Lucy was training with Rashid in an underground chamber, it was longer than it was wide, an oval tunnel with targets down one end. It was configurable so that training dummies could come from wherever. The chamber was magically shielded so that potent attacks could be used. They were both standing at the table opposite the dummies looking over loose sheafs of paper with magical diagrams and placing them in order.
“I think the ice effect is more useful than the fire. And it cost less mana overall.” Lucy said, moving one sheaf of paper across another to the left of the table.
“Don’t underestimate how much monsters or people don’t like to be set on fire. There’s a significant moral component to burning or watching others burn knowing you may be next.” Rashid countered.
The idea of setting people on fire gave Lucy a moment of pause before going on. “I think we have a good collection of effects here, the only one we need to try is the mana dump. We only found it yesterday.”
“Lucy you need to be careful of that one, it will strain you to draw the ritual let alone expend more mana with the strike. It will not be a mainstay of your combat set.”
Anyone without essences could conduct ritual magic, the magic that fuelled the ritual coming from spirit coins, quintessence or sometimes even essences. When Lucy drew her combat rituals in the air it consumed a little of her own mana. Depending on which ritual she was attempting it cost less or more mana.
“Well you had better be here when I first try it then.”
She turned around to face the dummies at the far end. Runes streamed from her eyes into the air in front of her, forming a rotating ring of glyphs. She raised her left hand towards it and blue light started trickling out, feeding the ring. The glyphs very slowly grew larger. After a long time when she felt she was nearing the last reserve of her mana that she would need for the missile itself. As she raised her right hand to fire a missile, a curtain of shimmering silver light started to envelop them like a bubble. Rashid was chanting behind her creating a silver rank bubble shield around them both, just as the aperture in front of her was closing Lucy fired the missile. It shot into the rune circle and blasted away four times the size it had been when it entered. At least four times as fast and four times as loud. It smashed into the far end with the force of a bomb.
Rashid’s bubble had just closed around them. The force of the blast washed back along the tunnel towards them, the bubble turning from silver to blue, to yellow, to amber. The far end of the tunnel shone with a blue light. To about halfway back the stone tunnel had been annihilated, there was built in blue reinforcing magic that was exposed from vaporised stone that contained any damage in the tunnel. The remainder of the tunnel had cracked and sections had started to fall down. Rashid gave Lucy a serious look who was herself looking a little shocked. She grabbed the recording crystal from above Rashid and gathered the notes on the table just inside the protective bubble that was rapidly getting buried. Rashid teleported them out of there, into the sunshine above.
“That would have taken a high level bronze attack to do that much damage, not a power you have only just received at iron, I would imagine that every minor threshold advancement would have a multiplicative effect on your Magic Missile attack, not that you will be able to use this variation of it very often. I would surmise from this mornings performance that you have a sufficient grasp of your powers to conduct a field assessment early.” He said. A confident smile on his face as he shook her hand.
Lucy was almost bouncing as she walked across the training grounds to the sign up sheet for the field assessment. It was tacked onto what looked like a monster notice board you would find anywhere in the world. The irony was not lost on the students as they put their own names on the board to be assessed. She had to put her name and the recommendation of at least one instructor. As she wrote Rashid’s name after hers she saw a young trainee coming towards the board from the other side.
“Wanyeng, I’m not surprised to see you here!”
Wanyeng was the youngest trainee by a long way. Most essence users could absorb their essences until they were mid to late teens. Wanyeng was yet to see his tenth birthday. He had wandered into a ritual being set in his house for his older brother, the sword essence looking like a wonderful toy to play with in the centre of the circle. Essence absorption rituals were not dangerous as it was known you had to be of age otherwise the body would not accept them. The incident of a child absorbing an essence so young had caused a major investigation by the magic society looking into the Wanyeng family for any experimentation they had done. None was found and it was decided in the boys interest to attend the academy to get to learn to master his new accidental powers.
“Lucy, it is good to see you.”
Wanyeng took a fold out stool from his draw string dimensional bag and placed it on the floor so that he could add his name to the list.
“I am hoping that a field assessment on my tenth birthday may make them finally see I am mature enough for my badge.”
Wanyeng had been at the academy since he was six. The normal length of training was one year. He had been there so long that he was almost a member of staff, having had the lessons so many times he could tutor his much older peers.
“You realise there’s a betting pool on you? Some reckon you wont be allowed your badge until your age of maturity, others say you wont be allowed at all, they think it sets a bad precedent and will make people try essences on younger and younger people. Not that it’ll help, without serious magical manipulation the body still isn’t ready.”
