As the group walked through the mountains in the direction of their destination Nalia and Nina kept on doing their training and fighting the mountain beasts. The rabbit girl was the one doing most of the fighting, given that the fairy’s training involved getting hit a lot and thus not being in her best condition most of the time.

However, the situation slowly changed as they proceeded.

“How do you feel?” Elise asked Nalia when she came out of the Room.

“Pretty good. Not one hundred percent, but close to it.” The fairy replied.

Elise’s had to pause before speaking again as Nina had just thrown her current opponent (a huge, horned wolf with a bladed tail) into the side of the mountain, creating a loud slam noise.

“That’s great. The healing technique really comes in handy.” The girl said after the interruption passed.

“Yeah. It’s really nice that you’ve gotten better with it.” Nalia said.

The main reason for the change in situation was exactly as stated. Elise had gotten significantly more skilled at the contractor healing technique that she had begun learning before they even reached the forest of Theremis. Another important reason was Nalia’s growing skill with her own defensive technique, which resulted in the fairy being less injured from Nina’s blows.

“It’s nice, but I’m sort of miffed that I still don’t know why exactly I’ve gotten better.” Elise said.

“You noticed the improvement even the first time you used it after we got here, right? That means you got better from our adventures in Theremis.” Nalia said, then winced as Nina’s opponent howled in pain from having his leg broken.

“That’s exactly it, but that doesn’t narrow it down very much.” Elise complained “It’s not from having gotten more powerful, since there were many contractors who barely improved regardless of how much power they amassed. Channeling the power of the forest could have had something to do with it, maybe because of gaining experience with manipulating energy, maybe because of growing stronger mentally or some other reason.”

“And it’s also possible that has nothing to do with it, and it was something completely different that caused this change.” Nalia pointed out.

“Yeah.” Elise said with a sigh.

The two had already had that discussion before, but Elise just wanted to let out some of her frustration by talking about it again.

Meanwhile, the fight between Nina and the wolf was winding down. It had managed to surprise her by still managing to do some threatening attacks even after having its leg broken, using the other foreleg as a pivot to spin its body around and attack with his tail, but she managed to block with her hands despite the surprise and only received shallow cuts on her palms.

And Nina was more than capable of handling even that unusual manner of attacking after it lost the advantage of surprise. She eventually found a gap to hit the wolf on the side with a powerful kick that winded it, allowing the rabbit girl to dash up to his head and hit it with a hammer blow that brought the enemy down.

Then she examined the ground around and was disappointed to see some very obvious mini-craters at several spots, which she had caused herself.

‘Even the take off locations have marks, let alone the landing spots.’ She thought to herself ‘I still need a lot more control.’

To understand what she meant, one must go back to a conversation Nina had with Elise while they were still in the forest of Theremis waiting for the discussion about their payment.

+0+

The two of them were on a clearing that was only a few minutes away from the bear village even on foot. Elise had said that they needed an open space that was at least decently sized for the training they were going to do.

“So, what exactly do I need to do?” Nina asked after they arrived.

“You will be training a mobility technique, one that has countless names because it is something that has universal utility, so countless people have developed their own spins on it.” Elise replied “I like to call it Instant Movement.”

“Instant Movement… Is that a skill to cross large gaps in a single movement to reposition on the battlefield?” Nina asked.

“You’ve hit the nail on the head. In essence, it is a controlled version of the explosive movements you were doing once in a while in the fight against Loran.”

“So I need to push off of the ground with exactly enough force to reach where I want to go?”

“Not quite.” Elise corrected “Doing that would result in a smooth deceleration as you got closer to the landing spot, but we don’t want the deceleration to be smooth, we want it to be instant. The real instant movement technique is based around using enough force that you are still moving at near top speed at the moment you reach the destination.

“Now, obviously that would result in just flying past your landing spot, so the instant movement technique actually has a second part to it. You simply have to apply an opposite force to cancel out your movement, stopping yourself on a dime. The full technique involves instantly going from being stationary to moving at max speed and then instantly slowing down from max speed to being stationary again.”

“That sounds…” Nina replied after a moment “That sounds pretty rough, honestly.”

“Yeah. Inertia is a big problem… But it is a problem that can be solved. You just need to dedicate part of your aura to move your organs along with the rest of your body.” Elise smiled.

“… What?”

