The investigation continued on. Just ten minutes were left of the ritual, Mathew heard the sound of several creatures coming toward him. Jeffery and Cherry also turned that way just after he did. “There is a large pack of something coming,” Cherry said pointing with her staff.

Mathew started to fuel mana into the two wisps. “Leave nothing alive and nothing escapes. Try not to get hurt. I have no idea how the parasites will work with summoning either of you. Jeffery and the wisps can just come back.”

Cherry and Agnox nodded and they all prepared for whatever was coming. Out from the foliage, a pack of wolves lept out at them. Two were instantly killed by Wispy and Whis combo firing.

A third was pinned to the ground as Mathew threw a spear made of ice followed by [Frostrim Chains] wrapping around a fourth wolf.

Cherry focused on controlling the natural foliage and captured a fifth wolf allowing Jeffery and Agnox to kill the remaining three without a threat to their lives. All the wolves were killed in a matter of moments.

“Burn them Agnox, before they come back to life,” Mathew ordered.

Agnox didn’t wait a moment and started to use his augmented [Fire Bolt] spell to reduce the bodies to ashes.

“I guess we go that way?” Cherry asked as she pointed to where the wolves came from.

Mathew nodded and walked in that direction. The wolves would have been annoying, but easy for him to kill by himself. With the help of his summons, he barely needed to act himself. Thinking back on it, he didn’t even need to fuel his summons with mana to kill the wolves. He could have just let them both focus on one, saving him mana in the process.

He glanced at his rod, already passively absorbing the stored mana within and at the ring on his hand. “Then again, I have plenty of options to regain mana faster than normal. If anything, I would need to be heavily reckless to waste more mana than I have stored over a very long fight. Using more mana upfront and over-estimating my enemies will just be a safer way to fight.”

As they walked, Mathew started to notice a change in the environment around them. The forest was growing more sparse, but not naturally. Patches of the earth were exposed where living trees have deteriorated and died.

Mathew followed the empty area around a bend. There he saw a dried-up husk of a human body. Their gear lay around them, with the few pieces of armor limply lying on the ground, showing what the human used to look like possibly.

“Boss, look at the clothes,” Agnox said while pointing with his sword.

Under the armor was a dirty and blooded military uniform. “Think he was one of ours?” Agnox asked.

Mathew looked over the body, not seeing any items that were unique or that he recalled. “Hard to say. We have people showing up and leaving all the time. We never declared missing people dead for that reason, unless we knew their names and saw them missing from the Leaderboard. This could be one of our scouts, someone from another zone, or someone who was doing their own thing.”

Cherry shivered, “This is giving me a bad feeling. There has to be a Dungeon nearby.”

Mathew looked around. “This isn’t recent damage. This is something that has been going on over weeks if not months.”

Cherry nodded, “I agree, this isn’t destruction, this is something that happens from something taking food from the plants around here or draining them.”

Mathew clenched his jaw, “We need to take care of this before it evolves into a problem that can’t be easily handled.” He pointed at Agnox, “Go scouting. Find the Dungeon or source of this shit. We are ending this today.”

Agnox gave a two-finger salute and flew off. Mathew sat down and started to channel his mana to summon a creature.

After an hour of time, Mathew summoned three elementals. Two ice and one lightning elemental. The Ice elementals were ghostly looking. Ice swirled in a shape of a humanoid top half that petered off into a point below it. The lightning elemental was just a ball of energy that zigged and zagged in the air.

With a thought, Mathew had the lightning elemental enter his robes. The occasional arc of electricity bounced over the surface of the cloth.

Lastly was the [Call Aid] function of his [Ritual] skill. Mathew focused on what he needed. Currently, only Agnox and maybe the ice elementals could securely kill the parasites. He needed firepower, almost literally.

Coming from the summoning ritual was a large bird. Its wings were tipped with blue energy while its talons were razor sharp. Mathew had his arms crossed looking at it. “Think you can kill parasites?”

The bird nodded. It was waist-high compared to the summoner. Mathew looked at it for a long moment. “Good. Don’t fuck this up. Kill the monsters and ensure no parasites remain.”

The bird opened its wings and with a single flap went over to a rock and sat down on it. As if it knew they would be waiting.

“Worst case, I can use my circlet on it if I take a bad hit. If not, then I can just order it to kamikaze itself. Don’t really care what happens to it so long as it is useful.”

The imp returned with good news a few minutes later. “I found a portal. I wasn’t close enough to determine what it was. There are creatures guarding it.”

