We recovered our hexacampi and departed again. It would be just about 8 hours travel to the next town, a little place called Tirio. Hopefully they’d be more competent than these people. Or less. I could try for that something more useful. Maybe Tirio is wealthy instead of competent. More likely just both. Duskir and Faelorn often expressed their disapproval of Haelcrien’s combative capability.
After a few kilometres the road lead us out of the forest and onto the plains. Luckily the stars weren’t so strong in autumn, so the lack of cover didn’t make their light unbearable. Golden grasses lingered short across the plain, occasionally leading to patches of taller, almost bushlike weed and circles of coarse dirt. The weed bunches were almost like trees, but cylindrical and badly silhouetted – if I’d painted those I’d probably kill myself. For an area labelled as the ‘Haelcrien Plains’, it’s not very flat from ground level.
The hexacampi had no issue navigating through the grass, even though we couldn’t see. I think they echolocated or something, dunno. You’d have to ask Bia.
“This place looks goofy,” Rosa said delightfully. The Verosavs had never really left Javenshard before. “Why’s the grass so uneven?”
She glanced at Lloyd.
“Dunno,” Lloyd said. “I studied Deliria’s local history, not Haelcrien’s. Maybe you Hastos know, aye?”
“Nope,” I said.
“Oh, this is actually a pretty funny story,” Bia said, cackling. “So, there were these farmers who came here trying to set up on these great big empty grasslands. But – since we’re right on the border of the provinces and this was before Haelcrien was one nation – there were two factions of these idiots; ya got your northerners from Haequar – ”
“WOO!” Rosa cheered. “Home team!”
Dan grinned alongside. Bia went off and then Lloyd cheered too – t-seven doesn’t negate peer pressure.
“Go on,” I said.
“Right yea, anyway. And then the southerners from Sammemmnon. There were some goof fights, some of em actually went into the abilities and all. Eventually the Haequarites won over ” – Rosa pumped a fist – “and FUCK EM Sammemmnons. A bunch of the Sam’ farmers stuck around anyway, and tried to sabotage the operations by having their dogs piss on the land. Turns out their dogs were a cheesehead weird breed from all the way down the peninsula in Dewlos that pissed growth hormones,” – Bia started chuckling and Lloyd gave an almost panicked sounding aggressive exhale – ”domesticated for agricultural purposes. They were also in fact not dogs and a deer – ”
“Fuckin’ what?” I spluttered.
“Yeah, a damned deer,” Bia exclaimed. “Eventually the growth got out of control and the farmers dipped, but the stuff had already sunk into the soil and we get this shit now. Also, the Samemmnons stole the deers from other farmers and the Dewlosians came back up to take their stuff back, but ended up fighting the Haequarites instead cuz the Sams had already left…”
“How d’you know this?” Lloyd said. “I don’t think they’d be teaching this in school.”
Bia put a hand to her chest. “Why, I am of the utmost diligence in my scholarcraft –”
“You’re the dumbest person I’ve ever met, and I have a sister,” Dan said from the side.
“Hey!” Bia and Rosa synced.
It was at this point I gave up deciphering their nonsense and retired from the soon-to-be barbecue. Lloyd saw and followed. I initiated a conversation more my speed.
“You think this would be a good training exercise for the Verosavs?” I asked. “Complex environments and all.”
“Would that really benefit them? ” Lloyd asked. “They need to do their fundamentals first, and they’re nowhere done.”
“Oh, you can tell we’re about to be knee deep in shit. They’ll need a crash course.”
“Or you could just give up the neckla –”
“No,” I rolled my eyes. “It’ll be good for em in time anyway. And we’ll always be around to keep em alive. They won’t be.”
“Look at you with your edgy toxicity,” Lloyd smirked. “Keep that up and Grim’ll back off with a few well constructed burnt-Eoresse roastings.”
“What?” I said, confused.
“Oh, whatev,” Lloyd shrugged. “You think we send em at something?”
“Yeah, should be fine. The ambient magic levels dip down around here anyway. Bloody convenient, aye?”
“Woo.”
I plucked the monster scanner from my pouch and set it off. A few cutesy screen animations and a pleasant ping later, a pack of voracrest were labelled a few kilometres to our south, along with some other monsters floating around the edges of the scanner’s radius. Voracrests would be highly stealthy in this environment, and they were closest anyway. Lloyd leaned over for a look and then swayed back to inform the others.
“Oi!” he called. “Voracrest pack ahead! Dan, Rosa, gear up.”
“Alright!” Rosa said with zest, summoning a bow, then quickly setting it down as she went to her pack to retrieve her robes. Dan put on his armoured garb as well, then lazily plopped back onto the crab saddle.
?Ability: [Frostburn Bow] (Conjuring)
Incantation: none
Cost: meagre mana
Cooldown: none
Damage Output:
50% Flame
50% Frost
Effects:
-
Tier I
-
Conjure a Frostburn Bow. Hit entities are given an instance of [Malkir Flame] or [Malkir Frost].
-
Bow can be set to flame mode or frost mode, each producing their respective damage type instead of dual mode’s combined damage types.
