And (N)one Shall Remain

“Mel! To your left!” yelled Dai’vasy when she noticed one of the monsters slipping around the frontlines and towards her friend. She herself coupled her warning with a handful of icicles shaped like needles that hurtled through the air towards the monster’s eyes at the same time. 

 

The creatures they were fighting looked like wasps, but where at most a regular wasp would be the size of their thumb, these [Yellowjacket Warrior Wasps] were easily a meter long each, though, with mandibles that look like they could shear off a limb and a stinger that resembled a short spear in size. The fact that they fly just made them so much worse to fight.

 

While Dai’vasy’s spray of ice needles were avoided by the wasp, it distracted the monster enough that it failed to notice Iryl – who was waiting for that sort of opportunity near Mel-Ivas and Dai-Vasy – closing to its side. The girl smashed the wasp down with her glaive, her arms strong enough to knock the wasp out of the air but not strong enough to crush through its shell or sever its limbs with the blow.

 

A larger ice lance flew in the next moment and pierced through the wasp’s head, though, ending its life cleanly.

 

“Thanks,” noted Mel-Ivas to the two who helped her. As the only healer of the group she was preoccupied trying to keep everyone healed of their injuries, and had been somewhat absent-minded when it came to her own surroundings. Of course, that was also the reason Iryl stayed close to her, to defend her in cases like what happened just then.

 

At the moment the [Prodigies of Yore] engaged around several dozen of the wasps, on their own, as part of their training. Esperanza had been helping them take care of the flying enemies during their trip, something that Belug-ur’ani pointed out correctly would end up making the progenies lack skill in that field unless they were to train up for it. 

 

It was sort of expected, but the progenies, being young children at heart, still showed some dependence on Esperanza as the adult leading them. As such, she agreed that if they wished to follow alongside her, they would need more training on how to do things on their own, hence the training session Ani arranged for them.

 

The wasps they were fighting lived around a few hours walk from one of the exits of Agur-Bas, and were around level thirty to forty five, a good range for the progenies to take on, considering the numerical disadvantage they would be in. Their stings deposit a venom that would hurt a lot, but was relatively harmless unless one got stung dozens of times. Even so, they brought antidotes just in case.

 

Most importantly of course, was the fact that the wasps were agile fliers, even if they were not particularly fast. The flight along was plenty to give the young progenies fits when it comes to dealing with them. Dai’vasy for example quickly noticed that ice lances with enough force to pierce through the carapace of the wasps were too slow and easily avoided, so she switched to needles aimed at their eyes instead.

 

Similarly, Resitia found some difficulty fighting the wasps with her favored spear, until she took a page from how Val-Kas’j fought and started swinging her spear around like a staff instead, striking the wasps down before skewering them with the spearhead. Trying to skewer them while they were flying was far too hard for her at the moment.

 

She, like the other progenies – even those not as inclined to fighting physically

like Mel-Ivas and Dai’vasy received some weapons for self-defense – wielded a new weapon crafted by weapon crafters from underwater villages not far away from Agur-Bas. The pointed lance-arms of the arachnoids she faced back in the dungeon, which she had just crudely bound to the end of a long stick back then, were cleverly grafted to both ends of a long, solid shaft that was very sturdy yet retained some flexibility, supposedly the core of some underwater plant of sorts, creating a double-headed spear for her use.

 

Similarly, Val-Kas’j wielded a sort of polearm with the scythe-blade of another arachnoid serving as its blade, while the shaft was made from the same sort of material as what Resitia used. He used a shorter spear in his other hand, with only one spearhead, small enough that he could still use the hand to hold both the polearm shaft and the spear’s without much trouble. He also had the easiest time against the wasps so far, since his sweeping chops often took more than one of the insectoids down in one go.

 

Tiesya beside him wielded a pair of blades fashioned out of the same materials, though now the blades looked less like they were limbs torn off an insectoid monster and looked more like a proper blade, ones that almost looked like they were ornamental works of art meant for decoration rather than combat. Of course, one look at how Tiesya cleanly severed a wasp into halves spoke of their effectiveness.

 

On the other side of the prodigies’ formation, Nalihimatu mostly bashed the wasps away with his new, larger, and sturdier shield. The large mace he used was not very suitable for knocking the wasps out of the sky, though it crushed them just fine once he had them on the ground. Given his heavy armor, he was also less concerned about the mandibles, though the stingers still posed some risk.

 

Ilavakida was behind him as she tried to lend support. Her arrows were fast enough to catch the wasps even during flight, and packed enough force to pierce through their exoskeleton, but they didn’t necessarily land fatal blows. Much like the others, the bow she used had undergone some improvements, which made it heavier and harder to draw, but also more powerful.

