As described, The Wavestriders (which made zero sense as a name because none of them had water powers) were a pretty intimidating group, visually speaking. The leader, Boreas, WAS short, but the green haired bearded man made up for it with some seriously wide shoulders. The really huge dark skinned guy, Raleigh (presumably no relation to the raiders) was holding a huge hammer in his heavy braceleted hands, as we'd be warned he might, and the small and delicate looking Astara was resting her hands on a pair of very thin and pointy looking daggers.

They were all standing in a way that made me kind of assume they had practiced this in the mirror, because there was no way that pose was natural, but despite the somewhat silly nature of their stances, they did actually look like a threat. Boreas had a cocky grin on his admittedly somewhat handsome face as his green eyes bored into the bag we'd just finished pulling closed. "I admit, I didn't expect the team to beat us here would be some randos we've never heard of. I thought for sure Fisher or MacDonald's crew would be the first ones to the beads. It's impressive you made it so far, but I'm afraid this is going to be the end of the line for you folks. Why don't you pass us the beads and we can let you leave in peace."

I raised an eyebrow, not that he could see it behind my mask, and looked around at our group. "You...you know there's three of you right? Because we have five G rankers here. Plus wolves. Like...so many wolves. More wolves than most people. I don't mean to come across as arrogant, but this doesn't seem like it's going to go the way you think it wi-" I noticed a slight shimmer near Astara and spun on my heel, acting on instinct, dropping my cane and catching it two handed near the tip as I spun, swinging it like a bat at the spot where the redhead was just now appearing to try to grab the bag.

She gave a squeak as she saw the silver head incoming and tried to dodge. I clipped her narrowly before she vanished again, reappearing back at their side without the bag. She was also holding her shoulder, which is where I'd apparently made contact, and glaring at me. I tsk'ed loudly. "See, that was just rude. I was talking and you just pop over here to try to steal our shit? Not cool. This is why everyone says you can't trust a teleporter." I paused. "Ok they don't say that. But I do. Or I'm going to start."

I heard a loud sigh from my side. Callie cut me off. "Sweetie, you're babbling. You were nailing it there for a second but you kind of spiraled at the end. You landed a hit, just take the win." I shut my mouth. She wasn't wrong, I wasn't really sure where I'd been going with that. Astara popping up had shaken me a bit and I tended to run my mouth when I was nervous. I'd gotten way too used to fighting monsters again. Callie reached over to give my arm a squeeze, I assumed to apologize for cutting me off, but I just put a hand on hers and squeezed back, not bothered at all.

Boreas, who apparently was not a fan of being ignored while I was monologueing, cleared his throat. "To answer your question." He said forcefully, obviously trying to drag our focus back to his much more strained looking smile. "We are The Wavestriders. We're some of the strongest freshman in the whole Academy, and we aren't worried about a bunch of nobodies or their stupid dogs."

Aforementioned 'stupid dogs' might not be people level intelligent, but they were still smart enough to pick up on his disdainful gaze, and the growls rumbling from their barrel chests was intimidating enough that it somewhat derailed Boreas's sneering tangent. I snickered a bit when I saw his face pale slightly. Callie was smirking as she responded. "Sorry if that disturbed your rant. Regardless, we aren't handing over anything to you. Like Solomon said, there are more of us. Plus no offense, but you seem like kind of a dick, and I don't want to give you anything you ask for just on general principle."

I saw the big guy, Raleigh's, lip twitch a bit, and got the impression Boreas was a big enough asshole even his own teammates enjoyed seeing him taken down a peg. Astara didn't seem amused, but mostly that was because she was trying to glare a hole in my skull while forcefully and from the sounds of it, painfully, popping her dislocated shoulder into place. Her blue eyes were boring into me so intensely it was actually making me a little uncomfortable. Like, I knew that had hurt but damn, someone had to have hit her before at some point.

Boreas, whose grin had now officially faded to a look of steely anger, spat to one side, presumably to be intimidating, though it didn't really work. "Fine. You must be new transfers. Anyone who had been around a bit longer would know their place. I guess it's up to us to teach you how things work." He took a menacing step forward, but before he could close the gap more than that, a wall of shadows slammed down over the whole room courtesy of Callie, blinding everyone in the place.

