“The Prophet and his mother!” the leader spat, astonished nonetheless. “You look younger than my sister!”

“Less amazement, more Spider-killing!” I hissed, sending out another volley, this time to the left, where the Split Rays scythed through the denser, untouched Spiders there, giving a moment of relief to the Fire-user before he had to build another firebreak. “Why am I in the middle of a damn Spider horde?”

“What, you never seen an East Texas Spider Swarm before?” the leader guffawed, watching in amazement as the lines of solid firefrost speared directly through so many Spiders, lighting them up from inside with internal detonations. “Some scouts were sent out to see what the situations with the Spiders’ numbers in the hills were. When they didn’t come back, we were sent in to look for them, only to run smack into this Swarm come boiling out of the hills.”

“The Banded Azurite Tarantulas vent their overpopulation on a pretty regular basis, every three to five years,” the hithero-silent Fire-wielder interjected grimly. “It’s a little early, so the other Hunters likely stirred up something, and their Ruler decided to send them out.”

A black-banded blue Tarantula came zipping in from the side, somehow dodging all the obstructions and getting through. As it lifted its forelimbs and charged, the massive thorned Vine laying unobtrusively in the middle of the men whipped out and down like a hammer, smashing into the bull-sized thing and flattening its head with a splat, sending it into a tumble as the Vine recoiled like a serpent ready to strike. I noted the tall, solidly-built brown-haired guy watching there silently, obviously the last line of defense, his Plant there akin to an Animal Companion. He was probably also a Wind user, judging by his Aura, but the Winds here were indeed pretty iffy for trying to call Mana, so none of them were trying such things.

The last guy was the biggest of the lot, black-maned and big-boned, and was the one tossing out explosions of stone spikes from the ground, clenching his fists as clusters of them erupted out of the ground and impaled other Spiders getting too close, combining wall and offense at the same time.

“You can’t outrun them, and they’re going to catch you in a sweep within a half-mile,” I judged at a glance. “You need to go underground and minimize the angle they can approach from!”

“How are we going to dig a hole fast enough?” the leader promptly cursed, more balls of Lightning whirling out from him to dance among the Spiders. “Even if we all combined hands, it wouldn’t be fast enough before we were overwhelmed!”

I set down on the Earth Wave, sighing. “I’ll dig out the first hundred feet of the tunnel, slide us into it, and you two fill the area behind us with fire and lightning. The rest of you help open the way deeper, so they can’t dig down to us, and we can just keep moving if they try it.”

“We have to warn the town,” the scarred Fire user spoke up, his expression grim.

“What’s the signal?” I replied, noting his Yellow Aura with approval.

“Three red flares!” the leader said promptly, watching the arc ahead of us getting closer and closer.

I promptly shifted my Darts to Radiant Red, Bursting, Weapon Mode for three of them, and sent them flying into the sky. A thousand feet above us, they Burst one, two, three among the circling Bats, bright enough to be seen for many miles.

“Good enough! Build that tunnel!” the leader roared, turning his Lightning on the scuttling horde at the same time the Fire-user unleashed his sticky flames.

I pulled up the Earth Magic of my Dawnstopped Shaping Stone, fed it a point of Mana and expended it, rather than going for duration, reaching out and forcing the stone out of our way ahead of us.

Our Earth Wave user caught the movement of the Earth, and went straight for the opening. Everyone ducked as abruptly we were inside a short but narrow tunnel, going down at about ten degrees, the end of it coming up fast.

Fire and Lighting filled the tunnel behind us as squealing Tarantulas crowded into the entry, but there was no way for them to get through the combined assault and reach us.

The short stocky guy tossing Walls and the big guy raising Spikes turned around and pulled on as much Earth Magic as they could. I was still Shaping, but without the massive surge of Mana that had rent open the beginning tunnel so smoothly, and I guided their efforts in driving the tunnel down, down, down into the ground.

“Icing it closed!” Adam’s-apple called out, and the two offensive Casters let off just in time for Ice to flow, ripple, crack, and solidify in a rapidly-thickening wall behind us. Something strong promptly ran into it, but the silent guy with the Vine threw out his hands, some seeds or something glittered in the air, and then exploded into shadows of greenery that filled the air with cloying, sticky tendrils, absolutely filling the entire tunnel behind us as we hit where my tunnel ended and the new one began.

“Bring it in closed behind us,” I grit my teeth, “and slow it down while you do. We’re turning off ten degrees. If they want to dig at us, let them find us. Stop the Earth Wave once there’s a hundred feet of stone between us and them, we’ll walk.”

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Nobody had a better idea, so the two Earth-users turned around and filled in the tunnel behind us with solid stone and dirt. Our speed slowed to a crawl while I slowly rolled the stone out of our way.

We still had Light, everyone watching me as I concentrated and the stone flowed away, the ‘driver’ letting the Earth Wave dissipate and leaving everyone standing on the ground. Plant-guy waved his pet back into what looked like dimensional storage, and there I was, deep underground, surrounded by what looked like eight paramilitary guys all staring at me.

“That is the smoothest damn Earth Magic I’ve ever seen,” the leader spoke up, watching the tunnel narrow down to merely three feet wide, but extend further as it did so. By keeping the height to seven feet, I could make it a good fifty feet longer every six seconds, long enough to proceed at a decent walking speed.

“I have done a LOT of sculpting,” I informed him over my shoulder, all of them following behind me without saying much, the Light-user keeping a gentle Light up high out of reflex. “My name is Fae. Who are you all?” I asked back at them, eyes staying forward. They could feel the magic working gently around me, much less violent than the powerful Earth Magic they’d all been throwing around.