 

It was fitting since she was growing in strength anyway and the old bow had gotten a bit too light.

 

Although Ilavakide’s arrows didn’t always kill her targets, the weight and size of the arrows themselves made them massive annoyances for the wasps she shot, its length sticking out of their body serving as a handle one of the others could use to literally pull a wasp out of the air and slam them to the ground to kill more easily.

 

Legisvula was the only one of the progenies who could not be seen, as he mostly stalked the wasps from the shadows, from atop the trees, or otherwise in hiding. He would leap out, land on the back of a wasp, quickly decapitate it with his blade, then disappear once more, like he was never there. His skills leaned more towards stealth and ambushes, and now he was putting them to proper use.

 

While the progenies had fought together before, it was more just them fighting alongside each other. They had rather poor teamwork, and sometimes even got in each other’s way. It was the reason why Esperanza and Ani agreed to work together to fashion some exercises that would hopefully help them improve on their teamwork, like the current fight they had against a swarm of overgrown wasps.

 

The experience the kids would earn from the fighting was a nice bonus as well.

 

Esperanza herself, together with Ani and the warriors who volunteered to follow her, were a good bit further away, where they could observe the fighting but were far enough away to not get accidentally involved. At worst a couple of wasps headed their way, but Esperanza just lashed out with one of her limbs and took them down before they could do anything.

 

She was the only one in that group who would still gain meaningful experience from the wasps anyway, as Ani was a fourth tier and the rest of the warriors with her were mid to late third tier.

 

From what they could see, the progenies took the lessons from the Ani to heart. They fought in a more coordinated manner than before, with Tiesya and Nalihimatu guarding their flanks, while Val-Kas’j and Resitia struck forward. Ilavakide, Mel-Ivas, and Dai’vasy were grouped together behind those four, with Iryl standing guard next to them, while Legisvula did his thing.

 

Unlike before, they got in the way of each other less. Esperanza even saw more instances of the progenies working together, like how Nalihimatu bashed some of the wasps out of the air with his large shield, only for Resitia to finish them off with her spear before they could recover. Similarly, the progenies trusted each other greatly, as could be seen by how they did not even flinch when an arrow of Ilavakide’s or shard of ice from Dai’vasy flew past merely an inch away from their heads.

 

Instead they made use of the support to take down a typically surprised target.

 

The fighting, which was intense at first, slowly petered down as more of the wasps fell dead to the ground. Around when there were only a dozen of the wasps remaining though, another swarm, roughly four dozen of the creatures, came out from the direction of their nest to join the fighting, which naturally intensified the battle to even greater heights than before.

 

While it was a difficult fight, the progenies slowly but surely dropped the wasps one by one. They showed no sign of relenting beneath the buzzing onslaught they faced, and fought fiercely until eventually, the remaining dozen and a half survivors from the wasps fled back to where they came from, leaving behind dozens of corpses of their brethren littering the ground.

 

The progenies did not give chase, as they were only told to fight until the wasps gave up on fighting them.

 

When they returned to where Esperanza and Ani waited for them, the group looked somewhat comical. Each of the progenies had been stung several times by the wasps, and multiple swollen bumps still adorn their bodies and even faces. Mel-Ivas was already out of mana from all the healing she did, so they had to suffer through these without her help for the time being.

 

Even so, there was a definite note of pride and satisfaction to their tired strides, one gained from their own hard work no less. The fight helped the progenies work together better as a team, and even Iryl, who lacked a special class and was thus far weaker, managed to contribute meaningfully to the fighting. They each also gained a level or two from the fight, though none of them were quite at the end of their second tier yet.

 

Esperanza knew that the kids had some fixation to the friends they lost to the arachnoids back in the dungeon. They had told her in private that if it were possible, they would like to advance to their third tiers back where they buried said friends, as a form of tribute to their souls. It was a motivation she felt best left as it was.

 

As such, they had been practicing their teamwork and acclimatizing themselves to their new equipment in the past week, with the help of Ani and the warriors who followed her. There was wisdom in experience and age, and the young [Progenies of Yore] were none too shy to make the best use of whatever they could get their hands on.

 

All of them know that in a while, maybe another week or two at most, they would head back towards the depths of the forest, towards where some of their friends were buried. There they plan to grow even stronger, and then to follow Esperanza in her mission from the Deities of Yore. They know that said mission would likely endanger their lives, but it was a risk they willingly took.

 

Some of them were also quite intrigued to see what the society of the people who worshiped the new gods were like. With the exception of those who had too-obvious human blood, if one of them learned a skill to mask their affiliation to the Deities of Yore from the new gods, then many of them could likely infiltrate a demon city.

 

It was something they looked forward to.