22 Chapter 22
[||||=LEVEL 22= ||||]
Around us was a beautiful place. A forest of blued trees made entirely of ice. Trees filled with ice clouded by oxygen stand tall everywhere. Their branches creep out overhead everywhere with icicles hanging down just about everywhere.
Every once and a while there's a stalagmite of ice jutting up from the ground under a tree. Sometimes there's a line of them following a particularly large branch.
"Eight o'clock!" I call. Raven twirls and immediately sees the ice elemental coming towards us. She swings her sword and a perfect arc of fire flies towards the elemental. It hisses as it melts and the opposing affinities break down the elemental.
A vicious hissing sound pierced the air behind me. Boring. I'm not using mage sight to be fair to the sport of the thing but it's really easy to hear the ice elementals move around. I had heard this particular elemental a minute ago.
I spin and my sword sings a note as a harsh shattering sound marks the dispelling of the elemental. Prediction made surprise attacks much less… surprising than before.
"One at ten." Ruby says. She takes aim easily and fires. The crack and more distant shattering sound marks another. "Oh it was a minor."
"Nice. that's four now?" I ask. There's three more elementals coming close to me. I ready a massive heatwave, well for them. For me it was just four thousand mana. Not even worth the effort of thinking about it.
"Um… five now." Ruby calls back. "This is kind of less fun than I thought it would be."
"Yeah." I release the heatwave and the three elementals hiss greatly as they begin melting to water. One manages to survive long enough to come somewhat close to me. I don't use my sword even. I jab out with my fist. I had the brawler skill making my punches five times as damaging so the already weakened elemental had it's head separated from it's body.
"Luckily this is still the fringes of the forest. We have plenty more miles to go towards the center." I said. Then I sensed something more powerful. Something actually dangerous.
"Common! Two o'clock!" Ruby scanned her part of the forest quickly and turned to face me. She looked past me and prepped a shot.
I made a long string of space where the motion would be accelerated, the acceleration spell I had gotten a while ago. Ruby's shot went rocketing towards the common elemental and hit it directly.
The elemental screeched and darted towards us in a serpentine motion. "I've got it. Raven said. She swung her fire sword again towards the elemental but it glided over it. The movement allowed Ruby enough time to get a shot on it again, which hit the already damaged parts of the elemental and killed it.
"Good shot. Nothing else?" Raven asked as we all looked around.
I noticed one more elemental coming towards us. A lesser one. I made a powerful shock bolt and used my dust system's fire dust to turn it hotter and more powerful than it would have been before. The elemental let out a screeching hiss and died.
To say that these creatures died would be inaccurate. They disperse to their component mana and reform somewhere else. But that hardly matters. I get XP from them still.
"Okay. let's go." Raven says. She begins trudging towards the center of the forest once more and we keep our eyes out as we walk.
We've been working on our fourth hour of hiking through the icy forest by now. It's not exactly thrilling but we've got about eight more miles to go so we're toughing it out.
It's to my intense irritation that mage sight, teleportation, and a lot of spells don't work here. The ice mana is thick and getting thicker as we go in towards the center. Teleport can't reach through all that mana very far until it stops, making my portals inaccurate and unpredictable. Casting spells from internally is perfectly fine since the ice mana doesn't get into my body.
Mage sight doesn't work for the same reason your eye can't see when a red laser is being shined towards your pupil. You need a spectrum of light to see. It can't be just red light or green light. Mage sight needs a spectrum of mana to see through at the same time but looking through mage sight now is like looking at a whole bunch of ice mana. Boring and useless.
The good news is that with all the ice affinity in the air it's super easy to cast ice magic… but that does almost nothing to the elementals. It's useful for throwing icicles at enemies like spears, which I've done a few times with motion magic manipulation (basically telekinesis). It's easier to use heatwave to melt the elementals though. The trees aren't really affected by my heat magic unless I actually focus on trying to melt them.
To fix this issue I've had all my parallels focusing on making my heat affinity better. I've gotten a bit of progress but not as much as I would have liked. It's helped, though, and it'll likely continue to help as I keep casting heat magic. Eight points so far is pretty good.
