As soon as he fired the weapon, Snap Shot twisted his arms down and to the side. It was the most dramatic adjustment the ability had ever made, and it wasn’t enough. He quickly lost sight of the projectile but could see by the aura that the monster hadn’t been hit. Khiat’s monstrous arrow missed too, though their volley did succeed in provoking the monsters.
It couldn’t compensate for wind shifts after I fired, Daniel surmised. Hitting something from a kilometer away with the force his weapon could put out was perhaps too powerful for his level anyway. If there was no challenge, he wouldn’t advance. I will have to stop using Snap Shot eventually, once I figure out how to make this more accurate.
“Miss?” Willow asked as he pulled back on the blast bow’s bolt.
“We both did. Not too surprising.” Daniel checked the bag of holding on his left hip, which held the extra magazines. He’d made three others for fire ammo, two for lightning which were proving slightly unstable given the bullet’s affix damage could trigger the primer in some rare circumstances, two for normal damage in case something was resistant to both of those, and one magazine that was wrapped in leather to prevent him from loading it accidentally. The springs he used for them were cheap and the boxes not too difficult to enchant, the real limiting factor was the bullets.
In total, he had 61 shots left before it would be time to pull out the bone claws and consider Beast Mode. Not enough to comfortably take on the thirty or so monsters below him, but that’s what being on a team was for. “Mark!” Khare cried out, leveling one of the smaller versions of the blast bow Daniel had made for them with the leftover andorite. It wasn’t magazine-fed but loaded manually, Khare able to do this more efficiently with their vines. However-
“Khare, there’s no way you’re hitting one from here.”
“Mark!”
“Fine.” He used Called Shot on the same iridescent whitespring, which was joining the others in flying up to challenge them. The monsters moved in a strange pattern, corkscrewing through the air until they were coiled and then shooting forward with a burst of speed, ending up straight again. The acceleration suggested some kind of power was in play, especially since the young whitesprings did not have this speed and began to fall behind.
Khare’s weapon snapped as it discharged, the noise almost down to the point it could be used as a stealth weapon. Theirs was more comparable to a handgun, though the projectile could still fly far due to the base enchantment used on the barrel. Unsurprisingly, Khare missed.
“Mark me until they’re about three hundred meters away, then open up yourself. This is just like the desert urchins, you should wait until they’re closer.”
“Accede,” Khare sighed, and highlighted the marked monster again for Daniel to strike.
“They’re so… calm,” he heard Bertrar comment, and Daniel looked over after he missed again at a range of about 850 meters. It took him a moment to realize what the other team was doing because his eyes refused to believe it at first. They were all sitting on a nearby cloud, Kahvin even idly swinging his legs back and forth over the side. Adva and Clacki were the only two who seemed remotely alert. “If all those monsters got to us right now, I’m pretty sure I’d die.”
“You’re all from the Thormundz, right?” Adva called over.
“Yeah, most of us.”
“Explains it. Heard you fought through the Crest to escape. Figuratively.”
“Almost literally,” Daniel replied with a scowl as he missed at 600 meters. The level 3 whitesprings were fast, though he could already tell their burst of speed was a potential weakness as they committed themselves to the direction they shot toward. He lightened his tone when speaking to the Totem Warrior, figuring he shouldn’t blame her for the piece of work her boss was. “Fight enough dragons and the little stuff doesn’t bother you.”
“Dragons,” Kahvin scoffed.
Daniel turned his attention back to the approaching monster pack and was surprised to find two missing. Khiat had nailed some of the level 2s, switching targets at the far end of her range since the stronger monsters were proving too nimble. Dexterity-based monsters, he decided, and adopted her strategy. On his fourth shot, he finally hit something.
The whitespring had tried to coil and jet away, but his projectile moved too quickly. Keen Sense did nothing for his eyesight and he couldn’t make out exactly what had happened, but he guessed the initial hit had cored the monster and left it with enough vitality to keep going. He was trying to figure out the best ways to manipulate the size of the spineshard jacket and bullet to make it break up like shotgun pellets in midair, but hadn’t gotten a working model yet. Splitting ammunition was temporarily a no go. Because the gun was enchanted in parts rather than one whole, the ammunition triggered while in the barrel and had almost destroyed the one that had been fitted when first tested.
