Entering back into the backrooms of the Tinte church, the party found Marta and the previous Devout, Aev, where they had left them. Both looked exhausted, though Marta was worse for wear.

The air was thick with the stench of blood and decay, sweat melding with it to make quite the icky sensation to the skin and nose. Looking over the woman on the table, the Devout healer that was brought here looked over her again, his eyes glowing slightly as if he were magically identifying her.

“She hasn’t progressed too harshly since last I saw her. With the reagents in hand, I can bring her back to strength in about a week’s time. The decay as well as the rest of her bodily state makes the implementation a lengthy process”, he explained.

Marta had a bit of life flush to her face as she saw and heard the group's return, “So, you brought it?”

Logan moved to her side and showed her the flask with the violet liquid, “As ordered. We were able to track down a troll for you.”

Marta gave a short prayer under her weary breath as Aev approached with a pouch full of jingling coins, “Your pay.”

Logan took it and threw it over to Amalia who caught it easily.

“What of the payment for you, sir?” Aev asked as he looked at the healer.

“Already accounted for. I can begin the regeneration bestowal immediately.”

“You don’t need us for that time, do you?” Logan asked.

“No. I highly doubt this church will come under fire from monsters. As long as you’re back at the end of the week’s time to take me back, we’re all square.”

Aev looked between all the people in the room, teary-eyed and a bit confused.

“Alright, we may be in Tinte for a few days, but we’ll teleport back to bring you to Gauntlet”, Logan replied as he waved off, moving out of the room.

“I hope all goes well”, Marcus prayed as he moved his fists to his stomach in praise to Pondress.

Amalia followed behind, not knowing what kind of farewell to give.

“So, what about your conferment?” Marcus asked.

“If it takes time, I know of a way to speed it up”, Logan replied as he looked around the village's dirt streets.

Amalia counted out the coins behind them, after finishing she put the pouch away, “You sure I have to keep all this to myself?”

Logan looked back, “Yeah, if you don’t intend to keep it and use it for yourself then the System doesn’t grant you progress in that objective”, he explained.

Marcus sighed as the group left the church and started to walk away from it.

Looking at Marcus, Logan added, “We’ll rest up after all that’s happened today. Tomorrow we’ll look into some more quests for you. Tinte has quite a few backed up.”

Making an almost bee-line to the inn, the party retired for another night. Marcus needed a rest, if not just for his psyche. There wasn’t even the nightly fight with the elementals.

Amalia spent some time before sleeping reading up on another book. Before long, the whole group hit the hay for the next day.

The morning brought with it the chirps of new-day birds and the creaking of wood wheels as the villagers began their early routines.

Logan woke to questions in his head, mostly down to his next quest. It would soon be time for a new one to appear. Would it include Amalia in it? If she really was aligned with a deity from below, would one appear after hers was done to kill him?

He thought it all over as he resummoned his usual elementals and did the long process of bringing in his secondaries.

Exiting his room, Logan met back up with Amalia and Marcus. After a quick breakfast, the trio and army of elementals made their way to the adventurer’s hall of Tinte.

A few other adventurers met their gaze as they entered the hall, but they seemed tired as if they just came from a nightly expedition and were resting here before heading out.

The quest board had been tidied up a bit after Logan’s arrival, though the number of staff hadn’t changed yet.

Quickly checking over the board, the group picked up a total of eighteen quests for the elementals, Marcus, and Amalia. Logan instead went to the counter to pick up the pseudo-hunter contracts that he had talked with the receptionist about the other day.

Splitting up as before, Logan headed to the west to investigate the locations of the missing adventurers. It was as simple a task as his normal hunting duties. Accept the quest, follow the tracker to an area, and scout out. Many of the jobs were located in the same span of a forest, possibly a hotspot for traitor activity or a death sentence when sent there for a quest.

Teleporting to the forest, Logan was quickly able to find some bones and a handful of gnawed wooden signets. These were good enough proof that the person had perished, even his quest log agreed. However, Logan wasn’t going to get many rewards for this kind of mission. If he could stumble across their old gear, Logan would bring in a lot more coin.

Jumping from tree to tree, Logan was able to avoid most confrontations with the monsters below. Where possible he did jump down to inflict Backstabs on wolves, quickly Harvesting them to build up his skills. They were worth hardly any experience at his current level, so were good enough targets for this sort of thing. It didn’t slow him down much either.

Logan kept finding signets and partial remains, if the adventurers were betrayed then the traitors did well to cover up their tracks over time with the feasts given to the monsters. The Spellthief did notice a few scorch marks here and there, leading him to believe that either a caster was involved or the attackers had spell rings.

“This would be simpler if I could use spells to identify blood or who cast spells in an area”, Logan thought to himself.

