Chapter 7

Red Sands Desert, Asarian Kingdom Border

City of Darthar, Oromar's Tavern

Allya yawned. She felt....great. It had been a long time since she'd slept that well, or felt so good. She stretched slightly, and froze as something warm pressed harder against her....and the arm draped over her chest squeezed her against that warmth.

Her brain started running at a thousand kilometers per minute. It wasn't the first time where she had woken up in someone else's bed (or woken up with someone in her own), but she usually remembered what had happened and who they were. Ever since the duel, she'd at least taken care not to get that drunk.

Then she heard a mumble, and the person currently spooning with her shifted, rubbing her body against Allya's.

Yep, definitely a she, she thought as she felt the other's breasts (well, not necessarily, there were a lot of strange magical modifications out there, but it was usually a safe bet). Then she realized the size of said breasts...and she suddenly had a creeping suspicion of quite who she had slept with.

The assassin slowly, carefully disentangled herself from her partner's embrace, and turned around.

And stared in shock at Pyn's peaceful, sleeping face.

Well. So much for not getting too attached, she thought. Then she realized that she probably could hold her alcohol better than the elf. Meaning that there was a better than even chance that the elf wouldn't remember anything.

Allya wasn't quite sure why she wanted to keep her at arm's length. A psychologist would have probably told her that it would be lingering trauma from her last true relationship, but she'd have dismissed it outright. Even if said psychologist would have probably been right.

She sighed, and slowly got up, and collected her clothes and things. It was indeed the room she had rented for Pyn and herself...and their clothes had been quite thoroughly scattered throughout the room. And some of the furniture looked like it had moved slightly from where it was supposed to be. Her blush deepened as she almost wished remembering what had happened during the night. For, uh, what was it they said in the Artificer's Academy? Ah, yes, "scientific purposes, of course".

She quietly dressed up, before looking around the room a bit. She was missing one of her dagger straps. It wasn't particularly problematic (after all, she was missing half a dozen daggers, and they weren't exactly expensive), but they were quite recognizable as being hers. Oh well, if she couldn't find it, chances are the absurdly cute elf wouldn't either.

Allya shook her head.

No, no, bad libido. Stay down damnit! She thought.

She couldn't even sound convincing to herself.

She sighed, and slowly left the room, quietly closing the door behind her.

She never saw Pyn's slightly cracked open eyes tracking her.

*****

Alexandra sighed, and sat down on the altar.

"It works!"

She flopped down onto her back, careful to avoid hitting her core crystal.

"Yes, congratulations!" Said Emilia as she circled the new golem, completely encased in brand new iron plate armor, with working joints, examining it. If nothing else, the newly christened Royal Guardian golem looked cool as all hell. Kind of like the knights you saw in the history books. "That's an impressive job, for someone with no blacksmithing or armorsmithing background."

Alexandra chuckled.

"Why thank you! A bit more, and I'd think you were trying to flatter me vampy."

She could almost physically feel Emilia's eye roll, which of course only made her more amused.

A slight thunk made Alexandra turn her head, and smile as she saw CQ. For some reason, the boss had taken to imitating her, and she was now sitting right next to her creator, looking down at her with curious eyes. Alexandra extended her hand, and patted her on the head, which prompted CQ to close her eyes in contentment.

Alexandra wasn't sure if CQ had any clue what headpats implied beyond that it was a gesture of appreciation, but it seemed to be enough for the boss. Honestly, most of the time Alexandra wasn't sure if she should be fascinated or creeped out by her. She'd never seen the so called "adaptative AIs" in action, the sentient (but not sapient) AIs that modeled themselves after their owner/assigned human. She'd heard that they used to give one to every EFSN officer back in the day, before AIs were given citizenship and the practice was abolished as immoral.

She was still of two minds on her boss. Sometimes she had the intelligence of a dog and basically behaved like a humanoid one, but other times, more and more often, she could see a spark. Not of intelligence, not yet, but at least basic comprehension. She wasn't very sure how to treat her, so when in doubt, she simply treated her like a curious little sister. She wasn't sure if she could even hear what her creator said when she went on rambling on what she was working on when the curious boss poked her head in, but it couldn't hurt. Plus, it helped to have an audience other than Emilia. The vampire girl was nice and all, but she had virtually no engineering background, and although she had expressed some interest in that, her eyes still glazed over in the most complex parts, and she politely, but firmly, retreated back into a corner to pull out a book and read in peace.

Alexandra couldn't blame her. She had the same attitude when someone had tried to explain to her tectonical terraforming. Oh, sure, she could understand the basic principle of pumping a giant amount of energy into Mars' core and getting it spinning so the planet could generate it's own protective magnetic field, but no, she wasn't interested in the detailed explanations of precisely how rock melted at a certain pressure point when you pumped a fissure full of plasma (yes, the Martian solution to their geothermal problem had been to build a kilometers tall and wide fusion reactor and pump several tons of 15 million degrees helium plasma per second straight into the mantle. That was a terrifying amount of energy. Well, they were trying to remelt the core of a planet, so of course they would need a massive quantity of energy, but still).