For now, Scatter Shot filled in the gap. For yet more mana per shot, he added a ridiculous amount of burst damage. The explosion of attacks around the creature appeared as quick moving lines of bullets that faded a short distance away. Most did nothing, but the few that intersected with the whitespring drilled more holes in its body. The level 2 briefly managed to activate its speed burst before the body broke away. He’d made the kill at 534 meters, estimate courtesy of Quick Mind.
By the time Khare began unloading their weapons, they’d killed seven of the level 2s and one of the alphas. Most were due to Khiat, whose natural aim continued to outshine Daniel’s magically enhanced one. The iridescent whitesprings had proven too fast to hit at far range and were at the front of the pack, the crossed and remaining alphas close behind. Still 600 meters away were the lagging level 1s, almost pitiful in their attempts to get to them.
“This is a common strategy,” Clacki commented, a bit of nerves in his voice as it was clear a melee would happen before the hunt was over. “If it were me down there I’d get in the shadow of clouds and islands and make for the ground limit to run away, but most low level monsters are mindless enough to fly at you until they die.”
“Why don’t we have anyone that can shoot that far?” Bertrar asked.
“Ask the boss.”
Daniel reloaded his weapon during the side conversation, taking care to drop the empty magazine in the right bag of holding and withdraw from the left. All of the earlier confusion that had happened when he had made far too many bags of holding had inspired him to make conventions such as this. He reached for the lightning ammunition next, distinguished by the purple tip on the bullet similar to how Khiat’s lightning enchanted arrows had a purple band around the head.
The only issue with his current ammunition design was that it was time intensive to make every shot. Arcane Creator had given him individual formulae for each combination of bullet and primer, but there were problems with enchanting it in one piece. He had gotten one for the blast bow as well, and it was ludicrously hard to make from just one base material. As far as the rounds in total, each one he fired took about 15 minutes to make, not accounting for Ammunition Surplus. It didn’t sound like much until you counted and realized you’d already thrown about two hours of work at the enemy.
First world problems, he thought as he eliminated another level 2 with the lightning-charged ammunition. It didn’t seem like the normal ones had special resistance to those two elements. He pulled back on the bolt, the lead whitespring just over 200 meters away. “Tlara, if you’re going to try to dominate anything, it’d be better if you go down there now.”
The wyvern, who was forced to continue flying as Tlara was unable to hover with her wings, did a few lazy swoops. On her back, one of Willow’s hands began to shine with a faint light. The Spirit Master was nervous but determined. “I don’t know if she- ah!” Willow exclaimed towards the end as Tlara dove towards the approaching monsters, angling for the iridescent he’d been trying to hit.
From this distance, he could make out the faces of the monsters. They had long jaws and most were fanged, save for the toothless iridescents. Confirming that Tlara was heading towards his initial target, Daniel toggled his mark on it a few times and then moved it to the other one to let Khare know what was going on. At the same time, he called out to Khiat so she’d know to avoid attacking it. All the while, Talonwing sat on their cloud, though they brought their weapons out.
Daniel fired twice in rapid succession, but the iridescent twisted out of the way of both shots. He cursed as he realized none of the special level 3s would be brought down before they engaged. “Khiat, we need to start moving. Let the other team cover us while-“
“Nah.” Daniel stared at Kahvin as the Hero stood and backed up from the cloud’s edge. They were a little ways away from where the monster pack was heading, far enough that they might just get ignored. “This is your flight certification hunt. I don’t have to intervene unless it’s necessary.”
The others on his team looked askance, but there was something new in Kahvin’s voice that gave Daniel an ominous feeling. It was still petulant, but with a surety and gleeful nastiness that would have fit with the smirk a bully gave their victim after tearfully relaying a fabricated story to the teacher. He wanted to argue and/or threaten to shoot the Hero, but the monsters weren’t giving him the opportunity.
By the time Tlara’s lightning attack struck the first iridescent whitespring, there were four level 3s and seven level 2s left. With the armor and weapons he’d made for his team he wasn’t as desperate as he would have been otherwise, but he’d held the other team in the back of his mind as a reserve option should it get this far. Now they were just sitting back and watching despite knowing how insane these odds were for normal hunters.
