NOVEL NEXT 0069 – Ice Sea Islands – IV
Shortly after they had left the store, Sarah started to vomit blood. According to an earlier explanation from the girl, it was a side effect of her self-developed bio-magical resistance skills. While it didn't quite look like it, since only a couple of health points went missing and no status effect appeared, Nia was inclined to believe the girl. Also the scientist wasn't someone who would try out dangerous experiments on herself first, unless there were no other options left.
Vomiting blood every couple hours was apparently still fine.
Though that wasn't Nia's problem, the girl would live and that was everything that mattered. She might have cared more, if the sisters acted a bit differently, but so far everyone in her party just used each other.
The three were still in a somewhat symbiotic relationship, but should she stay too long, should the contract expire and she wasn't ready, she might end up as a disposable subject of one of the experiments. Especially so with the two twin sisters being more or less under the influence of mental skills.
A bit lost in thoughts, she wandered around the narrow passages between the two sides of the settlement. They still needed to pass a bit of time before they could inconspicuously and surprisingly meet the two other girls.
And a while later they met. Even with an actual surprise factor, as the two seemed to know Nia. A statement also supported by the faith they had in her, though as with most people her own opinion of them was nearly non-existing and she needed to dig quite deep in her memory to find who they actually were.
"Hm...? Oh! Right! You were in my class!"
It was close to a miracle that she even remembered them, though she guessed they did leave a certain impression on her, as it wasn't that common that a light and a darkness mage did basically everything together. Even childhood friends would sooner or later usually choose different teams, simply live themselves apart or die. Maybe not so much when one had a physical class with survivability, but circumstances could still end friendships just a few cycles old. Be it death, a powerful item for mages without affinity limitations or something else.
"What a coincidence that we met each other here."
"Yes..." Anna answered hesitantly.
"So... are you two still trying to survive as a pair of two mages or have you found a party?" The guide questioned the two girls
"The former but..."
Before the other girl could continue, Nia interrupted. "I see... Want to join our party?"
After a few moments she got the first word of an answer. "Well..."
What a farce! However she played along. For one, because she was bound by a contract. But also because they had gained some uninvited guests. Rather high leveled ones at that, if she judged them correctly.
She had no idea why the spies were here, but they should finish things up and leave. The laws did protect them, yes, however as long as the crime wasn't discovered, no one could judge the perpetrator. And even if there were some convenient high level witnesses, assassins sent on those missions were usually disposable contract-bound pawns, not very different from the two ex-classmates of herself.
"If you have questions, we can discuss those later, but for now we should g- Where is Sera?"
So, now, instead of quickly leaving the realm in hopes of losing their observers, they had to search for the missing twin sister.
In the future Nia would think twice about bringing the twins into a settlement. Sera did get lost both times they were there and Sarah might just use the people there as guinea pigs for some of her experiments if she lost control over her greed. ... or thought it was the most efficient way to solve some issue.
Fortunately, this time the girl didn't trespass on others property and wasn't lost in a pseudo-dungeon or distorted space, which made the search much easier. Though the place she ended up was still a bit problematic.
She was apparently in one of the concert battle arenas.
Someone from another world might not think much about it, it was a rather normal looking building, just a bit larger, but it was the equivalent of a drug-house from other worlds. Well, unless you had an entertainment focused class and song, illusion or some other mind affecting affinity, then it was a good training field. However as far as she knew, that wasn't the case for Sera. Her affinity still was fire.
The idol might have been able to conjure up quite the show under normal circumstances, though a few flames wouldn't help her here, where the performers tried to enchant the audience with songs and illusions. Invade the mind with images all but impossible in the low level realms they were currently in.
Unfortunately all the mind magic did make it also hard to achieve their objective of retrieving the missing girl. Sarah could probably go in thanks to her greed skill, though there was still a risk with her low sanity. And it became only worse from here. Nia herself was required, so they would find the missing girl in the crowd inside and to prevent Sarah from getting lost in her greed. While the mental skills did have a certain protective aspect to them, that aspect usually appeared by enforcing their name giving mental aspects.
And should the scientist get greedy... Well, the guide didn't want to imagine the amount of damage that could cause.
Having Sera stay inside with her insanity was likely also not much better.
Lastly the two new girls were complete liabilities, if no one kept an eye on them. Like everyone they still had their rings, but they only helped so much.
Nia would have preferred to keep the three others outside, however with people still on their heels and without her knowing their objectives, it would be too dangerous. So the whole party went in.
Keeping an eye on the other three members of her team, the hunter followed the strand of faith leading her to the missing warrior. Ignoring the illusions and songs, she also tried to evade the crowd as long as it was possible. More than once she also had to remember the others why they were here and even she wasn’t completely safe.
A number of small stages had been prepared for the mostly solo-artists to perform on. While the venue was rather cheap, no elaborate decoration, pyrotechnics or seats for the audience had been prepared, the illusions and songs made more than up for it.
It was quite impressive.
But also dangerous. Without physical needs one could party basically forever. Or at least until the performers took a break.
Tearing herself away from another song, she quickly focused back at her task and continued to follow the tracks of Sera.
If Nia had gone straight for the girl, she might have already found her, but then she most likely would have also lost the other three in her party along the way.
And soon they found the missing girl. She was fighting another performer, quite far in the back of the building, but still with a crowd even bigger than what the others had amassed. Though, as she looked closer, fighting probably wasn't the right term. Nia had seen the warrior in battles and here she didn't try to injure her opponent. Or partner. It was more like a dance.
A dance spread out over the small stage and a variety of conjured platforms of ice, metal, earth and other solid elements, likely created by the audience, where both performers seemingly recklessly attacked each other with elements and weapons.
Flames got extinguished by water. Lightning grounded through the massive scythe of the warrior. Then a swing of the scythe was parried by conjured swords of ice, before both fighters distanced themselves again and two dragons were summoned which then fought.
It looked awe inspiring, despite most of the attacks being just illusions.
Sera had apparently found a way around the affinity issue.
Time passed. Definitely not because she was entranced by the show or anything like that. She just didn't know how she could get the warrior out without antagonizing the whole crowd. Simply covering everything in darkness just didn't come to her mind. It was definitely not because she wanted to see the fight!
However as neither of the fighters seemed to show any signs of stopping soon, the illusionist had likely a lot of mana and Sarah a lot of stamina, Nia decided to act. Also Sarah had pulled out the ice pyramid again and was apparently slowly losing the battle against her greed.
So finally remembering to just use her darkness element, she quickly covered the area of the dance-fight in a dark fog and kidnapped the warrior away from the stage.
"Hey!" Sera protested.
"Sorry, but you also just disappeared without informing us. And we have a slight assassin problem outside as well as a 'Sarah is about to use the crowd to test her virus'-problem inside." Nia quickly and quietly informed the other girl. No need to let everyone know what was going on.
"Killjoy! ...Fine." She grumbled in annoyance, but still kept her voice down. Freezing the crowd sounded fun for her, but then again it was her crowd which was about to be frozen and that was less amusing. Performing something just wasn't as interesting without the cheering people around her!
"Sorry, got to go! See you." Sera then quickly shouted, before she let herself be dragged away from the stage.
Only now did the hunter notice the absence of a song. It hadn't been as overpowering as those sung by those with a song affinity. It hadn't been as well integrated into the performance as those used by the illusionists. But it had still been there, added to the show and probably still entranced a portion of the audience.