Point was, CQ was a great listener. Even though she probably didn't even understand a single word. And hey, if she remembered everything, she'd have something of a knowledge base to start up with. Granted, a lot of that would be 'Damn it! This doesn't work! Argh, Jared, get that armor piece off of him, would you? Thanks.'

Oh, right. She looked to the side at Jared. The golem had become her shadow in the last few days. He couldn't really do much yet, but she had taught him how to take off the jammed piece of armor off of the other golems, so she didn't have to, and could spend more time doing something else. Granted, it would take her a split second to absorb it, but she had a tendency to...sometimes loose her temper, and over absorb. And golems weren't mana free. Well, technically she recovered mana from absorbing them, but it wasn't that much. Apparently most of the mana wasn't spent on the materials, or rather, the atoms themselves, but arranging everything, at least according to an obscure book on magical transmutation by a fellow extradimensional that had made Archmage (and wrote using terms she could understand, thank the Gods). So apparently, most of the mana wasn't spent creating the basic atoms (or ions for that matter), but actually arranging them together. That had some interesting implications, if she could reproduce the industrial processes and alloy furnaces from Earth...

TO-DO LIST UPDATED.

Override, up high, she thought.

COMMAND OVERRIDE ACCEPTED. TO-DO LIST UPDATED. ITEM MOVED TOWARDS TOP OF THE LIST.

She had created some override commands for her TO-DO list, for better organization. 'Up high' put the item in the top 100 or so, while 'Critical' put it in the top 10, and 'Immediate' put it as priority one.

"Yes, yes, she's very cute, but you could you please stop staring at each other? It's starting to be awkward."

Alexandra shook her head, and smiled at Emilia, before patting CQ on the head again.

"Sorry, I was just lost in my thoughts." She jumped to her feet, and smiled at CQ as she followed suit. "So, now that I've gotten the armor joints working, what's next?"

Emilia pulled up a small notebook, and peered into it.

"Weapons. Specifically, utilizing the bracelets somehow."

Alexandra nodded. Truth was, she didn't need Emilia to remind her, her TO-DO list was more than sufficient to the task. However, Alexandra wanted to keep the vampire girl in the loop, it wouldn't do to have her wait, bored out of her mind until adventurers showed up or it became necessary to teach her something new about this world. It wouldn't be fair to the poor girl. Plus, she was undeniably smart, and she had sometimes come up with ideas that had Alexandra ask herself 'Why didn't I think of that?', and not necessarily about magic either.

For example, she hadn't even thought of just attaching weapons on the ceiling, and letting them drop down like a pendulum. Well, she'd have to hide them a bit, but still.

"Right. Well, I suppose slapping the bracelet onto one of them wouldn't work, right?"

Emilia shook her head.

"Actually, it would. The problem is that the bracelet is quite expensive, correct?"

Alexandra blinked, and pulled up her creation menu, and promptly cringed. Oh yeah, it was much, much more expensive than her standard golem. Heck, it was even more expensive than the Royal Guardian. Not by much, but still.

"Yeah. It is."

Emilia nodded judiciously.

"That makes sense. It was made for repeated uses, and long term sustainability, while honestly our golems are likely to only get to use it once." She winced. "A threat like that will get targeted down pretty quickly."

"That's fair. What do you recommend?"

"How about we make it out of iron? Should be enough to take the strain of the spell, but not enough for many, if any, repeated uses, and it should keep the costs low."

Alexandra slowly nodded. The bracelets themselves were made out onyx, and she had no idea why it was a better material for magic items (and why it was so expensive), but apparently it was.

"Alright then. To the workshop!"

She thrust her fist into the air, and hid a smile as Emilia rolled her eyes...but the vampire girl's lips curled up slightly.

Alexandra smiled internally (to avoid getting the vampire girl angry again), and simply started walking towards the tunnel at the back of her core room.

She had dug it out when they had installed the command center and the workshop. It was only a few meters long, but it branched off into 3 rooms. At the end was the command center, on the right was the workshop, and on the left was the newly built secure experiments room. AKA 'how much armor plating and rock can I feasibly pile up in this thing so I don't have to rebuild the hallways again?'. The 5th room had returned to it's original purpose (although the marks of the...explosive experiments had remained), and the Orb of Resurrection was moved into the workshop. She'd thought it'd be difficult, but her body was even stronger than she thought, and she'd been able to carry the metal sphere back to the workshop without a single problem, although a normal human would definitely have trouble moving it. Then again, normal humans seemed to be in short supply on this planet, from her experience.

They passed the two Praetorian Guards (still Palatial Guards Mk2s with fancy names, but she had plans to make them...deadlier) guarding the door, who saluted as they passed. The chest bang was noticeably quieter, and Emilia had gotten used to it enough that she didn't flinch anymore. They stepped into the room, and Alexandra quickly surveyed it. She'd arranged the workshop in three distinct areas for now: mechanical hardware, enchanting, and engraving, each with it's own tables covered with various prototypes, bits and pieces, and even some sketches (she'd have to thank the two adventurer girls if she ever met them again, it had taken her quite a bit to realize it, but there had been a pencil and paper in the stuff they'd left at the entrance). Although, she rather doubted those areas would stay as cleanly separated as she started mixing the different concepts together.

