There were a lot of trees.
In a way, she hadn’t been exaggerating. I’ve been in a few wooded areas in my time, and this one was filled with densely packed trees that went up about as high as the walls surrounding the compound, maybe twenty-five feet up.
As we got closer the leader of the group started explaining how this was going to go down.
“Alright, as I said earlier, two teams. Five on each, in case that wasn’t obvious. I’ll take Liz, Balthin, Tory, and Riker.” As he talked he pointed at the ranger who had been complaining. The big guy with the sword. A rogue, and then another ranger that had been fairly quiet up to this point.
“We’ll start on opposite sides of the forest, I’ll set a firelight charge in the center. You probably won’t be able to see the flash, but you’ll definitely hear the pop. The pop is the ‘go’ signal. The goal is to defeat the enemy team, which is pretty straightforward. No maiming, no lethal blows, obviously. If you incapacitate someone they’re out of the round and they have to leave the arena. You can capture people if you want to, but like in a real fight, they’re under no obligation to stay where you put them, so you need to keep an eye on them and make sure they’re secured. Any questions?”
He glanced around at everyone. When nobody said anything he just nodded.
“Alright then, let’s split. Charge should go off in about 10 minutes, that should be plenty of time for everyone to make their way over to their starting spots and get prepared.”
And with that, everyone split up.
We took off at a run. While the fighting grounds weren’t as big as a real forest. It was still a couple of miles long and about a mile wide. These training fields were massive. The scale of this compound continually surprised me.
“So I don’t think we got your name, mind introducing yourself?”
I glanced over at the person that spoke to me. He was a mage, and he was currently floating next to me. His head was uncovered so I could actually see his face. He had a pretty sharp expression, not unkind, but he definitely looked like he took things more seriously than the people around him probably did.
He had short brown hair that looked well-trimmed rather than haphazardly cut.
“Alex, you?”
“Tilon. That’s Lytri, Fatri, and Wellin.”
With each name, he pointed at each respective member of the party. Fatri was decked out in the full plate mail set up, complete with sword and shield. Helmet blocked any features, but their physique was discernably female.
Cause boobs and all that.
She was a little taller than I was and way more heavily muscled from what little I could see of her actual body. It gave me a minor flashback to Lurks, but I quickly managed to push it out of my mind and focus on the next person. Fatri by comparison was a few inches under six feet and a rogue. Looked male, but it was hard to tell through the leathers as they were fairly androgynous in terms of physique. Slender, and didn’t have huge amounts of muscle.
Wellin was the last member of the group filling us out nicely with a ranger, all he had was a hood covering his head so I could still see his face and he looked… out of it. His eyes were a little bloodshot and he had a mangy beard growing that looked like it still had crumbs from his breakfast.
I frowned, “Is Wellin alright?”
Tilon glanced back, “Yeah, he’s good. At least as good as he usually is anyways.”
That was not reassuring.
“So what exactly do you do? We’re a full squad by ourselves, so we’ve been with each other for a while and know how we fight, but obviously, we don’t know anything about you. Also what level are you? Can’t actually see it, which is kind of surprising. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a level come back with question marks.”
A small smile tugged at the corners of my lips, “Spell-blade,” I answered, “Just got all three classes to the third tier not that long ago honestly.”
“Huh, what elements?”
“Lightning primarily. My third class is a nature-based support class though.”
That got his attention, but not necessarily in a good way.
“What? Why?” He asked incredulously, “Splitting your focus like that is pretty detrimental honestly, especially when you can just have a team account for weaknesses.”
I glanced at him as we kept moving, he was hovering rather than running with us. Looked like wind magic. It reminded me of Karif, he had a similar expression at the very least.
“Not all of us get to fight with a team.” I retorted.
He opened his mouth to say something but then ended up closing it.
“That’s… fair.”
I smirked, “Besides, I’ll let you in on a secret.” He raised an eyebrow and gestured for me to go on, “My support class is a purple.”
His eyes bugged out and the other two members that were actually in the right headspace turned and looked at me as well.
“Are you serious?” Lytri asked, interjecting herself into the conversation. She had a pretty gruff voice. Not harsh, but definitely not what most people would define as feminine.
“Absolutely.”
“What did you do to get that class?” Tilon asked with equal amazement.
I just laughed, “You genuinely wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
I just gave him an amused look, “Maybe another time, we have a spar to win right now and a plan of action we need to come up with. Besides, we’re at our starting area now.”
He looked like he wanted to keep pressing me for more information, but he let it go when he saw our starting point.
