RD 3 Ch 21

Chapter 21

After stepping out of the mist, Simone waved a hand in front of her, clearing it away. She turned to Gloria, surprised to find that the woman was not beside her. They had walked through holding hands, thinking that might help, but it seemed there was no such luck.

Nyx and Gloria were both gone, and Simone was left alone in an old pine forest. 

Rather than worry, she quickly scanned through her spatial ring, pulling out a talisman that Bran had given her as well as a coat hanger. She bent the coat hanger into something resembling the shape of a lowercase r with a bendable side sticking sideways. Then she took the talisman out, feeling it tug slightly in one direction, and wrapped it around the end of the coat hanger, holding on tight. It bent ever so slightly while it pivoted in her hand to give her direction and an idea of range. 

The talisman that she had used belonged to Bran, and she squinted at the little shaft up top, measuring with her thumb how far it bent. Then she swapped out Bran's talisman for Gloria's, only for it to bend far more. 

"So, Gloria's closer," Simone muttered. "I wonder if it's because we were in the same first trial." 

She got a bigger surprise when she wrapped Nyx's talisman around the end, and it didn't bend at all. When she held it in her hands, she couldn't even feel a faint pull. She realized Nyx was nowhere nearby, which felt unusual. But there was nothing she could do about that at the moment. 

Taking her handmade tool, as well as the talismans, she put them back in the spatial ring after wrapping Gloria's talisman around the tool. She would look for Gloria first.

If she was sensing Bran, that meant Bran could sense her. Knowing her lovable man, he was likely already headed in their direction. And if she went to Gloria, that would only make them all reuniting easier. So, picking the direction, she went straight for Gloria. 

She jogged through the woods, far faster than any of her afternoon jogs before. The forest was actually quite beautiful. She would have paid good money to live somewhere that had a trail like the one she was on.

Simone had enjoyed morning jogs in the past, before she had been Initiated. It was a good way to clear her head and keep in shape. Running for a long period of time no longer bothered her at all, neither physically nor mentally. 

The only difference now was that she ran with stats that would make her crush the entire Olympic Games. She could shoot through the forest as fast as a car, her strides devouring the ground in front of her. While she moved, she looked around for some sort of danger. She knew this whole place was bound to be riddled with traps.

She continued jogging, noticing a monster in the distance that was picking a fight with another. The two of them were bloodying each other up. But, unsure of the outcome, she decided it was not in her best interest to go after them. 

Sadly, Simone was probably the weakest of their group, at least offensively. If she was going to pick a fight, it would be much better for her to team up with Gloria and enhance the other woman's power while protecting them both.

Simone's Heartbreaker was a wonderful ability. However, it was more like a physical gut punch than a killing blow. The pink beam seemed to be made entirely of physical force, incapable of knocking things away, but unless she completely overwhelmed the target, her stats and ability rank were barely lethal.

Other than Heartbreaker, Wracking Pain was her only other ability that could be damaged. And that one... she was rather reluctant to use. It caused more pain than damage.

If anything, Simone really used it as a way to control an opponent or protect herself. It just didn't really feel like the kind of ability she wanted to inflict on anyone or anything for a prolonged period of time. 

Either way, she continued jogging through the forest at superhuman speeds.

Several hours later, after she'd passed a good handful of monsters, purple fire finally erupted to the side.

Simone knew she'd found her teammate. Two monsters fell to the side, or rather, what remained of them and their charred corpses. 

Gloria's clothes had seen better days. She'd swapped out of her dress at this point to a pair of tight pants and a blouse. Even those had already suffered several cuts. Gloria flinched as she sensed a new arrival, and a purple ball of fire appeared in her hand.

Simone squealed and tackled Gloria to the ground before the mobster could flinch.

"Get off me," Gloria grumbled, pushing back, only for Simone to hug her more.

"I found you!" Simone absolutely loved being chipper to the grumpy mob princess. It just made her day so much better to get a reaction out of Gloria.

Gloria, however, was stronger and lifted Simone off, picking her up and placing her to the side. "There could be more monsters," Gloria said seriously, before squinting at a few smoldering pine needles.

Then, as if the fire was afraid of her, it disappeared underneath the needles. Even the red glow faded quickly to white ash under her stare. 

"You're getting good at that." Simone felt relieved at having found one of their team members. Once she found Bran there would be no stress at all.

"It isn’t the first time I've had to put out a fire here," Gloria said. She walked over to the two beasts, kicking aside where their bodies had already disappeared, melting into the ground like an instance.

"What are you looking for?" Simone spotted a small bush. Normally one like this would be covered in berries, only this one had a scant three.

Gloria clicked her tongue as she inspected the fruits. "Unripe, just like the others."

"Others?" Simone asked. 

"Yeah, every time you see a monster, there's a good chance there's a fruit nearby," Gloria pointed at the bush. "Found a pair of melons, even bananas, growing off a stalk that was like two feet tall." She held her hands down by her hips as if to demonstrate. "Which doesn't happen. Bananas grow in tall banana trees. So, not exactly sure what sort of bioengineering… this vault is doing." Gloria crossed her arms and glared at the bush. 

Simone had caught her slight hesitation when she accused the vault rather than demons. They weren't supposed to talk and reveal that they might know what was happening. 

"So how many have you killed?" Gloria said, turning to her. 

"None!" Simone smiled back. "Absolutely none. I used the talismans, and I used the distance finder that Bran explained, and I came straight here." 

