Author’s Corner: I’ve said it once I’ll say it again. I HATE SINUSES.

Over the course of the next several minutes, I began asking the Ha’vosh for everything they knew in regards to these ‘mist walkers’. Celeste didn’t have any information on them, as they were likely not considered a major threat in the future. Also… I named this Ha’vosh representative Bob. When I tried asking for his name, he said that their kind had no such thing. They simply knew who people were when communicating telepathically, so names were unnecessary.

The information they had on the mist walkers was fairly limited, despite them having been present for half a solar cycle(which Celeste confirmed would be equal to a full year for us, due to the difference in orbits). All that they really knew for sure was that they would live in the fog, and attacks seemed to be conducted completely at random.

Since the creature was capable of perfectly hiding itself within this fog, they were unable to detect it. I thought that there might be an elemental at work here, but a mist elemental shouldn’t be attacking with blades or claws, and we would be able to detect it with the ship’s scanners. So far, there were only vague reports of what the creature looked like, a small humanoid shape with a blade for an arm. This image was seen when a group were attacked all at once, and one managed to get away. However, even that one never saw a distinct shape.

Hearing this, it seemed pretty clear that this was a creature specialized at living and hunting within heavy fogs. With its stealth ability, it could hide its aura, appearance, even its mind. But, this also gave me an easy way to deal with it. Mist is just air and water, plus that random element we couldn’t identify, but I didn’t need to worry too much about that right now.

“Okay, let’s try this.” I said as I lifted my hand up, focusing my Wind and Water Manipulation to disperse the fog in the immediate area. Yin might be better suited for this, as her specialty is weather control, but for now this would do.

As if a large breeze had spread outwards from my position, the fog pulled backwards, creating a bubble of clean air about fifty meters wide. Within this bubble was me, Sharon, the Ha’vosh… and no monster. “Looks like it wasn’t nearby.” This was the limit of the area I could create with my Wind and Water manipulation abilities, and I could only hold it for roughly two minutes before exhausting my mana.

I looked nearby to Sharon, who nodded and summoned out twenty rabbits. “These are all cultivating rabbits.” She then looked to the rabbits and had them spread out. Around each one, a five meter wide bubble appeared that the fog would not penetrate.

Meanwhile, the Ha’vosh were looking at us in what I had to assume was shock. Bob, being the only one that could speak with us, looked to the others and asked. “Is that… magic?”

I nodded my head in response to that. “Yeah. Doing it this way, we should be able to find a mist walker if we get close to one.” The problem was that we had to get close to one, and this was the only method I could think of to draw them out. Hopefully, they were only able to hide within the fog, and not in clear air as well.

Naturally, this meant that we wouldn’t be able to cover the entire planet, but if we set up the temple then other people can become druids and do this. Of course, we still had to determine just how strong the mist walkers were once they are exposed. If they have an overpowered defense, then that will just make things too complicated. At that point, it’d be easier to just slowly evacuate the planet.

The rabbits all spread out, running down the streets and in between the Ha’vosh. If they were to find the mist walkers, they would likely attack. Then we would see if one of Sharon’s improved rabbits were enough to kill one.

The answer, surprisingly, came in less than five minutes from Celeste. She radioed down from the ship to both myself and Sharon. “Monster sighted two hundred meters north of your position. The rabbit was able to quickly take care of it, and we managed to record the event. John, I’ll send you the feed now.”

Before I could respond, my vision was flooded with the scene of a lone horned rabbit running through the fog, blazing an uneven pattern that made it hard to predict where its next leap would take it. Soon, right in front of it, a five foot tall humanoid appeared. Its body looked almost ethereal, the mist clinging to it even as the rabbit’s magic tried to force it away. When the mist vanished from the monster completely, its skin was shown to be entirely white, with its right arm in the shape of a giant blade. Its body was almost entirely smooth and featureless, with only two glowing yellow dots to show the face.

