NOVEL NEXT Chapter 173: Encroaching Mists
Lucia watched the team battle taking place in the arena with keen interest. She didn’t know any of the combatants, but one of the girls from the Pellus team was obviously a [Rogue], the way she moved and fought, darting in for quick, intense strikes with her shortsword, only to rapidly retreat, was indicative of the class.
One of the [Rogue]’s teammates was throwing around balls of rainbow fire, the attacks seeming to distract and debilitate instead of burning his opponent. Lucia’s eyes narrowed as she watched the short sword wielder blur forward, taking advantage of the distraction created by her ally.
She should have committed to that engagement. Lucia thought. The spearman was off guard and she was inside his range. She was too quick to retreat.
In the seat beside her own, Roy was waving his arms and clapping. Her little brother kept jumping out of his seat, only to plop back down a moment later. He seemed to be focused on a completely different part of the fight, and within seconds she had followed his gaze, the perception altering field around the arena allowing her to make out details she would have otherwise missed.
Five minutes later the team from Pellus won, though it had been close. The match had ended with a duel between the final member of each team. A tall man with stone wrapping around his body like armour faced off against the spearman the [Rogue] girl had failed to take out earlier. Lucia tapped her foot impatiently, there were new things she wanted to try out. She could practically taste level four, she was so close. Hopefully both Leif and Hera would be available later for training, hopefully in the beast reserve like they had planned. The Blade wasn’t around every night, but the masked healer was.
A tugging on her sleeve caught her attention, and she looked down to see Roy trying to tell her something. Lucia leaned forward, trying to make out his words over the cheering of the crowd. Roy opened his mouth to speak, but whatever he was going to say got interrupted by a yawn. She squinted at him, covering her mouth with a fist as she fought back a yawn of her own. It was because yawns were contagious, not because she was skipping sleep.
“I’m hungry.” Roy said, his voice barely a whisper over the spectators. A chant had started up about how Pellus was the greatest of the islands.
Lucia nodded, standing and taking hold of Roy’s hand. It was strange to hear those words from her sibling’s mouth and have there be something she could do about it. In the time she and Roy had spent on the archipelago the past year had begun to feel like a lifetime ago. By the time they were out of the arena Roy was clinging to her back like a monkey, his chin resting atop her shoulder. He was still too light for his age, but only a handful of weeks ago carrying him like this for an extended period of time would have been too much for her to handle.
Roy sleepily mumbled his favourite parts of the day’s fights as they plodded along towards the portal hub, both of them grabbing two chicken skewers from a student run pop up stand, one of many that lined the road. The day was cloudy, though it wasn’t cold. The temperature this far south was fairly constantly warm, at least when it wasn’t turbulence. A subtle chill made her come to a stop, the gentle afternoon breeze rustling her clothes.
“Sis? Why is there mist?” Roy asked, pointing to a shadowed alley between two lecture halls.
“I don’t know. We should get home in case it gets any thicker.” Lucia mumbled, her eyes darting around as she noticed more and more wisps of unspooling mist. They seemed to be coming from the west.
===
Daniela Low sharpened her sword as she sat on the steps leading up to her grandiose residence. Servants and caretakers bustled around, each going about their own individual tasks. Sparks flew along the blade’s edge, and she focused her will to slightly alter the shape of the metal. When she was done, the weapon vanished, only to be replaced a moment later as she summoned another.
She hummed to herself as she worked, the rhythmic exercise always served to calm her, to centre her mind. There was so much to do, so many pieces to put into place. She had never been so busy, but ever since she had become a Blade of the Academy, her life had been one meeting after another, one commitment followed by several more. The responsibility weighed on her sometimes, that of her duty to the institution and her family, but also her own ambitions.
House Low was organising an expedition into the east, where they would finally uncover just how much territory the undead had lost. Humanity would likely never reclaim what they had lost in the region, but that didn’t mean they had nothing to gain from pillaging the underground fortress cities of the undead. She wanted to go herself, but Kastro would likely gain more from the experience.
