Hunst Academy had an elevator from the surface of Xulun city all the way down to the planet's surface. The use of the elevator wasn't restricted to academy students or facilities but was free for us to use. Anyone not associated with the academy would have to pay a fee. Liliandra mentioned to me as we rode the elevator down that once we graduate the academy and become alumni we would still have our free usage of the elevator. It was one of the greater perks of getting enrolled into the academy. The elevator opened up to a large lobby where adventurer administration personnel worked; they helped organize vehicle rentals and keep track of the adventurers that left the city. Both Dougelee and Liliandra headed off towards a door label marshalling yard. In the long ride down I found out that there were hundreds of these sites all around the border of the city. Some like the one we were currently at were associated with organizations while others were purely run by the adventurers administration. Sophia walked up to the clerk. A goblin with surprisingly lush hair and a myriad of rings, piercings and other accessories sat behind the counter. They had a androgynous look to them like all goblins did. I followed Sophia determined to learn what I can.
“Miss.H” The goblin started to speak their voice was nasally. Sophia cut the goblin off.
“ Sophia is fine, don't use my last name please.”
“ I understand miss.Sophia, if the schedule you submitted is correct then I assume you're here for a vehicle rental. As you most likely know, being a student of Hunst Academy gives you free use of the academy's fleet of vehicles. Will you be using one of those or renting one from the administration today?” The goblin took Sophia's Identchip as she offered it. As the goblin spoke they occasionally broke out into an almost nervous laughter before continuing to talk as if nothing happened.
“ We will be using the academies today. I would like to pay for a retrieval service in the event that we do not return. I would also like to assign a new member to our registered team.” Sophia motioned to me and I stepped up. I had already pulled out my own Identchip from my inventory. I had pretended to fish it from my pocket and was holding it out to the goblin.
“ Excellent! I can help with the registration of your new team member. I'll have one of my mechanics. Get your vehicle ready. As for the retrieval service, it will be charged to the Hunst Academy In the case of if and when it is needed, your organization has the option to deny this service and send out a retrieval unit themselves.” The goblin took my Identchip and once they were done with Sophia's they plug mine into their computer their eyes narrowed and then went visibly wide before darting back and forth from their screen to me. They laughed before putting on a smile and handing me back my identchip.
“ Your party members' registration is complete. Please go wait in the marshalling yard and our mechanic will have the vehicle out soon.”
This was my first time seeing the surface of the planet mile wide strips of asphalt could be seen to my left and right curving around the city. Various roads branched off cutting well maintained roads into the otherwise unkept grass field. Trees dotted the land in between the roads. This was one of the most beautiful and breathtaking scenes I had ever witnessed. Past the grass and trees forming will look like a spiny rim or mountains all around they curved with the city. Xulun city was in a massive valley.Dougelee and Liliandra were sitting on a massive concrete bench attached to the building's wall Dougelee was looking over his gear making sure he had everything he needed. Liliandra was leaning against the building wall. Her staff in the crook of her arm, eyes closed.
“ All done? That was pretty fast.” Dougelee said.
The vehicle we were given was a skimmer. There was a cab for the four of us mounted atop four arms that moved independently of one another.
“ Why don't we just take a flying car? Wouldn't that be fast.” I asked it was Liliandra that responded
“No, the distance we need to travel is too far. At the speeds we need to go to get to our destination in a reasonable time. Taking a flying car would drain our mana reserves and we would run out before we even got there most likely. If we were stronger or had someone with an extremely large mana pool it would probably be viable but these skimmers are a lot more mana efficient when you move at a faster speed.”
“ Huh. What about just using a buttload of crystals?”
“ That would work, but it'd be far too expensive with the amount of crystals you would have to run through.” Liliandra said. So skimmer it is. Dougelee got into the driver's seat with Sophia in the passenger seat and Liliandra and I in the back. It wasn't cramped but with Dougelee size he had to move the seat around reducing the space Liliandra and I had. Thankfully Liliandra sat behind Dougelee so I wouldn't need to squish myself against the back of his seat. As we drove towards a mountain range Sophia and Dougelee started going over strategies. Yesterday when we had all returned to the academy we spent our time running formations and possible responses to situations we might encounter like getting ambushed from behind or getting surrounded. Most of the strategies were devised by Dougelee surprisingly enough. I had taken him for a meat head especially after our first interaction. He was actually smart and quite perceptive. If I needed to compare, he was like Kenji but instead of being a craftsman he was a fighter. After yesterday and even right now as he spoke to Sophia I found myself wondering why he had tried to bully Kenji into doing his homework. I doubt I would ever ask because he was still an asshole but it felt like I could trust him if only a little.
