They travelled from village to village, there was a larger than normal amount of monsters on the board and Lucy and Wanyeng were kept very busy. Vincent even took down a few bronze rank monsters that were too close to the villages to be left to a normal contract. Sylvyn didn’t volunteer for any contracts and Vincent didn’t issue any contracts to her, content to let her float along and read her book or write notes or even at one point pull out a small manicure kit and pare her nails.
Only when Lucy and Wanyeng came back from the bog having fought a Wil-o-the-Wisp spirit monster and they were particularly filthy did Sylvyn look up from her book. They had gone together as the monster trapped its prey by luring them off the path into the sticky bog then attacking when they’re stuck. The way to defeat them was that the monster didn’t move when being looked at, the monster concentrated on being a lure. One adventurer would have to watch the small glowing wisp while the other circled around to attack it without looking at it. They had struggled to find their rhythm with being the distraction and attacker, if the monsters focus shifted from one to the other then it was free to move, far too fast for either to catch. They had taken turns to try attack the monster, each attempt dragging them deeper into the sticky bog. Finally Wanyeng had destroyed it with a spirit sword special attack.
“All that effort for an elemental monster? Ha, I thought the Remores would teach better than that. You all certainly swan around with your ribbons so proudly.”
All three stared at her in slight disbelief, they had been on the road three days and had been fighting monsters one after another, Vincent was starting to discuss with the other two his concern about the preponderance of monsters in the area.
“Well if your posh little backside is well rested then perhaps you’d like to take the next contract then?”
Sylvyn turned and looked at Lucy as if she hadn’t seen her talk before.
“Perhaps I might.”
And then turned back to her book.
They got to the next notice board, it was a shared board sitting an equally short walk between three villages on the crossroads. There were four contracts posted. Two were for Rattlings in two different villages which was fairly common, the weak monsters could normally be dealt with by the locals unless the nest went undiscovered for long enough for them to build up to be dangerous to normal people. The third contract was for a nest of stone crows; territorial birds made of stone, one of their difficult to deal with attacks by normals was the stone feathers being dropped from height, the birds not normally seen before the feather struck. The contract was to hunt the nest and then destroy the birds. The last contract gave Vincent pause. It was for Arknays, a cross between a preying mantis and a centipede. Torso the size of a horse but with dozens of short legs rather than the long ungainly legs of a horse. A locals pet cat had been seen being dragged into the cave complex near by, a diamond mine that had long been exhausted and was avoided by locals knowing it would be perfect for monsters nesting.
“I am content to start with the first three contracts then we will all assess the last together. The mines are known to be troublesome for seasoned adventurers and we normally avoid them on field assessments. With this team.” He said talking to Lucy and Wanyeng, absenting Sylvyn floating behind him. “I would be confident in taking on two Arknays in the mine.”
They made their way to the first farm that had reported rattlings, it was a barn that was rarely used and they could see a constant stream of the rattlings coming and going. Lucy and Wanyeng went ahead, now used to not even questioning about doing the contract themselves.
“Wan, can you clear me a way to the door? I can clear out the barn if I can get all the way round the building.”
“Sure, I’ll do a track around the building and you just try to keep up.”
“Ha, you think you’re all that do you?”
Wanyeng smiled at her and she knew she was missing something. He ran off to the corner of the barn, he hit the first rat with his plain katana. He had many sword abilities that conjured blades of different effects but he still had a trusted steel katana imbued with iron rank power. As he hit the first rat he blurred, moving so fast to the next that it was hard to follow with the eye. He moved from rat to rat, neatly cutting them in half lengthwise so there was no way for them to recover, Lucy tried to follow but had no chance at keeping up with the special attack Wanyeng was using, runes streamed from her eyes and laying chalk rituals at the same time, surrounding the building, she got back to the front as Wanyeng was cleaning the blood from his sword, standing in the doorway projecting his aura so no Rattling would dare come out.
“Perhaps we should have placed a bet if you could keep up.” He said, smirking at Lucy.
“Ha, if you had placed a bet I would have known something was wrong and never had taken it.”
The last rune left her eyes an completed the circle around the building, shrieking started immediately and Lucy staggered with the mana input.
