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Arcane Apocalypse ~ 55
🕑 Added 2024-10-30 17:00:10 +0000 UTC****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TLUmCJTDUjSQJyt3dk9J7-fsQqqEr43TBKQ-b26NlGE/edit?usp=sharing
*****
“Doable,” Mia said, earning an incredulous look from her mother. Mia stared back strangely. “What mom? I almost killed it. One more spell to the heart and the big bad Rift Guardian would have dropped dead. If we attack it together, it would have been an easy kill.”
“Or it would have snatched someone up and ate them alive,” Carmilla said mildly, continuing with an awkward look as Mia glared at her. “Which is apparently what happened to half of the fifty soldiers who stood guard on the little battlement the army had built up around the Rift. By the way, I don’t think even I could recover from getting digested.”
“We’d just need someone who has powerful fire based powers to shut its healing down,” Mia said, glancing at Helene. “Your bolts would probably work Mom.”
“From what you told us,” Brent said, cutting in. “It was strong enough that both me and Mark would be practically useless against it. As would Lina.”
“We could ambush it and shoot it down from afar,” Mia suggested, still strangely miffed by not having been able to finish off the Troll. It nagged at her like a nasty itch that couldn’t be scratched until she saw to it that the monster had died. “A Blood Bolt from Carmilla and a Blast from me, followed up by a piercing Bolt should do it. Especially if Mom weaves in a few bolts in the meantime. The rest of you could keep the smaller goblins off of us and help us escape once we are done.”
“The main problem still stands,” Mark said, arms crossed. “We can’t get to the damned rift without getting air-lifted one by one. Those army guys have half the city on lockdown. Plus, we also know that we can’t just sneak past the escaped Guardian and enter the rift since it got back there in moments. I bet it’s patrolling the area nonstop.”
Mia slumped back, feeling defeated as everyone gave her looks ranging from pity to understanding.
“Then we just.” Mia waved her hands about. “Do nothing?”
“I’m happy with nothing,” Mark said. “My Armaments are coming along nicely.”
“Do you think there are rifts out in the wilds?” Lina asked suddenly, glancing between Helene and Mia. “Do you think the two of you could find one close by? I refuse to believe those things only spawned in the cities. That’d be dumb.”
Mia looked at her mother, who gave back a slightly reluctant nod. Mia held back a grin. She had a bunch of things to train and upgrade too, but she felt getting the snowball rolling toward doing that rifts quest, and eventually, the Realm Event was important.
“I’ll go and ask that Avery girl whether they’d encountered any out in the forests or something,” Carmilla said. “I’ll also keep an ear out for any news on how badly the soldiers are holding up against the monsters. The way things are going, the general’s going to have to call in reinforcements.”
“Think there are any?” Mark asked.
“There should be,” Brent said, chewing over his words. “There should be twenty five thousand active soldiers, with at least a hundred thousand more reserves.”
“The division sent here had five thousand,” Carmilla said. “That’s a whole fifth. I doubt they can send another army of that size just for Graz. Especially with how … few people survived.”
***
“Found one,” Mia murmured, tugging Helene’s sleeves again and her mother quickly descended towards the hill half covered by forest and half in a grassy field.
The bottom of the hill had a road running through it, and a few dozen goats still grazed on the grassy opening.
They landed near the top, where the forest started behind an electric fence. Mia strained her ears as she hopped out of her mother’s arms, jumping over the fence almost as tall as she was with ease.
The thick, musky scent of the pine forest smacked her in the face, but Mia just smiled and took a lungful of it. It was refreshing, and it reminded her of Carmilla.
“It’s … probably a few hundred metres that way,” Mia said, pointing into the forest. “If it’s exactly the same level as the Goblin rift, or if the rift’s spread of broken mana is the same-“
“The direction is good enough dear,” Helene said, patting Mia on the shoulder. “Let’s go back and get your little vampire girlfriend to help scout the place out.”
“Sh- she’s not-“ Mia sputtered, face reddening.
