Chapter 127: The Arrival
Erani, Ainash, and I all continued to move through the mountains of Kingdom’s Edge. It was the morning after Ripley had come and given us a warning. Apparently the Demons were planning on sending something after us. But we had no idea what it’d be, or when it’d be sent. We just needed to be on-guard, it seemed. Not that that was any sort of change from our normal life.
So we continued to move through the valley. Maybe we could get to the empire before whatever elite Demon that was hunting us arrived. Then the Barinruth Empire’s soldiers could help us take it out, ideally with no casualties.
Since I hadn’t used Time Loop at all the previous day, that night I waited until just before midnight to ensure I wouldn’t regret using the Talent up, and then used it to re-do killing the same Shadow Panther for the XP. A single Panther didn’t give too much on its own, but tripling that number definitely made it pretty significant, bringing me from 953 to 1.53k XP, out of the required 2.2k.
Also, over the course of last night and this morning, Noxious Grasp’s XP had risen quite a bit, from 256 to 1369. Not enough for a Rank-up, but I was getting there. Currently, it was a couple hours before noon, so we were fully in our stride, traveling through the mountains and making steady progress. The cliff faces around us had shrunk back down to actually scaleable sizes, at this point, but we had no actual reason to move off the path, so we just continued as usual.
One thing that had happened was we saw a Dragon in the distance. Not very close to us, but it was enough to put us on edge. Out in the mountains, we’d just seen it fly from one peak to the other. I doubted it would actually spot us, and doubted even more that it’d care if it did, but it was still a monster that could kill us all in an instant if it wanted to. We needed to take heed of that.
So, especially considering there was also apparently some special Demon coming up to the Overworld, I went ahead and switched my Ethereal Armor from Light Plate to Dark Plate. It’d make my training much less efficient—and my Spells cost way more in a fight—but in combat against a Dragon, I wasn’t too concerned about my Mana-to-damage ratio, but rather with just surviving its attacks.
Erani looked over to me, seemingly about to say something, but she jumped in surprise when she saw me, interrupting herself. She shook her head. “Gods, I can’t get used to that armor.”
“What, the Dark Plate?”
“Yes. I guess I’m just so used to the Light variation, every time I see you I think you’re a monster. It doesn’t help that this form blocks me from seeing your face, unlike the other.”
“Ah, right.” There were quite a few differences between the two types of armor, most noticeably the fact that Dark Plate was much thicker, showed much less skin, and also sucked in all light around it, opposite to Light Plate’s light-emitting behavior. “Well, hopefully you’ll get used to it soon, I guess. Wouldn’t want to randomly catch a Firebolt to the chest.”
“That probably won’t happen. But I doubt I’ll ever get used to seeing you in it. You just look so… evil.”
I looked over my body. The armor certainly didn’t look friendly, that was for sure. The dark, heavy plate was constantly cloaked in shade, and its thick metal made me seem measurably larger than I actually was. And, like Erani said, the fact that it covered my face in a shadowy, slotted slab of steel certainly didn’t help.
“...No offense, of course,” Erani said after I didn’t respond for a moment.
I laughed. “No, it’s okay. I kind of get what you mean. You think it’ll cause any problems once we get to the Barinruth Empire?”
“Hopefully not.”
“Yeah, I guess.” I shrugged. “Though, if I ever wear it while fighting a monster and some random adventurers see me, I might end up getting attacked by them or something.”
“Well ideally the plate will keep you from dying in that event,” she laughed. “Besides, you’ll have me there to protect you, right?”
“Yeah.” I smiled. “I guess you’re right.”
A couple more hours passed, and my practice with Noxious Grasp paid off once more.
Threshold reached. Noxious Grasp XP has reached 1.49k.
Noxious Grasp Rank has increased to 15.
Due to Noxious Grasp Rank reaching 15, it has undergone the following changes:
Mana Cost: From 5.19 to 5.32
Health Drain: From 19.8 to 20.8
Stamina Drain: From 9.91 to 10.4
It’d only been around four hours since we’d woken up by now, so I was glad to have made some progress so early in the day. I was officially past double effectiveness with Noxious Grasp! Well, double the numerical effectiveness—I also had the Venomous Grasp Upgrade, which was arguably more valuable than the entire damaging component of the Spell, at this point.
But I could see Noxious Grasp going back to becoming my main damage-dealing Spell if I could raise the Health Drain component high enough. It was at 20 per second for now, but since the damage increased exponentially, it’d get to 30 in half as many Ranks, and 40 would come even sooner.
Then again, the XP costs also piled on themselves, so it’d definitely take some time to get there regardless. The next Rank said it’d take 1.92k Spell XP—almost 500 more than the previous Rank cost. But hey, give me some time and I’d be able to do it
The Dragon hadn’t given us any trouble yet, but we still saw it occasionally flying across the nearby mountains. Seemed like it hadn’t seen us yet—and ideally, it never would. We still had a couple Shadow Panther attacks, but it was nothing we couldn’t easily handle.
As we walked, I glanced behind myself and saw something strange. The path we were headed down was relatively straight for this stretch, and the hills lining the path were lower in this section. So, when I looked back, I could see pretty far away. And in the distance, just barely crossing the horizon, there was a cloud of dust.
“Hey,” I tapped Erani on the shoulder, pointing at the kicked up dirt floating through the air. “Do you see that?”
She furrowed her brows. “...Huh. Yeah. What’s that in the middle?”
