Rise and shine! It's time for another great morning! I quickly get out of bed and look to see who's awake and who's still asleep. Let's see, Aubrey and Freware are up. Cesre's still asleep. Azariah and Inell are also still sleeping, but that's the opposite of surprising.
After that I start my day with a bit of a jog. Doing a few laps, trying to cover a similar amount of distance that I normally did back in Heafdes. After that it's pushups and situps. If I had something to use as weights, I'd be using them as well, but I still can't find anything to use.
Up. "48…" Down. Up. "49…" Down. Up. "50!" I scream as I finally collapse back onto the ground. That was the 50th pushup. With that, my daily workout should be done.
"I've been meaning to ask you, but are you really sure you aren't a member of Diana's cult? Or at least your parents were?"
"For the last time Freware, I'm not a member. I just do this because I can."
"Hm… you train with the fervor of one of Diana's though."
"That just means I'll have a better… uh, affinity? Yeah, a better affinity with her." Azariah taught me the word and what it means for magic in this world. I'm having a bit of trouble remembering all of what she said after that workout, though.
"Yeah, you're right. You know if you want, I'll gladly let you come to my congregation, you'd probably really enjoy it."
Azariah also introduced me to the cults dedicated to all the archons when we were going around saying bye to everybody and we had reached her friends in Kari's cult specifically. I already knew they existed because of information from Heather, but figuring out Azariah was a cultist like that was still really shocking.
I was also really surprised to figure out that it really wasn't all that bad too. I guess the word cult means something different in this world than in my old one. Or at least the feeling that people get from the word is different.
Azariah seemed to be really enjoying herself in the cult and based off of all I've seen, all she really does there is draw and talk with her friends. The guy in charge of her congregation also seemed like a really nice guy. Still don't think that's actually a guy though.
So anyway, should I really accept Freware's offer here? From what I remember Kari was the archon of wind, so his cult tends to be free spirited. I don't have a clue what the cult of the archon of nature gets up to day to day. I should probably wait for more information. I know that Freware's a member, but I'm way too exhausted to ask right now.
"I'll think about it. You'll get your answer later, alright?"
"Yeah, sure, that's fine."
It takes a few minutes before my muscles are willing to let me get up again. I'll have to ask Freware to heal them when I get the chance, like I've been doing.
Azariah and Inell had eventually woken up. I think they both had some sort of conversation with each other but I'm not sure. Azariah had suddenly gotten comfortable enough to ride with us all in the carriage again. She isn't completely back to normal yet, but I'm happy anyway that she's doing better.
Our trip had gone on normally after that, until something happened. Everything had been going like normal until the cart started shaking again. Then we started hearing some loud screeching and Inell and Freware had gotten up at that point ready to fight.
"Driver! Stop the cart! Freware! Cast spatial awareness!" Inell was the first to speak, and both the people he ordered around got right to doing what he said. The cart stopped right then and there, and Freware also cast spatial awareness.
"Inell, what's happening?!" Aubrey yelled, looking like he wanted to get away from here as fast as possible.
"A fight! One huge snake fighting a whole bunch of smaller monsters! The little guys are putting up one hell of a fight too!" Freware yelled, looking like she wanted to join.
"Where's it happening?" Inell asked.
"That direction!" Freware points in a random direction. "About 500 meters! In a forest clearing!"
"Yeah, that explains why I didn't feel anything with my winds." Inell sighs.
"Hey, is it safe here?" Aubrey asks.
"It's far but if the ground is shaking this much from that distance it might be concerning. I'll go check it out real quick." Inell says.
Inell grabs his umbrella and starts to leave the carriage but before he can even open the door Azariah grabs onto some of his clothes.
"Huh?"
"I want to come."
Everyone had a different reaction to Azariah's words there. Cesre didn't seem to care, Freware seemed excited, Inell was just confused, and Aubrey just looked horrified.
"What? Why? I'm just going to be flying over everything and looking?"
"H- hey! Can I come too?!"
"Azariah! Can't you feel this shaking?! Why would you want to get closer?!"
Azariah looks like she's toning everybody other than Inell out as she starts to respond. "I also want to watch. Take me with you."
"Well, I mean as long as you don't do anything rash…"
"Inell!"
"Relax, Aubrey. We'll be flying way too high to get hurt, and I'll make sure that Azariah doesn't do anything stupid."
"Well… but…" Aubrey's desperately trying to think of anything to say but can't.
"Come on, let's go, Azariah."
"Yes."
Inell opens the door to the carriage, opens his umbrella, and they both fly away immediately after stepping out. Man, I'm never going to get used to seeing people fly like that.
Aubrey on the other hand looks like he's about to have a mental breakdown. "Let's follow them."
"I agree with that plan!" Freware yells out all excited.