The cold hadn't been a huge problem. We were all bundled up and active. I packed some wood, marshmallows, chocolate, and gram crackers in my inventory since there wasn't any wood in this forest. Just a bunch of ice. There's some beautiful stuff here, not gonna lie, like a cliff made of ice that had the sun reflecting off of it. It was beautiful and a bright enough that it was hard to see in that general direction. Kind of annoying after you got over the beauty.
It was also annoying that there were so many ice elementals. They were everywhere. Just everywhere. The petty ones, we soon found out, were absolute scrubs. Ruby could take them ten at a time. Raven literally took five with her eyes closed for fun.
Minor elementals needed a little concentration from Ruby but were easy for Raven or me.
Lesser elementals were actually a challenge for Ruby since they physically outstripped Ruby and skill came more into play for her. If she used her semblance she could handle them though. For Raven she could just fick them and they died (not literally). I could handle them with ease using magic but took some effort with my sword or halberd.
Commons weren't especially dangerous but when playing with magic be careful. So we called attention to them when we saw them. Raven could deal with them up close if she was careful. Ruby stayed back and sniped them (she did a lot of that) and I could magick everything in this entire forest to death with some time and effort so…
We hadn't seen a strong attack us yet but Ruby swears that she saw a sort of bony snake (because that's what they all looked like. Snake bones) but with armor. I saw something huge once. Some sort of giant but we passed a tree and I saw a little disturbed snow and nothing else. It was eerie.
"Where do you think we should make camp?" Ruby asked. Raven spoke without hesitation.
"Somewhere defendable. A cave, maybe, after we melt all the ice in it. If we need to we can create our own. Then we can elect a watch. Abyss, can you make runes to harm the elementals?"
"Of course." I said. "I've already got the perfect one planned out. You can maintain it if you have to or I can."
"Perfect." She said in a pleased tone.
"Ooh! Do you think we can go up to a cliff and take a picture? And snipe stuff, of course." Ruby unconsciously moved her finger towards the tripper of her incredibly powerful and dangerous weapon.
"Maybe. I don't think we're going to be able to get to the center before tomorrow but the curiosity could keep us awake. Getting to a vantage point and looking towards the center could solve a lot of questions. Like why this place is here in the first place."
Raven nodded in agreement. "Some answers would be nice. It's not like we're hurting for time either. I told Roman we might take about a week at most but that we'd be more like four days. It gives me a day or two off if we stick to the schedule."
"That's fine. I don't think that the world will end if you spend a little time away from Torchwick. I would like to get back to school without missing any days. I've got my friends to check up on."
"Of course. But travelling an exotic land for magical artifacts is more important than missing a day of school."
"Well that's true enough."
We stopped the chatter as we came across… well it was a dead body. An old one frozen in ice.
It was male, well built, and in an older looking blue uniform with two patches on the chest. A blue shield with a light blue flame in it with chains running across the shield and flame. The other patch was the symbol of Vale. Beside the man was a military styled backpack colored striped blue and black with three pockets. Over his patches was a sewn nametag. Sergeant K. Mango.
"Oh. This doesn't look good." Raven murmured. Ruby scanned the area and approached the man. I observed him and saw nothing I couldn't already figure out by seeing him. Dead, frozen, preserved from twenty six years ago, and part of a military organization, though observe didn't say which kind or the name of it.
"... Poor guy. The chunk taken out of his neck right here. It had aura blocking it but it broke and he died." Ruby said.
"When did you learn postmortem checks?" I asked.
"With the bandits last summer. Moss taught me on deer and rabbits first and then a raid by a clan nearby. I… I didn't really forget the experience." Ruby frowned a little.
Raven approached the man and checked the wound. "Wait… her." Raven pointed to the man's throat and traced a faint line with tiny punctures in it. "He was choked first… and then he died. So an elemental wrapped itself around him and bit into him. I think the little puncture marks are from it's ribs."
I grabbed onto the man's backpack and malted the ice on it rapidly, removing the water in case there was something perishable in it. Inside it was…
"HSSSS!" An ice elemental, a petty one, hissed at me from inside a cage of tinted glass reinforced with metal. Observe said the metal was an alloy of nillum, a mana resistant metal. The glass had nillium forged into it as well, giving it it's grey tint.
