76 - Trivial

“It’s worse than I thought,” Quintin said gruffly. “Level ten. We might not have a choice but to wait for backup from the city.”

Sable tilted her head. That had been why Quintin had dragged her away? “No, that won’t be a problem. I can handle it.”

“You can?” Quintin didn’t quite sound dubious, but rather concerned. “I won’t pretend to know much about adventurers, miss, but don’t mages struggle with solo hunting? There’s no shame in admitting this is too much for you.” His voice had shifted to a sort of grandfatherly concern, and Sable knew it wasn’t meant to be patronizing, but a small part of her took it that way. “Or is it that far beneath you?”

“It is,” Sable said simply.

The older silver-haired man appraised her, then nodded. “Well, I won’t contradict you, then. But again, there’s no shame in waiting for back up.” He hesitated. “Though … we might not have much time.”

“Hm?”

“That collapse. You saw it?”

“The rubble?” There had been what seemed to be a miniature cave-in across the clearing.

“It looks recent. I’ve got a suspicion it’s Merry’s doing.”

“Merry. That’s one of Ethan’s group?”

“A fighter with earth-based skills. I’m thinking she caused it deliberately.” Quintin rubbed his chin. “Maybe it’s a stretch, but they might have caved themselves in to escape from the troll. I’m sure they didn’t expect it to be level ten.”

“It’s plausible.” And good news if true. If they’d somehow scrambled into a cave and collapsed the ceiling behind them, they could still be alive. Sable had mostly expected the adventuring squad to have simply died to the troll—it was the more likely option for a missing party who’d gone out to fight a dangerous enemy. “But they might be running out of air. Or food and water. Or succumbing to injuries.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

“So there’s no time for back up.” Sable waved her hand dismissively. “Not that I need it. A level ten is fine.” She’d have been worried if it had three to five more levels, but at an equivalent to her own, even tired, Sable knew she could handle it without problem.

Quintin studied her for a moment, then nodded. “I would offer to help, but there’s not much I could do. With time and supplies I could set up a trap that might do damage to it, but we don’t have much of either.”

“Again, that’s not necessary. This shouldn’t be much effort.”

This time, Quintin’s expression really did turn dubious. “Not much effort? It’ll be that easy?”

Nobody has actually asked Sable her level outright, yet. They’d assumed by her looks and how she carried herself that she was unusually competent for the region, and she’d never contradicted them—since it was true. Sable intuited that even a level fifteen-ish—which she was the equivalent of, she figured—was outrageously rare to find in a random town in a green zone.

“I’ll go handle it,” Sable said. “Stay safe.”

“If you’re sure, miss.”

Sable set back off toward the clearing.

She considered the best way to handle the fight. It really ought not to be much. She was low on mana from the hectic past few days—fighting both the [Lesser Aspect] and the [Frostfang Titan]—but she still ought to have plenty enough to kill a single level ten. And, again, in the worst case scenario she could transform to her dragon form and the troll wouldn’t be able to touch her. That wasn’t ideal for many obvious reasons, but regardless, this fight offered no real danger, physically speaking.

As Sable approached the clearing, she saw Quintin follow a safe distance behind. He wanted to watch. Sable pursed her lips at that, but decided against telling him to leave. While she would be demonstrating some unusual strength for this region, the people of Sunstone already suspected her to be a powerful adventurer. She had no secrets to keep in this fight.

The troll came back into her vision. It sat on the rock, continuing to skin its prey—a giant grizzly bear.

Sable held up her staff. Mages typically had casting instruments, and Sable had wanted to play the part. The weapon gave some paltry boosts to her spellcasting abilities that were near useless to her unusually high stats, and so it was more a prop than anything.

Drawing on her mana, she started casting [Frostfire Grasp]. White-blue lines etched into the air as Sable filled out the diagram. The troll didn’t notice; it skinned dutifully away. Unsurprisingly, it had poor magical senses.

Sable considered how much mana to pour in. With her mana pool reduced to one-fourth, that meant each point spent in human form was the same as using four in dragon form—because mana and health transferred over as a ratio. So, she wanted to be conservative. Plus, she ought to have some discretion. Quintin was watching, and she knew she’d already be leaving an impression on Sunstone, but she didn’t want to leave too large of one. Simply to be safe.

So she went with a moderate twelve points. It was less than she would use in dragon form against strong enemies, but not a paltry amount; most mages didn’t have the ridiculous mana pool Sable did and had to be far more conservative. With reduced stats, the spell flung out, much weaker than typical.

