The two bolts of crackling arcane energy zipped through the air, devouring the distance between Mia and her targets in the blink of an eye. The first Arcane Blast struck its target, slamming into the back of the nearest orc and exploding with a thunderous crack. The second one, cast by he off-hand and cast under the added strain of having to maintain her spellcircle and without the safety rails of having a wand in that hand to cast it through, went a bit wide, tearing a bloody raving through the side of the second orc’s head before impacting the stone wall right in front of the creature. It barely had time before the resulting explosion expanded to cover its face, and killed it in an instant despite the less-than-stellar accuracy.
That was two out of ten orcs dead in an instant, and they were immediately followed by three more as a Lightning Bolt from Helene pulverised another oc’s head and a pair of Blood Lances from Camie nailed two more to the cavern wall, both projectiles piercing straight through their skulls to make their healing factor a non-issue. Damaged brain, heart or decapitation were the go-to methods to fight annoying regenerators and a lance through the brain seemed to be more than enough to get the job done.
That left five orcs, an ogre, and about forty goblins. A pretty good ambush to start the fight off with, all things considered. Mia didn’t have time to evaluate it more, though, as the other two orcs nearest to the dead reacted first, roaring in something that might have been alarm or rage. The ogre was farther away, but it, too, turned around to take a look, along with the rest of the orcs.
“Ambush successfully accomplished!” Sparkle chirped in Mia’s head. “The vermin got successfully sleep bombed and diced up. May I return to help?”
“Yes, quickly,” Mia said with a small fraction of her focus, trying to keep herself centred and calm as she gathered mana in one hand and kept the ramped-up Arcane Blast spell circle in place, ready to cast through the wand.
The two nearest orcs almost reached Mia by the time the White Guardian fully materialised next to her and met their charge head-on with a charge of its own. Mia grimaced as the stalagmites and standing columns shattered into fragments as the two sides met, uncaring about their surroundings or about preserving the absolutely gorgeous cave and its rock formations.
The Black Knight didn’t help either, rushing through a mass of needle-thin stalagmites reaching up to its knees and shattering them in its eagerness to pounce on the most dangerous foe to be found: the ogre. In a second, it was locked in a fierce duel with the towering mass of muscles that tried to smash it into pieces with a piece of club-shaped rock.
The goblins were slow to react, and only the ones that had them in their line of sight naturally did at first, the rest continuing to just club at rock formations. Maybe the constant loud noise was even more detrimental to their supposedly good hearing than expected.
Checking her secondary spellcircle over once, trying to keep calm despite her heartbeat thundering in her ears, and the sound of a vicious battle ringing in her ears from far too close, Mia cast a Mass Summon Familiar spell. Half a dozen semi-translucent pink wolves took shape around her, rising out of circles of electric pink energy seared into the cavern floor.
They wasted no time in pouncing on the nearest monsters, one’s maw closing around an especially foolhardy goblin’s neck and biting right through it, while another two bodily threw themselves at two orcs trying to flank the Guardian. They wouldn’t last long, but they were the perfect cannon fodder, a role which the lesser elementals possessing the constructs seemed to take to with relish. Unfortunately, one batch was all Mia could keep summoned at a time with the Spirits of Duality and Sparkle also weighing on her Spirit.
Speaking of Sparkle, the small sprite zipped back into the chamber right as Helene’s chaining lightning bolt zapped five goblins at once, dropping them to the cavern’s floor in piles of convulsing flesh. One even slipped and fell into the underground river. Mia nudged Sparkle towards the ogre, feeling that her Knight was once more just slightly outmatched by the annoyingly tough ogre that could just tank its blows with a laugh and hit back with the power of a speeding truck. The sprite gave a mental buzz of acknowledgement, appearing before the ogre’s eyes an instant later and driving a pair of nails made of solid arcane energy into its eyes- or at least he tried to. One of the nails drove home, but the other skittered across the rock-like skin on the ogre’s eyelid.
