Chapter 162: Nerves

Dark light shone from Jadis’ Cold Flame armor, warping the sun’s rays so that her three selves appeared as beacons on a shadowed day. The eyes of every twisted wretch could not help but turn towards her, their attention drawn like moths to a burning fire. And like a fire, Jadis burned through the hapless demons with relentless ferocity.

Syd’s lance skewered a wretch that had once been a horse, lifting the twelve-hundred-pound distorted body several feet into the air before slamming it down into the dirt with bone-jarring force. She pinned it there, holding the wildly flailing demon in place until she heard a twang and saw the crossbow bolt pierce into the corrupted creature’s neck. The shot wasn’t enough to kill the struggling abomination, but that wasn’t the point. So long as Sabina was contributing, Jadis’ goals were achieved.

“Keep it up!” Syd called back to the reloading half-elf. “You’re doing great!”

“This is terrifying!” Sabina screamed back as she shouldered her weapon and readied another shot.

For their second power-leveling foray, Sabina had come more prepared, at least in terms of equipment. She had put on a breastplate, vambraces, and greaves, giving her a far more martial appearance, though oddly she had still elected to wear her leather smithing apron.

Maybe it was a comfort thing?

She’d also brought a crossbow. She still had her hammer and shield, but those remained strapped to her side and back , respectively. The crossbow had become her primary method of offense, which Jadis thought suited the woman. Even though Sabina was, by dint of her trade, a well-muscled individual with broad shoulders and strong arms, she wasn’t much of a melee combatant. She seemed to panic whenever she got too close to the demons, causing her swings to go wide. But at a moderate distance, using a crossbow, she did much better.

Another twisted wretch, this one a deformed parody of a goat, came charging towards Syd. With no time left to let Sabina try to finish off the first, Syd finished the wounded demon off by putting her boot down on its head, crushing its skull like a grape. In the next moment, she backhanded the charging goat-demon, knocking the much smaller monstrosity to the side. With another lightning-quick move of her lance, she skewered that demon too and, twisting around, she presented the vile thing to the smith.

“Try this one,” she said, holding the still-living demon up in front of Sabina.

“Okay!” Sabina shouted back before firing her crossbow. “But I might need to throw up soon!”

Despite Sabina’s dire predictions, her bolt still struck true and put an end to the wretch’s stolen life.

Turning back to face the fore where the bulk of the battle raged, Syd tossed the lifeless husk towards the screeching mob of demons, bowling a couple of them over with the force of her throw. An easy opening for her other selves to take advantage of, which they did with coordinated efficiency.

With her charge placed with her back to the cliff-side wall of a broken hill, Jadis was able to mostly focus on attacking the small horde of demons that she’d baited into attacking her. Syd stood in front of the smith, catching anything that made it past Jay and Dys, but there weren’t many that did. Even with twenty-five twisted wretches hurling themselves at her, Jadis was able to handle their attacks easily thanks to the heavy armor she wore. And with her ever-increasing strength, she had no trouble dispatching the numerous horrid creatures with brutal proficiency. The only trouble the wretches gave her were the bile breath and gas bubble spells that a few of the demons were capable of casting. The gas in particular was effective against her defenses, since there was nothing her armor could do to stop the noxious fumes from getting to her lungs, but even with that to contend with Jadis was able to tank the damage due to her prodigious max health value.

If they were able to find this many demons roaming the hills every day, Jadis was certain that she’d be able to get Sabina to level twenty in no time.

The border had proved once again to be the best place for Fortune’s Favored to find demons to battle, though on this day they stayed away from the still-standing forts. A few miles from where the Broken Hills transitioned into the Great Southern Forest, Jadis and her companions had set up a rally point on top of one of the taller hills. From there, Jadis had spotted a clot of shambling forms moving through a valley and had rushed straight for it, carrying only Sabina with her. Everyone else had remained behind, as previously discussed, to keep watch for more demons. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean Jadis was alone with Sabina.

Noll squatted like a furry gargoyle on the slope of a nearby hill, watching the battle unfold. He was far back; further far back than Jadis had expected him to be, which gave her hope that his presence was beyond the point wherein he would affect experience point distribution. He was still a constant presence, however. Jadis could practically feel his eyes on her as she attacked the wretches.

It took a few minutes, but the fight ended eventually. With more than two dozen demons dead on the ground, Jadis felt both accomplished and a little weary at the thought of having to butcher the broken bodies for their demonic cores. That particular part of the job was not her favorite.