“Dual ritual circles.” She explained when Wanyeng held out an arm to steady her.
Two thin streams of light started trickling out of the barn towards Lucy, one red and one blue. She instantly perked up when the streams hit her. Rattlings were throwing themselves at the line of runes at the door trying to escape, when they did they were annihilated immediately in a burst of blue and red light that joined the stream towards Lucy. After a few minutes the shrieking stopped, a few more and the stream of light stopped. With a wave Lucy dismissed the glowing runes.
“That chaining special attack, that was bronze rank wasn’t it?”
Wanyeng smiled at her, “Yes, well done, most of my powers are bronze rank now, after all, I have been an iron ranker for far longer than normal.”
Vincent came up to the pair and took Lucys upper arm quite forcefully and marched her just out of earshot of Wanyeng.
“Cadet Mitchel where did you learn the ritual?”
“I didn’t, you know I make most of these up. There were runes of binding and siphoning. I just did a dual circle to make sure I got all of them, why, what’s wrong with that?”
Vincent relaxed and loosened his grip on her arm, letting go.
“I’m sorry, a group of radicals were using an almost identical ritual some time ago to kill entire families in their homes without them being able to run or fight. It caused havoc in the adventure society and was dealt with forcefully, hushed up very quickly so the ritual didn’t become common knowledge.”
“That’s awful I’m sorry I didn’t know.”
“No, I should have realised you wouldn’t, excuse my outburst. But please, don’t spread the use of that method, however efficient it may be.”
“I understand Vinc… Instructor Trenslow.”
He smiled and clapped her on the shoulder and they made their way over to where Wanyeng had joined Sylvyn who was dutifully ignoring him. Wanyeng gave her a quizzical look as if asking what that had all been about but Lucy gave a little shake of the head and a small smile showing nothing was wrong.
“I will explain to Cadet Wanyeng so that he knows the gravity of not sharing what he has seen here today.” Vincent whispered to Lucy, quiet enough to that only she could hear.
For once Sylvyn wasn’t looking at her book and watched Lucy and Vincent walking towards them.
“Now that you are done holding up the deputy director with your gossiping shall we get going?”
“Oh you are ready to participate now? A bit keen? Not scared of a few rats?” Lucy was starting to lose her patience with the haughty elf.
“Hmph, if it will shut you up than I shall show you the power of noble training.”
They made their way to a farm a few fields along, the infestation had been noticed when checking a crop one morning, huge melons were growing in the field and they could just about see the rattlings, so large their backs were higher than the melons, scurrying about between them. Sylvyn stood, her magic carpet rolling itself and floating to her hand and she stowed it in her clutch as she was walking forward. Before Vincent could intervene she withdrew a bronze spirit coin from the bag as she placed her carpet and placed it in her mouth.
“May the dam break, the vessel overfill, skiens burst with the pressure of the infinite waterfall.”
As she chanted she raised off the ground, arms wide, her hair turning white and translucent standing on end. In a ripple moving outwards from her the melons started to explode, moving outwards there were watery explosions of melons followed by the bright red explosions of Rattlings. Lucy could just about see the Rattlings engorging and ballooning before it became too much and bursting. The whole field was a mess of wetness, levelled by the spell. Sylvyn hit the ground hard like a rag doll, the bronze rank power having left her. She got up and used a vial of crystal wash before stepping gingerly back to the road. She pulled out her magic carpet from her bag and sat back down, looking tired but very pleased with herself.
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“That, that is not what we do here.” Vincent said, looking out at the field of destruction. “Or how we do it. You have not only destroyed an entire crop and made the field unusable for the foreseeable future but you have no way of knowing if there are any more rattlings.”
Sylvyn looked at him patronisingly, “The farmer should plan to have costs of raising crops where there may be monsters, and they can deal with however few there are left.” She was selecting between two books and put one back in her clutch.
Vincent looked like her was going to hit the back of her head before he visibly calmed himself and walked away.
Speaking to Lucy and Wanyeng, “I will go and find this farmer and apologise of behalf of the adventure society, the branch will have to pay towards this loss of crops as it was an accident on a field assessment.” He shook his head, “Accident by the gods that we brought her along. You two go and find the stone crows, we will meet in the village square nearest the mine.”
