We spent the next several minutes in silence. We lurked right next to the corridor that branched into three separate corridors, awaiting any potential escapees from the scavenger band. This was close enough that we could watch over the exit to the subsection of the school dedicated to the Universal Tree, while still being able to run if a powerful group of enemies emerged.
Fortunately, the enemy didn’t follow us out of the ball room. Perhaps they were afraid of us - or perhaps they lacked the ability to track exactly which direction we had gone. Either way, I started to feel relief as the minutes passed by without any visible movement from the scavengers.
After nearly ten minutes had passed, our group started to lose some of our sense of tension. After all, if the scavengers hadn’t followed us after this much time had already passed, their potential threat level would drop considerably. Every single minute that passed, the laws of reality in the Market would corrode their flesh and bones. Every second, they grew weaker, while we remained the same.
<So Miria, what did you do while we were running away?> asked Felix, after my attention started to drift. <It didn’t feel like a proper attack, and I don’t remember any of your self-made spells feeling like that either. There was a weird ripple of absorption essence, and then something changed - but I couldn’t figure out what was different. Did you develop another new spell and not tell us?>
<I think I manipulated reality at a conceptual level,> I said. <To be precise, as far as I can tell, the scavengers were ‘hoping’ to do something when they sent out a wave of spatial manipulation. I snuffed that hope out by relying on the conceptual half of my existence and my inherent connection to the concept of ‘hope.’>
<Interesting,> said Felix. <The way you described it reminds me of extinguish. Extinguish snuffs out the ‘candle of life,’ and what you just did snuffed out a candle of hope, instead. Did you base your actions off of extinguish?>
I paused. I hadn’t actually thought of my actions as being related to extinguish at all, but now that Felix had pointed out the parallels between extinguish and my hope-destroying spell, it was hard not to see the similarities. Even if I hadn’t consciously used extinguish as a model for my hope-destroying spell, I had probably pulled on my experience developing extinguish, at the very least.
<I think so,> I said.
<Eldritch abilities are incredibly strong,> said Anise. Her eyes shone like little stars as she grinned at me. <I never thought of creating a spell that can interfere with reality at a conceptual level before. All of my spells interact with the physical world.> Then, some of the excitement in Anise’s face faded. <Though, now that I realize this kind of attack is possible, I should start thinking about how to fight back. Just because you’re friendly doesn’t mean other people with similar abilities will be. Once we get a bit of time, we should really think about how to counter this kind of conceptual attack.>
<Something to think about later, when we have more time,> said Felix. <Though, if the tree bark we’re fighting for is adaptable enough, I certainly know what kind of tool I want to make out of it. Manipulating reality at the conceptual level seems incredibly powerful for anything that doesn’t have a proper counter to it.> His voice also carried a tinge of excitement.
We spent the next several minutes watching over the exit to the universal tree part of the school, as we discussed potential tools Felix could make out of the tree bark. Finally, I got a System notification.
Slaughter: Assist in Killing a Humanoid (Stage 2 Mage). |
Achievement +100 |
<I got an Assist! One of the Scavengers must have died!> I said.
<I got the kill for it,> said Felix. <My trap must have done a number on them, and then you stealing the Mark ensured they couldn’t recover? That would explain why I got the kill and you got the assist.>
<So that confirms our trap worked. We got rid of one of them. It’s just a shame that we don’t know where the next ‘threshold’ for kills is. That means we won’t get any more information from the System until we hit the next threshold for kills.> I felt a bit troubled by that. The System’s notifications were an easy and efficient way to track whether an enemy had died or not. If we could get perfectly accurate minute to minute information, it might have been worth charging back into the Universal Tree area once a few more scavengers died. Mopping up the survivors with a few distant extinguishes could have reduced the odds of the scavengers somehow making a comeback. Sadly, we had no way to change when we got Achievement notifications.
<At the very least, we dealt with one of them with minimal risk,> said Felix. <If the rest of that group is wiped out just from us stealing a Mark and running away, that would be ideal. No reason to risk dangerous fights if we don’t have to.>
The four of us waited another fifteen minutes, before I started to get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. We hadn’t gotten another kill notification, or any kind of System notification. I had originally thought that half an hour would be enough time for the other scavengers to perish, and that should have brought us to the next Achievement threshold. However, there was nothing.
<Something is wrong,> I said. <Most monsters and enemies we’ve fought give rewards at one kill, then five, then twenty five. A few have instead gone one kill, then three, and then nine, and so on… but we should have hit the next threshold by now. Why haven’t we gotten another System notification?>
<Should we go and investigate what’s happening?> asked Sallia. <Even if they found a way to survive without a Mark, they should be weakened. After all, the fact that one of them died means that they didn’t have a great way to nullify the impact of hostile laws of reality on their body. They should have still taken a lot of damage. We should hit them before they have time to heal.>
The four of us looked at each other for several seconds, before I ultimately sighed.
<Let’s go take a peek,> I said.
We crept back into the Universal Tree section of the school, and after several minutes of walking, we returned to the ball room. After scanning the area, I confirmed that there weren’t any nearby souls, and I couldn’t find any traps either. I had originally thought that the scavengers might leave some kind of ‘gift’ for us to try to take us with them, but if they had left a trap behind, I couldn’t find it.
Felix and I carefully combed over every step we took as we started making our way back towards the last spot we had seen the scavengers, but we didn’t find any signs of traps or sabotage. Instead, we found several marks of desperate, hurried attempts to survive.
In one area, I found an incredibly messy attempt at subverting the laws of reality. It looked like someone had tried to forcibly establish a bubble of friendly laws of reality - but they had utterly failed, either because they lacked the raw power needed to create a separate bubble of space. All that remained of their failed attempt was a rapidly fading spatial bubble and a few fragmented laws of a different physics system.
In another area, we found a corpse - or at least, the very messy remains of a corpse. It looked as if the corpse in question had been run through a blender. Their body was bubbling and roiling as chunks of flesh, bone, and blood geysered out of the body in random, irregular intervals. The entire hallway was smeared with red, and as we moved through the hallway, I had a strong urge to hose down the entire area with the best cleaning solution I could find. The sight and smell were both nauseating.
It didn’t take us long to find the second and third corpse, which looked much like the first one.
Seeing that our trap had at least dealt with three enemies should have put my mind at ease - but instead, it amplified my feelings of concern.
Where were the other corpses?
Soon afterwards, with my soul sight, I saw something else in the distance. It validated my fears.
In the distance, I could see twenty-eight souls. Four of the souls were withered and weakened, almost as if they were plants that hadn’t been watered in weeks. They were so close to death that even a light extinguish could probably finish them off - dealing with all four of them would probably only take ten percent of my alteration essence reserves, perhaps even less.
Unfortunately, the other twenty-four souls were in great condition. Most of them were at least on par with the scavengers we had seen so far. In the center of the group, I could see a scavenger with a much stronger soul. It didn’t quite compare to the strongest monsters we had seen in our previous life, but even though their raw life force was lower, something about the way their soul looked sent prickles of danger down my spine.
Life force wasn’t a true measure of power and threat. It was just a rough estimate of someone’s physical abilities.
<They’ve regrouped,> I said, before I sent my friends a copy of everything I had seen.
We had found the main expedition force of the scavengers. And since four of the first group of scavengers we had found had survived… the main force of scavengers also knew about us.