I wasn't sure how long she could keep it up, but I was guessing teleportation was a no go in the dark when there was fucking lava pools around, and I was determined to make use of the distraction. I activated Seek Hidden, happy they were close enough for me to be able to spot them, and then Leaf on the Wind as I dove forward to try to take out the redhead before the shadows came down. She was their most mobile fighter and would be the hardest to pin down once the blinding effect ended.

I used Mercy Kill as I came in, aiming for the same shoulder I'd hit earlier. Assholes or not I wasn't willing to kill these people. They were students at the Academy, not monsters who were brainwashing innocent people. I figured if I messed her up bad enough her concentration would be shot though, and I didn't imagine it was safe to teleport around a magma chamber when you were hurting too bad to focus. To that end I triggered Consecration of Flame and Touch of Tears right before the cane made contact.

I'd used the combination on my tonfas plenty, but it seemed like it was more effective on the higher ranked material of my cane. I could feel more power in the blunt weapon than I ever had before, though it still wasn't enough to have any chance of killing a G ranker in one hit. Her vitality would resist the effect like and of my friends would, so as long as I only hit her once it was pretty safe to use on her. I slammed the can down on her injured shoulder, and she bellowed in agony as I released what little force I had along with it.

The poison and flames invaded the injury, permeating the damaged flesh and causing what I assumed was unbearable agony as I leapt back out of the way. Raleigh had heard the impact and lashed out at the spot I was standing with unnerving accuracy, his hammer crashing down into the stone of the cavern floor with enough force to crater it even as I dodged the impact. I continued my backpedal, rejoining Callie and the others, and grabbed my girlfriend's hand to make sure she knew I'd accomplished my goal.

She dropped the shadow construct, revealing the entire room again, which was a smart call given the complete lack of ability to move around in it for our friends or the wolves. When the darkness cleared, Raleigh was holding Astara who was clutching the top of her arm tightly, teeth clenched in extreme pain as the green glow of poison fire spread from beneath her fingers. Her eyes were closed and her face was screwed up with agony and turning bright red. I was pretty sure she wouldn't be teleporting anywhere for a bit.

To his credit, Boreas actually did look really pissed about the damage to his teammate. I wasn't sure if it was an affront to his pride as a leader or if he actually gave a shit that she was hurt, but I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he cared about his friends and wasn't just stupid green hair and a too white smile in a way too colorful costume. He stepped forward, gritting his teeth as he hissed. "That was a mistake rookies, we could have done this the easy way, now we're going to have to hurt you."

Callie just sighed. "Do you? Do you really? Is this really worth it? Can't you just walk away and sell whatever you got here for a nice profit? I get that you want to win, but even if you get the beads from us you have no guarantee that you'll be able to take down Fisher and whoever else shows up to get the Heart of the Greater Mountain. And they will show up. Lots of them. It's going to be much easier to find than this was, and I would be shocked if that whole thing isn't a free for all by the time any of us get there."

The gritted teeth turned into a sneer, albeit a much angrier one than earlier. "You think we're just going to give up? Figures you nobodies wouldn't get how important this is. We need to win this. It's our best chance to stand out. We may be impressive to the Freshman class, but we're nothing compared to the next few years. Those people are all older and stronger and have their own publicity bases. If we're going to beat any of them we need to be the ones who win and get featured in the wrap up stream and publicized. You might as well ask us to quit being cultivators."

Once again I was pretty thankful for my ability. If I didn't have the power I did we would be completely at the mercy of other people just like all the other Ascendants. Sure we needed to pay attention to that stuff too, but it wasn't something that controlled us. We could redistribute points to the stats we most needed and make our powers more impressive, which made it that much easier for us to get attention. Especially me since I had the option of trading stats from other people and not just among the team.

Still, now wasn't the time for that observation. Despite having most likely taken their teleporter out early we still had a team to deal with, and they weren't going to be pushovers. The only major upside was that looking around I didn't see any of the H rankers. I assumed Callie had moved them with a construct and pushed them out of the room to make sure they didn't get caught in the middle of this. Their wolves had gone with them, leaving us with just our five strongest and five wolves. Hopefully more than enough to take down these posers.

They obviously noticed the missing team members, but since Callie had chosen to keep the bag with us (presumably to prevent them from going after our weaker teammates) they ignored them and focused on us instead. With everyone visible it was easier to coordinate all of our teammates too however, so we weren't at a disadvantage, especially not with Cark here, who should have enough muscle as a high G ranker to counter one of their brutes. Here was hoping that would be enough.