Anything ~ 22!

- Taylor -

The Archmage-expectant rubbed at her head. Taylor almost wanted a migraine, even though those sort of weak bodily functions had vanished for her when she became an Ascender. It would at least give her an excuse to get away from the people that had been beleaguering her for favors, advice, or to curse her out; sometimes all three at once. If she hadn’t had a chance to go hunting in her world, a chance to bring her level up to eight, she would have been even more on edge.

It had taken far too long to train the Capacity characteristic an additional point four points by circulating her mana at high speed, releasing it, and regenerating it with Master Don’s methods. She slightly resented the fact that she had needed to be so brutal to her mana channels just so that she could use a Spell that she had already Named, but the pain had been… manageable. Truly, she was mostly furious that she had needed to deviate from her self-imposed training plan.

At least she could use the spell fully now. Her eyes flickered to the side as she looked over her status.

Cal Scan

Level: 10

Current Etheric Xenograft Potentia: 4,523/14,400 to level 11!

Body: 7.7

Fitness: 9.2

Resistance: 6.2

Mind: 14.25

Talent: 14.7

Capacity: 13.8 -> 14.2

Presence: 9.85

Willpower: 7.7

Charisma: 12

Senses: 29.3

Physical reaction: 32.2

Mental energy: 26.4

Maximum Health: 112

Maximum Mana: 246.8 -> 250.8

Mana regen: 4.9 per second

“Excuse me, is my family becoming destitute boring to you?” She narrowed her eyes and turned back toward the mayor of this inconsequential little town that dared to talk to her like…

Taylor closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then opened her eyes and looked around at the swarm of starved, rat-faced people that somehow lived in this dustbowl. “I’m going to need to ask all of you to stop. I understand that you have concerns for your safety, but I assure you that any bandit issues you’ve had are going to completely vanish now that we’re here. You also won’t need to fear my companions. Not unless you have taken to banditry to make ends meet.”

A few people audibly gulped, and she closed her eyes again before she could lock on to who they were. “I’ll tell you this now. If you have… well. I highly recommend not doing anything that warrants the Kingdom coming down on you. I’m sure you have many more questions, but I assure you the Bard is more than happy to explain anything you might want to know.”

“She’s correct!” Zed burst into the silence exuberantly. “Come, let me tell you the tale of the Archmage! She who will soon Ascend into political power and machinations of state-”

Taylor stopped listening, and looked nervously toward the entrance to the town. Two days had passed… well, almost two days. Luke should be returning soon, and hopefully Andre would as well. Technically she had no power over Andre, in fact he was currently her political superior, but she needed him here now. This place had a practically negative food supply, and the desert was expanding faster than ever before thanks to the strong winds this year. If she didn’t get some help soon, she was going to have to abandon this place. It was likely everyone here would revert to becoming highwaymen, and Luke would need to go hunt them.

She didn’t want that for her countrymen. Taylor wanted them to be better, and she had the ability in Andre to start pushing back the desert. To bring fresh food back to the region, and make it prosperous again. For the first time ever, she scoffed at the fact that her Spells were almost entirely geared to either combat or personal comfort. If only she had the ability to make it rain!

Taylor pushed aside the thought. “No use ruminating over what I cannot change. I need to focus on what I can impact. What I can do is figure out what’s going on in the area that is messing supply runs.”

From the information she’d been getting over the last days, there hadn’t been a single merchant that had managed to get through in recent months. That didn’t sound like a bandit issue, as even the worst offenders would usually ensure that the majority of shipments got through. If they didn’t, caravans would stop even trying to get through. “That burned-out caravan… that didn’t look like a people issue. That looked like a monster attack.”

Not only had the people been killed, all of the merchandise had been ruined, not stolen. The data points added up suddenly, and Taylor nodded slowly. “There’s gotta be an open Scar around here. Monsters attacking, strange weather patterns… I love having direction.”

Anyone looking at her would have been rubbing at their eyes as she blurred and vanished from the spot she had been standing. Taylor sprinted out of the town, flipping forward and pushing off a low wall with her left hand so that she could perform a double-backflip over the shoddy wall encircling the inner portion of the town. An instant later, she was atop a random thatched roof and lightly pushing away. In the time it took for someone to take three deep breaths, her feet were leaving prints in the shifting sand outside of the town.

“If I remember correctly, the caravan was attacked a solid two miles from here, over where the sand hadn’t yet reached. That’s as good a starting point as can be hoped for…” Taylor’s movement wasn’t hidden in the least, causing a wall of dust to blast off the ground behind her. A few minutes later she was looking over the charred remains of the caravan.

Now that she had some idea of what to look for, the signs of a monster attack were clear. They were minor things; claw marks at this level of sharpness were easily mistaken as particularly vicious bandits with razor-sharp swords. The prints that she found in the ground nearby were also concerningly human-like, but no one around here would walk around without shoes, or have feet that… shifted size as they walked?