I spent the long butt aching drive buried in my interface. I had used the rest of my money to buy a bag of ten thousand ball bearings and a box of MREs. Sophia had a few questions about that purchase but she didn't press when I came up with some bullshit reason about using it to create an environmental hazard for monsters. I know she saw right through the excuse. The truth was I just had a gut feeling and they were cheap so I figured why not. They only took one slot in my inventory but after placing them inside a backpack Kenji's mother had given me I got the square back. Right now that backpack only held the one and two square items I had. This really felt like an exploit as the backpack only took up four squares but I had placed over twenty squares worth of items in it. I still had the wardrobe and I had kept my tablet out in its own space since the interface wouldn't work if it was stored in a container. The box of MREs took up a rectangle of six spaces but it had over a week's worth of meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner so that was understandable. Malice was at my hip and not in my inventory. I had made a holster for it with Mr.Woodickers help but I did have a box of ammunition for it stored away. Having grown bored of looking through and sorting my own inventory, I glanced over to see what Liliandra was doing. She had her own tablet out and her face was buried in it. Wonder what she's watching. I contemplated asking if I could watch with her but decided to take a quick look before I asked.
[He was the Alpha of the clan and his true form was that of a wolf. I had known we could never be together but right here right now I didn't care. He had taken a form similar to my own, mostly human with wolf ears and a tail. He wrapped his arms around my waist. His lips pre.]
Okay. That's what I get for intruding into someone's personal space. But reading erotica while others are around was bold. I respected that.
“Hey Sophia.” I turned my attention to Sophia as she was just looking out the window seemingly unpreoccupied.
“Hmmm?” She turned her head back towards me but couldn't look at me fully so all I could see was the side of her face. I didn't actually have anything to say to her, I had just found myself saying her name. I came up with something.
“ Yesterday made me realize that the things I know about this world and the other world probably aren't true. I'm sure with time and diligent studies I could figure it out. And even tho you dont like me much I would appreciate your guidance… Everyone's guidance really.” She didn't respond after that
We were about an hour into the hike up the mountain when we encountered our first Beadbiter. It was a large monster but moved across the rocky terrain like it wasn't even there. Dougelee moved in front to intercept its charge. A loud metallic ring sounded out across the mountain and echoed back to us Sophia was shouting orders.
“ We only see one but there could be more so be careful. Douge immobilize it. Rin show us what you can do. Liliandra save your mana and be ready to healer Dougelee or Rin.” She had yet to draw her sword but kept her hand on the hilt.
I rushed forward and the rocks made it difficult to move around and I almost stumbled as I kicked a rock but my new strength just sent it flying off. The Beadbiter roared its mouth opening fully a viscous acid dripped from its teeth and boiled against the rocks below turning it to a mushy mess. Some of the acid splashed against Dougelees shield but it was protected by a magical enhancement. Dougelee began to cast a spell in the guttural language that the words of command used. It made him sound almost demonic. Rocks shot out of the ground forming pillars pressing against the Beadbiter locking it into place. Some of the pillars broke as it thrashed around. I didn't draw Malice instead I wanted to see what this new strength could do. I bolted out from behind Dougelee grabbing the Beadbiters snout, my fingers digging into it, bright red blood welled up around them. I slammed the head down, closing the mouth and giving me height to punch down on the monster. I sent a right hook into the monster's head right between the eyes, still holding it down with my left hand. I could feel the skull give as it bent but not brake. Again and again I pounded my fist into the beast. Dougelee kept reforming new pillars to keep the beast trapped. It died with a mournful groan blood splatter and covered the rocks around. My duster remained clean as the blood formed droplets and slid right off.
“By the gods dude. I am suddenly feeling a lot better about you breaking my arm. If you can do that to a monster's skull.” Dougelee said, walking up to stand next to me and look down at the dead Beadbiter. A shout came from behind us.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Duck!” Dougelee was the first to react, putting his arm over me and pulling me down our body's dropping to the floor. He held his shield up and over us as we rolled onto our backs looking up we saw two more Beadbiters leaped at us. A rush of wind blew dust all around and a blade of wind smacked into one of the Beadbiters. The wind blade cut into the scaly flesh but only left a superficial mark as it knocked the Beadbiter off course sending it tumbling away. The remaining Beadbiter landed on top of Dougelee shield, small beads of acid began to drip off the edges of his shield; the small drops landed on the both of us burning through our armor and skin. An info window appeared.
[Beadbiter acid damage has been reduced. Effects of acid have been reduced.]
[Beadbiter venom has applied the debuff poison. Debuff poison has been resisted.]