“Whilst you are called a diviner by some, you do lack the spells of such”, Fol replied to Logan in his mind.

“Regardless. I doubt whoever did this is still around. Tinte has almost no casters, let alone adventurers with the finances for spell rings.”

“Then it was from the goblin shamans you believe?”

“Good enough guess as any”, Logan replied before looking above the canopy, “Time to return what I’ve found—”

As Logan began to mentally command his Dimensional Jaunt, his body started to warp, but jittered violently as the spell failed. Falling to a knee on the floor, Logan let out a quick breath of fear.

“Fuck!” he cursed as he jumped back and planted his back against the trunk of a tree.

A hail of light-brown spikes came shooting down from the canopy, impaling the muddy ground that Logan had been standing in previously. A pre-emptive dodge allowed Logan to evade all of them, but he had yet to find his foe.

Clicking his fingers, Echo Radar pinged the vicinity but also returned no signs of his attacker.

Waving his hand across the floor, Logan chanted, “Gaia Wall”, causing a wall of earth to erupt from the ground in front of him, protecting him from further attacks.

“It’s not a total spell block, otherwise that wouldn’t work. It must be some sort of teleportation block like back at the dungeon”, Logan ascertained in his head.

Several thuds hit his wall of rock and mud, cracks forming across the magical barrier that Logan had erected. Whatever was attacking him was fierce, nothing low-level would damage the wall that harshly.

Looking through the canopy, Logan attempted another teleport, but his body just shuddered all over as it failed yet again.

“Damn, will Sig-Clutch not help me here?” he thought. The skill said it had a 50% chance of stopping interruptions, but did this effect count as one?

Holding his hand to the floor Logan chanted, “Air Blast”, causing a burst of wind to form in his palm and blast him upwards.

Soaring through the canopy, Logan brought many smaller branches and groups of leaves with him. Darting his head around, he barely caught a glimpse of a large creature rushing towards him.

Its back was a mess of long spines and spikes, its face darkened by a long snout. It was some form of monstrous and bipedal porcupine-armadillo hybrid. Long arms ended in sharp claws that were aimed at Logan as they barreled towards him.

Before Logan could finish the thought of using Identification, he saw its beady brown eyes shine red, a shockwave of pain flowing over Logan’s body and blurring his vision. Logan winced in pain as he desperately tried to keep his sight on the foe.

Drawing up his daggers, Logan had his left go between the monster’s left index and middle claw, ending in a dirty parry. The right stabbed the monster’s right palm. While he had blocked both attacks, his stance was off, and he could barely see what he was doing.

The monster gripped tightly on the daggers, pulled inwards, and dealt a heavy double-kick into Logan’s stomach. Both disarming and hurtling Logan to the ground, the monster fell after him in a slower manner.

Logan threw his hand to the side and aimed it down, a blast of air stopping his hasty descent and flipping him around into a three-point landing back in the forest.

Looking upwards, Logan used another blast to dodge a downward claw slash by an inch, his hair getting snipped as he landed his feet on a faraway tree.

“Would be nice to know what the hell this is!”

Kicking off the floor, the monster came hurtling towards Logan again. Logan drew up six daggers from his hip holsters and tossed them at the foe, though they were deflected with claw slashes, sending them upwards and into the ground.

Dodging low, Logan evaded another slash as it cut through the tree he had landed on. Aiming his arm at the foe he chanted, “Flame Shot”, causing fires to ignite around his shoulder, dance down his arm, and flow from his palm into the chest of the monster.

Logan was sent backwards a bit as he slid across the muddy floor, tumbling to a standing stance. While the monster was sent hurtling into another tree, leaves cascading downwards.

Standing to face Logan from across the clearing they were now within, the monster started to glow yellow.

“You’re a caster, eh?” Logan asked aloud before he noticed the monster's claws at its sides. It was wearing spell rings. “Where’d you get, let alone know how to use, those?”

Without any reply, the monster used another familiar ability, Rush of the Fighter class. A massive whirlwind came with the monster as it appeared in front of Logan in two seconds, the power of its claw increased several times as it pierce into his shoulder.

Another claw came upwards as Logan punched into its wrist to block the next blow. As he drew back his fist he pulled another dagger from his inventory. Green cubes and static electricity sparked in midair as a dagger formed in his grasp and plunged into the monster’s right eye.

Backstab text popped up as Logan made sure to have his Dastardly Backstabs skill make the creature blind until healed.

A high-pitch screech escaped the monster’s maw as it opened wide, showing jagged teeth as if it were a shark.

Seeing an opening, literally, Logan let go of the Bowen dagger in the foe’s eye, planted it on the roof of the monster’s inner mouth, and used one of his rings. A torrent of flames flowed out from the monster’s mouth and down its throat, smoke shooting out of its nostrils and ears.

