I shine my light at the skittering shadow as Vii’s blades of wind lash the piles of metal junk surrounding it, filling the room with the clattering sounds of metal crashing against metal. The shadow moves up the wall, and I follow it with my light wand.

In the light, what’s revealed is a figure not unlike a spider. It crawls up the walls as easy as it walks along the ground, its legs shine in the light but remain otherwise black. Apart from the tap, tap, tapping of its speeding feet, it makes no sounds.

It has six legs, eight is two too many, four is two too few. The ‘spider’ is in fact, not a spider at all. I am quite glad that it shows little resemblance to the intelligent species that we slaughtered a world ago.

More than that, I feel strangely calmed. The fight is here, there’s no more waiting for it. It’s time to act.

“Stay together!” I call out, as I get to the centre of the room. Eshya quickly halts her charge and returns to beside us, “Are there any others?”

“I can’t see any.” Vii says, “Just that one.”

“We need to kill it.” Eshya says, overeager for the fight.

Nel stands by my side, her eyes tracking the spider as it runs along the roof.

“Is it attacking? We could just let it run off…” Just as I say this, the spider launches itself at us. Vii quickly deflects it with a blast of wind, and Eshya takes the opportunity to land a blow while it’s falling.

The dog sized creature crunches as it hits the ground, but whatever damage it takes isn’t yet lethal. It rises on its quick feet and skitters out of the room through the open doors.

“A splendid attack, but it would have been more effective with a proper knife hand technique over a closed fist attack. Would you like further training to improve your brawling techniques?”

“Shut up, Barry. Is it gone?” I ask, hesitant to approach.

Eshya, showing caution but none of my hesitance, approaches the door ahead of us. We slowly follow to support her, listening closely for any alien noises under the sounds of our own cautious steps and beating hearts.

Our vanguard fearlessly pokes her head out the doors and looks about. She turns left, right, up, down. She continues for a while longer, growing relaxed after a time.

“I can’t see it.” She retreats a few steps back to us, still cautiously watching the door.

“That was a beast, right?” I ask, “I didn’t think there were any wild beasts on this world.”

“There shouldn’t be.” Nel replies, “There really, really, shouldn’t be.”

“Well, shit.” I reply, “Here I thought we had a good spot for training.”

“What are you talking about.” Eshya turns to me with a bright smile, “This makes it an even better training environment. Now we have something to hunt.”

“Mana too.” Nel says after a little thinking, “If we can kill a beast like that one, it’s flesh should have some considerable mana.”

“That too,” Eshya nods eagerly, “We should track it down.”

“Too dangerous.” I say with a shake of my head, “Vii what was it doing when you saw it?”

“It was sneaking closer to us; I think it was trying to ambush us.” She says, glaring into the darkness. “It’s so dark I only noticed it because of the light reflecting off of it from our light wands. I’d actually like to check the room again, I might’ve missed others.”

“Exactly my worry, it’s a beast that prefers ambush.” I say, “I get the feeling we won’t do so well when it gets the jump on us.”

“Oh,” Eshya suddenly loses her passion, “So we’re going to have to stay on guard all the way back up?”

“Yes, but first we should find a way to get this door working again and hopefully lock it,” I say.

As I say this, I can hear a light clattering coming from beyond the stone door. Eshya races for it as the rest of us freeze up. From the darkness crawls a dozen of the spiders, instantly clearing away my earlier concerns of an ambush and replacing them with a few more immediate concerns.

Eshya kicks at the first few between the doors, but unlike us they aren’t so limited in their options as they squeeze through the gap. Many spiders follow crawling in through the entire height of the door and pushing our front line back.

I throw a fireball with a decent chunk of mana at the door crawling with beasts. The flames and heat inspire a chilling squeal from the creatures and force them to scatter. They’re split between those that run towards us and those that run back through the doors.

Vii’s wind scatters the last flickers of flame back towards the gap in the door, as Eshya throws aside the spiders that move towards her, punting them a few good metres. Nel knocks aside one that gets too close to us, hitting at it with her fists and her feet until it retreats.

“We need to close the doors!” I shout, as the spiders inside with us scatter under the pressure of our attacks. Vii and I throw spells left and right, Nel continues to defend against the few that get behind us, and Eshya pushes ahead for the door.

“How do we close it?” She shouts, as she gets to the dead door, punting back a spider that tries to get through. I throw another glowing ball of flames to frighten off any others that want to sneak in.

“Can’t we push it closed?” I ask, trying to do just that. We’ve already opened a few dead doors of similar design while coming down here.

“It’s not moving!” Eshya says as she pulls and pushes at the stone slab to try and get it to move.

