After changing landboats once, Moira and Natalia get off at the second stop nearest Langdon Mountain. The landboat route curved around the mountain, and Moira had chosen to climb the mountain from the shadowed side -- hopefully she’d be able to find more Darkness manabeasts that way. The pair pause for a moment, staring up at their rocky goal.

Langdon mountain was sparsely forested at the base, with sections of hardy shrubs and jagged rocks breaking up the greenery. The shrubs and rocks became more common as one rose up the mountain, until the spare forest was entirely gone. Two thirds of the way up, the grey-brown of mountainous earth is covered by white. That snowy area was Natalia’s preferred hunting ground, where she hoped she’d find Ice element manabeasts.

“Let me scout out the area,” Natalia states, linking her mind to a bird circling overhead.

“Let me know when you’re done scouting then.” Moira chirps sarcastically. “I’ll just... stand here.” With nothing better to do, Moira imagines slipping an arm across Natalia’s neck and ever so slowly depriving her of air - her struggles weakening until she hung loosely in Moira’s grip.

If Natalia knew what was going on in Moira’s head, she makes no sign that she notices. “Alright, there’s a pack of rocky looking slimes east of us,” Natalia comments, beginning to head toward their direction.

“Let’s go then!” Moira responds, following.

Before long, they come across the Earth slimes, bouncing around some rocks jutting out from the ground. Eight of them, each slime was about a foot tall and wide, with an earthen brown hue. Sharp rocks were fixed in a sort of crown around the top of each slime, jutting out menacingly (for a slime). If one were to be tackled, the rocks would cause serious damage.

The shadow of the mountain, combined with deeper shadows cast by the tall rocks dotting the landscape gave Moira plenty of Darkness to work with. She could feel just how much stronger her element was, compared to somewhere well-lit, like Liravel. Raising her hands out toward the slimes, she went to work.

Slimes were one of the most harmless manabeasts the wilderness had to offer, but not necessarily the easiest to deal with for the unprepared artificer. Regardless, they were good for beginner artificers to make reagents out of. Although slimes had the ability to divide, these were too small to be able to -- at least, that’s what they’d learned at the orphanage. That left Moira with cutting, stabbing, and crushing as viable options. She figured that while crushing would leave the bodies the most intact, it’d also be the hardest attack to apply -- darkness was better at cutting. Cutting would be messier, so stabbing it was.

Before the slimes could even bounce close enough to jump at her, Moira impaled the nearest with three spines of darkness. Hit from the sides and beneath, the gelatin body offered no resistance, and the Artificer flared her the spines wider before dissipating them. The swiss cheese slime plopped to the ground and didn’t move. The rest of the slimes died the same way, spikes of darkness extending from their own shadows or the shadows of rocks and bushes around them. It turns out only two thicker spines were needed to kill each slime.

“These might as well be hole-y slimes,” Natalia jokes as she starts drawing a circle around one of the slime corpses.

“Would you become a Psyche Artifact if I stabbed you?” Moira tilts her head, replacing Natalia with a nice necklace in her vision.

“I don’t think it works like that,” Natalia replies, “Plus, it’d be a downgrade from my current capabilities.”

“Yeah, but at least it wouldn’t make puns. “ Moira gets out her own stick of chalk and starts drawing circles. She chooses a small slime-rock as the Regent.

“Who else is going to stick with you aside from me?” Natalia teases, as she begins the process to channel the mana into one of the former crown pieces.

“Sniff. So mean to me...” Moira mewls pitifully. “What kind of ability do you want to use? Shard shot? Rock bullet?”

“You do this to yourself, you know. And I think materializing a boulder and having gravity do the rest would be efficient enough.”

“A whole boulder is a lot of mana though. And what if the thing moves before it’s crushed?”

“There are eight slimes here, I could easily have another artifact create earth walls to trap it. Or you could trap it with Darkness. Also, because shards and bullets won’t be effective on everything. I doubt manabeasts look up frequently either,” Natalia explains, now sealing the reagent to make sure it didn’t leak mana.

“Mm that’s true. “ Moira shrugs. She finishes the appropriate design for forming a boulder with the blue chalk and picks up the new Earth artifact. “I’ll turn these four into boulder artifacts then.

“Okay, I’ll do the same, but make one of them into an Earth wall artifact,” Natalia responds, “That way we can split up to kill weaker manabeasts.” Moira nods in agreement.

A short while later, Moira dumps her Artifacts -- a pile of rocks -- into Natalia’s hands.
“These look like stones I could throw at someone,” Natalia says nonchalantly, “Anyways, I’ve located a water manabeast further up the mountain.”

---

The water manabeast turned out to be a water slime - a giant one. Moira immobilized it with darkness -- Natalia with walls -- and Natalia squished it with a boulder while it couldn’t move.
“There’s a wispy looking cloud that might be a Wind manabeast up ahead. Do you want to get that while I turn this slime into an artifact?” Natalia asks.

“Sure. Don’t get caught by surprise while you’re crafting. I’d hate to have to carry all those Regents myself.” Moira cautions jokingly as she walks on ahead.

“Manabeasts still have minds, and I’m flattered you think of me as a pack mule. Take care as well though,” Natalia replies.

“At least you’d be useful!” Moira shouts as she walks out of sight.

After another thirty seconds? Of walking, Moira spots the cloud Natalia was talking about. It was pretty obviously fake as clouds went. First off, it was hovering only 80 feet off the ground. Second, it wasn’t a cloudy day at all, so there was just this lone white puffball in the sky, about seven feet across.

How am I going to get up to that? Moira wonders as she stops and stares up at the manabeast. She didn’t have to wonder for long -- the manabeast made the first move. Shrinking slowly as it floated directly toward Moira, the manabeast managed to get 30 feet closer before a black thing dropped out of the cloud and sped toward Moira.

She barely managed to get up a thin wall of darkness before the manabeast -- all sharp claws and speed -- tore through the wall, colliding with Moira’s shoulder before swooping away. She hisses in pain, clutching her shoulder as she spins around, looking for the manabeast. It hovers in the air, glaring at her with unsettling entirely white eyes. The manabeast resembled a cross between a crow and a vulture, and looked particularly bedraggled. It hung in the air without flapping its wings, its gaze still locked on Moira. Carefully, Moira formed a bed of spikes behind her back, making sure the bird couldn’t see them from its position. A moment later, the bird dived and Moira threw herself sideways with darkness while the manabeast ran headfirst into the spikes.

Sighing, Moira dusts herself off and takes out a stick of red chalk just as Natalia arrives, slightly short of breath.

“Are you alright? I sensed some pain coming from you,” Natalia says worriedly.

“I got a boo-boo...” Moira pouts, showing Natalia her arm. Blood was dripping from the wound freely. Natalia rifles through a rented dimensional bag and pulls out a roll of gauze and a small bottle of antiseptic, “Hold still.” Moira clenches her teeth and looks away as Natalia treats and wraps the wound gently.

“You should be fine until we get back to the orphanage now. Do you want to continue?” Natalia asks.

“Of course, it’s fine now that it’s bandaged.” Moira responds, shrugging with her good shoulder.

“Alright, just making sure. It would be pretty silly if we died on our first outing after all.”

“It’d also be pretty silly if we turned back so soon.”

“If you insist, I’m not going to stop you. Let’s keep hunting then -- I want to test out my new Water artifact at least once,” Natalia smirks, twirling a sleek Water gunblade in one hand. Moira just oggles Natalia. Something about girls with gunblades...

"Chump -nothing personal- and I are headed to the mines, tell Sirius for me."

Shor’s sudden exit with Kubo wasn’t too surprising. She always seemed to do things the way she wanted them to.

With Sirius off fetching Riss, and without knowing how long it would take in order to coax him outside, Lysette retreats to her room in order to assemble her gear. Collected over the years, she had a pair of swords, numerous throwing knives, and a simple bag to carry her items on the go. Once her equipment is set, she returns to the cafeteria to wait for Sirius and Riss.

Sirius notices that only one member of their original group, Lysette, is still there. Approaching her, he asks, “Where did everyone else go?”

“Shor took Kubo and ran off to the mines, wanted to let you know” Lysette responds with a shrug.

“Okay, then we should get going too,” Sirius replies, “Although we might want to discuss what manabeasts we’re looking for first.” I hope Shor and Kubo will be okay.

“I don’t mind too much what we go for, the only element I’m interested in taking up now other than the ones I’m using right now is Metal. What about you two?”

“Same to Metal, though I’m more interested in Crystal for now,” Sirius responds.

“Looks like we’re heading to the mines too.” Riss declares.

“You never said what you wanted,” Sirius points out.

“I want a lot of things.” Riss rebuts, expression expressionless as ever. “Don’t be selfish, Sirius. Selflessness is a finite resource.”

“I want you to get something out of this too, Riss,” Sirius retorts, frowning slightly.

Riss crosses his arms. “And I will. Sealed artifacts are always useful.”

“I want money” Lysette whispers.

Riss nods. “Yes, Lysette. I agree. Let’s all get Metal, Crystal, and Money artifacts.”

Sirius continues frowning, but reluctantly agrees, “Alright, we’ll head to the mines then. Is everyone good to go? I personally need to grab stuff from my room first.”

Riss reveals a plain beige backpack. He reveals it by taking it off his back and holding it up. How it went unnoticed before now is hard to say. He should have been a Darkness Mage. “I grabbed everything I could need when you weren’t looking.”

“Alright, I’ll go pack up really quick,” Sirius states, “Do you want to meet up at the train station?”

“Sounds fine to me, don’t take too long” Lysette says before setting off toward the nearest stop. “C’mon Riss, let’s go.” Riss follows, and the two walk in comfortable silence. Minutes pass and they eventually arrive at the train station without having said a word to each other. After readying tickets, they sit down on a bench and wait for Sirius.

Eventually Riss looks at Lysette and Lysette meets his stare. He ate a cat! Lysette internally screams. Riss makes a piss-poor attempt at conversation. “You like money?” Lysette blinks several times before looking away and pretending she never heard anything.

Back in his room, Sirius scoops up a light green backpack and packs medical supplies -- it wouldn’t do if someone bled to death. The mines would probably be poorly lit, but his Light abilities compensated for that. He stuffs some snacks into another pocket, bringing extra in case Riss or Lysette got hungry too. Water would be essential as well, considering they’ll be out for a while. Sirius hefts the backpack experimentally to make sure it wouldn’t be too heavy to carry around. The bag was of moderate weight, but things would balance out even with added reagents if the food and water were consumed. Finally, Sirius straps a straight sword to his waist and heads off to the train station.

When Sirius arrives, he finds Lysette and Riss sitting on a bench together. “Hey! Did you guys get along while I was gone?”

Riss and Lysette share a sidelong glance before Riss replies. “Best Friends.”

“A real bonding experience” She adds.

“Great! I’m glad you two could become friends with each other,” Sirius exclaims happily.

The arrival of the train graciously interrupts any follow-up to Sirius’s comment.

---

The corridors of the mines winded and weaved without rhyme or reason. Minecart rails jutted out of the ground irregularly, showing the mine’s age prominently. The air was stale and heavy with the promise of manabeasts lurking in the depths.

An orb of light bobs besides Sirius, illuminating the surrounding area. The place seemed a bit suffocating for his taste, but he’d have to get used to it. The mines were the most consistent source of Metal and Crystal manabeasts after all. He could sense the faint flickers of light up ahead from the torches lining the wall.

What bothered Lysette was that dust seemed to linger in the air long after it was disturbed, and using wind to shift it away only seemed to raise more into the air. Trying to breathe in the air was a mistake. Activating her enhanced smell only threw her into a fit of coughs to dispel the foul odors.

Sirius looks over, “Are you okay?” Lysette squints at Sirius, who was a blinding figure with the light orb nearby.

“Debt.”

“Debt?”

“Debt.”

It didn’t seem like Sirius was going to get anything else out of the girl, so he drops the subject. He then checks to see how Riss is coping with the unpleasant environment. Riss seems fine. Too fine, really.

“Where do we find the manabeasts? Kick over a rock? Blow a whistle?” Lysette asks, eager to blow her safety whistle.

“That might be a good idea, why don’t you try it out? I’ll keep an eye out for anything else that approaches,” Sirius comments.

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Lysette blows the whistle, letting out a shrill noise that sounded awfully louder inside the mines compared to the outdoors. “Can I do it again?” She asks after a few seconds of silence.

Shor stared at Kubo in annoyance, ‘Did this idiot really just say his artifact created glitter? And even more so, did he really just throw it all on her? And what was that goofy smile for, was he expecting praise?’ He was lucky to be the only one with her, because this meant he was all the support she had. Any other time she would have picked him up and flung him across the street.
‘On the other hand, at least he wasn't some sniveling wimp’ -most people just ran away when Shor approached them- but he even seemed a little confident.

Deciding that explaining would be a pain, Shor started walking and grabbed his wrist in passing,dragging him off by the left arm. “We’re going to get something.” She said. Communication was important as a team, after all.

For his part, Kubo merely sighed as he was dragged off yet again. It seemed that working with this erratic maniac came with it’s own downsides. He was forced to momentarily entertain the idea of somehow mounting a carriage to her so he could travel in comfort, but swiftly abandoned such notions just in case she guessed the reason for his smile. He liked his spine in place, after all. Regardless, he was off on his adventure.

---

Having stopped by some shops before taking the air-bus, the two of them now arrived at a mine, ready to go. Even as Shor hurried off to purchase a variety of items, Kubo went for a more focused approach. He already knew what he wanted to build, and exactly what materials he would need to build it. He stopped by a smith and started purchasing other elements of the plate armguard he had started on with his vambrace. Each individual part would serve as it’s own artifact, until he had a full set. Of course, it would always help to have some trinkets along to turn into artifacts in case they found something unexpected, like a Darkness or Water manabeast, and were forced to improvise.