Alexandra walked to the engraving part of the workshop, and quickly created a hollow cylinder of iron, of roughly the same dimension as that of the bracelets, albeit a tad bit larger to be able to put it on the Royal Guardian's arms.

"Alright. Let's stat with the power beam one." She grinned. "I can't wait to see the adventurer's face when they trigger that one!"

Emilia rolled her eyes, and took a seat on the stone stool in front of the table, as Alexandra did the same.

"Alright, so, at the start, you need to make the..." Started Emilia as she grabbed a few engraving tools and started laying in the runes.

CQ observed quietly from the door. Every rune embedded onto the bracelet etched into her memory. She might have problems with exactly what her mother was trying to tell her when she emitted those weird sounds, but she could understand magic just fine. After all, she was made out of mana.

*****

Allya took a deep breath, and sat down. She was in the room she had just rented for herself, having to suffer through the embarassment of renting another one, while the tavern owner knew exactly why she was doing it, and had just finished a very thorough shower. She slowly released the breath she had been holding, and started meditating.

Slowly, as she evened her breathing with practiced ease, she started to...feel, for the lack of a better word, the mana around her. Then, very slowly, she started to draw it in. As the first few wisps of mana entered her, she started constructing her syphon. The mana syphon was the basis of any cultivation technique, some sort of funnel from the body directly to the core, to enable mana to truly enter her in great quantities, and avoid overcharging her own body. While that could be useful in certain circumstance, it was also very wasteful and incredibly dangerous if you didn't know your limit and pushed too far.

Rune by rune, line by line, she assembled the syphon, a form of...well, like a tornado, with the tip ending inside of her core. Then, once she inlaid the final rune, she observed it for a few seconds. The syphon spun slowly, almost lazily. She sighed in relief as the first wisp of mana got caught into the tornado, and went down, before being absorbed by her core. It felt like putting cool water directly on an aching muscle. This was the most basic cultivation technique, the kind the guild taught adventurers as soon as they reached copper for free (although virtually everyone paid the small fee and got it sooner, given how vital it was to their growth). Fortunately for Allya, she knew better techniques...far better techniques.

She 'stepped back', and started assembling a ring of runes around the syphon, the halo. This technique was much, much harder, and was usually reserved for the nobility of the Eris Empire, although there had been some inevitable leakage, and some other powerful individuals had gotten hold of it. There were also countless lesser versions of it, widely used by adventurers and such.

She slowly weaved the ring together, putting the pieces together one at a time with infinite patience and care. Then, she activated it. The halo started spinning, counter to the syphon, and the syphon started accelerating, faster and faster, until it stabilized at almost 16 times it's original speed. She shivered as the amount of mana that was entering her multiplied. A trickle became a stream. A small, sputtering stream, but a stream nonetheless. She winced, as Darthar's ambient mana density was...low. It was significantly higher than the surrounding desert, thanks to the mana of the underground lake under the city, and the shield holding the ambient mana in. Otherwise, she wasn't even sure if anyone could live inside the city, at least in the long term.

Well, she needed a recharge. The dungeon had been a huge boon, otherwise she would have rushed to cultivate her reserves back up as soon as she had arrived into the city. Unfortunately it hadn't quite been enough, and her mana reserves were slowly and steadily draining. And given the current flow of mana entering her, it would take her weeks to replinish her reserves at this rate.

Well, time for alternative solutions, she thought.

She moved her hand into one of her pouches, slowly, steadily, to avoid breaking out of the trance she currently was in. She immediately knew she had found what she was looking for when her hand grabbed the mana stone. It felt like her world exploded, like the motes of mana she had been looking at until now had been mere specks of dust against a star. And, in a way, they were.

She took the 1 000 manastone (she always ensured the mana stones in her pouches were full, just in case), and held it in front of her body, about ten centimeters from her chest, right in front of where she felt her core. If it had been a 100 stone, she would have pressed it against herself, and absorbed it whole, but she didn't have the luxury for that. For one, she needed to do this fast, as the sun was already coming up, and she could feel it's warmth on her back. Additionally, she didn't know when would be the next time she would have the time to cultivate, and given what she was doing, she doubted she wanted to run out of mana at an inopportune moment. She might specialize in daggers, but her old love had taught her how to use spells, and she remembered her teachings to this day. She had also learned a few tricks during her journey, and had learned how to make some very basic charms, the most fundamental version of scrolls. There were three categories of written spell formats, which used magic inks. Charms were the most basic ones, only simple spells (relative to the power of the mage/sorcerer making them) could be used, and the charm had to either be manually activated, or had simple trigger conditions. Scrolls were more complicated, and time consuming to make, but also allowed for more complex spells and triggers. Some of them could even be made to be reusable, instead of burning to cinders, consumed by the power of the spell, like charms did. Lastly, grimoires were the most advanced, they allowed virtually any spell, and were the bread and butter of sorcerers across the world. They were fully reusable, and could store a large amount of spells, available to be cast at a moment's notice. Some of them had even powerful mana stones embedded into their cover, drawing power from it instead of the magic ink (essentially mana infused ink) used to make them, although those were usually very complicated to make, and thus incredibly expensive.