I took out the cage and set it aside before looking back in. There was another cage below the first one… busted open from the inside. Probably the one that killed him that did that then. It escaped, Mango tried to take off his pack when he heard the cage give, and the elemental escaped before he could get away. Then it got to his neck.
I opened the second pocket of the pack and found nothing but old deodorant, a small oil lamp; not dust; some expired military styled rations, a little high quality fire dust in a well sealed vial, and some trash. Wrappers, a toothbrush, and an empty roll of toothpaste.
Opening the final pocket was a change of clothes and the holy grail. A journal.
I withdrew the journal and flipped through it without reading. It's too long to read right now… I shut it and put it in my inventory. I'll read it tonight. Things just got a whole lot more interesting.
"Somebody was… trapping elementals?" Ruby said lowly. "But what… why…"
"Vale." Raven said. "But these uniforms aren't recent. It's a winter variant, obviously, but
"The closest thing I've got to scrying magic says that the man died twenty six years ago." I reached into the backpack and took out the broken cage. "Probably from this." Raven reached out and took the cage, inspecting it for herself.
"It's made from nillum. A metal that's extra resistant to magic. The bars in the lattice is refined nillum. The glass has it smelted into it, giving it it's grey tint. The tops and bottoms are pure nillum. But I can't tell how they open."
Raven turned the cage sideways and made a sharp knife made of ice. She levelled the knife with the edge of the edge of the top of the cage and the glass sides and quickly slashed the corner. She repeated this process a few more times and then did the same to all the other sides. She dropped the knife aside and latched her fingers on the rim of the top. With a swift jerk she seperated the top from the rest.
She offered it to me and I could see a small sheen of a hardened clear substance. "Adhesive." Raven explained. "I've seen something like this for capturing small grimm before. A new type popped up in the eastern islands and team STRQ was sent to capture a few and find their weaknesses. We caught them in cages like these but bigger. Scientists don't like to leave latches or flimsy locks with something as dangerous as the grimm so they make these to seal the tops on and call them observation cages. They're specifically designed for grimm to not get out except normally they use steel and reinforced glass instead of this nillum."
"I see… well either that cage was defective or… maybe the nillum isn't strong enough to contain them. It's actually an alloy of nillum and steel. They should have used fire dust treated nillum alloy. If they got the concentration right the cages could hold an elemental without killing it."
Raven shrugged. "This was twenty six years ago, roughly. Besides, do you think Vale knew what they were doing with the elementals?"
"Obviously not. I'm curious as to what a Vale military branch was doing in a magical corner of Vacuo twenty six years ago."
"Elementals." Ruby interrupted as she readied her weapon. "And I think that's a strong one."
A large serpentine form as big as the thick tree trunks was approaching us burrowing in and out of the snow like a worm. I immediately readied a large air blade. Air attuned mana whirled around me to a blade made of air and I used fire dust from my dust system. A pale blue sheen encased the blade and heat radiated off of it from the high-oxygen flame. I let the blade loose and if flew off with something between a whoosh and a sonic boom.
The large elemental reared back and struck forth. It's maw shot a blizzard of cold at my blade and weakened it. My wind blade slammed into it still thanks to my huge affinity for air and the elemental made a breathy screech. It wasn't dead though.
Strong ice elemental (Lv. 4,241) - An uncommonly strong elemental compared to the norm born of a high concentration of mana with an ice affinity in this location. It is naturally hostile to all entities besides a select few long dead.
Stats
STR: 5,993
VIT: 15,179
DEX: 3,969
INT: 73
WIS: 42
LUK: 49
AFF: 32,000
Definitely not dead. Just very angry.
Ruby took charge and spoke commandingly. "Raven, fireballs on the strong one. Abyss, heatwave for the weaker ones. I obeyed, trusting Ruby to know what was going on, and channeled five thousand mana to a heatwave. I combined it with some fire dust to make it more intense and released it.
