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Arcane Apocalypse ~ 33
🕑 Added 2024-09-09 16:00:14 +0000 UTC********************************************************************************************************************************************************************
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The group was fed and even given some drinks, after which they settled in in the living room. It was a little cramped, what with six of them getting squeezed onto two smaller sofas, but they somehow made it work.
Probably because poor Lina opted to settle into sitting cross legged on the rug instead of squeezing herself onto the sofa next to Brent and Mark. Neither man had a compact physique, especially not Mark in his new dwarven square shaped build.
The round of introductions finished up, with Helene only being a bit stumped at Mark’s reintroduction.
The other sofa was taken up by Helene having dragged Mia over and Carmilla who shamelessly slipped onto the small place left next to Mia once she came one step closer to being ‘clean’.
The shampoo and the water certainly helped, but Mia’s scrutinising gaze still found the girl’s state to be wanting. Her hair was a matted mess, resembling a bird’s nest more than anything any woman should have atop their head. At least that vibrant crimson colouring the girl had spoken of was now visible.
“Mark, be a dear and get some snacks for the girl,” Helene said, having taken a look at Carmilla herself. “You don’t have allergies or some eating disorder, do you? You look emaciated.”
“Uhhhh,” Carmilla looked uncomfortable under the woman’s piercing stare. “I … don’t think snacks will help much. I can still eat but, uhm, only blood would help me to actually gain some weight.”
“Blood?” Helene raised an eyebrow.
“I’m a vampire,” Carmilla said, pulling her upper lips up and showing off her fangs.
“I agreed to give her some already,” Mia said, seeing the look on her mother’s face. Helene was a regular plasma donor, so Mia wouldn’t have been too surprised if she offered up her own blood the next second, seeing the concerned look she had when looking at Carmilla.
“I’ll give you a syringe,” Helene said, nodding at Mia then narrowing her eyes at Carmilla. “I don’t know how much I can believe in folklore and such about vampires, but I don’t want to risk it. No biting my daughter, understood?”
“I already promised that,” Carmilla squirmed in her seat, glancing sideways at Mia, then down at her neck before averting her gaze with a gulp.
“Smart girl,” Helene whispered, patting Mia on the shoulder.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you to not drain me dry,” Mia cut in, wanting to clarify. “But that I know a vampire’s bite is either addictive or something of the sort in almost every story. I don’t want it messing with my mind, just as I don’t want drugs to-“
“I get it,” Carmilla said, shaking her head. “As far as I know my bite only numbs the area around my fangs and makes anyone I bite a bit out of it. Short-term memory loss if I push it. But I wouldn’t want that done to me either.”
“That could be useful in a fight, no?” Lina asked, looking a bit bored as she propped a cheek up with a fist and leaned on the coffee table.
“If I’m close enough to bite someone, I could have clawed them long ago,” Carmilla shrugged. “But I guess it could work well with an ambush?”
“Let’s not endanger a fighter for some minor results, alright?” Brent said, having peeled off most of his armour and was now draping himself over the sofa with a beer in hand and a happy grin on his face. “Also, while I do love the atmosphere, I think we need to talk about what we want to be doing going forward. I myself only had my future vaguely planned out up until this point.”
“Same,” Lina said, palming a handful of chips. “Though I’d be okay with anything that results in us fighting more monsters. I know it’s only been a day, but I’ve gained no levels yet.”
“I’m fine with just chilling,” Mark said. “Though … I could be convinced for some more fighting. That next quest reward is really calling to me.”
Most eyes turned to Mia, or to Carmilla, but the redhead was herself staring at Mia so that was that. She sighed softly, subconsciously leaning against her mother as she answered.
“You all helped me get here, risking your lives, I’m fine with anything.” She took another breath. “I’d love to get more time to study magic, but I know getting stronger quickly is also important so I’m all in if what you want to do is hunting monsters non-stop.”
“I’m with Mia,” Carmilla said, shrugging away everyone’s attention.