“Another student?” The machine, hereby known as Barry, says. “Your enthusiasm is appreciated, but please let’s begin with a check of your status.” I ignore him and the spider he’s suddenly decided to tutor.

“Then I’ll try something stupid!” I declare, touching the panel as Eshya punches a beast from the air as it leaps for me. “Thanks!”

It’s easy enough to surmise that the door is dead because it’s run out of the mana that’s used to make it move. I’m sure that there’s some elegant solution that that a magic engineer can use to fix it, I’m instead going to hit it really hard with a blast of mana and hope for the best.

I touch at the symbol that is supposed to make the door open and close and press my mana into it. Thankfully the greedy little door sucks up all that I feed into it, so without hesitation I flood it with about 50 units worth of mana.

As soon as the mana passes through, a spark of light ignites within the mechanisms and the doors begin to open wider.

“No, close damn it.” I slap the sigil again and the doors pause a moment before beginning to close. The spiders outside the room rush to us, to try and squeeze through, but the doors close before they can jam a foot between them.

Now if only I knew how to lock it…

I wait impatiently, glaring at the beasts inside with us, but it seems that the spiders can’t open doors.

“Help! Over here!” Vii shouts. One of the beasts is grappling with Nel, who’s struggling to throw it off. Vii’s wind blasts are barely keeping the others away as she sinks her talons into the back of the spider.

Eshya charges towards them but is forced to intercept a number more spiders that are trying to make the most of our weakness.

“Nel!” I shout, using the opening given by Eshya to get close.

“Your techniques are lacking.” Barry says as I charge in and pull at the legs of the spider clawing at Nel. She’s using all her strength to keep its fangs away from her, and can’t manage to get it off. Vii has been forced to pull her talons back and focus on the spiders racing for us.

“Help us kill these spiders you bag of bolts!” I shout at Barry, hitting the spiders leg with my newly learned mana burst punch. Feeling a snap, I see the leg break open and start oozing blood. The creature now filled with pain and fear, pulls away and tries to escape.

In that small opening, Nel thrusts her hand at its belly with the same attack I just used, cracking the shell. I hold it back from escaping as her punches continue, the shell breaking and shattering under her assault.

“It’s done.” Nel says, rolling aside and standing ready for the next attack.

I drop the corpse, and I’m instantly forced into lobbing another ball of fire at a leaping insectoid beast. It’s a solid hit. The screeching creature sprints madly around the room as the flames crawl over its black, chitinous body.

“Not many left!” Eshya says, kicking a spider and launching it across the room. It slams against the wall before landing loudly in a pile of metal junk, but still it stands again.

Vii’s wind blades aren’t doing much damage but they’re keeping the majority of the creatures at a distance.

I stand up beside Nel, ready to face the next ones that come at us. I throw fireballs here and there, but for all the mana that I put in them they’re too slow and most don’t even nick the fast spiders.

“I cannot properly teach you if you insist on refusing to tell me your mana density.” Barry says as he dodges an attack, “While your passion is welcome, it is only with a calm approach that we can improve ourselves.”

It seems as though they’ve lost most of their fight, they run around the walls and the ceiling trying to find a way out. Eshya runs after them, smashing them against walls, flinging them at the ceiling, and kicking them about when they’re too slow to escape her.

Nel and I are both so slow that we can’t catch any of the fleeing creatures but that’s soon not an issue.

At once the beasts seem to realize that they’re trapped in here and are being hunted down. In moments, they go from trying to escape to returning to the offensive, much more aggressive now than before.

Three of them run right at Nel and I, one on the ceiling, two on the floor. I throw a fireball at the monster on the ceiling as Nel and I both charge those on the floor. Vii and Eshya are dedicated to their own battles, throwing the spiders about as if without effort.

The spider on the ceiling drops, the flames thicker than earlier fireballs, and costing more in mana in return. Nel’s kick knocks her spider back a step, but mine isn’t quite so effective. I don’t have time to check, but my overuse of magic in the fight has noticeably weakened my attacks.

The spider jumps up at me, its fangs twitching as they just barely graze my shoulder, its legs clamping around my sides and digging in like knives. It’s the same trap that Nel was caught in a moment ago.

“Fuck!” I shout, barely managing to push the spider free with a burst of adrenaline fuelled strength. I try to keep it from escaping, but that proves too much, as it twists out of my hands and runs straight for the distracted Nel.

“Nel!” I shout in warning as I chase after it much too slowly.

She too is too slow to react, as it leaps on her back and sinks its fangs into her shoulder.

“She’s mine!” I shout, grabbing its head right between its massive fangs and hauling it off of her. Nel screams in pain as her blood splatters around us.