These creatures are experts of stealth and assassination, but now we’ve removed that little trick. And if you are comparing its reaction speed to a rabbit that has fought who knows how many battles in Sharon’s grove, it was easy to determine who would get the first blood. The little rabbit shot up like an arrow, embedding its horn directly into the chest of the mist walker. This did not seem to kill it, but its next action was more than enough.

Before the mist walker could raise its left arm to pull the rabbit off, its entire body began glowing and spasming, sparks flying off it in random directions. It would seem that the rabbit has used its horn as a medium to shoot lightning directly into the mist walker’s body, and it was super effective. The mist walker fell to the ground as the rabbit pulled off of its chest, before the furry little creature ran back towards us.

As the vision faded, I nodded towards Sharon. “Looks like their physical defense isn’t that great. Though, the fight was too fast to see if they have any other tricks.”

Sharon nodded with a slight smile. She then turned and spoke to Bob. “We’ve killed one of the mist walkers now.” Just as she finished talking, the little fluff ball of doom arrived like a blur in front of her, and sat obediently by her feet. The blood coating its horn reminded me of my own unfortunate encounter with these creatures early on in my adventure.

“Ah… thank you.” Bob shook his head. “Is it fine to... inspect the... body?”

I could imagine that it would be hard to trust the words of a total stranger, no matter how hard the times were that your people were in. So naturally, I nodded my head and led the way to where the battle had taken place, with Celeste’s help. As we approached, it seemed that the creature had vanished. However, the smell of blood was still in the air, so I used a little bit of mana to disperse the mist around the body, revealing it for the others to see.

So it is a passive skill, and it works even when they are dead. I was starting to get interested in the abilities of these mist walkers. If I could study one, and figure out how they worked, I should be able to add their stealth power to my arsenal. Maybe even adjust it like I did with the mana leech and mana breath aspects, if that is possible.

So, while Bob knelt down to inspect the body, I casually sent my Mana Sense through it to study its aura. After a few moments, I could hear them talking to each other, but I felt it was more important to take care of this right now, so I let Sharon handle the talking. Within five minutes, I had completely memorized the aura of this mist walker.

“John?” Sharon glanced over at me, snapping me out of my focus.

“Hmm?” I looked over to her curiously.

“We just got a report that two more mist walkers were found and attacked not far away.” Sharon sighed and explained, realizing that I had not been paying attention at all to what they were talking about. “One of the rabbits died. Looks like they aren’t all so easy to kill.”

“Ah…” Celeste, how did it manage to kill one of Sharon’s rabbits?

The AI responded after a fraction of a second. “Mostly a lucky shot. The rabbit was in the middle of a big jump and leapt right into its blade arm. Given their speed…. It pretty much cut itself in half.”

I winced a bit as I heard that. Death by running too fast. Well, at least it was quick? Okay, even I’m cringing at how bad that pun was. “Alright.” I turned to look at Bob. “Do you have any way to teach the languages to your people? Psychic transfer or anything like that?” Man, that would be convenient.

“Yes. We have… something that can… take care of it.” Bob shook his head again. Man, it was starting to get really annoying trying to remember that shaking his head meant yes.

“Good. I’m going to set up a temple for you guys. That way, you can start working on getting your classes.” I looked around, seeing the fog on all sides. “Where would be a good place to put it?”

“You… are standing in the street. So… not there. Back where you appeared…. Two kilometers south. Outside the city. Out of the way.” He took his time to slowly answer, of course.

“Understood. We’ll go get started on that.” I nodded, and then headed off to the south with Sharon, leaving the Ha’vosh to communicate telepathically behind us.

“Well… that went better than planned.” Sharon gave me a small smile, expanding her own anti-mist area. Hers was only roughly ten meters wide, but that was plenty to hold the two of us.

“True… By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask something. And since we’re walking for about a mile, I’ve got time now.”

“Hmm?” She raised a curious brow, leaning in to listen to what I wanted to ask her.

“Well… it’s been a year now, at least. You’ve had your animal companions just as long as I have, pretty much. And both of mine already evolved to humanoid forms. I was wondering why yours haven’t seemed to have gotten that far yet?”