“I know,” Helene clicked her tongue, then turned around to look Mia in the eyes. There was that motherly sternness to her gaze that had Mia stiffen up and shut up instantly. “Listen here, honeybun. That girl likely never had anything romantic happen to her, from what little I’d gleaned. Is that right?”
Mia gave a slow nod, listening intently.
“I thought so,” Helene sighed. “The poor thing looks like she’s trying to get used to living again, having trouble with just about anything and everything. She likely wouldn’t notice your adorable crush on her even if you had the spine to actually flirt with her. Be straight forward if you want anything out of her, hmm?”
“But she’s,” Mia started, trying to find the words. “I don’t think she’s ready for … that sort of thing.”
She just got out of spending half a decade in a hospital bed, then two years rotting in a coffin. Mia held her tongue, not wanting to share Carmilla’s secrets even with her mother without the girl’s approval.
The girl had troubles enough just trying to acclimatise to life again, Mia didn’t want to trouble the girl with her feelings. Hell, Mia wasn’t even sure what exactly she was feeling either.
Was it just lust? A crush? Something else?
What would I say anyway? Mia thought sourly. Experiences spoke, and they loudly proclaimed that Mia sucked at both flirting and getting her feelings across.
She remembered Claire, a pretty bubbly blonde. Mia’d asked the girl out on a date, saying she’d gotten a nice little spot just for the two of them in a nice bar she knew.
Claire asked who else Mia had invited. Then, when Mia admitted it was just the two of them, Claire went about inviting half a dozen boys with the same cheery smile that once had Mia’s heart fluttering.
That was one of those moments, the ones she remembered late at night and couldn’t help but cringe at.
The worst thing was that Mia wasn’t even sure whether Clair was just a dense airhead or if the girl knew exactly what she’d been doing and that was her way of letting Mia down gently.
“Well,” Helene said, sighing. “You’re the only one she talks to with any level of animation, so you’d know better. But keep what I said in mind, that girl won’t know flirting if it hit her upside the head with the force of a racing car. Okay?”
“Okay,” Mia said, swallowing. Still, she knew she wouldn’t do a single thing until Carmilla showed at least some passing interest in Mia as a woman.
She was just … not brave enough to shoot her shot without any encouragement like that.
“Alright, let’s head back and get the rest,” Helene huffed. “This is only an hour’s walk away from the city. Fifth that, if we can scrounge up enough bicycles.”
***
They could not, in fact, scrounge up enough bicycles. For one, Mark wasn’t really a good fit for one anymore and Brent couldn’t really manage the motion of riding a bike in full armour. So walking it was, which took a little over an hour for them as they had to huddle down halfway through as a military convoy rolled down the street towards the inner city.
It seemed the general was pulling away soldiers from Zeigler to shore up his own losses. Mia didn’t like the implications. It meant the district had much fewer people to defend it and that the beastkin raiders would have an easier time robbing the poor residents.
The group had hidden whatever preservable food they had. Meaning, Mark buried the whole fridge in the garden ten feet under. It wasn’t foolproof, but Mia doubted the raiders would bother to dig it back up even if they suspected what it was.
They stood at the edge of the forest, behind the electric fence. Lina was busy cooing over a baby goat that wandered over, while the rest planned.
“How strong do you think this rift is?” Brent asked, staring at Mia.
“Honestly?” Mia shrugged. “I have no idea. I don’t know how the spread of their presence works. Is it a set range and only the density changes? Or does the range increase with each level? If it’s the first, the rift is at best level 5, if it’s the latter, all I can tell is that we are on the edge of its influence.”
“We have to get closer then,” Brent said, shrugging. “Red, you’re our main scout. Me and Mark will make sure everyone’s protected here. I take the front, Mark the rear. Any objections?”
Everyone shook their heads, though Mia did have a new Familiar summoned to protect them too.
Mia attempted to tease out whether the elemental had any specialities this time, but all she got back was a vague sense of confusion from the creature. She guessed that meant no.
