Arcane Apocalypse [LitRPG]

"Mom?" Mia asked hesitantly, her gaze flickering up to the canopy. The storm and darkness was there once a second then gone the next, like it was all but an illusion. It was extremely off-putting. "You alright?"

Mia hesitated to reach out and touch Helene, having seen the tiny arcs of lightning jump around her body in a swarm. She didn't fancy the idea of getting fried by her own mother's uncontrolled magic. It'd be a sad way to go.

"Mia?" Helene startled, her dazed but yet again normal eyes blinking and trying to focus. She squinted. "Yes … I believe I'm just fine. Better than fine, in fact. Oh, the storm is gone, that's good."

"Mom … What the hell happened?" Mia asked, feeling rather conscious of the whole camp staring at her, or rather, her mother. She did just start crackling with lightning and floating in place with glowing eyes after all. "Did you do something to the storm? I thought … "

"I finally found a Spirit to Bond with," Helene said, a radiant smile on her face. "Come on out, little one. Let me introduce you to the others."

A small cloud of grey mist flowed out of Helene's chest, and a pair of crackling yellow orbs blinked open within it. Looking around at the fifty or so people gathered around and staring at it in various levels of wonder or surprise.

"This is T-" Helene cut herself off swiftly, frowning as the tiny cloud shook in agitation. "Tempest? Okay. He wants to be called Tempest, apparently."

"Well, hi Tempest," Mia said with a smile, stepping closer and holding out a hand to the Spirit like she would to a new kitten she met for the first time. She was utterly fascinated by the creature, her gem-like blue eyes twinkling in curiosity. "Nice to meet you."

The Spirit looked hesitant, its eyes quivering in indecision, jumping between all the people looking at it, Mia's outstretched hand and Helene. At the latter's encouraging nod, the Spirit extended a tendril of grey mist and tapped Mia's hand twice. He then fled, jumping back into Helene's torso and disappearing from sight.

Helene tapped her chest with a strange look.

"That will take getting used to," she muttered. When she finally took in her surroundings, the dozens of fighters all staring at her specifically, her jaw dropped in surprise. "Oh. What's going on?"

"You got struck by lightning, started floating and glowing like some God of Thunder possessed you and then the storm was gone," Brent said, taking a step forward in what Mia thought had to be an attempt to keep the rest from swarming Helene with questions. "It was a bit eye-catching. You said it somehow allowed you to bond with a spirit?"

" … yes," Helene said, suddenly wary. Nobody liked revealing the intricacies of their Class and magic, so Mia understood.

"Do you think others could replicate it?" Brent asked, practical as always.

"Only if they have a Sorcerer type Class," Helene said. "Maybe. I have Storm Sorcery, so I needed a storm to call a spirit. Someone with Ice Sorcery would need a blizzard, I'd assume."

"I see." Brent nodded. "Thank you, doubly so for removing the storm. It was making things rather difficult."

"What's a Spirit?" Someone asked, and Mia's gaze snapped over to a curious-looking… Sandor. At least she was fairly sure that was the second Berserker's name. "And what's it do?"

Like some spell broke, the rest started murmuring in interest too, some shouting questions and trying to press an increasingly uncomfortable Helene for answers.

"Shut up!" Brent growled, then stomped on the ground, shaking it ever so slightly. "Leave the woman who saved your asses from getting cooked alone. The rain is gone, and we have light again. I want the scouting squads out circling again. The rest of you prepare for leaving quickly, as soon as the scout returns, we are leaving to see how hard that monster settlement is to crack."

People reluctantly moved to comply, most still shivering in drenched clothes, weighing them down. Mia moved closer to her mother as they stood out of the way, whispering, "What did you get for Bonding a Spirit? I read I could probably Bond an Arcane Sprite if I found a willing one."

Instead of answering verbally, Helene just gestured into the air.

[User 'Helene Vexley' is sharing two System Windows with you.]

