The forest was the most vibrant, alive and fresh surroundings that Teddy had ever been in. The sunlight streamed through the leaves onto the path giving a moving, flowing, dappled pattern of shadows. The filtered effect of the light gave the impression that they were being charged with bursts of light. The boys were running. They ran at the speed of Olympians but it cost them little more effort than a casual stroll with their enhanced bodies. They were so at ease with the pace that they could’ve easily talked to each other but they didn’t, they ran in companionable silence, not wanting to break the nature around them. The forest around them was akin to watching a nature documentary on a 4K VR headset, where everything had been filtered and perfected, the sounds were pure and unspoilt, no far off noise of a motor or an aeroplane overhead from their own world. It was like listening to a documentary with noise cancelling headphones just before David Attenborough starts narrating.

The boys had never run together in their old world, not properly. They had a fitness craze in their early teens and tried to run together but it soon stopped. Now the four of them often trained together which included a lot of running. Now they were running to get home, the hydals they had brought with them they sold on the cheap to the estate owner once they had seen the state of his affairs.

………

The contract they had been given was a little more complicated than posted as they often were. The lumber mill owner had shown them the damage all around his property. He specialised in wood from deep in the forest that was very isolated from the rest. For the owner to call in a contract to help him out was rare, a condition of running the mill was to show a level of competence in dealing with regular monsters. The damage was wide spread, not just against the structure of his property but the surrounding bushes and trees, it looked as if two excavator owners had tried to have a fight, ripping everything up in the process. Teddy had felt mostly useless as James had wandered around checking out the tracks. Both Teddy and the mill owner had been surprised to hear that it was both Fergax and real bear tracks. As an iron rank creature a Fergax wouldn’t last too long until the magic inside it broke down and it entered the berserk stage. Through all the tracks messing the ground James was confident that there were multiple of the Fergax and even more of the bears, a veritable battle royale of fur and claw.

They cross interviewed the mill owner, not trying to scare the man but tagging in and out to interrogate him, drawing out little details the man would have otherwise forgotten. Then they got to the business of hunting monsters. The Fergax monsters were the first priority, the mill owner had put up with the disturbance for a while until it got out of hand and now they were worried that some of the monsters were getting to the end of their ‘sell by date’ as Teddy put it. At first James hadn’t been impressed by the church of the Hero’s selection of the Rat essence, but he had been very happy with the powers awakened by it. One power in particular was synergistic with his overall aura and his awakened powers from his eagle essence. His Scenting power from his rat essence didn’t seem very useful on its own but it added a layer to the picture in front of him. As a passive power it overlaid his sight with the scents around him, showing the direction and concentration. He found it difficult to explain to the others as it was such an instinctual power to him to use. As a passive power it had already got its way up to bronze rank. The side effect from the academy program taking so long to grind in the fundamentals of being adventurers was that it actually slowed down progression from iron to bronze rank in some situations, but over a year of constant training and directed meditation meant that most students on graduating were a good way through iron rank. At bronze rank the overlaid new effect confused him for a long time. He had the ability to sense auras as a function of being iron rank and an aura power of his own so he could manipulate and hide or project his own. What he could now see as well as scents was a visible trace of auras. He could now track people and animals by their lingering auras. Counter intuitively the stronger the aura the harder it was to track. The Fergax monsters aura was only iron rank so they were easy enough to pick up from the site to where they made their lair.

James crept forward, no sight of Teddy in the shadows at all. He moved over the ground with all the grace of a leopard on the savannah. They all found that iron rank made them better all round, the academy had pushed them to show them how much better they were, right now James was using every bit of the dexterity training they had been given. His animal essences and the animagus confluence had given him a deep seated instinctual gift. He could see in the loam where a stick may be underneath ready to crack and give away his position, which logs he could step on without leaving a trace and the pools of light coming down from the canopy that may flash off him and give away his position. His awareness of the nature around him showed where the trails of smaller creatures had been. What he saw ahead surprised him, Fergax were normally solitary creatures, manifesting in the forest only as singles unless it was a monster surge. A half dozen of the giant bear-like creatures were in front of him. An uneasy truce seemed to be between them and they all stayed together but kept a short distance away from each other.

[Six is quite a lot] came the interface message from Teddy.

[Divide and conquer? I can lure them and you take them out from behind?]

[I can probably take two out of the picture quickly then tie up the third, between you and Koda you can take on one each right? Then I should be around to help with the third one following you.]

The Fergax were spread out in a clearing that was and narrow slice of woodland floor with no trees. At James’ agreement to the plan he stood up and let out his aura, he then used a tiny trickle of mana into his special ability apex predator, not enough to suppress the clustered Fergax but enough to send them a challenge they wouldn’t ignore. He then dashed off into the trees, the clearing nicely lining up the monsters in a six monster chain to chase.

