Mined Games chapter 34

We spent the next week training. I made about a five crystal coins in mining (not counting what I’d spent on crystals and supplies to stock up for the trip), and picked up a few new potions to hand off to Tara, though I didn’t manage to get in touch until right before we left for the expedition, and even then it was only a message through Olivia that she was swamped with spell training at the tower. Cece and I took a few more jobs, but sadly not enough to afford any of the nicer spells I was hoping to pick up.

Of the snake crystals we brought back (a total of nine) eight of them were repeat crystals only worth two points, and one was a ten pointer with a brand new spell on it. I’d tried analyzing them before handing them over, but I wasn’t familiar enough with structure to guess what they did. Maddie taught me about the mana lattice for poison though, and all the spells unsurprisingly used it.

The other jobs didn’t even go THAT well, and I ended up with a total of forty four points to my name, and only that because Maddie had given us some free advice on which jobs we were suited for.

Which meant we’d officially done all the preparations we could as we stepped into Professor Teresa’s class on the day of the expedition. We’d spent the last week training with our arrow spells and a mana neutral shield spell Professor Teresa had taught us, and had gotten to see a few crystal beasts she’d brought in to class to demonstrate how they worked.

Now it was the day of the test, and we were heading out together into the wilderness. Annika had actually come over to ask about working with us, as had Duval, and after double checking with Cecily I happily invited them to work with us. I was a bit suspicious of Duval, since the antisocial man usually wouldn’t bother working with anyone, but I couldn’t really assume anything given how big a deal this whole thing was.

Instead of leading us directly to our testing locations though, Professor Teresa  passed us all the same kind of maps Beatrice had given us and told us to find our own way. It made sense that this part of the test would be about self sufficiency, given how much autonomy they gave us normally. I was pretty sure they were watching us somehow, just to be safe, but this wasn’t a problem for us anyway given the missions we’d already done.

“Alright.” I told the others as we walked towards the treeline, spreading out from the teams. “We’ve done this a few times, so we know how to safely move around.” I saw Dalton split off with a few classmates I didn’t know and decided to do the smart thing and go in another direction. The maps showed us the danger zones, and Cecily and I had learned from Maddie how to move through the woods off the paths safely as long as we had an up to date map.

Annika nodded. “Yeah, I’ll follow your lead. I haven’t had a chance to do any jobs yet. I don’t know about Duval.”

He just shrugged. “Not so far. I’ve been a bit busy. What kind of crystal beasts are in the territory we’re headed for by the way. I don’t think I ever asked.” He didn’t sound too worried, which made sense since he had metal type mana based on his arrow spell. Metal mana was excellent for defensive spells, and Ducal had the best shield out of anyone I’d seen in class.

“Weasels.” Said Cecily flatly. “Weasels that scream. We’ve dealt with them before. Not on an actual mission, but we’ve passed through the territory.”

I chuckled. “They’re Stoats actually. Sonic Stoats. But yeah, tiny rodents with sound based attacks. They hide in trees and heavy foliage and attack from ambush. We only caught the edge of their territory though, our…mentor, warned us to avoid the deeper reaches. They have a few tier threes in there."

Cecily shook her head. "We're safe from those. The territory we're heading for isn't the entire Stoat claimed area, just a portion. If there had been tier threes they would have chased them out. We'll still be dealing with plenty of threat, but not nearly as bad as it could be."

Despite her reassuring words, Annika and Duval looked uncertain. We shot each other an amused glance, but otherwise said nothing.

Over the next few hours we set about proving to our companions that we knew what we were doing. After so many runs out here we never even needed to speak aloud about our plans. Cecily knew when to use her Thermal Vision and I knew when to use Blink and my Spatial arrow to distract something that might be a threat. We made excellent time getting to the Stoat region.

Our new teammates seemed to pick up on how efficient and practiced we were too, because as we went they seemed to get more comfortable and proceeded to open up to us a bit more.

Of course, for Duval that meant more sarcasm and annoying comments, but Annika was a delight to have out here, always with a happy smile and a positive comment, all without going overboard and becoming an overly cheery nuisance. Even her teasing was light and good natured, and I found myself thrilled to have such an upbeat companion to balance out Duval's cantankery.

When we finally reached the Stoat zone, we all stopped, scoping out the area past the dividing line suspiciously. The Stoats were ambush predators, which made them pretty much impossible to spot without careful observation. It would have been pure stupidity to go in unprepared and get jumped. I glanced to Cece, who was scanning the treeline with her thermal vision.

My partner was carefully vetting every spot with her heat detection spell to make sure we didn’t get ambushed from behind. After a minute or two she pointed slowly at a tree about fifteen feet inside the territory, up on the left hand side of the upper branches.