"Come on, Aubrey. The dragon tamer said that there wouldn't be any problem. There's no need to be so concerned all the time." Cesre says.
"I'm just going to make sure. You guys can feel free to stay here while I go."
"Absolutely not! I'm going too!" Freware blurts out.
Cesre just sighs. "Alright if you two are going I might as well come as well."
"Alright you two, come one then."
"Hey! I'm coming too!" I yell. Aubrey just stares at me concerned.
"Kiaran, you-"
"Come on, you couldn't possibly be worried about me. I can hold my own, you know."
Aubrey just stays silent for a while before finally answering. "Alright you can come, let's go."
You know, Aubrey is actually surprisingly fast. As soon as the four of us left the carriage and started bolting towards the fight at full speed we both left Freware and Cesre in the dust, and Aubrey was actually able to keep up with me. I was not expecting him to be able to move as fast as me at all.
I jog a lot and I've had to run as fast as possible more than a few times in the Ulfur forests, and with Aubrey having comparable speed for some reason we were both able to get to the source of the noise and shaking really fast.
What we both wind up seeing is a really awesome fight straight out of some strange fantasy anime. There's a massive white snake that's like 50 feet wide at some points. The thing's definitely well past 500 feet long. I wouldn't be surprised if it passed the 1000 foot mark. It is probably a bit short of that though.
It's hissing at… a bunch of large frogs? The things would probably come up to my stomach at best, and they're colored black all over. I'm not sure how they could put up any sort of meaningful fight. The white snake is bleeding all over, so they've definitely somehow managed to make it bleed at least. How they pulled that off I have no idea.
The snake then bolts after them to attack them but the ground around the frogs appears to go pitch black, like Azariah's or Memento's hair, and they all quickly jump out of the way. The snake winds up crashing head first into the pitch black spot, but its head goes right through it like it's some kind of portal.
Pitch black tentacles come out of said portal and stab into the snake's neck keeping it down. Then the frogs that dodged out of the way summoned more darkness, but in the air this time. Swords that look like they're made of bone shoot out of the darkness and impale into the snake's body, causing it to bleed even more.
"Ha ha ha ha! A fully grown Storvitor Serpent fighting against an army of Gnostis Rana! What an absolute treat!" Freware yells.
I take my eyes off the fight to realize that Freware and Cesre had finally caught up with us. They're both sweating and panting, and Freware is carrying Cesre on her back. I guess their stamina limits are in completely different dimensions to each other.
"Freware, give me a low down on each." Aubrey says, not even looking back at them.
"Storvitor Serpents are huge snakes that live by the Antisor Mountains and in the Ulfur forests. They're fully grown at 200 years and can live for up to 1000. They rely on their huge size to crush their prey. When that doesn't work they rely on their death stare and their shining scales. Oh, by the way, if you see it start glowing, shut your eyes right away, or else you'll go blind for the next couple hours. Also don't look it in the eyes.
Gnostis Rana are magical frogs that travel and hunt in packs. They have access to a pocket dimension, where they store bones to make weapons out of, and can manipulate darkness. That ability gets stronger the more of them there are in one place. Also their meat is extremely poisonous to most living creatures. Also, their saliva is acidic enough to melt your skin and muscles right off the bone. I wouldn't recommend getting too close."
That's absolutely terrifying! Those things are scarier than the giant snake! Those swords are actually made out of bone?! Imagining them dissolving me and then using my skeleton to make a big giant sword… yeah, I'd rather get crushed to death by the snake.
"So… what do we do?"
"Nothing. If you really want to Cesre or Inell could probably manage to kill the Storvitor, but then you have all the Gnostis Rana to worry about… Oh, they're probably going to lose this fight, too. They took too many casualties right away, they're not able to use their abilities to the fullest with that few of them."
Looking back at the fight, I realize that there's a huge number of frog corpses scattered around. They outnumber the living. From just what I've seen from these things, there's no way I'd be able to put up a fight against them. And they're supposed to be way stronger than this when they're fully numbered? There is just one thing that's bothering me, though.
"Um, Freware, I've had to march into the Ulfur forests once, but I've never seen those frogs. I've seen huge white snakes the size of humans that fit all the descriptions of that giant snake, but I've never seen anything like those frogs."
"The snakes you saw were probably juvenile Storvitors. They take 200 years to reach full size, like I said. As for the Gnostis Rana, they are native to the Ulfur forests, but they're usually nocturnal, and even then they are quite rare."
"They're both from the Ulfur forests though, right? What are they doing so far away from there? We still have quite a while to go before we get all the way over there."
"I mean, a Storvitor coming this far out isn't entirely unheard of, but seeing an army of Gnostis Rana is really weird."
All of a sudden the snake manages to get it's head out of the darkness. It's neck is bleeding all over and it's screaming. The frogs keep throwing bone swords but it doesn't stop struggling. Then it's scales start to glow.