“Ahh..” Sharon grinned playfully, grabbing my arm. “They have. I’ve got a couple of dozen that can go humanoid by now.” The number made my eye twitch slightly.

“A couple… dozen…? How come you never told us?” She had only ever called out animals in the earlier evolution stages, so I was sure that she had been stopping them from evolving to a human form or something.

“Nobody ever asked.” She shrugged slightly. “They stay in my grove to serve as elders for their races. Some even started families, though we haven’t seen the results of that yet.”

I nodded my head. What she said made sense, as the evolved animals are part of a ‘clan’, so would want to stick around and help their own people. “Still, thought about introducing some to serve on the Ariadne?”

Sharon seemed to think about it for a moment. “I think some of the rabbitkin would be good for the tavern. Bunny girl maids, you know?” She winked teasingly at me as she said that. Though I had to admit, she was right. “As for other positions, they don’t really have any training. Maybe I’ll send some over to Celeste when we get back so that they can be trained for the easier positions?”

I nodded again. “Alright. I think it’d be good for Yo and Yang to meet them too. Did any of yours become demi, or did they all take the long path?”

“Hmm..” She closed her eyes and focused. “I’ve got three demis. Two from the rabbit tribe, and one from the wolves. If I’m measuring them right, I should be getting another one soon from the snakes. I planned to train all of the demis as druids, since they already have Nature Magic, and most of them can already cultivate.”

“That works. It’d be good to see new faces around the ship every now and then. And you haven’t gotten any new species in a while, have you? Not since we did your divine quest.”

“I know… I really want some fish, now. I’ve got birds, wolves, snakes, but no fish. I’ve even got a whole water planetoid waiting for if I come across any good ones.”

Well, that seemed pretty random to me. I mean, even if she gets fish, when will she use them? Land and air animals are easy to use for combat, tracking, or a variety of other purposes. But unless we arrive on a mermaid planet, there really won’t be much use for fish.

“You’re thinking that fish are useless as animal companions, aren’t you?” Sharon looked to me with a wry smirk.

“Uh… maybe?” Guess there’s a reason that I don’t have poker face or bluff as one of my skills.

“Well… you’re right. I don’t really want them for combat potential or anything like that. Though it would be cool if I happened to evolve a water dragon from a little fish. But actually… I’ve had this quest for ages now. Get a species for every climate. I’ve gotten forest covered in spades. Mountain was covered by the boulder lizards. Giant armadillos live underground, so I got caves. Wolves kind of count for plains as well, so that one is covered. Some of my wolves evolved along an ice path, so I have tundra. A couple of rabbits went fire, so I have desert. All I’m really missing is a water animal.”

“Huh.. what’s the reward for your quest?” I glanced over to her curiously. I can understand why she never brought it up. It’s basically just a quest to do in the background while you do other things.

“Supposedly, a Colony Druid special ability. He was a bit vague about it.” Sharon shrugged her shoulders as we continued walking. “Said it’d be a special ability that would be more effective the wider variety of creatures I had in my grove.”

“He as in… our original druid trainer?” I asked, and Sharon nodded her head. “Wow, you’ve had this quest a while.”

“I know, right? I want to finally get rid of it. At this rate, I’d be happy to just have a pair of goldfish.” She chuckled under her breath as we approached the site where we’d be building the Ha’vosh’s first temple.

In front of us, there was a slight disturbance in the mist, and I quickly shot out a stone spike with Earth Manipulation. As we got closer, I saw the body of another mist walker that had apparently not gotten out of our way fast enough. “Well, we’ll see if they have any interesting aquatic wildlife on this planet. Maybe we can catch you something before we go back.”

Sharon grinned teasingly again. “You mean before we go back and you introduce both of your girlfriends and your daughter to your parents?”

“Please.. Please no… Don’t say it like that… it’s totally accurate, but still…” I could feel a headache already forming, and it wasn’t because of a psychic broadcast.