Cadell Vritra POV
"What is it you want to tell me?" Agrona asked.
I had asked for a private meeting, planning to talk about Arthur.
"I am here because of Arthur."
"Is something wrong? I heard he reached initial silver yesterday."
"No, he is fine. Better than fine actually. I just fear that his advances are a bit too fast actually. I focused the training on fighting and control of mana, excluding the decay art at first, but he just taught it to himself. And he manages to use mana in a way I can't comprehend."
"I have seen his control over mana. He certainly has a distinct connection to mana." Agrona agreed. "But I fail to see how that is harmful."
"It isn't. The problem I have is that I can't really teach him anything anymore. Do you know of Dragoth's new emblem?"
Agrona nodded. "Some kind of wind shield. Untypical for a striker, but not unheard of, albeit the first time that particular rune appeared as an emblem. Up until now it was always a mark or a crest. I look forward to seeing how strong the rune is in this form."
"Arthur managed to copy the effects in under an hour, and after another hour evolved the spell. He explained that this rune controls and splits different parts of the air, to create a barrier of non-flammable air around oneself, while drawing air in. The fire mana used in the attacks burn with the help of the parts of air that can burn, creating a cloak of fire." I said. Again Agrona nodded.
"But Arthur complimented this by sucking in water from the air and letting lightning mana flow through it, together with some kind of metal, creating another gas, I think he called it hydrogen. He then proceeded to fuel the flame with this hydrogen, which amplified the power of the flame about tenfold. He also changed the barrier of air around him. He drained all the air around him, which prevented even the heat from reaching him, the major drawback of this rune.
He admitted that the spell combination he created cost him more mana then the original spell did, but this spell let him withstand my most powerful fire spell, soulfire excluded of course, with ease."
Agrona stared into nothingness, trying to understand the thing Arthur had done.
"This flame barrier itself was powerful enough to disintegrate most physical attacks, but he changed it into an offensive attack. The destructive power of that reaction was impressive, especially considering he is only at the silver core, and he hadn't used decay. I can't imagine myself being able to block this attack, once he reaches the white core and uses soulfire with it. Quite honestly, I wouldn't even be sure if I could deal with it with just one of those changes."
"So what are you saying?" Agrona asked, seeing this conversation leading somewhere.
"Soon I will be unable to teach him anything. I only have the decay mana left, where he still has to learn a bit, but in all the other parts he is more advanced than I am."
"What do you recommend we do with him after that?" Argona asked me. "If you can't teach him anything, what is he supposed to do? He has already devoured pretty much everything in the library."
"Maybe the next step would be to integrate him in the politics of Alacrya. He is stronger than any of the retainers, so maybe we should announce him as one of them."
He shook his head. "That would only slow his growth. He shouldn't have to handle the politics, that would only waste his talent."
"Do you want to teach him yourself?" I asked Agrona. He shook his head. "Unfortunately I don't have the time for that, especially now that I also have to train Sylvie. But I have a better idea." I could see a spark in his eyes.
I hated it when he did that. "What idea do you have?"
"We tell him about the place designed as a test, that constantly evolves people. He would beg to be allowed to go there."
It took me a second before understanding. The Relictombs...
Somewhere in the Beast Glades
"Hey Roland, care to go hunt a bit?" Emmi asked me.
"On my way." I said. We were a group of four adventurers, ready to clear a dungeon near the Dragonspire Inn. It was our first time attempting to conquer a dungeon, so we were quite excited.
Until now we had just hunted mana beasts on the surface, but as we became stronger this became too easy. Now we wanted to try ourselves on a comparatively easy dungeon, the green swamp cave.
It was a dungeon which was pretty flat, but the entire dungeon was flooded to the knees with water, turned green by all the plants in there. The beasts there were mainly giant insects, with the occasional snake and turtle. The king of this dungeon was a crocodile that stayed in the final room. That room was a bit tricky, because this cave was pretty deep and the crocodile remained underwater, so one had to fight it underwater.
