With everyone's approval including the captain's we all headed down to eat breakfast, to me this felt strange. The joking around, the free and open conversations just felt out of place for me. We covered many topics while picking what to eat, from Jerrald's stories of strange missions and the captain's reactions to some of the monsters Etyria had."Ever seen a hydra? Those damn things must be the most annoying monsters to slay!" the captain was explaining how difficult and annoying a fully grown hydra can be to take down."A hydra? measly...Try fighting a pack of swamp basilisks, you cannot look anywhere or you'll fall to their magic if you even accidentally glance at their vision. They are small but so damn fast and agile, not to mention the blade like scales covering their bodies!" Leya seemed to have more knowledge about monsters though, which was normal for a beast tamer."Have you ever met a dragon?" Anabel aimed the question at Leya who's expression turned to thoughtful "Wyverns are minor dragons dear, drakes are above them and then there is three more tiers of dragons. Titans are the ones you'd normally see and even they are extremely dangerous, then there is Devourers who are capable of exterminating a whole kingdom. Last there is the legendary Elder Dragons who are said to feed on the mana of a world, as for your question yes I have seen dragons before. The first was a spirit contracted with one of the Heroes of DarkGlade, a Dark elemental Devourer and the second was at the battle for DarkGlade or what everyone calls the second wave these days." her expression went dark as she stared into her open palm, seemingly recalling the event.

"That thing...It was like nothing I've ever seen before. It's scales were so white and dense with mana that nothing could pierce them, it was so large that barely anything could move it let alone fight it. It's eyes were the worst part... A swirling green and black full of corruption, it absorbed too much mana from the void. If it wasn't for your race's hero we would not have stood a chance." She looked up "It was an Elder Dragon and he was the one that took him down while his spirits forced it out of our realm.". Ell had just finished eating and turned to join the conversation "Did you know him? The human hero?", at her question everyone who wasn't listening turned to do so. Leya sighed at the sudden interest from everyone even some from other tables "Well...when he first arrived me and a close friend of mine were the first to meet him, he had almost got himself killed by a Void Wyvern and we had to take him back to Rosevalt."Leya let out a short amused laugh as she recalled the incident." After that the only other time I saw him was at the second wave, he had changed so much I barely recognised him. Do you know what they called him? A manamancer, a type of sorcerer that could use mana in its rawest form and bend mana around him to his will". Suddenly the captain got up from his seat while turning away from his Iris "Alright time to go, I just got a message that the caravan is ready." one by one we got up and followed, we grouped up around the console panel on that floor "I'll add you all to the comm party system, with that we can all teleport to the air docks together. There, now remember that to use the long range comms just pour mana into the Iris to activate it then just speak."

Everyone nodded in acknowledgement and he opened the map on his Iris, selecting one of the highest floors in the base he selected for a group teleportation. The floor under us lit up with runic magic circles as our figures disappeared, altogether we got teleported to the Air Docks floor. The floor was any sci-fi fan's dream, two thick walls on opposing sides while the other two sides were open with metal shutters and pillars in-between each shutter. "The whole floor is lined with "caravans", magically powered air crafts with the ability to hover, teleport for long ranges and are lined with state of the art weaponry. The real designation for these air crafts is "MCC-MK1" or Mercenary Combat Carrier mark 1, King Zeaxar had these custom made at Redguard the Demon's capital city and with the aid of human technology" Lia started to explain "Being the King of a country and owner of the most prominent mercenary guild had its perks and toys". The MCC's body was like a shuttle with its front bent downwards while having only a single wing to the right that came out from the top and bent downwards as its left was flat with the air craft's entrance on it, the whole frame wasn't smooth but blocky and the wing itself was twice the width of the craft making up most of its width. On the back of the craft were four propulsion mechanisms connected to the engine which was then connected to the mana supply that was absorbed over time from the surroundings, multiple runes were inscribed on the hull of the craft to absorb the mana while also having some barrier creating runes.

