Unbound

"Surge! On your right flank!" Kelgan shouted. "Wall up and volley!"

"Stonewall!"

"Sparkbolt!"

"Ice Arrow!"

Wave after wave of monsters crashed against their defenses, but the Haarguard turned them aside. Kelgan panted with exertion. His spear was a blur, each thrust dispatching one of the putrid things. He hadn't expected to find undead in the Pass, but it was clear they were raised from a plethora of Tier I beasts. A half-rotten dire wolf dashed for their defenses, but only made it past the first volley of Mana bolts. It didn't survive the physical arrows their second row fired.

Spear Mastery is level 70!

The Tin Gate loomed above them, so close he could touch it, but the doors were barred by the black-green signature of necrotic Mana. There was a necromancer nearby, controlling this minor horde, but Kelgan couldn't spot them.

Thankfully, his allies had better eyes.

"There! Atop the crenellated tower!" Karp shouted out, swiftly followed by an arrow that exploded with green-gold life Mana. The archer's life Mana had proven to be essential to the fight, with each of his imbued arrows eating into the necrotic Mana and dropping undead puppets by the dozen. Atop the tower there bloomed a bubble of black-green Mana vapor, clear even to Kelgan's Mana blind eyes. "Necro is holed up!"

"Yeah yeah, just gimme a moment!" The red-beareded archer loosed six arrows in less than a breath, his fingers a blur. The dome of necrotic Mana flared again and again, but cracks of green laced the predominantly black cloud.

Around them, the horde went into a frenzy. They'd cut down their numbers, but there were still around a hundred of the smaller creatures and they were very hard to pin down. Only their wall magics let them keep the noxious beasts at bay, while the few mages in their ranks dropped area of effect bursts of fire and earth.

Where's the Hand? Or Zara? The noble warrior could have slaughtered the necromancer faster than any of them, horde of undead minions or no, while the Sorcerer would have ended it before it began. Why aren't they helping?

A muted boom sounded above their heads, and the black-green dome shattered into pieces.

"Everyone, fire on my target!" Kelgan shouted before hurling his spear. "Amplified Strike! Kinetic Brace!"

His Stamina and Mana drained precipitously as the two Skills surged from his core and wrapped his spear, even as it left his hand at a speed his Perception couldn't track. The crenelations atop the tower exploded into stone dust as his powered spear struck true, and something cried out. A spell half formed in the thick vapors of Mana—

—and was snuffed out, as three dozen Mana bolts converged on the necromancer's spot.

You Have Killed An Unknown Necromancer!

XP Earned!

Thrown Weapons Mastery is level 45!

Kinetic Brace is level 61!

The remaining undead puppets fell limply at their feet as the Mana that animated them dissipated into the Ether. Kelgan panted through his thick, curly beard and wiped his sweat slick hair back from his face. This fight shouldn't have been this annoying, but necro's turned everything on their head. They were illegal for a reason. They'd had to pull out the stops to push this one mage back, and he'd even thrown his favorite spear.

Kelgan grunted in annoyance, watching his men and women slump in exhaustion. He dreaded the thoughth of climbing that tower to retrieve his weapon. They were all tired, but damn if he wasn't gonna abuse his rank. He turned to an Iron Rank guard, one he knew specialized in Dexterity.

"Go get my spear."

From their vantage point atop the Tin Gate, Zara and Darius saw the end of the battle. The necrobeast wasn't even a real threat, though it's tendrils of necrotic Mana did a passable impression of true necromancy. The guard was never in any danger, not from them. Zara was on the look out for something worse.

"There," Darius pointed. "The rat has chosen to run."

Below them, on the far side of the Tin Gate, a figure in white armor and a bright red cloak dashed out into the forest. Zara's Analyze caught him just as he escaped the Skill's effective range. An Acolyte of the Inquisition. He was running quite fast, having clearly focused on his speed.

"Better than hiding. If they had sent a Stealth user this would prove far more difficult," Zara said. She hummed slightly as she spoke and Mana coalesced between her outstretched hands.

"How do you do that?" The Hand asked her. "The humming while you speak."

"Practice. I'm merely subvocalizing the Chant while still speaking. A simple enough technique." A swirl of aquamarine Mana spun faster, tightening into a harpoon made of glistening power. "Go."

