpower the opposing magic, which with my level wasn’t possible.
“Alright, let’s go, hopefully this won’t take long.” Riza said, still with a slight frown to her face.
Penelope and I made small chat while we walked to the opposite gate of the town from where we entered. On our way we saw the damaged section of the wall. It was being repaired, but I could still see where acid had splashed and eaten away the wood. Buildings surrounding the breach in the wall were all damaged or destroyed.
“Ah fuck… it’s always him…” Riza grumbled as we approached the gate.
“Dame Riza.” A bald guard with a big mustache that looked to be middle aged said. Despite using her title he did not seem impressed by our knight. “I understand you’ll be hunting hogs.” He said with a smirk.
Riza glared at him. “Just point me in the right direction, Marvin.”
“Don’t be like that, Riza.” He attempted to put a hand on her shoulder but somehow missed her. He stumbled before righting himself. “Big scary knight Riza…”
“Just talk, guardsmen, I don’t like having to waste my time because you can’t do your damn jobs.” Riza stared Malvin down.
They stood there in an idiotic staring contest for severl long seconds before Malvin huffed. “Whatever.” He spat at the ground just in front of Riza. “We think they are near the glade just to the East of town.”
Riza looked down at where Malvin had spat for a second or two before looking back up at him. She did not look impressed. “I’ll be going then.”
Penelope and I did our best to stay well out of whatever pissing contest this was. We edged around Riza and began to walk a bit ahead of her. Malvin still noticed us of course. “Babysitting the Halcroft kid? Guess you really are his bi-” He didn’t get the last word out, because Riza had clamped it shut.
“You will refer to her as Lady Halcroft.” Riza exuded a terrifying presence that reminded me of Halcroft the few times I have seen him truly angry. “And I am Dame Riza, do not disrespect the lord’s house.”
She let him go by pushing him back. “Well fuck you too!” Malvin yelled after her.
Riza just ignored him, left through the gate and immediately turned right. We hurried after her. “Why was that man so mean?” Penelope squeaked out a minute or so past the gate.
“I’m not well liked among the guard.” She supplied as an apparent answer.
“That seemed personal.” I pointed out.
“Yeah well he and I were young and stupid and he got attached despite knowing I didn’t want that.” Riza said casually. “Wants me to come crawling back even after two decades, fucking idiot. It doesn’t help that we have to work together sometimes. I usually get called in when the guard can’t deal with something.”
I had never thought of Riza as anything other than Halcroft’s knight. I knew she had kids in town, but I didn’t know who the father was or if he was even in the picture. Come to think of it she never mentioned a lover and didn’t have a marriage band. I glanced down to her hands only to see her gauntlets. That was dumb. I couldn’t confirm now but I had seen her hands before and I couldn’t remember one.
Also she looked to be in her early 30’s so I had assumed her kids would be young, but that absolutely did not have to be the case in this world. If she achieved a high vitality at an early age she could easily be 60 already and I would never know.
“Is that why you are in a bad mood? That you have to work with the guard?” I asked.
Riza huffed. “Yes.” Was all she said.
Penelope and I glanced at each other and allowed Riza to get a few steps ahead of us. Clearly she did not want company right now and any more questions from us would make things worse.
After about twenty minutes of wandering through the fairly dense temperate woods we came to an opening. There was a large clear pond with two small rivers feeding into it and one coming out. Moss covered ground with occasional flowers poking out made the entire place quite enchanting. If we weren’t on a hunt I would have suggested we stop to eat the sandwiches I packed, this was the perfect picnic place.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Riza immediately began to check around for something. I didn’t know anything about tracking. Penelope was clutching her spear glancing around a little erratically. “You doing alright?”
She jumped at my voice. “Just a bit… nervous I guess.”
That made sense, I wasn’t really sure what to expect but I knew I needed to do this to get to a level so that I could be useful during and after the escape. We couldn’t put all the fighting on our one combatant, Farva. Plus she hasn’t been able to use her combat skills pretty much at all in the better part of two decades.
I reached over and gave Penelope a side hug. “We have to keep moving forward. Riza won’t let anything happen to us.” I assured her.