***

[Class Skill: Storm Sorcery]

Lightning Bolt - Channel the most destructive aspect of the Storms, the lightning.

You can mould your mana into bolts of lightning and throw them to decimate your foes.

Storm Calling - Use your connection to the Storm element to call them into your service.

You can call on the realm of Storms, the Grey Wastes and channel their primal powers to enhance your magic.

You can call on beings of Storm, beseeching them for help.

Spirit Bond: [HIDDEN] - You are Bound to the Storm Sprite [True name is HIDDEN from anyone but the Bond]. Nickname: 'Tempest'.

You can cast the spells Tempest is capable of casting through him.

You may freely transmit mana between yourself and Tempest, allowing the Sprite to sustain himself and to purify your mana.

***

[Trait 'Spirit Bound']

You have a permanent telepathic Bond with your Bonded Spirit, allowing you to communicate with them freely through subvocalization, thought and feelings.

You may use this Bond to cast spells through your Bonded Spirit, using them as a vector or point of origin for your magic. The same can be done in reverse.

Your Bonded Spirit is attuned to your mana and can now hide or rest within your Core.

***

"I think you'll only be getting the Trait if you do," Helene whispered, closing the windows with a flick of her wrist once Mia was done reading. "The sub-skill comes because my Class is a type of Sorceress."

Mia's thoughts lingered on the subskill, feeling a bit jealous of it. While she had to work to eat runes, work on mana shaping, and construct spell circles, her mother could leave all the work to her new Bonded Spirit and harvest all the fruits of its labour.

"So what spells have you got?" Mia asked curiously, trying to whisper under her breath.

Helene glanced at her reproachfully, then glanced at a woman with a pair of wolf ears atop her head, fiddling with a backpack just a few metres away.

"Message received." Mia averted her gaze bashfully, scratching her cheek.

"Anyone want a swift dry?" Lina ambled over, a wry grin tugging on her lips. She was also evidently dry, standing out like a sore thumb among the bustling crowd of drenched fighters. "The Lina drying service is in business, I'll graciously give you a party-member discount of … 5%. Any takers?"

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"Best I can do is a shiny rock," Mark said, eagerly hurrying over with wet stomps. His boots had to have bowlfuls of rainwater in them. "But you gotta dry my beard nicely, or you're getting dirt."

"You can keep your rock," Lina said with a mock sneer. "Don't want to take away your lunch."

With that said, she blasted the dwarf with just enough power to make him stumble and sputter, but not enough to throw him against a wall. She aimed the blowing wind to come from above, down on his head, which left Mark with an utterly ridiculous mess of hair and beard by the end.

While Lina turned to find her next victim, Mark grumbled and swore up a storm, fishing out a comb to fix his messy beard.

"I'm good," Mia said, remembering she could heat the air around her hand with her own magic. Maybe it was silly to worry about trying to keep her hair from looking like a crow's nest in a Rift, but she couldn't really help it.

"You sure?" Lina raised an eyebrow, and Mia just nodded, gathering her wet hair up in a bun. "Vamps, you want a full dry?"

Camie just shrugged, glancing at Mia.

"I can dry your hair if we have another five minutes," Mia said after a moment, watching the camp. It'd take the others more than that to prepare, especially if the scouts took too long to return.

"From the neck down then," Carmilla said, nodding as she pried her black jacket off herself.

Her drenched shirt clung to her skin, leaving little to the imagination, and Mia found her gaze wandering absently. Unlike her own slender form that made her look younger than she was, Carmilla was a woman with all the curves and muscles in all the right places.

"I can see her two brain cells dancing in a pink haze if I squint," Mark's conspiratorial murmur broke her out of her daze, her eyebrows twitching.

"Shut up." Lina elbowed him. "Why'd you have to ruin it? It was so cute."

"Cute? She was ravishing the poor vampire with her eyes," Mark scoffed. "Get to blow-drying before some idiot comes over and commits assisted suicide by saying something dumb to either of them."

