Flynn swerved away, only barely avoiding the spear’s edge glistening under the noon day sun. It nicked through the air where his cheek had been seconds ago, only to complete a whole revolution and then he was faced with a brutal jab from its blunt lower end. He tried to shift away from that too, but his footwork stumbled, and the wood struck squarely against his shin with enough force to earn a wince.
Had he been half his levels, that might’ve cracked the bone, or worse. As it was, all it did was sting his ego. The archer danced away, his movements slow and unbalanced from the weight of his disadvantages, but still nimble enough to make space.
But his foe was relentless. Silthius was on him like a dung-beetle on shit, his spear singing through the air towards his face again. Distantly, he heard Illsien chastise the spearman for going for headshots. “Aim for centre-mass, you daft lump!” hollered the elder.
Silthius had other plans. The man was ruthless. Flynn knew that he wanted to end the battle quickly rather than risk a long, drawn-out battle. They could try and neutralize his other advantages, but his stamina could not be denied.
It was for precisely that reason that he kept running away. Hobbled as he was, it was no easy task, but it made for great training for his footwork. He managed to dodge Silthius’s second strike but was caught off-guard by a follow-up feint that threw his balance off. He crashed to the ground, a grunt escaping his lips from the impact. He immediately rolled to his sides and tried to jerk back up to his feet, but Silthius proved a fraction of a second faster.
His spearhead arced out before coming to a stop inches from his neck. The youth froze, his escape attempt aborted, and his eyes locked onto the grinning alf that loomed over him. Flynn met the man’s gaze with an irate look before he deflated with a sigh.
“Victory is mine, victorious Flynn.”
“Yeah, yeah, just help me up.” The warrior agreed and hoisted the youth up back to his feet. He shifted unbalanced for a second until Silthius undid the ropes that bound his arms tightly around his body. The makeshift weights on his legs came off next, and it was only then that he felt like he could breathe again.
He’d never realized just how fast his boosted stats had made him until he’d been weighed down enough to only be half as quick. The youth did a spry few jumps on the spot before he dashed back and forth, revelling in his speed again.
“You were incredible, master.” declared Alsias as he strode up to Flynn, a cannister of water in hand. Flynn took up the bottle with a grateful nod.
“Incredible nothin’. I lost.” he said after a gulp.
“Only barely, master, and against an accomplished spearman whilst you had your arms tied and your body weighed. I do not think that constitutes a proper loss.”
Flynn snorted. “Thanks for the pep-talk bud but a loss is a loss. No reason not to admit it fair and square.”
“I would have to agree with Alsias, victorious Flynn.” said Silthius as he sidled up to his rival. Sweat ran down the man’s face in thick rivulets, which made sense considering how they’d been at it for the better part of an hour. That much exertion didn’t mean much to Flynn anymore, but ordinary folk could still be winded.
“I only won by your grace. If this were a proper fight, I’d have been downed within a minute.”
“A second.” Flynn corrected with a cheeky smile. “Humility’s good and all but it doesn’t mean much when you’re grinning that happily after beating me.”
The warrior’s eyes widened, and he immediately tried to arrest his smile, only to fail miserably. Flynn laughed at the sight.
“Excellent showing, great Flynn!” declared Illsien as the elder strode up, a calm smile on his lips. Sweat glistened on the alf’s forehead, though a lesser amount compared to the others. He’d refused to just sit still on account of his age and had decided to put his ample years of leadership and warrior experience to good use training the Ozana squad, as Flynn had taken to calling them.
It’d put the man in good spirits, his melancholy over Ohsthius’s loss momentarily forgotten to the demands of correcting posture and improving technique. It was good, Flynn thought, to see him up and active again.
“But you were still too uncertain with your movements.” remarked the elder with a teacher’s expert confidence. “A warrior must flow from one motion to the next without hesitancy. There is rarely time to correct your step in the middle of battle, even for one as swift as you.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, elder. Thank you.”