A massive wave of heat flew out from me with a few wisps of fire among it. The other elementals screeched but were quickly melted. The big one screeched louder than them but was still alive, though it was looking pretty melty. Raven made a fireball and shot it towards the elemental solemnly with a bit of air dust boosting the fireball. The ball of flames slammed into the creature but still it continued towards us. It was getting really close now.
"Dodge!" Ruby yelled. She disappeared in a flurry of rose petals far to her right and took aim at the beast. Raven jumped and used her air magic to go higher. I used my seldom used skill, body of worlds, to turn my body to wind. I blew towards my left and reformed myself with an idea on my mind.
Ruby leveled a few shots at the elemental, breaking chunks off of the magically hardened ice - because no ice was that hard - and Raven sent another fireball at the beast.
I had coalesced a few thousand units of heat attuned mana into my palm. I concentrated it as much as possible and shoved my palm towards the elemental. My beam of heat rocketed towards the creature, mimicking the heat of a fireball but more condensed, and shot straight through the creature's icy skull.
The elemental let out a weak strangled hiss and laid down tremblingly. Ruby took aim at it's thin spine and let off a shot at the center of it's spine. The creature trembled once more and went still. I also levelled a few times. Elementals were pretty good XP.
*Ding!* New spell acquired! - Heat beam
"Heat is like all the good things from fire with the better parts of ice! It's like fire's more fantastic younger brother. This particular spell is even good for welding if you sustain it!"
-Kerra the sightless inferno
Raven breathed slowly and sheathed her sword. "We should be more careful."
"They're smarter than I thought." I remarked. "This one waited until we let our guard down and then rushed us. What's just as worrying is that the smaller ones followed it. A pack intelligence, perhaps." Raven nodded.
"The bad parts are that the weaklings swarmed us slowly and we got confident that they were all that was there. So was that just a coincidence or did they send them knowing that we would get overconfident? And on that note, we're not even halfway through the forest. Not even to the densest hotspot of mana… so what's stronger than this?" a moment of silence was all that answered me for a few seconds as Raven and Ruby processed what sort of horrors lie in this forest.
"… We should keep moving. I don't think lingering is going to do us any favors." Ruby said quietly. I walked over to the cage with the petty ice elemental and considered it… I sighed. I walked to the backpack and put the cage back in and re-sealed the cage in ice.
I couldn't take it with me because I could only hold it in my hands, preventing me from using my melee weapon, and I couldn't put it in my inventory because I can't supply it with ice mana constantly. Well, not in it's cage. Perhaps I can come back later and grab the elemental to use for the siphoning experiment or as my familiar.
For now, though, I have to find out what's going on. Experiments will have to come later.
[|||| == ||||]
"No that's enough, Pyrrha. Take a break."
"But I don't know how he does it! He just waves his hand and a blade of pressurized air comes out?!"
"I've told you, it's making your aura like a blade and just applying dust to that form. Then you flick the form and the dust sort of peels off like a bandaid sort of. But if you do it right it holds it's strength."
"I AM flicking it! I didn't even know some of that stuff with aura was possible!"
"You see now why we don't meddle with dust. You're not the nerdy type, Pyrrha. And you're not the 'feel it out' type either. You're the type that does one action a thousand times perfectly and you can do it right that way for a lifetime. You're the repetition kind of person while I and your mother are more of the 'feel it out' sort of person. That's why you're not good with aura control. I told you dustcasting wasn't for you."
"Yeah but I've made some progress. Not much but some."
"And gone through half a crate of dust to get at that morsel of progress."
"… Didn't you once say that people could learn anything?"
"Yeah. And then I said 'but not everything should be learned'. Are you going to stop being a workaholic now? Me and your mother can't find it in ourselves to stop you from working so hard but it's christmas break, Pyrrha. Come have some leftover eggnog."
"I don't like the alcoholic stuff. Well, except that time you let me try wine. That was pretty good."
"It was practically grape juice but sure. Are you done with this dustcasting phase?"
"Of course not."
"Ugh. My wallet."
"But you're right that this is the obviously wrong way to go about it… so I need to augment my weapon styles to include dust with the weapons. Other than bullets I mean."
