Chapter 3

“Elemental crystals, any you can get your hands on,” Gary answered.

“Ok, where would I find those? Also what are they?” Jack had only vague recollections of hearing about something like that in the past.

“You’ll likely find plenty in the Skipwith Common Nature Reserve, although it's not really a nature reserve anymore.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, places like that got abandoned entirely over a year ago, it's just part of the wilderness now and considered a hotspot for monster spawning and other mutated animals. It is really dangerous….” Gary paused when Jack gave him a sceptical look. “But the things you find there are very valuable, besides elemental crystals that is,” Gary explained.

“Right, but what do you need them for?” Jack answered.

“Oh, well, we use the refined crystals for weapons and armour materials to give the gear certain properties when the wielder channels energy into them. It used to be a really expensive time consuming process, so only the most expensive high level pieces along with specific rare monster materials could be used with crystals. But recently some guy in Sweden found a much more efficient way of refining and melting the crystals that doesn’t involve any monster materials at all, just need small quantities of energy conductive material like copper or gold,” Gary explained, looking more and more animated as he explained his craft.

“So only high ranking hunters were able to have these crystals before now?” Jack asked.

“Yep, A rankers and some B rankers, way too expensive otherwise, but a lot never bothered because the process made the equipment more fragile and prone to damage, but that's been addressed too. You know how it is, people innovate, technology improves, people with good ideas get richer, well……sort of, depends whether or not you actually own your own idea or the company you work for does…….” Gary trailed off and looked angry for a second before grinning back up at Jack.

“And what about these abilities?” Jack asked. “What sort of abilities do these crystals grant?”

“As long as you use your own element, they empower your elemental abilities, you can also use them to augment your armour and weapons, they’re still being studied and researched however,” Gary said. “But I’ve got some plans of my own for them though, hmm, oh yes, big plans.” Gary chuckled to himself.

“Right…..just don’t blow yourself up old man. Anyway, what if you use another elemental crystal? Like if someone was earth and they used a fire crystal?” Jack asked.

“Mixed results, I heard about some guy who was a water element and used a fire crystal to produce a tiny flame but that was just a rumour. But essentially you won’t get much from a crystal that isn’t your own element, in theory anyway,” he explained, then he smirked a little which made it plain Gary knew something and he wasn’t telling.

“Well, bugger.” That was disappointing, so much for being the master of all elements. However, “Where would I find a lightning crystal?” Jack asked hopefully.

Gary snorted in amusement. “You’ve really got shit luck don’t ya? No ones ever found a lightning crystal, earth and water you’ll find all over the place in the wilderness, same for wind as long as it's in a place exposed to the wind, fire’s a little rarer but still here and there. But as for lightning, there’s never been a documented case of someone finding a lightning crystal anywhere,” he explained a little regretfully.

“Not even in….I dunno…..power stations or………locations after lightning storms or something?” Jack asked sadly. Gary shook his head. “Damn. Well alright then, I’ll swing by the guild tomorrow and accept the request.” Jack got up and began heading for the exit.

“Thanks Jack, appreciate it.” Gary went back upstairs and continued his work.

The day after that Jack got up early just before the sun started to rise. He figured that if he was going into the wilderness today then he would want as much daylight as possible just in case this job took a long time.

As he was getting ready and preparing breakfast he switched on the news. It was still covering the attacks in York city the day before yesterday. It showed multiple scenes of devastation with police and paramedics running to and fro during the day in question, while a hunter faced off against a giant cockroach. In scenes of the aftermath, people were tiredly removing debris, a giant spider corpse on its back with its eight legs curled up was being dragged away and placed on a truck to be disposed of and various eye witnesses were interviewed.

While he was sitting down to eat, to Jack's surprise the news anchor actually gave out the information that it was suspected that the attacks were perpetrated by the currently little known Cult of Four.

It was stated that not much was known about the mysterious cult, only that it had four leaders, all purported masters of one of four elements. They had never made their goals or views public, the only reason people might know of them was due to various recruiters they had out in the UK. They would have been ignored or considered only with mild interest if it hadn’t been for the fact that they had been directly linked to several major crimes throughout the UK. After investigating a major attack in the Welsh countryside that resulted in the destruction of an entire village, it was found that the Cult of Four had something to do with it, so they were put on the watch list of MI5 and a task force put together to apprehend them.

However the cult remained entirely elusive, various arrests of the recruiters had been made but law enforcement still apparently had very little clue as to the raison d’etre of the cult. The only major piece of information they had was the name and face of one of the four leaders. Oscar Variov, originally from Russia having emigrated to the UK with his family when he was a child. He was an earth element, however that was easy to tell, the entire left half of his face was an overgrown mess of grey stone. It wasn’t just grey skin but sharp jagged splinters of rock jutting out covering his left eye and part of his nose and mouth. The rest of his features were that of a cuacasian male with light blonde hair.