"Welcome to the Air Dock, my favourite floor!" Lia became excited at the sight of the caravans, to the point that she ran over to one of them and turned around with her arms open wide "This is my baby!" she was standing next to a caravan looking a bit different from the others, it was numbered like all the others but this one had some "modifications" to its frame. The 52nd caravan's hull was lined with thick inscriptions following the edges of its frame while underneath it's wing turret like machines were lined up. "Fifty two has some added weaponry and!" she opened the sliding door, went in and turned the caravan on "Added bling!" we heard her voice on the loudspeakers as the thick inscriptions filled with mana and shone a bright yellow giving the craft a golden luminous trim. The brightly shining craft caught many's attention while some just sighed and moved on with their day, the captain on the other hand just laughed it off and go inside "Lia is the pilot in the squad, she has the say on what our transportation gets or doesn't. Get on we're leaving immediately!" some of us like me, Ell and Anabel were the last to get on due to our surprise and mixed expressions. The caravan was fairly large, I estimated the pilot's cockpit to be three meters wide, six in height and four in length while slanted downwards and having two sets of two seats with controls on the front left one. The main room was about four meters wide, five in height and seven in length having each side except the sliding door lined with seats equipped with seat belts and a parachute on the back, each seat was connected to the wall which seemed indented all the way to the roof. On the wall to the side where the wing was another room lay, the gunner's room was two meters in width and length while being five in height while having a single seat and controls in front of it.

"Take your seats!" Lia shouted over from the cockpit as she took the pilot seat and the captain sat in the co-pilot seat "Right! Matt in case we need to use the caravan for combat you're the most qualified for the gunner's position, Alright?" by the time she finished everyone was seated and ready, the door closed and the engine could be heard turning on. There were no windows and the door to the cockpit was closed so I couldn't see anything but I did feel the caravan take flight, I also felt the mana flowing through the engines and the mana flowing through the hull and covering the craft. "Hold tight for teleportation!" we heard Lia's voice in our heads as the party system in the Iris was being used, suddenly the air seemed to shift around us as the teleportation took effect. Looking around the group everyone looked fine except for one person, Anabel looked like she was going to be sick while using healing magic to calm her confused senses. After a couple minutes we could feel the craft land with Lia confirming it on the voice comms "We're here! Destora's ThunderBird Roost." I took off the seat belt and got up along with the others, Anabel on the other hand was holding on to the seats to stand "You alright?" I ask her while passing by. "Yeah...it's...Uh..nothing.." she straightened herself and walked over to the exit, almost tripping down the step. I sigh at the sorry sight and step out with the others, Lia and the captain behind me. When outside I took in the surroundings, dark brown trees in every direction surrounded the opening we landed in and a sole house stood in the middle. The trees were so tall and the canopy so thick that you couldn't see in any direction, giving you the feeling of truly being in the wild and having no connection to the social world or its communities.

The house was fairly simplistic, a two storey stone brick house with slanted hay roof and a wooden door. Only a couple moments after we landed the door opened and a figure walked out, the creature could have been taken as a human child if it was completely dark due to its humanoid shape and short stature. It had greyish green skin with long green ears and a long pointed nose, the goblin stood no higher than a meter and was heading our way.When it got close enough other features could be made out like white stands of hair that grew out of its mostly bald head and star shaped pupil showing their Fae ancestry, the creature is small and frail but looks can be quite deceiving as a goblin's intelligence and slyness can be the end of any warrior. This one though was old and slightly hunched forward, it could barely walk without the walking stick it held on to but that as well wasn't enough to make me underestimate it. Goblins just like any Fae race held deep darkness within them that if released could create a killing machine, Hobgoblins were no joke and are even to this day treated as highly dangerous and the change is irreversible although highly rare.