The ogre roared in equal parts rage and pain, a sound so loud Mia felt it in her bones, and it proceeded to ignore the Black Knight in favour of trying to swat the cackling Sparkle out of the air. The operative word there being ‘trying’, since the little shit of a sprite kept zipping around its head, cackling all the while and even Mia couldn’t help the disbelieving snort that escaped her when the ogre smacked itself right in the face.
In the interim, Mia’d shot off two more Arcane Blasts while compiling a secondary spellcircle in her runic-model, dismissing the Mass Summon Familiar in favour of Spectral Blade. Spectral Blade had some overlapping runes with Arcane Blast, which usually would have meant she couldn’t have both spellcircles fully compiled in her runic model at the same time, but it was only a dozen runes she needed two of, so she made sure to have just enough duplicates at Rank 1 to be able to wield both spells at once. The Blade appeared in her off hand, and feeling the strain of keeping the Arcane Blast spellcircle manifested above her wand, she sent off a final Blast at one of the orcs fighting the Guardian, hitting it in the hip.
The orc roared; a leg went flying; the monster fell, and then its head was stomped by the Guardian. Unfortunately, the remaining three orcs reached the Guardian just then and left it no room to capitalise on its momentary advantage.
Mia took stock of the situation, seeing Lina busy throwing goblins into the river with blasts of air, Camie eviscerating goblins trying to flank them, and her Mom was frowning, looking to be in deep focus … oh, she was probably sending lightning bolts at the group of greenskins her Bonded sprite ambushed in the other cavernous chamber connected to this one. Meaning, she was busy, and Mia had to do the work herself if she wanted to keep her Guardian in one piece.
Just as she was about to step ahead, she felt the ogre’s repugnant presence be snuffed out, and a glance showed her Black Knight hacking away at its corpse’s neck like an axeman at a treetrunk, apparently determined to cut the monster’s head off and offended that it was refusing to part ways with the ogre’s body.
“Sparkle, go check up on Mom’s Bond in the other chamber,” Mia ordered mentally, while giving a mental yank to the Black Knight’s leash, redirecting the bloodthirsty pseudo-spirit towards the orcs the Guardian was just barely keeping occupied. Thankfully, the Knight didn’t resist overly much, throwing itself bodily at the orcs, and Mia felt its malicious glee at having its enemies ignore it, showing their exposed backs to it.
Mia took up post right behind the Guardian, letting its instincts bleed into her mind to avoid the few blows that slipped past its guard. Seeing an opportunity, she stuck her Spectral Blade out in a piercing lunge, its tip slipping past the tower shield and nicking an orc’s thigh. It wasn’t much, but the monster stumbled, its wild swing aimed at the Guardian’s head only grazing the helmet.
The Guardian ignored it as the monster caught itself, stumbling past its shield. The orc gathered itself in a blink, its bald green head snapping up and its small, black eyes focusing on Mia with unnerving intensity. It grinned, but only for a moment, noticing the stick of innocuous wood pointed at its face. A moment later, its entire head disappeared in an explosion of violent arcane energy, its headless corpse flopping back like a puppet with its strings cut.
A few goblins slipped past Camie, going around where she was fighting their kin in a wide circle, and they were closing in on Helene from behind. Mia broke away from her Guardian, leaving the remaining orcs to it and the Knight, while she rushed over to her Mom just in time to have the first goblin jumping over a protruding rock formation eat a mouthful of her Blade. Its momentum carried it onward, sliding onto her blade until its open mouth was at the hilt, making Mia shove her blade aside to get the corpse off of her weapon.
The next two goblins followed a moment later, one going left and one right, both eying her maliciously as they pounced with stone daggers gripped in their small hands. Mia dropped her Spectral Blade, twisted its spellcircle to have it lunge forward and start spinning, then yanked it sideways to intercept one of the goblins. She barely caught it, the tip of the blade raking across the small monster’s back, and it must have torn through the spine because it dropped like a sack of potatoes.