“Now the question just is whether we want to stay out here, boxed in between the wilderness, the Mur and a notorious werewolf with a growing army,” Brent said, taking a gulp of his beer and letting out a satisfied breath. “Or, do we head back towards the city centre with the eventual goal of clearing one of those blasted Rifts. I’m doing the latter, by the way. Hopefully with some of you tagging along.”
“Why?” Helene asked, glancing at her daughter with some worry that only grew when she noticed the resolute look in Mia’s eyes. “It’s much safer out here. There are monsters out on the fields and in the nearby forests and they are mostly solitary. Much easier to hunt.”
“Lina, you read that book you nabbed from Mia?” Brent asked, not averting his gaze from Helene’s.
“Uhhh, only the first few chapters,” Lina answered, scratching at her cheek embarrassedly.
“What does it say about what Rift breaks are and how long does it usually take for Rifts to burst?”
“Oh! Rift breaks are when the thing discharges every monster inside of it,” Lina said, her voice going grimmer and grimmer as she went on. “The book said that in the final phase, the rift kicks out the ‘Rift Guardian’ and creates a new one with a higher level, and / or even Rank. That consequently raises the level of the monsters inside.”
“And the only way to stop that infinite cycle is to go in, kill the guardian and break the core of the Rift.” Brent supplied that crucial bit of information. “As for our timer?”
“I … think it said most Rank 0 Rifts took a week or two till the first breakout.”
“You do know that there must be others out there, right?” Helene said, her hand grabbing Mia’s. “I heard even the military is going to be coming around soon.”
“I am not willing to trust others with this when every single remaining survivor in Graz could die if they fail to live up to my expectations,” Brent said. “And the military, I’m willing to bet my right kidney they’ll somehow make it worse. That is, if there is anything left of the town by the time they get here. We heard they promised to arrive five days ago.”
Mia squeezed her mother’s hand, making the woman tear her eyes away from Brent. She had that stern look in her eyes, the one she usually had on when she told Mia she couldn’t have the new toy she asked for or something similar.
Unlike before though, Mia didn’t glance away in resignation, nor did she have a petulant childish look that only spoke of how little she thought a decision through. Brent was right, Mia knew it and she owed the man much. He wanted her to help him, so she would.
It was dangerous, true, but Mia agreed with Brent’s words. The only way they could ensure those Rifts disappeared was if they went in and destroyed them.
Now that objective number one was complete, making sure her mom was safe and healthy — both of which Helene seemed to have plenty of — she could make plans for the future.
The fact that doing so would elevate her levels, help her complete more quests and make that Realm Event’s completion rate rise was just a bonus.
A bonus that was not an insignificant factor in considering Brent's plea, because that was what this was. Brent was reasonably strong, but if he went into a rift alone, Mia had no doubt he’d die in there.
He was just one man, he couldn’t face an army of monsters alone and win.
Helene held Mia’s gaze for a few lengthy seconds, she narrowed her eyes and chewed on her lips as the seconds crawled by. “I’m coming with you.”
“Can you fight?” Brent asked bluntly, and Helene only averted her gaze from Mia long enough to give the man a withering glare.
“What do you think I’ve been doing this week?” She asked. “I’m level 8 and I’ve been hunting everything out in the fields and in the suburbs from dawn till dusk. I think I can fight plenty well.”
Level eight, that was one level above Mia. She resisted the urge to gape at her mother, sure she’d always been striving to be … self-sufficient. Ever since her husband disappeared on her, she’d been sort of trying to be both a mother and a father.
Which was why she was proficient in shooting anything from small handguns to double barrel shotguns and had practice swinging anything from baseball bats to axes.
Mia saw how much she struggled and fought to be everything her children could need growing up. It probably wasn’t healthy, but Mia could never for a moment doubt her mother’s love for her or her dedication.
What was I getting at again? Mia blinked, realising that she’d somehow found herself sliding down memory-lane at mach 5.
“Good enough for me,” Brent said, shrugging with what Mia now recognised as fake nonchalance.
He glanced at Mia for the briefest moment, a frown on his face as he seemed to be pondering something before shaking his head and going back to sipping his beer.