“Well that’s just not good.” Taylor began following the prints, now working to ensure that she wasn’t going to be seen. Skinwalker-type monsters were some of the most terrible to deal with. If they entered a city, there was a chance that the city would fall and no one would even notice. There were protections against that, but… who wanted to test that they worked?

Normally, even a hint that a Scar of that type existed in the area would lock down an area until an Ascender group could destroy everything - and everyone - in the area and set up permanent barriers around the Scar. With Luke around, and somehow able to close Scars, Taylor felt that they could save the people around here far more easily. It all came down to how human the creatures could appear: how well they could hide in plain sight.

It only took a few hours to find the Scar; the monsters hadn’t bothered to circle around or hide their intent. An innocuous shimmer in the air was the only hint of it from this side; a far cry from the massive red rent in the air that the Chimera had been able to generate. Taylor watched the shimmer for the next few hours, with Thunder Beast’s Eye glowing in the air above her for the first time ever; patiently waiting for a target.

Her excitement over the fact that she could use the Spell waned as half a day passed slowly. Just as she was getting ready to charge the Scar, a person stepped out of the air and landed heavily on the ground. Taylor tensed, waiting for the thing to look her way. It got to its feet, raising seemingly weak arms as it got up and swayed in place. As it was approaching twilight, the glow from her spell was highly visible, and it turned to see what the light was.

Everything about the beast looked human, except for two noticeable details. Firstly, the creature was naked, but had no discernable sexual organs at all. Everything from the neck down was totally smooth; not even a belly button. Secondly, the face was wrong. It was in general very pale, the standouts being black lips and bright red cheeks. When this thing saw her, it opened its mouth and silently howled at her; revealing thin and sharp teeth that looked like a mouthful of needles more than anything.

Having seen everything she needed, Taylor allowed a line of lightning to arc between her Eye and the beast. She was pleased to see that it was as frail as it looked, and the lightning melted a hole in it that she could pass a pumpkin through.

You have killed a Larval Mime. +200 Exp.

“Not sure I like that this is a larval version, but they’re good Potentia.” Taylor muttered to herself. She went over to the Scar and looked at it more closely, noticing that the creature passing through it had destabilized the portal’s energy a good amount. “They aren’t coming through quickly then. Perhaps one a day? I doubt they’ve been staying on this side, the conditions are too harsh for them.”

She checked over the Mime’s body, finding that just falling out of the portal had caused its legs and hands to get torn up. Taylor made sure not to touch it, unsure if it had an after-death defense mechanism. “I’m gonna take a look. I’ve got to do it, to see how much we need to worry about this.”

Nodding seriously, she stepped through the Scar, hoping that she’d find plenty of Potentia sources on the other side. She was not disappointed. Taylor stepped through and directly into a cave. Only two things saved her from getting torn apart by the dozens of Mimes that were silently waiting their turn to step across the boundary. One, her arrival was utterly unexpected. Two, Thunder Beast’s Eye reacted even faster than she did.

The remaining bolts of power passed through the lined-up creatures perfectly, and the cave was clear of threats in the same instant. The Eye vanished from above her head just as the first of the Mimes hit the ground. Potentia increase messages went off, but Taylor ignored that as she searched carefully for any additional threats. Not finding any, she stepped to the mouth of the cave and looked around.

As far as she could tell, out to the horizon there were no signs of life at all. The world was entirely silent, as well; eerily so. “Huh. At least I know why they wanted out.”

In the same moment that she finished her words, the sky turned brown. Not as if a sun was starting to rise, but as though something were reflecting off… she gasped as her eyes were drawn to the sky far above. Instead of being able to see out of the atmosphere and into the night sky as she was used to, there was a clear curve of something almost like glass that denoted the end of breathable air.

On the other side of the glass, a face had appeared. The eyes that were roving around could have been planets in her own plane of existence. They either generated their own light, or were reflecting another unseen lightsource. Space warped as a finger appeared and moved to the ‘glass’, banging against it three times. The air shook, and Taylor felt the reverberations so powerfully that she started coughing blood.

The being said something, and moved away slightly before getting closer to the glass. Another sound came in answer to the being’s statement. Taylor darted into the cave just before they swept over her location. Her Sigil started spinning frantically as it attempted to record and decode what had been said. It finished just as she dove through the Scar.

Shaken terribly, she read over the message with a face that paled further as she read each word. “We need to close this right abyssal now.”

The words hung in front of her as she sprinted to go find Luke.

Translation generated.

Being 1: Honey, what happened to the fish?

Unknown Being in reply: Are they gone again? Let’s clean the tank and get new ones tomorrow.

Taylor had no idea what would happen if beings made of solar systems cleaned something, but she was sure it wouldn’t end well for anything connected to the ‘tank’. Suddenly listening to the small-town woes of random citizens didn’t seem so bad.