"That's… actually yeah, that might work… Sure. Let's try that. Do you want me to call Hephaestus and say you have a project for him?"
"Yes! Thank you!"
"Yeah, yeah. Just stop being so hard on my wallet."
"I'll… um, aren't aura conducting metals super expensive? I kinda need those though…"
"Oh… oh right. I'm just going to go ahead and retract my-"
"Thanksdadloveyoubye!"
"God, why did I have kids? Can't I scold her over grades or something? At least she's better than her sister… I think if I had to give Pyrrha pep talks as often as Odia I'd break out the alcohol."
[|||| == ||||]
"So… so steep." I grunted. Ruby was breathing somewhat heavily behind me. Raven was perfectly fine in front of us.
"We're at the top." She said casually. She disappeared over the angle of the top of the path for a moment before I made it up. Ruby came up shortly after. I ignored the view for a moment, wanting to see it properly. I made a bench from ice beneath me and gazed out. Raven took after my idea and made a chair and Ruby collapsed next to me and leaned on me. I could tell she was being dramatic, though. She could probably go for a spar right now and be alright. It was a pretty steep climb though.
We had always been travelling sort of upwards but the climb had increased sharply. We had no choice but to climb the slope. Combined with the occasional elementals we had a tiring time. At least there were none up here, though. I still kept an ear open just in case.
Down below there was a valley of sorts. It was at a way lower elevation than where we were at least. Most eye catching was a tower - because of course there's s tower- of ice on our left. Mana sense confirmed that the densest ice mana spot was there. Trees grew denser going towards the point up to a point, where they suddenly stopped and formed a perfectly circular clearing around the tower. You could only sort of see the clearing from our angle. We were high up, sure, but we weren't gazing down on it.
Of the three structures we could see the tower was the second farthest away.
On our right was a… base. I think. It's a squat concrete structure spanning some distance before sloping downwards. I'm no expert but I'd wager that it goes underground. In front of it is a genuinely large lot with an old bullhead in it. I'm not sure if it works or not though. There's a tank likely full of dust next to it. If I recall, bullheads use lightning and burn dust to form a mixture called 'energy dust' by those in industry. Bullhead dust is normally pretty high quality. Not great but good. I could use that dust with all the fire dust I've already used up.
This was the closest structure.
Finally was a large sort of square structure made of blued ice in the distance. One side of it was open ended but it obviously led downwards too. You could faintly see a pathway leading from it to the bunker.
"This is… odd." I said.
"What were they even doing here?" Ruby said frustratedly. "Capturing elementals and an honest to dust military bunker in the middle of this icy wasteland… and whatever that dome thing is - all of it makes so little sense!"
Raven took out her scroll and took a series of pictures. Then she sat up and turned around to do the same. She paused before taking a few. Then she put her scroll away. "Look."
I sat up and turned around but didn't see anything readily apparent. "On the right. It's in the trees but you can see it if you squint." Raven leveled a finger and I followed it. Still I didn't see anything so I tried pulling out a pair of binoculars from my inventory.
A little glimmer caught me eye and I saw it! A grey building was peeking out through the trees. If you looked closely you can see what almost looks like power lines and a path leading to the slope we were on. Just farther down that way.
"Interesting… mysterious building, bunker, tower of ice, or mysterious dome." I muttered. Ruby couldn't see it still so I handed the binoculars to her. She made an 'oh' sound and inspected the building.
Raven turned a little more and her eyes widened in alarm. "Oh no." I turned myself and saw a… a lot of white. But… what's that?
"Quiet!" I hissed. Raven and Ruby quieted as much as they could. I closed my eyes in concentration and listened very closely in the direction of the blizzard.
*hiss*hissss*scree!*hiss*hiss*scre...*
"Oh shit…" I said as my eyes widened.
"What?" Ruby asked. I moved her head to the snowstorm through the binoculars and she froze. "Oh fudge… that's a lot of elementals."
"What?!" Raven grabbed the binoculars and looked at the snowstorm in severe alarm. "Fuck… fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!" Raven popped the binoculars into our shared inventory and paced. I blinked in surprise. I've never heard Raven swear that much before. Or pace. I suppose I've never seen her so stressed before either. I cut in with a plan.
