The trio had a quick lunch together before setting off. Hiroka knew her way around that part of the forest quite well, so Elise just needed to point to a spot on the map and the foxkin would take them there.

The first spot they went was actually somewhere they had passed by while on their way to capture the Stranger. Elise had heard a particularly loud ‘voice’ from there with her Soul-Speak. It stood out quite a lot considering the voice of the forest of Theremis was pretty quiet in general.

According to Hiroka, that was a pretty out of the way area, which was also somewhat hard to reach due to the surrounding geography being very hilly and very sharp. The foxkin was good enough to move through there with a little bit of effort, but there was just no reason to go through the trouble.

Nalia’s wind boost made the terrain mostly a non-issue, so they didn’t have any trouble reaching the proper spot, and it became immediately obvious what was the cause. Orange vines that had wrapped themselves around a trio of trees that looked very obviously sick.

“Borovines!” Nalia snarled.

The fairy knew very well about them. Those vines were parasitic organisms that fed on trees and other plant life in order to grow. They were considered a very dangerous pest due to their growth easily reaching exponential levels if not stopped in time, combined with how their draining of plant life could cause areas to become entirely barren.

“To think they grew to this point…” Hiroka was aghast. The beastkin were also familiar with those plants, and usually an inspector would have discovered it and had them removed before the vines managed to fully infect a single tree, let alone three “This whole situation made it difficult to have regular inspections, but I didn’t even consider this could happen.”

“Big Sister.” Nalia looked at her contractor. She didn’t need to say anything else.

Elise simply nodded, so the fairy immediately got to work. Shooting a series of spells, she shattered the vines into pieces before causing them to melt into goo which was subsequently evaporated. Nalia then looked closely at the trees and cast a few small spells on them.

“Looks like we were just in time. They’re going to be okay now.” She said.

“Wait. Were you sensing the suffering of those trees?” Hiroka made the connection.

“Yeah.”

“And from so far away? That’s scary.” The fox woman spoke blandly “Do you know what I’m feeling too?”

“No.” Elise replied bluntly “Because you have an ego. The ego is like a barrier that separates an individual from the world as a whole, the demarcation between what is you and what is everything else. One can only hear an individual’s thoughts if there is some sort of mental connection or if they are deliberately projecting their thoughts.”

“Ah. I see.” Hiroka was somewhat relieved.

With that done, Elise chose the next place to go, which was actually an entire area of the forest. It wasn’t a big area, but it was quite notable for one reason.

“Why would you want to go there? There’s nothing in that place.” Was Hiroka’s reaction to the choice.

“Yeah, but I find that interesting. It is specifically noted on the map as a nearly barren section of the forest, so I want to see what that specifically entails.” Elise replied.

“It’s pretty much just an area of the forest that has very few plants and even less animals, along with no natural resources of note. But I don’t mind going there if you still want to see it.”

As it happened, Elise did in fact want to see it, so their next destination was decided. It was a bit further away than what they had traveled to reach their first destination, but it was in a section of the forest that was pretty much completely under control by the alliance, so they could travel quickly through it without having to worry about alerting enemies.

As a result, it actually took less time than before for them to reach the area. And it took only a single look to see that Hiroka’s description of it had been accurate. There was very little green there, since the trees that existed there had very few leaves, not to mention how small they were and how they looked barely alive. And there was pretty much no grass and very few smaller plants. The foxkin just sighed upon seeing it.

Elise could hear enough from those trees to know that there was nothing supernatural afoot, that was simply the result of the soil in the area having very few nutrients, which meant few plants could survive, so most animals would leave due to the lack of food.

Upon hearing that from Elise, Nalia asked ‘Is there a way to fix this?’ through the contract bond, deciding that it was best not give Hiroka any false hope if they couldn’t do it.

‘Without causing issues on another part of the forest? Only with a lot of effort over several years, after a long period of research to figure out the best way. And our abilities wouldn’t speed it up to any significant degree, not at our level.’

‘If that’s the case, then we should leave it to the beastkin themselves. I’m sure they’ve already thought about it, so the best way for us to help would be by dealing with this whole situation so they have the leeway to act.’

‘That’s a good way to look at it.’ Elise concluded.

Even as they were having that conversation, the trio had entered the area and began to explore it. The girl still thought that they could find something interesting in the area, and it wouldn’t take too long to check everywhere, so Elise didn’t mind the possibility that it would be a wasted trip.

In the end, they actually found something, but it wasn’t anything they could have expected.

‘There’s someone behind us.’ Nalia alerted. She had picked up a reaction on one of the scouting spells she was using.

‘How close are they?’ Elise asked in reply.