Lucy could be blunt with Wanyeng, he had been a close friend of all four Mitchells during their time at the academy annex. As outsiders themselves they had not judged anyones circumstances and had leant in to the serious young mans instruction in martial technique. James called him the little samurai, the word did not translate to the local language but Wanyeng had liked the sound of it and it had stuck. The boys essences were sword, swift, magic with the master confluence. As a human he had a preponderance of special attacks that manifested in a lot of sword based powers. He was the most skilled martial fighter in the academy annex bar some of the bronze and silver rank instructors. Often during sparring sessions with training swords Teddy had ended the fight battered and broken, bowing deeply to Wanyeng he would mutter ‘Master Yoda, much to learn I have’ to the general confusion of all looking on, while Wanyeng was from an aristocratic family and deserving of the title Young Master he had no idea who Yoda was. It was unavoidable as the style he used was so reminiscent of the Yoda - Dooku fight scene in attack of the clones, an underrated Star Wars film Teddy thought.
“I am well aware of the bets on my future.” Wanyeng replied with a small smile. “I myself have placed a wager on my sixteenth birthday being the year they will pass me.”
“Really? Then why do you go on every field assessment hoping to pass? You go on all three every year.”
“For a few good reasons, the few field trips we do as part of training are not enough, our purpose as adventurers is to kill monsters to protect people. Also, I have hope that they may see something different in me each time and pass me anyway.”
His eyes glittered in hope at his words, she could feel in his aura at how much he wanted to be accepted as a full adventurer. She bowed to him as he preferred rather than physical contact.
“Then I’ll put a wager on this field assessment in the hope that this time they will see you can do anything the rest of us can and more.
He smiled and returned the bow. Both heading off to prepare their gear for the trip the next day. As Lucy got back to her room she opened the rune circle that was her storage power, filled with golden light she could see all the items floating around in the depths. With a thought different items started floating towards her. She had a small selection of wands and staves that she could use thanks to her magic essence ability Magical Artisan, there were also some niche items that were magical in nature that she was glad the power let her use. She also checked the basics, she had a potion belt, enchanted to protect the vials from damage, that she would wear when she was on the road and a range of regular and throwing weapons. An enchanters robe, with the power to increase her mana pool. Over the top she would wear a system of armoured leather straps, the robe would not allow for conventional armour without ruining the enchantment on it. Kyra had insisted that she borrow her ring of mild mana replenishment and she wore this on her right index finger, the only other rings she wore were her wedding rings on her left hand. She laid down on her bed resting, the alarm in her room was the same as at the villa, a soft glow would wake her up in plenty of time to get to the marshalling yard for maybe the last time tomorrow.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Teddy, James and Kyra had headed back to the city. Kyra waved goodbye to the two boys as she had agreed to volunteer at the Broad Street Clinic for the day. The Academy annex had connections all through the city and encouraged their graduated trainees to engage with any civil services, it was also a great way for her to level up her Life essence powers. Lucky would gambol about the waiting room, alleviating stress from waiting patients and slowly healing any ills that anyone had even before they were even seen by an attendant. Kyra would assist a church of the healer priest with any cases they were working on with her Life Aura power, confusingly not an aura power but allowed her to produce a minor healing bolt that gave her feedback on the health and injuries of the target. Her Life Charge power was reserved for emergencies, very high mana it gave significant healing, every now and then a catastrophic accident happened and if no essence user was nearby with healing magic available then everyone in Old City knew where to bring the casualty. The boys had been issued a contract by the adventure society to deal with a monster in the lumber district, with wood at a premium, contracts were not left to have adventurers choose when they fancy them but directed to minimise disruption to production. The reason they had been chosen was James’ ability to deal with animals, as the contract wasn’t clear if it was a bear problem or a Fergax; an aggressive bear-like creature. Teddy was assigned to go with him as it was James first official contract from the adventure society, not including notice boards and even though it was not a two star contract it was being watched by the rich, highly influential people that had interests in lumber production.
In the morning Lucy arrived at the annex’s marshalling yard to only find Deputy Director Vincent Trenslow and two other people. A slight elf who was craning her head looking to see behind Lucy for anyone else joining them, not seeing anyone she gave Lucy a rudely close look up and down. The other one standing with a cool familiarity to the deputy director was Wanyeng. The haughty elf turned mostly away from Lucy before talking to her.
“I do hope you’re worth waiting for. The deputy director,” She shot him a simpering smile. “Has said due to the low numbers of sign up that we will be leaving as soon as you deigned to turn up.”
