Mid Evening - Mid Summer : In the Sky over Central Arlington
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- Archangel Michael ~
-I can't stop it...- Biting my nail as I looked at my system displaying several colored bars, labeled 'Population Rank', 'Mana Rank', and 'Monster Rank' respectively, I felt my soul churn with anxiety.
A mere week ago, the ranks were all at the lowest end of 6, however, with every day that passes with that dreaded woman on Earth, the mana rank crept higher and higher. -It's about to cross over to five...- And while the monster rank had increased quite significantly due to the appearance of The Warden and System Enforcers she dragged along, the mana rank was about to surpass it.
And that was bad...
Really bad...
The way the system worked was fairly simple. Each world was given 3 ranks, one for the population, one for the mana density, and one for the monsters. These three ranks would be averaged out to determine the overall rank of the world, however, it was exceedingly rare that there were outliers in these ranks because of one not-so-simple thing called 'balancing'.
In simple terms, rank balancing was a system to keep the three separate ranks in the same ballpark as one another. If the mana rank rose above the monster rank by an unspecified threshold, the system would implant monsters into the world through gates to increase it, and if the population rank fell below the mana rank, it would let us administrators create 'system quests' that would call in system mercenaries from other worlds.
It was all for the intent of keeping worlds balanced with their mana rank.
However, Earth as it was currently, was a very special case.
Ever since Evren had arrived, the mana rank had begun to skyrocket, and the monster rank even more-so. Thankfully, whenever monsters were summoned through gates, they would permanently raise the planets rank, regardless of whether they died or not, so Evren killing The Warden, and the System Enforcers gave Earth a grace period.
But that grace period was about to come to an end, and there was nothing I could do about it. -If there is one saving grace though.. it's that she doesn't increase the population rank...-
Thankfully, since Evren wasn't actually connected to Earth's system, the only thing that increased her rank was her datalink, which, as it was now, was set at default values of 0, casting no effect on the population rank.
It was the only thing keeping me from panicking. -With the population rank so much lower than the mana and monster ranks, we should be able to start calling in foreign System Mercenaries again before the monster rank balancing gets invoked...-
But, unfortunately, that didn't mean anything more than there was a chance we could survive.
"Hoooh..." Letting out a long, stress-filled breath, I looked up at the dark night sky looming overhead. -It's a gamble I already placed a bet on.. so I can't regret it now...-
If I played my cards right, Earth had a chance to evolve to a rank I couldn't have dreamt of before, but at the same time, one misstep could lead to this world's doom.
-I can only trust in Father's guidance...- Looking at the distant stars littering the sky, I felt the weight on my shoulders grow.
-I can only trust that I will find his light again before it's too late...-
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Early Morning - Mid Summer : Betsey Lake | Leyfa Askr (Previously Northern Michigan)
- Evren Lestir ~
-What a pretty sunrise...- Looking to my right, I watched as the sun was lifted over the seemingly endless forest drawn across the horizon, bathing the sky in a warm orange light before looking ahead to see Eve flying just ahead of me. "So, where did you say we were going?"
"To a place called Betsey Lake." Glancing at me over her shoulder, she motioned toward the horizon ahead of us. "It's where an old monster that lives in Spirit Lake comes to nest in the summer. It's somewhere around level 600, so we've been leaving it alone besides occasionally directing it away from ships, but I think it'd be a good experimental subject for you."
-I see...- It had been a bit over a week since Eve started teaching me about mana at that point, and honestly, things had gone swimmingly.
Over the past several days, I had expanded my knowledge of the world of mana immensely, learning what exactly it is, and the utmost basics of how to utilize it.
But the more my understanding of it grew, the harder it became to actually use it. It was almost like I was overthinking it, and overcomplicating the visualizations and calculations I was doing, even for simple things.
So, in order to help my mind shift gears and learn to shed the extra weight, we had moved to more practical teaching methods, bringing me to several different areas where I would be forced to use only aura, or only mana to do certain tasks, like flatten a village of orcs, or, to focus on my precision, try to hover in the air without using the ground.. something that was far more challenging than I anticipated.
And that day wasn't any different.
As things were, we were headed to a lake about a hundred kilometers north of Terra, across a stretch of water so vast I thought it was an ocean, only to be corrected and told that it was Spirit Lake, a freshwater sea that used to be the Great Lakes.
From the air, the lake seemed pretty normal, like any other huge lake, but the moment you peeked your aura beneath its surface, a whole new world was revealed.
Scattered around the lake were colossal monsters called 'living islands', colossal four-legged serpents that looked like something between an arapaima and a crocodile, floating beneath the water just enough to let their flat backs, covered in thick grass-like moss and small shrubs making it appear no different from a small island.
Typically they were quite docile, housing entire habitats and environments on their backs just like miniature islands would, feeding on whatever happened to float by in the water, whether it was a school of small fish, a human, or even boats.
For Earth, they were some of the biggest native monsters in the world outside of the ocean, sitting at just over level 400, and growing up over half a kilometer long at times.
But the thing we were looking for treated them like floating snacks.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
"We call her Betsey because of where she nests, but she's something called a chameleon eel. With her camouflaging abilities plus a bit of light magic, she is completely invisible when in the water, and even if you catch her crossing a stretch of land, if you don't know the area like the back of your hand, you won't be able to see her... At least that'd be the case if you were a normal person."
-Hm?-
"Unless she's really deep underwater, you'll be able to feel her presence the moment we get close, but the same can be said about you." Finally beginning to slow down, she held her arm out to make me stop as well. "Because you can only read so much of your aura for now, she'll feel your presence and run or hide before you can get to her. Knowing that, I want you to find and kill her without direct contact, that includes through aura."