Teddy used a series of lethal abilities in quick succession. Dashing forward with his swift ability he dropped a black hole hand grenade behind the rearmost Fergax, then dashing around it he slashed the air just behind the next monster with his hand opening a rift which crackled with the huge amount of mana he had imbued it with, the destination rift was just in front of the monster to which it ran into, mirroring the amount of mana imbued to the first, the result was half of the monster simply disappearing and the monster falling sideways in a bloody mess. As he appeared through the rift still dashing forward Teddy swung his dimension blade as hard as he could at the neck of the third monster pumping mana as he leant into the attack, the blade sliced cleanly through and the headless body crashed forward under the momentum of the monster’s run chasing James, it had never seen Teddy. Teddy looked back to see the grenade finish its black hole effect and exploded sending the first monster crashing into the departure rift, taking huge chunks out of the front of its legs, it wouldn’t be chasing anyone. Teddy pulled a mana potion from his belt and turned around to see how far James and the other monsters had got.

James had released Koda sending him as far out to the side as he could, with a burst of his aura he kept the chase on him instead of his familiar. When he heard the grenade go off behind him he turned and faced the lead Fergax. The monster thundered towards him, larger than any bear had a right to be with bony protrusions all over its body. James dug his feet into the soft ground and squared off. The monster didn’t slow down, it was so intent on catching it’s prey. The prehensile tail whipped out of Jame’s back and smashed the monster sideways and it cleared the ground before smashing into a tree, the bony protrusions carving rents in the tree. The second monster was hot on its heels and again didn’t slow as it charged forwards. This time the tail seemed to blur, James’ rat essence power Scurry was one that didn’t seem powerful on it’s own but James had found that it was a brilliant edge at the start of fights.

Ability: [Scurry] (Rat)

Special ability: Agility boost

Cost: Low mana

Cool-down: Combat status dependant

Current rank: Iron 5 (90%)

Effect (iron): At the start of every fight receive a 10 second boost to agility. Agility will be boosted to 200% with a small increase with every minor threshold advancement.

The tail wrapped itself around the Fergax’s head and James neatly stepped out of it’s way. He dug his feet in again and used his extra strength to hold his ground as he used the monsters momentum to wrench its head as it passed, neatly snapping it’s neck. The third monster was tackled sideways by Koda, the bear familiar was significantly smaller than the monster but undaunted, his strength was incredible for his size and he went claw to claw, tooth to tooth with the bigger bear monster. James trusted his familiar and turned back to the first Fergax that he had smashed into a tree. James leant down and picked up a spear that was being carried across the forest floor by, surprisingly, ants! The large soldier ants formed a column under the entire length of the spear and as he picked it up some were still attached, he shook his head and threw it as hard as he could at the monster, it pierced its thigh pinning it to the tree, he closed in and finished it.

When James and Teddy met in the middle a bloody and limping Koda arrived to meet them. An iron rank familiar should be able to take an iron rank monster with the aid of it’s summoner but James and Koda had been training a lot and Koda was becoming more and more capable of taking on monsters of his own rank independently. James subsumed his familiar in order to speed the healing process after giving him a potion. They walked around and looted the monsters, James getting to train his execute ability; last shadow, on the first Fergax that Teddy had crippled with his grenade and rift combo.

3 [Monster cores (iron)] have been added to each of your Inventories.

30 [Iron] spirit coins have been added to each of your Inventories.

30 [Bear] quintessence have been added to each of your Inventories.

Teddy immediately opened an inventory rift and pulled out a furry bag of gems.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“It’s like someone skinned Chewbacca and turned him into a purse.” He said as he passed it to James.

James rolled his eyes as he bent down to pass the bag to a fox and it scurried off amongst the trees.

“Well that bear quintessence should come in handy later on. Let’s head back to the mill and pick up the trail for the bears, see if we can sort this without killing them all.”

They made their way back to the mill, stopping to collect whatever herbs they could identify along the way that were on the list the clinic would pay for. When they got back to the mill James could sense the swirl of aura in the shed by the house, ignoring it he looked back to the scene of the bear fight. The scents of the bears were strong and their auras being normal rank were easy to identify. He led them into the woods to a series of caves.

“Teddy I’ll go in alone for this one, see if I can figure out why they’re attacking the mill. Normal bears shouldn’t be interested unless they’re being pushed, I’m guessing that with the Fergax gone the problem should be gone as well.”

Teddy shrugged and pulled out a book before nimbly climbing a tree to read. James turned and entered the cave. Teddy and James had always enjoyed reading and the new world meant new genres of books and wildly different imaginations, the book that Teddy was reading now was more utilitarian than pleasure as he was developing an entrepreneurial idea with Lucy. Shortly James made his way back out and Teddy hopped down.