They set off a minute later, with Helene at the centre, a bolt of lightning dancing between her hands as her head snapped from left to right for a target to fry.
Mark was in front, stomping through the forest in full armour. It was quite something, Mia wouldn’t want to come across him at night while he wore that thing.
The dwarf had been hard at work, and managed to turn his clay-mannequin looking armour into what looked to be an earth golem as tall as Mia. Even his mace was back to its original size, but outfitted with larger spikes.
Lina walked to Helene’s left, rings of Air mana flowing out of her fingers and circling the group like a web only Mia could see.
No animals attacked them this time, but that might have had something to do with the vampire doing forward scouting. That, or whatever monsters were coming out of the rift had taken care of every aggressive piece of wildlife around here.
Mia took a moment to think, about what they were doing and planning. This rift, it wasn’t inside the city so it wouldn’t count towards the five they needed to kill to finish the Obelisk Quest. On the other hand, while they couldn’t safely get to any of those five rifts, they could get to this one pretty easily.
It was practice, in essence. Practice, training and loot, because rifts supposedly gave handsome rewards to anyone who managed to clear them and then the System would triple that — at the very least — if they destroyed it. Mia was hoping for more Natural Treasures to eat or another Runic Lexicon, but she’d be happy with any potion or equipment, too.
Her wand had been quite useful after all, even if she mostly kept it as an emergency backup weapon. The question was whether they could actually enter the rift. Mia remembered there being a restriction about both the maximum level and number of Users entering one.
“Hey Lina,” she whispered, catching the blonde’s attention, who raised an eyebrow. “Could we enter this rift if it’s below level 10? I remember you mentioning that everyone going in had to be a lower level than the current Rift Guardian.”
“Yeah,” Lina said. “That’s the general rule. There are exceptions, but those usually only go for Rifts that are older. Ones that Rank Up.”
“Like the Goblin Rift that was supposed to be level ten, but spat out a level thirteen Guardian?” Mia asked.
“Yeah,” Lina nodded absently, most of her focus clearly on her magic. Mia knew the girl had Multitasking just like her though, and Cognity was even more important of a stat for her than it was for Mia, so she should be fine with talking some. “I suppose then every Rank 1 User can now enter that rift, even if they are higher levelled than the Guardian inside.”
We don’t have any Rank 1 Users though. Mia thought drolly, there was nothing they could do and the way things were going, that Rift would reach Rank 2 in a few more weeks and be entirely out of their league.
Mana density and quality was the only thing that limited the growth of Rifts and Dungeons, Mia knew that much and with how chaotic and mana rich Earth has become, she doubted the things would stop growing anytime soon.
The positive of that high density was, of course, that Mia’s entire pool of mana only took hours to recover from near-depletion and not days. That would have sucked hard.
Mana quality wasn’t something Mia had to worry about as a baby mage at Rank 0. There wasn’t a quality grade below Rank 0 mana, aka Grey Mana. There was some correlation between mana density and quality, from what she could remember from skimming her ‘On Mana and Magic’ book, but it really didn’t matter for now.
“Found it,” Carmilla’s voice came first, then the girl herself stepped out from behind a bush. “It’s fifty metres down that way in a gully.”
Mia frowned. The sensation she got from the rift was still weak when compared to the Goblin Rift. We might have wasted all this time coming here, only to find the damned Rift won’t let us in because it’s only level 8 or something.
Following Carmilla’s lead, the group navigated the forest swiftly and carefully slid down the sloping side of the gully. There were no monsters in sight, which worried Mia. A rift should be spitting them out near constantly, right? So if there were no monsters, then the only logical conclusion was that something was killing them.
“Why aren’t there any monsters here?” Helene voice Mia’s question before she could.
“The refugees came through here a day or so ago,” Carmilla answered. “They are only a few hours east of here, camping out on the hilltop. They killed every monster they came across.”
“I forgot to ask, but are they alright?” Mia asked, glancing worriedly at Carmilla who just shrugged.
