Once the group of [Students] arrived at a relatively flat area, the [Scouts] departed from the group to double-check the locations of various monster packs, scout for any abnormalities, and do a final patrol of the area. While the [Scouts] were gone, the [Teachers] had the [Students] draw lots to determine which groups would do their hunts first, second, third, or fourth. Alice’s group ended up drawing lots for the fourth round of hunting, meaning they would have to wait until all the other [Students] finished their hunts.
After the group finished drawing lots, the [Teachers] set up a resting area where the [Students] could relax after their hunts. Professor Tanmi and one of the other [Organic Mage] [Teachers] worked to build a very crude two meter high wooden wall around the camp from a mixture of organically manipulated plant life and logs Professor Tanmi cut down with kinetic magic. Walls of this height wouldn’t be enough to stop a relatively high level attacker, but they would get in the way of most local monsters and buy time if something unexpected cropped up. Alice was once again impressed by the level of professionalism the group of adults showed – even though this should be a fairly safe, low level excursion, they made sure each group of [Students] not only had an adult with them at all times while hunting, they even went to the effort of fortifying the resting area just in case. And Alice was also left stunned by how quickly a small group of high-level Mages managed to whip together a fortification. Even if it was unquestionably crude at some points, and had some occasional gaps or uneven parts to it, it only took the [Teachers] about half an hour to put the whole thing together. Afterwards, one of the [Teachers] even pulled out a bunch of food and drinks from a Storage Perk and began setting up small tables of snacks, before letting everyone know that they could help themselves. Some students even took over some of the stumps from Professor Tanmi’s logging operation, and a small rest area with food and drinks was quickly prepared.
The [Scouts] returned after about an hour. Seeing the newly-made wooden wall, none of them seemed particularly surprised, and simply walked up to one of the walls and waited for one of the [Organic Mages] to unravel the wall. Alice wondered if this was a typical part of life in the army – Mages building crude fortifications in a short period of time, before deconstructing and abandoning them the next day. Many of the teachers at the academy were former soldiers, and she couldn’t help but feel that all of the adults seemed rather numb to the whole process.
“There aren’t any new abnormalities in the area,” said one of the [Scouts]. “Have you finished figuring out hunting order?”
“We have. When you’re ready, you can take the first groups with you,” said professor Tanmi.
“Sounds good. We’ll take a five minute break to get some water and sit down for a bit, then we’ll head out. Tell the first group of [Students] to get ready,” said the [Scout]. The scouts headed off to the side and began grabbing some light snacks and drinks, while the first round of [Students] started getting whatever enchanted items they had ready, prepping any applicable weapons, and generally setting up for the hunt. A few minutes later, the first groups of [Students] departed, each one led by a [Scout] and a [Knight].
While Alice’s group waited for their turn, Alice decided to kill some time by using her organic mana to widen and flatten out a tree branch before she fashioned it into a simple game board. She didn’t want to spend any Kinetic Mana, since that was her primary combat resource, but Alice had discovered through repeated trial and error in professor Tanmi’s class that her organic mana just wasn’t useful in combat right now. If she had some Perks to boost it up, that would be one thing, but without any Perks it was easy to make mistakes and hurt herself if she tried to boost her Stats with Organic Mana, and healing mid-combat just wasn’t feasible for her without much better control. So for now, Alice didn’t mind wasting it.
After making some slightly lopsided squares on her newly made game board, and then making some very … artistically inventive depictions of chess pieces out of twigs and leaves, Alice began teaching her friends how to play chess.
And so the group of four spent a few hours playing chess while the first few groups departed and returned. After about half an hour of playing, a few other [Students] came over to see what was going on, and by the time the first group of [Students] had finished hunting a few other groups of chess players had sprung into existence around Alice’s group. Since Alice finally a bit of free time while waiting, she felt that she might as well bring another board game over from home, even if her bishops and pawns were so poorly made that they were hard to tell apart.