"I don't mind if you look," Camie whispered, just low enough that only Mia caught it. The redhead wore a teasing smirk as she turned just so that only Mia had a line of sight on her front.

Mia blushed furiously and hastily averted her gaze, suddenly finding a tuft of grey grass utterly fascinating and in need of a thorough examination.

"Lina!" Mia said, maybe louder than needed, in her embarrassment. "Stop lazing and get to drying. I'm still wet."

"I bet you are," Lina said with a giggle.

Mia groaned, suddenly wishing she had Earth magic to make the ground swallow her up. She'd walked right into that, hadn't she?

Blessedly, the blonde gremlin finally decided to actually do her job and started air-drying Mia's body and clothes. The wind was noticeably gentler than it had been with Mark, but that also meant it took nearly a full minute before she was largely dry.

"That's the best I can do," Lina said, a hint of teasing still in her voice. As she started working on drying Camie, Mia let her hair out and started working through it. Modulating the heat she was generating was the toughest part, as she was likely to set her head on fire or melt half her hair if she let her mana loose. "And done! Ms. Vexley?"

"I'd appreciate it, Lina," Helene said.

Mia focused on her hair, then once she was satisfied, had Camie sit on a cut trunk as she dried her crimson locks.

"Want me to braid it?" Mia asked, eyeing the mane of red hair cascading down Camie's shoulders, ending only just a bit above her waistline. "It's getting a bit too long to not get in the way when fighting … but it'd be a shame to cut it."

Her fingers slid through the silky locks, marvelling at how soft they were despite not seeing a drop of shampoo in half a week. Thinking of that, Mia reached up and felt her own mess of pink hair currently gathered into a loose ponytail. It felt nice, though not as absurdly so as the vampire's.

She must be somehow cheating with magic. Mia decided.

"I'd like that," Camie murmured, sighing blissfully. "This is nice."

Mia quirked a smile, having learned her girlfriend's love for scalp massages over the weeks.

"Alright then," Mia said cheerfully, only keeping half her attention on the camp around them as she got Camie's hair into a loose braid. It'd still hang down to her waist and swing about in a fight like a tail, but it beat having loose hair slapping the girl in the face while she was fighting for her life.

Some people threw the women disapproving or disgruntled looks, but Mia ignored them as best as she could. They were fastening armour around themselves, shouldering bags and quickly checking weapons, while she was enjoying teasing increasingly unladylike noises out of her girlfriend. It wasn't her fault they were mages whose entire arsenal of spells was safely tucked away in their core. Everything she had to prepare for combat, she had already prepared.

It took one of the scouts fifteen minutes to track down Kruger and return with him, their nature as Shifters allowing them to traverse the distance that took Mia's team an hour to cross in under a quarter of the time. She allowed herself to wonder how it might feel to transform her body into that of an animal.

Not that she'd have traded magic for shapeshifting. It was just a curiosity.

"The monsters sheltered during the storm in underground burrows," Kruger reported. "Their fortifications — what little there was — are in ruins. I'd recommend attacking them before they can rebuild."

"Agreed," Brent said, then let his gaze span around and take in all the fighters around the camp. "Jeff's team is still missing? Send someone to track them down Kruger, I want to know whether they are late or got eaten by a monster. While we're at it, everyone except for Maven's team, prepare for a march and a fight. We will go and introduce ourselves to these monsters."

"And us?" Maven asked evenly.

"I want you to stay and protect the camp," Brent said. "Nothing too dangerous should come this way, but if you feel the need, jump through the portal. I'd rather have you out of the Rift than dead, understood?"

Maven nodded, and Brent whirled around to shout orders at someone else. Mia tapped her knife, holstered snugly along her thigh and slid her wand out of its holster, which hung from her belt. The enchanted stick had seen better days; it now let off a pink glow along a thin crack halfway down its length, but it didn't seem to diminish its functions much. The potions on her belt were all safe and secure too; not one of the tiny bottles had a single crack on them.