“No need to bother them, the last fight killed a few of them so its only a small pack now. There is something interesting we should check out though.”

They made their way back to the mill and to a collection of large rocks in the grounds. James directed Teddy to widen the gaps between the rocks with his dimension blade, the stone vanishing on contact with the blade, the gap widened until they could fit into a small cave. The same cave system must have been connected to the nearby bear cave. A huge mound of quintessence was lying in a pile. They climbed back out and now that the aura disturbance in the shed was stopped they found the mill owner looking very tired with a cup of tea in a rocking chair.

“Ok, so. You had six Fergax and ten natural bears scrapping on your estate. The Fergax are taken care of and the bears shouldn’t be a problem anymore.” The mill owner raised an eyebrow at that and looked dubious. “I would like to insist that you leave the bear pack alone, they won’t venture near the property after we’ve cleared up the last issue. There seems to be a natural confluence point for the larger collection of bear and bear monsters in the area. I don’t know if the bears caused the concentration or the concentration attracted the bears.”

Teddy leant in to the owner and whispered conspiratorially.

“His wife is the smart one in the pair.”

James scowled at him.

“The question is do you want to claim the bear quintessence as it’s on your land?”

The mill owner finished his tea and stood up, he clapped a hand on James’ shoulder.

“Between what I’ve got for you in the shed and that pile thats a fair payment for what you’ve done for me and I’ll be sure to keep your name in mind for the future for any other bear-like problems I have! Now come see what I’ve got for you.”

As they walked towards the shed Teddy stopped and folded his arms watching an army of squirrels run in single file down into the hole in the floor, each one ran out holding one gem and ran back to the woods forming two solid lines. He threw his hands up in bewilderment and followed the others to the shed.

When they had first got to the wood mill they thought it was already under attack from bears. Huge sculptures of life-like bears were all down the path to the main house, the eyes seemed to follow them and their poses were so life-like that it seemed they would lunge at them any moment. The ones nearer the house were more docile, with mothers and cubs and huge protective alphas looking over the yard. Looking close up they looked so incredible that they almost wondered if they were a wooden monster bear just standing still. The sense that they were real wasn’t helped by the fact that they were subtly infused with a kind of magic. They had found the mill owner in the shed next to the main house with a set of magical engraving tools.

The owner was nervously excited as he took the boys to the shed. On the bench was James’ vambrace. The mill owner had spent the day engraving the plate that covered the back of the hand. A stylised bear paw engraving took up the entire plate ending in bear claws. Whichever way James turned it it looked 3D, the sense of magic coming off it was strong as it was freshly done and James could feel the new effect through his connection to the soul bound item.

Item: [Vambrace of Menagerie] (iron rank [growth], legendary)

Armour that when developed will increase the effect of transformation powers.

This item is bound to you and cannot be used by anyone else.

Effect: When engraved by a magical armourer (or mystical tattooist’s with the necessary skills) will grant the wearer benefits to transformation powers. Benefits will be limited to size and skill of engraving. Once an engraving is in place it cannot be removed. Engravers must be at least equal rank to the item, higher rank engravers will produce a stronger effect.

Effect (Bear Claw): When making physical attacks with this item it will create a slashing effect that will cause the [Bleeding] condition to occur. Against targets that do not bleed extra damage of the resonating force type will be added.

[Bleeding] (affliction, wounding, blood): Deals ongoing damage by causing or increasing blood loss. As a wounding effect, this condition absorbs or negates an amount of incoming healing, after which this affliction immediately ends.

Growth Conditions (bronze):

Bound user must be at least bronze rank.

4 kilograms of low grade (bronze rank) star-fall silver

100 bronze-rank iron quintessence gems

100 bronze-rank magic quintessence gems

100 bronze-rank animal based quintessence gems (per engraving)

[100 bear quintessence]

1000 bronze rank spirit coins

Silver rank Artificer

Ritual of bronze ascension.

James blew out a sigh of relief. He had not been sure that the engraving would work. The item description had specifically mentioned armourers or tattooists but he had a hunch this would work.

“It’s amazing thankyou!”

He shared the description with Teddy who was instantly very jealous. They left the mill owner with warm handshakes and leaving the hydals with him after the rest had run off during the bear brawl.

They were running down the road back towards greenstone at a leisurely pace (that was faster than either of them could have ever sprinted back on earth) when they saw the giant tower of light ahead of them.

………

The magic phenomenon that Lucy and Kyra had been battling alongside the adventure and magic societies was dangerous for a number of reasons. The rank of the monsters that the spiralling magic effect was producing was higher than the Greenstone area norm and the rate they were manifesting was much quicker.

