Adama frowned as he was hit with an inevitable smattering of Salamander blood, his flesh sizzling painfully as he continued to cut through the oncoming monster horde. It hadn’t just been Salamanders. His team had also been forced to fight off a small pack of wyverns, on top of a few Wyrms. These latter enemies were large brown worms that burrowed through the valley’s walls, appearing from nowhere and spewing a disgusting, yellowish-green flame. Adama was still taxed from his duel with the Sun Dragon, and he had little rest before being forced to face these new threats. Unfortunately, the flood of enemies kept coming, eventually forcing the party to beat a retreat. Before he left, Adama approached the Sun Dragon’s corpse and removed its magic stone.
The creature was a unique monster in that it was almost guaranteed to leave behind at least two items, thanks to its unusually high magical abilities. There were three possible items the dragon could drop: its heart, its hide, and its fang. Technically, it was possible to get both the hide and the fang, losing out on the heart and putting Adama in a very difficult situation. Fortunately, that didn’t happen, and when the ash of the dragon’s body vanished, a long white fang and a roughly cut crimson gem were left in its place. Getting the hide and the heart would’ve been ideal, but white had never looked good on Adama anyway. He scooped up the Heart and the Fang, and the party made their fighting retreat.
They made their retreat, but not their escape. The monsters hounded them, brought together in a massive group and sicced on the adventurers in deadly fashion. Whether this horde had come about naturally or otherwise, it was starting to become a snowball rolling down a hill. The larger the group got, the more noise they made, and the more monsters they further attracted to the horde. As the group ran through the valley, the chaos only grew as they began to attract more enemies over a wider area. To make matters worse, these enemies were driving their group even deeper into the unexplored zone. The weaker party members were forced to take a fourth dose of the custom Fire Resistance potion, and it wasn’t sure that they could get to a safe place before they ran out of the specialty potions, even if they got away immediately.
Soon, the adventurers realized that they had no choice but to stand their ground. Emi and Adama joined hands to form a vanguard, with Adama regularly throwing out Hidden Blades and Endless Swords to make mincemeat of the monsters while Emi blocked them off with her shield and buffed Adama and the others. The following battle was a long and brutal slog. The elves shot all their arrows, mundane or otherwise, and were eventually forced to throw down their bows and take up their swords. Lilli ran out of arrows for her Little Ballista as well, negating her ability to contribute directly to the fight. She was relegated to nothing but distributing health and mana potions to whoever seemed to need them. Despite the boosted Mind regeneration for both Adama and Emi, they were burning through mana potions, and everyone was eating through their health potions. Adama always kept one eye open, ready and willing to respond to an ambush from shadowy assassins, but no ambush came. The fight dragged on for one hour, then two, then four. Only after six full hours did the horde finally die out, leaving the adventurers and the elves shaking with exhaustion and covered in blood.
The battle finally complete, the adventurers began making their way back out of the canyon. They hadn’t slept. They’d barely eaten. But they hadn’t lost a single person. Adama pushed his exhaustion to the back of his mind, determined to keep it there as he led the others on a long march out of this death trap. Hours crawled by as they slogged their way back to safety, the sun a constant, merciless presence directly over their heads. As time passed, another problem made itself apparent.
The Sun Dragon’s Heart, which had been warm from the very beginning, had begun to cool down. An inert Sun Dragon’s Heart was still a valuable medicinal product, but Naaza had made it very clear that they would need to make the cure while the Heart was still hot. The Heart would retain its heat for two days after the dragon’s death, and it had been approximately a full day since. They wouldn’t make it out of the valley in time. Accordingly, Adama decided to call a halt. Their party had just left the more dangerous portion of the valley, meaning that their current location was the best place they had to brew the cure. They walked into a small, dead-end clearing, with only one way in or out, and Adama pulled out his Mixing gear from Lilli’s pack. He cut a rock into a rectangle, having it function like a table as he laid out all his gear and ingredients. As he worked, he spoke to the others, saying, “Watch my back.”
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Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and began.
