Descent

The air's screams could be heard faintly through the light helmet around my head as we fell. our squad was currently measuring the time left until we landed. We had jumped off the last branch a couple minutes now, so we should be landing soon. Audrey and Zack, our two navigators, reached their conclusion at the same time.

"Thirty seconds 'till landing!" They shouted in unison.

As I recall, Audrey and Zack are about the same age, this took a large role in the reason they are great partners. They also shared much of the same interests, such as intense thrills, chocolate, and navigating(Hence their current role as navigators on our squad). I was glad to have them. They got along well with the other members of the squad and are also people I knew I could count on in a pinch.

"5,"

"4,"

"3,"

"2,"

"1,"

As Zack counted down, the next branch appeared in the darkness below us. It was approaching fast, but not that fast. This was different from the tales of earth. In those, people die when they fall from too high. Here in Elfrem, however, a person's terminal velocity isn't fast enough to seriously hurt a person unless they landed badly. Most of us in the Research group tend to believe the cause of this is the disproportion of the atmosphere and the gravity in Elfrem. This disproportionality is caused by the air being compressed within Elfrem. The entire surface of Elfrem is made of a leaf-like substance that is almost impossible to even scratch. This has a byproduct of keeping everything inside, including solids, liquids, and gasses. Humans, who live in the upper branches, are one of the creatures that live underneath the surface in the branch filled darkness.

I braced for impact just before a loud thump could be heard as our entire squad of ten people landed simultaneously. A base branch, or an unusually large branch that grew straight up that other branches grow out of, was barely visible as a slightly brighter object against the blanket of shadow that surrounded us. It was important to keep at least one base branch in sight because it is impossible to travel up the branches without one.

Without needing to say much, the rest of our squad started to make their way to the edge of the branch to look for the next branch to drop onto. This was a very crucial part of descending Elfrem. Of course, there was a reason for this. If a squad missed a branch, they could be stuck falling in complete darkness for who knows how long and they don't know where the next branch is, so there was a high likelihood of the members getting injured badly upon landing. There was also a chance a Symbiote would attack them while they were falling or after they landed. The symbiotes would have a bigger advantage if they fought while falling so a squad tries to make each fall as short as possible.

Since it seemed we had plenty of time before we reached the side of the branch, I decided to pay attention to the people in our squad.

"Heh, we get to have Will and Cloe as our leaders again. We're pretty lucky."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I heard they puts some warrior pairs to shame even though they're a leader role. Since I've been on their squad before, I can also guarantee that their judgement is great for pretty much any situation."

I notice the heat building up in my face and turn my attention somewhere else. I decide to look at the faces of the members of our squad.

"I see... Audrey and Zack are our navigators this time. Hm... We have Emilia and Dylan for healing. It seems we got Nora and Owen for carriers and... hm?"

I stop and think for a second. Since when did the elders send ALL the strongest on just one mission. I mean, I know that the previous two squads were lost but... Isn't this a bit excessive? I mean, while they are only just above average at they're individual roles, each and every pair had at least the same battle prowess as a average fighter. I can exclude the fighters themselves since I don't know them. If we exclude the fighters themselves, our whole squad had a total of four pairs that had at least average fighter capabilities as well as being above average in each of their own roles as well.

After deciding that a plan of action, I turn towards my partner in the leader role.

"Alright Chloe, I have to remain here as lookout so I would like it if you could go and scout out our warrior pair's strength, "I tell my partner. Chloe blinked once and turned towards our fighters while saying,

"Alright."

I see her walking towards our fighters and nod. I go back to focusing on where we were going as I can hear some conversation begin behind me.

---

"STOP!!"

We are almost at the edge of the branch when I shout for everyone to stop. Directly in front of us was a writhing mass of roots, vines, leaves, and an occasional flower. Realizing that this was likely a stage three (Fighter) symbiote, the entirety of the group began to slowly move backwards while preparing for battle.

Out of the ten people in our squad, seven people pulled out a grimoire while I could see the other three pull out small vase-like objects that had writing carved into the inside.

'It seems like we have seven regular mages including me. At the same time, we have either three mages based on speed or those mages had slow default output rates.'

I thought observing how the majority of the squad used a basic spellcasting tool while three had containers that could hold more conductive fluid as to increase the rate of aether transferred from themselves to the spells contained in the vases. More conductive fluid increases the rate of transfer because it allows more of the user's potential energy to be released at once.