He walked away and drove the cart down the road, Sylvyn floating along next to it as she had all trip, not asking why the others weren’t following. They consulted the magic society monster register and found to their pleasure that they were at the time of day that the birds nested. It was a simple job for Lucy to use a vanilla magic missile to destroy the nest with the birds in it once they had found it with a tracking power that Wanyeng had. They met Vincent and Sylvyn at the next village, he was looking frustrated and she looked as she always did, nonplussed.
“One of the wealthiest families in the city and didn’t offer a single coin.” He muttered as the others said hello. “I’ve asked around the village and there has been a quiet spell around the mines recently. No one has gone near however and there was a confirmed sighting of two Arknays fighting over a pet cat whilst returning to the mine. We will have to be cautious, Cadet Lucy, Cadet Wanyeng you will take point, you work well as a team. Cade… Miss Sylvyn you will stay with me, better to cover the front pair with spells.” She nodded her assent to the plan.
Magical diamond varieties were found in veins of iron, bronze and very rarely silver in the area. This mine had long since been exhausted for its minerals and was abandoned. The method left a lot of loose dust and plain un-magical diamond lying around that had little to no value compared to the magical variety. It made for a startlingly beautiful cave system glittering with the smallest amount of light.
They moved forward into the mine, tactically caterpillering forward, Lucy and Wanyeng moving the limit of sight then Vincent and Sylvyn catching them up before setting off again. Lucy used powdered moon rock, a magical version of igneous rock, magically imbued when erupted from a volcano at night, the rock dust blended into the floor of the mine but was visible to magical senses meaning they could find their way out without a monster using it to find them. They each had walked through a ritual Lucy had set up which allowed them to see in the dark for a short time, it put a clock on their mineshaft adventure of a few hours without repeating it. Lucy found herself missing the other Mitchells and their ability to all silently communicated through their interface, there was no way to communicate underground other than hand signals as the noise would reverberate and easily give away their position.
The ambush happened during one of the longer tunnels, as Lucy and Wanyeng walked underneath a dark opening in the ceiling and a monster dropped down behind them. It wasn’t the bright green of an Arknay it was a preying mantis looking monster for sure, but it had hard black chitinous plates that went all the way down its body even to the tip of a wicked looking scorpion tail.
“Dark Hunters!!” Vincent cried.
The problem with notice boards that cadets are taught at the academy annex with monster contracts is that the details are being recorded by normal rank individuals that don’t stay long enough to get a good look, and don’t then look up the monster in the magic society records, they will just write what they think is right and normal for the area. Arknays are an iron rank monster, occasionally appear in pairs and make their nests in hard to get to places, so it was forgivable to think this was them. Dark Hunters on the other hand were bronze rank monsters, that appeared in groups. They were excellent ambushers, capable of hiding their auras well.
Sylvyn panicked, she blasted half a dozen spells at the monsters back with no thought to a plan. The monster took the hits and shuddered. It wasn’t until the roof collapsed that the monster was in real trouble, it was buried underneath the rocky ceiling. The last thing that Lucy and Wanyeng saw of the other side was a second dark hunter dropping onto Sylvyn from behind, slashing her back.
Trapped on the far side of the cave-in Wanyeng walked up to the pile of rock, the Dark Hunter was thrashing its head to and fro weakly, the only part of it that was free of rubble. He drew his sword and in a two handed blow drove it through the top of the monsters head. He tried to move a few of the rocks but they were large sections, they were not going to get through without an earth shaping power.
“Crap.” Lucy said
“Well that does about sum the situation up.” Wanyeng replied, wiping monster blood off his sword.
Lucy swept her eyes down the mine shaft away from the blockage.
“Well to completely sum up the situation, we’re trapped on the side that doesn’t have the convenient path to the exit, in the dark, as two iron rankers that are not even adventurers yet, in a deep mineshaft, thats infested with bronze rank monsters. Our assessor who is meant to step in when things get bad is on the other side with the useless elf witch who is now probably bleeding out and he has to rescue her while fighting bronze rank monsters so is probably not coming for us any time soon.” As she finished they heard the sound of many rustling legs coming from different tunnels ahead of them.