She didn’t pause what she was doing, trying to avoid alerting whoever it was. Nalia followed her lead as she replied ‘About a hundred meters southwest. They just tripped one of the movement alarms.’

‘That’s pretty close. And they’re not a Stranger, so they must be a beastkin or another outsider like us.’ Elise considered ‘But we’re downwind right now, right? So why hasn’t Hiroka smelled them from this distance?’

‘That’s…. A good point. Whoever it is can apparently avoid her senses somehow.’

Neither of the two thought it likely that Hiroka would have sensed that person and said nothing about it.

‘I think we should investigate. Get on my shoulder, boost me and get ready to defend if necessary.’

‘Okay.’

And right before the fairy landed on her, Elise spoke out to Hiroka.

“Can you wait here for a bit? We need to check something.”

“Wha-” The fox woman didn’t even have time to finish one word before Nalia cast her spell and Elise did a powerful leap backwards.

Elise’s leap carried her over four meters into the air and was so fast that she crossed the distance to their interloper in barely over a second. With a thought, she asked Nalia to bring her down about five meters away from them, not wanting to provoke an unnecessary fight.

Upon landing Elise was able to see their interloper’s appearance. She was a tiny girl, even smaller than Elise, who looked about as young as her. That girl was recognizable as a rabbit beastkin due to the ears visible at the top of her head, and she was wearing a gray one piece dress of such low-quality that seemed only a single step up from actual rags. Additionally, her feet were bare.

That also meant Elise was able to use her ability on the rabbit girl, which gave the result of:

'Tiny Rabbit. A type of beastkin that never grows beyond child size, even as they get older. Their physical abilities are so low that even untrained adult humans could easily wrestle them into submission, and their only notable trait is leaving no scent at all, thus allowing such rabbits to live in hiding.'

‘So that’s why Hiroka didn’t smell her…’ Elise thought.

Apart from that, the information was also conclusive proof that she wasn’t a threat. Elise quickly informed Nalia of that and spoke to the smaller girl, who looked like she really wanted to bolt.

“Hello. My name is Elise, and this is Nalia.” She pointed to her shoulder “Could you tell me your name?”

The rabbitkin still seemed quite worried, looking around as if searching for an escape route, but eventually sighed in resignation before replying.

“My name is Nina. Please don’t tell anyone else about me.” She begged.

Idly noting that her name apparently meant ‘defiance’, Elise said “Okay, but let’s talk for a bit.” And walked towards the girl.

Nina was trembling a bit, but kept her gaze fixed on Elise and remained in place as she walked close enough to see that her eyes were green.

“First of all, to fulfill my agreement…” Elise glanced at Nalia “Go tell Hiroka that there was nothing wrong but I need to be alone for a bit.” The fairy nodded, but cast a quick spell on her before flying off and leaving her alone with the rabbit girl.

“Now we have some time to talk.” Elise said.

+0+

Nina’s story came in fits and starts as she clearly struggled to figure out exactly how much she should reveal, but eventually Elise managed to get a pretty clear picture of the situation. The girl apparently belonged to the Reite rabbit tribe, which had been living in hiding for the last two decades in order to escape the oppression from stronger tribes (meaning every other tribe). She had apparently decided to reveal the truth about that instead of pretending to be from a different rabbit tribe, since that would be easily exposed as a lie.

Said tribe lived ‘somewhere underground’ (Elise could tell she really didn’t want to reveal the exact location, and had no reason to push) and they would rarely come to the surface. Nina shouldn’t have been outside at that time of the day, but she had become curious after their alarm tools had picked up vibrations consistent with two people moving around on the surface.

That was fairly strange, since most of the ‘visitors’ they got were individual people who mostly just wanted to be away from everyone else for a bit, and they usually just wandered around instead of exploring the area thoroughly like those two people were seemingly doing.

Nina thought she wouldn’t be exposed since beastkin tended to rely too heavily on detecting others via scent and she knew the place like the back of her hand, so it would be easy to follow while remaining behind cover. Of course, she hadn’t considered that one of the people wouldn’t be a beastkin and would have magical means of detecting her.

While Nina was talking, Elise got the impression that she was more worried about the possibility of the tribe’s existence being revealed than about whatever would happen to her personally, which raised Elise’s estimation of her quite a bit. And when she finished her explanation, Elise nodded before asking:

“Do you know about the current turmoil in the forest?”

“A turmoil in the forest?” Nina had no idea about it.

‘Their tribe really is quite isolated from what goes on in the rest of the forest.’ Elise thought to herself before giving the other girl an abbreviated explanation about the troubles with the wolf tribe, the Strangers and the state of siege that had befallen the forest of Theremis.