“Alright. You said it’s a support-based class, what can it do? Since it’s nature I’m sure it’s well suited to being in this area.”
I nodded, “I’ve got a couple of healing skills with it, although they’re pretty close range. On top of that, I’ve got a self-armor skill, barriers I can throw up, and a disabling skill. The most important one, which I think will be the most useful. I’ve got a sensory skill that works through nature. Specifically plants. So all these trees and bushes are eyes and ears for me. I’ve got a range of… 3800 feet with the skill.”
Tilon’s eyes widened again, “So you’d be able to see them long before they reach us?”
I nodded.
“Got any good ranged skills?”
“A few in my mage class, yeah.”
“How good are you at aiming in conjunction with your nature sight?”
“Good enough, If I had a clear shot I’d be able to hit them easily. I can’t curve my spells around trees though, so it’d be pretty hard to hit them, even if I know they’re coming.”
He nodded, “That makes sense. Alright, I think I have an idea. Fatri and Wellin, you two will stick together but split up from the rest of us since you actually have stealth skills. The rest of us will stick together, Alex will use his nature sight to let us have the advantage against the other team, and we’ll keep them occupied. While we’re doing that, Fatri, Wellin, you two find someone and take them out. I doubt you’ll be able to take out Balthin in one blow so try to avoid him. Honestly one of their rangers would be good. Wellin, you have the blunt arrows, right?”
Welling grunted and pulled one out of his quiver. Instead of being pointed at the end like you’d expect, it was rounded like a marble. It didn’t look particularly aerodynamic but I assumed with skills that wouldn’t really be a problem.
“Good,” He said, “Alright, any questions?”
We shook our heads.
“It’s a fairly simple plan.” I said, “Not much to figure out.”
He nodded in agreement, “Simple to make it easy to remember, not a lot of moving parts for something to go wrong. It tends to work better than trying to pull off some convoluted play where someone inevitably forgets step 39C and causes the whole thing to come crashing down.”
I snorted, “Yeah, I could see that happening.”
“Alright, there should only be a couple of minutes left before the charge goes off. Everyone start prepping, get any buffs you need going, and stuff like that.” Tilon glanced over at me, “You gonna be alright? You said you were a spell-blade but I don’t actually see a weapon.”
I smiled, “Yeah, I’m good.”
I started spinning up my minds and activated my buffs. As usual, lightning started arcing off of me and striking the ground. Wood started creeping up around my legs and up my torso and spreading down my arms, the etched lines glowing a soft green. From the palm of my prosthetic, I sprouted two blades, grabbing one with my good arm and letting the remaining one stay in the hand that I had summoned it from.
Tilon raised an eyebrow, “Can those actually cut things?”
I glanced at him and then at the swords. Now that he brought it up I guess it was a little strange, wasn’t it? Wooden swords? I didn’t really question it when Illes- Ili’kithari did it, but how was I able to pull it off? Sure, my swords weren’t nearly as sharp or as durable, but they were still as sharp as swords made of metal. Possibly even a little stronger than mundane ones at this point.
“They can,” I said confidently.
He didn’t fully share my confidence, but that was fine. I wasn’t necessarily looking for his approval.
Glancing around I could see the other members preparing as well. The rogue… I couldn’t actually see anymore. Damn, they were good.
The ranger looked kinda hazy like their form was starting to merge with the colors that were behind them from my point of view. Kind of like a chameleon.
Lytri didn’t look much different. I suspected it was because all her buffs were purely physical and passive for that measure. Much like a lot of mine were passive, but the magical aspect tended to leak through.
Thinking on that I remembered I could tone down the visual effects on them, so I did just that. The lightning didn’t arc out as far as it could, instead, it stuck closer to my body, the current washing over me continuously.
Tilon was in much the same vein as myself, wind cocooned his entire body and was spinning wildly, but it didn’t disturb the plant life surrounding him. On top of that, it was completely silent, so it just didn’t give anything away other than the fact that it was constantly moving.
If he had anything else going on, I couldn’t tell through the curtain of wind covering him.
I didn’t have much time to think about it because off in the distance, we heard a loud crack.
“That’s our cue, let’s move. Stick to the plan, don’t overextend you two. Lytri, you take point. I’ll go behind her, and Alex, you take up our rear.”
We quickly hopped into formation and I saw the ranger move off branching towards the outside edges of the forest. I couldn’t see the rogue, but I assumed he was moving with the ranger.
We quickly made our way through the forest. We didn’t focus much on being quiet about it since Lytri didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of not stepping on every single twig and branch she could.