She took another deep breath, and exhaled. This...might hurt. She started a myriad of runic cubes above her syphon, and then slowly linked them together in a complex pattern. She never truly understood how it worked, but the fractal flow of power had never failed her. It, somehow, broke up massive influx of mana, and spread it over a longer period of time. She'd even heard it had defensive uses, and was a core component of some protection talismans or shields (the forcefield kind).

Then, she slowly extended a line from a precise cube, and started drawing it through her torso, her shoulder, her arm, and then her hand. She hesitated for a second, then finished drawing it. The tendril of energy and runes exited her...and went straight into the mana gem she was holding.

She bit her lower lip and almost screamed in panic and pain as her body shook, the power suddenly flowing through her. It felt like liquid flames flowing through her veins. She started panting, then suddenly, the sensation eased, as the massive influx of power hit the fractals, and started dispersing. The sensation was still there, but only felt like a dull burning, instead of a living flame. Then suddenly that sensation simply vanished as the mana started reaching her core. The stream suddenly multiplied, before becoming a river, and for a few, glorious seconds, Allya felt like she was in heaven. Then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. She sighed, and slowly dismantled and reabsorbed the different runic formations inside her, before opening her eyes. She looked at her hand, at the dark blue dust that had once been a mana gem, then she simply tilted her hand, and the dust just...vanished, as it's last connection to her core was taken, and the few remaining wisps of mana holding it together destabilized and vanished into the air, the complex structure that had once held them shattered by her absorption. The process of absorbing mana gems wasn't 100% efficient, but thanks to her advanced technique, she was much, much better at it than most adventurers. Still, she had probably lost a good 30 mana in the process, either left in the dust (although that amount was usually less than a single mana), or that had simply never made it into her core for some reason or another. Given how energized she felt, a bit of it had probably ended up trapped inside of her body as well, although that could just be the sensation of her core finally being recharged to what she would call optimal levels.

Allya carefully got up, then stretched, before looking at the window. Fortunately, she wouldn't have been visible from anywhere but a few windows on an opposite building, and all of the shutters were shut. She froze as her stomach growled, and smiled. It would better if she could find sustenance for her physical body as well as her immaterial self. She quickly made her way to her door, before stepping into the hallway, carefully closing it behind her, before going downstairs. As soon as she started walking down the steps, her stomach growled again as she smelled the sweet scent of honey and pastries.

A few minutes later, she was heartily digging into the pastries, fresh from the oven, that the tavern's cook had apparently baked himself. She looked up as she heard a rather loud yawn, and saw Pyn slowly descending the steps. The elf looked...very, very cute, with her sleepy face and messy hair. She looked around a bit, then waved lazily at Allya, before making her way towards her human teammate. She sat down in front of her, and blinked.

"Hey Allya." She yawned. "Sorry. I'm not much of a morning person."

Allya snickered.

"Yeah, I noticed. I was the one that had to wake you up every morning and get you to move on our way here, remember?"

Pyn chuckled.

"Right, fair enough. Anyway, how was your sleep? Mine was excellent."

Allya paused, slightly, before catching herself.

"Same for me." She said, entirely truthfully...although probably not for the reasons Pyn probably expected. She then pointed at her plate. "You better order something for yourself. We have a long day ahead of us."

Pyn winced. They, indeed, had a meeting with the guildmaster, and Elkaryos later on today.

The elf quickly flagged down the waitress, and ordered a generous swathe of pancakes, bacon and eggs, along with an equally generous tip, to make sure it got here fast.

Allya raised an eyebrow, and Pyn stuck her tongue out at her. It had been a matter of some contention between them about what to eat for breakfast, during their journey. Allya was a firm believer in milk and pastries (the sweeter the better. She had one large sweet tooth), while Pyn was equally firm in her devotion to eating as much protein early in the morning as she physically could. This resulted in....interested conversations from time to time.

Thankfully, this time Pyn declined to start a full on argument.

"Alright, so what's first today?"

"Breakfast, obviously."

The elf sighed, and lifted her eyes to the ceiling as the assassin chuckled.

"I meant after that, obviously."

"Alright, alright. In about...three hours, we have to meet with the guildmaster, and then Elkaryos around 5 hours after that."

"Right. Anything else?"

"Well, none that I'm aware of."

"Nice, better get ready then." Pyn winced. "The Bazaar isn't exactly the easiest place to cross quickly."

"You got that right."

They both giggled, before the waitress arrived with Pyn's breakfast, just as greasy and filled with protein as promised. And while her friend dug into her meal with gusto, Allya kept a careful, if covert, eye on the nervous rogue observing them from a nearby table.

A good 5 minutes later, they had both cleared up their breakfast plates, and went back up to their rooms to get their gear, and prepare to go meet the guildmaster. When they came back down, Allya calmly noted the rogue's absence.

"Pyn?"

"Yeah?"