The other one was upon her before she could focus on conjuring an Arcane Blast or recalling her Blade. Its dagger plunged forward, aimed at her thigh, and Mia considered going Wisp before dismissing it.
The dagger connected with her body, or at least it tried to, instead skittering across the shimmering surface of her Mage Armour harmlessly. The Spectral Blade came back as Mia twisted the spellcircle again, slamming pommel first into the back of the stupefied goblin’s head and throwing it onto the floor. That didn’t kill it, but the follow-up of Mia slamming the conjured sword down into its prime form sure did the job.
Mia quickly checked her surroundings, leaning into her Spirit Sense to look for any other goblins that might have managed to sneak around Camie in the chaos. In her defence, the vampiress was holding off a dozen goblins all by herself and had a score of corpses scattered around her. She was doing her job perfectly, but there was only so much she could do against overwhelming numbers. She certainly sported a handful of nasty-looking new wounds that made Mia grimace in sympathy. As for the other sneaky goblins trying to flank them-
[Base Sensitivity (Spirit): 10 -> 11]
[Sensitivity: 18 -> 19]
Mia ignored the notification, a jolt of fright running through her as she was suddenly able to make out a pair of monstrous signatures appearing like amorphous blobs of miasma, thus far having been concealed entirely from her senses by blending in perfectly with the ambient miasma. One was right behind her, just a few metres away, and now that she knew it was there, she could sense its malicious gaze focused on the back of her head. The other was closing in on Helene, still looking lost in thought.
Mia would have been worried about that, had she not felt the occasional burst of gathering Storm magic inside her mom’s body that always slipped sideways and beyond her perception.
Mia wanted to trust the Ward of Protection still clinging to her Mom, but these monsters felt like those sneaky goblins she’d met inside the Rift, one of which had almost managed to gut her. She would have preferred that her Ward never be tested against their daggers.
“Mom!” Mia shouted, a bit of panic tinging her voice. “Ambush!”
Maybe that wasn’t the most accurate word to convey the situation, but it wasn’t like Mia had time to think; she just blurted out the first word that came to her lips. Helene snapped out of her fugue, probably more due to the panic she could hear in her daughter’s voice than because the actual words registered in her mind. She blinked once, then her eyes widened as comprehension bloomed across her face.
Mia was running, trusting her two pseudo-spirits to handle the remaining orcs, but the goblin stalking Helene was faster. It moved with the speed of a loosened arrow, darting over a rock formation and lunging at Helene with a sharpened iron dagger that vibrated with some vile magic.
Helene, to her credit, dropped to the cavern floor, and her Bonded spirit appeared above her in an instant, releasing a swarm of lightning that arced over Helene’s prone form to weave themselves into a protective dome. The sneaky goblin slammed into it and was halted in its tracks, the free-flowing lightning surging into its body with such intensity that Mia saw its skeleton for an instant before it was blasted away, trailing smoke and the scent of charred flesh.
The other sneaky goblin trailing Mia didn't let the opportunity go to waste, pouncing on her while she had her back to it, but she’d been expecting it. Still, even so, she just barely managed to transform into a Wisp in time before the unnervingly fast goblin’s dagger tore into her.
A wave of burning pain seared itself into her mind as the monster’s repugnant magic coating the blade tore into her intangible form. Her focus snapped, and she was sent sprawling, collapsing onto the cavern floor with a breathless gasp.
The goblin hit a column with its feet first and bounced off of it like a demented pinball, coming straight back at Mia for another try. She caught its malicious gaze through teary eyes, the crimson hat nailed onto its small head, and the dagger dripping with something dark and vile.
Her hand snapped up on instinct, and the dormant pre-cast spellcircle clinging to her Core burst forth, actualised in an instant by her panic and a disk of solid arcane energy a metre across burst into existence before her palm.