So we opted for cautious speed, we moved as fast as we could while also keeping an eye on our surroundings.
I used my multiple minds to start searching the forest using my two sensory skills. I should’ve tried to use [Electric Sense] on the rogue, just to see if that could see them through their invisibility. It would’ve been good to know.
Too late to find out now, I just had to hope it would see the rangers on the enemy team if they had similar stealth abilities.
I kept three minds aware of my personal surroundings and occupied with my defense. The other fourteen I had scouring the entire forest for any sign of movement.
“Any idea of what I should be keeping an eye out for?” I whispered.
Tilon just shrugged, “Other than the two rangers and the rogue, they’re not built for stealth. Honestly, I don’t expect you to find them before they find us, I’m just hoping you’ll be able to see them coming before we get ambushed. The remaining two will be a little ways away, waiting for their moment to jump into the fray. At least that’s what they tend to like to do anyways.”
I nodded in agreement. I doubt I would see the stealthy ones before they tried anything.
We kept moving forward through the forest, and eventually, I caught my first sight of our opponents on the edge of my range.
“I see them,” I whispered, causing our group to come to a stop.
“They’re on the edge of my range, almost directly in front of us. Only two of them like you said. No sign of the other three.”
Tilon nodded, “Alright then. Here’s the plan, Lytri, you’ll go in first and grab their attention. Alex and I will loop around the side to try and catch them unawares. Try to play safer this time Lytri, I don’t need you going down before we pull the plan off the rest of the way.”
She grunted, “Yeah I hear ya. I just didn’t expect the random he pulled to be so sneaky. But I’ve got a good read on Balthin and Ran.”
“Good. Then go, it’ll take us maybe thirty seconds to loop around properly, keep an eye on your backside, you never know when one of the sneakies will pull up behind you.”
In place of a response, Lytri went barreling off through the forest in the direction I had indicated. Meanwhile, Tilon and I darted off to the side in an effort to pincer them.
We rushed through as quickly as we could, Tilon was surprisingly able to keep up with me as I kept increasing my speeds.
With our increased speeds, we’d probably make it in more like fifteen seconds, rather than thirty.
However, we were going so fast that I didn’t see the tripwire until my face was already slamming into the dirt.
There were a lot of trees.
In a way, she hadn’t been exaggerating. I’ve been in a few wooded areas in my time, and this one was filled with densely packed trees that went up about as high as the walls surrounding the compound, maybe twenty-five feet up.
As we got closer the leader of the group started explaining how this was going to go down.
“Alright, as I said earlier, two teams. Five on each, in case that wasn’t obvious. I’ll take Liz, Balthin, Tory, and Riker.” As he talked he pointed at the ranger who had been complaining. The big guy with the sword. A rogue, and then another ranger that had been fairly quiet up to this point.
“We’ll start on opposite sides of the forest, I’ll set a firelight charge in the center. You probably won’t be able to see the flash, but you’ll definitely hear the pop. The pop is the ‘go’ signal. The goal is to defeat the enemy team, which is pretty straightforward. No maiming, no lethal blows, obviously. If you incapacitate someone they’re out of the round and they have to leave the arena. You can capture people if you want to, but like in a real fight, they’re under no obligation to stay where you put them, so you need to keep an eye on them and make sure they’re secured. Any questions?”
He glanced around at everyone. When nobody said anything he just nodded.
“Alright then, let’s split. Charge should go off in about 10 minutes, that should be plenty of time for everyone to make their way over to their starting spots and get prepared.”
And with that, everyone split up.
We took off at a run. While the fighting grounds weren’t as big as a real forest. It was still a couple of miles long and about a mile wide. These training fields were massive. The scale of this compound continually surprised me.
“So I don’t think we got your name, mind introducing yourself?”
I glanced over at the person that spoke to me. He was a mage, and he was currently floating next to me. His head was uncovered so I could actually see his face. He had a pretty sharp expression, not unkind, but he definitely looked like he took things more seriously than the people around him probably did.
He had short brown hair that looked well-trimmed rather than haphazardly cut.
“Alex, you?”
“Tilon. That’s Lytri, Fatri, and Wellin.”
With each name, he pointed at each respective member of the party. Fatri was decked out in the full plate mail set up, complete with sword and shield. Helmet blocked any features, but their physique was discernably female.
Cause boobs and all that.