"Hmm... seeing as we have the best pairs in this squad I will assume that they are speed orientated mages and don't just have a slow output rate."

I say this but I'll still take the possibility that they could be slow into consideration when we have to fight a large number of enemies.

The ball of squirming roots and vines finally unraveled itself, revealing a ball of wood with a bark like texture to it. The roots and vines all came from around the same spot on the ball. A crack in the ball appeared opposite to where the vines and roots were emerging from. This crack caused the whole ball to split halfway through to create a mouth-like feature on the ball.

"ROOOAAR!!"

Releasing a powerful roar, the end of all of the ball's roots suddenly sharpened themselves into gleaming spikes and razor, sharp blades.

While this was going on, our squad wasn't standing Idly by as I can see many different cold weapons appearing in the hands of the mages. These included spears, a sword and shield combination, a few battle axes, and daggers with serrated edges. Along with the the cold weapons, muttering could be heard as spikes, spiked balls, orbs made of ice, and an assortment of other weapons or materials floated around the members of our squad.

Prepared for battle, me and our squad charged towards the symbiote. As we charged toward the symbiote, the creature in question began to float off the ground and towards us with it's bladed roots swinging around it and forming a spherical shield made of many moving blades. All while the spiked roots were cocked and ready to be fired out when needed.

---

The battle was coming to an end as the decisive moment was approaching. Both forces are worn out as wounds could be seen all over. The symbiote was missing many of it's roots and it was trembling in the air. Our squad wasn't much better as we had lost two people, three are too injured to fight, and and another two are in a state of shock. This left us with three people to try and finish off the symbiote in front of us.

The symbiote launched a spiked root at me and I noticed it just in time before it went through my face. Taking the opportunity to attack, our co leader, Cloe, brought down an axe that chopped the attacking root in half.

After Cloe chopped the root, the symbiote shook violently as it was forced to abandon the root to not waste more energy. The root shriveled up and fell off the back of the symbiote. The symbiote started to shrink once again.

Seeing the symbiote get smaller once again, I look over at Chloe to see her turn towards me as well. I nod my head and she nods back. Turning my attention back to the symbiote once again. I notice that, because we had chopped a few off earlier, there are more openings in it's spherical defense. Of course, we noticed this earlier but we weren't able to take advantage of it because the blades were moving fast enough that it made up for it's weakness. However, the blades are moving much slower now so the openings are clear as day.

I run around to the left of the symbiote while Cloe runs around it to the right. As we got closer to being opposite to each other, we begin to close in the the symbiote. Probably sensing the danger, the symbiote launches a few spiked roots at us. These are easily deflected and I continue to charge, focusing entirely on the symbiote.

Locking on to one of the openings, I charge straight at it while flipping the pages of my grimoire. When I had almost reached the opening I dive toward it because it is too small for me to fit normally. I land on the page I want just as I am about to reach the opening. I guide a decent amount of aether from my heart to the letters on the page. As the aether moves through the letters and out the other side a a thin sheet of metal I manipulate the metal to apply itself to my skin and protect me as I move through the opening.

I go through the opening and the screeching of metal against metal tears through my ears. Once I'm inside the defense, I run towards the symbiote. I notice the symbiote send out a wave of aether outwards. This shocks me as the amount of aether the symbiote had to have used for me to detect it without trying must have been huge.

Following the release of the aether wave, the bladed roots started to give off a gleam. This indicating that they have become reflective. They are then pulled towards the symbiote at great speeds. To counter this, I remove the protective metal coating from my skin and form a dense metal ball. Manipulating the ball to hit one of the blades, I am shocks to see the ball easily cut in half.

'Okay. Side note, do not get hit by those blades!'

I continue to run towards the symbiote with the blades closing in behind me. Once they got too close for comfort I decide to look back and see if it is possible to dodge them.

I look back to see a blurry storm of reflected light and chips of bark as the blades rip apart even the bark of the branch we are standing on. This bark being one of the strongest materials known to man, I know that there was no way to escape or block those blades. Seeing the two options disappear confirmed my theory. The main body of the symbiote couldn't defend itself at all so it had to come up with ways to protect itself. This meant the only way to stop this slaughter was to kill the symbiote.

Turning towards the symbiote once more, I flip the pages of my grimoire to a spell that launches me at the symbiote. When I am about to hit the symbiote, I summon a suitable weapon, a wood chopping axe, and swing down on the parasite as hard as I can. It is also now that I notice my partner, Chloe, swinging a serrated dagger at the symbiote at the same time.