“I’m currently acting as a mercenary employed by an alliance of southern tribes to help against the Strangers.” She suddenly thought of something “Ah, and I’m not here as part of some operation, so don’t worry about the other tribes possibly having an interest in this area.”

“Oh… That’s good.” Nina replied “And I guess… It’s good that my tribe is not involved in this whole thing. We just need to keep our heads down and hope that we’re not affected by this crisis…”

Her voice had gone lower and lower as she spoke, and there was a tinge of some subtle emotion on it that Elise couldn’t quite figure out. It was something like regret, but not quite. Thinking a bit more about it, Elise thought that it might be some sort of mix of emotions.

Giving up on figuring it out, she decided to finish the conversation:

“Okay. I don’t have any reason to tell others about your tribe, so I should probably go back to what I was doing before. It was fun talking to you.” Elise spoke with a gentle smile.

Tension left Nina’s body “Ah! Thank you. Thank you so much…” She said in obvious relief “Then… Then I should also go back home. I need to tell everyone about-”

Her words were interrupted by a sharp cry of “Big sister!”, immediately followed by Nalia flying towards them at high speed. The reason for her hurry was made clear by her next words:

“A Stranger appeared! They just suddenly popped up in the forest’s perception, so I think they teleported.”

“Where?” Elise instantly turned serious.

“About four hundred meters west of here and five hundred underground.” Nalia replied, pointing at the direction.

Nina gasped “But that’s…” She hesitated when the other two looked, but then restarted her sentence “But that’s right where the center of our home is…” She swallowed hard.

“Let’s go there!” Elise decided immediately and grabbed hold of the rabbit girl “Please point out the entrance when we’re close. Let’s go, Nalia!”

Quickly casting the best version of the wind boost spell she could on short notice while taking care to include Nina in it, Nalia landed on Elise’s shoulder and the girl leapt forward in the direction her partner had indicated.

Nina let out a noise of surprise and twisted her body instinctively, but the spell kept her in place until the shock passed and she ceased struggling. Elise’s movement was fast, as she ignored the ups and downs of the terrain, essentially jumping from high point to high point in a straight line, and there weren’t enough obstacles in the way to create much of a delay.

The distance was crossed in less than half a minute, and Nina said “There. Below that rock is one of the emergency entrances”. Her voice was steady but with an undercurrent of stress.

The place indicated was a large rectangular boulder that had a small gap between it and the ground on one of its sides. Said gap was only large enough for a single person of their size to squeeze through, but Elise had different plans.

‘We’ll need to force our way through.’ She told Nalia.

The fairy did not hesitate and neither did Elise, who rushed towards the rock without slowing down in the slightest, confident that her partner had it handled. Nalia did so by casting her earth shaping and earth moving spells at the same time, lifting the corner of the boulder to give them a bigger gap and widening the passage that was revealed below it.

Nina barely reacted to that show of power. The safety of her tribe, her family was the only thing in her mind. They went through, moving even faster now that the passage was taking them mostly downwards, deeper into the earth. The passage began widening by itself at a certain point, so Nalia could stop doing it.

The fairy smoothly switched to casting spells in preparation for the battle, as they were getting closer and closer to the Stranger’s position. She and Elise exchanged a few words mentally, making some last minute planning for what was about to occur.

The passage opened up into a wide open area, and thus they saw the enemy. Elise immediately tried to use her power and her lack of success meant that the woman was indeed as human as her appearance would indicate. She was a pretty woman who looked to be in her early thirties, had shoulder-length black hair and was wearing a fancy red dress with a long skirt and sleeves, golden threads forming a beautiful wavelike design on the borders and several purple ribbons tied in different places. The skirt was so long that her feet could not be seen, but her sleeves were short enough one could see that she was wearing black gloves.

Her appearance was completely normal and wouldn’t cause others to feel wary if they didn’t know what she was, but the same could not be said of the figure standing beside her.

It was a dark gray suit of armor that was almost twice the Stranger’s height. It didn’t look like it was ever meant to be worn by others, but rather like it had been designed as an intimidating show piece, because it truly looked threatening. Besides the sheer height, the armor was also full of sharp corners and spikes, the helmet was shaped like a skull with overly large sharp teeth and the left hand had been replaced with a spiked ball, while the right one held a big double-edged ax.

The woman looked in their direction as soon as they appeared and the armor turned toward them a moment later. Elise stopped in place shortly after entering, still more than twenty steps away from the duo, and let go of Nina before quickly glancing around to examine the battlefield. She saw a few simple houses made of mud and stones, some of which had been broken and set ablaze, she saw several rabbits running away deeper into the cave… And she saw a small bloodied figure lying next to the Stranger.