The monster struck it, the tip of its dagger hitting it first and sinking halfway through but not quite far enough to nick Mia’s palm, then the rest of the monster hit it, promptly bouncing off the hard shield like a ragdoll. Mia swung at it with her Blade, not even bothering to get up, just snarling as she put her entire body into the near-feral blow.
The monster wasn’t there by the time the conjured sword struck the stone floor, springing away with a demented cackle echoing in its wake.
Mia stumbled to her feet, holding her Arcane Shield in place as she tried to focus on finding the monster despite the pulsing phantom pain making her grimace. She wasn’t hurt; she knew she wasn’t. With her new Enduring Wisp Trait, no injury she sustained in Wisp Form transferred back onto her real body unless a magic harmed both parts of her Wisp at the same time, both in the material world and in the Spirit Realm.
“What the fuck was that!?” Mia exclaimed, her pupils dilated and her heart hammering against her ribcage as she panted for air. That damned goblin was tiny, barely reaching up to her knees if it stood still, but it moved like a tiny missile. It moved so swiftly she could barely track it with her Spirit Sense, and even to her eyes it was little more than a blur darting across her vision. “Form up! Gather around, back to back!”
There were few enough monsters left that Mia felt the order wouldn’t ruin their chances at victory, doubly so because she felt her two pseudo-spirits jump the last remaining orc just a moment ago. They’d be free to help in a few seconds.
“Sparkle, report, what’s going on there?” Mia asked her Bond, a part of her worried her littlest partner wouldn’t be able to handle whatever he’d been left to deal with once Helene’s Bond rushed back to help.
“Err, I believe I may have uh, ‘fucked up a bit’? One of the nearby patrols is likely to have heard me,” Sparkle replied. “Or maybe they found the goblins I left to rot. Whichever it was, a few poked their heads in and then ran off. We handled this chamber, though! The ogre was annoying, but it is sufficiently murdered now.”
“Okay, thanks,” Mia said, falling into a small formation with Helene, Lina and Camie, the four of them forming something halfway between a circle and a square. “Lina, throw up a dome. Slow the little fucker if it pounces at us again. Whoever is fastest, kill it. There is only one of those fast, sneaky ones left.”
“I could put up a lightning dome,” Helene suggested, her little sprite letting out a small electric buzz that Mia took for eager agreement.
“We want it to attack so we can kill it,” Mia said, dismissing the idea. “Lina?”
“On it,” the aeromancer said, dismissing her previously present manifested magics in favour of weaving a dome of torrential air magic around their group. “That should throw it on its ass.”
Mia tightened her grip on her Spectral Blade, quickly stashing her wand in its holster. It would be of little use if she couldn't react fast enough to cast and then aim a ranged spell at the near supersonic goblin flying at her.
The final orc fell, and Mia mentally nudged her two pseudo-spirits to go about slaughtering the remaining regular goblins. Or at least, she had the Black Knight do that, while she sent the White Guardian towards the tunnel entrance she thought most likely to be used by them to escape through. Every goblin they killed here was one they wouldn’t have to deal with later.
The sneaky goblin kept stalking them, circling around their group, its small form hidden behind rock formations and small outcroppings. Mia did her best to pretend she couldn’t track it, hoping it would get sloppy.
It ended up on the cavern’s ceiling, skittering across it like some deranged spider, still hidden by hanging stalactites. Mia didn't raise her head, but she did nudge Camie slightly, motioning upwards with a tiny head motion. The vampiress just nodded slightly, likely having caught some diminutive noise from the monster that even Mia’s ears missed.
Just as she’d hoped, it pounced … and Carmilla snatched it out of the air, her hand snapping out like a striking serpent faster than even the monster moved. A sickening wet crunch of snapping bones and tearing flesh made Mia wince, though a satisfied smirk tugged at her lips as she felt the monster’s frustratingly vague miasmic presence burst and fade away. She double checked the cavern chamber, just to be sure.