I don’t have the mana left for a mana surge to be effective anymore, but I pound on its struggling legs anyway. After a few hits I disable a single leg, but it’s too little, too slow.

I press it on the ground with my weight and start punching at its head, using everything I’ve got.

Mana surge strengthens the movements in my arm and momentarily reinforces my muscles and bone. The mana then gathers into a vortex on my fist, as my punch lands on the chitinous exoskeleton, too weak to crack it. Instead, I focus on the mana vortex and squeeze the mana out with a familiar Skill. I delay the activation of flame burst and push all the concentrated mana out into the spider’s head.

The mana floods out of my fist about an inch deep into the resisting chitin before trying to burst into flames. I don’t know exactly how that results in the chitin popping like popcorn in a microwave, but I won’t complain.

Well, I’ll complain a little. I just wasted a good chunk of my mana on that one hit and while it did kill the spider, it’s not like it fully exploded, just its head. For the mana I spent I’d like a more Hollywood-esque blast, though that’s probably too much to ask for.

As it is, I get no new Skill. It really is just three different Skills used in sequence, and unfortunately the only real reason it worked was because of how much mana I shoved through in it. I still might want to try and develop it into a Skill when I get the time though.

“Nel!” I shout, returning to her side as she kicks away a spider, while pressing on her wounded shoulder.

“I’m still alive. Focus on helping me kill this one!” She shouts.

Nel has already smashed all the legs on the left side of the one that had come at her and now she’s dancing with the one that still has a few flames sticking to its exoskeleton. I rush it from the side and as it turns to run away from me Nel lands a kick, flipping the beast that she then crushes with repeated stomps.

“Remember it’s only sparring, try not to kill one another. It is our unity that holds us above the inferior species,” Barry says.

“Everyone alright?” Vii calls out, looking at each of us in turn. Eshya is peeling a corpse off of her ankle like an oversized boot. Nel is breaking a few more legs, her expression cold and calculative compared to our elf.

“Nel got bit! Are they venomous?” I ask in a rush, running to her side.

“Venom?” Vii lowers herself to one of the corpses as Eshya joins me by Nels side, trailing the guts that have stuck to her shoe.

“What about you, Kyra?” Nel asks, holding her hand on the bleeding puncture wound on her shoulder.

“The legs got me a little, I’m fine. You’re the one we need to worry about.” I say, pressing my hands on hers.

The legs were able to puncture deep into my sides, but that’s secondary.

“Kyra?” Nel says, “I feel fine. Don’t worry so much.”

As Eshya and I fuss over Nel, Vii is cutting up the corpse of one of the spiders.

“I think it should be okay.” She says, interrupting the rest of us.

“What? But she was bitten.” I say, still madly trying to figure out what to do.

“No venom.” Vii says, carefully pulling over a body with her sharp talons, “At least it doesn’t seem like their fangs are connected to anything.”

“Huh…” It looks to have been cut apart with a scalpel and with careful precision, not something I’d expected from a few minutes work from a girl without proper hands.

Eshya heads over and starts poking around in the corpse, before slowly nodding.

“Shouldn’t it be venomous? I mean look at it. It’s small and weak and likes ambushes. It’s almost ridiculous to say that it isn’t venomous.”

“Who knows,” Vii shrugs, “But it doesn’t have venom glands and it doesn’t have much mana to waste so there’s that too.”

“Strange, but welcome I guess…” I conclude, calming a little.

“Kyra, you’re bleeding.” Nel says, quickly coming over to check on my wounds even as she’s still pressing down on her own.

“I’m fine.” I say in return, the bleeding isn’t too bad, and the pain is forgettable.

“Were we the only ones hurt?” I ask as Eshya takes the time to finish off the last of the spiders.

“Yep,” Vii chirps hovering over to me, “There were a few close calls here and there though.”

“Damn…” I mumble, settling down on my ass and pulling off my top. There’s a stab in my right arm, and one on the right side of my torso, two on the left. Vii helps me press on the injuries her feathered half hands pressing with surprising force as her eyes flutter about with worry.

“We’ll need to get to a healer,” Nel says, “But explaining this…”

“It’ll be bad…?” Vii asks.

“I’ll be fine.” I say, “Just a few bandages and I’ll be alright. Nel, you need healing though.”

“And how will you explain that when we get to the baths?” She counters.

“I hate to be the one to say this, but don’t we need to tell someone about all this?” Eshya points out, “Beasts left to breed down here could overrun the whole world if they’re not dealt with.”

“And just let the welfare officers know that we’ve been fighting them?” Nel waves at the scattered corpses of the spiders we’ve slain, “What about the machine? We’re on a tight leash already with Adler watching us. I don’t think we should risk giving them more reason to come after us. Which is exactly why Kyra and I can’t have these injuries.”

