The nearby area is very... pink. Everything from the ground to the plantds to the animals are all varying shades of pink with the rare streak of purple, neon green, or orange.

The trees have cotton candy on their branches, all the creatures are smiling, and it looks peaceful. Anything this whimsical is clearly a hidden deathtrap of some kind, I don't yet know how or why, but it is unsettling if nothing else. Nothing is this nice without some catch involved or a ritual sacrifice require to maintain it. I can also feel Pythana cringe through the link even though she can't see what I am, she has a feeling she won't like this place.

The locals in the area seem to be singing cheerful tunes, and then I see the catch my paranoia was expecting, but still wasn't quite ready for. A spider sings while its prey cheerfuly walks toward its web, and when the spider starts to drain its prey alive it still sings along with cloudy eyes and a smile on its face. Similar scenes repeat throughout the forest, creatures being killed after strolling happily staight into predators lairs and being killed without even a hint of a struggle.

The scene is increadibly disturbing to say the least, the creatures don't even realize anything is wrong as thier bodies shrivel up and die, are butchered, or simply fall out of the tree and splatter across the ground. My monsters all share in my aversion, the idea of dying without even being aware that you should be fighting back is unsetteling.

This is my first encounter with mind magic unless telepathy counts, which means I also have no good way of gauging our resistance towards it. At a bare minimum the first priority of our group is now to learn an unlevelled mind magic along with the resistances and test how it affects the others, and it is probly best to just avoid the pink nightmare if possible.

I return to the rest of the party and we establish temporary names for the places we have been so far. We have Steven's island, the unending cave, the undead lands, punchy woodlands, and the pink trap. Ratina wanted to name the pink trap as kindling, but we don't know how flamable it is yet and as much as I'd love to test that, the last boss monster I want to piss off is one that can fuck with my mind.

I try to figure out mind magic using my experience with telepathy and magic connection as a base, while using class lecture on Slimerene and Ratina while they try different methods to get mind magic as those two have the most magic skills of my monsters.

Pythana can track the monsters we hunt and we only stop our practice for a bit whenever a fight starts.

It takes a good 5 days before I am able to use a mrthod similar to magic connection that gives a mind magic skill, and I levelled telepathy up to 7 in the mean time.

Mind magic: distracting empathy Impart an emotion or feeling into your opponents mind, the strength of this feeling is dependent on the difference between you and your opponents willpower

I test it out for a bit using impatience, and it can be quite effective on Ratina while she tries to focus on magic, but Pythana can mostly ignore it and Nasby and Slimerene are affected but not by enough to distract them.

The more effective way of using it seems to be using a small foreboding sensation in the back of their minds, or by giving them a feeling of arrogance/confidence that makes them lower their guards slightly.

Subtlety is key, enhancing what they naturally feel or altering thier perceptions without them recognizing is both the most effective and frankly terrifying method. So I obviously fill my monsters in on all the details.

Slimerene and Ratina pick up the skill quickly once I've figured it out and learn it too.

Over the past 5 days, Ratina, Slimerene, and Pythana levelled up twice while Nasby levelled up once. I levelled up class lecture twice, Ratina levelled up greater mana manipulation, Pythana levelled up swallow and shadow strike and learned shadow slither, Nasby levelled up taunt, trample, and healing aura, and Slimerene levelled up mage bane and life force drain twice each.

Class lecture LV2 Able to use the lecture skill on up to 3 targets at a time with 66% less effectiveness on each target Class lecture LV3 Able to use the lecture skill on up to 3 targets at a time with 55% less effectiveness on each target Shadow strike LV3 This skill can only be used when in a shadow other than your own and will be canceled if you are out of a shadow other than your own before hitting your target, Next attack +50% damage, MP cost 15, cooldown 20 Shadow slither LV1 Enhances all skills that help evade the notice of others while you are in a dark area

So class lecture boosted overall efficiency while decreasing individual effectiveness, a trade off I am happy with but Ratina is against.

During a magic training session....