"Stay on your guard. I think we've been stalked." She looked at her friend, and quickly pinched her, making her gasp in pain...and wiping out the alarmed expression from her face. She started whispering. "Stay calm damn it! Right now, we have the advantage that they don't know we're onto them. If they realize that we know, they'll either wait for a better moment, or come back with better numbers, and we can't afford that. So keep a straight face, and come with me. Sometimes, the best way through an ambush is to step into it with your eyes wide open." She sighed. "And we'll have to take the initiative. That means hopefully attacking first, no call to surrender, and only take prisoners if we're sure we got them all under control. Do you understand that?"

The elf looked at her, and slowly nodded, her expression becoming studiously neutral, but her eyes were grim. She knew exactly what Allya had told her they needed to do.

"Now come on. Chances are, they'll attack us right between here and the bazaar. Probably only a few streets from here, to avoid people from the tavern looking at the commotion. They'll probably have two groups, one in front of us, and another hidden in a side alley to bottle us in. I'll take the front group, it'll probably where their heavy hitters are. You just keep the rest off of my back."

Pyn nodded again. Allya smiled at the elf, and then opened her potion pouch.

"Well, we know they're going to come at us. Might as well buff up while we can."

"Yeah, that will be a nasty surprise."

Their smiles were definitely wolfish as they started grabbing potions from the pouch.

*****

"Are you sure about this boss?"

"Of course I'm sure! You don't believe me?"

"Well, yes, of course I do, it's just that..." The heavyset man sighed. "We've never done something like that on such a short notice before. And even less on guild adventurers."

The rogue frowned, but reluctantly nodded. Truth was, he probably wouldn't have done it either, if the price hadn't been so tempting. A malachite sword? With soul sealing echantments? That was the kind of thing that could set you up for life. Even the information of where to find such a weapon would be valuable, and that blonde wannabe ninja looked like she knew what she was talking about.

Of course, she wouldn't talk willingly, but once they threatened her friend, maybe sliced her up a bit and had some fun while they were at it, she would break. They always did.

Plus, they already had a buyer for the sword, or even just the information of where to find it. He had such luck that someone interested in that had approached him just for that particular reason!

It was, perhaps, unfortunate that the rogue didn't realize that anyone looking for such a prize would almost certainly want to make sure there would be no way for it's previous owners, or vengeful relatives, to track them down...and would thus remove any inconvenient link. Which would certainly include a team of bandits and thugs turned wannabe adventurers (without giving up their previous profession) lead by a certain rogue.

Of course, it would have been irrelevant. Because that wasn't the case.

Agent Seraik, of the Eris Imperial Autonomous Threat Removal Bureau, wasn't interested (or suicidal enough to even think about) stealing the Aubétoile's family sword, Skyfall. And her mission was very much off of the books. Thus, leaving any witnesses behind wasn't in her agenda. The bandits had signed their death warrants the second they had accepted her offer (not that she'd have let them live long after talking to them anyway, if they'd been smart enough to refuse her too generous offer).

Plus, given their level of competence, she wasn't even sure they would be able to take down her target.

Seraik sighed, and nestled herself more comfortably on the flat roof overlooking the alley where the bandits were setting up their ambush, her eyes closed as her spells allowed her to see precisely what was going on. It wouldn't have done to have gone for a more competent bunch, as they would have smelled the rat, and it would have gotten....messy. Still, a girl could wish. She shifted a bit, then began waiting as the bandit rogue talked to his minions.

"Look, I get why you're all worried. Really, I do, but this is the big one! I haven't lied to you once, and I won't now. This is dangerous, yes, but big rewards come with dangers. And if we do this, we'll be set up for life. So, are you ready to get rich?"

The rogue smiled as his team cheered.

"Good! Now get into position, they won't be long."

*****

Allya knew they had walked right into the ambush the second she stepped into the alleyway. All of her senses, honed after a decade of surviving encounters with assassins, monsters, and bandits, were screaming at her. The renewed tension in Pyn's shoulder told her the elf had noticed as well.

"Drop your weapons or d-"

It was, overall, a miracle that the bandit got even that much out as he pounced from what he no doubt imagined was a great hiding spot in the dark recess of a door. However, Allya had wanted to make sure she had all of them positioned in her head before engaging. She activated the enchantment on the elixir of quickness she had drunk earlier, and she smiled, coldly, as the world slowed down around her.

The bandit never even saw it coming.

She drew back her hand as the bandit collapsed, clawing at the dagger buried in his throat, and grabbed another of her throwing daggers. The second one had a split second to realize something was wrong before another dagger drove straight into his eye, killing him instantly. She shivered as the elixir of quickness' effect stopped. She then drew two dueling daggers, and took a step back, giving herself room as the three other bandits in front of her recoiled in shock at the death of their comrades and the sudden influx of essence. The twang of a bow, and gurgle of someone choking on their own blood told Allya that Pyn was indeed covering her rear, and had taken care of one of her own bandits.

For an instant, nothing happened, the other side too stunned to make a move. Then the spell broke as what seemed to be a rogue, with his cape and daggers, yelled.

"Gods damnit! Take her! Now!"