He immediately crushed up some Morgana’s Lillies, their potent, sweet scent filling the air around him. He dissolved the flower paste in water, turning the liquid pale, before placing the pale water over a lit burner and turning to his Thousand Year Tree Sap. Unlike standard tree sap, this stuff looked like a set of bright cerulean gemstones. Adama placed one of these gemstones in the water, watching as both it and the water turned a lime green. He did this several more times until the water was a dark, forest color, then took out the gemstones. Adama crushed these gemstones into a powder and mixed that powder in a beaker filled with orange liquid, an ingredient called Minefruit Essence that Naaza had managed to source back in Orario.
Adama continued to process and filter ingredients for up to an hour before he was forced to cut into the Sun Dragon’s Heart. The moment he cut off a piece and added it to the elixir, however, he felt a rush of danger run down his spine. Spinning, he knocked away a flying dagger with his fist, raising his sword as a half dozen shadowy figures appeared atop the valley’s walls above them. Emi yelled, beginning her Cornerstone chant, but it was too late. Adama was already hit with a barrage of daggers. He deflected them as best as he could, but there was no stopping the few that did get through. The daggers struck the equipment he was working with, shattering glass beakers and spilling their contents onto the valley’s sands.
Not one to stand around and take a beating, Adama leapt up toward the enemy, sword flashing as he deflected more projectiles in midair. He set upon one of the men with a fury, striking out with all the killing intent he could muster. But Adama was tired, spent from all his previous battles, so he didn’t manage to kill the assassin before the others arrived to defend their comrade. The assassins fought in concert, black blades glinting in the blistering heat as they set upon the weakened swordsman. One man in particular, a bland-looking man with soulless black eyes, wielded dual short swords with extraordinary skill. He stabbed at Adama with calculated power, continuously attempting to create or exploit openings in the swordsman’s guard. These six assassins were all Level 3, a serious challenge for Adama by himself even if he were at full strength. As weakened as he was, Adama’s story would have ended there. If he were by himself.
“Cornerstone!”
Emi had jumped up to the top part of the valley herself, following after Adama and unleashing her powerful offensive magic. One of the assassins was too slow to evade and was crushed to death. Valar and several of the other elves also clambered to the top, letting out war cries and charging to the aid of their ally. As soon as these reinforcements appeared, the assassins turned tail and fled. The adventurers would have followed, were it not for the intervention of a third party, “ROOOOOOAAAAAAAR!”
The primary reason why their party had walked through the valley’s ravines rather than traversing it up here was that walking across the valley’s top was an easy way to get ambushed by the flocks of dragons that populated the valley’s skies. The adventurers hurriedly dashed back to the relative safety of their clearing to avoid the pack of red dragons that’d dived down to attack them. They still needed to run for some time through the labyrinthine canyons before the dragons finally gave up. By now, the Fire Resistance potions had run out, and Lilli and the elves had begun sweating profusely. Adama had managed to grab his precious ingredients before running away, so all was not lost, but the destruction of his original attempt was a major loss. He would only have two more attempts before he ran out of supplies, namely the Sun Dragon’s Heart, a third of which was required for each attempt. He had some backup Mixing equipment, but that equipment wasn’t inexhaustible either.
Adama’s eye twitched in irritation as he considered his options. He considered halving the original recipe, since the original was designed to create eight batches of cure, but he was leery of adjusting a recipe like this as a novice. No, Adama would have to succeed in one of the next two attempts. The assassins were still out there, and he was certain they’d find his group again. They’d already proven that they could sneak around the elves’ perception and disrupt his Mixing efforts with minimal difficulty. He considered having Emi shield him with her magic, but the full time it took to make the cure was 3 hours, and she was already low on Mind. Even if she could maintain the shield for that amount of time, she would be distracted and vulnerable while doing so, a perfect target for the assassins.
Their party needed to fight off a few more monsters as they searched for a new place to brew a cure. Adama’s mind considered his predicament even as he gutted yet another Salamander, dodging the subsequent spray of blood carefully. As they kept walking, his eyes wandered to Lilli. Adama paused, then cocked his head thoughtfully.
There was one more card he could play...