"Shut your eyes!" Freware yells as soon as she catches it.
I immediately shut my eyes and look the other direction. Instead of my vision going dark it goes bright red, like when you close your eyes and look straight at the sun.
Eventually it dies down and I'm able to open my eyes again. Even though I shut my eyes as quickly as possible my eyes still feel hot and I'm still going teary eyed. What a terrifying ability.
It looks like that pretty much wiped out the rest of the frogs. It looks like that flash of light wound up burning them all to crisps. Is it a heat based attack as well? Freware only said that it was a flash of light.
Oh, it looks like there's still a few left. They're all just about burnt so they definitely won't be for very long. The remaining frogs do their best to summon just a bit more darkness, and out of that darkness comes a long, thin bone spear that impales itself right through the snake's neck. Are they trying to take the thing with it? Are they like honey badgers? These things just keep getting scarier and scarier.
The snake wriggles all over the place like it's desperately trying to survive. The bone spear winds up snapping and it crushes the survivors with its massive body. Well, it looks like the frogs lost. The snake's coughing up a lot of blood though so maybe it'll actually be a tie?
The snake eventually stops coughing up blood and starts moving like normal again. I guess it healed itself somehow. Looks like this wasn't a tie, it was just a loss.
Then though, the snake starts turning its head towards us. Its eyes are glowing red, I look away without really meaning to. Then it starts charging at us at full speed, which is surprisingly fast for something so massive. I pull out my scythe as soon as possible, not that it would really do anything to something that size.
"Cesre! Shoot it!" Aubrey yells.
"Time! Time! I need time!" Cesre's a panicked mess.
"Freware! Come with me! We'll hold it off!"
"Right!"
Aubrey and Freware start charging at the giant snake, and I rush in behind them. If it's just buying time we need to do, then between the three of us, I'm sure we can do it!
Before we can do anything though, a wind blade comes down from the sky and crashes right into the snake's neck, decapitating the thing instantly and creating a massive destructive explosion into the ground, blowing dirt and all sorts of other things really high into the sky.
The snake's head got sent flying. It landed with a loud, dull thud and kicked up a bunch more dirt into the air. All of that wound up creating a huge dust cloud around the area the snake died.
"I really thought it was going to just be me and Azariah, I'm not sure why the rest of you are here." That was Inell's voice and it came from above us.
Looking up Azariah and Inell are both flying a little bit above us. Probably about 20 feet. So Inell's the one that decapitated that massive snake in one attack. Yet another person who's leaps and bounds above me. Well, I guess I always knew Inell was strong, just not that strong.
"I was checking to make sure you two were safe." Aubrey says.
"As you can see, both Azariah and I are perfectly fine. If anything, you guys were the only ones who were under any sort of risk. Cesre, stop charging up that lightning spell right now."
"For your information, dragon tamer, I was actually preparing one of Florian's spells! Not Adad's!"
I don't really care about anything anyone's going to talk to here so I decide to go and check out the remains of the battle.
"Hey, I'm going to go check out the corpses. I'll be right back."
"Freware, go with him, don't let him out of your sight." Aubrey says.
"Oh come on, I'm not a kid."
"I agree with Aubrey for once. If any of those Gnostis Rana are still alive, it could be really dangerous for an amateur. We'll talk about this later, Aubrey, let's go and make sure nothing is out of the ordinary. It's really unusual for Gnostis Rana to be east of the Antisor mountains anyway."
"Sure, let's go."
We all begin walking down to the corpse of the giant snake and the frogs. Azariah and Inell finally stop flying and walk down with us.
"Freware, is there anything here that would be particularly valuable?" Aubrey asks.
"The scales of the Storvitor serpent, definitely. Scales that large sell for a small fortune. When one this large dies though, the prices tend to fall because of how much there is available. We'll have to sell them quickly before other adventurers find the body. As for the Gnostis Rana… yeah, they're all probably far too damaged to have anything worth selling on them."
"I understand. Help me pry a couple off then. Everyone else can check where all the Gnostis Rana are."
"No issues there. Oh, I'm doing well enough on my own, by the way. There's no need to split any of the profit from the scales with me." Inell says.
I really want to know how much a "small fortune" is. I wonder how long we'd be able to live off of all that? I wonder if it will be enough to buy my own equipment for myself. I might be able to give this old hand me down back to Ruse.
We eventually reach the remains of the frogs. The smell is absolutely awful. Azariah and Cesre even have to step back. I'm able to endure it because of those events with… Memento, and Inell grew up in the Antisor mountains, so I guess he had some amount of experience with the smell dead bodies give off. So yeah, it's just Inell and I here.
"Careful, every liquid in the bodies of these things are acidic enough to burn your muscles off."