Jack finished his breakfast while the news continued to go over the same points as they had already covered before. He got dressed and equipped himself with his armour and weapon harness before heading out and walking to the guild HQ. He got in just as the sun was beginning to shine weakly onto the front of the building, inside there were very few people around, just a few admin staff in suits getting into work, almost no other hunters around.

He walked into the jobs and requests room and rather than seeing absolutely no one, there were in fact several other groups of hunters around, however there were no individual hunters present.

He went to the nearest terminal and swiped through the various options until he found Gary’s request in the E rank listing, it was high E rank, like really high, bordering on D rank high. Jack frowned, maybe this was beyond him? It also recommended being in a group, he thought for a while but decided it would be ok, the hunt for the Needlejacket nest in the old church was supposed to be tough for a lone hunter too but he managed it just fine. With his mind made up he tapped on the hunt accept icon and his pager buzzed in confirmation. He set off.

Skipwith nature reserve was a little over ten miles south of York, through a couple of towns, past a collection of farms some of which were abandoned and some not, the land however was entirely flat. With that in mind Jack decided to cycle the entire way, ideally it should only take three hours or so, however he made a mental note to himself to stop being a cheapskate and to buy a car.

The journey was relatively uneventful and rather pleasant at times but also eerie at other times, a lot of the farmland he cycled past simply looked like wilderness at this point, with actual trees growing in the middle of farm fields. Most of the farmland was just thick untamed brush and at times Jack felt like something was watching him from the sides of the road but nothing jumped out at him.

The roads on the other hand, far from being abandoned were actually well maintained, the government had made it a point to make sure that travel throughout the country was always possible and that the various towns and cities were never cut off. With that in mind they greatly stepped up their efforts in road and railway maintenance, apparently they even used some sort of powerful herbicide on the roads and rails themselves to make sure they never became overgrown with vegetation.

Travelling along the roads Jack could see their efforts had paid off, they were pristine, Jack enjoyed his smooth ride whilst occasionally waving on an irate car driver past him.

Jack also got to see firsthand the walls that were being built around the smaller towns and villages in the more rural areas of the UK. The first set of walls he came to was when he passed through the village of Deighton about half way through his journey, it was just a relatively small collection of homes and businesses along with a bed and breakfast or two. A pleasant place to live in and for tourists to pass through.

The walls were still being built but looked to be about twenty metres tall so far, the stone itself looked to be a single giant slab of smooth grey concrete without any brickwork at all. Jack looked around and saw several construction workers in high visibility vests and hard hats gathered at one point in the wall. As he watched he saw one man place his hands along the wall which then seemed to stretch and grow slightly with a slight rumbling, several others which included some women seemed to be mixing cement. Behind them were numerous giant piles of rock.

After a few minutes of watching the construction team Jack carried on with his journey, he cycled into the village under the finished arched gateway which encompassed the entire road and continued through the village proper. After barely half a mile he was cycling through the other side. The only strange thing to note about the village was that the residents were all carrying weapons, swords, knives, axes and various blades were all openly worn on belts or slung over backs, even some of the older children wore swords. It was a strange contrast, in the city by the way people there carried themselves you could almost forget that monster and mutated animal attacks were a possibility, but out here the people did not give that impression at all.

After he left the village Jack cycled on, he had to briefly stop for a pack of some sort of mutated canines, they ran across the road and stopped to stare at him. Both parties stared at each other for a time, Jack wasn’t worried as these things, whatever they were, they were only about the size of a labrador, he’d taken on much bigger things and lived. Jack slowly started pedalling again and the pack of canines quickly resumed running in the direction they’d been going.

He cycled through another village and turned off to go down a country road, despite everything he was having a rather pleasant time and began to feel like he was on a cycle holiday. After another few miles he saw his destination, it almost loomed on the horizon, it looked like a large dense collection of woodland surrounded by fields, brush and wetland.

He continued cycling on the road and passed what seemed to have been an inn, but it was heavily overgrown with vines and other vegetation, part of it seemed to have been caved in too. The nature reserve was just down a gentle slope from there so he got a nice view of the entire thing. He spotted the patchy remnants of an old path through the surrounding landscape that lead into the reserve, he headed for that. He left his bike at the start of the path and set off.

He picked his way over the brush and rocks, there was no highway maintenance here, the sounds of nature began to make themselves known. He could hear the clicking and chirping of various birds and insects, however there was a lot more rustling of nearby bushes, growling and distant howling than what he could remember from his time camping with the Scouts. Jack drew his spear and proceeded cautiously, he made it to the first of the large trees that seemed to mark the boundary of the reserve and entered.