The alf smiled happily before turning away, his good joy turned stern as his eyes danced between Alsias and Silthius. “And? What are you two doing standing still? Will your body train itself? Get going, or are you content to have the great Flynn save our hides time and again?”
The two needed no more motivation and quickly set up a spar amongst each other. Flynn snickered amusedly as he retreated to the shade of a mushroom. Distantly, he saw Cheek shooting arrows with the group’s two dedicated archers, competing with them in a test of accuracy.
Smiling, Flynn reclined into the fleshy embrace of the stalk. The training had been going well thus far. Granted, it’d only just begun, but already it’d borne fruits in evaporating their glum mood and giving them all a goal to dedicate themselves to. Distractions, he’d understood, were more crucial in a time of sorrow than anything else.
But more important than their good mood was the growth that the group had collectively shown.
Lvl. 7 Alf
Monster
Lvl. 5 Alf
Monster
Lvl. 5 Alf
Monster
Lvl. 5 Alf
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Monster
...
They’d levelled up, he’d realized when he’d checked their levels, and likely the bulk of that growth had come from the battle with the beasts. The level fours had all become level five, raising the bar of the group as a whole to a level five minimum, whereas both Silthius and Illsien had levelled up by one. The elder, at level seven, was now definitively the strongest of the group barring Flynn himself, whilst Silthius came close at six. Alsias brought up the rear with all the fives, but Flynn was sure that the man would rise a level soon enough as well.
Not that the alf knew it. None of them did. He’d asked around after he’d noticed their growth, and none of them seemed to have noticed their level-ups. He’d already known that they knew nothing about the world of levels and stats and character sheets that they were now a part of, but it was odd.
Why had whatever force it was that had granted him and the others in the school access to such a system declined to do the same with the alves? Did they operate under a different system? Was it because of Siestemi’s influence, or maybe it was the strange, fungal magic that they practiced. He’d asked the elders about its utility in combat and was told that mages were too rare and too well-protected to risk in a combative role. At least, it was so in the south.
They were largely relegated to gardening and construction in tribes like the Aziethi and Ozana, though they’d also claimed that their cousins to the north had bloodier use for their racial magics than they did.
It’d be interesting to see that for himself.
Flynn took a few moments to just bask in the sight of his little troopers bettering themselves before he joined back into the fun. They didn’t keep at it for long. There was still a journey that needed to be walked, but they always made sure to make time to train properly as they went.
And that training was not limited to just battering at each other.
It was mid-evening when they started on the second step. Perfecting footwork and swinging a spear was well and good, but it was levels that mattered to Flynn. He was proof enough of raw power over technique, at least to a point. And to earn levels meant killing monsters.
Fortunately, none of the group seemed apprehensive. The opposite, even. All were eager to blood their weapons in vengeance. They found no taken-beasts, but they did find some smaller variety of beasts more common to the area.
It was here that they practiced formations under Illsien’s guidance and his ever-watchful eye. A spear wall of four of the warriors hounded and savaged the beast until it finally fell to their blades. After that, they would switch to another group of four. And then another, rotating amongst each other until all had received their opportunity, and then rinse and repeat.
Even the elders were involved, though only as the core of the squad, safe within the spear wall with their knifes in hand. They, maybe more so than even the warriors, were the most eager to grow their strength, and no weakness of age would stop them. Ohsthius’s loss would not be quickly forgotten,
The hours passed as such until night drew close with another level gained. The hunt had been enough to push Alsias to level six, which Flynn quietly celebrated. Afterward, there came the matter of a proper, defendable shelter. No one wanted a repeat of the night. The solution had been to take up shelter upon the head of a mushroom on high.
It’d been Alsias’s idea, and he’d seen no reason to deny it. It kept them well above any taken-beast's claws and teeth and gave them a powerful vantage point with which to scout out the surrounding area. The creatures had no ranged abilities that he’d seen so killing them would be a game of just picking them off from a distance. The only difficulty had been lugging everyone up there, though it wasn’t anything that Flynn couldn’t power through.
