Only one threat came nearby during his watch, which was the last of the night. Just as dawn broke, he noticed a team of ambling workers. The thought crossed his mind to Dance out there and kill them, but he ultimately decided against it. Not only would killing off workers alert the Matron, causing her to send forces to investigate, but it also went against their plan.
After a full hour of getting a sleepy Tia awake and food in their bellies, they set out.
With Vir in the lead, they headed due south—to the same vicinity he’d taken out the hunter-gatherer last night. By raiding locations in this region of the forest, they would make the Matron believe their base lay to the south, rather than the north.
A task that was easier said than done. None of the other party members could vault across branches like Vir could, so the going was arduous and slow.
Vir passed several groups of hunter-gatherers and workers, forcing the party to detour around them.
“Seriously, though, I don’t know how we’d do this without you. We’d have walked headlong into the enemy several times by now,” Tia said, wiping sweat off her brow. Vir had been careful to expend as little energy as possible to avoid that problem. It helped that his new, improved makeup was more resilient than before, but hard exertion would still cause it to run.
“We’d likely have aborted this contract,” Haymi said in agreement. “Having someone specialized in detection is invaluable.”
“I’m sure there are a bunch of others with similar abilities,” Vir lied, scratching his neck. “Just takes practice, is all.”
“Uh, huh,” Vason said, his doubt plainly clear.
Vir cleared his throat. “So, it looks like there’s a group of scouts up ahead. We’ll go with the strategy we talked about—incapacitate, then kill. Haymi? You’re up.”
Tia smirked. “We’ll make a leader out of you yet, Apramor!”
“S-sorry,” Vir said, immediately realizing what he’d just done. “I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine! I’m ostensibly the leader of Spear’s Edge, but I want us all to be leaders. Just means we have a stronger party that way. Haymi? If you will…”
The group sneaked to within thirty paces of the scout group, guided by Vir, using hand signals he’d practiced while Haymi was convalescing. Thirty paces was the minimum distance Vir was comfortable pushing. While he’d gotten closer to them before, it seemed like scout squads could link their senses together—or perhaps they merely communicated with each other. Their sensory range was more robust than the rare smaller groups he’d encountered.
Haymi retrieved her C Grade Splash spell and held it in her left hand. Splash could hardly be considered a combat spell, but it used as much prana as other C Grade orbs, so it lay in the same category. More a utility spell, it shot a stream of water in a spread. Useful for creating drinking water out of thin air… and for annoying people.
In her right mejai aiming bracer, she’d already slotted a C Grade Arc spell. For this engagement, she wore Life and Water orbs on slotted pauldrons and greaves besides her bracer, but Lightning spells demanded pinpoint accuracy—it was nearly impossible to use them without an aiming device.
Incidentally, Haymi’s aiming bracer was unlike those he’d seen Tanya and Maiya wear. Hers had two slots, allowing the mejai to slot two C Grade orbs in the palm of their hand, or optionally, one larger B Grade orb instead. Right now, Haymi had two Arcs, both precharged.
Must be nice… Vir thought, longing to shoot one spell after another in rapid succession. Mejai really are impressive.
“Wait for my mark, then go,” Vir whispered, nodding to Vason and Tia. Each of them snuck off in different directions into the brush.
Vir’s strategy relied on his enemies’ senses. Scouts were first and foremost information collectors. When faced with a threat, they fled more often than they fought.
When Vir approached, the spread out scouts moved away… before immediately stopping.
Neel and Vason waited sixty paces away, on the other side of the squad.
They the scouts moved left, running into Tia. Haymi was on the right.
Boxed in, the scouts clustered together for safety, pressing their gelatinous forms against each other, pincers all pointed out.
“Now!” Vir shouted.
Haymi charged forth, holding out her Splash orb in her left hand, and firing it high into the air.
A stream of water sprayed out, hurling in an arc to their foes. Even before her first spell had doused the scouts, she retrieved another precharged Splash and fired it, sending more water at their enemy.
When the two spells hit, not only were the scouts completely covered in water, but the surrounding ground became wet as well.
Thunder cracked at that very instant, but Haymi’s aim was not the scouts themselves. She had only two spells precharged, and there were six of them. Leveraging the tactic she used in their previous encounter, she targeted the ground. This time, though, she fired both Arcs simultaneously.
Bunched up as they were, they made for the perfect target. The entire squad writhed as Lightning magic coursed through their bodies.
Spear’s Edge did not waste the opportunity. Vir Leaped into the nearest foe. His seric blade was so sharp, he didn’t even need Empower. The beautiful katar sank into the enemy’s gelatinous torso as if it was water. Haymi’s slotted Arc spell only heightened the scout’s spasms, and Prana Blade did the rest. As before, the scout exploded into nothingness.
Tia took a similar approach, opting to wreathe her blade with Fire prana. Magic orbs didn’t quite imbue their physical effects when slotted in such a manner, only their prana. Tia’s blade was augmented with Ember, but without Prana Vision, Vir wouldn’t have known. Just that when her blade ripped through enemies, it did so with a deadliness akin to Vir’s own Prana Blade.
Realization dawned upon him in that instant. Prana Blade and orb augmentation were identical. Most Talent wielders used Earth or Shadow Affinity to wreathe their blades, while mejai used one of the five known affinities. Vir, on the other hand, used Ash prana. Owing to its natural potency, he figured his Ash Prana Blade was superior to the normal kind, but he’d have to do some tests to be sure.
Tia’s scout similarly exploded, while Vason took a different approach. He understood that these scouts couldn’t be cut… so he didn’t even use his talwar. He simply Leaped at his enemy with his tower shield, smashing it with the full force of his body.
Crushed under the impact, the blob similarly exploded and failed to reconstitute.
“Guess that’s one way to do it,” Vir said with a smirk as he dispatched his second foe.
Neel did what he could, distracting the enemies and biting into them, but he was unable to land a fatal blow on his own. Even so, he bought time for Vason and Tia to finish off the rest in no time, annihilating the squad.
A rush of adrenaline coursed through Vir. They’d perfectly ambushed their prey and had executed a flawless victory. What would’ve been arduous for him alone became trivially easy with a party. More than that, it felt good to share the victory with friends.
Friends, huh? Vir didn’t know when he started thinking of Tia and her crew that way. Yes, they disliked demons, but even so, they were good people. They’d done right by him, and he got along with them nearly as well as he did with Maiya.
Maybe I’ll stay on just a bit longer…