I said nothing, just took her hand, and we fell into the air. I stopped us at around ten miles up, and we looked around. There were what appeared to be extremely colorful mountain ranges moving in the distance. Closer in, I saw relatively tiny red, blue, and gray figures fighting each other, what almost looked like ants, and smashing what looked like a bubbles of air.
"Those mountains..." Robin murmured in awe. "They're dragons! Those figures must be fire, ice, and stone giants. At least it appears that there are cities that don't have overloaded wards. Yet." She turned to me. "We need to help the warded areas first. They may be the last bastions of humanity."
I nodded. Assuming she meant the bubbles, I constructed a gravity slide, this time with a loop around built in to break our momentum. While it might be exhilarating in a way to catch us last minute, I didn't want to ruin our entrance by getting stuck in the ground if I messed up.
We shot towards a flickering bubble. While it wasn't the closest, it had the largest number of giants clustered around it. As we got close enough to map the area, System put a counter of demons in the area on the top left of my vision. Fifty goblins, twenty giants, and there were even thirty beastmen! This was new.
I whipped out my guns and started to shoot at the giants on the periphery of the encirclement, and giving the slugs a good telekinetic shove to make up the range difference. Not all hit the monsters, but enough did to down three of the twenty giants. My guns glowed brilliantly as they fired slugs and sucked mana, making me wonder if I should make them stealthier. Not at this point, I decided, that would detract from the coolness factor of firing two blazing white shotguns. Maybe I could make a stealthy sniper rifle, though.
I looked towards where the beastmen were marked on the map. I saw ten of them, pretty much as I envisioned. They were basically humanoid animals, cats and dogs restructured to stand on hind legs and hold weapons. Nothing provocative about them, unless one had rather disturbed proclivities. They were growling at the goblins, and what was this? They were sheperding them away from a prone figure hiding behind a glowing black bubble.
It made a sort of sense, from what I could glimpse from their alien minds. They wanted all forces concentrated on breaking the bigger, juicier target. What is one mana reservoir, no matter how big, compared to the varied buffet from the big collection of food in the city? I still thought it was stupid to ignore a possible threat at their backs, but they might actually have been born yesterday, so I couldn't assume too much intelligence from these monsters.
I altered our fall slightly, and as our last revolution around the siege started to complete, I warned Robin. "Let's kill them all! Though I want to rescue that mage over there first."
She gripped her sword. We really needed some sort of sheath or scabbard for her. I felt her wonder if this would be the next member of the harem. I was assuming so, based on the extremely odd situation, but I guess I could be wrong. "I'll get the goblins, you handle the beastmen. Be careful, they're twice as fast and four times as strong as a goblin!" They were also forty feet tall. This will be fun.
We hit the ground running. Robin ran into the goblins, hamstringing them as she went. The way they fell to the ground in her wake was reminiscent of a bowling ball through bowling pins. I ran towards the beastmen, who were looking hairier than ever close up, and started blasting them in half. It was extremely gruesome, with their abdomens swirling around until they tore away from their waists and chests. Despite them being faster than goblins, they were even easier to hit due to them being twice their size. Their speed did not scale well.
Robin ran back toward me, slicing goblins apart on her away. I felt the magic flow through our weapons as the monsters dissolved, and turned towards our rescuee. Dark purple eyes stared wide eyed out at me from under long jet black hair. Then the ward was dispelled, and I realized that the hair was white, the eyes a brilliant violet, and the skin fair. The person rose and bowed to us.
"Thank you for your rescue, Hero." said a soft, lilting voice. "I am Ely, a wandering healer." This one had an exotic beauty. I couldn't keep my eyes off the beautiful face, or not jerk to attention at that mesmerizing voice. Was I under some kind of mental influence? Yes, but only a little, just enough to emphasize the beauty before me. Extremely subtle, but it was good I caught it early on before it made me obsesss over this seducer.
I reached out with my mind, intending to put this mind bender down, when I got interrupted by the galoomphing steps of four one hundred feet high red fire giants. I continued anyways with my probing and squeezing of the newcomer's mental defenses, causing the other's mind to flinch and withdraw. This Ely did not have strong mental powers; only enough to win friends and influence people.
I split my attention to Robin. "Robin, go hamstring them please. I'll back you up by exploding their heads."
Robin raced off toward the fire giants. I kept an eye on her situation while I gently pried Ely open. Wow, it was messed up. Ely had started as a farm boy, but when he discovered he had a gift for mana sense and manipulation, he decided to become the highest paid of the mage occupations, a flesh mage. He started experimenting with the animals and crops of the farm, but was banned from doing so after he messed up and caused them to turn bright purple. He wouldn't experiment on other humans due to his personal ethics, so he started modifying himself.