What? Mia frowned. Did he think having a mother and daughter pair in a combat group would somehow complicate things? Or was he just having problems with Helene standing up to him?
The latter would explain the glance, which would have meant he was considering whether keeping Mia on the team was worth someone possibly butting heads with him.
Though it could have easily been him worrying about the group falling apart mid-combat should either women get severely wounded or, god forbid, killed.
Mia wasn’t a mind reader, but she hoped it wasn’t the second option. She, and probably the others too, were only fine with Brent taking the lead because he seemed to know what he was doing and because he seemed to genuinely care about getting them through every fight alive.
If he started acting like some mini-Jeff, playing a tyrant, Mia would bolt without hesitation after grabbing her mom and the rest.
Leaving the Rifts as they were while she was possibly strong enough to do something about them would probably make her feel some guilt, but in the end she knew no-one from Graz other than the people in the room.
I’d say a prayer for Lara, she was nice. Mia thought, shaking her head a bit. Running for the hills was always an option. The Rifts seemingly targeted population centres primarily so they’d be mostly safe in rural areas. But not without monsters to hunt if mom could climb to level 8 just by hunting wandering monsters out in the wilds.
“So, uhm, Miss Vexley, I think I’ll head up to get some sleep?” Mark asked, taking on his regular respectful tone addressing his distant aunt.
“Good night, Mark.” Helene nodded. “I left the guest room as it was.”
“I suppose that means we’ll have to leave planning out the details for tomorrow?” Lina asked, looking a bit annoyed by that fact.
“Don’t mind me,” Mark said, heading up the stairs. “I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to be part of that mind-numbing conversation anyway. Go ahead.”
“What details do you think need working out?” Brent asked with an eyebrow raised at the blonde fiddling with building a little pyramid out of stick-crackers.
“How long do we stay here, where are we going, how exactly will we go about hunting monsters as efficiently and safely as possible and so on and so forth.”
“Well, we need some more information for that,” said Brent. “Miss Vexley, what would you say about the monsters around here? Are there any clumps of them within a reasonable distance for us lowly ground-walkers?”
“No,” Helene said, squinting at the man like she wasn’t sure he was mocking her somehow. Which Mia knew he probably was, which consequently made her glare at him. Still, she knew he was just like that. “The suburbs are clear, barely anything got out here from the city and the few things that wander close from the outside get slaughtered by the few all too eager people. The only place unlike that is the forest up on the hill.”
Probably deals with stress by annoying people or making fun of them. Mia thought, thinking back to the severe uptic in Brent poking fun at the group after every dangerous encounter.
It was never malicious, but it was noticeable and sometimes annoying.
“The one with the werewolf?” Brent asked, sitting upright. “The one to the east of here?”
“Yes,” Helene said, nodding slowly. “The whole hill is overgrown like no human stepped foot in there in a century. I know the toads and houses built on it were lived in before all this came here.”
“What of the monsters?” Lina asked curiously.
“Wolves,” Helene said with a rueless snort. “Weird ones too, with green fur and vines wrapping around them. Those things are probably the reason the whole place is overgrown.”
“That is … worrying,” Brent rubbed his chin in thought. “I’d say we target it, since the last Rift, the one which monsters we haven’t met yet might be hidden up there somewhere. But there is that werewolf with apparently hundreds of humans under him too.”
“Do you think the werewolf somehow took over the wolf pack?” Lina asked, looking like she was probably joking.
“We don’t know whether taking over from a monster as the Rift Guardian is possible,” Brent said. “Or perhaps that werewolf was the Rift Guardian, the previous one. We passed the one week mark a day or so ago so it’s possible that Rift already exhaled its first round of monsters.”
“Let’s hope that’s not the case,” Mia said uncomfortably, frowning deeply. She didn’t want to fight humans, even though she knew it would be inevitable at some point in the future.
Some would probably say she should just ‘get it over with’ to desensetise herself to it as soon as possible. After all, since it was inevitable, why should she keep pushing it back into the future.