Nina saw it at the same time.

With a roar of anger, the rabbitkin ran toward the woman and then Elise made a snap decision:

‘Give her a full boost!’ She ordered.

Nalia didn’t hesitate. Two seconds later the magic fell upon Nina like a cloak and locked around her like a suit of armor. Similar to the wind boost, this spell wasn’t enhancing the target’s body but rather amplifying the results of their actions. Apart from that, they were very different.

Like the name implied, Nalia’s Full Boost was meant to enhance everything. It had been designed as a way to allow Elise to fight directly if it became necessary, so the magical ‘armor’ would add extra power to the user’s blows and serve as a barrier to reduce the damage of any attacks that hit. It also improved agility, not to the same extent as the mobility focused Wind Boost, yet enough that Nina’s sudden acceleration caught the enemy off guard, so she was only able to jump behind the armor instead of striking back.

Nina leapt and punched it in the chest, which caused a loud crashing noise and made the point she hit cave inwards slightly, but didn’t do any significant damage. The Stranger was thus able to regain her footing and activate her magic. The armor pulsed with energy, shoving Nina back and then raising its spiked ball to bring it crashing down on the rabbit.

Nina rolled away and managed to avoid getting crushed, but the armor swiped its arm sideways and hit her, thankfully the movement was slow, so the hit was softened enough by her boost that it didn’t end up breaking any of her bones. The rabbitkin was on the back foot, and the woman followed up by setting the ax on fire with a spell and swinging it down.

Nina wasn’t the Stranger’s only opponent, though. She was saved by a quick spell from Nalia that pulled her away. Both her and Elise had gotten closer, the contractor a bit behind the fairy, who was easily close enough to engage. Nalia decided to attack the woman herself and shot a couple of earth bullets that found their mark, but she reacted as if hit with a punch instead, taking a step back with a wince.

Nalia saw the problem immediately and told Elise ‘That’s a really strong barrier.’, before switching to a fireball that got completely ignored, the woman instead making the armor move closer and letting her barrier block the attack, which couldn’t even scorch her clothes.

‘And that barrier also protects her from heat and shock waves. I think it is being enhanced by some magical item she has.’ The fairy deduced.

‘The armor might actually be the easier target.’ Elise replied.

Nina had gotten up at that point, and she changed targets, rushed toward the Stranger and managed to dodge around an ax swing from the armor. She had also seen Nalia’s previous attacks fail, so the beastkin decided to try a different tack. Leaping onto the woman, she brought her hands up and grabbed the Stranger’s neck.

Then she squeezed, attempting to choke her. Her target’s defenses could deal with even that, however. The barrier briefly wavered into view as it redirected the force up and down instead of crushing onto the woman’s throat. Yet the attempt clearly enraged her, as the armor briefly stopped moving while energy pulsed around the woman like the armor had done before, except much stronger.

Nina was launched away like a bullet shot from a gun, flying so fast she would have broken open a sizable hole when she crashed into the wall, but Nalia had manifested a series of air barriers on her way along with manipulating the boost spell to slow her down enough for the impact to only injure her lightly.

‘Looks like attacking the mage really is a no go.’ Elise commented.

‘But I managed to figure out something from that. Her magic isn’t channeled directly into the armor, but into some magical item that’s hidden inside the helmet, and then flows from there.’

‘Then our best option is trying to destroy the helmet along with the thing inside. It doesn’t look like she’s very good at using magic to attack directly, or she would have done it to Nina, so with the armor disabled…’ She didn’t need to say anything else.

Nalia acted by casting the most powerful version of her stone bullet spell, shooting twelve heavy stone chunks directly at the armor’s helmet. The first two hit with a heavy metallic sound, but the subsequent ones were muffled, the barrier flowing furiously to soften the impacts. And when it was over, they were able to see the metal bending back into place and undoing the damage.

‘This is really tough. The barrier can even adapt to counter specific attacks. And considering that earlier fireball, I don’t think we can use sharp temperature shifts either.’ Nalia analyzed as the armor took a step closer.

‘So we have to use a single, massive attack to do this. But what could-’

Her communication was interrupted by noticing that Nina had gotten up and was rushing back into the fight again. And then it clicked.

“Nina!” She shouted, causing the girl to stop and look at her “Prepare yourself, I have an idea.”

The rabbit girl was angry, but not enough to have missed that her current fighting abilities came from the duo, so they were her only hope. She nodded before looking at the enemy and clenching her fists. Elise was already informing Nalia of her plan.