It was a trap, and worst of all, Daniel had two bad options to choose between. He could try and tank using Beast Mode, but he was untested flying in his cat form and that risked exposing Khiat and Khare if he couldn’t control the rage. Alternatively, he could continue burning down the monsters and trust Tlara to be their shield. That depended on how reliable she was.
Fuck it. Daniel pulled out the half-empty magazine and exchanged it for the one wrapped in leather as the whitespring reached 50 meters. They were bigger than he’d first thought, the normal-sized level 2s a meter in diameter not counting the wings, and at least seven in length.
They’d soon reach a distance where their movement power would get them in melee range. The only saving grace was that they were now within range of his special ammunition. The unfortunate trade-off in this weapon design was that he couldn’t use the combination that led to the blast marbles to make exploding rounds, since the slug would just go off in the receiver.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
However, Daniel had a similar base ammunition enchantment that worked slightly differently. Lightning bolt, the formulae that had taken the gravity aspect of the lightning spines rather than the electricity overload. They were more limited in their usefulness since they exploded a certain range out, and only at that range, because of the internal charge that built during motion.
Daniel fired the first shot at the crossed whitespring, infusing the slug with Scatter Shot and grimacing as his mana hit around half. He wasn’t just suffering from ability usage but also the features he’d heightened, like Regeneration and Graceful Fall. Thankfully, he’d judged the range right and a massive chain of midair explosions went off. The crossed whitespring somehow survived, but it was left broken and vulnerable for Khare to finish off.
It only took Daniel a few seconds to load the next shot, and he acquired two of the level 2s that were close together. Using the same combo, he fired and struck again, Snap Shot proving enough at this range. The ammunition didn’t immediately explode on contact, preventing Scatter Shot from using the higher damage of the effect, though it did go off after penetrating through the monster. When he’d used it on bolts it had been liable to stick in creatures before it would explode, but that wasn’t a problem here.
He almost shot another of those bolts but stopped himself and switched out to the ones that just added lightning damage. Based on the charred parts of the iridescent whitespring that Tlara had managed to hit with her attack, even the more magical variant wasn’t resistant. While that fight was happening at a good range for his explosive ammunition, the rest were already too close.
“This is going to turn into a melee!” he shouted, both for his team’s and the other’s benefit. Even if Kahvin was being unbelievably petty, the rest of his team wouldn’t just stand by when the monsters got on top of them. Right?
“What do I do?” Khiat asked. She wouldn’t be fast enough to retreat even if all she did was fly away. Firing down on the monsters had been a good strategy, up until it prevented Khiat from diving to get away. The dusker was not the best when something got right up on her and she was just starting to acclimate to flying.
“Drop a smoke bomb and try to get to a cloud!” Daniel suggested, firing while moving to get between her and the advancing monsters. “They might not see you in one.” Khiat nodded and then in the next moment, gray smoke billowed out from her feet. The gusts around them dispersed some of it, but enough remained to obscure her. Khare, for their part, had put away their other weapons to bring out daggers.
Tlara got to her target before the rest of the whitesprings made it to them. She fired more lightning from her wings, the attack more effective at close range. The Spirit Master on her back used her own power then, the light in her hand projecting out in the air in a rough dome.
The iridescent’s retaliatory breath attack was slightly blunted when it hit, though the shield quickly broke. It did give Tlara enough time to twist away before she gripped the whitespring in her lower claws. With physical contact and a weakened enemy, she could begin dominating it. The shield by itself wasn’t that powerful, Quala’s Nova Shield could block more with an additional effect, but that’s not why Willow’s power was impressive.
Another breath attack directed at him forced Daniel’s attention away from below. The other iridescent was after him. It and a couple of the level 2s. Time slowed as he activated Moment of Clarity. It was odd, doing this without Hunter’s low grumbling in the background. It looks like I’ve got half the aggro. Khare will have to screen for Khiat. He would have liked to designate a Jump or Dodge Roll towards the cloud Kahvin was sitting on, but he’d yet to work out a way to easily make a mid-air platform that he wouldn’t immediately lose.
The best he could do was mentally line up a shot at the head of one of the normal whitesprings, then dive. The iridescent may be able to survive a hit and he needed to reduce how many he was dealing with. As soon as time resumed the attack released, Snap Shot driving it home. He attempted to jet down and away from the breath attack, but the iridescent was tracking him and at only ten meters away. A swath of the multicolored attack crossed his lower body. Daniel braced for pain, but something else happened.