As the last light of day passed and the sky above grew dark, the group settled into their shifts. Half the group, it was decided, would serve as a watch this time as the others rested. As an additional precaution, Cheek would also be constantly circling the mushroom. It was easier to monitor them, closely bunched as they were, and the little construct was determined not to let another monster slip past it again. He knew that it quietly blamed itself for not having sensed the monsters the last time, despite his besst attempts at assuaging its guilt.
It would not fail again, he knew.
They were prepared for an attack, if it came.
Despite the foreboding unease weighing down on them all, the night passed peacefully, and Flynn awoke to a brilliant new morning.
The next day passed much the same, with the group alternating between sparring and monster hunting as they trained themselves up, as did the third day. Their enthusiasm for their training regimen had likely delayed their pace, because the end of a journey that should’ve taken two days inched into the fourth day, by which time they’d comfortably settled into a routine, though they never let up on their vigilance. Especially at night. Not until they decided to detour to a nearby tribe to restock and pry friendly ears for any news worth listening to.
Flynn agreed, and so they made their way towards the burrow of the Caracarn Tribe.
Trekking through the thickening forest, the mushrooms larger here than in the southern domain, and taller too, Flynn was struck by an absence as they neared what should’ve been the inner depths of the tribe’s land. He felt no scouts watching him, and that was odd. The middle domain dealt with monster attacks more often and of a far more brutal difficulty than the alves of the southern domain did, and yet there, near the border, he’d been met with scouts as soon as he had neared their burrow.
Here? Nothing. Why would they not have scouts about in a land more familiar to attack? It also struck him as odd that they’d not been attacked in the past few days too, though he didn’t voice that. Better not jinx what good luck had kept them going. He voiced his other doubt to the others only to be met with looks of grim worry. He’d not been the only one to share that thought. Illsien was especially unnerved. “They should be watching us this close to their lands. It is not normal that they are not. I can only presume that something is wrong, great Flynn.”
A presumption he concurred with. The group walked closer together at his command, their blades ready for whatever surprises laid in wait. It was twenty minutes later that they arrived at what should’ve been the Caracarn Tribe’s burrow. Instead, they found a ruined hole in the ground. Flynn tensed, as did everyone else.
Mustering his book and an Illusionary Self both, he unsocketed the Explosive Finale spellgem before he told it to investigate the interior. The ruined entrance was not a good sign, but if the alves remained inside somewhere, he didn’t think that they’d appreciate him sending in an explosive illusion.
That done, he sent other selves to scout out the surrounding forest. A tense twenty minutes of quiet waiting followed before they started to trickle back one-by-one. The images hadn’t found anything troubling in the forest, but the one that’d investigated the burrow hadn’t been so lucky.
It mimed the word voicelessly, a severe frown on its lips. ‘Many dead.’
That’d been enough for him. Flynn immediately commanded the group to set off. Some had dared to protest. Silthius especially had wished to further investigate, and if nothing else, bury the dead as they deserved. Flynn shut that shit down faster than thought. Whatever had killed an entire armed and ready tribe of alves was not something he wanted his little group to contend with.
The spearman had nothing to say to that. Their destination set for the next nearest tribe; they walked away cloaked by an expectant paranoia. Every distant animal cry, every rustle of the bush or stirring of the ground earned a twitch of a blade or flinch of a limb. For the most part it’d just been nerves getting the better of them.
Until it wasn’t. Flynn felt it with an immediacy that stole all his focus: multiple monstrous presences darting into the edges of his senses. Dozens, at least. He raised his hand and flashed the signal for defensive measures. The group immediately closed ranks, their spears held out with the elders in the middle and Flynn free outside the circle.
His hand twisted and he prepared to flash the gesture for retreat when he noticed something about the presences. They felt familiar. He realized why a second later. They weren’t being charged at by beasts, but by alves.
A small army of them.
