- Testimony taken after Spring alignment, Lyra, 1079. Source was a civilian bystander who spent the alignment in bunker seventeen.
Sounds of battle filled the entire forest outside of Cetus. Shouts of anger, raw with fury. Cries of pain, raw with torment. Screams of anguish, raw with loss. Monsters let loose attacks of acid and flame, claw and tooth. Users let loose attacks with elements and arrows, swords and shields.
The three moons hanging in the sky one on top of the other light up the night sky with an eerie light, well enough to see, but not well enough to be comfortable about it.
Though a little bit less than an hour had passed since the start of the alignment, Kya felt like days had already passed her by.
Quickly calling up her quest timer and pinning it to the corner of her vision, she checked her progress in a brief moment of respite as a slimy inkling started slithering towards her.
- - - - -
Quest: Minor Alignment
- Objective: Slay at least 100 monsters before the alignments ends
- Current Progress: 74/100
- Time remaining: 5h;02m;14s
- Reward: Ability Selection
- - - - -
It had been about three weeks since Kya had emerged unconscious from the Rose Forest to claim her class. About three weeks since she had enhanced her strength, mind, body, soul and infused them with magic she still didn’t fully understand. In that time, she had trained against beasts and monsters, sparred with Wade, honed her Aura with Alder, and in general started to mold herself from an earthling into a… actually, now that she thought about it, she wasn’t entirely sure what this planet was called, or the people from it. Alder and Wade were both elves, though other than the height and pointed ears that didn’t seem to matter much… whatever, she’d worry about that later.
Dodging a shot of sickly green goop that came out of the inkling, she sliced it cleanly in half before bending over, chest heaving and struggling for breath.
“Seventy… ugh, seventy-five.”
In the three weeks since Kya had claimed her class, in all of the training and fighting she’d done, she had never been more exhausted than she was right now. She’d fought against the crabs from dawn to dusk for the past several days, but as Alder had said, they were relatively measured fights of one on ones. But after not even an hour tonight fighting against the seemingly endless waves of lesser monsters, Kya was stretching herself thinner and thinner as time went on.
She hadn’t again made the same mistake as she had at the beginning of the night. Kya had stayed within about twenty meters of Tylan, frequently helping him against a larger horde of monsters, or being helped in return.
Kya gripped and regripped her daggers, they were slick with sweat and grime, she just considered it a blessing that at least the blood and gore were all wiped away when her loot ability took the monster away.
She stood, muscles screaming and locked eyes with Tylan. The swordsman seemed just as worn out as her, his blade having lost its lustrous glow and drooping in his hands.
Kya lethargically moved her head to look around, seeing other’s still fighting, seeing dozens and dozens of monster corpses that were killed by those without a looting ability, and even a few bodies of other fighters. There weren’t many, as the average common 1-Star monster was nothing against an average 1-Star user, but with so many monsters all running around, it was all too easy to become surrounded and overwhelmed.
Finally though, Kya heard the sound she’d been listening for. Something akin to trumpets or bugles sounded all along the city wall as the second-string defenders all came out in a wave. Kya was so relieved and distracted watching the relief troops coming towards her, that she nearly had her ear bitten off by an aggressive rabbit. Whipping her head around so quickly it gave her a crick in her neck, she saw Tylan’s blade pierced through the torso of the small grey bunny, the raw scent of iron assaulting her nose as its blood began draining down the length of his blade.
“For that, I’m going to charge you a drink when we get back to Lyra.” Tylan panted, dropping the rabbit with a jerk, and then slashing his blade through the air to dispel the blood.
Kya gave a weary grin in return, “What are you talking about, I saved you from the hellhound pup like ten minutes ago, and the inkling before that!”
In that moment, a team of three young looking users landed right behind them, with the tallest stepping out to greet them.
“I’m Allain and we’re Team Whiplash, here to relieve you!” Said the boy with a grin. He couldn’t have been more than nineteen, and the two behind him wore confident grins as well, before rushing off to fight a group of rats that had started charging towards them. All three wore matching tanned leather armor, and while Allen and the guy behind him had swords, the girl had a long black staff with a golden crystal attached to the top.