-
Rapidly fire arrows using tiny bits of your mana supply to conjure them directly into the bow.
-
?Effect: [Malkir Flame] (Affinity)
Target becomes highly vulnerable to frost damage.
?Effect: [Malkir Frost] (Affinity)
Target becomes highly vulnerable to flame damage.
A few minutes of hexacampi speed later and we were fast approaching the voracrest, which seemed to have locked onto us as well – my senses said they’d stopped moving.
Bia reined in our hexacampi as we all dismounted. Rosa and Dan went ahead while the three of us watched and assessed from a distance, masking our presence from the voracrest’s primitive senses.
Rosa and Dan had been left alone to develop some basic tactics to work in their pair. Those would soon be put to the test. After their first few fights they’d quickly attained five or six abilities each to get them started on their power archetypes before diving into the complex stuff. The Governance was beginner friendly like that.
Rosa’s powers were focused on a ridiculously fast firing bow that drew from her mana supply and kept switching its damage type. The rest of her abilities basically allowed her to fire six bajillion different types of arrows augmented with six bajillion different buff options. She wasn’t very mobile or well defended, but was very stealthy – if only she would stop stubbing her toe on tree stumps and not loudly crush every leaf underfoot.
Dan was a high mobility defensive tank. He took a lot of hits and flitted around the battlefield like a frog, distracting the enemy and taking as little damage as possible. He conjured and fired knives rapidly, dealing damage just substantial enough that if left alone he’d be a problem. Basically, he’s that annoyingly impervious fly that keeps landing on your desk while you’re trying to do work.
Together, the two would make a pretty formidable team, if trained right.
They launched into the attack. Dan opened with an ability amplified dash straight into the voracrest pack, bowling several of them over and launching one into the air. That was just about the only powerful move he had – kind of a waste to set it off so early, but whatever. I’d grill him on it later. He then continued into a series of knife launching and dashing through the pack.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
The voracrests all focused Dan down, but were unable to effectively harm him between his shielding and mobility. By the time they noticed Rosa raining fire from her refuge in a patch of tall grass, they were already being cut down. It came down to two of the little things before they decided to bail. Each of them shot off like rockets in different directions.
Rosa nailed the first one before it could escape into a patch of tall grass, but the other one was already off and away by then. Dan chased it into the grass, Rosa following slowly behind.
?Ability: [Arcane Smite] (Attack)
Incantation: none
Cost: moderate mana
Cooldown: 20mins
Damage Output:
-
50% Kinetic
-
25% Explosive
-
25% Void
Effects:
-
Tier I
-
Instantaneously move (not teleportation) to a location in your line of sight and within 15 metres.
-
On arrival, release a powerful explosion that also carries void damage, going through protection.
-
A high-pitched lizard shriek sounded somewhere ahead of them, followed by a crunch and a loud bleating noise. Ominous. The two felt a Presence boiling down on them as something emerged from the trees, and then –
Wait a second. I’m not watching a recording, this is actually happening, where did Lloyd go –
BANG. Golden Boy unloaded two mags of tier five amo into the side of the goat-monster’s head in a fractionsecond right as it had launched itself at the Verosavs, but pause not and now it was tearing at Lloyd, who most certainly wasn’t a match for it at such close proximity. Bia and I both sped forward, she to herd away the t-ones and I to help Lloyd. Governance brought up a summary as I approached:
?Creature: [Devorean] (Beast)
Average Tier: XX
Target Tier: XII
Summary:
Bulky goat-headed humanoid, with large tearing claws and ornamented antler-horns. Very fast, but terrible at changing direction. Supplements lack of agility with the spread of its antlers, often leaning down so its antlers can sweep large swathes of surrounding enemies.
TIER VII RANK ADVISORY
DO NOT APPROACH; BAD MATCHUP
Rank advisory. Hadn’t seen one of those in a while. Governance’s beginner friendly feature suite gets a four star from me. Minus one for spawning this fucking thing next to a bunch of tier three voracrests. That makes the average rank here what, t-seven? Bullshit.
Lloyd fulfilled a role similar to Rosa as a backline damage specialist, except his damage output was melee rather than ranged. He needed time and space to set up an array of defensive and offensive buffs to eventually dive in for a final blitz that would end the fight. Usually he did this by dodging around the enemies and marking them with his abilities, slowly sapping power from them and turning that into buffs for himself. This made his abilities a bit of a waste against anything weaker than himself, but meant he was a massive asset against powerful, singular enemies.
I quickly took his place to engage the devorean while he snuck off and around to add more power sapping conditions on the monster. My role was very frontline – I was a highly mobile glass cannon and was the main damage dealer on the team. I maintained consistent damage for the first three quarters of a fight and Lloyd filled in when Bia and I began running low on mana.
The devorean’s overranked speed attribute was the major issue I had. High damage wasn’t much of an issue as most damage could debilitate me, but I was usually able to dodge. The devorean, despite not being very agile, did have its massive area covering antlers and tier seventeen speed to boot. This is where Bia comes in.