As if her thoughts had summoned the man, her younger cousin dropped down into the courtyard before her, his fall softened by a bubble of grey water that splashed up to partially engulf his body.
“Daniela! There’s something wrong, there are things in the sea heading right for the Academy! But I can’t tell what, something has severed my connection to the waters west of our location!” He shouted
She stopped sharpening her blade at that. “What do you mean ‘severed’?” She snapped, putting away the half sharpened sword with a wave of her hand. “What does that mean?”
“I’m blocked! It’s as if something is smothering my link to the sea! Likely a domain skill of some kind, though if that’s the case, it’s damn huge. Likely several skills working in tandem if I had to guess.”
Daniela squinted, her mind racing. There were several possibilities, and a handful were likely disastrous. Then her eyes picked up the faint movement of a bank of fog creeping along the large plaza her residence fronted.
“Oh no.” She muttered, earning a confused look from Kastro. But she didn’t have time to explain her theory. Instead she pushed power into her legs, then jumped as high as she could go, manifesting metal platforms under her boots she leapt again, within seconds having risen above every nearby building. Mist rolled over the island, growing more dense with every passing second.
Daniela twisted, summoning a fingernail sized ball of steel. Then she threw it as hard and fast as she could towards the peak of a distant spire. Two seconds later, a deafening gong resounded over the island as her projectile struck the massive bell she had been aiming for. As she alighted onto the ground, more bells began to sound. Then both she and her cousin sprinted down the street, groups of students letting out cries of alarm as they blurred past.
===
Marcus winced as he climbed up the final set of stairs, light trickling down from the side entrance to the temple. He had assumed correctly that the Academy guards weren’t on the lookout for him, but that hadn’t stopped a trio of them from barging past him, knocking him against a wall as they rushed deeper into the underground complex. He stepped out into the open air, immediately feeling a chill. How had it gotten so cold?
He rubbed his hands together, generating both heat and purple sparks of arcane power while he considered what to do next. Getting to Lutum was the priority. There was little he could do, as a third year student he had neither the strength or authority to make a significant impact on the situation he and Leif had found themselves in. Nodding to himself he set off, jogging along a twisting ridge winding between the towering walls of a ravine.
Marcus worked his magic as he went, first to seek out a path forward, then to find the location of Leif. The man turned tree was somewhere down below, and while his skill couldn’t find the scion’s exact location, it could roughly determine things like distance and if the target was moving. It didn’t seem Leif was, and that was either a good thing, in that he didn’t need to move. Or it was bad, in that he had been caught and captured. Either way, Leif was alive, and that would need to be good enough for the time being.
Channelling arcane power into his legs, Marcus quickly scaled a cliff, then from his vantage he looked around. Mist was rolling through the canyons and in between rock formations, and the air was growing colder by the second. He glanced towards the distant rooftops of the Dimid campus, and only then did he catch the faint ringing of bells.
An attack? How? Or is this some sort of drill? He thought, quickening his pace. Dark clouds churned above the Academy, blocking the sunlight that had been present only minutes earlier. Marcus bounded up a series of large boulders, crouching atop the tallest one to scan his surroundings. Almost immediately he saw a column of students and Academy guard winding through the rocky landscape some four hundred metres ahead of him.
The sight of the dark uniformed protectors of the islands made him let out a breath of relief. If the guards were headed back to the campus, they weren’t down in the temple hunting for his friend. The ringing of bells seemed to grow louder, more insistent, urgent. The [Arcanist] swallowed thickly.
He stood, almost by instinct turning to peer at the distant stretch of dark blue he could barely make out over the rocky geography of Dimid. A hundred tiny sails littered the horizon, and that was just the ships he could see. Marcus swore, then swore again, kicking a loose pebble. He recognised those ships, anyone from his homeland could. A fleet of republic vessels was approaching the archipelago. Somehow. As far as Marcus knew, the feat should have been impossible. You had to be mad to sail across the open seas, and if a fleet of ships sailed along the coast they would have been spotted long before getting anywhere near the Academy.