She was a little taller than I was and way more heavily muscled from what little I could see of her actual body. It gave me a minor flashback to Lurks, but I quickly managed to push it out of my mind and focus on the next person. Fatri by comparison was a few inches under six feet and a rogue. Looked male, but it was hard to tell through the leathers as they were fairly androgynous in terms of physique. Slender, and didn’t have huge amounts of muscle.
Wellin was the last member of the group filling us out nicely with a ranger, all he had was a hood covering his head so I could still see his face and he looked… out of it. His eyes were a little bloodshot and he had a mangy beard growing that looked like it still had crumbs from his breakfast.
I frowned, “Is Wellin alright?”
Tilon glanced back, “Yeah, he’s good. At least as good as he usually is anyways.”
That was not reassuring.
“So what exactly do you do? We’re a full squad by ourselves, so we’ve been with each other for a while and know how we fight, but obviously, we don’t know anything about you. Also what level are you? Can’t actually see it, which is kind of surprising. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a level come back with question marks.”
A small smile tugged at the corners of my lips, “Spell-blade,” I answered, “Just got all three classes to the third tier not that long ago honestly.”
“Huh, what elements?”
“Lightning primarily. My third class is a nature-based support class though.”
That got his attention, but not necessarily in a good way.
“What? Why?” He asked incredulously, “Splitting your focus like that is pretty detrimental honestly, especially when you can just have a team account for weaknesses.”
I glanced at him as we kept moving, he was hovering rather than running with us. Looked like wind magic. It reminded me of Karif, he had a similar expression at the very least.
“Not all of us get to fight with a team.” I retorted.
He opened his mouth to say something but then ended up closing it.
“That’s… fair.”
I smirked, “Besides, I’ll let you in on a secret.” He raised an eyebrow and gestured for me to go on, “My support class is a purple.”
His eyes bugged out and the other two members that were actually in the right headspace turned and looked at me as well.
“Are you serious?” Lytri asked, interjecting herself into the conversation. She had a pretty gruff voice. Not harsh, but definitely not what most people would define as feminine.
“Absolutely.”
“What did you do to get that class?” Tilon asked with equal amazement.
I just laughed, “You genuinely wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
I just gave him an amused look, “Maybe another time, we have a spar to win right now and a plan of action we need to come up with. Besides, we’re at our starting area now.”
He looked like he wanted to keep pressing me for more information, but he let it go when he saw our starting point.
“Alright. You said it’s a support-based class, what can it do? Since it’s nature I’m sure it’s well suited to being in this area.”
I nodded, “I’ve got a couple of healing skills with it, although they’re pretty close range. On top of that, I’ve got a self-armor skill, barriers I can throw up, and a disabling skill. The most important one, which I think will be the most useful. I’ve got a sensory skill that works through nature. Specifically plants. So all these trees and bushes are eyes and ears for me. I’ve got a range of… 3800 feet with the skill.”
Tilon’s eyes widened again, “So you’d be able to see them long before they reach us?”
I nodded.
“Got any good ranged skills?”
“A few in my mage class, yeah.”
“How good are you at aiming in conjunction with your nature sight?”
“Good enough, If I had a clear shot I’d be able to hit them easily. I can’t curve my spells around trees though, so it’d be pretty hard to hit them, even if I know they’re coming.”
He nodded, “That makes sense. Alright, I think I have an idea. Fatri and Wellin, you two will stick together but split up from the rest of us since you actually have stealth skills. The rest of us will stick together, Alex will use his nature sight to let us have the advantage against the other team, and we’ll keep them occupied. While we’re doing that, Fatri, Wellin, you two find someone and take them out. I doubt you’ll be able to take out Balthin in one blow so try to avoid him. Honestly one of their rangers would be good. Wellin, you have the blunt arrows, right?”
Welling grunted and pulled one out of his quiver. Instead of being pointed at the end like you’d expect, it was rounded like a marble. It didn’t look particularly aerodynamic but I assumed with skills that wouldn’t really be a problem.
“Good,” He said, “Alright, any questions?”
We shook our heads.
“It’s a fairly simple plan.” I said, “Not much to figure out.”
He nodded in agreement, “Simple to make it easy to remember, not a lot of moving parts for something to go wrong. It tends to work better than trying to pull off some convoluted play where someone inevitably forgets step 39C and causes the whole thing to come crashing down.”
I snorted, “Yeah, I could see that happening.”
“Alright, there should only be a couple of minutes left before the charge goes off. Everyone start prepping, get any buffs you need going, and stuff like that.” Tilon glanced over at me, “You gonna be alright? You said you were a spell-blade but I don’t actually see a weapon.”
