Lloyd dismounted his crab with slightly more grace and then fell onto the same tree. He tried to stay upright, then gave up and crashed next to me.
“Come on people,” I attempted. “Let’s get camp set up again.”
“No no,” Rosa exclaimed. “Can we take a fucking moment to talk about what just happened?!”
“Later. Mindless work can’t damage a tired brain, discussion can. Shut the fuck up.”
“Can we just sleep now…?” Bia asked hopefully.
“No, we’ll get eaten by monsters.”
“Lloyd seems to think otherwise.”
I glanced at Golden Boy, fast asleep on my shoulder.
“Fuck it,” I said, and took a pillow from my dimensional bag.
***
I had a surprisingly decent night’s sleep for being slumped against a tree. Lloyd was still asleep but began groaning when I stood up. I popped a stamina potion and sent my senses out to find the hexacampi that we’d left unleashed last night. Thankfully, they hadn’t wandered far. I strode over to wake Bia and get her to do her creature magic on the crabs.
“Bia, get up,” I said, singsong.
She blinked drearily. “Screw off.”
“No,” I dragged her arms up. “This is for yesterday morning.”
“Oh come on, you were holding us late…”
“No, I wasn’t. And you could be too. Grim could be here at any time.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” Bia slouched alive. “Look around. Grim hasn’t even caught up ye –”
“Shut the fuck up and get the hexacampi over here.”
***
There haven’t been any signs of Grim for the past day, but I’m keeping my eyes out, goddamn it. It’s a miracle no one was seriously hurt – my eye injuries were quickly taken care of by a healing potion. Maybe Bia caught a bruise or two from sweating too hard. And the funniest thing: I was able to injure Grim.
“Heads up!” Lloyd.
A knife sails by me. Dan and Rosa are fighting some veliophi right now. Hopefully those screams back there are from the monsters – but no matter, Bia’s guarding them.
But anyway – I was able to blast a great big chunk off of Grim’s arm. Not exactly sure how that mechanism worked. According to what little I remember of Mother’s lecture (this was pre-Gov’nance enhanced memory), it had just been… well basically, she just said ‘think it, and it’ll happen.’ Specific and scientific, I know.
Roughly a fist-sized piece out of Grim had taken – not most – but more than half of what my body could handle before the Hourglass was no longer enough to stop my sorry ass from dusting away. But at least, it had done something. It wasn’t much, but it was nice to know that we could really put up a fight if it came to that. At least, that I could.
“Agh!” Rosa hits a tree a few metres away. Bia slips into view and helps her up. I hear and sense Dan cleaning off that last and offending veliophi in the distance.
Lloyd did have a point that I may not be able to protect everyone at once. I am considering sending Bia, Lloyden, and the Verosavs back now, but I’m afraid Grim could hurt or leverage them against me without the hourglass there to protect them. The hourglass has to stay with someone and therefore can only protect that person and their vicinity; it’s safer they stay with.
“Ari!” Bia calls. I glance over – Rosa’s taking a healing potion and Dan seems to have come through unscathed. Predictable. “We’re good here.”
“Alright, pack up and go,” I said. Rosa and Dan looted their kills and stuffed them away. I glanced at Lloyd, who was already meeting my eyes despite the book in his hand. I raised an eyebrow and his face twitched.
Soon enough we took off again, Dan and Rosa having gotten a little bit closer to tier two. Rank progression was far faster at the lower ranks – a few months to t-two and three, then about a year each to four, five, and six, and two years to seven. Bia and I both started a little late, but we were fast. Haelcrien’s grad age was eleven as opposed to the usual ten (for extra brain maturity, maybe? Probably not much difference, anyway), and we took a few gap years afterwards to do screw around and settle here in Javenshard.
All told, they’d reach tier two in four months tops. Not enough to stand a chance against Grim and not in any reasonable timeframe anyway – it would be Haelcrien’s fighters and its allies that would deal with the issue.
But I suppose I may have to help them, or at least isolate myself to keep Grim away from the others. I’ll figure it out when the time comes.
Oh, this is such a bleeding mess. Maybe I can –
Hold on. Be right back – update then.
***
I’d spotted something in the trees. Mahogany red hair was the last I saw of it before another tree stepped in front.
“Bia, Lloyden,” I said, poising to jump. “I spotted something. Going to scout it out, be right with.”
“Okay!” Bia said, raising an eyebrow but inferring it’d be a monster or something.
“Why only address them?” Rosa whined.
I ignored her and leapt into the trees, conjuring my wings. Metaphys and phys senses worked in tandem and quickly located something rapidly flitting away. I pushed some extra mana into my wings and landed right in its path, dagger out. The wings folded into ambience.