Holy shit that would be one hell of a double whammy. I looked to Dougelee and could see his flesh turning a deep black from the venom.Blazing flashes of light appeared from where Sophia and Liliandra were standing. The Beadbiter was knocked off the shield as a wave of heat hit us. I scrambled out from under Dougelee's shield drawing malice. The first Beadbiter that was hit by the wind blade was already coming back. Charging at us. Wait, not us. Sophia was standing over the body of a Beadbiter, pulling her sword from it and jumping back to avoid a tail attack. She landed right onto the path of the charging Beadbiter. I currently had an earth shell loaded in so I charged forward holding the trigger and mentally activated the mana in the shell. The physical trigger on malice was just for show and didn't connect to anything of importance. Kenji and I had developed this gun with my abilities in mind using the interface to actually activate the weapon. The various words of command engraved into the gun gave a very simple command. Expel your mana to take the shape that I desire and just like the glove Alverez had me test out I could instinctively feel the mana wanting to form. Unlike the glove in which the engravings told it to form a shield. The ones on malice simply told the mana to follow my instructions allowing me to create a variety of facsimiles that resembled spells. Every once of mana that was being pulled out of the earth crystal was being supplied by the element syrup inside the shell allowing for me to create bigger and more complex forms with it. As the mana coalesced in front of the gun, it began to form a thin blade made of obsidian.
“On your right!” I shouted at Sophia dashing to intercept the beast. I swung the blade into its open maw placing my forearm against the back as the weight threatened to tear malice from my hand. With the additional support, my obsidian blade cut the Beadbiter in half length wise with its own weight and momentum carrying its body through the attack. Its limp corpse collapsed on the ground right next to Sophia. Dougelee had recovered, he swung his sword down at the still recovering Beadbiters neck trying to decapitate it. His blade only made it halfway. Sophia, quick to act in the moment given to us by Dougelee cast a wind blade spell hitting the back of his blade pushing and finishing the decapitation.
“ Hey Liliandra we got poisoned. Mind giving us a little purification? Take care of Rin first. I can handle it for a little longer.” Dougelee groaned, kneeling down on the ground. I could see the pain in his face as he squeezed his eyes closed
“ I'm good. Go heal Dougelee, I didn't get poisoned.” Liliandra ran up to me first and raised her eyebrow; she looked me over seeing I only had light acid burning. She ran off to Dougelee. The blue crystal glowed a vibrant teal as she manipulated her wind mage around it.
“ I saw the acid dripping onto you. How come you didn't get poisoned like Douge?” Sophia asked. she had knelt down next to the dead Beadbiter next to me using her knife to dig something out.
“ I just have a good constitution.” She narrowed her eyes at me while frowning.
“ So what I'm hearing is that you're secretly a tri-element user who has increased strength, speed, and constitution.” She pulled out a decent sized earth crystal and put it into her dimensional bag. Then got to work on the next one. I joined her, kneeling. I waited for her to make a large cut and I opened it, bones cracked as I broke them.
“ That's not what I'm saying. We all have secrets we wish to keep hidden so I'm not going to tell you the real reason.” I said
“ We are a team and I need to know what you're capable of. We may all have our secrets, but when it comes to working together, as a coherent team, if those secrets are going to get one of us hurt or even worse killed, I need to know them.” Sophia pulled out the crystal and we moved to the last monster.
“Look I can't tell you I promised I would keep it a secret but, I'll make a deal. I'll tell you my secret if you tell me a secret of equal value.” I said. Sophia sighed in response and shocked her head.
“ And how am I supposed to know what secrets of mine are the equals of yours? I could tell you something deep and violating about myself and then you can deem it not enough. Now you know something about me that I didn't want you to know and I still know nothing about you.”
“ That's a valid point. So I'm just gonna ask you to not ask me.please.” My voice was cold. Her face turned into an angry scowl for a moment before she sighed and gave me a nod.
“Okay.”. Alverez had told me to keep my new skills along with the fact that I have no elemental affinity a secret unless I absolutely believed it was necessary or trusted them enough. I had told Kenji pretty fast but I had a feeling about him. One that has proven to be right so far. But Sophia and Dougelee never. Maybe Liliandra since she is the only one who has yet to act hostile towards me. Sophia and I glared at one another for a while before Dougelee came up.
“ I know it's not that late into the day but we should stop and find a place to camp. It seems like we're just on the border of the Beadbiters territory.” Dougelee said Sophia turned her attention to him.
“No, we should push in a little more and try to get more combat experience together then set up camp.I won't push us to do more fights if everyone is against it.” Sophia said
“I'm still good to go but I need a five minute break.” Dougelee said
“I barely did anything that fight so i would like to do a little more” Liliandra said with a smile on her face. Her voice was chipper.
“ Yeah, I have a few things I want to try out.” I said. I could tell Sophia wanted to say something to me about what I had just said but she pulled back and simply nodded.