The mine itself had been abandoned quite some years before. While it hadn’t run empty, the miners had managed to break into a naturally occurring cave system deep below the surface. This had released a large number of naturally occurring manabeasts, and thereby made mining more effort than it was worth. In addition, the poisonous gasses that were common deep under the earth made exploring the cave system itself risky at best. The heavy gasses stuck to the floor of the caves, but could quite easily become lethal if one went too deep.

Heading in, Shor almost immediately tripped over a large rock. The rock -a manabeast- unburied itself, revealing a humanoid figure underneath (though only about waist-height). Agitated, the creature jumped her, only for Shor to block it with her feet and launch it against the ceiling. The creature hit the ceiling and dropped to the ground, cracks appearing all over and parts breaking off, this one was done for. “Stupid golems.” Shor muttered to herself.

Quickly drawing a circle and creating the reagent, Shor prepared a new artifact, a leather glove, Done preparing she looked at Kubo “Sorry, Koobs, next one’s yours, but I need something to hit these rats without breaking my fists. This should let me create a weapon, so I’ll manage for a bit, now. Let's keep looking.”

Shrugging, Kubo just let her do her own thing. Not much sense in bickering over an Earth reagent, considering how common they were. Besides, he had set his sights on crystal for today’s excursion, and metal, too. With a biome this specialised there was no doubt they’d run into one sooner or later, as this would be exactly where he’d expect to find such creatures. Of course whether they’d be able to take it down was another matter entirely. And perhaps more importantly the labyrinthine structure of such places made it quite possible for them to lose their way down here. If they didn’t keep track of where they’d come from they could find themselves wandering for months on end, if not years.

Reaching into his backpack, Kubo recovered his Sparkle Stick. With a gesture he created a small line of bright purple topaz on the wall, which he quickly traced to the entrance they’d used. The exit could be seen from the point where he aborted the line, and with a gesture he sent the line dancing ahead of them, along the route they would choose to take. Smiling he looked over to Shor, pointing at the Sparkle Stick. “Like I said, useful, right? This way we won’t get lost, no matter how deep we go.”

Shrugging at Kubo, Shor responded dryly “It’s okay, still can’t beat super strength though,” This idiot should really stop fishing for compliments, he might’ve gotten one if he just hadn’t asked for it. “Here, let me show you how it’s done” Shor goes on, one-upping him by lighting a torch. “Now we can actually see your sparkles.”

Following a downward path, Kubo and Shor would continue ever deeper into the mines. Along the way they came across what appeared to be a small colony of large, mole-rat creatures. Despite their lack of eyes they seemed to sense the presence of intruders and swarmed forwards, large mole-like claws at the ready.

Quickly, Kubo summoned forth his stone arm. Granite wrapped around the vambrace and then extended forwards, completely encasing his right arm. With a thick layer of stone around his arm he punched the first of the creatures to reach him, the added heft allowing him to smash it into the packed earth floor. By leaning both the weight of his body and his arm into it he sank the stone through it’s ribcage, the pressure forcing it’s internal organs out of the sides. Convinced it had been dealt with he then moved to swat another out of the air, which landed a few meters away and then turned around to resume it’s attack.

A few mole weren’t completely retarded and moved around Kubo to strike him from behind, but these would receive a solid hit from Shor’s superpowered warhammer and either be sent flying or squished. “Watch your back, Koobs.” Shor said, followed by a grunt of effort as she squished another one of the buggers. These moles made for a bloody mess, the smell...less than pleasant.

Raising both of his arms, Kubo reached out the the earth beneath his feet. Even as his now slightly erratic breaths slowed, he focused on the connection between himself and the Earth around him. The slow but inexorable movement of landmasses, brought into motion by lines of tension invisible to the human eye. Kubo took a hold of those forces, the earth-shattering hidden potential of billions of tons of mass, and manipulated its might. Even if he could bring but the tiniest fraction of that force to bear, it was certainly a humbling sensation. Then, by first pulling back and then rapidly pushing forward with his arm, he sent a wave rippling through the ground. A roiling bump, covering and crushing the small creatures, the rough uneven surfaces brought into sudden motion shattering legs and trapping limbs. The room briefly shook, motes of dust gently dropping down from the roof, and a stone could be heard clattering to the floor nearby. But when Kubo opened his eyes, most of the creatures had been dealt with, those that had escaped his attack swiftly dealt with by his enthusiastic companion.

Breathing deep, Kubo took a moment to recapture his breath. That one had tired him. Good thing he hadn’t quite overdone it, though. Retrieving the magical chalk from his backpack he went through the arduous process of drawing circles around the various corpses, deciding to use hairs from their whiskers as reagents. That would make them easy to work into various different artifacts. He already had some ideas for how he’d use his share of the creatures, although he wasn’t sure what Shor would do with them. Shrugging he looked over. “Should be a solid six or so reagents here, maybe a little more. Having a hard time differentiating some of these bodies.”

A loud screech erupted from little down the corridor, swiftly followed by the creature it belonged to, a large metal armadillo-looking creature. “I don’t think he cares for differentiating these bodies.” Shor managed to get in, before having to catch the creature, immediately causing it to start scratching at her. She dropped the thing and punted it back with a kick in its exposed stomach. “You know, I think it’s best if you stay back a little, I don’t know what you just did, but you look tired. Just focus on the reagents for now.”

Shor concluded, quickly rushing after it. It hissed at her as she tried to hit it with a quickly summoned warhammer. Its metallic shell didn’t even dent as she broke her crude warhammer on it. It seemed as though she would have to get to the underside to hurt this creature. The creature curled into a ball and charged at Shor. Shor managed to barely avoid the creature by jumping over it and grabbed it from behind. She couldn’t get a proper grip because of the centrifugal force, so the creature broke free and turned back at her. After Shor once more jumped over the beast it uncurled and jumped her. She barely managed to turn in time to intercept it, catching it once more. Shor tossed the creature up, summoned her warhammer and hit it in the gut and againt a wall, causing it to vomit up its own organs. Grabbing for her arm, she yelled “Motherf*****.” Now the initial adrenaline rush had worn off, she could feel the stinging of where the armadillo had scratched her, she should probably disinfect that.

Shor pried out one of the creature’s tiny but sharp fangs and prepared the reagent. “How are things going on your end Koobs? Mix up any bodies yet?” Shor asked mockingly as she returned with the reagent.

“Going quite fine, actually. And with far less noise.” Kubo looked over at her, as she took out the metal reagent. He’d managed to not only prepare the reagents, but also to build himself a little artifact in the meantime. By winding the whisker around a compass needle he’d created a small device that granted him the ability to sense nearby caverns and tunnels, in addition to a sense of how deep he was. Not all too powerful, but an excellent tool for further exploration of the tunnels. Holding out his new toy, he commented “It looks like you’ve managed to subdue the terrible armadillo. I’ll be taking the reagent, I’ve been trying to get one of those for an artifact I was planning.” Walking forward, he gestured to the small fang reagent.

Ignoring Kubo for the moment, Shor grabbed a disinfectant from her bag, spraying it on the wound and covering it with a bandage. “Koobs, the First one was yours, this is the seventh. Plus, you didn’t even do jack for it, on top of the fact I had also been planning to get a metal artifact, why else do you think I proposed heading for the mines? On that note, I’ll be keeping this.” Shor stated as she closed her backpack and was once more ready to get moving.

Raising an eyebrow, Kubo shrugged. “Fine, but I’m keeping these. And the next tier-2 is mine.” It wasn’t a point worthy of discussion. After all, he was the only reason they had any clue where they were even going. He momentarily entertained the concept of abandoning her in the tunnels, but their previous little encounters had proven that she was a reliable combatant. Good to have at his side in a tight spot. He wasn’t sure if he’d been able to defeat both those earth manabeasts and the metal one if she hadn’t been there, so it was probably best to stick together even if he didn’t entirely approve of her attitude.

Trailing the Sparkle Stick against the wall in order to leave behind an easy trail he made his way further into the Mines for a good uneventful 10 minutes. After some time had passed he sat down, creating a small brazier with the Sparkle Stick to contain Shor’s torch. “Sit down, I brought some bread and juice.” He gestured magnanimously to his backpack, which did indeed contain several small loaves and two containers of orange juice. Sighing he rested for a moment. Of course Shor would never mention it, but he suspected that scratch hurt, and this was a good time to take a short break.

Shor gratefully accepted the food, despite his earlier goof forgetting a light, Kubo seemed to be prepared. She insisted he’d take the juice because he seemed more tired to her. After finishing the food, she picked up a rock and threw it at something in the distance, the sound of impact followed by the sound of a small creature running away. Sighing, Shor sat down again. “This might not be the best place to take a break, so let’s get moving again, you wanted a tier 2 artifact, right?”

“Fine, fine. Let’s get a move on, then.” Sighing, Kubo packed up his stuff again, quickly downing the last few gulps in his sealed container of juice. He made sure that all of the Reagents were carefully stored away, and checked the Compass for depth. Didn’t want to accidentally get into the lower mines and choke to death. Satisfied he moved forward, keeping the compass in his left hand so he could guide them away from dead ends. It seemed they’d made it nearly 50m down at this point, and he believed that breathing would begin getting dangerous at the 150m mark. Although this would probably be different depending on the area of the mines they were in. He’d need to make an artifact capable of detecting poisonous gasses at some point.

After some time they came to a large hole in the floor. It seemed that years of erosion and the effect of various tunneling manabeasts had weakened the floor here, allowing it to cave down into the natural cavern system below. Most likely the creatures down there would be far more dangerous, and despite having brought a rope, Kubo opted it too dangerous. Instead he used his powers to create a ledge and then carefully made his way past the hole. Shor simply jumped the gap, utilizing her own abilities. The pair continued onwards past several similar holes, it appeared they were beginning to reach the transition point from mine into cave.

After some time, however, they heard a sudden scraping sound. Kubo dropped to the floor, pressing himself up against the wall. It was as if something large and heavy was moving in the hall up ahead. A quick peak revealed that it was a Manabeast approximately the size of a cow, a black spider-like creature covered in orange crystalline spikes. It seemed to be using one of it’s razor-sharp appendages to scratch at a wall for an unknown purpose. Kubo couldn’t get a much better look, but he knew this was his prey. He look over at Shor, with a grin on his face. “Wanna help me kill a spider?”

“I had hoped that would be the least you were capable of, but sure, I’ll help.” Shor replied, a mocking grin on her face and her voice equally sassy.

Unbothered by the sass, Kubo dashed into the room with the creature. It had turned around and he had to immediately duck under a swipe from one of it’s front legs, the crystal-tipped point slamming into the rock behind him. Rolling beneath it’s legs he came up on the other side, then stumbled backwards to avoid being impaled again. His rock-arm was active, and batted away a third blow even as he called out to Shor. “Right, I’ve got it’s- oop! Crap, that’s.. Yeah, it’s definitely focused on me, now! Punch it!” He grabbed hold of one of the legs heading for his face in his enhanced arm, holding it in place but losing ground at an alarming pace.

Shor rushed over, amused by his struggling, but swiftly landing a surprise attack on it’s rear, her hammer blowing through several crystals before slamming down on the spider. This wouldn’t make it a happy spider, but it should prove to have dealt some damage. Shor quickly jumped back to avoid the spider’s full attention, though it has definitely noticed her now.

Capitalizing fully on the distraction Shor had provided, Kubo forced the leg pinning him to the wall to the side. Reaching out into the surrounding rock he pulled forth a rock from the ceiling, dropping a boulder on the spider even as he prepared to bring down the whole roof on top of it. He’d be able to dig out the remains later, but this thing was proving harder to kill than he had at first anticipated. Almost as if it realized what he was doing it shipped around with one of it’s legs and got him in the shoulder, nearly slicing off the whole arm. He dropped to the floor with a cry, clutching the sudden gash on his upper arm even as he barely dodged the follow-up blow. It’s blades were now flashing in all direction, slicing at everything that so much as moved.

Shor, noticing her sidekick was getting stomped by the spider drew on her own mana to boost her speed significantly and stormed at the spider, closing the gap between them in no time flat. Quickly hurling Kubo away from the spider, Shor returned to the spider. The spider’s attacks were fast, relentless, precise and many. Shor had a hard time keeping up, so she increased her speed once more, she should probably a bit more careful with her mana from now on, but at least she should be able to beat this thing now. Summoning a weapon once more -a crude blade, closer to a plank- she intercepted the spider’s attacks, but as this broke too, she had to back off a little.

Although getting thrown into a nearby wall wasn’t pleasant, at least Kubo was away from the spider now, although he was planning on punching her once he could once again move his goddamn arm. The most important part was that now, at least, he had space to think. Once more he reached into the rocks, the tiny cracks in what appeared to be solid stone, the seams in the rocks that couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. He slowly began widening those seams, channeling his mana into the gaps and expanding the open spaces. Bubbles of air, loose dust, tiny cracks. But, distracted by the pain, this would take some time. If Shor dropped before then, he’d just be another meal. No way he was outrunning that thing.

Seeing an opening between the attacks, Shor punched the spider in the face. The spider recoiled giving shor a small moment, with her current level of speed, she utilised this moment and tore off one of the spider’s legs. That should make this fight easier. Deflecting the spider’s attacks with its own severed leg Shor was confident she could at least protect herself for a good while.

Calling upon the last reserves of his power Kubo gestured downwards forcefully. With a loud bang the ceiling cracked, momentarily doing nothing more than showering dust down on the two combatants. Hissing he repeated the gesture, and with a second bang several large chunks of rock smashed down on the spider. Shor dodged back from the impact even as the rest of the roof gave way, filling up the corridor with rocks and dust. The rumbling and shifting sound continued for several seconds, and once the dust had settled, Shor and Kubo were separated by the massive pile of rocks, which had crushed the spider.

