Chapter 5

They both walked onwards through the forested area, it was heavily overgrown, not a path or trail in sight. They could hear the faint sound of trickling water in the distance and decided to follow it.

Eventually they came to a small pond surrounded by trees, similar to the one Jack had nearly drowned in the previous day. Water entered and exited it in two small streams. They walked up to the edge cautiously and peered in.

Jack tensed up, not taking his eyes off the water. Right on cue a purple fleshy tentacle half a foot thick burst out of the water and tried to wrap around his leg. Jack was ready this time however, he lifted his foot and then slammed it back down onto the tentacle. He channelled a hefty amount of electricity down his leg and into his foot, the tentacle went rigid before spasming weakly. The water at the middle of the pond was disturbed by a large amount of bubbles and looked like something was thrashing around beneath the surface. Jack held his foot there and continued channelling lightning into his hated aquatic enemy with a vindictive grin before he decided to release it. The tentacle slowly flopped back into the water.

“Think you could do something like that again? We’ll have to go into the water, and fire doesn’t work so good down there,” Nate told Jack.

Jack nodded, he rolled his shoulders and concentrated. After many hours of practice this new skill had become easier and faster to use but it still wasn’t second nature like channelling lightning into his limbs or weapons. He mentally reached to his lightning core and pulled a strand of lightning from it, he channelled it down his left arm and into hand, he pointed at the pond and released a thick blue arc of lightning directly into the water.

He kept the bolt of lightning going continuously for several seconds. The point of impact frothed violently and emitted a huge amount of steam which billowed outward. Jack cut off the lightning and both hunters waited for the steam to dissipate. Once their view was cleared they saw the pond was filled with dead floating aquatic creatures, both monstrous and otherwise. Amongst it all they saw a long floating tentacle, resting limply on the surface.

Jack used a stick to snag it and pull it towards him. Then he grabbed it and began pulling it out of the water, Nate joined his efforts a moment later. They pulled close to fifteen metres of tentacle out before they felt resistance, they pulled harder and eventually whatever was attached to the long appendage began to emerge from the water.

“If this tentacle actually turns out to be this thing's penis, I am going to be really upset with you Jack,” Nate informed him. They gave one last heave before the monster was dragged onto dry land.

It wasn’t as large as Jack had been expecting, overall it was perhaps the size and weight of a large man. It resembled a wide barrel with brown rubbery flesh, at one end was a wide opening which Jack assumed was its mouth, he didn’t look inside, the tentacle was attached to its side. On the other end appeared to be numerous short pointed legs, similar to crab or lobster legs, they didn’t look any good for swimming, perhaps the monster used them for gripping the bottom of the pond or scuttling along.

“You know what this is?” Jack asked Nate who was staring at it with a perplexed expression.

“Um uh, pond…..bottom…..lurker, maybe?” Nate replied with a shrug.

“Take a picture of it, if no one has ever come across it before maybe they’ll let us name it. We should name it that,” Jack said with a grin.

They left the monster where it was and looked back down into the pond.

“I take it the water crystals will be down there?” Jack asked apprehensively, hoping he’d misheard Nate earlier.

“Afraid so,” Nate replied before taking off his weapon harness and removing his armour.

Jack sighed in resignation before doing the same.

As he was hopping from one foot to the other to remove his boots he noticed Nate place the gigantic sword he carried onto the ground with a thunk.

“New sword? Where’d you get that?” he asked.

“Gary’s, it's really cool, here take a look.” Nate unsheathed it and passed it one handed to Jack. Jack accepted it but very nearly dropped it straightaway, it was a lot heavier than Nate made it seem, it had to be close to if not more than forty kilograms. “Take a look at the end of the blade,” Nate said.

Jack awkwardly manoeuvred the blade around so he could look at the end. It was then he noticed dozens of small holes about half an inch thick covering the last foot of the blade.

“What are these holes for? They don’t look like damage.”