She essentially meant I couldn’t just punch it from a distance, using my aura to transfer the force. "So you want me to kill it with only magic or my aura?"
She was quick to nod.
-Simple enough...-
But as I turned away, about to run off and start the search, she held me up with a smile. "One last thing, you can't go underwater. Ah, and you have twenty minutes."
Pausing, I gave her an odd look. -Twenty minutes is fine, but...- Not being able to go underwater wasn't great... -How am I supposed to scan the bottom of the lake if I can't get in the water?-
To keep it short, aura, just like a gas, prefers to flow through lower-density mediums over higher ones, so, even if I focused the entirety of my aura into the water, it would barely penetrate it before being forced back to the surface like a fog machine pointed at the surface of water.
Until that point, my solution had been to dunk or bury myself in the object I wanted to force my aura through, that way the aura leaving my body would force itself into the medium, and while it'd still feel like moving a ball through molasses, it made it far less straining to control.
But on top of that, going into the medium got me closer to whatever I needed to reach, so I didn't have to worry about my measly four-hundred-meter range limit when controlling my aura.
However, I now had to find out another way. -In twenty minutes, no less...-
And that was far easier said than done. "Alright. Betsey Lake is straight ahead of us, right?"
Not wanting to waste more time than I already had, the instant Eve nodded, I darted to the horizon, reading as much of my aura as I could while sifting through the countless presences I felt in search of the monster.
But, even after finding the massive lake and scanning the surrounding area, I was empty-handed. -But if it's isolated to this lake, I have a chance...-
Standing on my aura about twenty meters over the water, let out a long breath. "Hoooh..." The lake was only about eight kilometers wide at its widest point, and almost half of it was a thin, relatively shallow canal, limiting my search area immensely.
-If I wanted, I might be able to just send a big enough shockwave into the water with my aura that the eel comes up to the surface to fight or tries to run through the canal...- But that would defeat the whole purpose of the assignment.
-So let's start simple.- With a little over fifteen minutes left to find the eel, I started running through ideas to more naturally inject my mana into the water so that I wouldn't have to precisely control it, trying everything from just forcing it into the water at the surface, thinking it would then push what was beneath it deeper into the water, to creating different shapes with my aura and shooting them into the water.
But nothing seemed to work right. -Creating shapes worked the best, but it's still not great...-
Trying spheres, disks, and even bullet shapes, I found that I needed something that would maintain its direction, unlike the disk which would flop over seemingly at random, and something that would provide as little resistance against the water as possible. -Since Eve told me mana particles can comfortably fit inside atoms.. what if I just stacked mana to make needles?-
In theory, it would work well, but similar to a teardrop shape I tried, it would take more control and I had to create in bulk.
However, it was the best option I had, so I looked more into it, very quickly burning away the remaining time Eve gave me to complete the assignment.
But even after a couple of hours, Eve never walked up to stop me, never pulling me out of my spiraling thoughts. -If it puts too much strain on my mind to create them individually, I need to create it in bulk.. or do it without thinking...- And on top of that, I had to figure out how to shoot it into the water.
But after a lot of thinking, I had an idea. -What if I covered my reserve in a bunch of funnels to focus my aura into thin beams?-
Of course, it was an idea that sounded much easier than it was, but after trying it, creating a rough funnel out of stiffened aura and placing it against my reserve, a thin beam of aura zipped out of my abdomen. -Oh?- And while quite a bit of aura still leaked through the 'shell' I made with stiffened aura, the beam was actually quite substantial. -Now.. I just need to shrink it.. and create a bunch of them...-
Pain instantly ripped through my head as I did it, but after forcing myself through it, I managed to make a section of perforated 'shell' that covered a small section of my reserve and turned that section into a series of tiny beams.
"Hooh..." Thankfully, once it was made, it was pretty easy to maintain, and even more so to move around. -Now.. let's see how it works...-
Turning it down to the water, the image my aura painted in my mind suddenly started growing, with a deep cloud forming in the water as the beams pushed deeper and deeper.
Of course, the beams were far from strong enough to reach the bottom, just like spraying a pressure washer into a deep pool, the beams made it about halfway to the bottom before coming to a stop and spreading into the surrounding space.
But that was more than enough to catch a whiff of the monster lurking below. -There you are...-
Smiling like a cheetah that found a wounded gazelle, I casually walked over the surface of the water until I was centered over the presence I felt, when, out of the blue, the massive, several-hundred-meter-long eel darted toward the surface, spreading its jaws just before it could close them around me.
But, unfortunately for it, it never had the chance to get above the water. -To charge into such dense aura... How ballsy.-
Stiffening a colossal plate of aura just inside the surface of the water, the moment the eel was about to blow through the surface, its nose was crushed while I, along with a few hundred meters of the lake's surface was launched into the air.
"Surface tension is a wild thing, ain't it?" Smiling with a bit of a craze as its bloodied face came out of the water, I looked down at it like I was looking at a rabbit caught in a trap.
*Vwoom* As the eel continued out of the water, trailing blood into the sky, I gripped it with my aura before letting the massive plate of water I held with my aura to start falling, and, just before reaching the water, transferring the impact into a corkscrew motion.
*Splat-SPLASH* Instantaneously shearing off the eel's head, its body began spasming, crashing through the surface of the water while its lifeless head sank into the depths once more.
*Ding!* But the panel only caused the joy of success to fade for a moment.
You have killed a Level 614 System Mercenary
Received: 14,321 Gold 26 Items:
-It says 'System Mercenary' again...- Looking over at its body haphazardly splashing around on the surface of the water, my expression darkened. -I wonder if it had a local system panel...-
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