As she played a few friendly rounds of chess with her friends, Alice realized that she had gotten used to the high-speed dice manipulation and magical chaos of The Settlers (Luliv Edition). Now, she found the comparatively tame games of chess to be surprisingly dull. It wasn’t very effective at training people – after all, it didn’t give users any opportunities to practice their physical or magical attributes at all. Its usefulness for training [Willpower] and [Perception] was also quite limited, meaning the one and only Attribute chess was able to train seemed to be [Intelligence]. Alice could use magic to lift up and set down her chess pieces, but she wasn’t willing to spend much of her kinetic mana before a fight. The rest of Alice’s friends also didn’t seem to find the game anywhere near as engaging as The Settlers, and the game ended up being treated more as a way to pass time while chatting instead of something to really get into the way The Settlers was.
Alice started to wonder if this world’s obsession with being productive and training Stats and Levels had influenced her more deeply than she had realized. Even she was starting to find chess, a game she used to love, surprisingly dull due to its lack of training value…
Finally, as the sun was beginning to set and paint the world a reddish-orange color, the third group of [Students] returned from their hunts. After the [Scouts] took their customary five minute water and relaxation break, it was finally their turn.
“All right, final group of the day before we can go home. Are you guys ready?” asked Arin, the [Knight] who was in charge of protecting Alice’s group. He seemed a bit tired, which was only natural. There were fourteen groups of [Students] and seven [Knights] total, so Arin had guarded another group of [Students] during the first and third round of hunts, and had been standing guard around the small camp during the second hunt. Even though the man seemed a bit tired, he still had a sharp, alert look in his eyes as he scanned the surroundings.
“We’re ready,” said Luka as he gave the other group members a few quick glances.
“Let’s go then,” said Arin, giving them an authoritative nod.
The group walked up to one of the [Scouts] as he took several smaller sips from a water container, and Arin also grabbed a few sips of water before waiting at the side. The [Scout] finished stretching and resting up before he took a look at them and nodded. He pulled out a chunk of bark from his pocket. Rainbow mana surged through his fingers and into the bark, and the bark quickly transformed into a rough map of the surrounding woods. The [Scout] pointed at a few specific areas, which turned red.
“There are five areas where I can take you for your hunt,” said the [Scout]. “These are the locations we found earlier today where packs were located and where no [Students] have gone yet. That being said, Wolves do move around sometimes, so don’t be surprised if we end up needing to wander around a bit before we find the pack. I can track them down, of course, but be patient. Do you guys have any preferences for fighting locations or anything of the sort?” Alice thought about it for a moment, before shaking her head and turning to look at her friends. To her, one location was basically the same as another location. Luka and Erkki shook their heads, and finally, Arsi shrugged.
“Somewhere with lots of open area, I guess?” said Arsi. “Makes it easier to shoot objects at the monsters during a fight, and I don’t think any of us benefit too much from specific terrains or need to level any terrain-specific Classes.”
The scout frowned, before turning back to the map. “Which of these two do you want? They’re both in relatively clearer parts of the woods, but this one is close to a river,” said the [Scout], pointing at two of the red marks. “Of course, if the wolf pack moves you might not end up getting your preferred area anyway. But we can at least try.”
“Do you three have any preferences for fighting near a river or no river?” Asked Luka, scanning over the map. Since nobody responded, he shrugged. “This one is fine,” he said, pointing towards the red mark that wasn’t close to a river.
The [Scout] gave them a cheery grin before he nodded.
“All right, let’s go.” The group walked up to one of the sides of the camp, where one of the [Organic Mages] undid part of the wall.
The [Scout] and the [Knight] led the four [Students] into the wilderness. As they walked, Alice noticed that the [Scout] had activated some sort of Perk that worked on the rest of the group. Alice took a few moments before she figured out what was happening. The group seemed to subconsciously avoid tripping over underbrush and tree roots, and walking became easier and faster. In short, it seemed like it made the group walk through the forest as if they were more familiar with the area than they actually were.
