AK - The Alchemy Kingdom

Year 2, Winter, Third Month, Third Week.

The situation in front of the cave was a little more than just awkward. On one side, Lew and Samia refused to reveal their ace. While on the other side, the group of ten Adventurers struggled to trust the pair and some amongst them even advocated for the use of force. Heidi didn’t know how to handle the situation and her brother was losing patience, it wouldn’t take much more for him to throw a spell at the other party.

“You want us to barge in without any guarantees that you would be able to block the sound attacks? How’s that any different from just throwing our lives away?”

“Aren’t we also going? Besides, I don’t want anything. If you want to cooperate with us, fine, but if you don’t, we’ll be on our way…”

Chris lost it for a second and started to form a spell with the wind energy accumulating around him but was stopped by his sister. Heidi ignored his betrayed expression and tried to reason with Lew again.

“Please, we just want to be sure… It’s two dozens of bats, after all.”

Lew turned to Samia, pleading for her help, but the girl just shrugged helplessly. It took a week for Karl to craft the tools, but the result was better than he expected. Unfortunately, the Council prohibited him from divulging anything about the tools. In his opinion, they should just show the tools and give a general explanation.

However, the Council still insisted on keeping it a secret. At least, they wanted to mislead the Adventurers into thinking this was their power. If word got out that they could use elemental magic with tools, without the need of a Mage, nothing would prevent the Kingdom from getting to them, not even the Forest.

It was all about calculated risks, if the Adventures thought they could use a different kind of elemental magic, even if the Kingdom learns of it, they would hardly put extra effort into hunting them.

Fortunately, they didn’t saw the tools working before and Karl had carefully hidden the Arrays inside of their coats, so he only had to keep the mystery and everything would be alright. If he could convince the Adventurers to trust them, of course. Lew hesitated but decided to try something at the risk of making them even more distrustful.

“You can trust us or not, but you would be losing a lot… I won’t tell you the details but I have a way of imprisoning the bats… Alive.”

Chris started coughing and Heidi could barely control her shock. The others didn’t understand why the excitement, it would help but not the point to make a huge difference. But when the wind Mage explained that an alive sound MT beast would sell for almost one hundred golds, everyone started to see the situation in a new light. Both the intentions of trusting the pair and forcing them grew.

“It’s not gonna be easy, though. At most, we could take three or four alive, if we’re lucky… However, if we get more than one, we’ll take one back with us, the rest is yours… Of course, we would need to compensate with the wind crystals. I propose we split the loot into equal parts. You have more people but we have the means… Each alive bat could be exchanged for five MQ wind crystals, but we still want to take one back…”

Heidi was about to protest but stopped. The deal was actually fair, they have even given them some benefits since the bats could be sold for the price of eight or so crystals, that is if they caught any beasts alive. But even if they didn’t, half isn’t too bad either.

“OK, let’s do it… You better be right about your abilities. Either way, you’re going in first.”

Her group wanted to discuss it, but Heidi silenced them. In few minutes, they were carefully following the tribal pair into the dark cave. As agreed, they would walk in the darkness and later, when they attacked, the fire Mage would light the torches and illuminate the cave.

Samia proceeded closed to Lew, not because she was afraid, but because he was using the magic energy to see better in the dark. Besides him and Heidi, only two other Fighters knew the technique, so everyone else followed apprehensively.

Lew took a deep breath before passing the narrow path and entering the big room. Heidi hesitated, once they passed this threshold they wouldn’t be able to escape from the beasts fast enough. But it was either this or going back to servitude, better to risk it then. Slowly, everyone entered the room but didn’t move forward, even the ones that couldn’t see in the dark could now feel the presence (unpleasant smell) of the beasts.

However, someone tripped over a stone and the collision sound spread through the room. Soon, many pairs of small red globes started to shine in the darkness, the bats were awakening. Besides gripping their weapons, nobody dared to move or make any sound.

Then, Lew’s coat started to shine and something strange passed through them, like a thin layer of something viscous. A bat’s scream rose from the sea of red glowing eyes, waking up the remaining beasts from their slumber. The Adventurers started to curse both silently and out loud, but then the bat’s screams became muffled.

The fire Mage had to be shaken by Chris to remember casting the fire spell. In a few minutes, the torches started to light up revealing a fantastical scene. On top of them, a thin blueish barrier kept the bats at bay. Waves traveled through the barrier like they were testing its strength and continuity. Lew and Samia already knew what was happening, but it took the others a few moments to realized the waves were the sound attacks crashing against the barrier.

The Mages and Heidi looked at the pair in awe, they couldn’t understand how they did it. Was it Lew a bubble Mage? But then, Samia brought them out of their daze by throwing a knife at record speed. They could barely follow the weapon that passed through the barrier as it was nothing before carving a bat into the stone walls.

Heidi stopped wasting time with being shocked and started giving orders for the Adventurers to shoot the bats. At this time, Lew took out a straw net and yelled at them.

“Don’t waste time, we only have a few minutes…”

Lew wasn’t lying, when he received the tool, Karl was clear about its durability, if they were attacked continuously by dozens of magic attacks, the barrier might become weak and let some attacks pass through. He concentrated and waited for the right moment to throw the nets. He only had four of them, so he would need to use them wisely.

Arrow and knives traveled through the barrier hitting and wounding the bats, but there was still a lot of them. The barrier started to show signs of cracking and Lew urged them again. Chris wasn’t being very helpful, as a wind Invoker he could only push the bats back in the areas nobody was attacking. The fire Mage, on the other hand, continued to prepare a strong spell. She kept increasing the Flame floating over her hand, making it stronger and hotter.

“I’m ready, fall back…”

Nobody dared to argue with the fire Invoker, even Lew and Samia quickly stepped back as the Mage pushed forward a dense Fire Ray. The attack passed through the barrier before hitting a group of bats, which screamed in pain. However, the Mage wasn’t done, she focused to maintain the connection with the fire and tried to spread it towards other bats. After killing eight bats, the fire Mage stepped back sweating and panting.

With the number of bats decreasing, Lew was finally ready to risk throwing a net. He quickly placed the net over a mark inside of his coat before throwing it towards a close bat. The net shined and covered the bat just in time for an almost invisible sphere to form around the beast and inflate the net. The bat struggled to leave the net and attacked it with sounds, but failed to breach the sphere as it fell to the ground.

The Fighter had to suppress the urge to cheer and celebrate. The barrier was getting weaker, so they needed to finish this fast. Fortunately, in another ten minutes, the fight was over and he could deactivate the battered barrier.

By this time, the Adventurers had given up on understanding the tribals’ power. However, Chris couldn’t keep himself from running to the net-spheres and analyzing what was restraining the beasts inside. Lew and Samia didn’t care, he wouldn’t be able to comprehend it anyway. Unfortunately, one net didn’t activate on time and was torn apart by a bat, so they only captured three bats alive. Even so, the Adventures were already satisfied with this loot.

One hour later, they had retrieved all the usable resources and were ready to leave. Heidi sincerely bowed to the pair and thank them for the cooperation. In the end, even the early animosity was forgotten. Samia bowed her head slightly while Lew offered a big smile and replied:

“Thank you for trusting us… Before we part, I would like to propose another cooperation…”