A shout of excitement from Sabina lightened her mood significantly, however.

“Seventeen!” she said, dancing around while pumping her fists into the air. “I hit level seventeen!”

“Nice!” Jadis clapped her metal-plated hands in clanging congratulations. “That’s awesome! Did you get a good skill?”

“I did get a good skill actually it’s a mainstay of any smith because it’ll help me with the purity of metal that I craft with which is important since if you get the purities wrong it can lead to brittle or weak steel which would be awful to spend so much time on a piece and then it ends up flawed because I misjudged the mix but this skill will make that far less likely to happen and it’ll be super useful when if I get to work with rarer alloys like Orichalcum or Faden’s Crux or Moon Silver or anything like that which who knows if I will but if I do it’ll be awesome and I don’t want to make any mistakes with something so valuable and important and gods it’s all thanks to you—ow!”

The final exclamation was one of pain as Sabina suddenly lunged forward to hug Syd, resulting in a rather loud clunk as she knocked her head against the thick metal of Syd’s armor.

“Sorry!” Syd apologized, crouching down and lifting her visor to look at Sabina. “Are you okay?”

“Yes! I’m fine,” she said while rubbing the side of her head, face all scrunched up. “Not the first time I tried to hug someone in full armor…”

Jadis laughed, easily picturing the perky half-elf pulling that same move with frequency.

“We’ll save the hugs for after I’m out of this armor, okay?”

Sabina smiled at Syd, her face back to bright and cheery.

“I’ll hold you to that!”

Spirits high, Jadis and Sabina got to work extracting the cyclopean eyeballs from the true bodies of the demons that had infested the poor specimens of local wildlife to transform them into twisted wretches. As she cut the corrupted flesh open, her eyes checked for Noll to see if he was still watching from a distance or if he was coming to join her. Much to Jadis’ surprise, the therion was gone.

Raising her heads to look in all directions, she found no sign of the older merc. He had left the scene, disappearing with a quiet ease that surprised Jadis.

Well, that was fine by her. She hadn’t expected the man to help with the dirty part of the job. And if he had decided he’d had enough of watching her and left early for the day, even better. If she was really lucky, he’d already be on his way back to town and wouldn’t be darkening her doorstep again.

Returning some time later to the rally point she’d set with the rest of her guild, Jadis realized she’d not been so lucky. Noll was there, picking his teeth with a clawed hand.

“Back already?” Eir asked, walking up to the quartet with a smile on her beautiful face. “How did the hunt go?”

“It went well, Sabina reached level seventeen,” Syd told her.

Politely waiting for Eir to finish giving her congratulations to the smith, Jay continued.

“We could use some healing,” she said, her voice unusually raspy. “Breathed in some of that noxious gas stuff.”

“Oh my,” Eir worried, her smile turning to a frown. “I had better check for poisons or diseases, too. Those spells the wretches cast can carry all kinds of maladies.”

Eir quickly and easily healed Jadis back up to maximum health and confirmed that she had not contracted any illnesses from breathing in the rancid fumes the wretches expelled just by touching Jay. However, since neither Sabina nor Noll knew about Jadis’ true nature, Eir checked on Dys and Syd as well, “healing” them to keep up the act.

With her healing done, Dys let Eir move away to fuss over Sabina and turned to see Aila and Thea walking back up the hill.

“Hey!” she called out to the two with a wave of one hand. “Where’s Kerr?”

Both waved back, though Aila was the one to answer.

“She’s scouting,” the mage said as soon as she got near enough that she didn’t need to shout. “She saw a few wretches to the east, a small group. She’s going to lead them towards my traps.”

One of the reasons why Jadis felt safe leaving her companions alone on the hill were the lines of arcane traps Aila had laid around the base of the slope. Any demons that might stumble across their camp would be in for some deadly surprises when they triggered Aila’s force spells.

“There she is now,” Aila said after a moment, pointing out the distant figure.

Kerr’s dark form sprinted along the slope of a nearby hill, heading for where the rest of them stood watching. As she neared the base of their slope, she came to stop and turned to face the way she’d come. Her giant longbow in hand, she nocked and drew an arrow, then let it loose a second later. Jadis barely had a chance to register what she was aiming at when a boar-like twisted wretch that had just crested the slope Kerr had come from was shot in the chest, the single arrow enough to fell the demon as its body tumbled forward in a heap.