Leaning back, Kubo made a choking sound. He grabbed his face with his good hand and grouned, as he felt the mother of all migraines trying to break it’s way out of his skull. It seemed he might have used a little too much mana there. All he managed to do was sit up before he dropped down, the whole world going dark.

The loud whistle echoed throughout the mineshaft. Riss briefly wonders how deep the cavern extends. Unlike Riss, Sirius had covered his ears to prevent from dying to the sound, “L-let’s not.”

“Aww… okay. I guess we just head deeper now?” Lysette asks.

“Yes, that would be-” Sirius is cut off when a great menagerie of cries sound out like one might hear at a slaughterhouse. Immediately, the party is accosted by the closest ones, the airy cries of canaries, their yellow feathers transitioning into purple going down their bodies with tail feathers replaced with a foul trail of black, hazy fluff.
Reacting to the sudden assault, Sirius boxes the six canaries with a cube of light.

Riss steps closer to the caged birds. “Aw, they’re pretty cute.” The canaries savagely smash their beaks against the cube with deranged fervor.

Sirius knows he won’t be able to maintain the cube indefinitely, so he shrinks it and lowers the canaries to the ground. “Lysette, can you deal with that?”

Lysette stares at the frantically writhing birds in the small container. She considers stabbing them, but reconsiders and decides otherwise. Instead she would position her foot carefully above the cube and stomp downward, amplifying her leg with Qi to crush the birds with excessive force.The light drops just before her foot hits the birds, smashing most of them and severing the squishy tails of the other ones, leaving a viscous mess beneath her.

Lysette lifts her foot, looking at the mess with disdain. “Gross.”

A couple of the canaries escape and are promptly smacked out of the air with a shovel. “That takes care of that.” Riss says, leaning against his gardening weapon.

“Mind if I take one Riss? I wanna try poisoning my swords or something cool like that.” Lysette asks, chalk at the ready.

Riss stares at Sirius, having already left to stand watch. “Uh… if you don’t mind me taking five…?” Riss pulls out his own chalk, ideas for artifacts already taking shape. He heads over to the mess of feathers and blood and begins separating the bodies, careful not to touch any of the black piles of gunk their tails left behind. One by one, he turns them into little skulls on strings to wear, each with small inscriptions to differentiate their abilities.

Riss picks up one of the intact birds and brings it over to SIrius. “Are you certain that you don’t want any of them?”

“Thanks for the offer, but I’m not interested in Death. You’d probably use it better than I can,” Sirius responds.

Riss shakes his head. “We could all use more sealed artifacts, and if not even that, you could always just use it as a money artifact.”

“But it would be hindering your progress in death. I can make sealed artifacts out of manabeasts people aren’t going to need,” Sirius counters.

Riss stares at Sirius in the eyes for a good three seconds of unblinking, unemoting uncertainty before saying “Okay then.” and turning around to get with making it into a fifth skull necklace. Only after completing the final necklace does he realize none of these artifacts have much direct use in combat.

Lysette singles out the remaining bird, much cleaner due to having died from blunt force trauma by a shovel, and pushes it to the side to give Riss some more room to work with. Delving further into her bag, she pulls out her sets of chalk and begins circling the bird in red. Now focused into a single canary feather, she holds a sealed artifact, capable of applying a magical poison onto objects. Satisfied with her creation, she sticks the feather to the side of her hat, quite fashionable and deadly. Finished with her crafting session, she cleans up her chalk and looks to Riss, who was still at it, now adorning himself with… skulls. So edgy.

Sirius leans against the earth wall, keeping an eye out for anything that may approach the pair while they were creating their artifacts.

After Riss wiped off his shovel, collapsed it and put it back in his backpack, he approaches Sirius, then stares at the darkness looming ahead of them. He turns back and sees Lysette ready to go, so he nods his head towards the blackness.. “Lead the way.”

Sirius takes the lead, the sphere of light floating in front of him. As they descend, an eerie quality seems to surround them. Flickers of movement, glints of light where there should be none. Yet, as much as one might interpret these as red flags, nothing happened.

Soon enough they start to hear a strange noise, the sound of metal scraping stone. Sirius points the light forward, less like a lantern and more like a flashlight. The scraping gets closer and closer until eventually, a large, spiky limb rounds a corner, followed by the remainder of the creature. A stubby, wingless dragon dressed from top to bottom in spiky metal plates appears, somehow shining in the light despite its dank environment. It was like a giant armored lizard with claws, a horn, and no tail. His voice drops to a whisper, “Does anyone have an idea on how to take on this thing?”

Riss calmly pulls out his shovel again. “You ever feel what it’s like to have a nail ripped off?”

“No?”

“Me neither, but I imagine it would be unpleasant.” With that Riss runs forward, jukes its initial goring headbutt and hops on top of it. He immediately jams his shovel into the back of a large spike atop its head and starts to push against it like a crowbar while decaying away where the plate meets skin. Immediately, it begins to buck, but clearly, it was not made for jumping. Instead it begins to ram itself into nearby walls sideways, trying to remove Riss, and after a few tries, Riss has to concede, evacuating while pulling the shovel out the wrong direction, ripping it off more.

The manabeast, suddenly much angrier than it was before, stands there with its metal plate drooping off its head crookedly, pulling at raw skin never meant to feel air. Riss starts to feel bad for it before it roars, an awful sound echoing across the cave just as the whistle.

From behind Sirius and Lysette, the sounds of metal scraping against rock repeats as a second one appears a ways away, charging at them. At the same time, the first one was clearly moving in to attack.

Things were escalating fast, so there was no time to coordinate. “Try not to hit the edges of their metal plates. If the edges become jagged, they’ll cut us instantly.” Riss wiped a small cut on his leg with the jeans around it and went to meet the second dragon-lizard-dinosaur thing.

To distract the second metal beast, Sirius fires a beam of light into each of its eyes. The armored dragon-lizard shrieks and starts blindly charging around, ramming into walls haphazardly. Sirius secretly hopes that the ceiling above them wouldn’t crash down on them.

Lysette spots the opening that Riss provided on the rare metal dragon. With a Qi enhanced leap toward the roaring roar dragon roaring, she lands above the exposed rare metal flesh. Drawing a sword in each hand, she stabs downward, burying the blades into the beast’s rare metal head. It begins to move erratically to get Lysette off, and now it’s Lysette’s turn to play cowboy on Mr. Dragon’s wild ride.

The numerous rare metal spikes were convincing enough for Lysette to release her grip and retreat from the flailing rare metal dragon. With both of her swords still stuck in the rare metal opening, it was a wonder that the rare metal dragon was still standing. “Maybe I should have poisoned the blades before sticking them in…”

Riss casually takes a step onto the blinded rare metal dragon and begins digging. Rather than trying to crowbar a plate off, he instead just tries to shove the shovel all the way through as he decays the skin connecting it to flesh. This works much better, his shovel smacking the horn on its face as the plate pops off. The rare metal dragon doesn’t like this one bit and tries to smash its horn into Riss, bending over backwards as best as its stubby stature allows.

It’s actually kind of pathetic. Rare metal “dragons” clearly aren’t predators.

Riss gets off of it anyway so that he can deliver a smack to its face with his shovel, which immediately clangs, leaving his shovel vibrating and a skin-crawling echo resounding throughout the mine. Clearly, shovels are musical instruments.

“You can enchant my sword and I’ll go stab it,” Sirius states, offering his weapon to Lysette, who complies and enchants the blade with a poisonous edge. Forming a series of steps with his light constructs, Sirius gains some vertical ground on the manabeast. When he’s on top of its weak point area, he drops down and thrusts his sword downward into its flesh. The metal dragon-lizard roars and rears suddenly, and Sirius barely manages to stay on by keeping a firm grip on the sword. The manabeast falls back to the ground with a weak growl and stays still. Sirius pulls out his sword from the creature’s head.
“Whew. One down, one more to go.”

Now able to retrieve her swords from the defeated rare metal dragon, Lysette pulls them free and sits back to watch Riss dig to his heart’s content.

The dragon, reeling from the fact that its head was made to vibrate enough to produce a sound, patiently waits as Riss rummages through his bag for something sharp and settles for a pair of gardening clippers. Like a knife, he stabs it through the exposed flesh as deep as possible and tries to hold onto it, twisting it hideously as the rare metal dragon panics.

It probably makes it more pissed, but getting on top of its back is probably the safest place for this, considering how there are horn-like spikes coming out of its face and joints. Eventually the dragon moves erratically enough for the knife to come out of its head, where Riss leaps off and begins to make some distance in case it starts a chase.

As it so happens, that is exactly what it does. Unfortunately, it is still blind.

As it crashes into the wall, it falls over, blood pouring from its rare metal stab wound. Riss looks back at Sirius and Lysette. “You know, removing Lysette’s knives to let it bleed out would have probably been enough to kill it.” Riss moves back in to finish off the rare metal dragon in case it was still alive, and with that the combat comes to a rare metal close.

Riss, emulated Sirius from earlier, stands on the side and begins cleaning his gardening tools while keeping watch. “So, if you don’t mind me asking, why are you guys going for metal?”
Sirius, drawing a circle around the first slain rare metal dragon, responds, “I’ll be wearing armor in the future and the extra protection and the offensive capability metal offers is useful. I’m also looking into mirrors though.” He rips off the dangling plate and begins concentrating the beast’s mana into the metal. I can probably get this shaped into an armor piece when I get back.

“I want to sword faster.” Lysette states, slowly encircling the other rare metal dragon in chalk. Several strong whacks to the beast’s rare metal horn removes it from the body to serve as the collection point. Unfortunately, with her Wind mana conflicting with the Metal in the new reagent, she would be unable to start absorbing from this artifact until she depleted her Wind mana pool, which would be unwise to do in such a risky environment. “Into the bag you go!” Lysette says as she tosses her belongings into her bag.

As the party finishes up their preparations, the mineshaft seems to come alive. The walls shake, rocks start to fall, it was like some sort of earthquake hit all at once. Riss tries to regain his balance as the shaking eases and begins heading toward where they came from. “I think that’s our cue to leave.”

“Yeah, let’s get out of here,” Sirius agrees.

Must be my whistle blowing, Lysette thinks.

The party begins to leave, slowly making their way back to the surface, but no matter how much closer they get to it, the rumbling only seems to get worse.

They walk in silence for several minutes before Riss notices a distinct change in the rumblings and turns around to find a horde of Earth manabeasts approaching rapidly. Bats, crabs, moles, scorpions, spiders, rabbits, rats, and countless insects of several varieties. A veritable swarm was approaching, and there was no way in hell that the party of three could deal with them all at once.

“Run.” Giving a one-word warning, Riss begins to run.

Sirius bolts after Riss.

Lysette runs. Fast. Zoom Zoom. Combining Wind and Qi together resulted in her running speed significantly increasing, overtaking both of them.

Despite their speed however, the entrance to the mine was still too far away. The manabeasts overtake Sirius, then Riss. Lysette abandons her comrades to die. Goodbye my friends…

I’ve already used quite a bit of Light mana. If I use too much more, I’ll get backlash. Clutching his new metal regent, Sirius creates a protective metal shield around him and Riss. Countless Earth manabeasts swerve around the structure, some accidentally headbutt it in their haste and fall over dazed. Eventually, the stream of creatures stop and Sirius tentatively peeks out from the shield. The coast was clear. He turns to Riss, “What do you think that was all about?”

Riss doesn’t answer immediately, but when a god-awful screech rips out from behind the shield, he no longer has to.

Once in the open, the swarm of small manabeasts behind Lysette disperse outward in waves, many slowing down in the harsh sunlight. Rapid kicks into the crowd eliminate manabeasts at random. Free artifacts go flying left and right. The scene becomes less joyous when Riss and Sirius come running out of the mine entrance followed by what appears to be, from where Lysette’s standpoint, a giant crystal centipede.

Lysette keeps running, stuffing many fallen creatures into her bag on the way to the train. Goodbye my friends…

Mandibles clack menacingly against each other, as the centipede swivels its head side to side searching for food. It lunges forward and snaps up a nearby rabbit. The bones crunch audibly as the centipede consumes the animal.

Sirius pales visibly. Lysette pales distantly. Riss is fine. Too fine, really. He looks towards Sirius. “Got any plans? I can think of a few, but domesticating it seems difficult.”

“Can you distract it? I’ll try to cut off its mandibles first. And then we can go at it relatively safely,” Sirius comments.

Riss stares at Sirius, looking back at the centipede. “It looks pretty distracted already. Are you sure it’s a good idea to bring its attention to the humans around with the allure of food?

“Use your best judgement,” Sirius begins rushing towards the centipede, sword drawn.

“Do your best!” Lysette yells from a distance.

Riss takes a close-mouthed sigh before making dead… cows would actually be too big for the centipede, wouldn’t they? Pigs then. Riss leaves a small trail of pigs for the centipede to reach down and eat. Riss, the greatest Bacon Mage the world has ever known.

The centipede seems to take notice at the great quantity of literal bacon being presented and gets down instead of rearing up dramatically all the time. It crawls over, its crystalline legs stabbing into the ground all the way, producing the sound of jackhammers.

As he nears the giant crystal insect, he approaches carefully. The manabeast was devouring the crass amounts of bacon, distracted by its feast. Sirius holds the sword above a mandible and swings down with as much force as he can muster. The mandible snaps right off, crystal being brittle and all. He immediately swings the sword up at the other mandible. The centipede scurries backwards rapidly, but Sirius manages to partially sever the other mandible before it escapes. The appendage dangles uselessly from the centipede’s mouth as it rears up and screeches with anger. It attempts to devour Sirius by lunging and actually would have, if not for the metal shell that materializes around him. The centipede experiences rebound from its own kinetic energy and is momentarily stunned.

Riss climbs up a leg and starts breaking off anything crystalline he can reach with a shovel. The centipede proves to be universes more flexible than the rare metal dragon and scoops up Sirius, swallowing him whole before twisting its body and eating Riss as well.