Well, nothing is as inevitable as death and yet Mia had no intention of Blasting herself in the face or jumping off a bridge to get it over and done with.
“Indeed,” Brent said. “Which is why I’m suggesting we sod off from here as soon as possible. I don’t want to be near that cunt and his army of raiding beastkin. We should tackle something simpler first … like the critter Rift or the bird one if we can find either.”
“You sure about that?” Mia asked. “I’ve seen a rabbit rip apart a squad of goblins effortlessly and we struggled against a smaller squad a few times. The birds are a pain too, if Lina misses even just a single one, someone is getting mangled at best and killed at worst.”
“The alternative is goblins, or the sewers,” Brent said. “With you being mainly heavy on single target attacks, I’d say we rule out the Rift with ‘swarming’ in its name. That leaves a ‘fortress’ filled with the ‘green-tide’.”
“I’d wager we’d die if we go into either of those four as we are,” Carmilla piped in helpfully. “We’ll probably die even if all of us get to level 10.”
“If we sit around and do nothing the monsters will only keep getting stronger and stronger,” Brent said. “I doubt we can outpace the Rift’s speed in advancement.”
Carmilla scowled at the man, clearly wanting to say something but holding herself back.
“I doubt any number of goblins or overgrown rats would be too much of a trouble for me,” the vampiress said easily, glancing at Mia. “If I was topped off on lifeforce, that is.”
“I … think I too could handle a crowd of weaker monsters,” Helene said after some consideration. “I haven’t had much reason to experiment with it yet, what with my targets being stronger solitary monsters till now, but I apparently have some affinity for Storm magic.”
“Right! I didn’t ask yet but what did you get turned into mom?” Mia asked leaning over to stare up into Helene’s eyes.
Aside from her facial features and expressions, only her sky blue eyes similar to Mia’s were the same as she remembered.
“I’ll tell you later,” Helene whispered back with a smile in her voice. “What the rest of you need to know is that my Class is called Stormborne Sorceress and that I can fly. I think the name’s quite descriptive.”
“It sounds cool,” Lina hummed, staring up at Helene with a twinkle in her eyes. “Uhm, I have Air Elementalist right now, do you think I could get that to turn into some Storm magic Class?”
“Perhaps,” Helene said with a light shrug. “I have very little understanding of how these things actually work. My … race is predisposed to Storm magic though, so that’s likely why I got it.”
“Can you at least tell me what the component elements of Storm are?” Lina asked, leaning forward a bit.
Mia could guess why the blonde was so interested. She’d been saying she was aiming for becoming powerful and quickly, and Storm magic was the element most fitting for combat among almost all of Air’s Fused or Advanced elements.
“I think it can be either with Fire or with Water,” Mia said, her Memory stat doing some heavy lifting as it recalled the exact paragraph she read of the element. “Or for the most effect, Lightning, Air and Water. Though I don’t actually know how that is even possible since having both Air and Water affinity should be impossible.”
Mia frowned as she finished, that little contradiction having been left unresolved annoying her to no end.
“Rituals, I’d wager,” Lina said thoughtfully. “I read somewhere that you can increase your affinity with elements with rituals. It works best for the four base elements and is almost impossible to do with the three fancy ones.”
“Wouldn't that somehow need to change the positive-negative energy ratio in your lifeforce?” Mia wondered.
“It’s more like infusing yourself with elemental essence or something of the like.” Lina shrugged, seemingly having been more results-driven in her research instead of focusing on the theory behind it. “Instead of naturally attracting it? I think that was how it was said?”
Must be some severe downsides to that. Mia thought, tapping at her chin. Perhaps she’d have a much harder time controlling a mana type for which she has an artificially enhanced affinity?
“If you are really that confident, I suppose we can go ahead with clearing the sewers as our first goal,” said Brent, a grimace flickering across his face. Though it had nowhere near the severity all the women had around the room. “I’d say we go for the goblins, but there has to be a reason that rift started out at level 10 instead of 5.”
“I’d really like to get my next quest done before we even think about going in,” Mia said. “The one where I have to kill a monster at my own level alone, it’d give me a wand. Also, I have another Runic Lexicon I’d like to fully go through too.”