I squinted and looked more closely. She was right. In the center of the dust cloud, still a few hundred paces away, was… “A person?”
“What’s making the dust? Are they running toward us?” Erani’s eyes widened. “Oh, gods, they’re moving fast. Way too fast. I think they’re hostile.”
I nodded. If someone was out here at all, chances were that they were here to kill us. And considering we knew some sort of special Demon was on its way out here…
“Lets go,” I said, grabbing Erani and Ainash by the arms and activating Expedite several times on all of us. It drained my Mana considerably, but we needed to move.
With the stacks of Dexterity buffs on us all, we sprinted down the path. The occasional Shadow Panther leapt out at us, but a Firebolt from Erani or Crippling Chill from me was enough to deter them into not pursuing. For now, we had more pressing concerns than battling it out against invisible cats.
Glancing back as we ran, I could see that the figure was still fast-approaching. With Expedite, we were certainly faster, but clearly not fast enough.
“Should stand ground and fight,” Aniash said as we ran. “Outnumber bad guy. Could kill easily.”
“We don’t know how strong it is,” I responded. “It might be way more powerful than us. Like the Dragon was.”
“Still too close. It is faster. Will catch us eventually. Do not have enough time to run.”
I frowned. She made good points, despite how much I’d rather favor caution here. If we ran, we’d just tire ourselves out before fighting. Whatever this thing was that was creating the dust cloud, it clearly wouldn’t just give up and go back to where it came from.
“Arlan, I think Ainash is right. We should just stop and fight on our own terms.”
After a moment, I nodded. We still had several safety nets, so fighting here wouldn’t be too risky of a maneuver. If we lost the fight and I had to go back with Time Loop, we’d just know better next time and could figure something out with better knowledge of its abilities. It was like back when Astintash had crushed us, the longer I could fight against it, even if I was destined to die, the more information I’d have for next time.
“Fine,” I said.
We all stopped running and turned to face the quick-approaching entity. Erani took a few steps back, so she had Firebolt at the ready behind the two front-liners—me and Ainash. I prepared my myriad of debuffing Spells to hopefully keep our enemy at a manageable speed, and Ainash’s whip lit aflame. Whoever this person was, they were about to catch a massive amount of damage aimed straight at them the moment they stepped within a few dozen paces of us.
And speaking of the person approaching us, I could tell that they were obviously pretty Human-looking. At the very least, it wasn’t one of those massive, hulking Infernals. It didn’t seem like it was an actual Human either, though. The proportions were just slightly off enough that the silhouette gave that away. But due to the thick dust, the silhouette was all I could see for now.
And as the person approached more and more, that silhouette got closer and closer, and I got more and more prepared for a fight. Two hundred paces. A hundred and fifty. One hundred. Seventy-five. Fifty. And…
“Go!” I shouted and activated as many effects as I could in such a short timeframe. It was difficult to switch between so many Spells so quickly, but I’d been mentally preparing to do so beforehand, so I was able to fire them all off in quick succession.
Crippling Chill. Gravity Well. Ray of Frost. All three hit at once, alongside the explosion of a Firebolt and several inhumanly-fast lashes of Ainash’s flaming whip.
The blast from the Firebolt flung the dust away, finally allowing us to see who was hunting us down.
It was…someone I didn’t recognize. Obviously a Demon, with the deep red skin and glowing blue veins, but I wasn’t familiar enough with the different species of Demons to be able to immediately identify it.
But one thing stood out to me. Despite the debuffs, explosions, and flaming thorns that struck its skin, it looked…relatively unfazed. It stopped, and was standing there pretty calmly. Examining me. No, not really examining, more like…finding the small details. The way someone might look at a celebrity that they’d heard a lot about, and maybe seen some drawn depictions of, but had never actually seen in person. Well, it was like that, but minus any of the admiration.
But it just stood there. Like it hadn’t just sprinted what was probably several thousand paces to get to us. It could easily close the distance and start fighting, but it just didn’t.
I hesitated for a moment, both out of curiosity and out of fear. But then I came to my senses and raised my hand again to start shooting a barrage of Rays of Frost. Whatever had caused it, I’d take advantage of this moment of vulnerability in my enemy.
But then the Demon opened its mouth, and began to speak. And that caused me to hesitate for a moment longer.
“Hm,” it said in a smooth voice. One that I’d almost say would be charismatic and suave, in other circumstances. “Seems like you haven’t yet seen me in any other timelines.”
I blinked and instinctively took a step back. How did it know? Did it have some sort of power to see through Time Loop?
“Thought I’d do some introductions before this whole thing. Well, you don’t need to introduce yourselves, I know who you all are. Arlan Nota, Erani Wos,” it pointed at each of us, ending on Ainash, “and, y’know, I don’t actually know your name. They just call you ‘the Dryad,’ normally. Well, my reconnaissance is pretty old, at this point. And it seems like you’ve undergone a pretty significant change recently, so maybe they call you something else by now.”
I was still standing completely in shock of what was going on. Why was this Demon standing here talking to us, as though we hadn’t just attacked it with everything we had? Erani was obviously also taken aback by its words, too.
I hesitantly opened my mouth. “...Are you hostile? Are you just, like, a messenger, or something?”
“Hm. A messenger. Yeah, I suppose you could say I’m a messenger.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, okay. What’s your message?”
It lifted its hands and tucked them into fists, finally leaving the completely casual pose it’d been in this whole time. “The message is, ‘I’m here to kill you all.’”
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