“The real issue with inertia is the fact that the force moving you is applied only to the surface of your body. Think of it like this: Suppose someone pushes you from behind, they push only your back since they’re obviously not touching your organs, but when your back moves forward it pushes your organs forward with it.

“Maybe using deceleration as an example would be easier to understand. Imagine that the outside of your body is a steel ball and the inside is a ceramic ball. You are moving forward at high speed, so it’s like the two balls are rolling along at high speed, the steel one in front. What happens if someone suddenly stops the steel ball?” Elise asked.

“The ceramic ball would keep moving forward and thus collide with the steel ball. And break.” Nina realized “I… Think I understand. So what I should do would be the equivalent of using one hand to stop the steel ball and another to stop the ceramic ball, using the same strength for both.”

“Exactly. But you need to use your aura on the insides of your body, meaning you need a high level of awareness of them. Which is another reason why the full awareness training is so valuable.”

“I guess so.”

“But that’s not the only thing you need to focus on.” Elise spoke “To accelerate, you apply force to the ground, and same thing for decelerating. But what happens if the ground is fragile and breaks when you apply too much force?”

“It would be impossible to push off of it, since my legs would just pierce through.” Nina said “That sounds really annoying, but I’m guessing there’s a way to deal with it?”

“Indeed. It is simply another application of something you already do. Basically, when you put your aura into a punch, a portion of it is dedicated to softening the impact when it hits something so your hand won’t break.” Elise explained “In the same way, you need to dedicate part of your aura to soften the impact the ground will receive when you push off of it.”

“Ahh, of course! If I do that…” Nina suddenly fell silent “If I want to do that, I’ll have to focus on my body and on the environment at the same time in order to apply the energy of my aura with enough precision.” She spoke with a tone of dread.

“Yes. It is going to be very difficult and demanding. It’s gonna take a lot of training to master.”

“Is this what everyone has to do to perform that technique?”

“Of course not. There are many variations, some don’t have ways of protecting one’s insides so their maximum speed is limited by their toughness, others have no outside aspect so they can’t be used on unstable footing, others simply have methods for dealing with said problems but they’re not as good…” Elise smiled widely at Nina “But this particular variation covers all bases and it can be scaled up as you get stronger. It will give you the strongest version of the skill, capable of overwhelming those weaker, easier to learn versions.”

The rabbit girl swallowed hard. She had gotten the point.

“Where do I start?”

+0+

It had taken a good while and some intense effort, but Nina was now able to use a basic version of Instant Movement. It was good enough to be used in battle, but the girl still had a lot to improve on every single aspect, as proven by her inability to completely soften the impacts to the ground.

“Yeah. Still a long way to go.” Elise said after walking up to Nina and noticing the same thing.

“What exactly would be master level in this skill?” Nina asked.

“You’d be able to jump between falling leaves of a tree without even causing them to shake,”

“Wait, how? Just the wind from moving that fast would be enough to launch them away.”

“You would be using your aura to manipulate the air around you as well, of course.” Elise replied “But you shouldn’t be thinking about the future, just about what to improve right now.”

“I guess so.” Nina agreed, before suddenly snapping her head to the side “There’s another monster approaching.”

“Weird, that doesn’t usually happen.” Nalia said, casting a spell to check for herself “I guess we were close to the edge of this one’s territory.”

“Should I go intercept it?” Nina asked.

“No, actually this is a good chance for Nalia to get some more battle practice in.” Elise said, giving the fairy a look.

“Alright. I’ll try to do it without using Dual Wing Magic, to test my overall skill.” Nalia said, earning a smile and a nod from Elise. Then she flew a bit ahead and prepared to intercept.

The enemy was fairly fast, so it didn’t take much longer for it to reach close enough that even Elise was able to see what it was. The thing was a bit weird even for the standards of the mountains’ monsters, being a sort of vaguely humanoid-ish crocodile that had four eagle-like wings on its back, which didn’t seem capable of letting it fly (as it was an obviously very heavy organism), but their beating gave him great speed as the crocodile more or less skated over the ground on its hind legs.

Nalia calmly watched its approach. She could have spent time preparing a large scale spell to easily deal with the charging opponent, but that wouldn’t serve as good training. She needed to be able to fight powerful opponents without having the benefit of such a long preparation time.

When the crocodile reached only fifteen meters away from her, the fairy finally moved, quickly casting a stone bullet spell. And despite its quickness, that particular projectile was heavy enough to almost completely kill the momentum of the huge monster, being more like a cannonball than the basic shots she had mostly used before.