When both attacks hit the symbiote, they tear through it with surprising ease. The two weapons moving in different directions rip the symbiote in half.

Once the symbiote dies, all the roots, vines, and blades shrivel up and turn into dust.

Once we defeat the symbiote the pressure on everyone's chest is lifted as many in our team give a sigh of relief.

"Alright people! I know that we are all exhausted but we might as well be comfortable. I suggest that we set up a tent and rest up. We should restore our energy before we continue our travel."

I shout out the first part, but since I am too tired I end up kind of just muttering the last part. The others don't disagree with me. They can see just how tired me and Chloe are, not to mention, they themselves are exhausted. I would say most of them could just lay down on the bark and sleep there.

We build ourselves a large tent and take out a bunch of sleeping bags. We don't bother doing anything else and just fall asleep.

---

I wake up and don't even open my eyes. My whole body aches from the activities of a couple hours ago. I instead focus my attention on my heart. As the muscle that pushes blood through a human's body, it's health is essential. This is unfortunate as it is also the organ that produces aether. Aether, the mysterious force that allows any living thing to change reality, is produced at a very small rate and humans need to force themselves to produce aether fast enough for practical use. This has a variety of possible side effects should this go wrong. heart attacks, low blood pressure, and internal hemorrhaging are all possible.

Thankfully, there is nothing wrong and my heart is still going as strong as ever. In fact, it is producing aether even faster than before. This is another thing that all creatures are grateful for. The ability to increase one's natural production rate through exercising their aether production and control. this consequently increases the amount a person can increases their rate of production as well.

I check one more time to make sure that everything's is really okay before opening my eyes. The semi-bright light fills my vision and I squint a bit to let my eyes adjust to the light. Since the light is on, that must mean that someone else has woken up already. I fully open my eyes and look around. I see that Owen, Audrey, and Chloe are awake. I am not surprised that any of them are awake before me because Chloe is a much harder worker than me and could often be found training even now, just a short while after an intense battle. The other two just lost their partners so it was understandable for them to wake up early. Audrey even had circles under her eyes, indicating that she hadn't gotten much rest.

I assume that neither of them want to talk with someone right now so I walk over and sit beside Chloe, who didn't seem to notice and kept up her training. She was slowly increasing the amount of aether she generated while controlling it to form different shapes, materials, and even forms of energy such as fire and light. Using this method, one could slowly train both their control over aether and how fast they can produce it.

"-Whew-"

Chloe lets out a sigh as she turns towards me while asking,

"So, what do you want to talk to me about?"

I smile, recognizing that she probably reached the limit to how far she could strain herself for aether production at the moment and impressed she was aware of my presence without indicating it.

"How long do you think we should stay here to rest?"

I ask her this even though I already predicted that the best time to leave would be in a day or so but it is valuable to have another opinion when estimating things without a specific answer.

"I would say we wait for about a day so that all our members can rest and get ready before we leave."

After confirming that my estimation would be effective, I begin to think of what I should do in these two hours. Since I can't leave the tent for the fear that symbiotes will notice the light from inside the tent, I look around for something entertaining to do.

As I am choosing between fiddling with a Rubik's Cube and playing solitaire, another member of our squad wakes up. The one who woke up was one of the fighters from our fighter pair. As I'm not familiar with this specific pair of fighters, I decide to find out her name and start walking over to her.

"Hey."

I greet her as I walk over. She looks up at me before smiling and greeting me back with a,

"Hello."

"I don't remember your name and I came over to ask you soo, could I trouble you for your name?"

Although slightly awkward, I realize my goal in coming here.

"Oh, my name is Victoria. Nice to meet you!"

She greets me with much enthusiasm. She seems to be one of those types who gets excited over everything.

'At least she's happy'

I think as I look over at our two members silently glaring at Victoria's cheerful smile from the corners of the tent. Victoria noticed them and turns to face them. I think they may be dampening her spirit but am proven wrong when she smiles and waves at them.

'She doesn't seem to care... She is definitely one of those chipper types.'

Satisfied at how much I found out I begin to walk off.

'Now that I've checked her out there should be one other fighter to check out. I should probably check on the ones who lost their partners as well'

I have decided to take this free time to find out more about some of our members that I don't know very well or don't know at all.