Riss stares at Sirius in the fleshy confines of a centipede, a mound of small animals is the only thing between them and stomach acid. “I think I like the domestication plan better.”

Riss grabs Sirius and pushes past him, putting Riss closer to the stomach. “You might want to hold on or… I don’t know, just don’t… get stuck.”

“Errr...what?” Sirius asks, confused.

Riss begins creating cow after cow, the biggest animal he has available to him. Riss suddenly gets a flashback about how cows are too large for the centipede to comfortably eat.

In no time at all, the walls of flesh surrounding them start to convulse, and soon enough Sirius, Riss and multiple cows are being upchucked. Before the cows come, Riss climbs atop its stooped figure and begins smacking its face with a shovel. In physical pain both internally and externally, it does its best to shake it off with as little movement as possible and fails as Riss holds on by eye sockets and antennae, whacking it over and over until he hears something break. As the centipede expels another cow, it seems to have lost all ability to properly react to the things being done to it. Taking advantage of this, Sirius begins hacking away at the point where the head attaches to the body. Eventually he makes adequate progress wherein he decapitates it with a metal wall. Riss hops off of it as Sirius stabs it through the head for good measure. It seems that the centipede is dead.

But it’s a centipede.

The remainder of its enormous body writhes around violently. A giant pillar of centipede meat and carapace raises up and immediately comes crashing down right over Sirius. Sirius tries to backpedal but when another metal wall collapses, he closes his eyes and accepts his horrible fate.

For some reason however, it never lands. Sirius opens his eyes slowly when the expected weight never drops on him to find himself in the shadow of the headless centipede clumsily holding itself up with a few of its legs.

Riss yells from his spot outside of the shadow. “You should get out of there.”

Sirius doesn’t need another prompt before booking it.

The pair rapidly abscond as the body flails in random directions, going back to Lysette,who’s been spectating the whole thing lazily. The sight of several small animals and insects being crushed under the centipede’s weight was equally as horrifying as debt.

Riss looks at the mess covering himself and Sirius, a light burning sensation covering his body. He turns to Lysette and looks her in the eyes. “You could have prevented this.”

Sirius goes over to the piles of slightly burned manabeasts, cows, and giant centipede corpse and begins to gingerly separate them by element --a process made much more difficult by the constant burning sensation all over his body. Most are Earth, a few are varying types of Crystals, and another small portion are Metal. Sirius plucks out a few manabeasts and motions for Riss to come over to partake in the spoils. He draws multiple small formations around each fallen corpse to convert them to reagents.

Sirius was adamant to give Riss (and not Lysette) every single fucking Earth artifact, causing his backpack to jingle with the sounds of artifacts clanking against gardening equipment. Sirius himself was able to pick out the bodies a few small-fry metal and crystal manabeasts, and with Riss’ help, the centipede itself. Rolling it up to fit in a chalk circle of reasonable size took longer than it did to convert the rest of the bodies, but when it was finished, Sirius had a pendant to show for it. It was just a simple rectangle piece of crystal with the end cut to a tip with a leather cord looping around his neck.

“Let’s head back as soon as possible,” Sirius states, “The sooner we get treatment the better. I don’t have anything for acid, unfortunately.”

Riss ponders for a moment, strapping on his backpack. “We’re not exactly drenched; I think we’ll be fine, but you’re right. It’s better to be on the safe side. Let’s go Lysette.”

They return to the orphanage and take a well-deserved shower.

Lysette regrets many things and laments her missed opportunity to combat the greatest evil.

Debt.

The pair hunted until sunset, picking up T1 reagents of all sorts along the way. Time that would normally be spent searching was drastically cut down by Natalia’s ability to see through flying creatures, manabeast or otherwise. Another notable pickup includes a Lightning reagent. The Lightning manabeast had proven to be a bit trickier, as the pair couldn’t get terribly close due to all of the electricity. But an emergency Earth wall here and there protected them from harm and the boulder dealt the lethal blow. There were also Crystal manabeasts, specifically of the ice variant, roaming around near the top of the mountain. It wasn’t too difficult to just straight up drop a boulder on the slow moving creatures. Turns out that not many things could survive a large heavy object falling on top of them.

“That was really productive,” Natalia says cheerfully, “I’m set on all of the new elements I wanted to go into. Thanks for helping, Moira. We’ll definitely get you a Darkness artifact tonight and we’ll journey to a Death biome tomorrow. Let’s take a break and eat dinner before searching for a Darkness manabeast though. The sun hasn’t completely set yet.”

“I could use a break.” Moira admits. She opens up the bag and sets out a thin tarp -- the ground was pretty cold with all the snow. Earthen walls also enclosed all sides to shield them from the wind. A Fire artifact sits in the center, radiating warmth and light.

Natalia grabs two sandwiches from her bag and hands one to Moira. She also spreads out a scroll on the that partially mapped out the wilderness. “So we’re here,” Natalia points to a mountain on depicted on map, “And it’ll probably take us several hours to walk to the ghost town. Is there anything you might want along the way?”

“Hmm... we really should have rented airboards as well. Too bad it would have been too expensive. We can start walking now, and maybe we’ll find a Darkness manabeast on the way.”

“Yeah, we should have enough for them next time. And making progress towards the ghost town would be more efficient, especially since using Psyche to look around is less effective during the night.”

“I can take over scouting now, the darkness is so thick, it’s easy to tell when something is moving around.” Moira points out. “Are you going to have any troubles navigating? I can go by feel, but you...”

“I’m able to tell where you are relative to me and how you’re dealing with the environment,” Natalia responds, “Maybe I’ll even get lucky and come across a creature that has good nocturnal vision.”

“Whatever works then.” Moira shrugs and lays back. “Let’s rest a little longer before we head out though, it’s nice to warm up.”

The pair sit around the Fire artifact a bit longer, greedily taking in its warmth before packing up their belongings. They travel back down the mountain, a feat increased in difficulty for Natalia due to the sun setting and with her trying her best not to slip, and start making their way to the ghost town. By then, complete darkness had fallen upon the pair. This was Moira’s domain now, as she tugs Natalia along the right direction. They trudge along for what seems like ages, scanning for Darkness manabeasts and ignoring the T1 and T2 manabeasts.

Finally, Moira pauses in place as she senses motion in the emptiness before her. Natalia nearly bumps into Moira as she catches herself suddenly, alert. “Manabeast...” Moira murmurs, trying to discern the form of the creature through the surrounding mana. Shadows darker than the surrounding night coalesce in front of the pair into the shape of a wolf. Its ebony fur gleams under the faint moonlight and the beast growls, tensing its muscles in preparation for a lunge. Moira yanks Natalia out of the way just as it leaps. Natalia frantically tries to get a grasp of the situation and locks onto the wolf’s senses. The world around her is extremely sharp, but washed in shades of gray, and a smaller field of view. The wolf’s hearing is also excellent, Natalia had briefly considered trying to flank the manabeast, but their footsteps would give it away.

“Moira! I’ll provide covering fire,” Natalia shouts, breaking away from Moira and shooting rapid rounds with her gunblade. Moira calls out in affirmation and readies her mana, stabbing forward with a shadowspike. The wolf deftly hops sideways and dodges, starting to circle around Moira. A few water bullets connect with the wolf, prompting several agonized yelps before it disperses into the darkness. I’ll be difficult to kill if it keeps going into that form. With that in mind, Natalia mentally changes gears. Moira calls out a warning to Natalia about the manabeast materializing behind her, but Natalia still was piggybacking on its senses -- she already had turned around and fired a shot at the creature. It hits a leg, and this time the water freezes shortly after, slowing the Darkness manabeast’s movements a little bit.

With the wolf slowed, Moira is able to score a glancing blow with another shadowspike, catching the manabeast in the flank as it twisted to avoid her. Gradually, with Natalia slowing the wolf and Moira managing to injure it half the time, they wore down the manabeast. At the end of it’s life, blood dripping off of it’s fur from countless small wounds, the duskwolf mounts a suicidal charge at Moira, shrugging off her hastily throw blade of shadow and knocking her to the ground. As she falls, she manages to drive another spear of shadow through the wolf’s chest, finishing it.

Slightly out of breath, Natalia states, “We should set up camp and sleep. We’re a good bit a ways to the ghost town ad we need to rest up before we hunt two T3s tomorrow.”

Natalia hears a muffled assent emanate from the small girl lying limply under the manabeast corpse.

After harvesting the manabeast, the novice Artificers make camp and sleep.

---

Natalia blearily stirs from her sleep and sits up. She looks over to Moira and gently shakes her awake.
“Ow.” Moira complains, feeling the myriad bruises and aches gained the day before.
“Sorry.”

The duo begin their journey once again, feeling relatively well-rested from last night’s sleep. An hour or two later, they reach their destination. The center plaza is filled with worn down and partially demolished buildings. The residential area had marks of a widespread fire, with the scorched planks and burn marks marring the houses. Instead of people, the place had become a den for manabeasts. Raindrops begin to drizzle from the sky and clouds covered the sun. It was almost as if the entire town was a wounded beast, crying silently for its loss. But their destination was the massive graveyard behind the pitiful remains of a church, destroyed to the point where Natalia and Moira could barely make out a symbol that indicated what religious sect it belonged to.

Natalia whispers to Moira, “There’s an undead axeman northwest of us. That’s your Death artifact right there. We should keep our distance -- Death does some nasty things.”

“I do some nasty things.” Moira smirks, striding forward.
Natalia shoots her gun to immobilize the axeman’s feet to the ground. Attacking in sync with Natalia, Moira’s salvo of shadow blades falls upon the axeman, each blade swinging several times, sending undead flesh flying. She held nothing back, rapidly expending her mana to finish the fight.

When it seems that victory is within their grasp, the injured undead smashes the butt of his axe on the ground. The soil almost bubbles and an skeleton horse frees itself from the ground and stands obediently next to the marauder. The axeman climbs on and charges Natalia and Moira. Hordes of skeletons froth from the ground around them.
“I...think we should run,” Natalia states uncertainly, staring at the many mobs around them. Too bad her boulder and earthen wall artifacts were used up. They would’ve made for a good inhibitor.

“I don’t think we harmed it as much as we thought, either.” Moira remarks, watching as the axeman knits its decaying flesh back together rapidly. Despite her best efforts, she’d never even managed to scratch the bones that peeked out beneath the patchy pale flesh.

“I’ll slow the horse down, I think we can outrun the normal skeletons,” Natalia comments, pulling out her Crystal artifact and creating a patch of ice on the ground in front of the undead horse.
The horse skids on the ice and loses its balance, falling over. The axeman jumps off of it before the horse hits the ground.
The pair abscond.

“Do you want to try going after a Psyche manabeast instead?” Natalia asks.

“Anything is better than what we just left behind.” Moira says dryly. She was wrong.

---

After wandering around a lake surrounded by a flower field, Natalia stiffens and slows to a stop as she senses a sizable concentration of Psyche mana overhead.
“Hmm?” Moira asks quizzically.
“Psyche manabeast above us,” Natalia states hastily.
A wyvern circles above them, letting out an ear-piercing screech. Natalia sees Moira drop to one knee, clutching her head and barely managing to activate her collar Artifact, causing a thick cloud of inky haze to obscure herself. Not before long, Natalia succumbs to the same painful effect herself and her senses are scrambled as she could barely feel or see anything.
*cue Natalia’s battle music* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmOZL_0rj70
Natalia mentally flings herself into the other nearby creature’s minds, trying to regain her footing from the extreme mental disorientation. After that she could function a little, even with the pain in her head-- seems as if putting up with all the angst helped her after all. The Psyche manabeast dives towards Moira, almost certainly meaning the end for her. No! Natalia musters all of her will and manages to push Moira, tackling her to the side. Talons graze Natalia’s back instead, leaving sizable gashes behind. Natalia cries out in pain and rolls onto her side. It looks like I can still feel pain, Natalia grits her teeth. Using other creatures’s senses of sight, she shakily grabs her gun and aims it at the wyvern, blasting multiple shots that alternated haphazardly. Natalia could only hope that she would land a hit -- since she only had a third person point of view to go off of. It’s almost as if she’s watching herself in a movie. Natalia is hardly able to feel her own body too, aside from the pain and blood flowing from her wound. Only a single shot scores a hit on the wyvern, but it is hardly affected. Out of sheer frustration, Natalia pulls out her Lightning artifact and starts firing bolts of lightning at the beast in conjunction with the bullets. The wyvern nimbly dodges most of them until a bolt clips it, causing wyvern to screech more in indignation as it falters for a moment. The pain in Natalia’s head is overwhelming now, but she somehow is able to squeeze the trigger and arc a lightning bolt simultaneously onto the wyvern. The Psyche manabeast falls silent as its body plummets to the ground. Although the pain subsides, Natalia’s mind still feels fuzzy from blood loss. She shifts her head to check on Moira, seeing her begin to recover. Natalia breathes a sigh of relief before slipping unconscious.

The haze of pain quickly fades away from Moira, bringing sweet lucid relief. She stands up to find an unconscious manabeast and a dead friend. Wait, no. The wyvern -- she could tell it was a wyvern now -- appeared more dead than Natalia, with all the burns covering its scaled body. While the bloody gashes oozing blood looked bad, Moira thought she saw the wounded girl twitch in her sleep.

Rifling through Natalia’s bag of holding and humming to herself, Moira quickly locates the medical supplies and treats the long parallel gouges carved into her friend’s back. That done, Moira sits back and realizes that Natalia might not wake up for some time. Time to make the most of this opportunity. Moira grins widely, not needing to hide her ominous expression without anyone there to see it. She lifts up Natalia’s long, soft pink hair and raises it to her nose, inhaling deeply. The hair was so soft. So long. So luscious. Moira continues sniffing Natalia’s hair for several more minutes before deciding to “check over Natalia’s body for other wounds”. Every single inch. In meticulous and caring detail. Hey, the unseen wound was the deadliest.