“Ha! That's the cool part, the middle of the sword is hollow, there's like this long narrow empty bit running from the hilt to the little holes at the end, now watch.” Nate took the sword back from Jack, lifting it effortlessly one handed again.

He held it so the blade pointed up then channelled fire into it. Instead of a warm orange flame wreathing the surface of the blade like Jack had witnessed earlier, smaller flames emerged from holes at the blades end. It didn’t look very impressive, it looked more like a candelabra. But then Nate poured more power into the flames and they turned blue, then he poured even more power into the flames and they turned almost white similar to the flame of a welding torch. Nate continued pouring more power into his flames and the flames reached almost a metre in length, they were incandescently bright and Jack had to avert his eyes for fear of being blinded. The noise of dozens of these flames created a low roar and even though the blade wasn’t pointed at him or anywhere near him he could feel the heat tingling on his skin.

Finally Nate let the flames die down and he grinned smugly and proudly at Jack.

“Whaddya think?”

“I think I’m glad you didn’t use that ability earlier, you would’ve burnt down the entire forest. But yeah, I have to admit that's pretty badass. Have you killed anything with those flames yet?” Jack felt the faint stirrings of jealousy but clamped down on them.

“Ah, not yet, just got it a couple of days ago. Besides, I can’t use it that way too often. There’s no gas running through the sword, just pure flame and heat, eventually the metal warps and I have to take it back to Gary for repairs. He’s good though, he said he’ll give me a discount for maintenance because I’m the first to use the sword type,” Nate informed him with a smile, looking fondly at his sword.

Nate carefully rested his now red hot sword on top of a nearby rocky surface and continued taking off his camouflage carapace plate armour. It was then that Jack saw that Nate had been wearing a wetsuit directly underneath his armour the whole time, Nate then turned to the small pack he’d been wearing on his back and took out a snorkel and mask.

Compared to Nate, Jack felt woefully unprepared, standing there in just his boxers. The next time he went on one of these excursions, Jack thought to himself, he’d actually take the time to prepare and find out what he was getting into beforehand.

Nate turned to him and suppressed a smirk at Jack's underwear. “Ready?” Nate asked. Jack nodded and they both waded into the pond. The various dead fish monsters were beginning to give off multicoloured light a vapour, it rested on top of the water like fog.

They swam the several metres to the middle of the water, pushing aside dead monsters and fishes then dived down. After a blurry few seconds Jack's vision adjusted and he looked around, it was murky and dim. Nate remained on the surface looking down through his mask, breathing through his snorkel. Jack swam about looking around the edges of the pond near the shallows, going back up to the surface periodically for air. After a while he saw something interesting, the multicoloured light from the dead monsters was slowly flowing down beneath the surface of the water disappearing into the murk towards the bottom.

Jack went back up to the surface, he pointed down to Nate who nodded. They both took a deep breath and plunged underneath, they swam down, further and further. Jack felt his ears pop, the surroundings got darker and murkier, but in the middle of it he could just make out a faint stream of multicoloured light and vapour flowing down lazily like a beam of sunlight. He followed the light and eventually came to what he and Nate sought, a small patch of elemental water crystals. The multicoloured light illuminated and flowed into them, they were a mixture of blue, purple and black but seemed to be perfectly round like large marbles or pearls instead of rod shaped.

Nate tapped Jack on the shoulder and motioned upwards, Jack nodded and they both made for the surface. When they broke the surface, instead of needing to gasp for air, Jack found that little stint under water hadn’t taxed him at all, despite spending over a minute underwater he actually felt he could’ve gone a little longer. But they needed the tools for harvesting.

They retrieved their tools from the shore line, and dived back down, fortunately the harvesting was fairly easy. They simply needed to pry the spherical crystals from their settings which popped out without much effort. They finished harvesting the whole clutch in one dive and broke again for the surface. This time Jack was panting a little, despite easily harvesting the crystals, they’d been under the water for close to four minutes.