"Oh! I also have something to say!"

Victoria seems to remember something just as I begin to walk away.

"What is it?"

"I want to say that you were really cool yesterday. The way you fought and worked together with your partner was just so inspiring! I wondered if you could teach me and Sam how to fight like that sometime."

'I might have to extend our break so that I can accommodate all the things on my to-do list.'

I think while looking at Victoria's enthusiastic face.

---

Almost two hours later, I am staring at our two fighter breathing heavily while laying on the floor. During the last hour and a half, I've been putting them through the grinder. I had them do an assortment of aether control exercises such as making a metal rod and turning the rod into a sphere and creating fire to heat up breakfast for our newly awakened members. Of course, this was only warming up as I soon had them slowly increasing their aether production, fighting each other with one-handed, wooden swords, and modeling a metal structure made from their aether in their other hand.

Thinking back, it's no wonder that they were huffing and puffing on the floor.

"Alright! I want you to practice these exercises at least twice a week! You may be exhausted now but you have barely made any improvement. To really improve, you need to do this consistently or else you won't improve, you might even get worse. It takes work to improve upon yourself!"

I'm yelling at them in my drill instructor voice. I want to grind the fact they no matter how exhausted they feel, they will only improve a little bit. I want them to know that consistently practicing is the best way to improve, even if it requires them to lessen the intensity of the workout.

"Sir, yes sir!"

They are so exhausted that they are calling me sir out of habit. They must think I'm one of the trainers back at base.

"Alright, you are very exhausted right now so we might as well spend the rest of the day training."

I think this is reasonable since it would still be a couple days before everyone was completely recovered. Might as well train what has recovered while we can. I turn towards everyone else in the room. Seeing that most of our members were awake, I call out,

"Alright people! Most of us are still not fully recovered so we will take the first half of the day off. We will resume our descent after we eat lunch."

I announce our schedule for today and see the members of our squad nodding their heads. Most of them decided to train their aether because it recovers faster than muscle. Because of this, everybody who starts to train didn't train muscle.

I walk over to our fighter pair and tell them,

"Since you two have done an intense workout I would suggest you to rest up with the remaining time available."

They nod, acknowledging my advise. With that, I walk away to one of the corners in the tent that currently housed a very grim looking Audrey. Since I had met and interacted with Victoria and Samuel, I only had to meet Audrey, Emilia, and Dylan before I get to claim that I know everyone in the squad well enough.

When I arrived in the corner, Audrey glared at me and said in a low, crackling voice,

"Wha -cough-! What do you want -cough-!"

It was quite obvious that she was in very bad shape. My objective was to get to know her better so I decide to ask her what her and her partner liked to do in their spare time.

"Why would you need to know that? There is know way that this information is useful in this mission. Aren't you invading my privacy?! There is no need for you to ask such a personal question! My partner is de -cough-! My partner is dead!! Would you please leave before I start yelling insults at you?!!"

'Hmm... she seems very upset. She seemed to mention that her partner is dead and that the information is too personal.'

I thought as I was deciding how to approach her.

'Based of her answer, My next question will be less personal and not involve her partner, who is dead. If she still refuses to answer then I will have to consider it having to do with her mental state.

"Audrey, would you mind telling me which of the elders is your favorite?"

"No! Why would I want to tell you that?! Just leave me alone. It would be better for us all that way."

Audrey replies angrily as tears start to well up in her eyes. She definitely wasn't in the right state of mind to think rationally.

'Her current fighting abilities and social abilities seem to be based very strongly on the emotions she's feeling right now. It's in these kinds of situations that my limited empathy really shows. I can understand why she would be upset by the death of her partner... but I just don't understand why it would affect her rational thinking. Also, she seems to be showing little control over her body, often attempting an action multiple times before doing it successfully. indicating she can't fight as well either. I just can't understand some people I guess.'

I let out a sigh while writing up the summary of the encounter in my mind. It's such a shame that I wasn't able to get to know her very well. However, it cannot be helped as I can see further interactions would be pointless. I know that the only way to understand other people better is to encounter more people like this but I just find it very frustrating to deal and figure out people who don't listen to me.

"With that wrapped up. I will head your wishes and leave. See you later Audrey!"

I begin to walk towards Emilia and Dylan who are our healers in this mission. As I am walking away I can hear Audrey mutter a few words in her raspy voice,

"What a strange man..."