"Alright, most of our training so far has been discovering new skills, while this is useful, I feel like we are lacking a fundamental understanding of our basic skills" (Auxentius)

"How so?" (Ratina)

"Take wind manipulation as an example. We can alter the air flow with magic, but can we alter other aspects of the air? Air is a medium that sound travels through, we should test whether we can create, amplify, or restrict sound. Also what are magics properties? we can use it to move things, but does it have weight? Does it transfer more smoothly through different media? We have grown quickly and gotten alot of skills, but we have a shallow understanding of how we can apply them." (Auxentius)

"If I can uhh repremess the sound thingies, wouldn't it be easier to sneak up on people?!" (Pythana)

"Exactly, we have been gaining so many new skills so fast that we haven't had time to go over the limitations of the ones we do have. Its fucking magic for Pete's sake, surely we can do more than shoot balls of it at people" (Auxentius)

Creating a sound was easy enough, just compress the air and have a small hole the air leaks out of and you get one of those high pitched annoying sounds that could drive your enemies insane if you followed them around while doing it. Pythana ended up learning wind magic manipulation and her having fun with it didn't make the others want to kill her any less just to get her to stop after an hour of the screeching noise going off non stop. Pythana has now picked up a habit of sneaking up on some of the locals so that she can blast the sound as loud as she can and see how high they jump when startled, and boy can some of those squirrels jump.

Amplifying the sound or silencing it turned out to be far more difficult, while completely stopping all motion should be able to prevent noise from travelling, none of us have ice manipulation. This also begs the question of how ice manipulation is different from fire manipulation. I can heat things up with fire manipulation, but I cannot cool them down unless I am spreading out the fire over a larger area, in which case the total energy is still higher than when I started. If I can manipulate the amount of energy when increasing it, what is the fundamental difference preventing me from decreasing it? But try as I might I just can't reduce energy with fire manipulation. I focus more on trying to amplify the sound, but even if I understand that I need to increase the amplitude of the sound wave, I still can't pull it off in practice.

Ratina ends up picking up ice manipulation while trying to reduce the noise, but desn't have any success pulling it off.

Slimerene has been focusing on better using earth manipulation, I have been using it alot to get around and am ashamed for not thinking of using it to kick up earth in the enemies eye. The stats end up making it so that the eyes don't get hurt or have to blink from the dirt, but it impedes their vision when you maintain a layer of dirt around their eyes.

We spend the next 4 months training since the current area has straitforward opponents and there isn't any immediate danger here. Nasby to levels up to 15, Ratina and Pythana reach level 22 while Slimerene only gets to level 20. As for me, I level up a grand total of 1 time after 5 months of babysitting, the level up pace is really terrible when fighting things 2 ranks beneath you at a fraction of your level while splitting it five ways in a party.

Naby learned fortify, encourage, ki manipulation, and deflective stance. She levelled up her skills that could be levelled up to 4, got trample and bunker down to level 5, and got first aid to level 10 which maxed it out. She also got bulky to level 8 and picked up light magic manipulation, though she has yet to exploit it in all the ways I am thinking up.

Fortify LV4 Increases defense by 40% if you haven't moved for 1 minute until you move again Encourage LV4 Remove fear based debuffs and statuses on allies in a 12 meter radius Deflective stance LV4 Can parry attacks more easily and parried attacks do reduced damage Light magic manipulation LV2

Ratina got both light and dark beam and levelled them up to 5, got higher tier attribute magic to its maximum level of 10, maxed out her wall skills, got electric shock and ice shard to 7, got light, and dark manipulation and levelled them to 4, got electricity manipulation to 5, got guider of flame to 3, maxed out mana perception at level 10, got mind magic resistance level 5, levelled up rupture to level 8, got column of wind to level 6, got minor arch magic to level 9, got mage blood level 4 and expanded mana pool level 6.

Pythana got critical strike LV4, charm LV3, night vision LV8, and gaze from the depths of darkness LV4. She also levelled lesser venom fang to 10 (Max), dagger weilder level 10 (Max), lesser venom spray to 7, minor evasion boost to 5, rough scales to 5, shadow strike to 6, shadow slither to 5, bite to 8, hide to 10 (Max), Ambush to 9, prepare terrain to 5, swallow to 10 (Max), and camoflauge to 6. She has also mastered the ability to annoy foes by making the most irritating noises possible with wind manipulation, even though that skill doesn't have a level for her.

Critical strike LV4 When hitting a vital spot of your opponent, has a small chance to inflict 200% damage. Charm LV3 Able to use your appearance to bewitch your foe, for 3 minutes you will appear more attractive to your target and they will be more suceptable to suggestion. MP cost 8, affect will be based on how attractive you naturally appear to your target and is stronger with your charisma and weaker with thier willpower. Night vision LV8 Able to see more easily in the dark Gaze from the depths of darkness LV4 Your presence in the shadows will unnerve your foes should you decide to allow them to notice you at all, you can more easily inflict the fear debuff on your opponents when they don't know your exact location.

Slimerene leveled up taunt to level 7, life force drain to 8, maxed out escape, magic drain, and mimicry at level 10, and got mind magic resistance to level 5. (All of us got the mind magic resistance skill, but only Nasby and Slimerene can level it) Slimere also learned death beam, but only got it to level 2.