Needless to say that any fire and wind attribute conjurer hated that dungeon, while any water attribute mage loved it. I grinned. I was able to reach dark orange last year and was eager to use my earth affinity in a real fight, and not only against the occasional stray mana beast or in a training match.
I augmented my ears and eyes, scanning the area and was able to find some trails of animals. There was a fresh trail of a deer I decided looked promising enough. After some trailing I was able to discover the deer eating some berries of a bush nearby. Its hooves were sucked into the earth by my spell and I finished it off with a quick attack. There was no need for it to suffer more than it had to.
As I came back to the group, I saw that they had already started a fire. I skinned the deer and listened to the conversation. They were also excited about our dungeon crawl. Our leader Thomas reminded us of the beasts in there and repeated the techniques we developed to deal with them.
I personally thought that we worried too much, as we were all orange core mages and these beasts could be killed by a team of good red core mages. Additionally we worked out strategies, bought better equipment and even invested money in a healing potion.
Let's hope we don't need it, as it was quite expensive and only for emergencies.
But I figured it was better to be over prepared than dead.
I joined in on the conversation and started to roast the meat above the fire.
Soon afterwards we ate the meat, which was really delicious. I swear the meat of wildlife was getting more delicious the further one was in the Beast Glades.
Now strengthened, we decided to start the dungeon crawl.
We put out the fire and started to armor up. As Thomas put on his armor I helped Connor with his. Emmi and I only wore a leather harness, as we were the conjurers, we wouldn't need any armor, since the beasts would focus on our augmenters.
When we were ready we walked the last few meters to the entrance. It was a cave entrance, around 3 meters tall and 5 meters wide. We entered and followed the path underground. The further we went the worse the smell got. Soon enough it smelled like something had died here and was rotting for a while.
"That is normal. Remember, Jeff said that this dungeon smelled a bit?" Thomas tried to encourage us.
"Yeah, he said it smelled a bit. That is not a bit. What is wrong with him?" Connor answered, visibly annoyed.
We continued to walk deeper and finally met the water. Thomas entered the water and made a disgusted expression. We followed and made the same expression. The water was warm, like someone peed in it, and it had chunks of something bumping against our legs.
A bit further down the dungeon a group of giant dragonflies discovered us and started to fly towards us.
"Okay, we went through that. Emmi cast a wind shield so they can't reach us." Thomas ordered. Emmi complied and we saw how a glimmer spanned from one wall to another.
Then I started to cast earth spikes, which impaled the dragonflies one after another.
"Wow, that was easier than expected," I said. I had thought that it would need multiple hits, but a single spike was enough to finish them off.
"We shouldn't get ahead of ourselves. We still have to beat the crocodile"
As we went down the tunnel there were some more dragonflies and other insects. As these were quite weak we loosened our formation. In the middle of the dungeon we were attacked by a swarm of piranhas. Connor and Thomas took care of them, so we didn't have to fire our spells into the water, which cost a lot more mana.
And finally the ceiling lowered itself, as the floor dropped too. This was the indicator that the boss was ahead.
But something was wrong. The green water, this cave was so famous for, was missing. Not that the water was missing, but the water suddenly became clear. It was like an invisible filter holding back all the green plants in the water.
"What is that?" Emmi asked.
"The guide said that the main problem for the boss is, that you can't see it, and don't know where it is coming from, till you feel it from your area spell. Maybe another group has set up a spell to cleanse the water to get rid of the problem?" Thomas suggested.
"I'll go and take a look," he said, and dove underwater. We saw him swim a bit before swimming through the small slit in the wall that led to the cave of the crocodile. He came back a few seconds later.
"The water is clear on the other side as well. The cave is around 40 meters deep and there were a lot of dead plants all over the ground. My guess is that they couldn't handle whatever is clearing the water. I didn't see the croc directly, but between the plants was something that moved. If we take the clear water out of the picture everything is as expected. The cliff is on the side of the slit and we have more than enough time to get there, before the croc would reach us.