Allya smiled as the two bandits surged forward, while their leader kept a prudent distance. The first one almost stumbled as he neared her, and swung at her with his longsword. Allya easily parried the swing, and quickly slashed his exposed arm, drawing a hiss of pain from him as he darted back. Then suddenly, the second bandit was upon her. This one was tall, clad in iron armor, and probably heavily muscled. He was wielding a big rectangular shield, like the dungeon's soldier golems, and a shortsword. And contrary to the other, he looked like he knew what to do with them. Allya parried a few strikes, and got in a few of her own, but she failed to get a sufficient opening to penetrate his armor, only being able to leave gouges in it. She had enhanced her strength with potions, but she still needed a good angle to actually penetrate the armor and inflict some damage.

Then the first bandit jumped into the fray again. Allya silently cursed as the armored bandit adapted, and they started fighting together. The first one might be inexperienced, but it seemed he had been drilled into fighting with his comrades. Usually, bandits actually fought worst when they were several against a skilled target, as they inconvenienced each other more than they were helping. Low chance of happening with these. She parried and dodged, only keeping up thanks to the potion of dexterity she'd drunk earlier, but she knew it wouldn't last.

Well, time to start resorting to alternative solutions.

She launched a flurry of attacks, forcing them to take a defensive stance, and then she jumped back, and drew a vial from her vest. The armored bandit's eyes widened, and he dashed forward, obviously expecting the vial to be a potion she would attempt to drink. Instead, she tossed it at the inexperienced bandit's face. He failed to get his hand up in time to intercept it, and he yelped as the fragile glass vial shattered on his face. He blinked his eyes clear of the liquid, and licked his lips, confused.

Big mistake, she thought.

The bandit had a second to realize something was wrong, before he started spasming, and fell to the ground, his mouth filling with foam, and Allya felt the rush of essence.

The armored mercenary took a step back, and went into a defensive posture, his expression going grim. He had obviously realized that Allya was no pushover, and that simply rushing her wasn't going to work.

Unfortunately for him, he was already dead.

Allya sheathed one of her daggers, and in one smooth movement, she drew three kunais from her belt. She immediately threw them, and, as she expected, the armored bandit intercepted them effortlessly with his shield.

He grinned at her.

And then the charms she had wrapped around the handle of the kunais, and whose timer she had triggered when she grabbed them, activated.

The paper slips, covered in complex runes carefully written with magic ink, disintegrated in a small storm of fire. The conflagration spell was considered one of the most basic fire elemental spells, beside flame, of course. It was usually laughed at by most mages, because of it's short range and short duration, but in this case, it made it perfect. The bandit screamed in pain and terror as the flames engulfed him. It wasn't enough to kill him...but it was enough for him to leave his guard wide open while he tried to put out the flames. Allya simply darted forward, trusting her enchanted clothes to protect her, and jammed her dagger straight through his jaw, before withdrawing it as she felt the rush of essence.

The fact that she bothered withdrawing it, instead of leaving it inside the body and drawing a new one, indubitably saved her life, as she instinctively parried. Her eyes widened as she saw the bandit rogue's face sneering at her. He had literally vaulted over the body of his dying comrade to get to her.

Allya jumped back, but he was almost as fast as she was, and was constantly attacking her with his dual daggers, forcing her to parry, again and again and again, and preventing her from getting enough breathing room to draw another dagger and equalize the odds.

Then suddenly, the rogue stepped forward...and stopped, a confused look on his face, before collapsing, an arrow shaft protuding from the side of his head. Allya looked to the side, panting as yet another rush of essence hit her. Pyn looked back at her, panting as well, a profusely bleeding cut on her right cheek, holding her shortbow. Allya idly noticed that her shortsword scabbard was empty, before turning further and looking behind her. Three bodies laid on the street, one had an arrow through the throat, and was still twitching as her life bled away. Another had a shortsword literally buried in his chest, and the last lone looked like she had been repeatedly stabbed with an arrow.

Allya took a deep breath, and smiled at the combat shocked elf.

"Well, it looks like we did it."

*****

Major Silart Montuart, of the Erisian Imperial Autonomous Threat Removal bureau, lifted his head from the seemingly unending paperwork on his desk as the door chime sounded throughout his office.

"Come in!" He yelled.

The rather imposing oak door to his office opened, and his eyebrow rose as captain Valmer, one of his most trusted and efficient officers, stepped through.

"Valmer!" He greeted her. "It's pleasure to see you, as always, but wasn't the daily briefing supposed to be in..." He pointedly looked at the clock on the wall. "1 hour and 45 minutes or so?"

"Yes sir. However, there was something I felt you'd like to be informed before then...without anyone knowing you had that information."

Silart's eyebrow rose.

"It's about the Skyfall incident sir."

His face suddenly went blank. The Skyfall incident was the name they had come up with for the disastrous duel between archduke Armik's daughter and that maniac Allya Aubétoile. Valmer was one of the select few of his subordinates with who he had decided to entrust with his decision to oblige his personal friend, archduke Ostrar Armik, when he had asked him for a favor to have his daughter's murderer...permanently removed from this world. They had all followed him, whether through loyalty to him, personally, or because some of them had known young lady Armik before she was murdered. Not killed, murdered. The...financial compensation the archduke had provided for some of his more mercenary subordinates hadn't hurt either, although they were more the exceptions.