“That, is also succinct in its summation.” Wanyeng said. “We need to move, this is not a good place to be making a stand. Anywhere more defensible for now.”
Lucy opened a circle of runes to her storage power, briefly illuminating the tunnel in golden light, twinkling in the diamond dust encrusted walls and pulled out a notebook.
“You lead the way, your perception power must be almost bronze, you have more chance of spotting an ambush, I’ll follow close behind and give cover.” She flipped through her notebook. “I knew I should have got more mundane rituals, I would exhaust myself before I could burn through that much rock, and we don’t know how stable the tunnel is.”
They made their way down the rest of the long tunnel, Wanyeng didn’t draw his sword, he moved with one arm out low and straight behind him, his hand flat as if it was a blade that was ready to strike. After a few hours they came to a junction, four tunnels were in front of them, all dark identical openings.
“Can you hold here for a while?” Lucy asked, “I have an idea but I wont be able to be present for a while, I’ll need you to defend my body.”
Wanyeng looked quizzically at her but nodded, as she sat cross legged on the floor he took a protective stance over her, tucking his thumbs into the belt of his robes. Her brow furrowed in concentration and Wanyeng felt a small surge in her aura and felt it separate from where she was sat before it dimmed and shot down one of the tunnels.
The world was bright and hazy around Lucy, ghostly in appearance. She was floating down the first tunnel shaft, fast as a sprint she wound her way down the tunnel. She didn’t often use this power as it was disorientating but was proving invaluable now.
Ability: [Astral Projection] (Mind)
Special ability
Cost: Low mana
Cool-down: None
Current rank: Iron 2 (14%)
Effect (iron): Project your consciousness outside your body to a range determined by power of the ability. Whilst in this form you cannot affect or be effected by physical matter. You may be detected by aura senses in this form. Your body is left defenceless whilst using this power. Any damage to your body will cause your consciousness to be immediately recalled.
After Lucy had pushed her ability to the limit she returned to her body.
“The left tunnel is clear but no sign of a way out, everything ok here?”
Wanyeng had a guilty look on his face as he put away a sweet stick he was munching on.
“Err, all quiet here as well.”
She frowned at him then smiled and repeated her projection into the second tunnel. It wasn’t until she tried the third tunnel she found something interesting, there was a line of ants travelling along the edge of the tunnel, the two way ant traffic would have normally gone unnoticed if she hadn’t seen that going one way they were carrying leaves. Excited she followed the line of ants back. Before she reached the end of her range the world flashed staccato. She felt a piercing pain through her whole body and the world rushed by. When she felt herself back in her body a moment later the pain receded to her right foot and she saw a long black spike-like leg piercing it.
Wanyeng was a blur of movement, he was a tiny figure against the three shiny Dark Hunters. He jumped and sprang off the walls of the tunnel, using the small confines to his advantage in acrobatic leaps. He was a boy of many swords, he held a silver shining katana in one hand and a golden wakizashi in the other, he spun not striking the armour of the monsters but deflecting their many spiked leg strikes, dodging the lunging mouths. He looked bored, a calm face that was not excited by the raging conflict, every now and then he would strike when the monster overreached, digging the point of either his sword or the shorter blade into a crease, when he did an orb would appear above the monster, either a sun for the golden wakizashi or a glowing moon for the katana. A storm of ghostly miniature blades surrounded him like a small comet tail, intercepting the rapid attacks of the bronze rank monsters, reducing the amount that got through that Wanyeng had to block himself.
The Dark Hunter piercing Lucy’s foot had done it more by accident than an attack, it had been backing away from the whirling dervish that was Wanyeng. Lucy was amazed that Wanyeng was managing to hold them all by himself, she could recognise that whilst he was holding he was not winning, riding a knife edge to protect Lucy and keep all three busy. The Remore academy had been training adventurers for centuries and was full of combat philosophy, all dedicated adventurers at some point hit a wall and had the need to form a team to push themselves harder, the foundation of this teamwork was set from basic training. ‘The strength of a team does not come from its collective strength, but the moments of its individuals efforts to support one another.’ When Lucy saw her moment she took it. Wanyeng had just delivered a piercing blow to the stinger tail of one of the monsters as it lunged at him, striking just behind the bulbous head of the stinger it nearly severed it but not quite, the tail already healing when it withdrew. As he leapt back to start his next attack sequence on the monster that had stepped on Lucy she used her Psychic scream power.