The thing blurred right past and through the knife, so fast my eyes couldn’t register what it was – just a reddish-brown blur. The knife hadn’t seemed to leave a scratch and checking my Governance logs showed the hit wasn’t even registered. Was I hallucinating?
Whatever. I released the wings and returned to the caravan, landing on my hexacampus. It let out a chirp of what I assumed was surprise.
“Ari!” Bia squeaked. “Careful with them!”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Expensive, and all.”
“No, you fuckin – whatever, just don’t!”
“What happened?” Lloyd said. He still had eyebags from the Great Grim Crab Race. Normally any kind of visible sleep fatigue would’ve been washed away by our t-seven vitality, but maybe he was already tired before? Dunno.
“Something was stalking us,” I said, steering my ‘campus closer. “I got ahead of it, but it blazed straight through me.”
“Huh,” Lloyd pondered his eyes. “Maybe you’re just seeing things? Tired from few nights ago?”
“No, not everyone’s you. I recovered morning of.”
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“Hmm. Just a high ranked monster, then? They get more intelligent the higher their rank is.”
“Wait –” I froze. “It could still be around. If it was stalking us all this time, and it’s that fucking smart, it could be trying to play us or –”
“Oh, chill out,” Lloyd patted me on the shoulder. “Not like we can do much anyway, not until it comes out. If.”
“BIA!” I shouted. “There could be a high-tier monster around here!”
“Okay. How many times this week have you said that?”
“Oh – damn – I’m stressed, alright?!”
“Sure, and how many days a week are you stressed?”
“Wha –”
“24/7!” Lloyd chimed.
“Thanks,” Bia chimed back. She turned at me. “And that’s why you’ll never be a statistic. You never get fucked over by shit because you’re too overly careful.”
“I think that’s a pretty desirable thing to have?” I raised an eyebrow.
“It also kind of annoys everyone around you,” she scoffed.
“Oh,” I said.
Okay.
***
In the gilded hours of midday we came across a small village in our path – barely a village, actually, only eight or nine buildings at all. No wall either, just a few badly calligraphed warding rituals chalk-drawn sloppily over some of the buildings. Doubtless some noble was sent out to start a town and failed miserably – miraculous they’d survived this long. I’d heard some of the southerner cities even considered it a rite of passage for the administrative classes.
As we inched closer I heard some kind of chittering noise ahead. Then the screams sounded. An opportunity: monsters and some incompetent victims.
I turned the hexacampus around and the others stop as Bia issues whatever magic order she does to control the crabs.
“There are monsters attacking the settlement ahead,” I turned directly to Rosa and Dan. “This is your chance to demonstrate to us and show off to them. I think you’re capable of taking on these ones without supervision..”
Rosa clapped giddily. I think it’s about time she grew up; Dan was starting the inn at twelve. Fae mature at ten, regardless of whatever the Haelcrien school system says. I retrieved the scanner tablet – it returned voracrest inside the town, tier two. There was also something more troubling approaching from behind us.
“It’s a bunch of voracrest, nothing you can’t handle. Go in.”
They rode in and I turned to Bia and Lloyd.
“We need to go fast.”
“What’s happening?” Bia asked.
“There’s a pack of four tier nine bonestalkers inching in from several different angles up north. We’ll have to spread thin to take them all before they reach the village.”
“Shit,” Lloyd said. Tier nine was over our paygrade – the gaps between tiers was far more punishing the higher you got.
“Why didn’t you tell the other two?”
“I can trust them to take out the voracrest, but it’ll be tight. Challenge is good for them, and unnecessary stress will just slow them down.”
“But if we can’t hold them – ”
“Then everyone is dead anyway. This is better for them. We can tell it as a funny anecdote later, aye?”
“Fine, I guess,” Bia still looked apprehensive.
“Alright, let’s go. Whoever finishes theirs first goes after the fourth one.”
The three of us fanned outwards and I shot away towards my target.
?Creature: [Bonestalker] (Aberration)
Average Tier: VII
Summary:
Amorphous monsters made of bone that can warp their own bodies at will. This allows them to take almost any form as long as it keeps the properties and limitations of regular bones of their tier.
I caught up to the bonestalker quite quickly – it was stealthing its way through the forest and therefore moving quite slowly. The monsters hadn’t seemed to have learned that we could track them. I imagined any smart enough to know were already high ranked enough to be exempt from my cheap scanner.