The enemy wasn’t completely stopped, though, and it had blocked her shot with one of its arms which were covered by a layer of dense scales, so it wasn’t even particularly injured. The crocodile roared in defiance of its new challenger and beat its wings to forcefully accelerate once again.

In response, Nalia fired another stone bullet, quickly followed by a third one. She couldn’t rapid fire the “cannonball” projectiles like she had been able when using the small ones in the past, but the delay between shots was barely a second. The crocodile blocked once again, but was once more slowed to a crawl before the following shot came and actually pushed it back a bit. Those two shots had hit almost exactly the same spot, so the second one even managed to crack the powerful scales that defended the monster’s body.

The crocodile roared in anger, but evidently realized that simply rushing in wouldn't work, so it decided to give Nalia a taste of her own medicine by crouching to pick up large stones with its “hands” and throwing them at the fairy. Nalia dealt with that by quickly firing two small fireballs that blew up those stones and immediately switching back to the stone bullet as the monster advanced again.

That one didn’t find its mark, though, as the crocodile beat its left wings to force itself to the side, finally succeeding in reaching the mark of fifty meters away from the fairy. Yet Nalia wasn’t flustered. She accepted the challenge, using a quick wind spell to shoot herself at the monster.

The enemy attacked with a clawed hand as the battle came into close range, and Nalia countered it with a close range fireball, forcing its hand back but also pushing the fairy slightly backwards as well. The monster followed up with the other hand, which the fairy countered with another fireball, this time hitting the enemy’s hand on the side instead of the front, nullifying the attack without being forced back this time.

Nalia used that chance to quickly cast another “stone cannonball”, aiming at the enemy’s head, but its instincts were strong, so it dodged at the last moment by flapping its wings and forcing itself down. And then it launched an unexpected counter-attack: Having its tail stretch far beyond what would be reasonable, driving its sharp tip at the fairy.

Nalia did not panic. She quickly manifested a shield of earth, and while the tail easily broke through the first layer of it, the fairy’s spell was actually a combination of earth and water, arranged in sequential layers. The water layers slowed down the tail’s stab until it failed to break through the earth layers, fully blocking the attack.

Before the fairy could counter-attack, the crocodile leapt forward with the strength of its eight limbs (including the wings) and attempted to bite down onto Nalia. She took a page out of the enemy’s playbook and used another wind spell to forcefully drive herself down closer to the ground, but the monster immediately switched to trying to kick her as it went past.

So she channeled a large amount of magic power in less than a tenth of a second and shot two powerful fireballs at the enemy’s underside, driving it upwards and causing the crocodile to let out a howl of pain as the shockwave caused internal damage despite the armor’s protection. Nalia had been preparing that spell even while dodging the enemy, but was forced to change it into a more powerful version very quickly when the situation changed.

“Dual Blast.” Nalia declared almost without thinking.

Still, while that attack was effective, the damage it caused wasn’t actually critical. The enemy was a very annoying combination of both highly maneuverable and extremely tough, so the fight would definitely take a while if she continued to fight in the same way.

‘I’ll have to get rid of those wings.’ She thought, and immediately put it into action.

The fairy cast a wind spell to accelerate herself and shot upwards, flying behind the still falling enemy. It had very good awareness and managed to attack by extending its tail once more, but Nalia easily dodged it as well as its follow-up mule kick, then channeled a large amount of magic power again. The crocodile realized the danger and flapped its wings to force itself forward, but the fairy’s acceleration spell was still active so she easily kept pace despite the wind pressure caused by the monster’s wings.

Then she attacked.

“Slashing Tempest.” The fairy declared, and began to unleash a series of bursts of razor sharp wind, targeting the enemy’s wings.

It had no chance. The wings weren’t protected by the same resilient scales as most of its body, so they were cut over and over again, until all four of them got completely severed from the monster’s body.

It howled in pain, dropping to the ground like a boulder and crashing down onto it. The monster then forced itself to its feet and turned around to look at its opponent. It was still far from critically wounded, but if the monster had any self-awareness at all it would have tried to run away, seeing that the situation had become untenable.

It had no such self-awareness, though, so it simply roared in challenge as Nalia dove down towards it. The fairy shot a stone cannonball that the crocodile only barely managed to block with its right arm, given how close it was, but the follow-up shot drove the arm to the side, breaking the block.