It was like entering a new world, he may have spent the majority of his time in cities and other urban areas but he was still passingly familiar with forests and other parts of the British wilderness. This was like nothing he’d ever seen before, a dense jungle-like growth of trees were all around, vines hung down from them and a mixture of grass and moss grew on the ground. As soon as he entered the various sounds of nature became more muffled due to the closeness of the surroundings, it almost felt like Jack was intruding, in the distance he could hear the faint trickling of water.

Jack continued further into the reserve, clambering over rocks and sliding between tree trunks, not a path or trail in sight. Even though this place hadn’t been touched by humans for only a year, it looked more like it hadn’t seen human activity for centuries.

After half an hour of struggling through Jack found a small pond, it was here he thought he might be able to find some water elemental crystals. He approached the idyllic looking scene, it was a large looking pond of clear water with the sun shining down on it. He got down to the edge and looked around, would he have to go into the water? Suddenly a raucous squark sounded behind him, he turned around in surprise but then suddenly felt something wrap around his ankle. He barely had enough time to look down with an ‘oh shit’ before he was dragged into the pond.

He face planted onto the ground before being pulled rapidly under water, he felt himself getting pulled several metres down before stopping. His boot hit something squishy on the bottom and stuck there, he couldn’t see or hear anything, more somethings wrapped around him, by this point Jack had had enough time to assess his situation and full on panic, almost going out of his mind with terror. If this wasn’t enough he then began to feel various things bite into his arms and leg, whatever was wrapped around him began to tighten and squeeze out the small amount of air in his lungs.

Jack had no more room for rational thought, he reacted on instinct, he reached into his core and just pulled out everything he had, absolutely everything and discharged it all around. The water around him seethed violently, the thing holding went rigid for a few seconds before going limp and whatever was biting him stopped. He was on his last few seconds of breath and on the verge of just breathing in any way, he frantically clawed his way through the water up to the surface, the weight of his armour, weapons and water logged gear didn’t make it easy but eventually he made it.

He desperately drew in a ragged breath of sweet sweet oxygen as he breached the surface, then doggy paddled the several metres to the water's edge. Once there he flopped down onto the ground with his legs still partly submerged, he rolled onto his back and raised his head slightly to look at the pond.

He saw various shapes floating on the water's surface along with something long and thick, he got up to his feet and took a closer look. The things floating in the water all looked to be some sort of fish, large fish, with rather large teeth, if he had to call them anything then piranha or pike might be how he’d name them. As for the long thing that had probably wrapped around him, he didn’t know, there was no head, he could only see one end, it might be some sort of tentacle, he didn’t care. That massive discharge of lightning had pretty much emptied his tank, he could barely stand, even now his legs were wobbling, the only way this could have gone more wrong is if he’d lost a limb or something.

He sighed bitterly while looking around warily at his surroundings, he should’ve gotten back up, why did he come out here by himself? He didn’t even know anything about this place, let alone how to survive out here. He briefly thought about continuing further but discarded that thought immediately, after a second spent checking he still had all his gear he decided to call it a day and get out of the reserve while there was still daylight. He would find somewhere to stay for the night and call around to see if anyone wanted to come out and team up.

The trek back through the reserve was miserable, he was soaking wet, cold and tired, it took him almost two hours before he finally made it out of the trees during which time he’d been attacked several times by various small monsters and mutated animals, it was as if they sensed weakness. He managed to fend them off or kill them each time and even cultivated from a few things, one was a giant toad creature that utterly stank, another was a large insect like monster from a horror film.

Once he’d left the tree line he began the gentle ascent up the patchy pathway until he found his bike, luckily it was still where he left it. He looked around the area for a place to camp, he saw only remnants of a car park and the dark ruins of the nearby inn and didn’t feel any great anticipation. It was then he remembered he’d passed through various towns that day all of which had inns and bed and breakfasts. With that decided he cycled back up the road to the nearest town and managed to check in at a lovely little bed and breakfast, they seemed glad for the business.

As he was devouring a large plate of grilled steak and chips he thought about who he should call, he knew he’d made a mistake in coming out here alone, but at the same time he didn’t really want the others to find out about it and hold it over him. The only one he could call was probably Nate, he seemed like that unique mixture of competent and irresponsible which was what Jack was going for at this point. With that decided Jack called him up.

He barely had to explain anything before Nate immediately agreed to come out when Jack mentioned he was at Skipwith nature reserve, he said he’d come by the next morning. Now that was done, Jack finished his meal before dragging himself to his room and collapsing into his comfortable fluffy bed.