The group trudged through the forest in relative silence. The cheery laughter and relaxed atmosphere of the camp faded away, and Alice quietly checked her Status Screen for two Perks she hadn’t used in a very long time – {Sixth Sense} and {Sense Hostility}. One of them gave her information on the location of nearby monsters, and the other gave her the ability to sense when someone stared at her with bad intentions. Neither Perk had seen much use in several months, since she had spent most of her time in relatively peaceful areas, but now Alice felt reassured by their presence, even if they were relatively lower-level Perks. Alice was bemused to realize that these days, [Survivor] was used to keep help her stay safe while using herself as a test subject instead of being used as a Class focused on wilderness survival, before she shook her head and focused on her surroundings again.
After about twenty minutes of walking, the group came upon the den of the wolves.
However, even as the group crept up on the location of the wolf pack, Alice couldn’t sense any monster presences with {Sixth Sense}. She frowned. Were they farther away than expected? She gave the [Scout] a confused look, but he had an annoyed expression.
“Looks like they’ve moved. Let’s head to the den so I can {Track} them,” said the [Scout] irritably as he led the group forward.
When the group finally came to den, Alice’s eyes widened. There were no monsters there, but there was certainly something else.
There, in the middle of the wolf den was a small pile of badly mutilated human bones, covered in blood.
Alice felt shaken as she looked at the bones. The size of the bones was very small… the owners couldn’t have been older than six, at most, and had probably been younger. Why were there a pile of children’s bones here?
The rest of Alice’s group had also stiffened, simply staring at the pile of mutilated bones in horror.
Alice turned towards Arin, hoping for him to figure out what the heck was going on. There hadn’t been any children in the woods before, right? Had they come from farther to the East, and somehow dodged the other [Scouts] and [Students] hunting here? What was going on?
Alice took a closer look at the bones, and noticed that some of them still had little bits of Rainbow mana stuck to them. She frowned, before taking a closer look and realizing that the area also seemed very slightly low on mana. {Advanced Mana Measurement} confirmed that this area’s mana per square meter was about four percent lower than the surrounding area. Which could have been chalked up to the usual ebbs and flows in mana, but Alice was starting to get an increasingly strange feeling about this scene. How had children gotten this far without being noticed?
The [Scout] was also frowning as he looked at the pile of bones, before he looked around.
“These weren’t here two hours ago,” he said, frowning. “But… how could they get here?” He seemed at a loss for words, as he began to creep closer to the bones.
Then, suddenly, the [Scout] frowned, before turning to the woods ahead of the group.
“Who are you? Come out!” He hissed, raising a bow and pointing an arrow at the underbrush. Alice whirled towards the underbrush, trying to see if she could find anything.
Even though all of her normal senses couldn’t pick up a thing in the underbrush, she spotted several clumps of dense rainbow mana in the underbrush. Since monsters couldn’t interact with rainbow mana, that meant there were humans hiding in the underbrush right next to a pile of suspicious children’s bones. Alice immediately started reaching towards her enchanted items, preparing to use them if the other party attacked.
“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” yelled a man in simple travelling clothes, holding his hands above his head as he stepped out of the underbrush. Following him, three other people stepped out of the underbrush, also holding their hands in the air.
“Who are you people? Why are you skulking about here?” asked the [Scout]. Now that he had something to focus on besides the missing wolves and the children’s corpses, he sounded much more composed, but Alice could still hear an edge to his voice that hadn’t been there before.
“I’m just a [Peddler], and these are my [Guards]. We’re just trying to avoid [Bandits] and Monsters in the area,” said the man who had spoken up. His voice quavered while he spoke, as if he was incredibly afraid of the [Scout] with a bow pointed at him. However, once Alice got a closer look at the people, she immediately realized something was off about these people.
They were all Mages. Every single one of them. They were all fairly high level, too. Somewhere between 60 and 70. Not as high as the [Knight] guarding the group of students, but still a massive threat.