Bia was a ranged spellcaster, usually standing back and dropping buffs on allies and debuffs on enemies. Her healing and shields were the only thing that kept me in battle condition through the fight.
Slowly we whittled against its immense life force, Bia continuously slowing it down and draining its stamina with spells, strategically placing shields and healing spells while Lloyd flitted around the battlefield, completely unnoticed by the devorean. I had drawn the monster’s attention and ire, and was too big a threat to leave be and too resilient a threat to squash.
However, Bia and I’s mana pools were soon running low. We had to pray that Lloyd would have built up enough charge for his ability to finish it off.
Then the devorean paused. It sniffed, and the few seconds warning weren’t enough for either of us.
It bowled me out of the way and bashed straight at Bia. Five shattersweep shields failed to stop it, neither did both of Bia’s shield spells. I wasn’t fast enough to catch up and the devorean knocked Bia through the grass and into the ground, then bore down on her instantly.
The previous dodges I had made were all due to my mobility and Bia’s shields, turning direct hits into narrow misses. Bia had no such speed and took the full brunt of the attack.
Lloyd’s voice blazed from shadows: “Blur the scriptures; may time take its justice.”
It was time to turn the tables. His blitz might not finish the devorean, but it would buy us the time to heal up, which was ultimately more important.
A gilded blur slammed into the monster’s side, the only part of the silhouette visible through Lloyd’s sheer speed being a massive golden longsword, its blade etched with runes.
?Ability: [Ascension] (Buff)
Incantation: Blur the scriptures; may time take its justice.
Cost: overcharged extreme mana
Cooldown: none
Damage Output:
None
Effects:
-
Tier I
-
Drain mana on attack.
-
You can hold mana over your regular capacity, up to a fifth mana bar’s worth. To maintain overcharged mana capacity, continuously drain it from enemies.
-
-
Tier V
-
Dump an overcharged mana bar’s worth to temporarily ascend your attributes to that of a tier equal to the amount of overcharged bars.
-
When the buff wears off, suffer an attribute detriment equivalent to the buff, reversed.
-
His ultimate ability was incredibly powerful, but required a ridiculous amount of setup and he was only partly done. At the moment, he hadn’t fully charged it and had only been able to set himself to tier ten, which was a welcome boon to us but still wouldn’t be able to finish off the t-twelve devorean before it ran out – and when it did, he’d be toast.
I quickly gathered up Bia and brought her rattled body away, fed her a healing potion, and returned to the fight, trusting she’d be able to get herself back into fighting condition.
Lloyd was still a golden blur, raking his sword around the devorean as he spun around it at t-ten speeds. I joined in, continuing my assault, trying to conserve the last vestiges of my mana by using only my dagger and movement abilities. Even then, my mana was fast depleting.
“Ari!” Lloyd yelled. “Back out.”
I nodded – he was about to use his finisher.
“Gloried heart of the ancients, consecrate that which has been stolen!”
I dashed away as an orb of golden light began descending onto the monster from above. The wind slowed and the grass’ waving with it. A faint alien hum echoed in the distance.
The orb landed.
In an instant, the devorean’s flesh began warping and wilting towards the orb, melting straight off its bones. The hum grew louder as it growled and stood still, eyes affixed to the orb even as they were pulled from their sockets into it.
Blazing rays of light bled out from the orb’s epicentre, engulfing the devorean.
The monster’s desiccated skeleton fell to the ground moments later.
?Ability: [Rapturous Singularity] (Conjuring)
Incantation: Gloried heart of the ancients, consecrate that which has been stolen
Cost: extreme mana
Cooldown: 24hrs
Damage Output:
Holy
Effects:
-
Tier I
- Conjure a golden orb that warps nearby flesh towards it.
-
Tier III
- Move the orb at a slow speed. Orb can now be used to blow up non-living matter.
-
Tier V
- When orb duration expires, all damage dealt by it is sent outwards in a blast of healing magic.
-
Tier VII
- Alternatively, a quarter of all damage dealt is afflicted to all enemies in blast range.
“Holy fucking shit,” Bia reentered from a patch of tall grass. Lloyd collapsed backwards, panting.
“When the hell did you pick that up?!” I berated him. “I thought you were just going to use your regular finisher – the execute beam thing.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a recent thing. Had help from some spons –”
The corpse twitched.
Wait a minute. We didn’t get a Governance prompt saying we defeated the devorean.
The still-alive monster, somehow still living from the little patches of flesh on its bones, warped uprightand punched him in the face, then followed up with a ram to the chest before – Bia’s scythe chopped through an antler and then buried itself in its chest. It fell weakly to the ground and she continued to clobber at it until the last of its flesh was scissored away.
“Die, you motherfucker!” Bia screamed. “Fuck off!”
“Bia, it’s dead,” I sighed.
“And it almost killed us too!” Bia said. “I think I’m allowed to be pissed about this.”
“And now you get why I was pissed at you for leading us to a t-thirteen area on the day we met Grim.”
“No, not really. That’s just your bad.”
“Bia, I kind of hate you.”