Chapter 503 - Expedition like ours

After Tacita waves at me, the field around her changes to a version similar to the one during the tournament—one that we used for some playful training instead of going all out, where she tries to hide herself and I pierce through that field around her.

Yet, she hid from me. Quite easily too. It looks like someone didn't like nearly dying during the tournament and went on a training spree.

Jean swings his arm at her, but she vanishes, reappearing on his opposite side with incredible speed, her dagger raised even higher and aimed directly at his eye.

The man freezes at that moment, and I see his muscles tensing. But Tacita doesn't follow through and instead takes a step back, putting the dagger away and lifting her empty hands, still smiling. She ignores Lily, who waves at her excitedly, and instead moves to the side where she sits, pulling her knees up to her chest and watching us with curiosity.

Before Jean can do anything, Leticia jumps down from Luna, who shrinks and moves towards him, cursing at the man and calling him dumb.

"I would've been able to stop him," Sophie notes when I move closer to them.

"I also saw him move, Nat. I don't think I would lose against him." Tapping on her axe, Lily takes her eyes off Tacita.

"It's fine. It's me who somewhat organized it all, so it's reasonable for me to stop him. And don't underestimate him. He won their tournament for a reason."

"I'll talk to him," Tess says, stepping away from us. "Everyone knows how Sophie's abilities are perceived so that reaction isn’t all that surprising. I'll make it clear—if she ever uses them against any of us, she’ll answer to me first."

With a smile and a wink at Sophie, Tess strides toward the bulky man, while Lily shifts her focus back to Tacita. She doesn’t approach her directly, treating the young woman like a skittish stray cat that might bolt at any moment. Instead, Lily keeps waving and smiling, maintaining a gentle, reassuring distance.

"Nat, do you think I could win against Tacita?" she asks curiously.

"Honestly? She would probably kill you in nine out of ten fights."

"That many?"

I confirm with a nod and also look at the mute woman. I wonder, would I be able to see through her field with my strengthened eyes? It's quite likely.

Well, if it isn't a great start to the expedition.

As Tess and Leticia talk to Jean, who has that young jerk near him all the time, it's Luna who returns to us, back to her original size.

"You humans are so dumb sometimes." as before, I'm amazed at how she was able to create an organ to make the air vibrate and create words. When she "talks," her mouth is open but not moving, so it's quite eerie.

"Can I pet you?" Lily is unable to resist and asks.

"No."

"Oh." There is a lot of disappointment in her voice.

Luna observes her smartly. "500 shards for one pet," she offers.

"That's too much!" Instead of being surprised, Lily starts bargaining. "Two hundred and I can pet you for five minutes."

"What do you take me for, young girl? I offered because you seem nice, and I thought it might make you more willing to heal me or Leticia in the future. But two hundred? That’s like pulling my whiskers out!"

"I would help you even without that."

Luna looks between me and Lily and then turns back to Lily. "500 and three minutes."

"500 and two times two minutes! Two minutes now and the second set later."

"Deal."

The shards are exchanged, and Lily, with a big smile, reaches her hand to Luna, who sniffs at it and then slightly bows and closes her eyes as Lily puts her hand on top of her head and starts petting her.

Unknowingly to the golden retriever, her tail starts wagging slowly from side to side.

(Yo,) Sophie sends through a private link made with her web.

I can only sigh. (I know.)

Tess, done talking with them, moves with the others towards Tacita, who stands up and runs somewhere else where she sits again, clearly showing no interest in the conversation.

(So the guy who wants to kill me. That boy who you said is a jerk and uses that man as a shield. A weird woman and her talking dog. Mute girl following us like a curious cat.)

(Don't forget Gareth. Tess said he will be here. That man is surely secretly evil. And at this point, it looks like we are missing Savi and another winner of the tournament with his wifey.)

(Well, at this point I'm happy Savant isn't here. I don't think he likes me either.)

(Sucks to have such ability. How was your handler?)

(Surprisingly normal. He gave me some warning to hide my ability and if I get caught to pretend I can manipulate only monsters like some sort of tamer and told me a few more useful things. Don't go to the surface. If you go to the 1st floor, do it with a group only, and beware of groups and contracts and more. What do you think the handlers are?)

(I think either Champions or Absolutes. My handler mentioned there aren't that many of them and each has dozens or hundreds of people they are handlers for and are using some item made by Diligence to be able to do so or have the ability to do it directly.)

Luna barks and finally, Lily stops petting her and starts thanking her. The retriever is able to somewhat keep her dignity still and moves towards where Leticia is, just 500 shards richer.

Maybe Lily really isn’t great with money or shards. I know she got plenty from selling the items I made, but this? And then there are all the clothes and trinkets she picked up in Hollowhole, even trading valuable metals and mana stones for them.

When Jean starts moving towards us, I bring my attention back to him even as Tess gestures it's fine.

Instead of going to Sophie, he just gives her a disgusted look and stops in front of me.