“This isn’t going to be good.” He said aloud. If there was an attack here, there would almost certainly be ships heading for the other islands. It was possible there was a seaborne invasion happening all over the western provinces. He hesitated, then took off running, with any luck he would catch up to the tail end of the expedition and slip right in.
===
“It’s only theft if the coin is taken out of circulation and kept in a vault somewhere.” Helos was saying, his arms crossed. “The whole point is to reinvest back into the city, province or whatever.”
“And how often does that happen? You think some slimy fifth generation governor is going to be able to resist skimming a nifty sum off the top?” Mouric asked, the massive man’s head almost brushing against the room’s ceiling.
Hera popped a salted nut into her mouth, trying to tune them out. She flipped through a folder of reported monster sightings near the imperial capital, matching the descriptions given with her repertoire of knowledge about the region. It had been too long since she had gone on a proper hunt, and while the occasional bout with her peers kept her from getting too rusty, she was keenly aware of the deadline she was working with.
She had decades, but it was still better to act while the proverbial iron was hot. It was a known phenomena, that just like how younger people suffered from an experience penalty, the same was also true for the elderly. Though whether this was because of some system imposed limitation, or simply a natural consequence of the soul stagnating over time, well, there were some fairly fierce debates about the answer to that question.
“-Right, but if you use the wealth from taxation to build roads or whatever, infrastructure that improves the efficiency of commerce and labour, you end up making more over time. Surely this is a fairly simple concept to understand?” Helos said, reaching over and grabbing a fistful of nuts. Hera shifted the bowl away. These were her nuts.
“Oh, I understand it just fine. The last time I was in the eastern provinces some pompous dickhead happily explained how he was leeching from the people to fund his next mansion. I put his head through a wall, and last I checked his son, or maybe grandson had taken over as governor.” Mouric explained.
Helos shrugged, then the sixth Blade reached through a shimmering silver portal, grabbing another handful of nuts out of the bowl.
“I’m going to stab you if you-” Hera said, only to be cut off as the sound of bells resounded across the arena. Within seconds the happy, cheering crowd had fallen quiet.
Mouric cursed, summoning his massive hammer. Helos threw the nuts he was holding into the air, and in the same motion he created a doorway of liquid mercury. Hera rose and dashed for the portal, and the three Blades were gone before the nuts had fallen to the ground.
===
Leif found it worrying how weak he felt with his cultivation all but empty. It wasn’t a physical weakness, but more an uncomfortable feeling now that one of his lifelines was tapped dry. If he could find a living being, ideally a plant of some kind, he could heal it with his other skills, and then drain it. The process was slow, and wouldn’t do much, if anything to help expand his reserves unless he spent months doing it, but any little bit would help.
Unfortunately, the only living plants he could sense were himself, and small shoots of grass that poked out of cracks in the stone. Trying to refill his pool of vitality with a bunch of grass would be like trying to drink the ocean through a straw. Only possible with an obscene amount of time, effort and stubborn determination .
He had emerged from the temple several minutes ago, and now he was making his way through mist filled valleys and canyons. It was all but impossible to see more than a handful of metres in front of him, the mist seeming to press down on every type of perception, not just the mundane. Sound was muffled, and everything appeared to suddenly burst out from nowhere, even if it was just a jagged boulder. Even with the obstacle, Leif had little issues making his way back towards the campus. With the mist, he might even be able to get back to Lutum without Vevosis, or the Academy guard finding him.
But it was difficult to look on the bright side of his situation, not when the abrupt onset of the usually evening confined mist filled him with worry. There was a constant dull sound, like metal striking metal, only from a great distance away. He suspected it was some sort of bell, but with the mist dampening everything it was hard to tell. Was there a monster attack? Was the bell ringing because of him? Probably not that last one. So then why?
It was as he was considering this that Leif ran into a party of a dozen armed men and women. The group almost stumbled right into him, clearly as unaccustomed to traversing the misty environment as Leif himself was. They weren’t Academy guard, they didn’t have the dark uniform. Adventurers? But why would they be here? He didn’t have time to ask, because after only an instant of hesitation, the newcomers attacked all at once.