The arrays that Lucy had helped design and implement had worked successfully, covering the entire front of the magic phenomenon as it crawled along the ground like an invisible bank of fog it left only small gaps between giant pillars of light. Lucy had managed to figure out how to chain her portion of the array as to block any magic at all from seeping through. The other ritualists had not been able to see the opportunity to plug the gaps but they had planned for this and blocks of adventurers stood ready to tackle the manifestations that got through. The manifestations had been occurring sporadically along the front of its advance, now with the arrays using up much of the magic wave the remaining magical energy tried to squeeze into the small gaps, this caused a much higher concentration.

The manifestations during the phenomenon had been unusual because it normally took time to coalesce into either awakening stones, essences, quintessence or monsters. The iron rank manifestations had been occurring almost instantaneously, bronze rank taking half a minute and the silver ranks only taking minutes. When a horde of iron rank monsters poured between the gap followed by dozens of bronze, a handful of silvers everyone knew they were in trouble when three of the manifestations in the gaps continued even longer.

Over a hundred adventurer auras were spread over the battle. Essence powers were flying all over and the neat blocks were now only loosely being able to be controlled. Everything on the battlefield fought with a manic ferocity, the monsters freshly manifested threw themselves into the adventurers with instinctive aggression. Every type that was common in the delta and more than a few that were rare. The adventurers fought with a frenetic pace as they looked over the heads of the monsters at the manifestations that were still coalescing, bound to be gold rank.

Kyra kept close to Lucy, the four outworlders had all practiced fighting as a team including pairings and working as a three in every combination. She was a whirling dervish with her summoned diamond sword and buckler. Catching an earth elemental on her shield she lunged into the torso of a Deerstrix, the size of a large buck, with antlers that were bladed as well as finishing in vicious points. Lucy was standing in a rune circle she had drawn with coloured powdered chalk before the fight, it powered up spells used within and left her free to use her rune power more flexibly with her magic missile, she was boxing clever, trying not to expend all her mana so she would be useful for what was to come. The issue with being a back-liner magic user in a sprawling battle like this was that in the carnage there often wasn’t a back line. She found this when an ogreish creature came barrelling towards her side when she was covering a fellow adventurer to the front. If she stopped her attack the beleaguered adventurer would be overwhelmed and Kyra was busy engaged with the earth elemental. The Ogreish creature was suddenly pummelled in the side by a blur of yellow and orange fur, claws rent its flesh and giant teeth punctured its neck. Standing over its now dead corpse was a giant pre-Neolithic saber-tooth tiger. It shook its mane out and bared its teeth, roaring over the battlefield. Lucy recognised the magic in the roar as James’ apex predator power and as the roar finished he shrunk back to his human form. He staggered slightly as he leant on Lucy. Teddy ran up using the full speed of his swift essence powers. He nodded at them and ran to his wife. James hugged Lucy and without talking they set about joining the others and dominated their area of the fight.

The fight went on longer than any had experienced before of constant combat. They had gotten to the easy sweep-and-clear stage when the grand manifestations completed. Of the three they were lucky that one of the manifestations was an awakening stone, to be gold rank it was surely an epic class stone. They were not so lucky with the other two manifestations. Two giant dragons stood crouched on the ground, the height of the tallest building in the city and from snout to the tip of their tails they could go from wall to wall of the city. One was black and one was green. They waited looking over the scene in front of them while their arrogant, smug, prideful auras crushed those in front of them. Suddenly they spoke as one.

“Prithee who among thee is the bravest, that we may smite you and be done with all of you.”

None of the adventurers wanted to volunteer, the instructors were trying the hand signals to try and get the formations back together but they didn’t want to draw too much attention. The bulk of the adventurers were iron rank and bronze. With a few silvers amongst them, but not nearly enough to counter the two gold rank monsters.

The dragons started to uncurl, their giant maws almost smiling as they raised up unfurling their wings, everyone knew this was going to be a quick end.

Suddenly a silver and gold bolt plummeted from the sky between the two monsters, from the dust cloud that accompanied the impact with the earth giant silvery tentacles shot out and curled around the monsters and flipped them over and over, dragging them in as easily as a squid would a fish. There was a cacophony of light and dust in the centre and then stillness. Afterwards a regal looking woman walked out and surveyed the crowd with an imperious look, almost the same as the dragons had. She wore silver robes that matched the silver of her hair and eyes, there was a detachment that didn’t seem human as she passed her gaze over them all. Then she looked up and blasted off the ground in a shower of silvery gold sparks, the ground behind her takeoff was scorched with the colours.

“I think we just got saved by a passing diamond ranker.” A shaky Vincent Trenslow said from the front of the adventurer pack.