“My name is the Mick, and I’m the captain of this bunch of idiots what nearly got us all killed,” the Lightning-wielding leader spoke up immediately, shouldering the blame stalwartly. “The guy bringing us out of the fight is Sam. Guy with the Vine is called Tox, he doesn’t say much. The fellow flashing the Light is Glenn. The chucklehead with the fine, full head of crimson love is Red. The big fellow tossing stone is Bjorn, while the short fellow is Big Bad John. Our Ice-user is Burt.”

“Who brought in the Wolves?” I turned my head slightly. “I don’t sense any Summoners among you.”

“Burned a Hunting Horn off to call in some help to buy us time,” the Mick confessed. “Fucking saved our bacon, it did, but as you said, probably wasn’t enough.”

“You Earth-users can probably feel some of them digging, but they’ve lost our trail.” All the men looked back, to see the tunnel sliding closed behind us. “Now, the air is going to get bad soon, as we’ve only got what we brought with us, but we’re well below the Bats. If you can very slowly and subtly bring up some fresh air, I’d sure we’d all appreciate it.”

Three of them could use Wind: Glenn, Tox, and Burt. Glenn seemed to be the one with the touch, as the other two let him handle the deft but slow use of Air Magic to re-oxygenate our breathing supply.

“Where you from, Miss Fae?” the leader asked for them all as we walked steadily forward, stone flowing open and closed in front of and behind us.

“I do not mean to be coy, but I think it better for all of us that you do not learn that, Captain,” I told him, earning a few meaningful grunts behind me.

“Knowing Void Magic at your age...” he trailed off, shaking his head. “And you’ve a weird accent, definitely not American. We’re not dumb enough to not recognize an elite student when we see one, Miss, although I have to say you handle yourself fair enough.”

“For a prissy rich girl, Captain?” I called back to him, and heard them all chuckle.

“And truth!” he agreed. “Never seen a spell like the one you used on them Spiders before.”

“It’s a Force Magic variant. You can sort of think of it as compressed space without matter, if you like, shot out and homing in on centers of magic in series. So, instead of punching out with telekinesis, I shoot an arrow at them.”

“Ahh, and a fine arrow it was, zigzagging all over the place and sending them flying!” he complimented me warily. “Is that how you were flying without wings?”

“Telekinetically lifting myself is much, much easier than trying to lift Tarantulas with size fixations,” I returned to him easily. “Now, I don’t mean to put a lot of pressure on you, but how do you gentlemen feel about making some money, or better yet, some improvements to your magic?”

I had their immediate and undivided attention, not that they had much to spend it on. “You’ve got a job for us?” I could almost hear him grin.

“No. Well, sort of. Clean-up duty. I’m not walking away from the Spiders, you see. I’m walking us back and around while their Swarm sidles on by above us, because we’re leaving a lot of money on the ground behind us.”

“Ohhhh...” “Shiiiit...” “Damn, she’s right. The eyes...” “Don’t forget the claw-tips and the fangs!” rang out quickly behind me, as they got quickly back into money-making mode. Reading them as mercenaries had been accurate, I patted myself on the back.

“Better. You saw how the ones I killed were burning with a white fire, right?”

There was a chorus of assents behind me, as it was pretty damn hard to miss. “That some kind of Seed effect?” Burt called forwards, curious.

“No, it’s a special variety of magical energy called vivic fire. Its main function is to purify Dark energy, and random magic around, and accelerate the decomposition of the dead. When it does that to random magical creatures, it leaves these behind.”

I flicked up a Soul Crystal from my Pocket, catching the Light Glenn had up. I tossed it back to the Mick behind me, who caught it deftly and looked at it closely.

“There’s magic in it, but I can’t tell what type,” he admitted after a moment, before passing the thing back to Sam behind him, who took it quickly and studied it intently.

“It’s unaligned,” I informed all of them. “Which is absolutely wonderful, as far as you are concerned. Its primary use is enhancing the Tier level of your Stars.”

It got suddenly very quiet behind me.

“You mean, like Soul Remnants do?” the Mick asked in the silence.

“They are called Soul Crystals. I shall let your imagination do the rest.”

The breathing behind me got rather intense as they each solemnly took the Soul Crystal in turn, felt the magic inside it, and pictured what it must do.

“So,” the Mick asked slowly, “how many of these Soul Crystals will be laying about up there?”

“One per carcass the vivus burns away. I regret to say you will lose anything else valuable about them, but every Servant-class creature will generate a Soul Core like that; a Warrior-class will generate a Soul Egg like this,” I held up a larger, purer Soul Crystal that shimmered in the Light, “and the two Commanders will generate Soul Gems like this.” The hen’s-egg-sized Crystal dazzled them in the magical Light.

“Enough Soul Cores will get your Stars to Tier 4. Eggs will reach Tier 5. Gems will bring them to Six.” I closed my hand, and the Soul Crystals between them disappeared. “Of course, you must treat ALL your Stars by Rank for them to be effective. Leave even one shy, and there is only the benefit of expanding your Mana limits.” Which was a huge benefit all by itself. “Get a full set, and the Tier of your magic ramps up.”

“Mick,” Red murmured back there. “There were a lot of Servant-class Spiders who might be burning down...”

Maybe even enough for all of them, or at least one Element each. The Warrior-class, not so much, but if they could just raise all their Stars one tier, the benefits of that would be incredible! I could hear them breathing more heavily as they contemplated the upgrades.