"Thank you for coming...more dire than first thought...Feel it?" the goblin spoke as his voice trembled in what sounded like fear, a fear well founded as we also began to feel the rushing of mana all around us and could terrifyingly sense where it all converged. It felt like something or someone was sucking in as much mana from our surroundings as possible and forcing it to converge and compress, it was the same feeling you'd get when standing in a dark and broken down building with the feeling of something watching your every move and the eerie creeping up your veins except you knew exactly were the eyes were watching from.The feeling came from deep beneath the ground, somewhere untouched by the sun. "And something else..." the goblin began walking away towards the forest, we followed it as it spoke "Strange..cave opening...was never there before.". "Cave?..Woah..." the captain's expression was the same as everybody's in the group, "Leya, Anabel inspect the entrance." the captain turned to them both and they nodded, moving to the entrance which looked like the earth had been pushed upward to create an alcove of sorts with only one opening that went down who knows how deep. Stepping away from the two and Jerrald who stood guard with them we entered the tunnel which surprisingly had stairs made of stone heading down and torches lighting up the way. We went down the stairs for about a minute till we came to the tunnel's apparent end, the goblin walked up to the wooden double door and rested his hand on it "Not made by hand..magic so dense...so intricate..." he turned to look at us "Crafted with mana this was..."

We stepped closer to the door, intricate runes unknown to us covered the surface "Anabel!" the captain was using the party comms "Get down here, leave Leya and Jerrald to watch. You need to see this." he ran his hands through the runes. "Tried everything to open..would not budge, even tried explosives!" the goblin started exclaiming its failed attempt of opening the door. "These runes aren't like anything I know of...We won't open it until our mage gets a look at it." the captain stepped away and started inspecting the torch on the wall, he tried to pull it out of its holder but it wouldn't budge. Lia sighed "This place reeks of DarkGuild...If I didn't know better..."and suddenly Anabel almost flew down the last steps "This...that...what...I...." she was holding onto Lia's shoulder and was breathing heavily having obviously rushed down the stairs. "Calm down girl!" Lia held her up while she collected herself, when she did she walked over to the door and inspected it and the runes "These runes aren't of Etyrian teaching...They are so much more...Detailed..." she ran her fingers down multiple runes while pouring mana into them and making them glow slightly. "Can you decipher them?" I asked her while moving closer to the door. "No...It will take me too long to get a single word out without a cipher..But something I did discover which also explains these runes..." she turned around to face everyone "The tunnel..The stairs...Even the walls...They were all crafted with almost perfect mana control as if through some one's will. Each thing in here is connected through a single mana signature...A single presence...And something tells me that same presence is the one collecting mana to create all this..."

"Jerrald, Leya come down here." The captain sent for both of them to come down "Guess we're going in..now for the door problem..." He steps around us and lays both his palms on the door, putting little effort into it he pushes the door open "Huh...Well it opened..." he pushes further and fully opens the door to reveal what lay inside. On the other side of the door was a sight to behold, a room almost the size of the large training rooms back at HQ and with almost medieval design to its floors, walls and roof along with several passages on each side. "Woah.." Anabel started walking into the room but I lay my hand on her shoulder and stopped her "Wha..what is it?" she glanced back just as Leya and Jerrald reached us. "I'll go in first" gently pushing her out of the way as I walked around her I walked into the large room, standing in the middle I counted three other passages excluding the one we came in from. Closing my eyes I began to focus, summoning forth both Ember and Wayne. "I'll scout the whole thing." pouring mana into both aethers I instructed them on an old magic I use to utilise, with trained movements I raised both and aimed them at the two opposing passages to my left and right. By joining my own chaos magic along with my spirits's I could create disturbingly realistic illusions, one part of this and my mist form magic. When I pulled the trigger a yelp could be heard from the entrance as a wave of fourteen bats per gun left the barrels and spread through each of the three passages, these bats held within them some of Wayne's very essence allowing him to see,smell and hear what they do.