And their magic seeds were incredibly weird too. All four of them had Organic seeds, which was pretty normal for Mages. However, two of them had bizarre seeds too. Ones that Alice had never seen before. The woman standing behind the vocal man had a purple magic seed that seemed… fractured. Finally, one of the two remaining men had a more standard kinetic seed. It made Alice uncomfortable when she looked at it. The vocal man had a bizarre blue seed that Alice had also never seen before, and looked even more messed up than the purple seed. The woman was also carrying a bag that had moderately dense System mana inside of it. And inside of it, Alice could also see one chunk of weird System mana. Normally, System mana was very… beautiful, for lack of a better term. Overwhelmingly complex and almost impossible to track with regular human eyes, but also aesthetically pleasing in an odd way. However, the system mana chunk inside of the bag were strangely garbled, as if multiple chunks of System mana had been stuffed together and hadn’t organized themselves.
There were three other chunks of pure mana inside of the bag, although those ones seemed to simply repel mana and purify very small amounts of mana, before letting it in. Alice frowned. She didn’t remember the System ever having such a strange and garble fractal before. The three normal globs of pure mana were probably enchanting materials, but the fourth item baffled her. What was inside that bag?
Alice started to feel very uncomfortable. Weirdly powerful Mages claiming to be [Peddlers], and wielding strange magic seeds that Alice hadn’t ever seen before… And all of them had Organic Seeds…
A frightening possibility started appearing in Alice’s mind. She really hoped these people weren’t who she thought they were. Feeling increasingly tense, Alice stepped behind Arin.
“Is that so?” The [Scout] immediately frowned at the so-called [Peddlers], before gesturing towards the pile of children’s bones on the ground. “What happened here? Do you know?”
“We don’t know either. We were just moving through this area when we came across these bones,” said the vocal [Peddler], shifting uncomfortably. “After that… well, I have a Perk that lets me know if other high level people are moving around in the area. I sensed someone coming closer, so we decided to hide. Before that we were also trying to figure out how such a tragedy could have occurred.” He shook his head, seeming lost for words. “To see the bones of young lives cut short so unfairly like this…” The man let out a sad sigh.
Alice wondered if Arin and the [Scout] knew something was wrong with these people. If she whispered something to Arin, would the other side use a Perk to hear her? If she said nothing, would Arin and the [Scout] realize something was wrong even if she didn’t say anything? Her heart started hammering in her chest.
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Before she decide what to do, Arin took a step forward, frowning.
“What kind of goods are you selling?” He asked.
“Oh, just some normal items you can find all throughout Illvaria. Nothing particularly special,” said the [Peddler], neatly dodging the question.
Arin’s eyes narrowed, and his hand began drifting towards his sword. “I’m going to need some more specific answers from you four.”
“Sirs and Lady, we’re just simple [Peddlers]! Please, don’t hurt us!” said the [Peddler], taking a step back as his eyes widened in horror.
Alice decided to speak. If she wasn’t mistaken about who these people were, they had probably just killed some children less than an hour ago and possibly watched them get torn apart by monsters. If she was wrong, Arin and the [Scout] would hopefully be able to sort out the situation. However, there was something really off about these so-called [Peddlers]. Alice took a step closer to Arin, before she stood on her tip-toes to get a bit more height and said as quietly as she could.
“All four of them are high level Mages with Organic Seeds. I have a special mix of Perks and Achievements that lets me check.” Revealing unusual abilities that natives of this world didn’t have wasn’t what Alice wanted to do. The danger of the Society of Starry Eyes was present all the time. But there was good chance some of their agents were standing in front of her right now, and if Alice died keeping her mouth shut secrecy would be pointless. Besides, there were all sorts of strange and unique abilities one could get access to. Just revealing she could check levels and magic seeds shouldn’t be a big deal on its own.