“Hmmm.” Riza was looking at something quite intently. I approached her and saw that she was examining an obvious trail through the moss. The indentation was about a foot wide and slowly curved back and forth until it went back into the forest. “Shit.” She swore under her breath. “Basilisk more than likely.” She mumbled to herself. “That’s a real threat, by far the most dangerous thing in these woods and it’s close. I need to take you two back and come back with some more soldiers.” All of her sourness was immediately dispersed as she took charge of the situation.
I considered objecting, but I thought better of it. If she needed the assistance of soldiers a basilisk was super bad news. I decided that if I was going to have a chance to do this again in the future I needed to follow her orders without objection. “Alright, I understand. Should we go back the way we-” I was cut off when I heard the crunch of a twig.
Riza and I spun toward the sound. A large pig with matted short fur and green pustules all along its back and long dangerous looking tusks was standing there. In the shadows of the forest behind it were several more of its kind slightly illuminated by the green glow of the acid on their backs.
Riza stepped forward, drawing her longsword and gripping it with two hands. “Well we can at least kill a few of these creatures first I guess.”
I drew my blade and Penelope ran toward us to let Riza get between her and the hogs. I turned off my system notifications not wanting them to interrupt the fight. Then activated my Radiant Blade magic with all the mana my 68 magic stat could muster. Thankfully I had refilled my mana pool before we got out of the carriage.
I kept my mana and mana regeneration per minute in the upper left hand of my vision just to be able to keep an eye on it. 718 of 786 mana remained with a mana regeneration rate of 0.8 mana per minute. Now that I had activated it the blade would only drain 6.8 mana every minute, 6 mana when you subtracted out my mana regeneration. If I did nothing else I could keep my blade going for literal hours.
Penelope reoriented herself and got into a ready stance next to me. I Identified the closest hog, [Acid Hog, 84]. Monsters only rarely had classes, which meant their base level was their only levels. Still this hog had 62 levels on my total level. I checked my mana to see how much it cost to identify the hog and was happy it was only two mana. Identify only used as much mana as was needed to get all the information I could, so a person with level 2 Identify could see the level of these creatures. That meant their Animus stat was pretty dang low.
“Do not let that acid touch you.” Riza warned about the obvious threat as the hogs began to move toward us fanning out. One of them was preparing to charge us when Riza burst forward, and sliced its face in half in an instant. I was confident Riza could handle this all alone, but I needed to gain experience.
I activated Radiant Step and lunged forward at another smaller hog. Unlike with Riza this one had time to rear back and attempt to gore me as I approached. I came to a sliding stop as it butted its head forward where I was moving toward. I made a sideways slash while the hog was overextended and my blade went through the flesh of its head like butter but caught when it was about half way through the skull. My swing’s momentum hadn’t been enough to make it all the way through.
The sound and smell of sizzling flesh hit me at the same time as I reeled back. The hog fell to the ground dead. The meat still cooked from the residual heat of my blade, and the blood dripping into the radiance blade sizzled and popped. I wretched at the sensations.
Riza appeared at my side and bisected a hog that was about to charge at me. I hadn’t noticed it at all. Goddesses I thought I was ready for this, but Radiance magic was way more brutal than just a simple sword swing. “Pay attention princess!” Riza shouted at me, slaying another hog the moment after. She glanced back at me, and I swallowed back the bile in my throat. I had to do this. There wasn’t another choice if we were going to successfully escape. I nodded at her and took up a ready stance. Riza blurred away, off to kill more of the hogs.
I just focused on the three remaining on my side of the battlefield. The hogs had been wary of approaching Riza, but when she disappeared they immediately began to charge at me.
Two of the hogs charged as the other one stuck his head in the moss and somehow caused one of the pustules on its back to explode outward toward me. Dodging immediately tracked the attack showing me where every gobdule I needed to evade was and its trajectory.
I activated a max power Radiant Step taking one leaping stride between the charging boars. The sudden acceleration was jarring causing my vision to gray at the edges, but I had trained for this exact maneuver. With both hands on my hilt I held the sword to my left side allowing it to slice along the flank of the hog on my left. I saw some of its pustules pop spraying the area with acid, but fortunately the extreme momentum of my bursting movement cleared me of the acid and the other charging hog.