---

Half an hour later, Moira straightens Natalia’s shirt and steps back in satisfaction. She’d changed Natalia’s ruined shirt and placed the girl onto a tarp, with a pillow under Natalia’s sleepy head. Moira then tied the pillow and tarp to the sides of Natalia’s body so she’ll stay on it. A dozen feet to the side, the harvested wyvern lay in a chalk circle, having been converted to a reagent already.

Chirping an apology, Moira picks up Natalia’s legs and starts the long walk back to the nearest landboat stop, dragging the girl behind her. Hopefully the pillow she’d affixed would soften the bumps Natalia is being dragged over.

---

The landboat ride on their return trip is uneventful. A kindly Artificer helps load Natalia’s still unconscious form onto the landboat, saving the girl some more bumps and bruises. Moira also makes a stop by the rental shop to return their bag of holding, dragging Natalia all the way. Several customers give Moira odd looks about the unconscious Natalia. By the time the two girls return to the orphanage, it’s late at night. Leaving Natalia on the floor just inside the orphanage entrance, Moira walks off to the healer’s office in the central wing, a nondescript room filled with mostly chairs and a single cot. Only one cot was needed since magical healing is a quick process. Wards showing up late at night with bloody wounds was par for the course, and the healer doesn’t even raise an eyebrow as she takes a look at Moira’s shoulder. A quick jolt of Life mana and Moira is immediately in peak condition. Thanking the healer, Moira nearly walks out the office before remembering she nearly forgot Natalia.

“Oh, right! My friend is laying just inside the entrance so if you could heal her, that’d be great thanks! Goodnight!” Moira says cheerily as she exits.

---

Natalia stirs, regaining consciousness, and sits up straight immediately. Wide-eyed, she scans her surroundings and locks her sight on one of the orphanage’s healers.
“Your friend brought you back while you were unconscious and asked me to heal you,” the healer says amicably.
“Moira? Is she alright?”
“Yes, she’s fine. You should go get some rest now.”
Natalia nods and pushes herself unsteadily to her feet.
“Do you need help getting back to your room?”
“No, I’m good. I can handle myself.”

Back in her room, Natalia spreads out the spoils of their trip on the ground. It looks like Moira didn’t take her share of the reagents. I’ll bring it to her room after I finish turning this Water and Psyche reagent into proper artifacts.
Natalia converts a Water reagent into another bracelet for daily wear. This artifact would have the ability to create a sphere of water. The rest of the Water reagents would be stored for later use in case her gun ran out of ammo. The Psyche reagent, a piece of scale from the wyvern, became a necklace around her neck, that allows her to block the senses of others. Her Lightning and Crystal rings were still on her fingers from the previous fight. Both artifacts were pretty generic, the Lightning one emits a bolt of lightning and the Crystal one creates ice. Natalia scoops up Moira’s share of the T1 reagents and makes her way to her friend’s room. I also need to thank her. Who knows what would have happened if I had been by myself? Reaching Moira’s room, Natalia knocks quietly on the door.
No answer.
Natalia knocks again to make sure.
There is still no answer or sounds, but Moira is definitely in there -- as Natalia could sense her mind.
“I’m coming in,” Natalia announces as she twists the doorknob and enters the room.
It’s completely dark and the only thing that can be heard is the faint snoozing noise coming from the bed. Natalia blinks several times as she waits for her eyes to adjust and she spies a pair of ears peeking out from the blanket.
Natalia carefully sneaks around to Moira’s desk, dumping all the reagents onto it. They make more noise than Natalia intends for them to, clattering against each other and the wooden desk. She freezes and look back at Moira. An ear twitches, but there is no sign that Moira had been disturbed. Natalia breathes a small sigh of relief and starts making her way out of the room. But, Natalia slips on one of the many things on the ground and falls comfortably onto the layer of clothes lying on the ground. The coziness and warmth make Natalia realize just exactly how tired she is. And with that, Natalia falls asleep too.

Now seperated by a thick wall of stone, Shor was unable to reach Kubo and treat his wound(s). Shor called for Kubo...But nobody came.
Deciding to break the rock wall, Shor prepared her stone hammer. Slamming down several times, she was painfully reminded of the wound gotten from the metal armadillo. "Motherf*****." Not only would she be unable to keep this up for too long, it also seemed that the noise had attracted a manabeast. It was a brown-ish chameleon. Shor almost decided to ignore it until it jumped at her, its skin turning metallic and tripling in size. With a quick curse Shor sidestepped the chameleon, it neatly landed on the rubble from the cave-in and shot it's tongue at her. A mistake.

Shor caught the tongue out of the air and gave it a pull, sending the chameleon soaring through the air like a yo-yo. Swinging the frightened chameleon around her, Shor started pummeling the rock wall with it. Three strikes in she had some good progress, but after those three strikes the chameleon seemed to have died and it returned to its normal brown color and regular size. Unable to progress quickly through the wall, Shor turned the chameleon's tail into a metal reagent. Making a necklace out of the curled tail, she now had a proper metal artifact. She immediately started using it, the skin on her arms turning metallic in color. With her now metal-covered arms she proceeded to pummel the wall of rubble, making some progress, but she would need something bigger.

Her call would be heeded as a massive earthen creature approached her. Or charged her, Shit. The huge earthen stegosaurus barely fit in the passage and seemed unimpressed by the rock wall. Shor had a feeling she could use this creature to her advantage if she could find a way to not get squished by it. Up was not an option, it seemed capable enough of running through the rock wall. Its sides were also not the place to go since those almost touched the passage's walls. Barely in time Shor dropped to the floor and covered her entire body in metal. She hadn't ever believed in any gods, but she was praying this would go right.

Its lower body scraped against Shor as it rushed past. It tried to stop, but couldn't do so in time, resulting in it slamming into and through the rock wall, getting stuck in the middle of it. Removing the metal cover, Shor summoned her hammer once more and covered it in metal. She was going to go THROUGH this thing. The creature was flailing madly, its tail only centimeters away from hitting Shor. She rushed forward, ducked under its tail and hit it at the base. It's tail made a loud cracking noise before going almost entirely limp. Shor did the same for it's hind legs, cauing it to stop moving on her side. Shor hit the creature's hip several times, slowly digging throught its side. Somewhere halfway through, blood was pooling around Shor's feet and a dying screech could be heard.

After having slammed away the creature's back half, Shor tramsformed her hammer into a bent shovel and dug out the creature's intestines, leaving only bloody bones and a few hints of muscle tissue. Eventually arriving at the front, the creature's width became inadequate to move through. Shor hestitated for a second, but then stuck the bent shovel between two of the spine's joints and separated them, it took her a good time, but eventually she had managed to sever the creature's neck and body, leaving a passage in the wall supported by its ribcage.

With Kubo now within reach, Shor rushed at him applying some serious first aid...and second aid...also some third aid. It could never hurt to be sure. After having made sure Kubo was still- and would keep breathing, Shor looked around. The spider was visible from here, not covered entirely in rock like the other side. The room itself, despite Kubo's best effort to keep away from those, lead into a dead end, in there was a spider's nest, obscured by a thick layer of crytal-web. After cutting throught the web, five spiderlings came forth, originally protected by the mother spider. The spiderlings weren't nearly as dangerous or as fast as the spider however and in a few strikes they were flat and dead. Collecting the reagents from them, Shor returned to the big spider. She dragged it out from under the rock, leaving maybe a leg or two behind. Collecting the reagent from the spider, she concentrated the mana into a small crystal that she put in Kubo's pocket.

After collecting all the reagents to be had (including the stegosaurus' drawn from his guts and severed bodyparts) Shor picked up Kubo, carefully dragged him through the ribcage-passage and put him on her back. Smiling gently, she whispered to Kubo; "See? You can't beat super-strength."

Having made her way out of the mine, Shor returned to the air-bus, carefully placing Kubo in a corner-seat. On the ride back several people had tried to ask why Shor's friend lay there unconscious, but she'd snarled at them clarifying she would answer no such questions. One guy even tried to pickpocket Kubo, said person had a broken arm about a second later.

Back at the orphanage, Shor went to a healer, it was early in the night and the healer seemed more surprised by Kubo being dragged here on Shor's back than by the injuries themself. Shor was a bit infamous after all. Laying Kubo down on the bed she soon fell asleep on the chair next to it, her head resting on the bed even as the healer took care of her arm.

Vera wasn't sure how long it had been. With the window more or less luminally sealed off with drapes and blankets she had broken off from a 24 hour sleep cycle. Deciding it was finally time to get out of bed she began her normal routine. Unwrapping the protective hide from her arm she took note that it was particularly mangled, probably best to find a better system to keep from carving herself up in her sleep. The hide was definitely an improvement from binding her arm to the bed frame as far as comfort was concerned, but really she need some kind of custom built armor for it. She carefully got dressed, making sure not to slice open herself, or her clothing, and retrieved various implements. She measured and recorded the size, thickness, and hardness of the various plates, scales, and spines that now made up her right arm into several journals. This was the second sleep cycle with no apparent additional mutation and the pain was more or less gone, just a deep and dull ache in a few places.

Slowly flexing the various joints she made note of the ranges of movement, and compared them to her other arm. Some had improved from the last cycle but, they were still less than before the mutation started. The rigidity of the spines and the depth of their attachment made rotation of the forearm stiff and somewhat limited, forcing the shoulder to compensate if she wanted to hold her arm out straight with her palm down. The length of her claws and the bulk of the plates on her fingers made it next to impossible to form a fist that wouldn't either break something or slash open her palm on impact. The scales on her palm and the lack of pads on her fingers make it difficult to hold small rigid objects without just spearing them with her claws.

She reaches out for one of her books with her right hand pausing shortly before contact and letting out a nervous chuckle, “Still not quite used to that.” Grabbing the book with her left hand as to not slice through it she flips through the pages one handed eventually finding the section she wanted. A copy of one of the few fragments she could find on lichdom: the pinnacle of the death element; it was a mere description of such an entity, nothing useful, just a reminder of her goal. “One day,” she mused before closing the book with a light thump, “but I need to get more artifacts before we can learn enough to start that.” She takes the time to aggregate the data thus far collected on her arm into a kind of informal report and make a redundant copy before hiding the various journals across her room and returning the tools to their place. She then grabs her cloak and throws it over herself making sure to cover her arm, she locks her door on the way out and heads to the cafeteria.

The awkward and silent return from the mines ended with a much needed shower to remove the dust and dirt that seemed to flow throughout the mines. Once settled, she could handle cleaning up her swords, and replenish her supply of chalks. It was still early evening at this time, leaving Lysette with a decision on how to spend the rest of her day. No decision was made before the time for dinner came around. A sad and lonely meal. Alone.

She returned to her room after the meal and went back to extracting the grime from her belongings. With a bag full of manabeasts still untouched, she thought it was best to handle them tomorrow, and left them alone. Cleaning up those could wait. Only after flopping on her bed and staring at the harshly carved door she remembered her metal reagent was in her bag, under the stack of Earth rabbits. Said rabbits were essentially moving rocks during their period of life, and had now hardened into what were basically rigid statues. Fortunately, they did not crumble and leave a mess of dirt whatever they touched, making storage in the bag no issue.

I guess I'll have to go take that out now and figure out how it'll work

Dumping out the contents: rabbits, chalk, knives, and other miscellaneous survival gear, Lysette found the reagent tucked in a fold and fished it out. She tossed it onto the open space of her room and reached around for the chalks to begin the artifact making process.

Drawing the colored circles right on the floor, she placed the rare metal horn reagent and another feather in the appropriate rings and transferred the mana. Now crafted into yet another feather based artifact, its active ability was capable of rapidly pulling metals toward her. She could now return thrown daggers, swords, or even her enemies swords, back to her with ease. Even more effective usage would be to pull the blades in the unsuspecting target's back while their attention was focused on her. The perfect plan to accompany her style of fighting.

With two feathers now in her hat, her hat fashion had now doubled in effectiveness.

Throughout the rest of the evening, she spent her time refining her elemental skills, and controlling them to work with one another. Using wind to accurately guide her thrown weapons to their targets was her next challenge to master, something that would further reduce the risk of fighting up close with an enemy. Adding Qi to the mix, along with metal in the future would allow her to throw blades with an even greater velocity, reducing the difference in power that swinging a sword up close could provide. Further advances in other types of elements could take it steps further.

Debt would stand no chance at this rate.

It was nice being clean again. Not that he didn’t expect to get dirty while killing manabeasts. But it’s certainly a relief compared to the acidic burns from earlier. His main concern though, is the fact that he nearly died a mere hour or so ago. I can’t be that careless. I need to be more prepared next time. Granted, he did gather a group for the purpose of safety in numbers, but who would have thought Lysette would bail on them? He would have sacrificed himself to protect her, but she only thought of herself in that moment. He didn’t mind that Lysette ran away when she saw the thing -- it was intimidating for sure. But the fact that she didn’t help when they were fighting it? That felt like betrayal of the group. Sirius supposes that he can’t expect other people to be selfless though. Lysette also didn’t receive any of the spoils from that fight, so she already got her just punishment. All in all, the incident today did wake Sirius up to the reality of the situation. I should be more careful about who I can trust. Especially when we may be put in situations of life and death.

Sirius gathers the plate from the metal dragon lizard, a small black horn from a rabbit, a metal stinger from a scorpion, a pink crystal broken off from a bat, and a silvery leg of a spider. He needed to get the metals and crystals identified and then fashioned appropriately into an artifact. The plate is already an artifact, but Sirius figures he might as well give it a functional use too, mainly in the form of an armor piece. He slings his backpack over his shoulder and exits the orphanage, making his way to the local armorsmith.

---

The place is stuffy and Sirius could see the glow of the forges from behind the counter.

“What can I do fer ya, lad?” the gruff shopkeeper asks.