Arin didn’t take his eyes off of the four Mages, but he stopped moving. “Are you telling the truth?” he whispered as rainbow mana spread through his throat. Alice now heard his voice strangely clearly, even though he was practically mumbling.
“Yes.”
“I don’t have a lie detection Perk, but if we go back to town and I get a group of [Guards] and such to question you, will you still say the same thing? Lying to a [Knight] in this kind of situation could be a capital offence, depending on circumstances. Being a Mage might get you off, but the consequences will still be bad. Are you sure you’re telling the truth?”
“Yes.” Alice felt terrified at the idea this might devolve into a fight, but things looked like they might already heading in that direction. In that case, letting Arin know what he was about to fight might be the difference between the group getting wiped out here or surviving another day.
Arin drew his sword, and rainbow mana started pouring into his body from his class fractals.
“I need the four of you to come with us. We will be taking you back to Metsel for some questions. If you’re who you say you are, and you really had nothing to do with this tragedy, you’ll be released with an apology from me, but finding you next to these bones in these circumstances is suspicious. Please comply or things will get violent.”
{Sense Hostiliy} started going crazy, and Alice knew that the four people in front of them were about to attack.
The [Peddler] raised his hands even higher and began to kneel down, as if he was going to comply. And at the same time, the purple mana seed in the woman’s body activated, spewing mana into her surroundings…
“Dimensional Mana!” yelled Luka, immediately activating his kinetic seed. Seven tendrils of mana pulled out branches from the group’s surroundings, flinging them at the female Society member who was using dimensional mana.
The mana in the area quickly twisted, breaking as a whirlpool of infectious broken mana started forming in the area.
Arin’s body exploded into motion. Alice’s eyes somehow completely lost track of his presence for a moment, before he suddenly appeared in front of the woman and swung his sword.
Rainbow mana cascaded through her body, and she dodged the blindingly fast attack.
The Society woman charged her body with massive amounts of Organic mana, and a second pair of arms ripped themselves out of the sides of her dress. The first pair of arms grabbed Arin’s sword arm and tugged, breaking his balance, while a dagger overflowing with rainbow mana sliced towards Arin’s side. At the same time, her final arm threw a dagger directly towards Arsi … before it vanished in a whirl of purple dimensional mana, teleporting directly in front of Arin’s face.
Arin activated rainbow mana, and his armor suddenly seemed to become sturdier and bigger. The two daggers clattered off of his armor, and he wrenched himself away from the woman’s first pair of arms. He took a step back.
This gave Alice a clear line of sight, so she activated her bracelet. Twenty-seven organic and kinetically enchanted beads ripped themselves off of her bracelet and flung themselves at the woman. Six of them connected with her arms, and organic mana poured out of the beads and ripped away at the woman’s flesh.
Her two right arms were ripped off by the impact of the beads, and she screeched like a banshee. She turned towards Alice, eyes glowing with hatred while her three companions finished boosting themselves with rainbow mana and organic mana. The three of them dove towards Arin, temporarily tying him up.
Another portal made of dimensional mana appeared in front of the woman and in front of Alice, and then the woman threw two daggers through the portal and towards Alice’s face.
{Adrenaline} activated. Alice activated her kinetic-energy stopping necklace. The two daggers froze in midair, before Alice used her tendrils to pick up two ordinary stones and the two daggers and lobbed them at the three Society members fighting Arin. Since he was the strongest fighter here, if Alice freed him up they would win. One pebble tore a man’s thumb off, but he snarled and kept attacking Arin. The other three projectiles were blasted away by a burst of kinetic energy.
Arsi and Erkki finally reacted, sending a shower of missiles towards the woman and forcing her to dodge. The [Scout] turned to one of the three male Society Members before shooting one in the neck. One of the four enemies finally dropped.
Arin turned away from the two remaining people attacking him, giving one of them the chance to fire a pebble towards his left arm. Iron armor crumpled under the impact, and he gasped, before his figure flickered again. Suddenly, he appeared in front of the woman, swinging his sword at a nearly imperceptible speed.