"We need shelter. Bad. The grey building is the closest. It's also downhill. We have to go that way."
"Absolutely." Ruby said.
"Any plans to get there quickly?" Raven asked as she stopped pacing. "That storm is moving fast. Walking or even running won't get us there in time."
"Does your semblance still work, Raven?" She frowned. I jogged over a little and let her test it. A portal opened right next to me.
"Fine." She said.
I manifested my wings. "Ruby is pretty light." Raven raised an eyebrow.
"Can you fly with them?" I bobbed my head from left to right a little.
"Sort of. I can't land very well and not from lack of practicing. I also can't take off in cold weather like this. I need warm air and an updraft to rise up and warm air to stay aloft, which I can make through magic. Humanoids weren't meant to have wings… Look, the point is that I can glide and that's enough to get us close enough to the building to run the rest of the way with some spells but it's going to be close. Can you fly as a bird? And don't ask how I know. I can distinguish between nature magic and the maiden magics pretty easily. I just never brought it up."
Raven blinked a little but didn't look very surprised. "I can fly alright… but when I transform to a raven I don't have any insulation. I get hot and cold easily. I could get hyperthermia before I get to the building. I also don't fly all that fast. Maybe twenty five miles per hour. Perhaps less in the cold."
I nod. "Not fast enough?" She shook her head.
"That shorm's going to be here in a minute or three. That building's two miles away at least. Go and I'll make a portal when I get too cold. I'll burn mana to ward off the wraiths and use my semblance when I can." I frown but nod. We don't have a better plan and we're running out of time.
"I'll send mana through the…" My eyes widened.
"My soul space! Get in!" Ruby's eyes widened and she ran to me. I tapped her and sent her to the habitable soul space. Raven blinked in surprise but I held out my hand and she clasped it.
"Stay safe." She said seriously. I nodded and she disappeared into my soul space with Ruby.
I ran towards the edge and made a hot updraft. I jumped and my wings spread. I grunted but kept myself straight. I poured mana into motion spells and my air affinity and felt myself flying fast.
I could hear the roar of the storm getting closer but it was looking like I'd be safe. I approached the trees pretty close to the building and tree-hopped with some air and motion magic along with my already strong leg muscles.
I stopped for just a moment to look at the building. It looked like a somewhat small warehouse. It was long and rectangular with cart tracks outside holding two carts modified to hold two gunners at old machine guns. Probably to deal with the elementals if I had to guess.
The warehouse had barn-like doors that were almost certainly frozen shut but there were windows broken above. I jumped once more and used an updraft to sort of double jump. I dismissed my wings and was able to squeeze through the window when I moved my legs to my chest.
Immediately I was faced with another problem. Elementals. A strong one and several of a weaker variety. Shit.
To the right side was an elevated platform with lockers lining the wall above and below. On my left was a stairwell leading underground. The elementals lay in the middle on some tracks.
I sent a pulse of aura to my soul space and hoped that alerted Ruby and Raven while I collected a massive amount of heat mana into my left hand and drew my shortsword with my left.
As I neared the ground Raven appeared and Ruby as well. Their eyes widened at the elementals and Raven performed a laido strike with her fire blade. A wave of flames rebuffed the elementals while Ruby ran with her semblance to the elevated platform.
I shot my heat beam at the strong elemental and it screeched at the flames and concentrated heat. I followed that up with as much air attuned mana as I could make blasting out of me, creating a huge blast of wind that pushed back the elementals.
Ruby managed to get some quick shots off and knock out four weker elementals. Raven was working on some sort of spell. I readied a heat wave for the rest of the weaker elementals. I need more heat based moves…
The strong elemental, to it's credit, recovered quickly. Ruby shot at it four times but didn't do much. It was just too big. The sound of her magazine clicking was met with her immediately loading another.
Raven dashed forth to meet the charging elemental. I saw it rear back to use it's breath attack like it had used on my air blade before but Raven didn't stop. She swung her sword as the elemental pushed forward and shot a concentrated blizzard at Raven.
