Trolls, unfortunately, lived in sewers. They didn't like the sun apparently so we had to wade into the dark and muck to find the bastards. Arriving where the sewer tunnels had their entrance, I could see why the Troll population was left alone. Aside from the insane regeneration, no one in their right mind would want to wade through literal rivers of dumpster water to track down something that wanted to kill them. Which didn't really say much about my own sanity, but hey, there you go. I turned to Callie. "So boss, which way are we heading? Can your tracking power pick them up?"

She shook her head. "No, sadly not. The environment here is so dirty and mobile I can't pick up a trail." She bit her lip. "What about your Seek Hidden ability? Can you find them with that?" It was a reasonable question to ask, that power would be pretty beneficial in most tracking situations. Sadly this particular instance was not one where that ability could shine, so I had to let her down there.

I shook my head. "Not really. I mean...yes. I can track them fine, but labyrinthine tunnels are a bad match up for Seek Hidden over long distances. I can see exactly where the target is, but it doesn't show me how to get there. I can give us a heading at least, but we're still going to have to find our own way to their location. Since this a sewer we can't just blast our way through either. This is why people mostly use this skill to find mineral deposits from ground level. Once they find them they have a direct path to get there."

She sighed but nodded. "That's fair. It's better than just searching blindly though. most people who show up down here have no clue where they're going. Jessie are you all stocked up on gear?" She glanced at our green clad teammate who gave her a happy grin and a thumbs up.

She pulled her cloak aside to reveal a belt lined with wands. Not permanent wands, I didn't have the materials for that, but I had made her better versions of the disposable one I'd given her before. I'd been making them in my spare time since they required so little in terms of daily charges. She had eight of the things, which should more than last her the day, and hopefully keep her combat viable until we had a chance to get some more mats for her permanent weapon.

She was clearly happy with the wands because showed them off proudly. Benny threw his hands up in a gesture of questioning complaint after her earlier comments about her Might and she shrugged. "What? I said I could function in combat without my wand, not that I wanted to. Besides I plan to keep using them as we go on. The more people see me spamming rapid growth and binding plants the more Vitality and Might my reputation will bring in. I would think you of all people would understand the benefits of being well geared in battle."

Benny sighed. "Yeah, I know, but I was looking forward to a more even fight, and based on how OP those plants were even the last time we fought I doubt I'm going to do nearly as well this time. I'll have to find some kind of escape item before our next sparring match." He sounded sulky, but only on the surface, it was obvious he was just teasing her, and it made me smile to see they'd gotten closer, especially with Jessie talking to Maria long distance lately. I wondered how that was going? I hadn't had a chance to ask.

My musings were cut off by a loud voice bellowing "HAND OF GOD!" There was a roar of energy and a bright golden light, quickly cut off by a much more bestial roaring. I looked to the others and Callie nodded, clearly planning to find out what the hell that was. The four of us took off at a sprint toward the sound, and when we came around the corner spotted a group of three surrounded by a bunch of tiny green skinned creatures with red eyes and needle sharp teeth.

The three people were in costume, and obviously ascendants, but their costumes ran more towards old style adventuring gear from history than hero outfits. Which was fair because honestly so did ours in some ways. At least mine and Jessie's, what with our cloaks and all. The group was fighting off the small creatures well enough, with a big man in gleaming metal armor was swinging a big ass sword in tight arcs to push them back, and a pretty blonde in a red and white dress was standing behind a girl who I was pretty sure was an actual elf, dressed in green leathers and holding a pair of short blades.

The blonde girl was the one who had shouted the phrase earlier, because she did it again and a massive hand made of golden light appeared and swung in an arc, knocking away all the little monsters and giving the armored guy a chance to reset and catch his breath. I nodded to Jessie who reached down, plucked a wand, and flicked it out with one hand while tossing a handful of seeds with the other. The difference in Might and Vitality showed in spades as the carpet of vines swallowed the tiny green monsters.

The group froze, turning slowly to look at us. The two girls looked wary, and I couldn't see the guy's face, but I was guessing from his posture he wasn't exactly happy to see us. Callie stepped up, raising her hands. "Sorry to cut in but you folks looked like you were having trouble. No kill steals here or anything, and we won't spread it around. We just figured you could use a reprieve. You seem pretty strong, are you students at the Academy too?" She gave a friendly smile, and after hearing we weren't here to steal their bounty they relaxed.