Gloria frowned and held two talismans in her hand as they popped out of her spatial ring. "Bran's still really far away, isn't he?" Gloria squinted. "As for Nyx, I don't feel her at all."

"Same with me," Simone said. "I have no idea where sister Nyx has gone, but it's okay. Now that we're together, Bran will likely come right this way," Simone reasoned. 

Gloria snorted. "Yeah, I'm sure he somehow already found a way to pick up another woman."

Simone could only hope. It was probably a beauty, knowing Bran. Simone had yet to get her claws into either Gloria or Nyx, but she figured she and Nyx could probably get along. And probably Circe, a woman like that, old as dirt, was probably always up to try new experiences.

"Wipe that lewd smile off your face," Gloria said. "We have some work to do. We gotta keep track of where all of these fruits are as we go. And then figure out what the heck we're supposed to even do in this trial." 

Simone pointed down the fruits. "We're supposed to collect those. But they're unripe, so do we pick them and let them ripen?" Simone pondered aloud. A fair number of fruits ripened after you picked them. However, these unripe ones perhaps needed to wait for them to ripen on the vine. 

Gloria shrugged and plucked one of the berries. "Now we have one to test your theory. If it gets ripe in a couple days, then we'll come back and we'll keep picking. Otherwise, we should probably keep moving. This place doesn't feel safe to stay in one spot for too long."

As if her words caused a reaction in the world, a shout echoed through the forest.

Simone snapped her head up to see a group of three from their previous trial. The woman was garbed like a ninja, while the man who had shouted had already pulled back his bow. The third was another man who had already begun waving his staff. 

"Oh look, our new friends," Gloria squared up to fight. 

Simone sighed. "Friends, yes, I see. That's what we can call them, after you robbed them of their fruits!" Her voice grew louder as she spoke.

An arrow was flying their way. Simone waved her hand, a barrier appearing and blocking the attack. The arrow was shot with enough magical force behind it that her barrier produced a thin crack in defending them. 

"Doesn't matter. We can just play with our new friends." Gloria waved her hand and a spread of purple fireballs lobbed out from her. 

Unlike the stairs, Gloria’s targets now had the ability to move around quite a bit. The archer shot between the trees, kicking off them in quick succession in erratic movements while he continued to load arrows and fire at the two of them. Meanwhile, the ninja shimmered and disappeared before Simone's eyes. That just left the mage who summoned two giant serpents made of water that came crashing through the thin underbrush towards them.

Gloria didn’t back down. Simone rolled her eyes. Gloria looked almost eager.

Bran had even been slightly impressed when he saw her class for the first time. Therefore, it came as no shock that Gloria seemed to be a step above the others in their trial. Not to mention, the three of them had climbed the highest on the stairs and were already considered the strongest among them.

Gloria's purple fire exploded in a series of concussive blasts as she tried to capture all three in the explosions. She certainly got the water serpents as one of them exploded in a spray that stretched the distance all the way to Gloria, only for a wall of purple fire to erupt in front of her and catch the water at the last second. 

The ninja shimmered back into existence behind Simone, a pair of twin daggers racing for her throat with a green glow.

However, Simone wasn't completely defenseless. She activated Wracking Pain, narrowing her eyes on the ninja.

The woman screamed and completely lost focus on her attack, staggering and missing as Simone sidestepped.

A heart-shaped beam erupted in front of her, knocking the ninja back and sending her flying. 

"Good catch," Gloria said, using the fire on the forest floor to set off a chain reaction of flaming purple columns that slammed down around the archer who was bouncing between trees.

The archer paused and focused on his shots. His arrows kept firing and managed to penetrate Simone's barrier. One arrow that punched through flew slightly off course and nicked Gloria.

The hit was a small wound that Simone waved away with a flash of magic. "I would have thought that hit would have done more." Simone glanced at the small scratch. 

Gloria grunted. "It hurt a lot less than I expected it to. And that's not just pain tolerance from being thrown off cliffs. My skin is actually as tough as ranked monsters now." 

"Oh," Simone raised a playful eyebrow. She knew thick skin was gone, absorbed by her physique. "Does that mean for Bran to do the kind of damage that makes you squeal at night, he has some ranked equipment of his own?" 

Gloria narrowed her eyes. "Is this the time, Simone?" 

"Is this the time?" Simone said exasperatedly. "You have the gall to ask me that after you caused so much trouble?" 

"I didn't cause trouble. We were just making friends." Gloria waved her hands and lobbed more explosive fireballs, blanketing an area in ripples of purple fire, trying to knock the archer out of his hiding rhythm. 

"Would you stop him for me?" Gloria asked. 

Simone rolled her eyes and activated Wracking Pain. The archer came to a screaming halt as he missed his next tree, smacking into it only for a column of purple flame to descend down on him, crushing him to the forest floor as it ripped open like a chasm from a purple hell as more fire exploded up around him. 

Gloria nodded to herself. "Thanks. With him down, we'll just have to worry about that damn ninja." She squinted and spun in a full 360. 

"What about the mage?" Simone asked. 

"Pretty sure I already got him." Gloria squinted in the distance. "Yeah," she pointed at a prone form.

"No, you’re right, he could be faking it." Another column of purple flame exploded on the mage. 

Simone could only shake her head and continue to be a mana battery. The mob princess, after all, had a powerful set of class skills.