"Yeah, Feware already made that pretty clear."
"So, I can't see any remnants of any magical interference, although I think that Cesre would be better at finding that stuff out than me."
"So no mind control?"
"No, Kiaran, no mind control. It would probably be really difficult to mind control an entire army of Gnostis Rana. Although if it really is Vincent, anything could be possible."
Vincent Boreas. That name leaves a really sour taste in my mouth. Any connection with Memento would be enough to get the same reaction, but being the guy who orders her around only makes the feeling worse.
He had some reason to steal that magic stone, causing Pitiful's men, the Wisefang Manor, and I so much pain. If he's the cause of this monster congregation, and the one that's mind controlling the dragons, Inell's people… I don't know what I'll do. What is that man after?
"Kiaran, just to make sure, you can cast "Spatial Awareness," yes?"
"Oh, yeah. Freware's is way better than mine, though."
"Doesn't matter. Cast it anyway."
"Alright."
Archon of Nature, Diana. Allow me to properly digest the knowledge of everything around me. "Spatial Awareness!"
The impression returns to me of being able to feel everything around me. With my training from Freware, I can increase the distance that I can feel, and I can feel in better detail. I can also control both of those now. I turn down the distance so I can increase the accuracy of "Spatial Awareness."
Something small at 7 o'clock. It's writhing underneath one of the burnt corpses of the Gnostis Rana. I can't detect anything else. I tell Inell all this information as efficiently as possible.
"And nothing else?"
"No."
"Alright then, I'll use my wind to flip the thing over. Keep spatial awareness up."
"Understood."
I point to the dead body I want Inell to turn over, and a strong gust of wind gently rolls the corpse onto its back. It turns out, that the thing I had felt writhing under there, was a baby frog that had no injuries whatsoever. Looking at it now, it looks kind of cute.
I walk over to the thing slowly.
"Be careful." Inell walks beside me.
"Yeah, yeah, I know." It doesn't appear to be running away. I know that I really shouldn't pet it, but I still really want to. It looks wet, and I don't want to burn my hand off, so I'm not going to touch it.
As I'm thinking that though Inell walks right past me, picks the baby frog up and starts petting it. It's the size of a small cat in his arms.
"H-huh?! Hey, isn't that dangerous?!"
"Their skin fluid stops being toxic when they die. The bodily fluids of the babies don't start getting acidic enough to worry about until they start growing up. We still have a few years before it's dangerous. Just to make sure, you really didn't feel anything else with "Spatial Awareness?"
"No, I didn't, I'm sure of it."
"This one's the only survivor then. The question now is what we're planning on doing with it."
"What'll happen to it if we leave it here?"
"I don't know, you'll have to ask Freware for that."
We meet back up with Azariah and Cesre before heading back to Aubrey and Freware. Inell and I explain all of what we've found to Freware, asking for her opinion.
"Hm… well, if we leave it here, it's definitely going to die. One Gnostis Rana isn't going to be able to use its racial abilities enough to be able to survive. There definitely won't be any more armies around here, and even if there were they won't let strays in."
"Hm… it would be a shame to let this little one die, but I'm not sure what to do with it." Inell says, still carrying the little thing.
"I'll take care of it." I say.
"What? Is that really going to be OK?" Aubrey asks.
"Yeah, as long as he trains the thing it shouldn't get dangerous. He'll need a license to keep the thing as a pet, but I could help him get one through Diana's cult really easily. Who knows, give it a few years and it could be quite the battle asset." Freware says.
"Um… Inell told me just how dangerous these things are… I'm not so sure about-"
"Don't worry Azariah, I agree with Freware. It's just a baby right now, and as long as Kiaran trains it right, it won't be any problem." Inell says.
"Yeah, I actually want to see what Kiaran can do with the pocket dimension of the Gnostis Rana. I think they could make quite the good duo." Cesre says.
"Well if you put it like that… I guess I would like to see what Kiaran can do with it."
"Thank you, Azariah!" Now that Azariah's switched over, it looks like Aubrey is the only one left I really have to convince. Aubrey's my main obstacle here, so hopefully he respects Azariah's opinion. If that isn't enough though, I'll have to come up with a name soon so that he gets attached to it.
"Um… alright, fine. I'll let you keep it, Kiaran." Yes! I succeeded! OK… even if Aubrey's fine with letting me keep it, it still needs a name. What should I pick?
We made our way back to the carriage after that. As we continued our journey, Freware gave me the basic rundown on beast taming, the needs this baby Gnostis Rana is going to have, how to become a registered beast tamer, and pretty much everything having to do with their biology that Freware had happened to know.
Also, it's a girl. I named her Shirley. Azariah seemed to like that name, but everyone else seemed pretty indifferent. Whatever, as long as Azariah likes it.