The thing was in the shape of some kind of canine, but quickly armoured itself up on approach, shifting its form to that of an oversized beetle covered in bone plate. Thankfully, my abilities liked to take armour for breakfast, with a healthy dose of flesh on the side. Well, the bonestalker didn’t have any flesh. But close enough.
?Ability: [Echoing Strikes] (Buff)
Incantation: none
Cost: passive
Cooldown: passive
Damage Output:
- Void
Effects:
-
Tier I
- Your strikes send echoing waves of void damage through solid materials, degrading the integrity of armour and rigid materials.
-
Tier III
- Occasionally, strikes manifest mirror images of the weapon that come from other directions. These will deal the damage the original strike would have if the original strike is blocked.
-
Tier V
- Apply 300 ms. of [Stun] of tier three ranks down to hit enemies. If your tier minus three is negative, default to tier one.
-
Tier VII
- Degrade the durability of conjured weapons over time.
Echoing Strikes was one of my main abilities that defined my specialization as a artillery cannon perched upon a glass castle, along with the wings and other mobility abilities. The bonestalker quickly learned armouring up was no use and switched to a more offensive form, standing high upright and morphing sickle claws. A combo of slashes forward sent me dashing away and latching onto a tree.Their length still nicked my foot and the tier-nine material did a lot more damage than I would’ve liked. Goddamn Bia, taking us to a fucking tier-thirteen area. However she’d even found the one rare dangerous spot in the Javen woods was a mystery.
Anyway, the bonestalker had discovered that ludicrous range was more effective against me than traditional defence. The bone scythes it’d made for hands were slicing through trees and its higher-tier reflexes were letting it nearly catch me with every swing.
I summoned a storm of light blades from behind it to hit the vulnerable back of the creature, then caught it off guard as it whirled around, pulling out my heavier sword to cut into the back of it’s ribcage-looking abdomen again. A high kicked skewed the thing’s skull a little on its neck, though there wasn’t any major damage from that. Stupid Ari, it doesn’t have vital organs and there’s nothing important up there.
A line of conjured blades scissored it from all sides, then another actual hit from my dagger, backed by a damage and armour pierecing buff, then – great big gouge from the bone scythes into my leg. I spun away, popped a healing potion and leapt back in even as the wound sealed over, balancing the dead weight as I whirled at its underside with the dagger. Not without several more nicks on the arm, however.
I slid under the bonestalker to arrive on it’s front side, then fired eight successive light blades into its joints. Killing a bonestalker wasn’t as simple as just chopping through the right organs – you had to cut it up enough that its essence or whatever would dissipate as it couldn’t find anything to cling onto.
We sliced and diced at each other for another minute that t-seven combat turned into an analysis that’d take five minutes to explain. It proved more resilient than I with it’s t-nine power, but I proved elusive enough to stick around until I had whittled it away. The others would be having a harder time even – I was the glass cannon after all.
I checked the scanner – the original two bonestalkers were stopped in place, and the fourth was indeed getting dangerously close to the village. I sped over to catch up to it.
The next fight was quite routine – I took a few hits, but was able to dodge around and whittle down the bonestalker. Bia and Lloyd were able to arrive in time to help with the last little bit. We went back and looted all the stuff – a nice t-nine Governance core came out of it and we headed to the village. Scanner detected no voracrest – Dan and Rosa had handled it fine, as predicted. Rosa was cheering for herself, however tasteless that was, though the villagers didn’t seem to mind. Dan was trying to hide the prideful smirk on his face while chatting with a man in fancier-looking clothing. Probably the noble sent here to settle the area. A tier six, but no combat skills to speak of, as nobles usually bought their experience.
“Well, who’s this?” the noble said in a reedy voice as we approached. “More adventurers?” he addressed Dan, “These your friends?”
“Ari, Bia, Lloyd,” Dan announced us. “This is Weven. Nobleman from Troltano.”
“Call me Aryon, please,” I stalked over and shook his hand. “Aryon Hastor, of no significant title but of combat capability.”
“Ah, call her Ari,” Bia said. “We’re chill people, however cold and emotionless this one is.” She poked me in the cheek. I glared at her.
“Aye,” said Weven, smiling. He turned to Dan and Rosa. “I think some compensation is in order, yea? Ardolah hasn’t got much, but our Burger Barn has some quite delectable sandwiches…”
“OOoooh, yes,” Rosa grinned.
I grimaced. “Really, I think we’ve got to go, busy and all –”
“Burgers,” Rosa put her hand over my mouth.
I pushed her off. “Time management.”
Bia and Dan both also covered my mouth. Lloyd snorted.
“Burgers,” they said in adamant unison.