Some of the acid fell on the other hog, and it sizzled burning away the fur, but when it got to the skin it stopped. Something about their hide made them resistant to acid.
I activated a cheap Radiant Step to spin quickly the moment I landed. Then another few Radiant Steps and I was on the hog that had sprayed the acid at me. It had only just now begun to spin toward me, I was faster than these creatures even without my Radiant Steps, with it, I was running circles around them. With all my weight in the blow I made a downward slash aiming for its neck to avoid bursting any of the pustules.
The blow hit and my sword buried itself deep into the neck of the hog. Its body went immediately limp as it began to fall forward. Dodging threw another warning vision in my head coming from behind me. The last hog had sent an acid attack flying toward my back.
I lifted my foot and poured mana into a Radiant Step by kicking the side of the hog my sword was still embedded in. I shot back and my sword ripped from the creature’s corpse. I couldn’t see where I was going and I felt myself crash into a tree that was behind me.
I had avoided the acid attack, but just like during training I had smashed into something and knocked the wind out of me. My vision blurred from a combination of extreme acceleration and deceleration. A clear image appeared in my vision, the hog charging me. I staggered to my feet, and noticed only now that I had dropped my sword at some point. I garbled out a swear and raised one finger to the attacker.
I poured mana into my finger creating a radiance beam from it. I used the clear image from Dodging, because my vision was still quite blurry. I shot and miraculously hit the hog in the eye, immediately causing its left eye to explode. Its charge faltered and it went veering off to the left as the image from Dodging winked out. I cut the radiance beam off immediately, but it had still drained a considerable amount of mana. Keeping a beam going for even just 1 second counted as a few ‘castings’ and I did it at full power. In that second I had lost 204 mana.
Dodging didn’t warn me of any more attacks so I slumped down to the mossy floor and desperately tried to catch my breath. A bit more than a minute went by until I could finally catch my breath.
My vision began to clear and I finally saw my Sukeshi sitting right on the ground next to me and grabbed it. I needed the increased mana regeneration of Sukeshi chakra, because I was down to 345 mana. That actually wasn’t as bad as I was thinking. I checked my mana max and regeneration, it was up to 848 and 0.81 per minute, I must have gained quite a few levels. I held off on checking for now.
Riza walked over to me after finishing the hog I had wounded with my radiant beam. “Four hogs, pretty good princess.” She actually seemed impressed. She held out her hand and I grabbed it with my off-hand and she hefted me up.
I glanced around the battlefield to see that Penelope was breathing hard surrounded by several dead hogs. I doubted she had killed all the ones around her, but with her stat advantage over me it was possible.
Riza held out her hand. “Give me your mom’s vials, I don’t want either of you spraying yourselves with acid trying to get it.” I did as she asked, handing over four empty stoppered vials. “Alright this will take just a moment then we’ll be heading back. Killing some forty hogs should at least buy us some time.”
There had been that many? I took in the whole picture, there were 5 corpses near me, the 4 I had killed and the 1 Riza had to help me with. There were some 10 or so near Penelope, and then a line of corpses going into the forest.
I walked over to Penelope who gave me a weak smile. “I got 6, how’d you do?” She asked.
I held up four fingers with what I assumed was a similarly weak smile. I heard a popping sound behind me. “Shit!” Riza swore. I decided not to look back since there wasn’t any screaming to accompany it.
“Good news, Lady Shalia’s vials hold the acid just fine, bad news is the outsides aren’t as resistant, nearly melted one into my hand.” Riza said as she approached us. Three vials would just have to be enough.
“Thanks.” I breathed out before taking and storing the vials in my bag of holding. I pulled out a waterskin and took a long drink both handing it to Penelope who eagerly took a drink as well. “Want some? I have another skin.” I asked Riza.
She held up a hand. “No, thank you though…” Her gentle smile faded and she spun on the spot looking into the forest. “Stay behind me.” The words were stony. Then I heard a hiss in the distance.