They swam back to dry land, once they were out Nate held out both his hands and conjured a small concentrated orb of orange red light. Jack immediately felt the heat radiate from it and stood closer, he shook himself slightly to get rid of the excess water and let the small ball of fire Nate had summoned dry him off.

“Thanks Nate,” he said.

“No problem, so we just need to get these crystals back to Gary then job done yeah?”

“Yep, ready to go?” he asked.

“Yeah, let's get outta here.” With that they put their gear back on and began walking. It took them an hour to realise they were actually lost and didn’t know the way back, in the end they had to use the compass feature on their pagers to exit the forested area in the north. They were nowhere near the old path they’d used to enter the nature reserve, so they had to trudged and scramble through the overgrown brush and wade through wetland before they finally made it to the slope overlooking the whole area.

After that they walked back to the village Jack had stayed the night in. Nate offered him a ride back in his jeep, they put Jack’s bike in the boot and drove back to York, dirty and tired but mission complete.

Forty minutes later they arrived at Gary’s Monstrous Alloys and stepped into the store.

They drove around to the rear of the shop and entered straight into Gary’s workshop. They found the man himself bent over the corpse of a giant spider, or bits and pieces of it anyway. Gary suddenly looked up at them whilst holding a saw in one hand and some tongs in the other.

“Hey Gary!” Jack greeted him

“Jack! Ya back, and Nates here too? Did ya get the crystals?” Gary asked.

In response Jack and Nate put their bags of earth and water crystals on a nearby work bench. Gary put his tools down and fished out a small scope from a pocket in his work apron. He picked up one of the earth crystals and held it up to the light before looking at it through the scope in his right eye. He turned the crystal this way and that before putting it down and examined several more crystals. Eventually he put everything down.

“Well, they’re a bit small but they’ll do nicely regardless. Thanks boys,” Gary thanked them with a smile. “You brought Nate in on the hunt too I see.”

“Yeah, the job was a bit trickier than I imagined it would be, we’re splitting the money fifty/fifty,” Jack told him, motioning to Nate who was wandering around the workshop poking and prodding things in curiosity. Nate looked over to them and waved briefly before going back to poking something he likely shouldn’t have been.

“Uh huh, well that's fine, I’ll just pay you the full amount and you can give him half,” Gary said and Jack nodded.

“So what's this then?” Jack pointed down to the bits and pieces of the dismembered giant spider scattered around the store. “Trying to harvest the chitin for armour?”

“Not exactly, I’m trying to harvest the spider silk, I want to see if it can be woven similar to kevlar to produce armour,” Gary explained.

Jack's eyebrows went up in surprise. “Huh, I wouldn’t have thought about doing that, is it possible?”

“Seems like it might be,” Gary grunted whilst holding up a piece of white thread and rubbing between his finger and thumb.

“And is it stronger than kevlar?”

“This stuff? Probably not, I’m just using it to see if it's possible to weave this stuff like kevlar. If I can then I think the next step will be to get a hold of a monster that produces strong silk or thread. Then I’ll use that next, but we’re a ways off from that,” he explained.

“Huh, sounds good. Anyway me and Nate are gonna head back to the guild, we’ve still got stuff to sell.”

“Righto, thanks again Jack, you too Nate!”

“See ya Gary!”

As they were leaving and heading over to Nate's car, a man suddenly appeared from behind a corner with a camera and quickly snapped several pictures of Jack before hurriedly retreating back the way he came. Jack stood there stunned and motionless for several seconds, wondering if he’d just imagined that or if it really happened. In the end he simply shrugged and got into Nate's car.