The dark haired girl with the pointy ears stepped forward and nodded, bowing slightly at the waist. "We are. I am Celine, leader of the adventuring group Grimmengap. These are my companions, Sir Martin, and Sarah. We are recent additions to the Academy. I thank you for your assistance. We will of course take your aid in the spirit it was given." Her tone was formal, but not arrogant, she gave off a dignified air. Benny was staring.

Sir Martin, her companion, must have noted the confusion on the faces of those of us he could see, because he laughed behind the helmet. "Sorry, Celine is from the Fairieland. They do things different there. She decided to kind of stick to what she knows. Still, working for her has given me skills needed to synergize the Lesser Knight ability, which you can only really get working for someone like Celine. Sarah is a devotee of the Red Revenant Church, but since she's already a a Cleric so the group really helps her get recognition."

I blinked. That...was an interesting gimmick. I hadn't considered doing theme groups, and having a literal elf as the leader was bound to draw some attention. It also made me much more curious about the Farieland. Benny stepped forward, holding out a hand to the pretty elf girl. "Hi, I'm Clockwork, it's nice to meet you. I hope we see each other at the Academy."

I had to bite my lip to keep from breaking down laughing as my friend lowered his voice an octave to try to sound cooler. I rolled my eyes. "Well, it was nice meeting you all, but we have some trolls to hunt. We were heading back to the Academy in a few days though, maybe we could meet up then." I was dying to learn more about the Faerieland, and I was pretty curious about the Church too, given their enmity with the Black Sorrow Cult, it might not be a bad idea to reach out to talk.

Sarah looked a bit timid, clearly not used to being around so many higher ranked Ascendants. Still, that glowing hand thing had been really cool. I wondered how that kind of power worked. I asked about it and she smiled brightly. "Oh, the Church has it's own cultivation system based on ranks of the clergy. There are certain skill combinations that can steer nearly any power towards that path. I started at H rank with an ability called helping hands. It lets me make light based hand doubles to help me with complex tasks. When you take up a clergy role your ability is folded into it, so when I became a cleric my helping hands ability became a skill called Hand of God."

I hadn't realized you could even do that. There were some really interesting factors in other cultivation systems. I couldn't wait to hear more about that. I gave her a grateful smile. "Sounds interesting. I'd love to hear more about that back on campus. Do you guys want to meet us at the crafting hall when we head back in a few days? We have to make a trip up to get some new materials anyway."

Celine smiled and nodded. "That sounds good. We have to harvest the goblins and bring them in to sell in any case. Their eyes are an excellent base for night vision enhancement, and their bones are naturally suited to lockpicking." I nodded wisely, obviously bullshitting because I knew nothing about goblins at all. We exchanged scan ring numbers and then headed deeper into the sewers to continue our search for the trolls.

Seek Hidden pointed the way, albeit pretty slowly, and finally after an hour or so of searching we managed to find a path to where one isolated troll could be found. There were other groups of more of them lurking around, but we wanted to test out a single opponent first to get a better idea of how doable that would be for our junior teammates.

When we entered the chamber the first thing we noticed was the smell. Rotten meat and garbage and other things I really didn't want to think about. The flipside of having high Perception was that you could get blindsided by strong smells and things like that. You could offset that with Focus by concentrating on other things, and it usually balanced pretty well in day to day life, but in situations like this where we were just walking silently through an area we had to pay attention to it was pretty rough.

The troll itself was...hideous. Huge and ugly rough grey skin like stone. Moss grew over it's body and its huge bulging belly hung down almost to it's knees. It's eyes were golden and gleamed in the darkness, illuminating it's face with a sinister glow as slit pupils flicked over us. A huge distended purple tongue slid out and licked the sides of its mouth, where a complete lack of lips framed an odd collection of sharp and blunt teeth that seemed to be in no particular order, just an odd collection of dental work jammed haphazard into a gaping maw.

Seaweed hung from it's head, draping over it's whole body like a cloak and hiding large portions of it from view. All in all, it was hands down the ugliest thing any of us had ever seen. I turned to Jessie with a grin. "Huh. Any chance you can control that seaweed?" She blinked before focusing with her wand, and the long strips of green plant lashed out to grab onto every part of the troll they could reach. I nodded approvingly. "Seems like a good start." Then the troll broke free and the fight was on. I was really looking forward to seeing what my friends could do after their upgrades.