‘That thing likes to swing its weapons downward. Try and get them stuck.’

Her partner didn’t need any further instructions. Casting the wind boost on herself she flew forward and stopped right in front of the armor, dropping quite low to the ground to make it awkward to try and hit her with a sideways swing. Then she began casting spell after spell, using pretty much every attack magic she had ever developed and targeting the armor and the woman in turns.

The lure worked, the woman commanding the armor to swing down with its spiked ball, which Nalia dodged with a quick movement to the side, still remaining in range. The next attack was a swing from the ax, but channeling fire and blasting everything around it with flames.

Nalia put up a quick barrier that was only able to slow the attack for a few moments, but long enough for her to dodge back and avoid the hit. Exactly enough in fact, as she had deliberately allowed it to break instead of reinforcing the barrier to block for longer.

The ax crashed down and the woman had already begun lifting the spiked ball back up for another attack, but not fast enough. Nalia canceled the wind boost and put every remaining scrap of energy she had (except for what she was using to maintain Nina’s boost) into her earth magic, making the ground rise up and bury the weapons, locking them into place.

The armor began to pull, and it was strong enough that Nalia wouldn’t be able to keep her hold for long, but Elise had been giving instructions to Nina over the previous seconds:

“You need to destroy the armor’s head with a single blow. You’ll need to crash into it from above.” Were her exact words. And as soon as the weapons were locked, she shouted “Now!”

Nina ran and then jumped with all her strength, reaching the ceiling of the cave ten meters above the armor, then she turned around and kicked off the ceiling, launching herself down and reaching terminal speed in an instant, her arms extended and hands clasped together in front, turning her own body into a projectile.

The Stranger had no time to react and her magic had no time to adapt. Nalia had received her final instructions right before Nina’s first jump, so the boost shifted completely during the very small gap between her final launch and the impact, almost all of the magical energy focused into her hands.

The impact was tremendous. Not only did the helmet get completely crushed with a sound of tearing metal but the trunk caved inwards, destroying the shoulders and leaving the arms separated from the rest. Nina would not have survived if Nalia hadn’t used the rest of the energy to protect her body. As it was, the rabbit girl ended up bouncing back and ending up collapsed close to Elise.

The Stranger’s eyes widened. She shouted “You!” at her opponents, her voice full of anger, but seemed to control herself and then closed one eye before moving her left hand in a curious pattern. And vanished.

“She teleported away.” Nalia spoke after a moment “She’s all the way on the other side of the forest now.”

Nina groaned and struggled back to her feet. The boost magic had already vanished, but her wounds weren’t nearly serious enough to keep her from moving normally. She looked around to make sure that the enemy was indeed gone and then her face twisted into a desolate expression.

Nina didn’t have time to think about it during the fight, but now she had to face the truth. The girl walked toward the body, with Elise and Nalia following close by in silence. And there was no doubt that they were dead, because there was just so much blood pooling around them.

Reaching closer, Elise was able to see that he was a male rabbitkin who looked to be about the same size as Nina, but his wrinkled face and white hair showed that he was much older than her. The rabbit girl kneeled next to his head and gently closed his eyes. She closed her own eyes and faced down in silence for some time.

Then she turned around and looked at the other two girls, her face full of tears.

“Why?” She asked “Why do we have to suffer like this? Why do we have to keep hiding in fear? Why can we never get better?” Her tone went heavier and heavier as she spoke “Why can we never get any power of our own?!” She sobbed and looked at the duo with a complicated expression.

Elise had only one reply to that.

“Do you want to be stronger? Then how about becoming my partner?”

Nina let out a sound that was like a mix of a laugh and a sob.

“So you really were a Contractor.” Her gaze hardened “Would you really accept someone so weak as a partner? Could you really make me stronger? Don’t joke with me!”

Elise put her hands on Nina’s shoulders and gazed into her eyes with such an intensity that the other girl was completely paralyzed.

“I would never joke about that.” She said “My goal as a contractor is to reach the peak of this world, walking through the path of power and struggle. Join me on that and you shall become stronger than you ever imagined possible. Stronger than any beastkin in this forest, stronger than any tribe, even stronger than all of them put together.” She paused for a second “This path will also be far, far harsher than anything you could possibly imagine, but such is the price for that strength. And so I ask you again: Do you wish to become my partner?”

Nina let out a breath, then breathed in again. Her body began to tremble as a thousand thoughts went through her mind, but then she looked back into Elise’s eyes and spoke a single sentence, her voice steady:

“If you can truly make me stronger, I’ll follow you through any path, for as long as my will remains.”

And so Nina had made her decision, and stepped toward an unimaginable future.