Raven's sword blazed with fire but in front of her a portal sprung into existence. Another was made right next to Ruby. Raven flew through it and came flying right at the elemental's side.
I shot my heat wave at the small cluster of elementals, which was down to three and the strong one now. The weaker ones died and the strong one interrupted it's breath attack to turn into a hiss.
Raven finally met the vertebrae of the elemental and her sword cleaved through it's neck. The hissing cut off and the elemental began to wisp away into ice mana.
A long silence met the end of the skirmish. Ruby kept her gun trained at the stairs and I dropped my shortsword/halberd to instead have two heat beams - one in each hand - ready to fire if anything came up. Raven swayed a little but shook it off. I was at about a quarter of my mana but I spared a third of it to her and she nodded gratefully and got into a more fighting shape.
"I just need a minute." I said. I had my parallels meditating for heat affinity and mana all the time, though the mana regeneration didn't stack, at all times now since I could spare a parallel, but I was dangerously low on my mana and my aura wasn't looking too good either. I had drawn from it for my spells to save some mana and use both regeneration effects. I was at about three fifths.
Everyone just stayed calm and took a breather for a moment. Exactly two minutes later, I was counting, I drew on my ice affinity and made sure the doors weren't moving and iced over the windows. I made the ice as cloudy as possible to prevent any elementals seeing us… or however they see. Not aura or mana sense seeing that Raven and I were hidden…
"Alright…" I pulled Swift from my soul and ordered him to inspect the stairwell for danger. If there was danger he would return. If not he would do a flip.
Swift checked it out and happily did a flip as he returned to me. Simple enough. Swift wasn't very useful in a fight but little things like this were good.
I moved towards the stairwell and kept my senses alert. Ruby hopped down and went to the railing of the stairwell, peeking her gun down when I took a look. Sweep and clear, huh?
There wasn't any danger though. There was a metal push door…
"A door. Raven, if you would?" I sent a bunch of aura and a bit of mana to Raven, draining myself a little, and she sighed and passed by me. She walked down the stairs and drew her fire attuned blade and readied a fireball in one hand. I walked down the steps to be near her if she needed it.
Raven drew back a boot and strongly kicked the door in. Or, well, tried. The door budged a little and a crack of ice signalled a failure. She didn't emote at all and kicked again. The door flew open and a shattering indicated ice being broken. A loud hiss came from a minor ice elemental that lunged for Raven. She sliced it's head off and checked the room.
It was a smallish square room with an open doorway leading to another room. I could see some old beds through it. It smelled… well, it didn't really smell at all. There wasn't any dust because literally nothing but a mass of ice mana was here for years.
Ruby, Raven, and I swept unanimously let our guard down. I turned and closed the door, seeing a sheet of ice on the other side of the door. Now with a spiderweb of cracks on it. The hinges were also so cold that after Raven's kicking them they cracked. Oh well.
The main room we were in had two older computers on one wall and a couch, bookshelf, cabinet, some shelves, and a stove in the corner. People… lived here? Or rested here before taking the minecarts to wherever they went.
Raven looked into the other room and sighed. I walked over to see the other room. Two bunk beds, two empty footlockers, and a thin plastic sheet drawn back to a thankfully empty toilet.
"Was this place some sort of outpost or resting spot? It's my best guess. People like Mango went out to collect… things, and then they went back here to take a cart back to a main camp. Probably the bunker we saw."
"Carts?" Ruby asked. I nodded.
"Two carts with older machine guns mounted. I can't say if they're motorized or not. They might be like bicycles with foot petals. Two guns facing outwards making it a two seater. We can probably take one to see where it goes tomorrow." Ruby nodded.
"This isn't how I imagined the icy forest would go." Raven said.
"Oh believe me, we've barely scratched the surface of it so far." I said. "But we can really only wait and see. I want to know more about this organization that Mango was a part of. Why was Vale here? How is this place here in the first place? The trees emit ice mana passively but the tower has a larger signature of mana than any of them. It's all… very obscure."
"Maybe that journal you picked up has some answers?" Ruby suggested. I nodded.
"I'm half expecting more questions but at least it's a start in the right direction." Raven sighed.