“How long would that take?” Brent asked.
“The previous one took me five days, but I was spending half my day doing other stuff,” Mia said. “Plus this one is a bit shorter so maybe four days if we keep hunting monsters and travelling in the meantime?”
“Good enough,” Brent said. “Go ahead with that then, I was already planning to have as many of you do that next quest too as possible. The sword I got out of it certainly served me well enough, as did the armour from the quest after that.”
“So that’s where you got those from,” Lina exclaimed, squinting at the metallic armaments in a corner. “Are they magical or something?”
“The sword won’t break on me and will stay sharp,” Brent said. “The armour has some enchantments that apparently eat up kinetic energy from physical attacks and store it to enhance my next attack.”
A Force magic enchantment? Mia leaned forward, her eyes practically sticking onto the haphazardly piled up set of armour like they were glued onto it. Could I copy a rune from it without needing to get the kinetomancy Lexicon? … I really shouldn’t. The brochure thingy warned against trying just this … but hmmmmm.
“What does the quest after the armour give?” Lina asked.
“For me? A technique-manual.” Brent shrugged. “I’d assume that’d be one of those Runic thingies for Mia and something of the like for you too as you have no need for manuals telling you how to circulate Ki.”
“Can’t we use it too?” Lina asked.
“Ki can’t be cultivated in a body suffused with mana.”
“Oh.” Lina deflated a little, but shook herself out of it in a moment with a glance at Brent’s armour. “Okay. I’m ready whenever. We just have to decide where we want to go now. Do we head back and camp down somewhere around the panels and go hunting for the next few days further into the city?”
“That was almost exactly my plan,” Brent said. “But with one small modification, we need to camp close to the inner city. I want all those panel-dwellers between us and the werewolf’s army. Anyone against that plan?”
Mia shook her head and Carmilla mirrored her a moment later. Helene, for herself, looked at Brent for a long few seconds before shaking her head too.
“Great!” Lina gave a little cheerful clap. “So we are setting out early tomorrow? We shouldn’t waste too much time.”
After another round of acknowledgements, everyone turned themselves in for the night. Helene, Mia and Carmilla opted for sleeping on the pulled out sofas while Lina got Mia’s bed and Brent Helene’s.
Mia was a bit put off by getting weaselled out of her own childhood bed, but with how distinctly uncomfortable Lina looked with the idea of sleeping next to the vampiress, Mia easily gave in to the girl’s silent plea.
Comments
ZephanyZephZeph
In addition, drinking Mia's blood would give er massive amounts of power, compared to most others. And as we have seen, she's that of a vampire progenitor.
BerciTheBeast
From CH 28: “And if you don’t need to drink blood … directly from the source, I think we’ll manage. Though, doesn’t monster blood work too?” “Thanks,” the girl chirped, visibly debating whether to hop over to Mia and risk getting poked by Brent’s unsheathed sword or to just stay where she was. “And uhm, I don’t need it from the source, but lifeforce fades fast so I need it fresh and while monster blood works, it tastes horrid, and I’d rather drink sewage water.”
BerciTheBeast
Because it "tasted worse than sewage" to her and she would rather starve, and they know this. If she has to resort to monster blood while such awful living conditions could be solved by someone's mild inconvenience (especially after having promised her aid) is straight up inhumane. So yeah, just because he can go looking for rotten mouldy food in a dumpster while she has an option to get a sandwich from willing donors doesn't mean she's "eating luxury food". The fact that the oferrer happens to be a source of michelin star meals is a pure coincidence.
lenkite
She can feed herself with monster blood any time she wishes as she already confirmed. No idea why she wants human blood and why everyone feels it is OK for her to be offered human blood when it isn't necessary. She can go chomp on a Goblin anytime she wants - nobody is eating luxury food so why should the Vampire ?
BerciTheBeast
Question: why are they stalling so much with feeding Carmilla? If we go by their regular meal times she's been skipping quite a few and already looks emaciated.