Now to the important question: Do we want to continue or do we want to go back and inform the guild about these changes first?"
"I say we go for it. We went all the way here and the beasts were much easier than expected. The clear water only helps us." Connor said and I agreed. Emmi just nodded in agreement.
"Okay, that was also my plan." Thomas confirmed. "Then let's go!"
We all swam to the slit and passed it one at a time. Thomas was right, the cave water was clear and the dead plants on the ground hid something. We hurried to the cliff, where we climbed the meter high wall and stood up. From here Emmi and I would fire our spells, while Connor and Thomas would jump into the water as soon as the beast started to swim toward us.
Then they would keep it occupied, while we would finish it off.
On Thomas' signal we fired spells toward where we had seen the creature last. The crocodile reacted by evading and started to swim toward us. Our augmentors got ready to jump in, as we fired more spells.
But then something weird happened. The crocodile changed its course and instead of attacking us, it started to swim to the slit in the wall we have come in from. It started to bash his wall against the cave above it.
"It's trying to close the split. If it succeeds we are trapped down here!" Thomas realized. He jumped into the water and Connor followed. They swam toward the crocodile, who was still trying to close the slit. Emmi and I fired our spells, which were significantly weakened by traveling through the water. This thing is supposed to come up near the surface, where the spells were more powerful.
As our augmentors reached the crocodile it switched targets and started to try and bite Connor, who could evade by using some water mana. Meanwhile Thomas went to work with his sword and began to break its scales. Once you destroyed its scales it was pretty vulnerable and easy to defeat. Normally the scales were supposed to be sturdy, but would break after multiple hits with a sword, even unaugmented. But it seemed like the scales didn't move a bit. We could only watch, as after multiple evasions of Connor the crocodile caught his leg. It mowed through it, and bit it straight off.
Connor screamed in pain, but since he was underwater all that happened was that he let out a giant air bubble. He immediately recognized his mistake and looked toward Emmi, who understood. He tried to stop his bleeding with a rope, while Thomas kept the crocodile in check.
Emmi hurried and conjured an air bubble that flew down toward Connor, so he could get air. The bubble reached him, and he inhaled the air. In the meantime Thomas retreated from the crocodile, and the two of them swam toward us. Connor was slow because of his injury, while Thomas was busy defending himself and Connor against the attacks of the crocodile.
Connor finally reached the surface where I helped him out of the water, while Emmi was busy casting another bubble for Thomas. The fight was supposed to be over quickly, so we didn't think we would need to use these air bubbles.
Fortunately I had heard of this spell and Emmi learned to cast it.
As Connor got out of the water I hurried back and helped Thomas out of the water, but the crocodile didn't let him. Every time I tried to grab him, the crocodile attacked, and so Thomas had to defend, aborting his rescue attempt.
"Connor, get him out!" I shouted to Connor, who was trying to stop his bleeding. He nodded and I began casting an earth spell, to create a wall between the crocodile and Thomas. Hopefully this wall would keep it at bay long enough for Thomas to get out.
As the wall erected itself and Emmi fired an air projectile at the crocodile to distract it further, Connor grabbed Thomas and yeeted him out of the water.
We hurried to stop the bleeding, but with every beat of his heart more blood pumped out of the stump, that was his leg. We tried to bring it into an elevated position and we tried to tie his blood vessels close to it by using a rope as a compression bandage. But nothing worked
"It isn't working. Where's the potion?" Thomas exclaimed. I looked in my backpack and found it. I gave Connor the vial and he drank it. We could see how his skin grew slowly, covering his wound.
The success was disrupted by a rumble. We looked around for the source of the noise only to discover that the crocodile had returned to the slit in the wall. Now some rubble was covering the entrance to the cave.
We were trapped.
***
>2.6k words
Tell me if you like the OCs, so I know if I should kill them off, or if they should survive.
No matter what the result is gonna be, prepare for a best girl pov next chapter.
Now I am going to lean back, and see how the comment section explodes xD