Vincent rolled his eyes behind the elf’s back.
“That’s not quite how I put it. Good morning Lucy, you are still early. As Miss Sylvyn has pointed out however, now you are here we will move out, a small group, two from the Remore academy annex and one Greenstone local.”
Kyra and Wanyeng shared a look, although it was not required to attend the annex to be an adventurer, most in the greenstone area, whether from wealthy families or not, normally chose to attend. Those that didn’t were normally against the idea of ending the class system inequality that was present in the still majority aristocratic political system of Greenstone. With most of the best trainers choosing to teach at the annex that lead to lesser trainers inflated with personal recommendations from influential family members to tech the scions of wealthy families. This lead to what the four Mitchells had come to realise as ‘the blind leading the blind’. Because there was no recommendation required to attend a field assessment outside the annex they had a very varied sampling of quality, mostly starting at poor and getting worse from there.
Vincent went on,
“This should be a relaxed atmosphere between the four of us. It will still be an assessment don’t get me wrong, but we will be in only each other’s company for the next week, we still have the same route and same number of monsters a larger group would deal with.”
Lucy and Wanyeng looked delighted, they were looking forward to dealing with more monsters and relished the chance to pick up the extras that would be dealt with by other on assessment. Miss Sylvyn did not look impressed.
“Surely we can come to some sort of arrangement, there is no need to be away from the city for so long, as soon as you see my performance I expected you to return me to civility!”
Vincent’s face took a serious look, he had socialised with the Mitchells away from the Annex and Wanyeng had been on every assessment that he had recently run, and he made a point as the deputy director of running as many as he could. He did this because he was a firm believer in the principals of being an adventurer, for the young prissy noble-born elf to have already started complaining before even leaving had drawn out his assessors look.
“Miss Sylvyn, I am a man who measures my words with care, I have no doubt that what I said is perfectly clear. Whilst I am there to ensure you achieve, or do not achieve the standard of being an adventurer we are testing it by doing what adventurers do, that is, to help people. The monsters are very real, they hurt and kill very real people and so we will complete the assigned route. Is that clear?”
It was quite clearly a dressing down, before her time at the annex training grounds Lucy would have cowed slightly under the withering words. Sylvyn however didn’t seem to take it in at all. Her haughty expression hadn’t changed as she looked away from Vincent.
“Oh very well, lets go shall we.”
And she simply walked off in the direction of the road. Vincent narrowed her eyes at her back with a slight shake to his head. Lucy and Wanyeng looked at each other and started to follow her to the wagon parked on the road. When Sylvyn got to the cart she looked at it in exaggerated horror.
“I was told that the transport for the journey was rough but I hadn’t expected it to be so abysmal.”
She reached into a small clutch bag that was hanging off one arm by a small golden chain. Pulling out a rolled up bolt of cloth. It was long enough to lie down on and wide enough when unrolled to fit two people comfortably sitting side by side. She stood on one end and the other end started to fold itself in a stair-like fashion to provide a seat and backrest, it floated a foot or so off the floor. Vincent raised an eyebrow at her when he got to her.
“Cadet Sylvyn, it is recommended that those on assessment ride in the wagon so that we may discuss upcoming contracts and feedback.”
Her head had whipped around at the use of the moniker ‘cadet’.
“Mr Trenslow, whilst I respect your position in the society my family have been in greenstone for more generations than years you have been alive! I will be addressed by my family name without a preposterous term. You will address me only as Miss Sylvyn.”
Something closed off behind Vincents eyes, he took a deep breath and turned away from the floating elf and climbed onto the front of the cart. Lucy and Wanyeng jumped nimbly onto the back, both sitting on one side so they could keep an eye on the elf travelling alongside. Vincent tapping the reigns on the hydals backs and they were off.
The first village they came to greeted them warmly, this close to Greenstone they had regular adventurer visitors and the notice board itself was recently serviced, there was only one notice on there.
“Braxions.” Vincent said.
He reached down to pull a piece of paper out of the tray next to the notice board to make a copy and was surprised to find he took the last sheet. As an adventure society official he carried supplies with him and refilled the box with a thick wedge of papers.
“That’s unusual, I was told that someone had recently come out to refill and repair all the notice boards. Anyway, Cadet Lucy, Braxions are a good as any monster for you to start the week on, what do you know?”