“Can you help me identify some crystals and metals? I’d also like to put in an order for a chestplate, a vambraces, and a shield,” Sirius asks politely, displaying the orphanage crest on his Light ring.

The shopkeeper squints at the crest to confirm and replies, “What do ye have fer me then?”

Sirius places each reagent onto the counter and gingerly sets the metal plate artifact down.
The burly man pulls out a magnifying glass and inspects each one closely. After several minutes of examining and testing out the metals lightly with the hammer, he makes his verdict, “Well lad, you got yerself a glass pendant, rose quartz, obsidian horn, steel plate, aluminum chunk, and a piece of silver.”

“Can you convert the steel plate into a chest plate and make a new vambrace and shield?” Sirius queries.

“Sure can do,” the blacksmith answers, “Lemme get some measurements.”

Sirius obediently stays still while the owner measures his chest and arm.
“So what kinda shield do ye want?” the shopkeeper questions, busy noting down numbers.

“A kite shield please,” Sirius requests.

“Any trim wit’ yer order?”

“Gold would be nice,” Sirius concedes.

“Alrighty, these’ll be done by tomorrow.”

“Can I pick them up in the morning then?”

“Sure, just drop by when ye need to.”

Satisfied, Sirius scoops up the reagents and leaves the plate behind. His next order of business would be to buy some jewelry pieces to put his reagents in.

---

As he opens the door to the jewelry store, a bell tinkles as a sign to his entry. Sirius is greeted by a relatively young woman, “How may I help you today?”

“Just looking around for suitable artifact vessels,” Sirius explains.

“Are you looking for anything in particular?”

“I can find them on my own, thank you,” Sirius remarks, looking around.

The display cases sparkle with all the gemstones and metals shimmering in the light. Sirius had a fondness for jewelry and has one of his ears pierced too. He browses the selection, settling on a simple silver ring and an onyx stud earring.

“I’ll take these two please,” Sirius points out the two pieces he noticed earlier.

The woman retrieves the jewelry from the display cases and puts them in a small box for him. He hands over the money and thanks the owner.

---

Sirius draws circles on the floor of his room around the horn and the earring as well as the spider leg and the ring. Sirius’s room is neatly ordered and practically spotless -- his bed is made, no clothes or dirt to speak of on the floor, books and journals are stacked on a desk tidily, and the clothes in his dresser are organized by type and color.
His new artifacts acquired, he slips the silver ring on his middle finger and replaces his current earring with the artifact one. His ring has the ability to coat things in silver while his earring could create obsidian spikes. Nothing much I can do now to train Crystal or Metal. It’ll just be a waiting game before I have a large enough mana pool to do anything.
With all of his business done for today, Sirius gets a bite to eat at the cafeteria, prepares for the night, and falls asleep in his bed.

Waking up on the side of a dirty, sparkly and bloodstained bed, Shor rose rose to her feet. After a few moments of looking around and seeing Kubo, she remembered the events that had transpired the previous day. "F***ing mess" She mumbled to herself, but when the medic chuckled at Shor's comment, Shor realized that she too, was a mess.

Shor took a long shower to ensure all the blood, dust and glitter was gone before anything else. Since Kubo hadn't waken up yet Shor had decided to let him rest for a while longer and travel alone for the day. Shor returned to her room and started planning. First she'd need a target. Settling on Qi and Life, Shor considered several biomes but eventually settled on a dense forest, forests were blooming with life and Nature would make training Life easier.

---

Shor stopped by some stores to collect everything on her quickly written checklist, before almost forgetting to get her metal reagent crafted into a proper artifact. Rushing in a shop selling accesories, buying somthing she'd considered buying the day before, then quickly heading back out, Shor went to an expert to help her craft the metal fang-reagent into an artifact. With the expert's help Shor managed to create the artifact swiftly. The artifact itself was a snake bracelet* that'd allow her to create chains and slighy manipulate them. After finishing this artifact Shor thanked the expert who had helped her and quickly finished her checklist, had some breakfast at the bakery, bought some food for the trip and headed off.

---

Having taken an airboat to a forest located a good ways away from most villages, Shor was getting ready to embark on her journey into the forest. Shor checked her supplies once more before putting her scarf in the bag and closing it tightly. She pulled her boots around the pipes of her pants so they wouldn't get caught in some thorny plant. Complaining to no one in particular "Can't even wear my scarf here. It's no good since it's out of power and it would just get caught in something...Damnit." Shor entered the forest.

At first she was met with little to no manabeasts at all, but sure enough, plenty of manabeasts were to be found just a little deeper in. The forest turned out to be less than hospitable when the first manabeast she encountered was a giant ape. Despite it being a lot bigger than her, it seemed to have noticed Shor and slammed its massive fist down towards her. Shor managed to roll out of the way, but a shockwave brought forth by a strength the creature shouldn't possess (even despite its size) knocked Shor up into the sky. When the ape reached for her with its other giant hand, Shor instinctively reached for a branch even though there was no way her hand could reach it. From her new bracelet, a thick steel chain shot forth and wrapped itself around the branch, pulling Shor towards it and out of the ape's grasp.

The ape, apparently having missed this, looked around confused and frustrated. Shor, on the branch had pulled the hunting rifle from her back, loaded it and took aim from around the tree. It was tricky business since she'd likely plummet to death if she were to fall. Shor took a deep breath before whistling a high-pitched whistle, drawing the ape's attention. Before the ape could rush at her it let out a shriek of pain. Its eye bled as crystal grew outwards from the eyesocket. Shor's shot had (luckily) connected as it was supposed to.

The ape now flailed madly, constantly agonized by the crystal growing in its eye. Shor quickly lowered herself from the tree with another chain, it might not have been the absolute best tool, but it would have to do now her position was compromised and she needed a quick getaway. The ape ran into several trees in its pursuit, but managed to keep up with Shor despite his lack of depth-vision. Running past several other manabeasts, Shor slowly lost the headstart she had as the ape ran straight through the manabeasts she had to avoid.

Shooting a chain at the ape, it stopped and grabbed it, pulling it towards it. Shor disconnected the chain and turned around, once more aiming the hunting rifle. She shot again, but missed the creatures other eye. A crystal started growing next to its eye, but it seemed mostly unfazed by this as it threw the chain at Shor. In response Shor had little choice but to drop to the floor in order to dodge the chain. The creature charged her once more and Shor had no opportunity to start running again. Aiming one more time, Shor took another shot at the ape. It reached for its eyes but lost its balance, tripped and tumbled her way, a rolling ball of destruction and no way to dodge it. Once more relying on her metal cover, Shor closed her eyes and hoped for the best.

The creature rolled over her, slightly denting part of her shell and came to a dead stop. Correction, just a stop. As Shor removed her metal cover and feeling sore, the ape was already getting up. Turning around to once more stare the ape in the face, Shor saw she had barely missed the eye, half of it now hidden by crystal. The squinting ape seemed to be listening for sounds. Shor picked up a stick and threw it against a tree, drawing the ape there. Quickly turning around, Shor aimed again, she was pissed now. Shooting once in the flailing ape's neck caused it to turn around. The second shot was once more meant for the ape's eye, and this time it hit, accompanied by the sound of the rifle emptying. The creature, now blind, dropped to the ground, wailing in pain.
Shor used her chains to bind the ape to the ground before plunging a crude, rock weapon into its heart. The ape's spasming broke through the chains without a whole lot of trouble, but it was too late for the ape now, it was dead.

Shor had some trouble drawing a chalk circle on the soft ground, but other than that the process of creating a reagent went smoothly. Unfortunately, many of the local manabeasts looked less than pleased, being trampled over by some giant ape. Shor stood still for a while, carefully observing the manabeasts around her. One by one the manabeasts lost interest in her and left, except for two monkeys. A moment of staring passed before the two charged Shor at a ridiculous speed, even though they were the only manabeasts left in the area, Shor's arms were now being forced on the ground by the pair of monkeys.

Lysette awoke early the next day in time for the morning meal time. She went to cafeteria to get her breakfast, bringing along the bag of rabbits in case she could sell them off to another orphan for a meager amount. The scrambled eggs looked good this morning. A generous pile of scrambled eggs and a three egg omelette shortly adorned her plate. Seeing Riss’ bacon deployment against the crystal centipede the day before had reinvigorated her desire for meat. A generous pile of bacon was added to her tray. For a drink, orange juice!
Her dangerously close to tipping tray is carried across the room. Searching out for a empty table, she picks the least occupied one by the back of the room. With only one person sitting at it, it was a prime target. A cloaked and pale looking girl is scribbling through a journal while munching on her breakfast. Lysette slowly slides up to the other end of the table and sits, starting on her breakfast. Over the next few minutes, she gradually scoots close and closer to the girl, sneakily glancing to her right for any signs of reaction. Within the next few minutes, the two are centimeters apart.

“Hey.”

“Are you trying to hit on me?” Vera flatly inquired.

“Hey~~.” Lysette winks. Poorly.

Vera flops her dragon arm on the table with a light thud, “Well. You are a brave one, aren't you,” she jokingly plays along.

“Wanna buy a… rabbit? ;)” Lysette whispers, gesturing toward her bag.

Vera, slightly saddened that the game had already come to an end, raises an eyebrow out of curiosity, “No?”

“Please I need money.”

“Don't we all. Unfortunately, I don't have any to spend at the moment, so unless you want to go out and earn some…”

An offer to hang out! Clearly this was an offer of friendship. A friend has been made. “Yes please come I don’t think the people from yesterday like me anymore.”

“Well then, maybe I shouldn't go hunting with you...” Vera teases, attempting to gain a little insight into this as of yet unknown person.

Lysette has no response. Collapsing in defeat, she falls onto Vera, whispering “Please don’t leave me.” Slight sniffles are heard.

Surprised Vera moves to pat Lysette’s head in a reassuring manner before pushing her off to the side, but instead, noticing the fluffy almost floofy ears is unable to resist gently scratching behind them with her left hand for a few moments. Lightly embarrassed she stutters out a response, “...F-fine.”

Ear scratches were a new feeling, and Lysette clearly had been missing out.

“This was all a ploy to get me to scratch your ears wasn't it?” Vera questioned, pausing for a moment.

“No I want money.”

“Well then maybe you should try to get some of your,” she pauses for just a moment, ”friends from yesterday and meet back here so we can go hunting.”

“Maybe I’ll go get Sirius. Sirius is always nice.” Lysette reluctantly rises from Vera’s lap and abandons her breakfast to search for him. Evidently not in the cafeteria, he was most likely in his room at this time of the day. She nervously knocks on his door and awaits a response.

Sirius opens the door and to his surprise, his visitor is Lysette the abandoner. He chooses to greet Lysette cordially, despite being more wary of her. “Hello, what do you need?”

”Hi Sirius!”

“Um, hi? If you don’t need anything...” Sirius begins.

“No wait wait wait. Don’t move. This is important. Sorry for uh, escaping from the mines without you. And Riss. I guess I panicked and… zoned out at the end,” Lysette’s ears and tail slowly drooping throughout the phrase.

Slightly looking towards the ground, she mumbles “Will you still go out with me?”

“...”

“NO WAIT I MEAN HUNTING. HUNTING. NOT LIKE THAT NO.”

Sirius considers Lysette’s apology. “I wasn’t upset that you escaped from the mines, I was upset because you didn’t help us with the centipede,” Sirius winks at Lysette, “I’m also not interested in any romantic relationships at the moment. But I’ll give you a second chance and go hunting with you.”

“Yes! Thank you! You should come meet my new friend.” Lysette grabs Sirius’ arm and attempts to drag him back to the cafeteria.

Sirius lets Lysette pull him along. “You might give people ideas about us,” he jokes.

Lysette ignores his tease and brings him in front of Vera. “I brought him!”

Sirius examines the new girl in front of him. It’s definitely the first time he’s seen her. She’s fairly short and her complexion seemed sickly. Sirius holds out a hand to shake, “Hello, my name is Sirius. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Vera, and i’m going to have to pass on that handshake,” she excuses herself from the pleasantry by revealing her draconian right hand emphasizing her claws.

“I can see why. What artifacts do you have?” Sirius asks, “Seeing as we’re going to fight manabeasts.”

“Just Death, this is the first day I’ve really left my room for an extended length of time.”

“Riss also is going into Death, you two might get along with each other,” Sirius muses.

“Is he the one with the room?” Vera asks not wanting to pair up with whoever needed their room fumigated.

“Yes, although he has a nice collection of plants. And a bird,” Sirius replies.

She politely declines, “I think I’ll pass, his methods seem a tad,” she hesitates for a few beats trying to find a word to properly show her disapproval, while still keeping up appearances, “disorganized.”

“It smells like death.” Lysette wrinkles her nose in discomfort.

“I heard Lysette mention hunting? What are your plans for that?” Sirius asks.

“Hadn't planned any farther than just going out and trying to find some manabeasts to kill and harvest,” Vera admits plainly.

“Hmm… well if no one has any plans, I personally would be interested in a Light manabeast,” Sirius proposes.

“Wouldn't mind one of those myself to be honest,” Vera agrees looking slightly up and to the side her mind already churning out potential uses and combinatorial effects.

“Sure! Where would we find one of those though?” Lysette inquires.

“Probably at an altar or something. There should also be an increase of Light manabeasts during the day as well,” Sirius responds.

“You good with going there, Vera? I’m fine with it, I’ll go grab my gear” Lysette asks.

She hesitates everso slightly, “Sure.”

“I have all of my hunting equipment ready, but I need to pick some items up from the blacksmith,” Sirius comments.

Vera rises from her seat, “In that case let me just grab a few things and i’ll be ready to go.”

Lysette heads to her room in order to prepare, first emptying her bag of the Earth rabbits and to grab her weapons. She returns to meet Sirius and Vera in the cafeteria.