"What is it?"

"Sir, you need to see this. Just...read it."

She handed him over a sheet of machine written paper, straight from the intelligence division's dispatch office, if he had to guess. He gingerly took it, and read it. Then re-read it. His nostril flared.

"You're right. Damn it! Good job Valmer, now go, I have to call Seraik before she does something we'll all regret."

Valmer nodded, took back the dispatch, and left, carefully closing the door behind her.

Silart stared at the door for a second, his thoughts in chaos, before taking a deep breath, and typing a message on one of his personal crystal tablet. The one he used when the messages he was sending to his agents never officially existed. He hesitated for a second...but his sense of duty won out over his loyalty to the archduke, and he sent the message, classifying it at maximum priority.

*****

Seraik sighed, and readied her own daggers. Looks like those idiots had indeed failed. And even more badly than she'd first thought! They hadn't even landed a single hit on Allya, and her elven friend had only taken superficial wounds.

Oh well, my turn now, she thought as she prepared to pounce from the rooftop.

Then, she froze as her tablet very quietly, but still noticeably, buzzed. Her eyebrows rose, before she quickly opened the pouch containing the device. Her eyebrows went even higher as she recognized the priority...and her nostrils flared -much like her superior's, had she only known- as she read and decoded with practiced ease the content of the message.

Command to ATRB Agent Seraik.

Mission abort. If the target is in danger, ensure she survives. Situation has changed, more detailed update will be sent in 3 hours.

She looked at the tablet for a few seconds, then once again mindcast the spells that let her see into the street. She lay there, watching as her target started tapping the elf's cut with a tissue, fussing over the superficial injury. Then, she sighed, and jumped on the other side of the building, before disappearing into the city.

*****

"Sir?"

The sergeant looked expectantly at Silvart.

"Could you please prepare a courier? I need to get a dispatch to archduke Armik ASAP."

The sergeant's eyebrow rose.

"With all due respect sir, wouldn't comming him be faster?" Said the noncom as he gestured at the communication crystal on his superior's desk.

Silvart chuckled.

"I'm afraid the archduke has warned me a few days ago that he was doing an inspection tour of the fortresses guarding the edge of the spirit fields. I suppose I don't need to tell you how attempting to use a communication crystal there -if he was stupid enough to bring one with him to begin with- wouldn't be a good idea?"

The sergeant winced. The spirit fields were one of the more dangerous areas in the Eris Empire, and wasn't an especially pleasant place to be at the best of time. They were...no one knew exactly what they were. Most mages called it and 'anomaly', which was as good of a name as any. Point was, the place was terrifying. Anything that died in the spirit fields didn't stay dead. Whenever something died there, something ripped the core out of their body, and materialized some form of phantom of the creature that had once held the core. And unlike regular (if rare) spirits, they didn't seem to decay over time. As long as they stayed within the spirit fields, they kept going virtually indefinitely. Even worse, the spirits seemingly were possessed by an unending hunger for consuming other cores, when a spirit killed another (or killed a living being), it absorbed it's essence, and grew in power. Initially, most of the spirits were just confused memories of the beings they once were, but as they consumed more and more other spirits, their hunger grew and they became...twisted. They fused and almagated with whatever they absorbed, and almost inevitably went completely insane. Then, after a certain threshold of growth, prey that could temporarily sate their ever growing hunger grew scarcer and scarcer, and they started looking outwards. Towards the lands of the still living.

That was why there was a massive network of walls and fortresses separating the spirit fields from the rest of the continent, with heavily armed warships regularly patrolling the coast, blasting into oblivion any spirit that grew large enough to dare try to escape to consume the empire's citizens.

That, on it's own, was bad enough, but some form of massive disruption field (some of the more higher ranked or knowledgeable artificers called it a jamming field) blanketed the area. Some linked it to the fog permeating the spirit fields, other to a completely different phenomena, although no one knew for sure. What they did know for sure was that most attempts at magic communication, through communication crystals, telepathy, you name it, usually came out distorted and garbled, when they came out at all. And sometimes...

Sometimes things heard the messages. They called them specters. Apparently they were what happened when many spirits and cores were shattered, and either dispersed or absorbed in the same area. The remaining fragments just...combined, over time, and formed a twisted aberration of shadows and hatred. According to high ranking adventurers, they usually haunted the massive ruins at the center of the spirit fields, but sometimes a magical signal, whether through a com crystal or a powerful spell, would push them to leave the ruins, and track down whoever had made that signal and eliminate them.

"Right. I'll get to it right away sir."

The sergeant saluted, and Silvart saluted back, before waiting for him to close the door. The major took a deep breath, and walked to one of the windows in his office, putting one of his hands on the top embrasure, and leaning forward. To anyone observing, he would have just looked like he was admiring the view. In truth, he was far too distracted by his own thoughts to even begin to pay attention to the vista in front of him.

