Chapter 44

On the fly, Adrian altered his intention.

Fucken plants.

Internal haste triggered.

With his dagger and telekinesis, he tore the plant out of the ground. The illusion trap triggered, linking him and the flower.

His mind rallied. Holding back the pressure briefly. A giant wall to stop what the damn thing was planning. The flower’s power seeped through him and his defences rallied around his core consciousness.

Visually, the surrounding trees disappeared, but that was only a minor issue. His desperate bulwark had kept most of his mind intact.

Adrian refused to be distracted. The physical domain sense functioned as normal, even as smell, sight and he suspected feel failed him.

The flower was going to be his.

He would throw it in his bag of holding and in doing so, free himself from its machination. The bag of holding flopped open and his telekinesis gripped the flower and lifted it across.

His magic unravelled somehow, and the flower tumbled to land in the dirt.

What?

The flower was near its initial spot. Its roots were twisting, moving, and reattaching it to the ground. They thickened and strengthened rapidly, becoming so strong that no normal force could pull it up.

No!

Illusion flowers did not do that.

He shut his eyes and concentrated on the physical thread of his domain. The flower had not fallen instead it was still held in his mental hands. Trapped by his magic in the air and helpless against his abilities.

So tricky.

To avoid any further mistakes, he stopped manipulating it and levitated his bag of holding. The drawstring released, the flap pulled back and the opening to the dimension space gaped. The leather bag was like a monster with a giant mouth jumping to devour a bird. It went through the space he knew the flower was in and then snapped shut.

Trees reappeared.

There was a hole in the ground where he had ripped the flower from.

His sensing domain confirmed there were no invisible lumps anywhere near him.

It was his.

His mind opened one of the smaller public bags and ordered it to expel its contents.

A wave of sensing magic slammed out from the class four monster that Adrian knew would come to seize back its prize.

The other sensing spell he had observed must have been a passive version because this one was twice as high and ten times as fast. There was no avoiding it and it swept over him. The internal threads touched him and felt him out.

The monster had found him and scanned him to boot.

Battle Wraith clicked on

Materials were falling at his feet from the open spatial bag.

Adrian started sprinting away.

It entered the edge of his domain.

Information assaulted him.

First was its shape.

It was big and was some sort of cross between a snake and a dragon. Long, sinuous, and lithe rather than heavy. Two buses long but only as thick as a horse at its widest and it possessed vestigial wings. His other senses overlapped. Its temperature was the same as the environment, but now that it was expending energy it was heating. He already knew it had a strong magic source, but its magic type was ice magic.

Relief flooded through him. That made the battle easier. If it came to a fight, he was almost guaranteed to win.

Stick to the plan.

Cold energy was around him and physical ice materialised on all exposed surfaces. Fifty metres in every direction were filled instantly. Trees froze solid and then shattered, a victim of the intensity of the spell.

The magic working was only at expert tier but the quantity was absurd. Adrian did not challenge the spell, except for keeping it from affecting his body. Completely unhindered, he took off to a tinkling noise as each step shattered the frozen blades of grass. The deadly flood of ice had frozen everything solid apart from what the creature had wanted to freeze.

Adrian was unaffected because Ice was his thing.

He ran and behind him he could feel the unstable waste products reacting, generating heat to break the oppressive cold. A bucket load of material was falling every second.

He had not used his step yet, but not because he couldn’t. He was waiting to get the monster entangled.

There was a roar and the power it had been exerting to freeze everything withdrew and reorganised. Spears of ice formed at the height of the top of the trees. Thousands of them. And then they launched at him.

His domain assessed them and found them wanting even as they came into existence above him. They were simple advanced constructions and when the monster sent them flying at him, Adrian did not oppose them. He wanted it to think it was in control. The more time it wasted attacking him with ice the more likely the waste material would expand and become truly problematic.

At the last moment, all the spears that were targeting him directly and in the line he was running through deviated and crashed against the ground on either side.

The monster roared and sprang forward landing right in the centre of the clearing.

Adrian turned to face it. Thousands of ice spears covered the open ground. Each of them embedded a foot into the earth with the bottom of their shafts coming up to his waist.

It was beautiful.

Juvenile Ice Wyvern

This ice wyvern was separated from its pack and thrown into a harsh climate that is far too hot for it and it has attempted to hide its power till it could grow strong enough to survive in the new climate.

This species will seek solitude and avoid sapients. They seek knowledge and will often bond and serve those they see as smarter than them.

With a description like that, Adrian would not kill it.

Battle wraith triggered. His attributes improved and identification kept running. The wyvern was faster than him in this form, though steps or internal haste totally flipped that equation. Like for like it was as strong as him, but since it was a hundred times his size, Adrian would never win a strength contest. Its magic pool was immense, but it did not have a domain like Adrian. The two big spells had halved its mana pool.

It was a baby of its race and it showed because it had no other magic skills. Its entire magic repertoire comprised those two ice spells. Despite its natural physical superiority, the poor creature did not stand a chance against him. He would not lose a leg fighting it. The active charges would tear it to bits and shadow steps would let him flee the counterattack

If he chose, it was dead, and then he would get a chest. Although that last line intrigued him. It was a majestic creature and should not be killed for some loot that he did not need. One day maybe he could bring one of his kids back and encourage them to bond with it.

Flames slapped the wyvern on the nose. It reared backwards, putting more of its mass in the rapidly expanding pile of waste that was about to trap it.

Step.

Adrian burst away.

The last impression he had of the animal was it shrinking away from him. Even furious at him for stealing its treasure, the wyvern recognised either that he was sapient or far more powerful than it. As a result, it did not seek to attack immediately. The waste product spread and then it was too late for it to change its mind.

It would break free easily, but Adrian only needed a few seconds. He chained steps and then alternated with low cannonball flights. After ten minutes of running, he was convinced that if it had followed, it would never catch him. He slowed and then almost fell over in shock.

There was another concentrated source of plant energy. Not quite as strong as the illusion flower, but miles above everything else he had sensed. After hours of searching, he had run into two treasures in ten minutes.

He approached cautiously, but there was no monster guarding it. All those hours of finding nothing were paid for in minutes. This was a success beyond his wildest dreams.

Once he was close enough, he studied it.

It wasn’t much and appeared to be a normal-looking mushroom

Mythical Deadcap

When ingested, this mushroom is lethal.

Even a small amount was lethal and there were multiple horrible potions he could brew with it. All of them involved killing things. Disappointment filled Adrian. He had been hoping for something useful. Being careful not to absorb any spores, he telekinetically plucked the mushroom and threw it in his bag of holding. He would probably never use it and given how the traders on sold things he wasn’t sure that he would sell it, but he might as well collect it just in case.

That done, he kept running, catching up to the group just before the swooper territory.

“Did you have a productive hunt?”

“Yes, I did,” he answered. “But you already knew that.”

“Of course I did. I was just being polite. People get all flustered if you carry out both sides of the conversation.” Adrian looked at her sideways and Kiyoko giggled like a schoolgirl, which was weird given how old she was. “Age is a state of mind.”

Adrian took half a step before he could help himself.

She laughed again. “I did not even use my powers for that. Your expressions are transparent.”

“How does this fight go?” he asked nodding toward the swooper territory.

“How would I know?”

Adrian raised an eyebrow.

“Slow and tedious,” she admitted after a moment. “Very tedious.”

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