He landed and looked at the extra summons. “Oh, I had forgotten you can summon elementals.”

“I didn’t,” Cherry said with a grin.

“What is guarding the portal?” Mathew asked.

“A mix of things,” Agnox said. “Mostly animals. A wolf, two bears, a couple of deer, and lastly a human I think.”

Mathew raised an eyebrow, “You think?”

“It’s skinner and taller than normal,” Agnox replied with a shrug. “What did you want me to do, go and ask it?”

“Fine, that’s good enough. Lead the way Agnox.” Mathew said looking up at the imp.

A mile away the damage to the environment was utter devastation. Nothing living remained. Mathew could easily see a glowing portal in the middle of the empty area. A swirling black energy with spots of black was guarded by several creatures.

Mathew looked them all over, especially at the human that was standing in the middle of them all. The animals all looked normal other than the fact deer, bears, and a wolf was standing in close distance of each other. The human was wearing leather armor, only covering vital areas such as the torso and forearms.

With a feminine face, Mathew assumed it was a woman with a flat chest. In her hands was an elegant longbow. From this distance, Mathew could tell it had to be hard to pull back. It looked like the old English longbows being three-quarters her height, but as thick as a baseball bat.

“I’ll need to be careful of the arrows shot from that thing. One arrow will tear a limb off.” Mathew thought to himself.

None of the guards moved, even as Mathew and his summons walked closer. He wasn’t going to give them a single chance. He smiled as he created a [Mana Bolt]. Mana swelled and he layered it with his Axiom of Piercing.

In response, the archer drew her bow back. Muscles bulged as she barely showed effort of pulling the bow back. Mathew almost thought he had overestimated the strength of the bow at that moment, but then reminded himself that looks can be deceiving.

Mathew thought back to his fight with the Anubian floor boss. How he created a spear that combined both Axioms of Piercing and Ice. He tried to combine his ice Axiom but found the two energies only attempting to replace one another, not working in tandem.

“Fuck it, this will do fine,” Mathew said, choosing to stick with his Axiom of Piercing. He pointed and fired the bolt.

At the same time, the archer released her bow. The arrow flew faster than the bolt and Mathew’s eyes went wide as he tried to both dodge and raise a shield. He narrowly dropped to the ground, the arrow flying above his shoulder, a shield manifesting in the empty air right where the arrow had already passed. Mathew didn’t have the moment to concentrate on his bolt, and the Archer easily dodged the uncontrolled bolt.

“That was too fast! There was no way I could have dodged that without the lightning summon.” Mathew realized he could lose a ranged battle, “Go!” He shouted, ordering his summons.

After his side took two steps, the other side surged forward as well. Everyone with ranged attacks opened up and fired forward. Mathew stayed back and concentrated on his [Fracture] spell, targeting the Archer’s bow.

Mathew’s summons were the only ones with any ranged attacks. Thus the attacks were one-sided. Two deer were instantly killed by the barrage, while one of the bears was somewhat wounded.

The animals outnumbered Mathew’s summons, but his side had higher levels. Agnox and Jeffery tore through the enemies dealing the brunt of the damage.

The two elementals pointed their hands and let loose a cone of cold that hit everything, including allies. Luckily, they were low Novice level creations, and wouldn’t be able to harm Agnox very much and Jeffery didn’t seem even affected thanks to his magical resistance and armor.

Mathew finished casting his spell and threw the white energy forward. The Archer’s eyes went wide and dodged the attack. It drew the bow halfway back and started to fire weaker arrows but did so rapidly.

[Mana Shields] blocked any arrows that he couldn’t dodge. Both Wispy and Whis dodged around in the air, throwing their own attacks at the Archer.

Mathew fired his own [Mana Bolts] rapidly, keeping the ranged fighter moving and unable to fire a powerful attack.

The brawl between them was slowly ending with all of Mathew’s summons still alive. Mathew pointed at the archer, “Jeffery, get her!” As he yelled out his command, he fired his [Frostrim Chains] to try and lock her down.

He wasn’t used to fighting such a mobile enemy. She ran sideways and jumped over the chains that landed on the ground where she was standing. Mathew sneered in annoyance. Jeffery was aware of her agility and didn’t overcommit to any attacks. The two ran around each other. She was unable to fire her large bow, but Jeffery was also unable to connect an attack to her.

It took only a few moments before Mathew got lucky and hit her with a [Mana Bolt]. The attack threw off her rhythm enough for Jeffery to pounce on top of her and tore into her with his claws.