I nodded, lifting my knife and weaving the mana before launching a Spatial arrow. I’d used some serious magic today, but I’d been resting between spells to recover and there had been large gaps of time, so I wasn’t quite as worn out as I could be.

There was an enraged squeal as a flash of light punched through the branches hiding the Stoat and slammed into the thing, knocking it off its perch. A pair of arrows, one fire and one metal, slammed into the falling creature in succession even as it plummeted to the ground, and it was dead before it hit the dirt.

Once Cece nodded her confirmation we all surged forward, snagging the weasel. I had the others wait while I sat down and dissected the creature, retrieving the stone and then separating the meat, bones, and hide so I could learn as much as possible about them.

Annika and even Duval looked sick at the sight, and I understood, but I at least tried to explain. “An understanding of the weasel musculature and bone structure could help a ton in battle, and it helps us learn their weak points.” I drew a picture of the thing in the dirt. “Like see right here.” I traced an arrow to a spot in the middle of the weasel’s back. “This is a blind spot and a gap in the bones. Stab or perforate right here at a forty five degree angle and you can slip your blade directly into the heart.”

It was a bit gruesome, but Cecily stepped in to confirm the necessity. “We’re mages, and hunting crystal beasts is our largest source of income out here on the border. I know it’s morbid, but you guys need to get used to this kind of thing. We’re going to need to get accustomed to blood and death out here, unless we want first hand experience.”

Duval nodded, his face still a bit green. “Sure. Right. Gotta make with the murder before the animals all murder us.”

“But…” Annika said unhappily. “It was so cute.” Which made me wince. Snakes had turned out to be an easier kill than most things we ran into. Smaller animals tended to be lower ranked, and since we were just starting we dealt with tiny and cute things far too often.

As for the Stoats…they were cute. Fuzzy long bodied rodents with black fur and red eyes, they had fairly adorable faces, though their oversized razor sharp teeth were so big they literally kept their mouths from closing, which was pretty horrible.

Cecily gave her a sympathetic look. “I know, we usually aim for less adorable enemies, but this is our assigned area. We just need to bear with it ok?”

Annika gave a slow, unhappy nod, her face twisted with misery in a way that made me feel like a monster, but I brushed it off. This sucked, I knew it, it was bloody and awful, but it was what our lives were, and we had to stick it out or get killed.

Slipping the crystal into my inventory, I wondered what kind of spell it was. I’d checked briefly, but it was incomprehensible. Even the mana type, which I assumed was sound, was strange to me, so I had no chance of figuring out the rest of it, especially not with my terrible foundations in Mana Control.

We moved further in, leaving the bones behind because they were pointless, and resumed out search for Stoats. We hadn’t been given much instruction for the expedition. We had three days, and during that time we had to collect as many crystals as possible from nearby animals.

The Stoats weren’t a requirement, but we’d have to find other animals here to hunt if we wanted to change it up, and given the number of those little bastards running around it seemed unlikely they would leave anything else alive long term. This wasn’t EXACTLY what I’d been expecting based on Alec’s description, but that could just be assumptions on my part, or they could have changed the test.

We found another six Stoats in short order, and through careful planning managed to take them out without alerting any nearby packs or getting too badly injured. It was all going pretty fantastically actually…until the seventh.

Engaging the last Stoat was a breeze. Same as the others we detected it, lined it up, and I took my shot. It should have been hit and knocked flying, and since they didn’t have wings that left it vulnerable to followups from Duval and Cece. Annika still wasn’t ok with attacking the cute little things, so we let her hang back, but we were still on a roll.

But when I shot down the second,there was a shift in the tree it was on as it fell. Something had knocked it off balance, and somehow the damned plant had rotted from the roots beforehand and toppled fully over. The massive smash echoed loudly through the forest, and I winced as I looked across the huge tree to where Annike and Duval were standing, frozen in fear.

Cecily tapped my shoulder and pointed to the literal CROWDS of the things emerging from behind us. “Run!” I bellowed to our teammates, and then grabbed Cece’s hand and bolted off into the woods. I didn’t have time to check for directions or read the map, I just ran, hoping we weren’t about to get eaten alive by fucking screaming weasels.

As we ran, blasts of sound smashed into the trees, stripping the bark and blowing holes in the wood. We turned left and right, and I even used Blink once, casting it internally to let me shape it better and desperately forcing the spell to cover both of us. When we finally got away, exhausted, sore, but mainly unhurt, I looked around, panting, and froze. I didn’t recognize this area, but I could tell one thing. We’d gone deeper. We were in the center of Stoat territory, and there were things here we definitely couldn’t survive.