Vera heads to her room and grabs the adventuring gear she had prepacked over the previous days as the mutation had slowed down. She carefully changes into something a bit more defensive and heads back out to Sirius and Lysette, once again tossing the cloak over herself and making sure to lock her door.

“Where’s the nearest altar? Do you think we’ll need to take a landboat or train there?”

“Landboat, the area we’re looking for is relatively in the open,” Sirius answers.

Lysette nods and says “Lead the way.”

“Alright, if you don’t mind following me to the blacksmith.”

---

The shopkeeper recognizes him from yesterday and greets him. Sirius receives his new armor and shield and slides several coins over to the blacksmith. He tries on his chestplate and vambrace and is satisfied with the fit. Thanking the blacksmith, Sirius exits the shop with the other two trailing behind him.

The trio then head to the land docks, and showing their crests, board a land boat.

Some amount of time later, the group arrives at a platform on a hill overlooking the expanse and disembark enjoying the view; an open field covered in swaths of tall grass blowing in the gentle breeze like ripples on a pond. At six or seven feet high, the grass could easily conceal manabeasts within.

Lysette looks to Sirius and Vera to say “Which way should we head off on?”

Sirius pulls out a map, “We need to travel southeast from here.”

“Well seeing as you have the map, lead the way,” Vera responds.

“I don’t have a compass either,” Lysette adds.

Sirius leads the way off into the grass.

---

As the group walks, Lysette trips on something, and is almost immediately, rapidly dragged off away from the group.

“REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE” Lysette shrieks as she is pulled into the darkness of the tall grass. Goodbye my friends…

Vera starts running off after Lysette, “God damnit stab the thing!”

Sirius debates whether to start weed whacking immediately, but doesn’t because of potential friendly fire. He is useless here.

Lysette’s flailing arms catch hold to tufts of grass, bringing her to a stop. Now able to look around, she sees the vines wrapped around her legs, straining to continue retreating. “Sirius! Free me! Over here!”

Sirius starts sprinting in the direction of Lysette’s voice.

Vera comes running over to Lysette’s flailing form and taking a few more steps, slashes through the vines with her claws.

Scrambling back from the separated vines, Lysette begins peeling off the greenery attached to her legs. Once on her feet, she creates a blast of wind, knocking back the reapproaching vines. The wind pushes a line of grass apart, revealing more of the vines further down.

He catches up to the two of them and helps them fend off the vines by hacking them whenever they got close.

“So do we harvest this one or just try to leave?” Vera polls the group.

“What if we let it pull Sirius this time, and follow it to the source?” Lysette jokes.

“I think we can tell where it's coming from,” Vera sternly interjects.

“If you really think that’s a good strategy, I’ll do it. But I’m worried about lighting the entire field on fire,” Sirius replies evenly.

“Let's not set everything on fire,” Vera requests.

Lysette pushes the grass apart with another wave of air, clearing a path that Sirius would have an easier time moving through. Leading the way, she quickly spots the source, a large clump of vines. Reacting to the group’s entry to the small clearing of grass where it sat in, it sent several feelers towards the three. With their slow moving nature, Lysette easily slashes them out of the air before they get close, causing them to jerk back towards the vine ball.

Sirius takes the opening and stabs the amorphous clump of vines. It begins thrashing violently at the trio.

Vera thrusts her arm as far into the writhing mass of vines as she can, grasping at whatever might be there and attempting to rip out a chunk of the beast.

Lysette takes the opportunity while Vera is reaching inside to cut down the vines that were encircling her. Once cleared away, she takes a second to apply her Death artifact’s enhancement to her sword. With careful aim, she plunges it into the center, making sure not to stab into the area Vera’s arm was occupying.

Trying to withdraw her arm, Vera finds it is quite stuck, and instead starts carving out an area with her claws the best she can.

Sirius starts cutting things, taking care to avoid cutting Vera’s arm.

A few minutes later the mass of vines stops moving and as Lysette and Sirius take a few steps back, the party takes a moment to catch their breath.

Vera, slightly embarrassed, breaks the silence, “So uhh...my arm is kinda, stuck,” giving a quick tug on her arm to show it is indeed trapped in the mass of vegetation.

“Should we… carve it out?” Lysette asks.

Vera looks slightly concerned at the thought of Lysette carving near her arm, “It might be best if I do it, but I can't reach anything out of my pack at the moment.”

“Here, take this knife and have at it.” Lysette passes Vera the knife.

Vera takes the knife and starts carefully cutting through the vines in order to free her arm. In an attempt to keep the others distracted she asks, “So who’s getting this one? Or are we going to divide it up?”

“I have no interest in Nature, I’d just be selling it,” Lysette states.

Vera pauses for a moment falling prey to her own distraction, “Let's see, Nature.. No conflicts, complements with Earth, Water, and Life. I mean I could use it, but I’m not overly attached.” She then resumes freeing her arm at a slightly increased pace.

“I would be selling it as well,” Sirius remarks.

“Lets sell it and split the money then,” Vera decides finally freeing her arm. She takes a moment to look it over before handing lysette her knife back, “Thanks.”

Stowing away her weapons, Lysette begins to grab the loose vines and bundle the manabeast into the smallest ball possible.

“Make some surface Sirius?”

Sirius obliges and a thin light platform appears, hovering inches above the ground.

The manabeast is quickly encircled with chalk and a reagent made of a length of vine. Lysette finishes up and indicates to the group that she’s done. “Thank you Sirius, you can drop it now, don’t spend all your mana.”

“It doesn’t cost that much mana to maintain,” Sirius replies, dissipating the light construct.

“Back to walking now if everyone’s good?” Lysette says as she stows away the reagent.

“Southeast I believe it was?” Vera adds looking to Sirius.

“Yes.”

The group then heads off to the southeast, watching for more vines as they go.

---

The party arrives at a large stone outcropping with a marble altar in its center. The entire area is brighter than the surrounding lands and almost thrums with energy. The foliage is more lush and vivid yet tame, and the area around the altar is clear of any vegetation. A large herd of deer graze in the clearing, scattered around the altar. What is even more peculiar is that some of the deer are pure white and glowing. Interestingly enough, they also don’t seem to be concerned about the artificers’ presence.

“What should we do about all these deer?” Sirius questions.

“Uhhhhhhh, get a few to go somewhere else?” Vera suggests.

“Okay,” Sirius responds, boxing a deer on the outskirts of the group inside a light construct and levitating it away. The other deer thankfully don’t seem too troubled by this occurrence.

“Look at it go. One deer away. What about the other deer?” Lysette asks.

“We could just fight them one at a time,” Vera said.

Sirius shrugs, placing the deer down in a adjacent clearing, isolated and hidden from the rest of the herd, “Better to be safe than sorry.”

“So I haven't really had that much combat experience, do we just stab it now or?” Vera inquires.

Sirius responds, “Unless you have another method to kill it, sure.”

Vera, not confident in her abilities to avoid a counter attack, attempts to get one of her more hardy companions to start the fight, “You first?”

Lysette swings for the neck. The deer just stands there, expecting to be saved by mama deer. But nobody came...

The deer’s head falls cleanly to the ground with a gentle plop. Blood sprays liberally.
Sirius draws a circle around the deer and converts it into a reagent.
After he’s done, another deer is spirited away by a Light box.
The other deer watch quizzically as their second brethren is removed from the safety of the herd. Unbeknownst to the evil humans, a few deer follow the pretty light box from a distance as it floats away over the grass.

The second deer dies the same way as the first. This was way too easy...

The group of three deer that had followed Sirius’s light box emerge into the clearing and freeze. They see two dead decapitated deer on the ground amid a massive pool of blood. They see a human with blood dripping from her sword. They put two and two together, and charge balls of light in their mouths before firing blazing beams of light at Lysette.

Sirius instantly materializes a single mirror in front of Lysette. Lysette unintentionally combat rolls away from the cover of the mirror as the beams fall upon the mirror and reflect, one beam catching some grass on fire.

Lysette saves the environment by sucking out the air around the fire, preventing its spread.

Vera makes a lifting motion with her right arm, followed by a swift gesture to the side. The two decapitated deer rise up and charge the three deer.

Having just attacked Lysette and hesitant to attack the bodies of their siblings, two of the living deer are knocked over. The remaining deer rallies itself and creates a sharp wedge of solid light that it drops down to cut an undead deer in half.

The remaining, mostly intact, undead deer helpfully flails about on top of the deer that it had knocked over, preventing it from getting up quickly.

Sirius swings his sword down on the neck of the flailing live deer. The blade stops against a thin barrier of light just above the two flailing deer. After a moment, the barrier thickens. Sirius tries a different method, firing a laser that seemingly misses at first but hits a mirror that angles downward at the deer. The grass around it catches on fire, but eventually hits the deer as Sirius adjusts the angle of the mirror. The Lightdeer goes limp -- a lucky blow was struck.

Standing deer opens its mouth and preps another hyperbeam for Lysette, bothered by the blood still dripping from her sword. Lysette deftly combat rolls once again, allowing the environment to take yet another hit. Like a true eco-warrior, she quickly extinguishes this fire as well. The deer mentally apologizes to the grass.

Deer number two finishes saying prayers over its bisected cousin and wheels around to snarfle angrily at Sirius. It begins another prayer for the third dead deer of the day.

Sirius readies himself and prepares for an attack by the deer. Devout deer deploys a light barrier in front of itself and its friend, who charges smaller balls of light on either side of itself, focused on Sirius. Ideally, he wouldn’t be able to block both. So Sirius instead boxes the deer itself in mirrors. A bit miffed, the laser deer stops and forms the orbs of light outside of the box before firing at Sirius again. It couldn’t see him, but it knew where Sirius was before, and being full of light mana made him easy to sense. He dissipates the mirror box in response and sets up a mirror protecting himself. The beams nearly hit Sirius before the mirror appears and deflects the lasers harmlessly. Sirius counterattacks by materializing an obsidian spike from below the deer and impaling it through the midsection.

At the same time the undead decapitated deer blindsides the left deer bringing it to the ground. The barrier flickers and drops as the fallen deer thrashes helplessly. Lysette takes this opportunity to sprint in and stab the deer. A light barrier appears and shatters instantly as her blade penetrates the deer’s head.

Without wasting a moment, Lysette whips out her red chalk and starts drawing a circle. Nothing would stand between her and freedom.

Vera, after quickly checking for more deer, approaches one of the Light manabeast corpses, uses her claws to cut off a palm-sized piece of antler, and drills a small hole at the larger end for fashioning the antler into an amulet. Satisfied with her work, she sets it on the corpse of the manabeast and takes her time drawing out the binding runes and creating the reagent.

Sirius elects to keep watch. He already had a Light reagent and isn’t particularly greedy for another immediately.

As the pair finish creating their reagents, a lone deer approaches the party. Sirius warns the group to get ready to fight. It’s lucky that another one wandered over here alone.

Vera’s vision blurs and heart races, eyes widening in terror as she looks to the deer, its form flawless and radiant …That's not light... Her mana is quickly annihilated, rendering Vera completely helpless. The almost godlike aura of the single deer stuns the entire party as more and more deer enter the clearing, their antlers glowing a painful white. Vera, on the other hand, feels her mind being crushed into a smaller and smaller crevice. We’ve got to leave it’s going to kill us… I have to run… move… Her eyes can see the deer clear as day, but to her it's muddled, and unintelligible. Unable to comprehend anything other than base emotions, she can no longer grasp why her last sliver of remaining consciousness is being reduced to a feral fear. What's left of her vision fails her as the herd unleashes a storm of light. The only sensations available to her is a throbbing in her shoulder, the slight plinking of her ring hitting the ground amidst a rain of ash, a dull pain in the back of her head, and then nothing.

Sirius sees Vera drop and immediately sprints over, scooping her up and running away. He glances back, seeing a majestic deer radiating an intensely pure aura. Holy..?

The monkeys started to look frustrated when Shor tried to force her arms back up. Frustration would soon be replaced by surprise when Shor enhanced her strength with some of her own mana, catching one of the monkeys between her palms as she slammed them together. Surprisingly enough, this didn't kill the creature, although it visibly left it rather dazed. As she got up, the other once more lunged at Shor, it's speed proving too much for Shor to keep up with as it hit her right in the gut. Bothered, but generally too pissed to care, Shor threw a punch at a monkey. The monkey dodged easily with it's unbelievable speed and the other monkey launched itself at Shor after she failed her attack. Realizing she couldn't defeat the monkeys up close, Shor decided she'd have to trick them somehow.

Creating a spear with her earth artifact and covering it in metal, she now had a decent weapon to strike from some distance. Lunging at the monkeys was unsurprisingly ineffective and both the monkeys charged her now. Rather than try to dodge again, Shor covered her torso in metal. Slamming into the chestplate with a cracking sound, the monkeys fall to the ground and try to get up. Unable to ustilise their speed, they attempt to crawl away, making decent headway despite seeming to have broken some limbs and maybe ribs. Reaching for her gun, Shor swiftly puts in another crystal reagent. Hitting the first monkey in the head and killing it immediately. Seeing his partner die, the other monkey scurries off even faster, but halts when it gets hit in the leg and crystals pin it to the ground. Pulling its leg in an attempt to rip itself free, it barely manages to do so. It did not manage to do so in time however, as the moment it breaks free a crystal bullet pierces its chest.

After having collected these two reagents as well, Shor begins travelling back. She had run quite a ways when trying to distance herself from the ape. Luckily the heavy creature's deeply imprinted footprints as well as the splatters of blood on the ground maybe for a decent guideline to where she had originally enountered it. About halfway along this trail however, a porcupine blocked the path. The porcupine poked its nose against a smaller creature, a ferret that looked as if it had been trampled by something big, presumably the ape. The porcupine's quills lit up in a gentle green and the ferret quickly looked a lot healthier. It did not start moving however, it appeared the ferret was already dead. Surprised she'd actually managed to find a life manabeast, Shor slowly approached the creature. As tired as she was, she was not going to let this opportunity pass by.

