The Liminari mountains were considered to be one of the most dangerous parts of the continent of Comeda. It went without saying that they were quite difficult to climb, with extremely hostile geography and an environment that became less and less suitable for life the further one climbed.

However, those mountains were also dangerous even for those who simply wanted to pass through instead of climbing. The reason for that was the animals who inhabited the areas around the bases of those mountains, which were truly terrifying beasts that fully deserved the moniker of monsters, being too strong and too tough for even teams of fully armed professional soldiers to take down without losing members in the process.

Because of that, even though the natural resources in the area were plentiful (as proven by the fact that they supported large amounts of those beasts), the area had never been developed by the country where the mountains were located, despite it being one of the biggest and most powerful countries in the continent.

And so that mountain area remained wild and untamed, becoming a place that very few people ever set foot in. Which made it all the more unusual the fact that there were currently three people living inside it.

Those people were, of course, Elise and her partners. And one of said partners, Nina, was currently locked in combat with one of the monstrous beasts that could be found in the area.

The beast was a bear large enough to tower above even particularly tall men, so the difference in size to the rabbit girl was astounding. The bear was also very unusual in appearance, having four arms, a hard shell coating over his lower torso and a pair of sharply pointed horns on his forehead. It was also walking completely upright, more like a man than a bear.

And it was far faster than one could reasonably expect, specially considering the rugged terrain of the mountain base area where the fight was taking place. However, its speed paled in comparison to that of his opponent.

The bear charged at Nina and swiped with its right arms, but the girl took a step that was more like launching herself, moving fast enough to instantly vanish from the bear’s sight. The monster’s hearing was also quite good, though, so it clawed to the side with its lower left arm to attack Nina’s new position, but the girl did an uppercut with her left fist, hitting the bear’s wrist and forcing its attack off course.

Nina followed up by throwing a high kick at the bear’s left thigh, causing it to let out a small noise of pain before forcing his deflected arm back down in an overhead strike that Nina dodged with a sidestep that brought her right in front of the bear in a single motion before she struck the shell above his stomach with a quick one-two punch that nevertheless still caused cracks to form on the enemy’s protection.

It also did enough damage to delay its next move for a moment, so when the bear brought its right arms back in a half (literal) bear hug, Nina had already moved on to her next target, hitting the bear’s right knee on the side with a brutal elbow strike that dislocated the entire thing and still having enough time to duck under the enemy’s arm.

The bear howled in pain and seemed to revert to animal instincts, dropping down into fours (or sixes, in its case) and trying to bite Nina in the same movement, stretching its neck in an unnatural way to reach the girl that was now under his torso.

Still in crouched position, Nina did another super fast movement (using her hands to help), getting out from under the bear and rising from her crouch to deliver a powerful front kick to its side.

She felt some of its bones break, but the bear growled angrily and forcefully twisted its body to face the rabbit girl, trying to bite her and clawing with both of its upper arms at the same time, but Nina stepped back out of range of its claws and then spun into a powerful kick to the bear’s upper right shoulder, causing so much damage that it seemed to briefly lose control of the arm connected to it.

That also distracted the bear, and Nina wouldn’t miss such a chance. She stepped in again and uppercut it on the chin before jumping just high enough to bring her elbow down on a merciless blow to the top of its head.

And the huge, ferocious beast fell to the ground unconscious.

Nina kept up her guard for a few moments to be sure, but then relaxed and walked back to Elise who had been watching from only a few steps away.

“How was it?” Elise asked.

“It’s still pretty distracting to fight while maintaining full awareness.” Nina replied.

That’s right. Nina had been keeping the full awareness state throughout that entire fight. Elise had previously said that stage four was making that state as natural as breathing. Nina wasn’t at that level yet, but she was definitely deep into stage three.

Elise’s new training regime for her partners after the struggles in the Forest of Theremis was already showing results. Nina’s greater mastery of full awareness training was one of them, but far from the main one.