As that was happening, Nalia was still diving, reaching close enough for the enemy to raise its left hand and try to claw her, but that hand was then hit by a fireball, then a second and a third, breaking through the resilient scales and severing away some of its fingers.

And then there was nothing else to protect the monster, so Nalia dove down even closer while focusing her magic for nearly half a second and channeled that power into a terrifying fireball that seemed to pulsate with sheer explosive power.

“Blast Piercer.” Nalia declared.

The fireball exploded without leaving her hand, but the tremendous destructive power was forcefully focused into a single direction, creating a cone of flame that blew straight through the crocodile’s head, killing it instantly.

+0+

After taking a few moments to make sure that nothing unexpected would happen (a giant parasite had burst out of one of the monsters they had killed before, so the group was wary), Nalia flew back to the others.

“Yeah, the difference when using more optimized attack spells is really significant.” The fairy commented.

“Definitely.” Nina agreed “It takes time to master magic to the level you do, but it is definitely worth the wait. I could tell you weren’t even using any more magic energy than while we were at the forest, it was just spent better.”

“And since I’ve gotten stronger since then, it became easier to use that level of magic. I still need some more work to optimize the stronger spells, but I should be able to use some of them to pretty decent effect.”

“I can only imagine. I wonder how much stronger we are now.” The rabbit girl said.

“You don’t need to wonder.” Elise said with a smile “I can estimate that sort of thing pretty well, and I think a good way of putting it would be by making a comparison between how well you did in the fight against Loran the first time and how well you would do if that same fight were to happen now.”

“And the result would be…?” Nalia asked, also curious.

“It would be difficult, but I believe you’d be able to win against him in a straight fight, without me needing to make an appearance.”

“That… That really puts things into perspective. We’re still getting stronger pretty fast, huh…” Nina commented.

“Yeah. And its a good thing too, because I think that was the last monster we’ll need to fight before getting close to the Noktos Gem.” Elise said “We should be able to find a way to reach it within that crocodile’s territory.”

“So…” Nalia looked at the sky “It’s getting a bit dim already, but we should still be able to cross a good distance before stopping to sleep.” She looked back at them “Meaning we’ll reach that thing tomorrow.”

“We’re almost there, then.” Nina smiled “I’m ready to teach that thing a lesson.”

“Are we going to stay here for a bit longer after destroying it or will we start heading somewhere else immediately?” Nalia asked.

“We’ll head somewhere else.” Elise replied “I already have a new destination in mind.”

“Cool. I was beginning to get tired of those mountains.” Nina said.

“We’re more or less at the middle of this place, so it will take a while to actually leave, though.” Nalia pointed out.

Nina groaned in response, causing Elise to giggle.

+0+

It went just as expected. The group traveled a bit further forward before stopping for the night and then resumed her travel on the next morning. The sun wasn’t even at its highest point in the sky when they found a small crack hidden inside a hole in the mountain, which was the passage that would lead them closer to the battlefield they were seeking.

“How far down do you think this goes?” Nina asked after they went inside the tunnel.

“Wouldn’t you be the best one at estimating that?” Nalia asked “Considering where you grew up.”

“The forest underground was mostly sedimentary rock. This place is mostly igneous and metamorphic rock, since it was formed from volcanic eruptions. It’s totally different.” The rabbit girl replied.

“Oh? I didn’t realize you knew that much about geography.” Elise said, impressed.

“Even before going underground, our tribe did lot of digging for resources or safety, so we accumulated a lot of information about soil and rock types. We wouldn’t have been able to survive for long after abandoning our previous village if we didn’t already have a lot of knowledge in that direction.” Nina pointed out “It only became more important after that, so that was simply a subject that everyone was taught as a priority.”

“Sounds interesting. I wanna hear more about it later.” Elise said, which Nalia echoed with a nod.

The rabbit girl agreed, then the contractor spoke again:

“Based on the side of the area where those monsters are reported to roam, I believe this particular Noktos Gem should be located somewhere around two kilometers below sea level.”

“And we were about five hundred meters above it when we went in, so…” Nalia tried to work it out.

“But it’s difficult to tell how long it will take, because this tunnel isn’t going to be a straight path to the gem.” Elise explained “As a side effect of it expanding the corruption, the area of ground around the Noktos gem becomes filled with open spaces as the ‘channels’ said corruption travels through begin to ‘reject’ the material around them.