But her ‘typical’ [Frostfire Grasp] could lock down a rampaging level twenty or higher, so the ice crystal projectile slammed into the troll, and three giant rings of frost engulfed it. The rock it sat on, the bear corpse it was skinning, and the troll itself disappeared into a transparent prison of burning-hot ice.

Sable leaned against her staff and watched the troll struggle, screaming and thrashing inside its painful confines. The ice wasn’t as tough as usual, and splintered bit by bit, but a level ten monster lacked the strength to break through as easily as something like the [Frostfang Titan].

Still, the [Forest Troll] was a bulky strength-based monster, so it didn’t stay trapped for long. Sable had already prepared her next spell. By the time the troll broke out, then locked eyes and roared at her, she had already sent forward a [Frostfire Spear]. She put eight mana into it, not wanting to waste the resource. She’d rather not get into a hand-to-hand with the beast, since she wasn’t sure how well she’d fare, but she also didn’t want to go burning through tons of mana. She would appraise how well she was doing, first.

Pretty well, she noted with some amusement as the projectile slammed in the troll’s chest. The sharp crystalline spear embedded itself straight through, and from the puncture point frost radiated outward, spreading across its chest. The troll had just begun to charge her, but at the injury, stumbled.

Surprising Sable, the beast roared, then yanked the crystal spear away and tossed it. Flesh knitted over, and in seconds, it was as good as new. Trolls were known for their regeneration capabilities, so she wasn’t completely shocked—but brushing off a fairly decent projectile that had skewered the beast straight through the chest was still more than she’d expected of a level ten.

Her next spear had around the same amount of mana. The troll made it halfway to her. This time, it slammed into its stomach, and the beast toppled over.

She conjured three more projectiles—less mana, so weaker, but only slightly, since mana became more inefficient with each extra point—and continued pelting the troll. When it laid still, she finished closing the gap by herself, then landed one last finishing [Frostfire Spear] into its skull. That created a gory mess which Sable wrinkled her nose at, but at least none of the viscera got on her robes.

The fight might have been difficult had Sable not had the element of surprise, and the troll had arrived on top of her before she could react. As it stood, she’d had prep time to launch a root followed up by several strong projectiles before it could reach her. Already stronger than the beast, the combination had made the troll a trivial fight—even more than Sable had expected.

She glanced back, looking for Quintin. It took a second for her eyes to latch to him. He was well concealed in the treeline, hidden behind a bush, but while Sable’s predator eyes weren’t as effective in humanoid form as her dragon one, she still found it an easy task to identify hidden prey.

“That should be it,” she called to him. “It’s dead.”

She glanced down at the beast to make sure, then nodded.

Tentatively, Quintin came out.

As he approached, Sable saw equal amounts of shock joined with wariness on his face. Sable had purposefully tried to downplay her strength, but it seemed she’d set an impression anyway. The aged man sent looks skittering between the troll and Sable herself.

“Made short work of him,” Quintin finally said. “I expected something more of … well, a fight.”

“I had the element of surprise. If he’d gotten to me, it would have been messier.” Not wanting to discuss her exact strength, she moved on to the more relevant topic. “That cave-in. You think they’re trapped inside?”

“We can only hope. But it did seem like the troll was posted here, guarding it for a reason. Doesn’t seem a coincidence.”

“Why couldn’t they escape themselves? Dig out?” They wouldn’t know the troll was guarding them, so Sable would figure they’d at least try.

Quintin gave her an odd look. “A group of three level sevens can’t exactly dig their way out of a collapsed cave.”

“They can’t?” Actually, yeah, that was fair. Collapsing a cave would be easier than escaping that same debris, especially when skills came into play. “But the earth mage doesn’t have a way to help?”

“Merry’s no mage,” Quintin said. “Just has earth skills. But no, I suppose she doesn’t. Not strong enough ones, at least.” He grimaced. “Or maybe something happened to her.”

“Right.” That was more than a possibility. “Well, let’s see what we can do about it.”

“Is there?” Quintin asked. “Something we can do, I mean. I’m not sure how we could go about digging our own way through.”

Arriving with a dozen feet of the collapsed cave entrance, Sable considered the problem. Between the two problems, the troll and the tons of rock possibly blocking off the beleaguered adventurers, the latter was the trickier. Sable didn’t have many tools available to excavate—besides transforming into a dragon and using her claws, which would certainly work, but was off the table.

Before even trying, though, Sable ought to see if Quintin’s theory had merit. Whether there were adventurers trapped inside. Maybe if they banged on the outside loud enough, they’d get a reply.