Logan quickly retreated his hand, grabbed the arm that had stabbed him, and pulled out of the claw’s impalement. Darting to the side to create some distance between the two.

Retrieving two potions, Logan spat the corks to the floor and downed them both. His vision was almost back in tip-top shape, but not enough to really see his status or attempt another foolish Identification.

Throwing up a hand, Logan activated a ring, casting Lightning. Sparks of azure danced towards the foe, but it put up a similar hand and retaliate with a rain of rocks at the Spellthief. It would have been safer to use the same spell to block, but it seemed the monster either didn’t have it or didn’t know what Logan would cast.

With the spells having finished their collision, the monster came charging at Logan again, though without the power it had previously. Logan made a claw with his right hand and pulled it back as he chanted, “Necromantic Skystrike”, forming a claw of shadows behind the monster and having it pierce through its spikes and into its back.

As the lifeforce was drained from the foe and transferred into Logan, the monster came to a sliding halt as it spread its arms wide and threw them forwards with a slap of its palms, its spines and spikes shooting towards the Spellthief.

When its arms were spread, Logan could tell what it was going to do, so he waved his arm across the floor and chanted, “Frost Wall”, creating a thick wall of ice in front of him.

The spines pelted the ice, a few piercing partway on Logan’s side, cracking it all over. Jumping to the side, Logan dodged the large shadow that was appearing on the other end. The monster came crashing through the frosty blockage with a wide slash.

Aiming at the monster’s side, Logan let off another torrent of flames from his ring. The creature faltered to a knee, but it wasn’t blown off of the floor this time. Surrounding itself in another healing aura it pulled the dagger from its eye and dropped it to the floor.

“Spellforce”, the monster growled out, its hands open towards Logan.

“What?”

A gust of wind whooshed from behind Logan, and it felt as if it came out of his body too, as a slightly violet light started to seep towards the monster.

“Your MP is being drained, Logan! 13… 12…” Fol shouted in Logan’s head.

“It’s a demon!?” Logan shouted.

Through his research into demons, Logan stumbled onto this ability as one that was highly sought after. Known as Spellforce Blast, it was a combination effect of sucking in nearby spellforce, even draining it from creatures, and then blasting it back out as a destructive force.

Drawing out four more daggers from his hip holsters, Logan tossed them at the monster, each one bashed away by its claws before going back into his stance of vacuuming in wind and spellforce.

Jumping to the side, Logan could feel his body was sluggish from the absorption effect. He didn’t just use spellforce for his spells, it fueled his body and his status, without it he wasn’t much stronger than a classless being.

“7”, Fol recounted.

Calling up the powers of his rings, Logan blasted a tuft of embers at the monster, but these were also sucked into its palms.

Pulling backwards, he attempted a Lightning Skystrike, but he also felt the essence peel away before it appeared behind or above the foe.

Tying to call on the remaining changes of his Air Blast spell also produced little effect.

“4.”

There was one last recourse for Logan, if he wasn’t able to dodge the incoming blast, he would have to stop it completely. Something that didn’t use spellforce to attack.

His body became weaker still as he used Bloodcasting, his skin growing pale and his veins popping. With a hand behind him, and the other drawing the frozen lord edge, Logan propelled himself forward as he chanted, “Air Blast.”

The monster’s eyes went wide as the disabled caster was able to pull off a spell, Bloodcasting used lifeforce, not spellforce. Clapping its claws together, the monster formed a chaotic orb of monochromatic hues, sending it towards Logan it destroyed the air and ground it punched through.

Logan flew his hand to the floor and let off another Air Blast, forcing his body upwards and above the wave of death that was aimed at him. Turning in the air he looked at the rear of the foe, crossed his arms, and sent a blast to send him hurtling towards the monster. With a devastating strike, Logan plunged the artefact blade into the back of its head, appearing through its forehead.

Backstab text glided upwards as the monster’s jaw dropped open, its body falling along with Logan as he landed on the floor. The blast continued away from them both, destroying tree after tree, the sound of timbering wood filling the forest with even more chaotic noise.

As Logan began to breathe a sigh of relief at the experience numbers floating over the corpse, he tensed up immediately as he saw the body starting to convulse, bubble, and engorge itself.

Looking skyward he commanded a ring to take him as far as possible, warping into his centre with the blockage seemingly clear, he blasted 36 miles into the air. On the floor, the corpse engorged further before exploding outwards, spines and spikes going all over, impaling the foliage and soaring into the sky.

Logan stared downwards as he barely made this out so far up, but he knew he had evaded quite the devastating climax.

Teleporting again to the floor, Logan stood amongst blood and gore, the monster having self-destructed, or whatever that was, leaving its remains scattered all around.

“Talk about being a sore loser”, he sighed sarcastically.

--- *** ---