In the silence that follows, I can hear the hollow skittering of more of the spiders outside.

“We might have more immediate problems.” I point out, “We’re going to have to fight our way back up.”

“Do you think they’re going to have something bigger out there waiting for us?” Vii asks, “There are probably more than just these little guys in their colony.”

“Even if they don’t, they can ambush us as we move like Kyra pointed out,” Eshya says, “It’s going to be dangerous whatever the case.”

“Great, well on the bright side, they’re better than ghosts.” I say, feeling a little calmer now that my wounds are getting some treatment.

“I mean, depends on the ghost, doesn’t it?” Nel asks, pressing on her wounds.

This is the first bleeding wound I’ve received since getting here, and I kind of expected to be in more pain. I guess something really is wrong with me to be feeling so little about it.

“Barry, you wouldn’t happen to know healing magic, would you?”

“Barry?” Nel asks.

“The robot guy. So, Mr. machine? Magic? Yes? No?” The machine eventually responds to my questioning.

“I only assist with combat education. Constructs are considered poor in teaching complex mana manipulations. I would suggest that you find a master to teach you, whatever magics you are after.”

“Damn, not that easy…” I admit, sitting up, “So do we charge out there?”

“Either we should wait and see if they disappear, or we should head out right now and try to get back to the surface before anything bigger and meaner comes around.” Eshya concludes.

“Ah, well then… how are you feeling, Nel?” I ask her, looking at her shoulder wound which, thankfully, seems to have stopped bleeding.

“I’m better, but still in need of some healing.” She says, “I think my condition to be much the same as yours.”

“Then, let’s wait.” I say, checking again that her wounds are as she says.

“So, we need to figure out how to get some healing?” Vii asks, “Healers, or potions. Both could be a little difficult to get access to. Perhaps the markets? Finding a healing potion might be easier than a healer that won’t cause problems.”

“Does anyone have any idea how to learn healing magic?” I ask, “I just sort of figured out fire magic with a bit of stressing on the battlefield, but even now I’m not quite sure how it works.”

“That’s not unusual for common and simple elemental magics.” Nel says, “It’s… difficult to explain, but it’s about imbuing mana with a purpose, so it’s something individualistic.

“Unfortunately for more complex concepts like healing, it’s unusual to be able to make that first breakthrough without learning a great deal about the subject and meditating on it for a while.”

“So, none of us are going to be making a breakthrough in healing magic in the next few hours?” I ask, and she nods.

“Figured as much,” I say stumbling to my feet.

“So why should we wait?” Nel asks.

“Are we going to give up on all of this?” I ask, waving my hands around. “Are we giving up on Barry? On combat training? On hunting the monsters down here?”

“Of course not,” Eshya replies.

“Then, we need to be able to fight whatever lives down here.” I say, “Honestly, all this gives me some hope.”

“Hope? We’re injured and stuck in ancient ruins underground with a bunch of beasts waiting outside the door to kill us.” Nel says, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“If there are beasts surviving down here, it means we can too.” I say, “It means a reliable source of mana. It means reliable hunting. It means we have somewhere to run to if the welfare officers decide that we’re too beastly.”

“Into dark tunnels filled with monsters?”

“Better than my other plan.”

“What was that?”

“Stealing a ship and trying to get it to work before we get caught.”

“So, what’s our plan, then?” Eshya asks.

“We see if we can scrap together some weapons, we snack on some mana,” I kick at a spider corpse, “And we’ll see if Barry can teach us something useful. Already we’re learning a lot, perhaps more than Red was teaching us.”

“To be fair she wasn’t teaching us for long.” Eshya says.

“Do you think we’ll even be able to learn anything useful?” Vii asks.

“Yes. We just learned something useful a half hour ago.” I tell them, “I didn’t realize just how close to the starting line we still are but, according to Barry, we’re practically children.

“It’s always rather quick to learn the elementary basics of any skill compared to how long it takes to begin mastering it. This seems to be the same. There are already attacks and other things that we should be able to do, that we just haven’t thought of, or been taught yet.

“Like how we just learned to flush mana into our arms to punch, what if we use that in our legs while we run?”

“It helps you move faster.” Eshya says, “I’ve been using it for a while now.”

“That’s why I think we can learn something.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Stats & Skills

~Mana Form:

Current mana density: 203 units

~Mana distribution:

Skin: 21%

Muscle: 7%

Mind: 3%

Cardiovascular: 7%

Misc.: 1%

Efficiency: 39%

~Skills:

-Mana skin

-Mana shield.

-Mana surge strike

-Flame burst

-Fireball

-Infused Delayed Casting