Tylan grasped the man on the shoulder and said “Right mate, thank you for this. We were just about at our breaking point here. Be careful, it’s only going to get more difficult as the night goes on. Stay together and stay sharp and watch for the hordes. Commons are a joke, but we’ve been seeing quite a few Uncommons starting to swarm about.”
“Nothing to worry about. We’ll hold the line for the next thirty minutes while you get some rest. Just don’t forget to relieve us as well!” Allain said with a laugh, before leaping after his teammates to help them fight.
Kya watched the three for a moment, waging a war against the two- and three-foot-long rats with grins on their faces and cries of battle on their lips. “They’re going to have a hell of a time this next half hour…” she muttered softly.
Tylan nodded his head solemnly. “It’s going to be sink or swim for them, and this is a hell of a place to learn how to swim. C’mon, we’ve only got twenty-eight minutes left until we’re back out here, and I want a nice drink and something to eat before we do.”
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Collapsing into a simple chair a few minutes later, Kya greedily chugged down the diluted restorative potion that one of the cities support staff had handed to her as she made her way past the city walls and into one of the recovery tents they’d set up.
It was a massive temporary construction, not much more than a red tarp on stilts, but the quiet place to just simply take her mind off the constant fighting she’d been doing was more than enough for Kya.
Diluted though it was, the small glass of amber liquid allowed her mana to recover slightly faster and had a calming effect on her mind. Taking another long sip, she let out a sigh and looked over as Tylan sat down next to her.
“Is this typical city defense strategy?” Kya asked, “I mean the fort line fighters and relief fighters switching off like this.”
Taking a mouthful of his own drink, Tylan eyed her before he replied, “I keep forgetting how new you are to all of this, still hard to believe you come from a region without alignments.” He shook his head, and continued “Well, yes and no. Cetus is more of a large town than a city, and the population goes with that. There are only seven 2-Stars in the city, and that’s after we brought four more from Lyra. Then we have less than fifty 1-Stars, again only after being reinforced. Larger cities like Lyra itself or any of the key cities on the continent will have standing guard forces and an actual guild presence to bolster its defense. So, for the most part, they’ll just have teams of Users fight for the duration of the alignments. But smaller settlements like this one are lucky to have this large of a force at all, let alone an actual wall for defense. What usually happens is the 1-Stars stay in town to take care of the zero’s and any monsters that form here, while the city lord and their personal guard man the walls.”
He shrugged, taking another sip of his drink. “There are positives and negatives to every strategy, but this one works well enough for the alignments at least. For the waves though, those are much worse. You’ll see in six months give-or-take, but the entire island will mobilize. All of the citizens leave their homes, and the guild will fund hundreds of escort quests to make sure all the citizens get to fortified locations. Tylos, Quin, Hima, and of course Lyra, become veritable fortresses. Citizens go down in bunkers, Earth Users reinforce half the city, it’s a whole thing. But the party after,” a gleam came into his eye, “That week is one of the greatest times to be a User.”
Kya laughed and was about to respond, when the other students all came in, covered in sweat grime and gore, and sat down heavily next to them.
Relis, the nineteen-year-old Death User who felt like nothing so much as a boy trying to larp a vampire and convince his mom that it really wasn’t a phase, pulled his black hood back to reveal his shoulder length greasy hair plastered to his face. He said in his probably fake, too breathy and too gravelly voice “While I revel in sending these souls back from whence they came, even I grow weary at so much carnage as this.”
Volund, the stocky Earth User, clapped Relis on the shoulder and said in his booming voice “Aye, that’s some hefty shit we’re wading through I tell yah. Hefty indeed.”
Relis for his part looked absolutely mortified to be touched at all, making the entire group laugh.
Gelar and Galar, the half elf brother-sister combo, along with Celi the small quiet woman whom Kya had maybe heard three words from. They were a good bunch, and a good party.
While the group talked and ribbed one another, Kya noticed the slight tension in all of their shoulders. They laughed a little too loudly, spoke a little too boldly. They knew the respite was only so long, and in only a few more minutes, they’d be out there once again.
Calling up her status while they talked, Kya checked her progress since the night had begun.