They drove back to the guild and pulled into the nearby car park across the road, they made their way into hunters plaza. As usual it was busy with various hunters all selling their loot, haggling over prices, browsing or just hanging around the fountain chatting. Jack and Nate headed over to a general herbology loot drop off point, this was a store that took everything regarding magical flora for just below market price and sold it off to different companies. They could have gotten slightly better prices if they had sold their harvested plants at specialist places such as pharmaceutical or agricultural drop offs but then they’d be there all day if they did that. The clerk manning the general herbology drop off point cheerfully agreed to take it all after they had sifted through and properly categorised everything. However the clerk did make sure to put on gloves and place the purple flowers into an air tight sealed bag, these were the same flowers Jack had harvested in the clearing right before the bloodbath.

Jack frowned and gave a worried glance at the flowers before giving a suspicious one to Nate.

He turned back to the clerk. “Uh, are those flowers dangerous?”

The clerk frowned at him in a confused manner before explaining. “If you're exposed to them too much they can have hallucinogenic effects, they also seem to act as an aphrodisiac for some monsters and animals. Didn’t you know that before harvesting them?”

Jack shot an accusatory glare at Nate who just shrugged.

Once they had sold all the various plants and fungi they headed over to a similar store on the upper floor that took harvested materials from monsters and sold the rest of their loot there. Once that was done they walked back downstairs to the ground floor of the plaza.

Now that they had sold all their loot and Gary had sent confirmation to the guild that the job was completed, they had officially finished. In total they had both earned just over four thousand pounds. Jack turned to Nate.

“Drinks?” he asked.

“Drinks,” Nate confirmed. They headed over to the guildhall and the bar.

Several days later after Jack had recovered from his jaunt in the wilderness he was back in HQ looking for another job. Whilst there he ran into Zack and Rachael, they both looked a little ragged, with light cuts and scrapes covering their faces and armour.

“Hey guys!” He greeted them. “You two ok? You look a bit…..erm…..tired.”

“Hi Jack,” Zack greeted him and Rachael mumbled a greeting too. “Yeah, just got back from a hunt for a flock of Razorwings,” Zack told him.

“What are Razorwings?” he asked.

“They’re like these small flying lizard things, they gather in large swarms and devour their prey in minutes, like flying piranhas.”

“Whoa! That sounds pretty bad, is that an E rank hunt?” Jack asked in concern.

“It's a C rank hunt, anyone who’s rank D and above can take it. But it wasn’t so terrible, Rachaels a wind element so that makes taking down flying monsters a cinch, especially the smaller ones,” Zack explained.

“Huh, apart from those Needlejackets a little while ago I don’t think I’ve even seen many hunts for flying monsters,” Jack wondered.

“Yeah, flying monsters and mutated animals are considered particularly dangerous since they’re able to go wherever they please and attack people with impunity. So whenever the surveyor corps finds out about a flock or swarm or whatever in the area, they put up a hunt for them and immediately start calling the various wind element hunters they’ve got if they want to accept the hunt. They want hunts for flying monsters to be completed as soon as possible. It's why me and Rachael actually spend half our time hunting for flying monsters. We've gotten pretty good at these types of hunts lately, if I do say so myself.” Zack crossed his arms and looked a little smug, Rachael simply leaned tiredly against a wall and absently scratched one of her cuts.

“Huh, I didn’t know that. Anyway, I’m just here for a hunt of my own, so I’ll see you both later?”

“Yeah, see you later Jack. C’mon Rachael.” Both siblings tiredly dragged themselves towards the HQ exit and Jack said goodbye.

He turned to the jobs and requests room and walked through the double doors. Once there he navigated his way past the assortments of hunters and guild personnel before he got to a free terminal.

As usual he looked at the E rank list to the exclusion of all others. Some of it was interesting, some of it was boring, but then something caught his interest. Some doctor from the local university had put up a request for a hunt for Red Caps at one and half thousand pounds, Red Caps, that name sounded familiar to Jack.

In any case, it said to meet the requestor for more details if the hunt was accepted. The details themselves were fairly light, in fact it looked like the requestor had only put the bare minimum down. That made the job either very sketchy or potentially very interesting.