The battle was over. Mathew strode forward looking over the damage. “Anyone hit? Agnox, destroy the bodies.”

“I think we are okay,” Cherry said as she looked over everyone. Any damage was done to Jeffery or Agnox’s armor. However, one elemental did perish during the fight.

The wooshing sound of flames echoed out as Agnox started to burn the bodies down. The spirit bird landed next to him and pointed its wings toward the pile as a blue ooze splattered over the bodies.

Mathew looked at it and realized it was some sort of acidic ooze. It tore through the flesh of the bodies, destroying anything it touched until it reached the ground where it fizzled out. He nodded approvingly and turned toward the woman.

Upon closer inspection, he noticed the ears were pointed and the woman's face was more olive in color than he thought a normal human would be. Cherry gasped in shock, “That’s an Elf!”

“What? What’s an Elf doing here?” Agnox shouted over his flames.

Cherry turned to Mathew, “If an Elf is here, then they are close. Shoot, which clan are they from?” Cherry reached down to the body, but Mathew grabbed her hand, “Infected, remember?”

She paused and nodded, “Right. We need to remove her armor. There is probably a clan insignia on her skin somewhere. All Elves brand themselves to mark their clan. The fact it’s not on her face is good news as it eliminates the more devastatingly dangerous clans, but not all the ones we want to avoid.”

Mathew looked over at the portal. He looked at it as a blue screen popped up.

Parasite Dungeon: Novice + 4

Unlocked

Unclaimed

Number of Attempts: 87

His eyes bulged at the information. “This Dungeon has four Hearth Crystals and had been attempted eighty-seven times! What the- This explains why we haven’t seen any other nearby zones or dungeons within a couple of days of travel. The one dungeon we did find is in the completely other direction of this one.”

He looked back at the elf’s body and saw it was twitching already. “Last chance Mathew. If we can determine the clan, we can get an idea of a possible nearby dungeon, unless the parasites took it over, which I heavily doubt. You don’t want to piss off elves. They can be a powerful ally, but an even more powerful enemy.”

“She’s right Boss,” Agnox said walking over, now done with the animal corpses. “Even the Ky’ clan didn’t mess with most elven clans. If I recalled, if we heard there was a chance an Elf was nearby one of the planets we were invading, we didn’t bother them. If you want to know what sort of preparations to make for the clan, this is it.”

Mathew licked his lips as he thought things over. “Fuck it, I’ll do it. Stand back.” Mathew said as he summoned his spear. He stabbed through the elf’s head, then created four more spears pinning down all the limbs.

He flexed his hands preparing himself to tear off the armor. In a moment of thought, Mathew called upon his Axiom of Endurance and focused it all on his hand. “This shit better protect me.” A pink shimmer covered his hand as he reached out at the armor.

He quickly grabbed and yanked at it, working to just tear it off. As he did so, the elf’s eyes opened wide and its mouth opened in a splurge of bile shot out. Mathew jumped back and the body tried to follow the armor but it was pinned down. The leather tore thanks to his increased strength and revealed a naked body.

Mathew patted himself down looking to see if anything touched him. He looked at the others. “See anything on me?” As he said this, he frantically cycled mana over him and flushed all his Axioms through and over his body. The thought of letting Agnox set him on fire even came to mind.

He sent a ping to his passive spell and detected nothing amiss other than his elevated heart rate.

“No, you are fine Mathew,” Cherry said calmly. “I didn’t see anything hit you.”

“Neither did I Boss,” Agnox said as he looked at the naked body.

The elf wasn’t female at all but was in fact male. At least, Mathew assumed it was male based on what he could see. “No idea if other races did things differently.”

Tattooed across the center of the elven chest was a straight feather that had a halo surrounding it.

“Well, what clan is it?”

“I don’t recognize it, do you Cher?” Agnox asked.

“Cherry. And I do, but only barely. Which means it’s probably a smaller clan. The feather surrounding the halo is the symbol of one of the more recent Gods, Ulihor, The God of the Cosmic Wind. Which means this is one of the religious sects of Elves.”

“Great, more shit with Gods,” Mathew complained.

Cherry nodded to herself, “We are in luck. Ulihor is an ally of Gaia. I vividly recall her visiting once.”

“Visit? Weren’t you created just before we showed up at her domain?” Agnox asked.

“I was a tree for years. I wasn’t born until just before Mathew arrived. Anyway, I think if we run into their Dungeon, I can talk to them. Worst case, they are not instantly hostile.”

“We can figure it all out later. Right now we have a Dungeon to clear out.”