I smiled, “Yeah, I’m good.”
I started spinning up my minds and activated my buffs. As usual, lightning started arcing off of me and striking the ground. Wood started creeping up around my legs and up my torso and spreading down my arms, the etched lines glowing a soft green. From the palm of my prosthetic, I sprouted two blades, grabbing one with my good arm and letting the remaining one stay in the hand that I had summoned it from.
Tilon raised an eyebrow, “Can those actually cut things?”
I glanced at him and then at the swords. Now that he brought it up I guess it was a little strange, wasn’t it? Wooden swords? I didn’t really question it when Illes- Ili’kithari did it, but how was I able to pull it off? Sure, my swords weren’t nearly as sharp or as durable, but they were still as sharp as swords made of metal. Possibly even a little stronger than mundane ones at this point.
“They can,” I said confidently.
He didn’t fully share my confidence, but that was fine. I wasn’t necessarily looking for his approval.
Glancing around I could see the other members preparing as well. The rogue… I couldn’t actually see anymore. Damn, they were good.
The ranger looked kinda hazy like their form was starting to merge with the colors that were behind them from my point of view. Kind of like a chameleon.
Lytri didn’t look much different. I suspected it was because all her buffs were purely physical and passive for that measure. Much like a lot of mine were passive, but the magical aspect tended to leak through.
Thinking on that I remembered I could tone down the visual effects on them, so I did just that. The lightning didn’t arc out as far as it could, instead, it stuck closer to my body, the current washing over me continuously.
Tilon was in much the same vein as myself, wind cocooned his entire body and was spinning wildly, but it didn’t disturb the plant life surrounding him. On top of that, it was completely silent, so it just didn’t give anything away other than the fact that it was constantly moving.
If he had anything else going on, I couldn’t tell through the curtain of wind covering him.
I didn’t have much time to think about it because off in the distance, we heard a loud crack.
“That’s our cue, let’s move. Stick to the plan, don’t overextend you two. Lytri, you take point. I’ll go behind her, and Alex, you take up our rear.”
We quickly hopped into formation and I saw the ranger move off branching towards the outside edges of the forest. I couldn’t see the rogue, but I assumed he was moving with the ranger.
We quickly made our way through the forest. We didn’t focus much on being quiet about it since Lytri didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of not stepping on every single twig and branch she could.
So we opted for cautious speed, we moved as fast as we could while also keeping an eye on our surroundings.
I used my multiple minds to start searching the forest using my two sensory skills. I should’ve tried to use [Electric Sense] on the rogue, just to see if that could see them through their invisibility. It would’ve been good to know.
Too late to find out now, I just had to hope it would see the rangers on the enemy team if they had similar stealth abilities.
I kept three minds aware of my personal surroundings and occupied with my defense. The other fourteen I had scouring the entire forest for any sign of movement.
“Any idea of what I should be keeping an eye out for?” I whispered.
Tilon just shrugged, “Other than the two rangers and the rogue, they’re not built for stealth. Honestly, I don’t expect you to find them before they find us, I’m just hoping you’ll be able to see them coming before we get ambushed. The remaining two will be a little ways away, waiting for their moment to jump into the fray. At least that’s what they tend to like to do anyways.”
I nodded in agreement. I doubt I would see the stealthy ones before they tried anything.
We kept moving forward through the forest, and eventually, I caught my first sight of our opponents on the edge of my range.
“I see them,” I whispered, causing our group to come to a stop.
“They’re on the edge of my range, almost directly in front of us. Only two of them like you said. No sign of the other three.”
Tilon nodded, “Alright then. Here’s the plan, Lytri, you’ll go in first and grab their attention. Alex and I will loop around the side to try and catch them unawares. Try to play safer this time Lytri, I don’t need you going down before we pull the plan off the rest of the way.”
She grunted, “Yeah I hear ya. I just didn’t expect the random he pulled to be so sneaky. But I’ve got a good read on Balthin and Ran.”
“Good. Then go, it’ll take us maybe thirty seconds to loop around properly, keep an eye on your backside, you never know when one of the sneakies will pull up behind you.”
In place of a response, Lytri went barreling off through the forest in the direction I had indicated. Meanwhile, Tilon and I darted off to the side in an effort to pincer them.
We rushed through as quickly as we could, Tilon was surprisingly able to keep up with me as I kept increasing my speeds.
With our increased speeds, we’d probably make it in more like fifteen seconds, rather than thirty.
However, we were going so fast that I didn’t see the tripwire until my face was already slamming into the dirt.