We spent the next couple of hours hunting down Beadbiters. If it was just one we would take turns fighting them on our own they weren't weak but manageable. When I got the chance to fight I tested out idea after idea. Most of the ideas I had came from certain video games and movies I had played and watched. But others came from videos of real adventures. I killed one of the Beadbiters by firing what I called an icy star. I shot right into its opened mouth. The icy star started as a small ball of ice but once it made contact it exploded into a spiky mess impaling anything it touched. We encountered a rather large Beadbiter resting atop a pile of rocks the beast was asleep.Sophia wanted Dougelee to collapse the rocks below and impale it but i managed to convince her to let me take care of it. I activated my overclock skill, focusing on Malice. The engravings began to glow a bright green as I depressed the trigger sending a full power wind blade at the monster . It had used up the whole shell and I made a mental note. I didn't have an infinite supply so I would have to use that ability sparingly. It was more than overkill, the Beadbiter blew up into small chunks as the wind blade impacted it Sophia was pissed when we couldn't find the earth crystal that was inside. Elemental crystals were not expensive but recovering them from dead monsters was apparently good practice for an adventure as it helped offset the initial cost. When Liliandra's turn came up she would cast a flurry of wind blades at a low cost shredding the beast. If it got to close she would use her staff as a large cudgel. Sophia was efficient when she dealt with death. The blinding speed of her swordsmen ship dealt rapid strikes at the Beadbiters weak points cutting off many of its limbs before finally dealing the killing blow. Dougelee the massive tank would look limbs off as he guarded against their attacks. A tail slash meant a tail gone. A bite attack meant a stab to the throat as he wedged his massive shield into the mouth. The largest pack we encountered was five Beadbiters Dougelee roared out a pure blast of mana attracting the monsters to him. He encased himself in layers and layers of rock as they attacked. Acid easily melted the rocks however he would just reform them. He seemed an impenetrable force. Sophia and I attacked each Beadbiter one by one combining our attacks. She would rend open a wound for me to fire an icy star or rock burst into causing the Beadbiter to die from the inside out. Liliandra specialized in support magic and used a ritual spell combining her wind affinity with the water crystal. She would quickly start setting out iron shavings in intricate patterns around her in a circle. When she finished the casting she would shout out to Dougelee letting him know she was done and he would dismiss his rocky armor. There was always a delay between his rock armor disappearing and Liliandra's shield appearing around him. It started at a full two seconds but as she practiced she managed to shave off a single second reducing the danger to Dougelee.
I had gone up another couple of levels. Going from level five to level seven by the time we felt we had done more than enough for the day and found a small alcove to set up camp. I decided to hold off on distributing stat points until the next morning. Dougelee created a rock wall at the alcoves entrance with holes at the top for ventilation. Liliandra was helping me set up the two tents we had brought.
“ You know that shield spell? It used to take me a whole thirty minutes to cast it. Setting up the ritual circle used to take up most of the time, but I feel like I've managed to get a lot better at it.” Liliandra said.
“Why do you need to set up a ritual anyways? You can combine the two elements without one right? I've seen you doing it to cast a healing spell here and there.” I was pulling the tent fabric over the polls as Liliandra held the other side tight.
“ The shield spell requires a lot of mana from both elements to cast. I can produce enough wind element mana from my own mana reservoir but trying to push enough of my own mana through the water crystal is like pushing a frozen block of cheese through a chain link fence. Like yeah I could do it but I'm gonna be super tired and probably break the fence .” Liliandra said.
“That makes sense I guess.” In the general studies guide Mr.Dunths gave me there was a section that talked about mana and its elemental variance. Mana always started out without any elemental influence typically stemming from the user's own mana reservoir l. The user elemental affinity would filter that unaspected mana into the user's element. Our bodies did this passively but when we used a different element crystal the mana needed to be converted back to its original state and then into the element of the crystal. To my understanding in this process you would lose half the mana you put in. However when a person has multiple affinities their mana reservoir split creating two separate yet equal reservoirs that connected to an aspect of their physical being. Both reservoirs would slowly grow back to their original size leaving the user with double the amount of mana allowing them to cast more complex spells.
“ Do you not find it hard and taxing to push your mana through all those different element crystals you have in your gun? Seeing how powerful that wind blade was I assume your elemental affinity is with wind. It must require a large amount of mana to cast those earth spells.” Liliandra's hand slipped as she was bending one of the tents' support polls. Since I was holding the other end I got smacked in the face. Liliandra yelped and apologized profusely. I waved it off.
“ It's okay, it only stings a little.” I said “ I don't have an issue with it.” I pulled out Malice and removed one of the shells showing it to Liliandra.” This fluid is element syrup; it provides the mana I need for the casting.” Since I don't have any mana of my own, if this runs out then I'm shit out of luck. I didn't add.