Ability: [Psychic Shriek] (Mind)
Special attack
Cost: Moderate mana
Cool-down: 30 secs
Current rank: Iron 5 (05%)
Effect (iron): A non-verbal cry. Causes a brief period of intense disorientation to a single target. Causes minor damage to the target.
Even though the scream was in it’s mind the monster turned it’s head towards the source of the disturbance. Wanyeng took the opportunity provided, as the neck was extended he lunged forward, stabbing both blades into the crack in the armour that had appeared. He thrust in opposite directions, getting covered in monster blood as he almost decapitated the monster. It fell to the floor next to Lucy, thoroughly dead. Wanyeng turned and used a power he had been setting up for the whole fight.
“Darkness and light, sun and moon; be mine to awaken and move at my command. Mine is the command. Mine is the realm and the power; bring forth the kingdom of eclipse.”
Wanyeng had got the same power as Rufous Remore, awakening a Sword essence power using an Eclipse awakening stone. He had private tuition in how to use it by the Principal himself.
In the dark tunnel the orbs of sun and moon rose off the monsters. They formed an eclipse over their heads. Wanyeng pointed at one of the remaining monsters and a bright beam with a dark core poured transcendent damage into the monster. A wide hole in the middle of the monster was annihilated and the beam ran out. Lucy hadn’t been idle, as soon as she saw Wanyeng focussing on one monster she attacked the other, using a magic missile from the floor she hit it square in its torso, smashing it against the wall, a splatter of bug goo hit the wall around its impact but it wasn’t finished there, it lunged towards Lucy where she still lay. Using her martial arts training she tucked her legs above her and kipped up to standing, reaching she drew Wanyeng’s sword from his side, she somersaulted the monster and dug the sword into the crack in its side formed by the impact with the wall, she hung on riding the monster using the sword handle as an anchor. She held on gamely until she felt her magic missile come off cooldown, she reached down to the other side of the monster from the sword and placed her hand flat against the gap in the armour and fired a missile point plank into it. After a second and a third missile the monster exploded and Lucy found herself sat on the floor in the middle of the goo.
They made their way up the tunnel, Lucy’s ability to project herself outside her body was a safe way to explore the tunnel up ahead and she used it every time they stopped. They found more Dark Hunters on their way, not a challenge to the two strong adventurers as single monsters. On one of the stops Lucy was taking watch while Wanyeng had a rest and a bite to eat, he was sat cross legged on the floor sharpening his sword with a stone when a light started to glow from within him Lucy turned in shock at sensing a bronze rank aura, knowing the ambush monsters aura control was good enough to get past her. But the bronze rank aura behind her was no monster. The young boy stood, no taller than he was a moment earlier but he seemed it, his face slightly more mature and he held his shoulders with more confidence. He looked older than his years but still the size of a small ten year old. He looked incredibly impressive until he hit the floor and started vomiting and excreting the awful pus everyone did on rank up. Lucy was kind and dragged him by one foot out of the gunk whilst he was recovering, she put his dimensional drawstring bag next to him where he could reach it for a bottle of crystal wash. It didn’t take him long to recover and change after he had doused himself with the small bottle to get rid of the awful smelly gunk.
“You must have been so close to ranking up before this!”
“I have been close for a while, danger is hard to come by in the academy, this is why I come on so many field assessments.” He smiled ruefully.
“Congratulations Wan.” She said bowing in his fashion to him. “Well at least it should be even easier to get out now.”
They found their way out of the third tunnel. When the sun hit their faces they were relieved, they had both thought to themselves there was a good chance before Wanyeng ranked up that they might die without ever feeling the sun on their faces.
What they didn’t expect, was the huge monster rampage going on all around them with a small army of adventurers battling them.