"Can we start on some food first? I'm fine with anything right now."
"We'll have to save the marshmallows for another night then."
"Awwww." Ruby whined. "Alright… can I get first watch? I don't feel like sleeping right now."
"Want to do some reading first?" I put the journal into my hand and raised it. Ruby nodded with a small smile.
"Food please?" Raven asked. I sadly had to forfeit good cooking and use warm and go food so I got out a can of chili and pried the top open with a knife. I quickly started the process of heating it with my heat affinity and Raven eyed it like she might just take it without heating.
I walked over to the couch and sat down. I assigned a few parallels to remote clones and directed them to make a series of barriers to both hide all mana in the building and walls of intense heat when they detect ice mana in close proximity.
I also wanted those lockers searched for anything useful. Three clones got on the barriers while one searched the lockers. The last continued meditating on my heat affinity.
I finished quick-heating the can of chili so I passed it to Raven. She made a spoon out of stone from earth mana and started wolfing it down.
I made a pot from some quick ice producing and jotted down a rune to make it not absorb heat as I so often did. I produced water from mana and filled it before flash boiling it and dropping in a tea packet. Raven took notice and looked pleased at my initiative.
I closed my eyes and watched through my clone's eyes at the contents of the lockers. Nothing. A whole lot of nothing. Well, there was a family photo, a box of old dust rounds, and an old pistol. Not useful at all. Not to mention that the ammunition might be bad with age. I ordered my parallel to crack open the bullets for the dust and he got on it.
I ignored the other three, who were a quarter of the way done with the protective runic circles, and made some canned ravioli for Ruby and I to eat.
Pretty soon we finished two cans of the ravioli and Raven got to her tea, which I handed her a canteen for. She drank some for a few minutes and put the rest in the canteen before heading off to bed. My parallels finished and checked their work so they got to practicing the heat beam in my soul space.
And I opened the journal…
[|||| == ||||]
"So how did you brats like your jobs?"
"Bouncing was boring."
"Those guys you wanted recruited were idiots. I have no idea why you think they even have the potential to scrub toilets but they work for you now."
"Goldilocks one day you'll realise that plenty of idiots have their uses. Anyways… Fishie?"
"The dust depot was fun to break into. There were a few guards patrolling around but I got the tax reports."
"Thank you, Fishie. Now… rewards! Here you are you two get paper and Fishie, be very careful with these deadly poisons. They're worth a lot."
"We can use them to kill rats maybe."
"Shut it Goldie. Here. This was easy enough to get but like all things precious you own it comes from me. Well, on our mutual friend's behest but meh."
"Sure. Li… a… an apartment at… okay then I'm just going to take this."
"Sure, sure. And here, stone. It's apparently for your family."
"Thank you."
"I like him. He doesn't have snark like you two."
"Can you put your poisons in his coffee?"
"That would be a waste of good poison."
"Love you too, brats. I'm glad we got to know each other so well. Now shoo. And don't slam the door this-"
*SLAM!*
"… I hope we never meet again."
"Hi Torchwick."
"GAH! Oh… teacher."
"Right. Here, pictures of that drug dealer. I got all his stuff sold to another one. I also found his contact to Vacuo. He's running with his tail between his legs and a lovely tattoo on his face. It's like a poster board of your name."
"A little brutal but sure. My friend said you didn't like violence though. And where'd your cheer go?"
"You forgot to mention that he was experimenting on the homeless. I kind of… got a little angry. Not really feeling like being happy and bubbly."
"WHAT?! Dust damnit. This is why I don't like drug dealers. Not now, not before, and not ever. Too unpredictable… um, here. Wait - that's not it… here it is. Your reward. It's the only one I didn't have to get myself."
"Thank you."
"You're the only one of the four that I actually like. I'll reach for you if I have a job dealing with terrible people other than myself."
"Huh. I'd be alright with that. Bye now."
…
*Shrkk*
"Hm? From Qrow?… Oh?… OH MY GOSH! AHAHAHAHA! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! I FINALLY GOT A DATE! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
[|||| =NEXT LEVEL= ||||]
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If like it please drop some POWER STONES