Another seven wretches followed after, but Kerr was already up the hill, having bypassed the traps Aila had laid and was nearing the top.

“Need any help?” Dys called out to Kerr as the archer approached. She was given the expected response.

“Fuck no! You think I can’t handle a few wretches? I’m just bringing them here so I don’t have go as far to gather the bodies.”

At that moment, the half-dozen demons reached Aila’s traps.

Several were killed outright as three-foot-long force spikes thrust up into their legs and bodies from below. Others were crippled by the spikes while a few more were pinned in place by her snare trap variety of spell. Only one wretch managed to make it past the line, and that one made it only a few steps before an arrow from Kerr struck it with enough force to go all the way through its body. A second later the demon collapsed like its strings had been cut.

“Like I need help with a handful of demons,” Kerr scoffed. “I could have killed all of those fucks in the time it would take you just to get down there. Need help my ass.”

Dys just rolled her eyes at Kerr’s exaggerated show of grousing.

“Since you’re here, want to finish those ones off?” Aila asked Sabina while motioning towards the trapped and crippled wretches.

Sabina readily agreed, even if she did look a little green at the prospect. She, Aila, and Thea went down the hill to finish the job. As they did, Jadis turned her attention back on Noll.

The man was standing off to one side, arms folded as he stared northward. Again, Jadis had some trouble reading his expression, but he honestly looked more bored than anything else. That made sense enough to Jadis. The man was supposedly over a hundred levels higher than her or anyone else in her group except for Kerr, and even then, he was still ninety-eight levels over her. Seeing them fight demons that were probably so below his skill level he could have slain them in his sleep couldn’t have been much fun for the man.

“Noll,” Dys nodded to the therion as she took up a spot next to him, her own arms crossed in a mirror of his stance.

He grunted, not looking up at her, his gaze still turned northward.

“So? Feel like you’ve had enough watching us yet?” she asked after a moment of silence. “Or do you need to see more before you report back to your boss?”

“He’s not my boss,” Noll growled back. “And yes, I’ve had enough. I can only watch you three pups flounder for so long before I can’t take anymore.”

“Excuse me?” Dys said, her head turning to look down at Noll. He steadfastly continued to not turn her way.

“You heard me,” he replied roughly.

“We don’t fucking ‘flounder’,” Dys snapped back.

“Sure you don’t,” Noll let out a huffing laugh.

“What’s your fucking problem?” Dys demanded, turning fully to face the man. “If you’ve got something to say then just say it.”

Her exclamation was loud enough that Eir and Kerr had turned to look at the commotion, but Jadis didn’t care. Noll’s dismissive attitude had gotten under her skin. That he continued to just stare off into the distance, ignoring her demand just made her anger peak even higher.

“We just took out over two dozen twisted wretches by ourselves,” she said, looming over the shorter warrior. “How the fuck is that ‘floundering’ to you?”

“Because you’re a brute,” Noll finally growled back at her, his head turning slightly so his yellow eyes met her violet ones. “Those wretches were brutes. You three are brutes. You three were the stronger brutes, so you won. Fight someone with half a brain and you’ll be outclassed. So yes, you three flounder.”

“Are you calling us stupid?” Dys asked, her face a thundercloud.

“I’m calling you ignorant.”

“Fuck you!”

“Fuck yourself.”

Jadis fumed. Something about the way Noll so calmly insulted her was driving her up a wall. She knew she should be wary around the man. He was at a far, far higher level than her. Probably closer to the same level as Vraekae, and that elf scared the crap out of Jadis. For all she knew, Noll was stronger than the Magistrate. Yet he was absolutely getting under her skin in a way that made her forget all caution. His rude criticism just made her want to shove his long nose into the dirt with how wrong he was.

“Okay then,” Dys said, leaning down towards the calm therion. “If you’re so good, then show me what we’re doing wrong. Spar with me. See what I can really do.”

“Hmph,” Noll made a noise in his throat. “Why should I?”

“You’re really going to talk shit and then back off like a little bitch?” Dys asked, her voice falsely sweet. “I guess ‘Noll the Savage’ doesn’t have the guts to back up his mouth.”

Noll’s eyes narrowed as he looked up at Dys, his lips peeling back to reveal his sharp white teeth.

For a brief moment, the thought went through Jadis’ mind that she might have just done the stupidest thing she’d ever done in her life.

“Fine,” Noll said, his growling voice even harsher than before. “But you better go get your sisters, little whelp. You’ll need them.”

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