The rabbit girl had also been training in fighting methods and techniques matching her new, more fluid combat style. But it wasn’t that simple either, as while Nina had managed to set aside her ambition of crushing enemies with power given the seriousness of the situation, it didn’t mean that part of her was gone.

And honestly speaking, Elise was glad for it. As long as it didn’t make Nina lose sight of the greater picture that sort of ambition would only make her stronger. Managing that sort of thing was another one of Elise’s jobs as a contractor.

And then there was her other partner, Nalia. The battles in the forest had highlighted her two biggest weaknesses. One of them was the fairy’s lack of skill in high-level attack magic. She had a lot of trouble with trying to threaten enemies that had strong defenses.

The issue wasn’t a lack of spells. Nalia could use magical attacks that were powerful enough for that. The problem was that they would take too long to cast and would require for her to devote the majority of her energy to them, meaning Nalia would be mostly defenseless while casting.

And it would be fairly obvious that she was casting a big spell, which meant enemies would undoubtedly focus their attention on her.

So Nalia had been spending a lot of time practicing and optimizing those powerful attack spells, as well as developing modifications to weaker spells like the stone bullet which would give them higher burst power and allow for them to be useful in more situations.

However, that wasn’t what she was doing on that day. Instead she was training to overcome her other big weakness. And so Nalia approached while Elise and Nina were talking after the fight and floated in the air next to them.

“I’m ready.” She said, looking at Nina “Just put a bit more power into it than last time.”

The rabbitkin nodded, then raised her hand and punched Nalia.

“Ghhh…” The fairy struggled against the pain, gritting her teeth and forcing herself to focus enough to cast a fireball spell to the side.

“Hmm… You’re getting better, but that’s still a bit too slow to be reliable in a fight.” Elise judged.

Nalia’s second greatest weakness was her fragility. Having her spells violently broken with overwhelming force had caused her to be stunned during the fight against Loran. That was partly due to already having been worn out from the previous fight, but fighting while tired was such a common occurrence that such justification didn’t really mean much. It was still something that could not be allowed.

Her current training was for the sake of being able to take hits (which was obviously more physically demanding than simply having her spells broken) and immediately counter-attack.

“Your aura defense is getting pretty tough, though. That was like punching a steel plate.” Nina said.

“After taking all those blows from you, getting tougher was pretty much inevitable.” Nalia said, having already recovered enough to talk.

“It still required a lot of effort to mold your defenses to that high of a level.” Elise said “And that sort of defensive skill is something that will always be useful, so this is a really great thing to achieve.”

“That’s nice to hear. I really don’t want to be so helpless anymore.” Nalia said.

Elise smiled and walked over to the unconscious beast and put a hand to its head before closing her eyes and focusing for a few seconds.

“No good.” She said, shaking her head “There’s barely any trace of a soul inside. As expected, the closer we get to the source the worse it gets.”

The other two revealed dark expressions as they knew what she was talking about. After learning about this area, Elise had quickly deduced the reason behind the presence of such strong, savage and uniformly aggressive beasts around. And the reason the trio had come to the area wasn’t only for training, but also to deal with that thing.

According to the girl, it was something called a “Noktos Gem”. Essentially it was an artificial gemstone that would be planted in an area and spread a corrupting influence around it. That influence was fairly subtle and incredibly hard to detect, but it would affect animals that were born within it, slowly warping their bodies and minds into savage monsters over the course of multiple generations. The creation of Noktos Gems was ordered by a king who wanted something that could be used as a bioweapon to weaken enemy nations.

“That project was deemed a failure due to how long it took for the effects to grow.” Elise had explained “And the prototypes were destroyed, but because they had been designed to feed upon a land’s energy to grow and spread their effects, each and every shard of those gems had the potential to grow into a complete Noktos Gem given the right conditions.

“Some of the shards were small enough to be picked up by the wind, resulting in Noktos Gems being able to appear all over the world.” She continued “Most of the shards would never grow into gems, but they also had no expiration date so inactive shards could suddenly become active after centuries due to one factor or another.”