For one terrifying moment, he had a flashback to the monster-spawning incident on the street, but this wasn’t it. This attack was only giving him back mana, rather than just trying and reshape his flow. It wasn’t a lot, about five Snap Shots worth or 1% of his maximum, but the attack from a creature one level higher than him wasn’t as immediately threatening as he first thought. The reason why became clear as he tried to slow time again and found he couldn’t.
The mana he’d been given was constantly circulating in its own pattern, not usurping his regular flow but interrupting anything he tried to do with it. While he was affected by this he was locked out of abilities or any way to improve features he hadn’t already heightened. The foreign mana decayed as it circulated, but slowly. It was an insidious effect either way, and being hit with more of the breath would prolong the duration.
Daniel tried to mark the iridescent as he twisted in the air and gave a relieved sigh when it worked. This was similar to magical suppression in that bonds could at least still function. Khare shouted something in response to the mark but he was too far away and moving too fast to notice.
The addition of a third dimension to the fight was something Daniel was rapidly realizing he wasn’t prepared for. In seconds, he’d fallen farther from his teammates than he could have run in a minute. The iridescent whitespring moved just as quickly, striking forward while opening its mouth, multicolored light shining within. Have to kill the others, Daniel thought quickly. I can’t avoid all of that, but without teeth it’s less of a direct threat.
He leveled out, Graceful Fall still working and leading him to ride a gust that was flowing laterally to the iridescent’s approach. Even with its momentum it was still able to turn towards him, but Daniel managed to get a cloud between him and the breath attack. The water vapor that was struck bubbled, absorbing some of the foreign mana before it fully dissolved. That looked kind of like what happens when I fail an enchant. What the hell?
The remainder of the multicolored breath struck him, tripling the amount within. Quick Mind’s running estimation reset and now put it at just over a minute before it would be fully drained. It seemed that as the effect compounded, it grew harder to get rid of. He brought his weapon up, trying as best he could to line up a target with the physical sights he’d put on top of the frame. The level 2 whitespring he shot at managed to avoid a direct hit, both from its nimbleness and the shot going slightly off. Still, the slug shredded a good number of wings along one side, either destroying or setting them on fire. It fell away, leaving only three of its normal kin to support the iridescent.
Another blast of colorful flames reached for him, but Daniel was able to divert it this time by throwing a bone dagger in the general direction of the iridescent, causing it to flinch when it got close. It hadn’t been on target of course, but it let him slip away. No cooldown on its ability, though. That’s insane. He began to appreciate just how dangerous the iridescent could be. Get hit once by its breath and it could continue to lock people down, and it would take something like Thomas’ Flash Reset to cleanse the effect. If it continued like this he’d have to-
A creature about the size and shape of a normal rabbit, but with a lightning spine sticking out of its head like a unicorn, fell from the sky almost on top of the iridescent whitespring. In slow motion, Daniel watched the horn-like protrusion spark, followed by an explosion that buffeted him and shredded the wings of the iridescent. What the fuck?
He heard a roar of triumph above him and watched as the other iridescent in the battle dissolved to dust and flew towards a pouch Willow held in her hands. He put together what had happened a moment later. She must have been at her monster limit and ejected whatever that was. She had that thing this whole time?
Watching the iridescent fall, Daniel decided he had no desire to prolong the lockdown effect and would have finished off the other level 2s if not for the other shout that followed Tlara’s.
“Help!” About one hundred meters up, a few whitesprings had found Khiat and were circling her, trying to bite into her. From a nearby haze it seemed she’d tried to use the smoke bomb from her armor, but it hadn’t been enough. The dusker was trying to fight back but was being overwhelmed.
He raised and then lowered his weapon, climbing as fast as he could. Khare was also holding back everything but daggers, neither confident with the aim of their big weapons to risk accidentally hitting the dusker. Daniel tried and was able to borrow Flash Jaunt from Hunter, but when he attempted to use it the ongoing mana lockdown stifled him. The power was given to him by a bond, though it still wasn’t considered as directly from it and could be suppressed.
“Boss, we should help,” he heard one of the Talonwings say as he neared their cloud.