Shor created a warhammer and slammed it down towards the porcupine. Her strike hit nothing but air however, as the porcupine nimbly dodged out of the way. After dodging Shor's attack, it ran to away to create some distance before turning around and shooting its spikes at her. The distance made it easy enough to see the attack coming, but with the spread of the quills, dodging would be out of the question. Once again encasing herself in metal, Shor was unpleasntly surprised when she still felt the sting of the quills. Looking down, the quills, while mostly stopped by the layer of metal, had punched through it, leaving some nasty stinging. The porcupine meanwhile, glowed up once more and regrew the quills it had shot. Quickly taking cover behind a tree, Shor was relieved to see the quills fall along with the metal casing. Readying her gun, Shor peered around the tree, only to immediately pull her head back and barely avoid getting her skull pierced. Utilising the moment it took to regrow the quills, Shor stepped out from behing the cover of the tree and shot the porcupine. It shrieked and exploded in a rain of quills, barely dodged by jumping to cover.

Once more peering around the tree, instead of seeing a dead porcupine, she saw that the porcupine was already regenerating its lost quills. Shor shot the porcupine again, causing it to shriek and explode once more. She managed to pull her head away from the rain of spikes again. Grateful for the tree's cover, Shor suddenly felt a sting in her back. She looks down to see a quill sticking out of the tree. "What the f***!? How even?" Determined to end this battle quickly, motivated by the stinging of her wounds as well as her failing cover, Shor leaps out from behind the tree. Creating a rock hammer bigger than any she's made before, then covering it in a layer of metal with a thick, hollow head, she slams down on the creature. Spending a considerable amount of mana to enhance her strenght and improve her coordination, the hammer hits the creature, drawing one final shriek and another quill-explosion, luckily contained by the hammer's big, hollow head.

Before being able to collect the reagent, a bush unearths itself and readies itself to attack Shor. Picking up her rifle, she quickly empties the rest of the magazine intot the creature, reloads and empties another magazine. The now largely crystallized bush falls backwards and shatters upon impact. Salvaging a single quill from the bloody heap that was once a porcupine and a crystallized leaf from the disregarded bush, Shor channels the mana into the reagents. Mumbling to herself "I should probably adapt a more... elegant fighting style. I've just showered this morning and I'm already covered in blood and dirt again." She quick-fixed her wounds and returned to the forest's entrance, to her relief without anymore delays.

Stepping out of the forest with a sigh of relief, Shor noted to herself she should probably explore closer to the city for a while since there are way more manabeasts here and they also happen to be stronger than the ones near the city. Returning to the airbus-stop and waiting for a couple of minutes, Shor was relieved to see she had not missed what few airbuses actually travelled here.

---

Returning to the orphanage, Shor checked in at a healer's post first, getting the proper treatment for her wounds. Taking another thorough shower she eventually manages to cleanse herself of the blood and grime again.
Grabbing some leftovers from her bag for dinner, she returned to her room. By the time she was done showering and eating it was getting rather late. Studying a little and going to bed soon after, Shor fell asleep peacefully, getting some well-deserved rest.

Lysette takes off after Sirius immediately, using Wind mana to push the tall grass apart from their path, as well as increasing their running speed slightly.

“Sirius! Where are we going?!” Lysette screams.

“We have to find somewhere safe so we can check on Vera. A clearing or once we’re out of this grass!” Sirius shouts back.

The group continues onward, eventually reaching a clearing where they could stop to inspect Vera. Sirius gently sets her down on a light platform and begins searching his bag for medical supplies.

“Her arm is gone.” Lysette states, staring at Sirius’ medical attempt.

Vera’s arm is indeed gone. It has been burned away slightly past the joint, the flesh carbonized, cracked and oozing blood. The bone is charred and the marrow exposed. It's a mercy that she's not awake.

“We should bandage the side so it doesn’t get infected.”

“I think we need to deal with the bleeding more than worry about the infection. We just need to make sure she doesn’t bleed out by the time we get to a healer,” Sirius reasons.

Using what medical knowledge Sirius has, he fixes up Vera to the best of his ability. From his training at the orphanage he knew that he needed to see the full extent of her injuries, and that he was going to have to wrap something around her torso to keep the bandage in place; and that meant having to remove clothing. With Lysette’s help he removes Vera’s shirt, and without even considering temptation, applies bandages her shoulder wrapping strips of cloth from her shoulder around her torso tightly, but not tight enough to interfere with her breathing. He decides against replacing her shirt, on the off chance the dressing slips off the wound and instead elects to use a few more wrappings to preserve Vera’s modesty. Throughout the course of treating Vera’s wound Sirius and Lysette notice a few dozen almost completely healed cuts on Vera’s left side. Lysette thinks little of them, dismissing them as wounds from hunting. Sirius is slightly concerned but keeps it to himself.

Lysette says “We should get back to the landboat stop quickly so we don’t miss the next one. The faster we get back, the better. We don’t even know if that deer is still after us or not either. Or a vine creature.”

“Yeah,” Sirius agrees, “We got very few things to sell, so if you want we can kill all the small manabeasts along the way.”

“Sounds good” Lysette says, punting a groundhog manabeast into the air simultaneously.

A laser roasts a nearby squirrel and Sirius mentions, “I have my hands full so you can pick up all the corpses.”

The pair continue onward, systematically eliminating and bagging manabeasts as they go. Was Vera’s safety even his main interest anymore? Sirius was concerned about Lysette’s interest as well, but at the very least it seemed as if Vera’s condition had stabilized.

At last, the landboat stop the three had arrived on came into sight. Since Vera had lost her artifact that identified her as part of the orphanage, Sirius pays a small fee for her to get on the landboat with them.

Over the duration of the ride Vera luckily doesn't wake up. But she does stir, whimper, and attempt to bury her face into Sirius’s chest, her progress halted by the breastplate. The group earns quite a few looks and some murmurs pass through the boat but the ride is otherwise unremarkable.

The trio arrive at town and head to the orphanage. There is a short delay at the orphanage as Vera’s identity is confirmed. Sirius takes her directly to the healer and lays her gingerly on the cot, eliciting a slight murmur.

Setting Vera’s things off to the side he sits in one of the chairs to wait and make sure she recovers. At the medic’s prompting Sirius searches though Vera’s pack, having made it clear that Vera won't fully recover immediately. There's no danger, just some lingering, and fading, effects preventing her from awakening for the time being.

As the medic is finishing up Sirius finds what he is looking for: Vera’s room key. Reading the number, he scoops up their belongings with a light platform, picks up Vera, and heads off to her room with Lysette tagging along. Along the way she stirs slightly, her right hand reaching out to hold herself steady finding purchase on the collar of Sirius’ breast plate. Her claws tightly cling to surface with a light rasping sound as they curl around the rim causing the metal to flex slightly as they anchor themselves in place.

Reaching Vera’s room, Sirius unlocks and opens the door only to find a pitch black room. Creating a soft orb of light, he enters and sets their belongings down inside for the time being. Lysette drops off Vera’s portion of manabeasts and waits for Sirius. Walking over to Vera’s bed, he attempts to just set her down. ‘Attempts’ being the operative word, her grip on his armor is stronger than one would expect for someone of her constitution. Sirius pries her hands off the armor as gently as he can, as he did not think that Vera would appreciate waking up with Sirius in her room. Vera is in no danger anyways--the healer confirmed it, so Sirius tucks Vera in her bed and leaves the room, the door closing with a soft click.

Vera

Vera wakes up in the middle of the night with a whimpering groan. There is a cold and sticky wetness to her normally warm and fuzzy furs; a sharp pain in her left side and arm; and a numbness in her extremities. In her groggy state it takes her a moment to realize what's wrong. I went to bed without securing my claws? She painfully moves the covers out of her way and realizes she seems to be wearing some kind of, now tattered, wrap around her chest and a normal pair of pants. She recalls the previous day’s adventure: she made a Light reagent, then Sirius said something, but she struggles to remember anything past that. She gingerly maneuvers herself to the edge of her bed, deciding that it may be best to avoid him for the time being. Attempting to stand up she finds that her legs give out underneath her, collapsing to the floor with a cry of pain. She takes a moment to gather herself and shakily stands back up slowly stumbling around her room, bracing herself on the furniture, looking for wherever whoever left her room key, finding it after a few moments. Tossing a cloak over herself and locking her door on the way out, she slowly makes her way to the healer, bracing herself with the wall and having to take frequent stops to rest lest she pass out.

Returning to her room Vera looks over the small pile of manabeast corpses left on her desk, they’re all Earth which she has little interest in, however she notes one of them is slate which could be particularly useful. Stripping off the top layer of her bedding she lays it on the floor using a portion of it for each half of the artifact creation process. She is left with a small sealed slate tile that can create and disperse a blackboard of various size. Balling up the bedding and moving it off to the side she uses her new artifact to create a surface with which to turn the other two earth manabeasts into reagents for sale. She retrieves the antler amulet made from the Light deer, turning it over in her hand, mulling over the possibilities, not quite sure what function it should have. She threads a length of leather cordage through it and ties the ends, weighing several options. Setting it aside for the time being, she instead stripps the rest of her bedding, balling it all up and taking it off to the laundry service leaving it and payment behind.

Returning to her room, she removes her cloak and locks the door once inside. Still wearing nothing but the pants and wrap from the day before, she retrieves her journals from their hiding places and begins recording what noteworthy parts of the hunt she can remember, all the while weighing the options for her next artifact. She then moves on to check if her arm has at all changed and is quite surprised to find that her ring is missing. Making a note that she needs to get a new form of identification, she re-measures all of her previous metrics, however any changes are negligible. Staring at her claws it comes to her that the Light artifact may be the answer to her sleep problem. Bringing out a new slate surface she begins the process of finishing the artifact. In the end she has an amulet that she can use to put barriers over the sharp parts of her arm as she sleeps. Not wanting to assimilate any part of a deer, she’ll have to be careful about how long she wears it. She dismisses the slate, finishes up with her journals and hides them away.

Tiredness flooding back to her, she decides showering can wait till tomorrow. Removing the wrappings from her chest and the rest of her clothing; she dawns the new artifact and activates it, the muted glow hardly even casting shadows. Not wanting to rip apart her unprotected bed on the off chance the artifact fails at its trial run, she curls up on the rug in the middle of her room and drifts off to sleep.

After making sure Vera would be okay, Sirius retreats to his own room. He doesn’t bother turning on the light and leans against a wall. Several seconds of silence pass before Sirius balls his fist and slams it into the wall.
This is the second time he and others nearly died.
He wrongfully thought that because he faced death yesterday, he would be more prepared today.
Sirius needed to be better.
He takes in several slow, deep breaths to calm himself down a little. He had been too worried about Vera and too shocked after the incident to let himself feel properly.
The Holy manabeast today was his fault. He should’ve sensed something was off -- he sensed the other deer just fine with their abundance of Light mana. But somehow the fact that he didn’t sense anything from the obviously glowing deer didn’t tip him off.
Sirius creates a small orb of light and examines his right hand gingerly. There doesn’t seem to be any signs of damage aside from the swelling.
He treks back to the nurse and sheepishly offers his hand for her to heal. The nurse thankfully doesn’t question him about it and makes his hand normal again. Sirius thanks her graciously and leaves for the training facility in the orphanage. Partway there, he pauses and figures that he should check up on Riss to see how he was doing.

Sirius braces himself for the stench that would be no doubt coming from Riss’s room and walks to his door, opening it. Riss seems to be laying in bed and moaning in pain. Shaking his head slightly, Sirius picks him up and takes him to the nurse as well. The nurse raises an eyebrow at Sirius’s quick reappearance and Sirius only offers a light-hearted shrug. He was unsure of what happened to Riss or what caused his ailment, but it wouldn’t surprise Sirius if it was due to the state of Riss’s room. It appears as if Riss would take some time to recover so Sirius departs (again) for the training room.

The stench of sweat and body odor permeates the training room, a relatively simple area stocked with weights, punching bags, and other implements to improve oneself physically.
Sirius makes his way to a punching bag and throws out a punch experimentally. The leather material absorbs the impact easily and he punches with his other hand.
Once Sirius settles into a good rhythm, his mind wanders onto other topics.
What should he do in the future? Sirius sure wasn’t confident in hunting more manabeasts without substantial progress on his part. It was foolish of him to expect anything different on the second day. He had his new artifacts but they hardly helped in dealing with the real threat.
Taking time off to train and help out around the orphanage certainly wasn’t a waste of his time either. His accuracy with using mirrors to aim and redirect light also had a lot to be desired.
Repaying his debt was still urgent, although he had more leeway than a lot of the kids for joining relatively late. Sirius figures if people with bigger debts could pay theirs off in time, he should be able to pay his off.

Beads of sweat are rolling down Sirius’s face from the physical exertion. He grabs a clean towel from a stack and dries his face. He takes a deep breath in and out.
All he had to do was focus on training for a bit, and he’d be good to go. Or at least better off.
He takes a shower, revelling in the feeling of sweat and grime being washed away, and goes to eat dinner. Sirius exchanges a few pleasantries with the people there and then turns in early for the night.

Vera

Vera wakes up with a shivering groan instinctively massaging the crick in her neck with her right hand. Realizing her mistake calls for celebration as she didn't slice her neck open, the light barriers held. Standing up takes off her amulet and places it on the far side of the room not wanting to sprout antlers. Changing into something simple she grabs some things to take a shower and on the way out snags the amulet thinking it may be easier with the use of both hands.

And it is far easier, the water is warm and refreshing she leans against the wall and just lets it wash down her back as she tries to recall what happened yesterday. Giving up eventually she shuts off the water dries off and gets dressed getting new identification and grabbing her bedding on the way back to her room. She makes her bed and sits on it still feeling uneasy about her missing time.