“Wait, if each shard could become a complete gem, wouldn’t that mean that even destroying gems as they appeared would only result in more shards spreading?” Nalia recognized the problem.

“Indeed.” Elise replied “It took a while for people to realize they needed to use special methods to fully dispose of a gem, so many gems were broken and ended up spreading their shards even further. And there’s also things like gems that become ‘mutated’ due to external contamination or people who deliberately spread those things around, so the Noktos Gems are pretty much an endless pit of problems.”

Of course, the duo had agreed with Elise about the need to get rid of the gem that they knew existed in that area, so even as they fought the beasts and trained their skills, the group was constantly moving towards the source of the corruption. Because it just so happened that one of the few ways of detecting it was via bond magic, using the connection that the creatures had with the influence affecting them in order to find the origin of said influence.

It wasn’t exactly easy, but Elise was capable of doing it due to her skills as a contractor. She also knew of a way they had to fully dispose of the Noktos Gem by using a spell that Nalia was more than capable of developing. And according to her, they were steadily getting closer to the source, so the fairy had already done the necessary preparations.

Still, being able to find and dispose of the gem weren’t the only issues.

“Do you think we can defeat the gem manifestation?” Nina asked.

Because of course the Noktos Gem wouldn’t simply allow itself to be destroyed.

“From what I’ve been able to gather, this particular gem’s power shouldn’t be enough to make a manifestation that we can’t defeat.” Elise replied confidently.

+0+

After that Nalia finished off the unconscious beast and the group went forward to a nearby cave that Nalia’s scouting spells had discovered on the way and sat down to eat and rest, as well as having the fairy use her magic to clean them and their clothes.

Elise currently had ten sets of clothing on her bag, seven of which having been obtained in the forest of Theremis. Nina was only a little bit smaller than her contractor, so they actually shared most of their articles of clothing (Nalia’s own clothing was a large number of strips of cloth that she could mix and match depending on her mood, so they barely took any space).

Elise’s current clothes were a red vest and skirt set with white frills and long sleeves of the same color as well as a small green ribbon and a blue hat with a yellow decor. Black shoes completed the ensemble. As for the rabbit girl, she was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and shorts whose colors were a very light pink and an equally as light violet, respectively. She also had a gray jacket with black accents but had nothing on her head or feet. Finally, Nalia’s own clothing strips were currently in tones of violet.

“Being able to eat food made by Hiroka really was a luxury.” Elise commented.

They were currently eating a meal made up of a roasted fish along with a few mushrooms and fruits they had been harvesting from the area. It wasn’t bad, but no one would consider it gourmet cuisine.

“Maybe you should form a contract with a cook next.” Nina joked.

“I’ll take your suggestion under advisement.” Elise replied.

“It would definitely be nice, but we should try to learn how to cook anyway.” Nalia said “Because our theoretical cook may theoretically end up temporarily disabled, forcing us to do it ourselves once more.”

“And going from gourmet food straight to whatever we can throw together would be a big shock if our culinary skills remain the same.” Nina understood what she was getting at.

“Ah, of course. I knew our supplies were missing something. We failed to bring a “How to Cook Using Wild Ingredients” textbook.” Elise joked.

“I am truly sorry for failing to add that as part of the payment in my negotiations.” Nalia smirked.

“Now we have a new goal on our journey, I guess.” Nina continued “But speaking of which, I’d like to ask something, big sis.”

“What do you wanna know?”

“Which of your other sisters is the best at cooking?” The rabbit girl asked.

“Dilira, definitely. She’s really good in general, but her pies specially are amazing.” Elise replied energetically “Most of them are at least good, though. They had a lot of time to practice.”

“Which ones aren’t good?” Nalia asked.

“Kumiko and Carolina. The former because she went through a lot of hunger so her standards pretty much amount to ‘edible’ and the latter because she’s always changing her own body and physiology, so her sense of taste is all over the place.”

After they ate and rested for a bit the group got up and left the cave to continue heading towards their destination.

Soon enough they would reach the Noktos Gem.