"Don't stand in my way ever again, do you understand?"

He really is looking for a fight.

Even though he’s much taller, I step closer, stopping just an arm's length away—a range that plays more to his strengths and abilities.

"No, I don't understand."

Somewhere in the background, I hear Tess groan and Leticia grabs Jean's arm, but he moves it with ease as if she isn't even holding it and pushes her away.

"I understand loyalty to your friend, and I even respect it. But Noname, as long as I’m breathing, I’ll do everything I can to kill people with abilities like hers."

Each of his words is calm and said with clarity, making me understand that he means each word. But my decision is simple.

"Got it. But let me warn you—lay a hand on anyone in my group again, and you're dead."

Jean nods in acknowledgment, saying nothing more. But even that makes it clear—if it comes down to it, he’ll go through me to kill her, even if it means taking me out too.

Like me, he seems to have his own set of rules he follows.

***

Gareth comes a bit later and apologizes over and over again while introducing himself.

As always he looks like some sort of hero. He has shiny armor, a well-kept short beard and hair, muscular fit body, and even though he is 40-50 years old he seems younger than that and very energetic and fit.

Without any trouble he accepts the presence of a talking dog, greets Tacita, and shakes hands with Jean, all while being pleasantly nice and with his firm but friendly voice.

The man is evil, I can tell. Other than being racist-ish toward anyone not from Earth there must be something else. Humans aren't meant to be that friendly and that... proper looking.

"After we reached the safe zone Savant left and I haven't seen him since. Derick and Noelle also seem to have done something similar," Leticia explains.

That leaves us with ten people, even though I have trouble including Tacita. She is, well... too unpredictable.

"Aren't healers rare?" I ask Leticia.

"They are quite a bit. I met a few groups and they always seemed to be lacking them. Are you talking about our group?" she smiles, quickly understanding why I asked. "If yes, I don't think most of them would consider Lucien or Gareth proper healers. Lucien is either capable of healing only one person at a time or doesn't want to heal that many, and Gareth can heal more people at once but his healing isn't that strong."

To that, I look towards Gareth, who laughs while talking to Jean. Did that silly man already talk about his abilities? Is he dumb?

Waving, Leticia heads over to join Tess and Luna, who are already working on organizing our formations based on our abilities. Meanwhile, Lily stays near Tacita, who eyes her like she’s ready to swat her away in irritation.

I do wonder if other planets also have such expeditions like we do.

***

We enter the 1st floor not much later.

Right away Leticia weaves something out of her mana, similar thing to Sophie's web, but covering a bigger area and not as useful. The only thing it does is detection. Sophie deploys her web as well and Tess stays near her while Lily moves a bit ahead near Gareth.

At the front there is Luna, already as big as a horse and Leticia riding on her back, Jean keeping near.

Tacita, after curiously looking around for a while, is gone from our sight.

When I talk about distances they aren't just a few steps. Often what separates us is the length of multiple football fields. A distance that at this point is nothing to us. We can perceive at that long distance, we can communicate and we can move to help within a few seconds.

Tess, Sophie, and Lily are careful and curious. The new environment making them nervous but intrigued as well. Even though I told them a lot they don't know fully what to expect.

I, on the other side, have experienced this a few times already so I'm not that surprised when five lurkers pop up ahead, a warning from Luna.

Before we can even reach them Jean jumps in and kills two melee fighters, each with a single hit.

One of the three remaining jumps into the air, fleshy wings growing from his back and a mana spear forming in his hand, the spear twice as long as he is, with a blade burning with a blue flame.

Before he can attack, three javelins followed by lightning shoot at him. He blocks the first one with a barrier, but that barrier cracks. The second javelin hits the exact same spot, destroying the barrier and throwing him back until the third javelin pierces accurately through his chest where his heart is.

He falls from the sky motionless.

I look back and with my normal sight, not improved by mana, I barely can see Tess, just a small figure in the distance.

Two remaining lurkers move to the side, speeding up and avoiding Jean as much as possible, only to crash against Gareth who charges at them with his shield, bashing one, followed by a hit with his mace surrounded by that silver light of his.

Lily moves that way herself, a quick change in trajectory, straining her body just to stop the inertia, and when the 5th lurker tries to stop her attack by putting his swords in front of him and surrounding his body with armor made of stone, she adds more strength and her axe smashes through, breaking the arms and denting armor.

Her feet move quickly and she swings that giant axe again and again, using it more like a hammer than something with a sharp blade—as she is still working on actually sharpening it.

When Gareth deals with his lurker we move again, quickly.

A minute later we find a group of lurkers. Six of them and all dead without any signs of putting up a fight. As if they stood there and got attacked before they could defend themselves.

Two of them have stabs through their hearts, one of them with a cut off head, and the remaining three looking as if someone stabbed their brains through their eyeholes.

All their equipment is still there, and it mostly reminds me of a pet proudly dropping a dead bird at its owner’s feet.

***

Next Chapter