Several minutes passed and the others joined me inside the room, I stood there with my eyes closed as Wayne worked his scouts and Ember her magic along with mine to create an illusionary illustration of what the bats scouted. This went on for about fifteen minutes until I recalled the bats back when it seemed that they checked every nook and cranny of this place, opening my eyes I looked at the almost holographic red 3D image in front of me. "Alright...That's pretty sick.." The captain walked up next to me as the others surrounded the map like magic,"Where are we in all this?" he waved his arm over the map that was a perfect square and a meter in length and width. I tapped one of the rooms with Ember's barrel and an elevated dot appeared on one of the larger rooms, although one of hundreds. "This couldn't have appeared over night...So many rooms...I would have noticed workers going in and out!...or atleast a thunderbird acting more territorial!" The goblin looked enraged that someone dared build under his property. "From the scale of this...the room here...this covers half the rain forest and a bit of destora..." he didn't look happy at all. "Wait..What is this space here?" Leya pointed out an empty space in the middle of the map the bats couldn't get to "Is it just empty?" she did have a point and I went through the vision of the bat's through Wayne. "There is a single door taking into that middle room, its here." I tapped the map with Ember's barrel again to make a door shaped carving appear on the wall of one of the rooms north of the empty space. "My scouts cannot make it budge at all, maybe it requires actual people to be close or a large group of them like the other door? That would explain what those runes do." I gave my theory and waited fora response, everyone looked on edge and some trigger happy but I didn't blame them as this real feeling of something watching penetrated my own senses.

The captain walked away from the group and stared down one of the passages that held a long corridor lit up by torches with other similarly large passages along it, "Leya help Matt figure out the shortest path to that door, everyone else ready your gear. We're going through, Buck you should head back up and let us deal with this while also sending word to Destora's guard." the next couple minutes were spent with me moving Wayne's bats through the passages and rooms till Leya had a good grasp of the terrain and paths with my describing. "Ok, we're ready to go. Matt has the path memorised, though his scouts's vision is minimal and we're not completely sure what those rooms hold." she grabbed her bow and as if out of thin air a mana arrow formed in her other hand. Jerrald stood up front with his shield held high while Lia and the captain formed behind him and Anabel with Leya in the middle while I took the rear guard along with Ell who had been silent the whole time. We moved as a group as Leya gave directions "Left...Second passage to the right..." until we arrived at another room, it was similar to the first one but half the size and less lit up. This is where everything went to shit, loud thumping noises could be heard from behind us as if heavy running footsteps with an occasional "Mooouuuauu!" Jerrald quickly moved back and took the rearguard while steadying his spear and shield. With a loud crash the massive beast smashed into the left wall of the corridor while building up a substantial amount of debree and dust covering most of itself from view, we saw its form within the dust cloud turned and taking charge once again.

"Minotaur!" Jerrald almost roared the name of the beast as he raised his shield, it glowed brightly as a thick mana barrier appeared in front of it and covered the whole corridor width and height. The Minotaur crashed into the shield putting large cracks into it while it roared at us from the other side, the thing looked like a bull standing on its hind legs with five times the muscle and humanoid like arms holding a gigantic two handed war axe. It took a couple steps back and clenched the axe while heaving it upwards behind it, the axe came crashing down on the barrier and shattered it while at the same time the Minotaur took a step forward and spun to it's right while spinning the axe with it to combo another attack in. The axe crashed into Jerrald's shield just as a denser and smaller barrier hovered in front of it, the power of the attack was enough to send him crashing into the wall of the passage. Before the beast could attack again Lia and Captain Carlos rushed behind it and they both lowered their posture into a round house kick at a leg each, they infused the kick with their mana to enhance their power and speed forcing the beast to tumble backwards and to the ground. Jerrald pushed himself out of the wall just as Anabel cast her buff on him increasing his speed and resistance, he threw his shield to the side and leaped to the wall to then kick off into the air above the Minotaur as it tried to get up. Infusing his spear with fire mana he crashed down on the beast's torso and pierced through its chest with the spear, the Minotaur roared in agony "MUAAAUUUA" and back handed Jerrald off its chest and into the wall again. Golden blood leaked out of its mouth and wound as it rose back to its feet, Lia and the Captain leaped up and punched its shoulders as hard as they could while infusing themselves with more mana just as a sickening crunch filled our ears.

