Inside of an oval room made from thin pieces of wood lay Elijah, along with several other hunters who had been injured. While being conscious, he noticed a beautiful lady with dark eye bags standing close to him while saturating his muscles with healing water magic. This was not Alexia nor Emelia, but a simple yellow cored woman who had definitely been here for some time.
"I can tell you are awake." she said with a monotone voice. Her scrappy brown hair was tied in a bun.
"I know. I am just observing how you are using water magic to heal me."
The lady who Elijah could not guess her age spoke. "What happened to you?"
"I got thrown into a wall." Elijah had to lie through his teeth. He had no idea if this was some taboo practice, but either way it was extremely destructive to the body.
She sighed at his response, and calmly looked at the people walking inside the building.
Greetings were made between the party members and the healer, while she explained that Elijah will make a full recovery. This type of injury required her to use a lot of control to piece together the bones and muscle tissue that were fractured, broken, and torn. If this was to be looked at underneath a microscope, it would look like this entire right side was crushed by a boulder.
Elijah stood up and felt his heart start to beat faster. "What is your name?"
The lady gave a slight smile. "Yela."
Elijah walked off with his party slowly, as he received pats on his back, only this time to not receive an onslaught of pain coursing through his right side. Novius played it like some type of joke.
The party was stopped on a walkway to the building where Andal resided. "I'm sure you all feel that right?" Novius asked.
Everyone nodded, and suddenly dropped to the floor. Tremors were heard coming from the floating structure. There were thick metal ropes that went from the ceiling to the metal guard that Elijah thought acted as the foundation for this tree-like stronghold. Instead, the metal foundation fell unceremoniously to the floor after the metal wires all disconnected.
A blaring wind sound that was accompanied by metal scraping against stone reverberated through the cavern. All of which were outshined by the bright lights emitted on the edges of the cavern from metal being torn apart. What followed were a cacophony of hoarse high-pitched screams.
BAM!
Anything that was previously on ground level, had been squashed into nothing. The trees, rocks, and most importantly, the beasts.
As the party was recovering, and Elijah was slowly standing back up after feeling some pain in his right shoulder, loud footsteps accompanied by laughter entered the area. "Hahahaha, what do you think of our simple but arduous way of killing beast hordes that venture into the cavern?"
"Besides the eardrum shattering sounds, It's quite amazing!" Of course Novius was excited to see something like this, something that didn't even require magic, but his response also had a trickle of sarcasm.
"Usually once every month there is a beast raid on us, and it's always the same types of beasts. Kyrats, with their army of mini-rats that nibble and tear away at anything. Thankfully, dropping a metal structure on their heads smushes them all to bits." Andal explained as he looked questionably at Elijah. "It seems you guys had a rough time on your mission. Did you complete it?"
"No." Aslan replied with a straight face. "The ceiling caved inn on us, along with a huge number of clagmire's. That's without mentioning the gorgon that Elijah killed."
"A gorgon! So you guys actually saw one! How fascinating!"
Raylen walked up to the man with an angered expression. "Are you trying to kill us! What the hell is wrong with you?!"
"Absolutely not! I provided you with information that you may encounter them, and you did, and did not die. How did you kill it anyway?"
"Ha, I knew something was off about you… Let's go guys." Elijah said as he walked in the opposite direction of the suspicious man. Andal, someone who had seemed like a good person, had wanted to test our strength by not letting the guild know a beast as strong as a gorgon might be inside of this cave system. Gorgon's are mostly simple red core beasts that don't even use magic, but their innate abilities transcend the limits of magic, so even a yellow or green core mage could fall to their claws. What an insidious man.
The party slowly walked towards the barracks that were built to house everyone ordinary visiting Nova40. Of course top people of the guild had their own special place in this stronghold, with bigger beds and facilities.
Since the whole party knew it would be some time before they could leave, they decided to take bunk beds next to each other in the corner of the wood barracks just left to the door. The bed sheets were thick, and as soon as Elijah carefully plopped onto his bed, Alexia, had climbed onto the bed above him with Emelia eyeing to do the same. Elijah wasn't sure if they saw him as a protector, someone stronger than everyone around them, or someone they wanted to marry, and be with forever. Elijah had a knack for noticing these types of things that were happening, but had been complacent about it ever since reincarnating.
"Don't crowd around Elijah guys, he is still sore. I don't think that pesky healer healed him all the way." Theon said while catching Elijah's gaze. It seemed everyone in the room caught on to what was happening.
Hours passed as the party talked to each other, played made up finger games, and took naps. A knock on the door resounded in the room to let everyone know that the metal foundation was lifted, and the ground had been cleaned. The party of eight, had not noticed as they had all fallen asleep.
Sleep is something they deserved. No one had died, and a bond between them all had been fundamentally strengthened. The easiest way to truly see who someone is, is by going into a life or death battle with them.
"Guys! Wake up! We can leave!" Harry was the first to wake and shouted to his friends.
"Huh? I don't like it when you touch me like that…" Raylen slightly woke up, but uttered words that made the group burst out laughing.
"What exactly were you dreaming about Raylen?" His brother Theon asked teasingly.
After the party grabbed their small backpacks and weapons, they headed straight for the loadout room and fell down using the ziplines. No one was needed to be present as the zip lines would automatically come back up when no weight was attached.
An older group of hunters were seen on the way out of the cave, which allowed them to not stare at a map the entire time. The sky was dark outside The Catacombs. While riding in the carriage, Elijah was using healing water magic on himself to recover his shoulder. Yela had not fully healed his shoulder as a lesson to him, she knew what he did. This means that Elijah should continue to not talk about what he did, but also experiment with different possibilities. There has to be a way to enhance his physical abilities without inducing damage to his body.