The woman turned towards him, her eyes widening in terror, before a final burst of purple dimensional mana flooded the area. Before she could finish whatever she was trying to do, her head sailed away from her body.
The woman’s two companions, finally realizing that things weren’t going their way, put all of their organic mana into their legs, turned around, and began running. The [Scout] dropped his bow, gasping, and Alice turned towards him before realizing he was covered in broken mana.
Erkki, finally reacting to the situation, turned to one of the two fleeing Society members before he held up an enchanted necklace, pointed it towards the two fleeing Society members, and activated it. Kinetic Mana flickered in far greater quantities than Alice had ever seen a living mage command. Something flew through the air faster than Alice’s eyes could track, propelling something grey towards the fleeing man…
And one of his legs fell off. He shrieked, before growing a new leg on the spot and kept running. Alice propelled another group of four pebbles into his head and he went down, dead.
Arin grimaced, rubbing his broken left arm before he changed his grip on his sword and turned towards the final Society member.
Arin’s figure flickered one final time, before he appeared behind the man and stabbed him in the stomach. The man turned to Arin, howling as the sword lacerated his innards, and tried to reach out a hand towards Arin’s neck in a last ditch attempt to kill Arin and save himself.
Arin’s sword flicked out once more, and the man’s arm flew off. Then, Arin delivered a heavy punch to the man’s face and the man collapsed, unconscious as Alice’s {Adrenaline} Perk wore off. Alice began gasping for breath, fear and adrenaline warring inside of her body. Then, realizing it might be a problem if no one dealt with it, she fired a few mana tendrils at the area of broken dimensional mana, intending to purify it away…
And realized that the [Scout] was still inside of the cloud of broken dimensional mana. Instead of calm, he was starting to become increasingly frantic, his fists scrabbling at the ground in desperation.
Alice realized what was happening a moment later. Broken mana baptism.
Alice breathed heavily, adrenaline and fear still coursing through her body as she panted in exhaustion, not even having the time or mental energy to process the System dinging at her.
She turned to Arin, panicking as he brought the only living prisoner towards the rest of the group. “Is there anything we can do for him?” She asked, feeling desperate even though she was pretty sure she knew the answer already.
Arin turned to the [Scout], before he sighed, uncomfortably. “No. There is no way to treat a mana baptism. Once it starts, you succeed or you die. And nobody can improve the odds or help at all. Many, many, many people have tried to research a way. But nobody has ever succeeded. All we can do is keep watch over him and make sure monsters don’t eat him while he’s trying his baptism.” Arin grimaced, before he raised his sword towards the prisoner again. “Do any of you have the ability to heal something?”
Alice frowned. “I have a healing seed with some mana, but not much. I have a ring with a healing enchantment too. What are you planning?”
Arin raised his sword towards the prisoner, and then cut out the mage core located behind his heart with his one good arm and his sword. “Heal him. But don’t restore the mage core. And heal up the cut in his stomach, too. If we can get him back to camp we can interrogate him later. Can any of you lift the [Scout] out of the cloud of broken mana? Also, please highlight where the broken mana is so I don’t accidentally stumble into it myself.”
Luka nodded, using a few mana tendrils to lift the man out of the cloud of dimensional mana and then levitating him just behind the rest of the group, while Alice healed the stomach and ruined spine of the prisoner. The group quickly grabbed the various objects the Society members had dropped, including the bag with weird mana inside of it, before shoving everything they could into various storage Perks and holding whatever they couldn’t. There was no time to look over their spoils of battle right now, or even for Alice to look at her System notifications.
“Let’s head back to camp. We need to tell the other [Knights] what happened here, and report back to the capital. Keep an eye out for monsters, if you can. We don’t have a [Scout] to tell us where they are yet.
Alice’s group nodded, and as Luka levitated the twitching [Scout] behind the group they began to make their way back through the woods.