The beast fell to its knees with two dislocated or broken shoulders as its arms fell limply to its side and dropping the axe, with agile and trained movements I side stepped around the others while in mist form to increase my speed. Just as I lined up Wayne's barrel to the Minotaur's face a purple mass of mana shot out and engulfed its whole head devouring flesh and bone alike, the monster fell on its side dead and headless down to the neck. "What the fuck!? Aren't these colossal shits extinct!?" The captain stepped around the corpse with Lia behind him."Something is not right...The technique it used..Normal Minotaurs don't have the capacity for such learning.." Jerrald was being helped up by Ell's vines while Anabel healed him. Leya walked out from behind us and started to inspect the corpse, only for it to dissipate into mana before she could even touch it "That is definitely not normal...Anabel the mana signature hurry!" with her call Anabel moved from healing Jerrald to pouring her own mana into the area the corpse once was at. "No..No no no...This doesn't make any sense!" she was inspecting the mana signature the beast left behind "It's the exact same as everything else!" she was shaking her head frantically as she moved to the wall and then lowered herself to the floor. "Else? What is it ana?" Ell had retrieved her vines as Jerrald could stand on his own again, she moved behind Anabel and rested her hand on her shoulder. "The walls..the floor..the door..the stairs..even the monster...It all has the same mana signature!" now that she mentioned it I too felt it although the Minotaur had already gone and my senses couldn't pick it up anymore I could sense the mana in the walls, floor and very air around me, it was all the same.

"Unknown runes...artificial rooms and monsters...What the hell is going on?" Lia walked into the room and looked around, her expression then turned to excitement "Treasure!" she practically pounced on the chest that lay in a dark corner of the room. "Wait!" I shouted at the top of my lungs as I entered mist from to lunge at her ever descending arm, stopping it just as it touched the chest. With a *clank* and a *squeal* I could sense the intricate mechanisms and mana flowing through the chest and into the walls, preparing Ember I listened closely just as the trap engaged only moments after the touching of the chest's surface. I pushed Lia down to the ground as five barbed arrows launched out of the wall to our right aimed at my position, in quick succession I fired three blunt shots deflecting three arrows while dodging two with mist form."Damnit Lia contain yourself!" The captain walked up and helped her up. "Ah we're fine..You're fine...right?" she played it off but looked at me with actual concern. "Yeah..I'm fine.." I nodded and turned to look at one of the arrows that stuck to the wall behind me, it was oozing and smoking as if acid was eating away at the wall until it dropped to the floor "Acidic poison..Old fashioned but..Deadly..and painful" Leya walked over to one and inspected it "Same thing, same signature I think." she walked over to Anabel who poured her mana into the arrow "Yeah you're right..." with her acknowledgement Leya threw the arrow to the side.

I sighed and moved in on the chest kneeling down next to it, "Matthew? You sure that's a good idea?" Jerrald walked up behind me as every one gather around as well. "Yeah, the runes disappeared right after the trap activated. It should be safe to open now..." I slowly laid my hands on top of the chest and raised the lid ever so slightly, peaking inside for anymore contraptions. "Well I'll be damned...Check this out.." I raised the lid fully revealing the contents of the chest.

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Author: Just to clear this out now, No the story is NOT turning into one of "those" story genres. This is just part of the story I've elaborated, we will be going over a multitude of settings, legends and mythologies as I will focus a lot more on the "adventure" genre going forward. Also to be clear, No I am not sorry for the ending. :)

Edited by; Birse, Pitchfork him for nasty cliffhangers :