“It’s done,” she said, her shoulders slumping a little as the tension of battle drained out of her form. Not entirely, not in a monster-infested cavern system, but she let go of her intense battle focus. “All of them are dead. Unfortunately, a patrol heard Sparkle going wild and ran off to notify the rest. So we’ll need to either follow them and hit them hard and fast before they can fully prepare, or retreat to rest up so we can face them later at our best. But before that, what the heck was that demented, murderous little pinball?”
“A Redcap,” Gabe said. “You know, like from Irish folklore … or is it Celtic? Eh, fuck if I know. They are nasty little freaks that like to wear hats drenched in fresh blood, and as you’ve experienced, they are extremely fast for their level and usually have some stealth Skills. The tradeoff there is that they are tiny and fragile. A regular level 1 Farmer could snap a Rank 1 Redcap in half like a twig if they can catch them. Mia also experienced their ability to imbue their daggers with miasma to make up for their lacking strength by making their blades go through most defences.”
“Well, I’m spent, so I’d like to vote for a tactical retreat,” Lina said, and only then did Mia notice the way the girl was panting for breath and how tresses of her wheat blonde hair stuck to her sweaty skin. She looked like she’d just run a marathon, and even her eyelids looked like they were desperately fighting against the inescapable pull of gravity. Helene just nodded, looking barely better than Lina.
Mia checked her reserves, winced, and nodded decisively. If she didn’t take a potion, she wouldn’t have to start being more economical with her mana. That Mass Summon Familiar spell was super effective, but it cost a hefty chunk of her reserves. Even though the arcane wolves got swarmed and hacked apart by the goblins, they occupied dozens of them, giving Camie the breathing room she needed to start going through them like a farmer’s scythe through a field of wheat. On that note, even if she didn’t show it, and wasn’t mentioning it, Camie must have been running low, too.
It’s been a while since I’ve let her feed, hasn’t it? Mia mused, a brief flush coming to her cheeks at the memory of their latest ‘feeding’ session. She shook her head.
“Retreat then, for now,” Mia said decisively. “At least back to the first few chambers, and we’ll have our Bonds keep watch while we take a breather. A … an hour? Maybe two? We’ll see how we feel afterwards. We can return tomorrow. We killed a bunch of them, and I doubt they can replenish their numbers in a single night … right?”
“You should get a bestiary and memorise the most common monster types,” Gabe said with a huff. “Both in and outside a Rift. But no, even goblins need a few weeks to go from newborn to physical maturity.”
“These aren’t ‘rape goblins’, right?” Lina asked somewhat queasily, and Gabe turned a bewildered stare at her. “Like, that’s a thing in anime, you know? That goblins don’t have any females in their species?”
“No, they have females,” Gabe said, shaking his head. “They are just as God-ugly as the males, though. I’ve never been able to tell the difference. Even the regular, non-monster goblins are the same, and from what I heard, their sense of ‘beauty’ is … skewed. The uglier the better, is a reductive, simplistic way of putting it, but it gets the point across. Unless you look like a goblin, they’ll be just as repulsed by the idea of sleeping with you as you’d be.”
“I- okay?” Lina said, sounding somewhere between weirded-out and bewildered. “Is it weird that I feel offended that a goblin wouldn’t find me pretty?”
“I think,” Mia said, huffing. “That I need a drink. Let’s go. I’ll drop down a Phalanx behind us, just in case. That’ll shut off the tunnel for half an hour … any objections?”
There were none, thankfully, and they swiftly retreated back over the river and hurried up the staircase after Mia spent what remained of her mana reserves on dropping a simple, solid wall-shaped Phalanx before the tunnel entrance. Its mana would hold for about half an hour, and while it did, they might as well try tunnelling around the wall. It’d probably be quicker than trying to hammer their way through Mia’s Phalanx with mundane pickaxes and clubs. After all, that thing was supposed to have comparable defensive properties to a regular Rank 2 protective spell. Rank 0 and 1 monsters had little hope of breaking through it.