- - - - -
Character Screen
- Name: Kya Ophelia
- Race: Human/Founder
- Race Benefits: Loot the Corpse, Identify, Translation
- Class: {Space} - 1-Star - 47%
- Class Abilities: Push and pull - 2-Star - 00%, Slow Fall - 1-Star - 42%
- Class Benefits: Aura, Inventory
- Blessing: {Life} - Potion Processing
- - - - -
Even after killing seventy-five individual monsters and fighting for nearly an hour straight under the boosted experience of the alignment, Kya was still only at forty-seven percent. She sighed and dismissed the window, taking another drink and starting at the now empty glass, surprised she’d drank it all that quickly.
Tilting her head back to look up at the dull gray tarp over their heads, Kya let out a sigh. The group around her burst out laughing again, and Relis said “You go too far, Tylan. Too far indeed. The noble and ancient class of Death is one of unmistakable-”
“Me thinks,” Came the quiet whisper of a voice from Celi “You doth protest too much.” A tiny smile playing at the woman's lips as she looked around the group with eyes like saucers.
For a moment, no one said a word. Then Tylan drained the last of his drink and placed a hand on Relis’ shoulder. “Sorry mate, if even Celi’s calling you out, then it’s plain as day. You’re cringey as fuck.”
Relis’ face flushed scarlet as the entire group howled with laughter, and Kya joined in as well before casting her mind into her storage space and once more looking over the tiger’s eye item she kept there. Relis was over the top in every way possible, but she did genuinely like the raw combat potential of adding a death ability to her spacial abilities. Perhaps after tonight when she was closer to ranking up her slow fall, she’d take the plunge. But for now-
A voice suddenly rang throughout the tent, causing all the Users to groan and get to their feet. “Five minutes until you’re back out there, five minutes!”
Kya stretched her left leg, then right, then clasped her hands over head and stretched out her entire body. Tylan and Relis were arguing like brothers, Gelar and Galar were rooting them, Volund had somehow co-opted another potion from someone and was chugging it down, and Celi was still sitting crisscrossed on her seat just watching the others contentedly. Kya knew that this wasn’t her world, and these weren’t here people. Hell, she’d only know this group of people for less than a week.
“But that’s what fighting together does,” she thought, “you who shed your blood with me and all that.”
Walking over and sitting next to Celi, Kya eyed the woman. Her class was fire and emotion, called Hearthfire, and had made Kya wary of growing close to her. Thus far, she’d had only negative interactions with emotional users and didn’t like the inherent ability they had to mess with what she was feeling in any given situation.
Nodding to the group, Kya asked softly “Is any of this your doing? The levity I mean.”
Celi took in and slowly let out a breath in a quiet sigh. “It is, only a little. It’s hard to mess with the emotions of those at the same level as you, almost impossible when they’re stronger than you. Still, it doesn’t take much with them. All I’m doing is helping them destress a little, gain a little more confidence before we head back out.”
Celi looked over at Kya out of the corner of her eye. “You’re a very closed off person.”
It was a statement, rather than a question, and so Kya didn’t feel the need to answer.
Unfolding her legs and moving to stand, Celi hesitated and turned to look at Kya. “Fire and emotion go very well together, at least for me. They can be so chaotic and destructive for some, but for me, they’ve always been different. Warm. Kind. Home cooked meals and stories at night. Tomorrow evening, how about you and I find a quiet corner and trade stories, hm?”
Kya hesitated, not because she didn’t want to, but because she wasn’t sure if the feelings in her were her own, or the result of some manipulation from Celis. But slowly, she nodded. “I think… I’d like that.”
Another small smile from Celi, and a nod, before the voice rang out again “Alright, time to move, go, go, go!”
Drawing out both daggers and standing tall, Kya followed out Tylan, Relis, and the others. They weren’t the best of friends by any means, but slowly they were becoming her team, and behind them was an entire city of civilians. Kya knew that her ideals were sometimes naive and, well, idealistic. But she felt stronger, and prouder than she could describe knowing that she was fighting not only to make herself stronger, but to protect and defend.
Cloak flapping wildly in the wind as she leapt to the top of the town wall and then out once more into the fight, Kya was determined to slay as many monsters as she could… but that feeling of renewed optimism died in her chest at what she saw before her.
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