Weapons of Mass Destruction

After Tacita waves at me, the field around her reverts to something closer to the one she used back during the tournament. The one we used for more playful forms of training when we weren’t going all out, that same old game where she tries to hide herself and I pierce through the field around her.

Yet, she still managed to hide 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, aimed directly at his eye.

The man freezes at that moment, and I see his muscles tensing. But Tacita doesn't follow through, rather she takes a step back, putting the dagger away and lifting her empty hands, still smiling. She ignores Lily, who’s been waving at her frantically, and instead moves to the side to take a seat, 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 a fool.

"I could have stopped him," Sophie notes as I move to stand next to them.

"I saw him move too, Nat. I don't think I would’ve lost against him." Lily states, tapping the blade of her axe and finally pulling her eyes away from Tacita.

"It's fine. I’m the one who organized it all, so it's only reasonable for me to be the one to stop him. And you shouldn’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 his reaction really wasn’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 that might decide to bolt at any moment. Instead, Lily continues to wave and smile, all while maintaining a gentle, reassuring distance.

"Nat, do you think I could win a fight with Tacita?" she asks curiously.

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

"That many?"

I nod, confirming my statement, and take a moment to give the mute young woman a quick look. I wonder if I might be able to see through her field with my strengthened eyes? It seems likely.

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

As Tess and Leticia talk to Jean, who has that young jerk near him at all times, it's Luna who returns to speak with us, having returned to her original size.

"You humans are so dumb sometimes." Once again, I find myself amazed that she managed to create an organ to project vibrations through the air, much less properly form words. However when she "talks," her mouth simply hangs open unmoving, creating quite the eerie effect.

"Can I pet you?" Lily asks, finding herself unable to resist the temptation.

"No."

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

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

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

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

"I would’ve helped you regardless."

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 out 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.

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

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

I can only sigh. (I know.)

Tess, having finished her conversation with the others, moves with the others towards Tacita, who stands up and rushes to find somewhere else to sit, clearly showing no interest in the conversation.

(So we have that guy who wants to kill me, the boy you said was a jerk using said man as a shield. A weird woman and her talking dog. And a mute girl following us like a curious cat.)

(Don't forget Gareth. Tess said he was going to be here. That man has to be secretly evil. And at this point, it looks like we are missing Savi and one more tournament winner with his wifey.)

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

(It must suck to have such a scummy ability. How was your handler?)

(Surprisingly normal. He gave me some warnings about hiding my ability and he told me to pretend it only works on monsters like some sort of tamer if I get caught and then he told me a few more useful things. Stuff like don't go to the surface. If you go to the 1st floor, make sure you only go with a group, and beware of groups and contracts and more besides. What do you think the handlers are?)

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(I think they’re either Champions or Absolutes. My handler mentioned there weren’t that many of them and each one has dozens or hundreds of people they are handlers for and are using some kind of item made by Diligence to make it all work assuming they don’t have the ability to do so directly.)

Luna barks, finally prompting Lily to stop petting her and offer thanks instead. The retriever manages to somewhat keep her dignity intact and moves over to Leticia, a mere 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, she was 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 that it should be fine.

Instead of going to Sophie, he simply gives her a disgusted look and comes to a stop 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 should play more to his strengths and abilities.

"No, I don't understand."

Somewhere in the background, I hear Tess groan as Leticia grabs Jean's arm, but he pulls it free with ease as if she hadn’t been holding it in the first place and pushes her away.

"I understand loyalty to your friends, 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 stated with utmost clarity, giving the impression that he means each word. But my decision is simple.

"Got it. But I don't care. 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 to live by.

Gareth shows up a bit later and apologizes profusely while introducing himself.

As always he looks like some sort of hero. He has his shiny armor, a well-kept short beard and hair, a muscular and fit body, and despite being between 40-50 years old he maintains that youthful edge, energetic and fit.

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

The man is evil, I can tell. Other than being somewhat interplanetary-xenophob-ish there must be something else. Humans aren't meant to be that friendly and that... well put together.

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

That leaves us with ten people, even though I have trouble including Tacita in that count. She’s just, well... too unpredictable.

"Aren't healers supposed to be rare?" I ask Leticia.

"They are, extremely so. I’ve met a few other groups and they never seemed to have one. Are you talking about our group?" she smiles, quickly understanding why I asked. "If so then 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 have the desire to do more, and Gareth can heal more people at once but his healing isn't really all that strong."

At that, I look towards Gareth, who’s laughing, caught up in a conversation with Jean. Is that silly man already talking 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 might swat her away in a bout of irritation at any moment.

I really do have to wonder if the other planets have expeditions like this too.

We enter the 1st floor not much later.

Right away Leticia weaves something out of her mana, something fairly similar to Sophie's web, though it covers a bigger area and it’s not quite 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 further ahead staying close to Gareth.

At the front of our little pack is Luna, already the size of a horse with Leticia riding on her back, with Jean to keep near watch.

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

When it comes to distance I’m not just talking about a few steps either. Many times we find ourselves separated by the length of multiple football fields. A distance that at this point is nothing to us. We can perceive across those distances with ease, we can communicate without obstruction and we can move to help any of the others within a few seconds.

Tess, Sophie, and Lily are careful and curious. The new environment clearly leaving them nervous and intrigued at the same time. Even though I told them as much as I could, they don't really know what to expect.

I, on the other hand, have experienced this a few times at this point so I'm not that surprised when five lurkers pop up ahead with 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 is about twice as long as he is, with a blade burning with blue flame.

Before he can attack, three javelins trailing lightning shoot through the air heading right for him. He blocks the first one with a barrier, but it cracks. The second javelin strikes the exact same spot, shattering the barrier and hurling him backward. This opens the way for the third javelin to pierce his chest with precision, driving straight through his heart.

He falls from the sky motionless.

I look back and with my normal sight, unmodified by mana, I barely manage to see Tess as a small figure way off in the distance.

The two remaining lurkers move to the side, speeding up to avoid Jean as much as possible, only to crash right into Gareth who charges them with his shield at the fore, bashing one with the blunt instrument, followed by a blow from a mace surrounded in that silver light of his.

Lily moves in that direction 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 positioning his swords out in front of him and surrounding his body with armor made of stone, she adds more strength and her axe smashes through, breaking arms and denting armor.

Her feet move quickly and she swings that giant axe again and again, using it more like a hammer than the bladed implement it is—I guess she’s still working on actually sharpening it.

When Gareth finishes dealing with his lurker we move again, quickly.

A minute later we find a group of lurkers. Six of them, all dead without any sign of struggle. As if they just stood there and got attacked before they could muster any sort of defense.

Two of them have stab wounds through their hearts, one of them clearly fell victim to decapitation, and the remaining three look like someone scrambled their brains through their eye sockets.

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

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