Robin had now brought the giants to their hands and knees. I fired twice with both guns, and watched in satisfaction as their heads swirled into a gory mess. Then they dissolved and were sucked into my guns and the sword. I'm loving the instant cleanups! As Robin strutted back to my side, I turned my full attention on the pale Ely. Since he had dared to use mental influence on me, I would not hold back.
At first, things seemed to be going great. He exercised his brilliant mind to learn how to best strengthen his strength and durability, and even modified his features to be more attractive to the local girls. There were a few mistakes, such as when he had accidentally made his arms as long as his legs, but they were quickly remedied by a swift reversal.
That's when a local siren by the name of Carol got her hooks into him. He started getting uncontrollable urges to visit her, even when he was busy with the odd patient who was willing to risk an apprentice in flesh magic healing him. Each time he felt the call, he quickly finished his job and rushed to her, and each time she was waiting for him, like she was expecting him, because of course she was.
The third time this happened, Ely started to suspect foul play. He paid extra careful attention to his body functions, and noted that parts of his brain and certain glands were being stimulated, though not with magic. He pondered the implications after the frenzy that occured when he visited the siren, and concluded that there was some sort of mutation in her body that gave her special mental powers.
Mutated humans were a rarity. It not only required an extremely high mana density to be present at conception, but the baby had to be fantasized about by both parents in order to give intent to the mana. The fact that Carol became a siren was almost certainly deliberate, because that meant both her father and mother had thoughts about their unborn daughter seducing men during conception in a high mana environment. This made me realize that alot of people may take the opportunity to conceive powerful children before I lowered the density levels on this world. Spagetti may find himself with an X-Men world in fifteen years.
Anyways, Ely had a not so brilliant idea. He should scan her and see if he couldn't replicate her mutation. While using magic on another was considered an attack, he figured that Carol had started it by mentally manipulating him. He used his magic to rejuvenaate his stamina and continue his time with the siren. When he touched her, he started to send pulses of magic into her body, and began mapping her body. At first, she struggled, so he held her down. Then Carol consciously started to use her power on him. He tried to concentrate through the haze that began to develop, and was able to identify the areas of her body she was using for the effect, before everything devolved into a frenzy once more. This time, Carol passed out by the time he was finished with her, and he was able to complete his scan.
That's when he realized that he'd been running it the whole time, and that he hadn't been in control. Uncontrolled spells are tricky things, and this one was focused where he was, on her mutations and on where he had his way with her. As he kept pumping more mana into the spell, it spread through Carol and then Ely through their physical connection. Then it accepted both of their subconscious thoughts. Each wanted to be more like the other; Ely wanted to mutate for the purpose of defense from sirens, while Carol wanted to be physically strong and on the other side of their intimate sessions once in a while. So the spell did both; Carol became more masculine and muscular while still retaining her female specialness, while Ely got more feminine and a lesser version of the siren mutation while still retaining his male dignity. In short, they became two hermaphrodites that looked like extremely beautiful siblings. Since Ely did not know exactly what it did to change them, he/she was not able to safely undo it.
Ely stayed to discuss the changes with Carol, but after she woke up, Carol only wanted to fight with Ely. How dare he use magic on her! When he pointed out she was influencing his mind first, she didn't believe him. It turned out that the siren mutation was a passive, and her knowledge of him coming was more because when she wished for things like that, it always came true.
It took Ely using his lesser mutation on her for her to acknowledge what she had been doing to everyone. While she wanted to feel a little guilty, she didn't have time before their mutations seemed to sync and another frenzy of intimacy ensued. Fortunately, the new secondary organs were above the primary ones, and so they fitted together like they wouldn't be able to with anyone else anymore. Then they both passed out from their exertions.
I stopped my summary and took an existence scan of Ely. "System, upload that to the VMD. When we find Carol, we'll need to add her to the file. This is big! Ely accidentally made two new genders! Ok, technically they're both hermaphrodites, but they are custom made for each other! This will come in handy later."
I got a sense of System not entirely understanding yet as I focused back on Ely's story. Ely and Carol decided that they should get married after much discussion. They lived on a farm about a mile away, and Ely had been out on a walk when the monsters attacked in earnest. Ely was trying to use his/her siren powers to convince us to help Carol when I found him out and mind probed him.
I turned to Robin. " We need to clear out this area, but dive bombing them all seems inefficient. Let's go pick up Ely's partner and then we will board the Monster Crusher!"