“Seemed so,” the redhead said offhandedly. “They can hunt for meat out here to eat quite easily. Avery is back on her feet, and she apparently took a score of the more adventurous fighters she had with her when she was escorting the refugees.”
“They missed the rift?” Mia asked, glancing over at the archway carved out of cracked grey stone. It had that same otherworldly glow and rippling air inside it too. It was damn hard to miss.
“Seems like it,” Carmilla said, curiously looking at the rift’s gateway. Or was it a portal? It was, wasn’t it? So cool.
Mia stepped up next to the redhead, her Spirit Sense pushing through the natural revulsion she had of the thing to examine the magic behind the contraption.
She couldn’t glean much, but she could sort of push her awareness through the wobbly air and she felt a different place overlapping with the one before her that way. It’s really a portal.
“Do we know what types of monsters are supposed to be inside?” Brent asked as he too came over to cast an examining glance over the rift’s entrance.
“Boars,” Carmilla said, tilting her head up at the archway's top. She pointed at a small line of cracks that looked vaguely familiar to Mia. “That supposedly says ‘Boarling Settlement’ in some language.”
That’s a language? Mia squinted at it, tilting her head as she looked over the lines. She shrugged, instead looking back over the group. “Who wants to test whether we can enter? This thing is level 10 at best.”
“You can tell it's a Rank 0 Rift from the grey rock the archway is made of,” Lina said, gingerly poking at the cracked stone. “Rank 1 rifts would have their arches made of some white material.”
So even rifts are colour coded? Mia thought, nodding in thanks at the new info.
“Boarkin are ferocious little shits,” Mark said, his face scrunched up as he stared at the rift. “They are like goblins, just with fur and tusks. They also prefer arid, dry environments over the humid caverns and forests goblins do … what? I read that in the Monster Manual. Don’t tell me none of you read it?”
Mia averted her gaze, scratching at her cheek awkwardly. She had books on magic to read, so studying up on monsters was something that she didn’t bother with. Sure, she’d skimmed it and remembered the bits that caught her attention like the Trolls braining each other for fun, but she didn’t actively try to memorise any part of it.
Which, apparently, went for the rest too.
“We knew we could count on you to read it!” Brent said with a grin, slapping Mark on the back strong enough that it made the earth-covered form stumble. “So, anything else we should know?”
“Their shamans are their leaders,” Mark said, grumbling under his breath. “They use strange dark magics, rituals that sacrifice souls and blood and stuff to empower their fighters.”
“Well, shit,” Brent mumbled, then squared his shoulders. “Everyone still in? I know this isn’t the rift we were planning to destroy first, but this close to the city, it could easily endanger the district we live in all the same. Even if we don’t get rewards, destroying it will save hundreds, if not thousands of lives.”
As far as speeches went, that was quite bad in Mia’s opinion. She didn’t come here to save people, by her estimation the city would long be wiped off the map by the time this rift became a real danger if the goblins had their way so it wouldn’t matter either way.
No, she came for practice, training and the rewards. This would count towards the Realm Event’s completion rate, and she was hoping for something good for the third week’s reward.
“So, how do we do this?” Brent asked, turning to the shimmering portal as he gingerly reached out with a hand.
“If your hand passes through the rift, it’ll let us in,” Lina said. “If not, we are too high levelled for it.”
Brent nodded, then pressed his hand up against the air and as if it really was water, it sunk right in.
“Rank 0, level 10 Rift: ‘Boarling Settlement’,” Brent said slowly, his eyes moving through the air as if he was reading something floating there. “Maximum number of participants: 10. Perfect.”
Mia stared with her eyes wide open at Brent’s hand cutting off at the wrist. The man stepped forward, elbow, then shoulder going in.
“See you on the other side,” he said, then stepped right through. His entire body was gone.
Mia peeked around the side of the archway and found nothing other than the mirror image of its front. Brent was gone. Cool.
“So,” Mia said, turning back to the rest of the group. “Who’s going in next?”
Comments
Stephanie Washburn
Finally, rift adventure!
FanObooks
Thanks for the chapter