The harpoon exploded forward as if thrown by someone with incredible Strength. The projectile ripped through leaves and branches and vines as if none of it was there, until they both heard the distant sound of impact. A muffled groan of pain drifted on the breeze, and Zara smiled.

"Simple enough..." Darius muttered, and Zara let her grin widen. It unnerved many Humans to see a Naiad's teeth. She found that to be a useful fact.

"Let us go visit our crimson cloaked adversary, hm?" Zara didn't wait, but rode a cresting wave of Mana down from the Gate and into the forest proper. She didn't bother to worry about Darius. The Hand could keep up.

Soon enough, she had traveled the quarter league distance and found the Acolyte. Her harpoon had pierced him through the left leg and into trunk of a fallen tree. Darius appeared only seconds later.

"Pathless forfend," the boy cried out. "The demon!"

Darius looked at her. "I assume he means you."

Zara raised an eyebrow at the Hand, before walking toward the Acolyte. "What was your purpose at the Tin Gate, boy?"

She crouched, just out of his reach, and the Acolyte swallowed in fear before clenching his jaw. Zara could feel him gather all the anger he had in order to drive his terror away. "I'll not speak to you, witch!"

"Just to watch and report, then," she said, humming in contemplation. She felt a flicker of triumph in the boy's Spirit. "They wouldn't dare give anything more important to an Acolyte, after all."

The boy, barely out of his second decade, trembled with unrestrained fury. His Spirit quivered in kind, as that sense of triumph and fear battled against one another.

"Darius, kill him. He's of no more use to us," Zara wiped her hands and stood, but the song of her words still spun through the trees. The Acolyte's fear spiked, overwhelming all else. His Spirit caved as her song took root.

"No! No, please! I'm to report the result of anyone attempting the Tin Gate, but also to recover the lures we used!" The Acolyte's face crumpled as the weight of his terror overwhelmed all else. "Please! Let me live! I've done as I've been ordered! I've only killed Sorcerer spawn! I walk in the Pathless' light!"

"Lures. Used to draw in beasts and monstrosities," Darius growled. "They're restricted constructs."

"You have these lures on you?" she asked, letting the song fade. Darius shot her a look Zara couldn't be bothered to parse at that moment. "All of them?"

The boy nodded.

"Good. You've done well, redcloak." Zara loomed over the Acolyte as his induced fear finally ebbed.

"So you'll...let me live?"

Zara bared her teeth.

The Arboreal Serpent was strong. Easily Tier II, it was likely close to being classified as Tier III. That meant it could compete with all but the strongest Journeyman Tier combatants, and perhaps might have destroyed them had they come upon it unawares. The creature was a hundred feet long, thick as a tree trunk, and mean. It toyed with the Haarguard before Evie and Vess arrived, which was likely the only reason they survived, but even Evie couldn't quite keep up with it's lightning fast strikes.

The Haarguard weren't without their moments, however. Felix saw as Kylar engaged in a furious dual parry, deflecting the dancing tail strike from the Serpent before ducking out of the way for Vess to take over. Davum struck where he could, and his Strength was mighty, but the Serpent too fast. It took Nevia's ice magic and Evie's Bindings of the White Waste to hold it in place for more than a few seconds. In that time, Davum, Vyne, and Kylar all took their pound of flesh. Kikri was a standout, threading her shots through the Serpent's dizzying movements and even pinning its tail against a tree for over twenty seconds.

Felix was impressed. Harn was right. They were a good team, if a bit weak. Ultimately, Evie dispatched the beast with her new chain, trapping the Serpent between trees as she decapitated it.

All of the Haarguard gained a level from its demise, and his friends all said they'd progressed a sizable way toward their next. Felix tried not to feel jealous. He'd killed almost four hundred Shelled Aurochs, a Tier II beast, and had barely gained a fraction of his next level. That XP penalty was killer.

They kept moving.

The Haarguard learned quickly that everything in the Foglands was trying to kill them. They engaged those they could, but the rest were avoided to the best of their ability. Vyne was proving to be extremely capable in that regard, a reliable bulwark against enemies that might have normally ended the rest of them. His defensive heavy Skill set was remarkable effective even against tougher monsters. It put Felix's own mind at ease, and let him quit focusing so much on their protection. As a result, they moved all the faster through the foothills and forest, until they encountered a wide, grassy plain.