Death beam doesn't instant kill whatever it hits, it is more like it causes the target to start withering away while dealing rather substantial damage compared to our other spells. Some testing revealed that if there is any armor, than the beam is blocked, the skill only works if you can directly hit living tissue which means that while it is stronger than the elemental ball skills, it is also harder to use against armored opponents. Granted none of the opponents we have faced so far have had armor, but that doesn't mean that none ever will. Another side note is that while leather armor protects the wearer, the armor was damaged to the point where it no longer gave a defensive bonus anymore. Stone or metal armor was unaffected even after shooting it 20 times.

I scouted around over the past four months and found another exit that lets us avoid the pink woods, but there is good news and bad news.

The bad news is that it is pitch black, astral projection is effectively useless for scouting as I cannot see anything nor use magic while astral projecting. The good news is that when I went in person I could still use mana sense to see my surroundings, so if all the cretures specialize in hiding and ambushing, our party can give them a nasty suprise.

Ratina can also light up the place briefly with light beam, but it is like a flash of light as opposed to a lasting light source and light manipulation uses up a huge amount of mana when in the dark territory and isn't a feasible answer.

Fire magic isn't as bad, but has a strange situation where it costs the normal amount and does the same damage, but the light produced by the flame only goes out around an inch around the flame itself before the surroundings are pitch black again. I tried making a small widespread fire to circumvent the issue, but any flame smaller than a few feet in diameter provides no light at all.

The main issue with the dark path is going to be finding our destination, there will be no stars or areial views to look for destinations and it will be increadibly easy to get lost. However the alternative is to fight monsters that can mess with my head, so the dark path is the obvious choice. I made sure to leave a trail with dirt manipulation as we stepped into the territory with our magic sense up to find foes.

It was a week until we had a fight, and things weren't as easy as I thought they would be. I figured after a few days of not finding any monsters with magic sense that the are was uninhabited, we found some weird plants in the area that had some food, and only around half of them were poisonus. The strongest poisons came from plants that gave off a glow presumably so that creatures that ate them would die and end up as nutrients for the tree, but Slimerene excels at eating anything and everything without issue.

But back to the fight, we were ambushed. We had magic sense up, and still were hit without seeing the enemy coming. I should have predicted that our magic sense could be evaded, WE have magic sense evading skills after all. And it wasn't just 1 monster, it was a swarm of elementals.

there were around 50 of them, dark wispy creatures that all cast a magic at the same time. It was a debuff magic that halved our magic damage and our regeneration rates of HP and MP. As bad as the debuff was, I considered it lucky that they didn't opt to use damaging magic as if they had chosen to all focus a large group attackon Ratina and Pythana, I cannot say for sure that they would have survived. The wisps were fast, hard to detect even after knowing they were around and focusing on them, and they all cast magics that either delt damage, slowed you, or debuffed you.

Pythana was like a fish in water though, she could see somewhat even without light and her shoadow walker let her move quick enough that they couldn't target her with the debuffs to slow her. She can also intant kill them as they are evidently quite low rank and rather squishy. Slimerene was somehow able to eat the debuff magic of of us, I didn't think that was going to work even with magic drain, but she found a way and once Ratina was at full power she just blasted aoe magic blindly killing everything in every direction.

Once the battle was over and I could calm down somewhat, I began to reevaluate just how dangerous our current area is. If the wisps all shot a dark beam at Ratina instead of using a debuff magic, we would need to be able to immediately use a defensive magic for her to survive. I suppose that if they got close enough to hit us before we could do that then Pythana would be able to see them or thier steath would no longer work as the closer we are to them, the easier they are to detect with magic sense. The same could be said for most physical ambushes, but if there is a monster with a build similar to Pythana's then they could be too fast for anyone other than Pythana to react.

This leads to a difficult set up where it would be nice if Pythana could scout ahead for foes, but we need her near the center of our formation to prevent a physical ambusher from wreaking havoc. Nasby cannot constantly be using taunt aoe and she can only use a regular taunt after she identifies a target. I end up setteling for having Slimerene stay attatched to Ratina to easily guard her from ambushes, and having Pythana be on the lookout for dangers. I am overleveled enough that I should be able to take quite a few hits before being in danger, which is long enough for the others to respond.

The loot is a bit odd this time, the wisps had coins that I can sense trace amounts of dark magic inside, but the menu only identifies them as copper coins. I have Ratina use dark manipulation on them, but nothing special happens. We already tried using dark manipulation to see better, but that didn't work. We press onward with our new setup, and hope there are no more unplesant suprises.