“Braxions live in wooded areas only, locals can deal with them themselves if they are willing to sacrifice the forest, the monsters would burn rather than go on open ground. Very stealthy, they blend with the trees and kill travellers on paths that lead through forests as they are incredibly territorial. They appear in numbers from a dozen to twenty outside of a surge, in a monster surge they number from a hundred upwards, large enough swarms have been seen to travel across open ground as effectively a forest in their own right.”
“Very good, the contract is for ‘a group’ the local who posted the notice could not give more detail, when most people see monsters they tend to run rather than stand and count.”
They made their way along the road until they saw it disappear into a copse of trees, they stopped short of the overhanging branches. Without needing to be told Wanyeng and Lucy disembarked. Sylvyn was floating along reading a book. Lucy started to prepare herself, she took out a short thick wand after a little deliberation and then took her notebook out and leafed through it. Making a few notes she put it away. She then looked towards the woods and runes streamed from her eyes to form a circle in front of her, it revolved slowly, she took a few moments to look over the circle in the same way someone would check a paragraph for errors then it dissipated to nothing. She nodded at Vincent who nodded back and put a far see crystal above her head and she made her way down the road to the tree copse.
The group of trees was only small so she estimated it would be a small group. She missed James for his aura ability, his ability to enhance the vision of others would have helped her spot the monsters. The Braxions were long limbed thin creatures that looked like humanoid stick insects. Their fingers came to wicked points. They were not strong individually but attacked from stealth using camouflage and shadow. She strolled into the woods as this was the most surefire way to find the monsters. Her magic essence power, Magical Master, allowed her to see the eddies and flow of magic, the Braxions were gifted in hiding their auras so she couldn’t find them that way, the monsters had driven out all the other creatures in the woods so she couldn’t look for dead spots either. Watching the flow of magic she saw a change in the branches up ahead, a very slight vortex of magic centred on one spot. Readying her short wand she kept walking, appearing oblivious.
When she was directly underneath the one she had seen, a Braxion dropped down in front of her about ten feet away. They were working together she realised. Her aura power was Clarity, she didn’t slow time down like Teddy could but the effect was similar, her thinking time and decision time was much quicker. She immediately shot her wand straight upwards without looking. She had chosen the wand because it fired a forceful blast rather than anything flammable. She heard the crunch of limbs as the monster was shattered in mid air, just above her head and landed in a crumple on the road next to where she had been standing. She had immediately rolled forward catching the monster in front off her off-guard, it had expected her to freeze or run. She caught its legs in a scissor sweep. Using savage technique and her iron rank strength she had hit the fragile legs with enough leverage to snap them sideways. As she untangled her legs from the broken remains she quickly knelt and snapped the monsters neck with a wrench. Standing up she saw that four had landed around her.
“War is the realm of uncertainty.”
The monsters shrieked, Lucy’s own vision didn’t change but she’d had the effect magically countered onto her in the mirage chamber during training. Her Fog of War ability caused the monsters to see a thick mist all around them, still able to see shapes moving but they would have to be close to see detail. The effect was in a dozen meters or so around Lucy but lasted a brief amount of time. She made the most of it, runes streamed from her eyes, the same as what she had practiced before the woods but much smaller, they formed a ring that was just wide enough for her to stick her arm through. She made a pumping motion through it and it stuck the end of her arm, just in front of the knuckles, a steady blue light rose in a swirl from her wrist to power the circle. As the fog dropped she extended her arms in a right angle, aiming at two of the monsters, her wand blasted, snapping the first one in half at the waist, her right hand fired a magic missile, hitting the small rune circle it blossomed into a continuous stream of green fire. It arced over and splashed onto the first monster. It shrieked in rage, nothing was more deadly to Braxion than fire. Without pause she swept the stream of fire around her, catching the other two in their leap towards her back. The stream of fire lasted as long as the flare of the missile hitting the rune circle, so she repeated it a few times. Everywhere the fire hit that wasn’t monster the unnatural green fire disappeared. On the monsters it spread like lamp oil, consuming them rapidly.
After the first two ambushes and the display of fire magic she was not attacked again. She walked around the small copse taking her time and found two more that were hiding from her. Thoroughly sure there were no more she made her way to the road in the centre and waved to give the all clear to the others in the wagon as they had to go through anyway.
“A very good start Cadet Mitchell. You have a natural talent not only for using magic but innovating and adapting existing structures to suit the environment you are working in.”
Wanyeng gave her a double thumbs up with a huge smile on his face, looking every bit like a nine year old boy who had watched someone blasting monsters apart with fire magic. Sylvyn was still floating along next to the cart, not having even seemed to have looked up from her book.