“This results in the appearance of many tunnels, which would eventually all link up into a path straight to it, but that takes a huge amount of time. If the gem had been here for that long, then even the monsters on the edges of the region would have been completely soulless, rather than only the ones close to the epicenter.”

“So that means we’ll eventually reach a dead end and have to dig our way to another tunnel to get closer and then keep doing that until we get there?” Nina asked.

“Yep.” Elise confirmed “Thankfully Nalia can use her magic to locate nearby tunnels, which will save us a lot of time.”

“That would definitely be a huge pain, so I thank you in advance, Nalia.” Nina said.

“You’re welcome, I guess. But this place sure is getting darker and darker.”

The group had been moving through the tunnel while talking, and they had already gone far enough from the entrance for it to start getting dark enough to be difficult to see.

“I guess I should do this.” Nalia said, then cast a spell that created a light emitting orb that would float beside her.

“And that’s another reason to be thankful to you.” Nina grinned “Truly, having a magic user on the team is very convenient. Don’t you think so, big sis?”

“Yes. Nalia was definitely the best first partner I could have asked for.”

“Stop! You’re embarrassing me…”

After that brief interlude the group continued on their way. As expected, they were soon faced with the need to dig their way into another tunnel before moving forward, and that was repeated several more times after that. All three of them began to get more and more tense as they got closer and closer, wary of any possible surprises that could be laying in wait.

In the end nothing significant happened. Elise decided to make a stop midway through for them to eat and let out some of that tension, seeing that it was getting to a point where their focus would be negatively impacted, but besides that there wasn’t much to say about their journey through the tunnels. It was hard to say just how long they spent just moving around, but the contractor would estimate it to be somewhere between two and three hours.

Then Nalia said that her scouting spells had picked up something nearby, and soon after Elise was able to feel the sense of corruption emanating from close by, thanks to her experience sensing it. After that the tunnel ended in a large subterranean cave and the fairy powered up her light spell and threw it at the cave’s ceiling in order to illuminate the area.

The terrain was extremely uneven, with sudden drops all over the place as well as countless stalactites, stalagmites and pillars, all of them looking far sharper than what should be natural, and at the absolute center of the area was a hill-like elevation atop which was a huge pillar that contained the Noktos Gem.

It looked fairly unassuming. The gem was about as large as a person’s head, but the only distinction it had from the rock around was its deep red color, while everything else was mostly gray and yellowish. It had the same rough texture as the rest of the pillar, and one who didn’t know the truth might even think that it was nothing more than a natural accumulation of minerals.

Wordlessly, Nalia cast the usual wind movement boost on Elise and flew along as the other two jumped down to a relatively clear area beneath the tunnel they had come from. Then they were noticed.

Instantly, the feeling of corruption that had been light enough for it to be unnoticeable to normal people was amplified to the point where it was almost overwhelming. The gem lit up with a sickening glow and emanated a huge amount of energy, taking control of the earth around itself and reshaping it with astounding speed.

The ‘hill’ grew even larger and the rock formations around began to break off and be sucked toward the pillar as if it was some sort of tornado. All that extra material merged together into a rounded shape bigger than a house, which then began sprouting long, thin appendages that grew until they reached the ground. It looked like…

“Legs.” Nina said “Four pairs.”

She and Nalia had taken a defensive formation around Elise as soon as everything started, readying themselves for any sudden attacks from the enemy or orders from Elise. The fairy also began to cast several spells in preparation, knowing that it wasn’t going to be an easy fight.

The ‘back’ of that huge shape began to extend, forming into a long appendage that stretched upwards before forming a terrifying stinger shape. At that point the end result was obvious, so none of the three were surprised when the front sprouted two new appendages that grew horizontally and ended in heavy stone pincers and then reshaped itself into a horrifying ‘mouth’.

It was a scorpion. The manifestation created by the Noktos Gem to protect itself was a huge stone scorpion. And yet something even more surprising happened immediately afterwards. One of the things Nalia had done in preparation was throwing scouting spells in all directions, to detect whether the gem’s defense had any extra features, but what she detected was far different from expected.

“Something is coming from the west. Really fast. It doesn’t emanate any corruption.” The fairy said.

“So a third party is gonna get involved in this. But are they friend or foe?” Elise asked.

“Whatever it is, we’ll know soon enough. Because they’re already here.” Nalia replied.

And just as she said that, a hole was exploded into the wall at the west side of the cave, a good distance away from the spot where the trio had emerged. And a figure emerged from that hole.

It was an elf.