That was unfortunately the extent of her arsenal, with the newest addition being Nikki's new Ward Amulet hanging from a thick leather cord around her neck.

Finding everything as well as she expected them to be, she fished out a canteen from her backpack and a handful of snacks she could fit in her pocket. Who knew how long destroying that settlement would take? She wouldn't want to be weighed down by the bag, but neither did she want to go without any provisions.

"Anyone who's ready, form up outside the walls!" Brent bellowed, and Mia moved to do just that with the rest of the team following behind her. A minute later, everyone was more or less ready and standing around with their squad outside. Brent gave a satisfied nod. "Kruger, you and your squad spread out on the front and will be our forward scouts. I don't want any monster sneaking up on us; I want to know where they are before they even notice us. My team and Rex's will take centre. Konstantin you'll have our left flank, and Lori our right. Henri and Sebastian will take the rear. Viktor, you are under Konstantin and Adrien's team will be under Lori. Does anyone have any questions?"

"Why don't I-" Aiden started, already working himself up into a petulant fervour.

"Questions that aren't whining." Brent cut him off with a glare. "Lori can focus on commanding the right flank while you focus on your fireballs. Other Questions? No? Perfect. Let's go!"

Mia readied the spell circles for Arcane Blast and Shield in her runic model, making sure her mana was currently Chaos aspected. It would be impossible to change to the Order aspect mid-fight, but she'd decided she'd need to bring firepower into the fight instead of a bit more defensive power. She had a full squad of five brutish beastkin to soak up all the attacks, and a handy mark to handle whatever got through them. She just needed to focus on killing things.

It was curious, in a way, how two of her very first spells were still her go-to choices in combat. They were just simple, easy to cast, quick and powerful. One didn't want to think about how to command a slew of animated chains in combat, for example, or how to throw a spinning magical blade to do the most damage. Mia liked the simplicity of pointing at enemies and watching a magical missile explode them to bits, or the simplistic nature of her Shield, which would hopefully defend her from enemy spells or projectiles.

Of all her spells, only her Lesser Ward of Protection and the piercing Bolt got anywhere near as much of a workout as those previous two. Mage Hand had been nearly useless, though Mia was still hoping for its versatility to come in use sometime, so she was reluctant to get rid of it, but knew it was going to be the one to go when she had the time again to learn a new, actually useful spell. She had been eyeing that Mage Armour spell for quite a while, for example.

"Good, everyone seems ready," Brent grunted. "Unless someone has something urgent, we're heading out. No? Alright. March!"

The thick forest made an actual march close to impossible, and the gathered raid team had none of the discipline pulling it off would have required. What ended up happening instead was three vaguely cohesive groups ambling through the undergrowth. Rex's team was at the front of the centre of the group, and Mia was just behind them, preoccupied with trying to track the elusive Shifter scouts further ahead into the woods.

To the sides, she could sometimes catch glimpses of the right or left flanks walking a good twenty or thirty metres away, but the thick woods didn't allow for anything more than those occasional glimpses. The raid team was filled with lumbering brutes, stomping with each footstep like the ground owed them money. Mia knew she wasn't exactly proficient in moving silently through a forest herself quite yet, but this was a bit much. Every single monster in the forest would be aware of their march unless they were deaf.

Mia tried to drown it out, focusing on every sound and noise aside from those made by her comrades. The trilling song of the canopy was still there, echoing in her skull, but she heard nothing else. All was eerily silent.

It made some primal part of her brain scream in alarm, shouting that something was wrong, knowing that the only time such silence fell on the forest was when something truly dangerous was prowling the woods. Mia had to stomp down on that feeling, knowing this forest was inherently wrong and unnatural. Still, it didn't stop the hairs on the back of her neck from standing on end and swinging her head about every so often to check behind and above herself for some surprise monster ambush.