Unbeknownst to Allya, her decision to go from Elkaryos then straight to the adventurer's guild yesterday had saved her life. As, a few hours after meeting them, guildmaster Starvak had sent a notice to every guildmaster in the world that a new dungeon had been discovered, by whom, and that he was looking for an assessment team, as well as beginning the resource requisition process to put into place the adventurer guild's standard procedure when faced with a new dungeon, which more or less boiled down to 'explore the dungeon, bribe the king, put a massive presence down before any noble starts getting funny ideas'. Of course, the irony being that a noble already had executed some 'funny ideas' about staking ownership of the dungeon (well, at least the lands surrounding it), and had quite some plans with what to do with that ownership.

It had taken the whole night for that report to percolate through the Erisian Intelligence Bureau's networks, then go through the inevitable massive bureaucracy, before it was finally delivered to Silvart. And the fact that Allya Aubétoile was clearly named in the dispatch, and co-credited as the initial discoverer of the dungeon, had made his heart freeze solid. Assassinating a disgraced noble in exile with Imperial assets and agents was one thing. Assassinating someone who had just discovered a dungeon was another. Doing so would have undoubtedly drawn far, far too much attention, with high level inquiries from the adventurer guild and the Asarian kingdom probably inevitable, possibly even one from the Elkis Republic, as they tried to convince their neighbor that they weren't the guilty party. Which, for one, they wouldn't be.

Silvart snickered.

That'd be a nice change of pace for these snakes, he thought.

He was probably being a bit too harsh...But just a bit. The Elkis Republic, for all of it's proclaimed principles of equality and justice, was very much an oligarchy. Oh, everyone was equal...but some were a bit more equal than others.

For decades now, the Republic had been steadily prodding at the much older, and more heavily populated, Asarian Kingdom, trying to destabilize it through revolutionary movements, strategic assassinations, the whole panoply, and thus be able to claim the very profitable trade routes between Erakis and Darthar.

Silvart winced. Maybe assassinating Allya wouldn't be necessary. If he was lucky enough, she'd put herself right on top of that dungeon, scouring it for riches like virtually every adventurer in the area, and get caught in the crossfire when the Republic inevitably invaded. The corridor the dungeon would form into the wasteland would simply be too valuable not to go to war over.

Of course, the question was whether the Republic would be able to win, or not. And given their respective capabilities...Silvart honestly couldn't say. The Republic was smaller, less populated, and had the Tark Hegemony, the city state of Gorromar, and the Far Reach bordering them. Now, Gorromar wasn't really a threat (the Gorromarians might be annoying as all hell, and tried to impose their rules on everyone else, but they never actually conquered anybody), but it was no secret that the Tark Hegemony had been looking to expand it's territory further into the Republic's fertile heartland, to feed their ever expanding capital city of Tark. And the Far Reach...

Well, the Far Reach was the reason the Republic had spent the last 15 years rebuilding it's military. That mountainous frozen hellscape wasn't much better than a wasteland, but the dungeon at it's heart had made it a valuable strategic asset...and the rare minerals contained in the mountains didn't hurt either. However, when the Republic had invaded, it's leadership had overlooked the critical fact that the dragons inhabiting these same mountains, and had regular contact with the dungeon and the hardy mountaineers that delved into it, might object to a foreign army marching into their land.

Predictably, it had ended with a few dragons growing noticeably bigger, more powerful, and a lot of Republic soldiers never coming home. Ever since then, raiding parties regularly descended from the mountains, and attacked the various Republican military outposts and forts along the border. They were always scrupulously sticking to attacking soldiers (unlike the Republic that had seen burning down entire villages and cities during it's campaign as a viable military mean to victory), but they still inflicted a heavy toll on the Republic's forces, and despite some raiding parties being cornered and obliterated every now and then, most of them managed to disappear back into the mountain without even coming into sight of the pursuing response force.

On the other hand, the Asarians had a whole slew of problems of their own. Their own kingdom was definitely unstable, with social unrest bubbling under the surface, and scheming nobles ready to backstab each other for just a bit more power or territory. Their information blackout on essence also had the effect that far, far fewer of their population actually cultivated mana or became adventurers, which noticeably decreased the overall powers of their army on a soldier by soldier basis. Last but not the least, some Asarian nobles still relied on feudal levies instead of the professional military most nations now used. This made their military contribution of even more questionable quality.

On top of that, the Asarian Kingdom bordered the Saphire Kingdom. And the bad blood between the Far Reach and the Republic was nothing compared to how much (and how thoroughly) the Asarian Kingdom and the Saphire Kingdom hated each other. The Saphire Kingodm had once ruled over the whole continent, a thousand years ago....before a province named Asaria had rebelled, and traitorously murdered almost 75% of the Saphire Kingdom's army, and launched a bloody civil war, that had ended up with the entire continent collapsing into squabbling dukedoms and cities, in what was now called the Wars of Shattering.

Even after all this time, the citizens of the Saphire Kingdom hadn't forgiven the 'barbaric bloodthirsty Asarian traitors' for their betrayal, and the subsequent collapse of the greater kingdom.

Silvar sighed, and massaged his forehead, before going back to his desk.

If he sent the sergeant for a courier, he might as well have the dispatch ready before he arrived.