“Why? The cheaters all have good armor. Look, it’s even repairing itself. Better than a trash level 1 should get, than all of them should get. It makes us look bad, don’t you get that? They all think they’re better than their level. People like that are the worst. We’re not helping until they’re really desperate, otherwise how are they going to learn their place?” A part of him rose in anger at Kahvin’s words, reminding him that he could trigger Beast Mode without needing to use mana and that he could easily put that Hero down in that form without powers. He resisted the temptation.
“The Crest are you talking about?” Adva asked as he flew past them. “They’re winning. All you’re going to do is make it impossible for us to ever buy something from them.”
“We don’t need anything they have,” Kahvin shot back angrily.
Daniel ignored the rest of what was going on with them as it was clear no help was coming. Khiat’s armor was holding thanks to the level 2 enchantment, but her carapace was a weak point. Even with the physical improvements her alternate method of leveling gave, the natural plating wasn’t enough to withstand the whitesprings. She had a few cracked sections on her arms and one on her body that leaked blood from the injured flesh beneath.
I haven’t looked for any more potions, he thought, cursing himself. All of his time and effort had been put into enchanting and in the back of his mind he’d decided to wait until he could claim the deferred bounty from Aughal to buy anything he couldn’t just trade with Temir for.
He reached Khiat faster than Tlara even though she’d started higher, her form slower to ascend. He had to remember that the level 3 wyvern was technically the young variant and immature in some ways. Bone claws in hand, he did his best to cut at the many pairs of wings on the monsters before they could react to his presence. Khare’s daggers dotted the bodies in places, though they must have reserved the bleed effect they could put on them because of the proximity to Khiat.
“We’ve got you, fly towards the other team!” Daniel shouted to Khiat. Talonwing could be juvenile assholes all they wanted, but couldn’t ignore the monsters if they aggro’d onto them. As the dusker flew away, blood trailing her, the rest of his team focused on the remaining whitesprings.
By the end they had all taken a few injuries, even Willow, though these were passed onto Tlara. Daniel felt the last of the foreign mana depart as he glared at Kahvin, whose team was doing the best they could to not look at where Khiat was trying to use a section of her armor to staunch one wound that had yet to stop bleeding. There was still a bit of wind, but without being in motion himself Daniel and Kahvin could still hear each other from a good distance away.
“I didn’t know they let cowards stay in the guild,” he seethed at the Hero. The look of fake ‘it was just a prank’ playfulness on Kahvin’s face twisted.
“You should think carefully on how you address me.”
“Fuck you and fuck your team. I don’t care what you tell the guild because I’m going straight to Torch’s church to make a statement.” He wasn’t sure if that was a thing, or if the god who’d supposedly wanted him destroyed back in the lost time had given her churches an APB for him, but Kahvin’s hand going to his sword suggested he’d struck home. “I don’t care about the rules you’re trying to hide behind either. People like you are worse than the Spiritualists. At least they help the side they’re on. I think everyone should know how trustworthy you are.”
“You think that thing in your hands makes you powerful?” Kahvin cried back, actually taking to the air. “You’re all just cheap tricks and luck. Take a look at that bug friend of yours and you’ll see what your trash team is worth. Coward? I’m just here to observe you idiot! She’s the one who froze up. You’re all hopped up outsiders thinking you can fly big. My family’s the one that’s built this region. If you can’t respect authority, you have no place in Threst.” His sword exited his sheath as he moved a wing towards it and it floated a few centimeters from his feathers. “I am Kahvin Talongleam, Hero of Threst, and if you wish to see me fight, then perhaps we should settle this with a duel.”
Daniel was seriously considering the offer when another voice called out to them. It was Bertrar, the most junior of the other team. “Uh, guys, there’s still monsters out there.” They both looked down and Daniel realized the level 1 young whitesprings had never made it to the fight proper. They’d started to lag behind and once it had really started going, he’d lost track of them. It seemed the group hadn’t continued flying up. Instead, something else had happened. “Are they, are they eating each other?”
“Oh fuck,” Daniel cursed as he saw the auras of the distant monsters below wink out simultaneously. They hadn’t died, but they had changed enough for Identify Creature to be removed, just like when a mortal leveled. He reapplied the tag and found what he’d feared.
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~Undefined~
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