"A plain? In a mountainous forest?" Felix asked. "I'm pretty sure that doesn't make geological sense."

"Geo-what?" Evie asked, before shaking her head. "Who cares? It's probably magic."

She had a point there.

"This is where I said our mounts would be handy," Harn grunted. He twisted off his helmet with a muted hiss, and peered across the terrain. "Last we came through here, we found dozens of monsters had nested in burrows beneath the grass. Made the walk hazardous but not if we moved fast enough."

Felix walked a touch closer, Pit at his side. He panned his senses over the grasslands, looking for any evidence of monsters.

Tracking is level 20!

...

Tracking is level 23!

Dozens of tracks littered the grasslands, but the ones that glowed under the effect of his Beginner Tier Tracking Skill were long, thin furrows. Felix flared his Manasight, a Skill that was always working at a low burn, and spotted the flows of green-gold life Mana as it flowed through the grasses. Dusty brown earth, black-gray shadow, and the golden shimmer of the sun's light Mana abounded. But most curious of all were the streamers of orange that smoldered low to the ground, virtually hidden by the long, tangled grass.

Voracious Eye!

Name: Kaltraps

Type: Insectoid

Level: 42

HP: 789/789

SP: 843/843

MP: 3488/3488

Lore: A giant insect that feeds upon the life and Mana of all that step atop it. Uses explosive fire and earth Mana offensively to surprise and kill their prey.

Strength: More Data Required

Weakness: More Data Required

"I see them. They're not so little anymore," Felix said. He pointed out the nearest one, and after a moment the rest spotted the dun-colored exoskeleton poking up from the dirt. "We step near them, and they use fire and earth to kill somehow. Since this is the Foglands, I'm guessing they pop up and explode before eating our still burning corpses."

"Gruesome," Kikri recoiled. "And their level 42? That's on par with the Arboreal Serpent."

"How many?" Harn asked.

Felix hesitated, sweeping his senses across their immediate vicinity again to be sure. "At least thirty for the next hundred yards. Sorry, three hundred strides." He adjusted to their common measurement for distance, which, best he could tell, was roughly equivalent to a foot back home. People were fairly loose with actual measurements on the Continent. "They're grouped tightly together, and I imagine if we set one off, it'll set off the rest. There's no chance of everyone moving fast enough to evade them."

He left it unspoken that he and possible Evie and Vess could make it across with little issue. Harn too probably, but that was strictly due to his uncanny armor. The mages and the Haarguard wouldn't make it more than twenty steps in.

"Can we go around?" Atar asked.

"Not unless you have three days to spare," Harn said. He pointed to the north and south, where the grasslands extended into the horizon. Only the blue haze of mountains in either direction suggested they stopped eventually. "Which we don't. As it is, the crossing here will take at least six glasses."

Felix let out a breath. "That takes out the option of Pit and I ferrying people across. Pit might be able to carry a single person across for that time, but he'd be exhausted on landing." Pit bobbed his head in confirmation, his armor rustling slightly. "My own Skills wouldn't a portion of that time. We'd fall right into the center of them all."

"What about blowing them early?" Evie suggested. "Throw a rock at em, make them blow up, get them all tired and we go through."

Vess didn't wait, but scooped up a cantaloupe-sized stone and hefted it. Eyeing the distance, she shot-putted it forward and it struck the first right on it's exposed exoskeleton. There was a long moment where they all watched it, but the creature didn't even move.

"Seems they know if their prey is alive," Vess said with a frown. "Fairly intelligent, then. Which means their Mana manipulations will hit all the harder."

"Night," Alister cursed.

Stone Shaping!

A series of stone spikes lanced through the earth, aimed at the nearest of the Kaltraps. But just as the earth Mana reached it, there were a series of muffled thumps and fire Mana flared beneath the ground.

"What was that?" Kylar asked.

"Tried something," Felix said and rubbed his chin. "The Kaltraps countered my Stone Shaping with targeted explosions. None of them reached the monster."

"Make that very intelligent," Vess amended.

"Seems we'll just have to get clever, then," Felix said. "I have a plan."

"Oh no," Atar groaned.

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