(TLO) Chapter 160: Skirmishes (Patreon)

Skirmishes. That was what all this was. Skirmishes that could still cost him his life.

In the beginning he had wondered why they’d needed so many priests charging the crack. Now he knew. They had been in the crack for over a week now, intercepting soul beasts and claiming as many soul fragments as time allowed. At least four priests had a pocket marble and they slipped every fragment into it. As for the corpses, they left them there, stripping them of the fewest parts considered edible.

Now, they sat camped out under a thundering sky with gathering clouds, red like a sandstorm. Another group sat not too far from them. They wore simple garmets of leather armor but most were outfitted in steel. Still, they were outfitted lightly.

Nothing marked their affiliatin except the emblem of the government. However, Seth recognized nothing of it to dictate which branch of the government or even what continent.

On his first day they had ventured as Gregory had ordered. They’d met a group of reia beasts and dispatched of them adequately. The numbers were high but their team work was lacking. These beasts were not known to work in numbers, not in the real world. Whatever had coupled them in so many numbers within the crack had forgotten to give them a pack mentality. They had succumbed to the priests in good time.

Unfortunately, the seminary had lost a priest to the skirmish.

Their convergence with the second team had come a day later than anticipated before they’d been handed over to Reverend Dozie. According to the Reverend, their delay was at the entrance of the crack. Like Gregory, they’d had to fight their way in, spilling more blood than was necessary.

In Dozie’s care, Seth and his brothers saw combat. It was everything they’d hoped it would not be. In their first fight with the priests they made unnecessary errors, stumbled where they shouldn’t have and almost made mistakes that bore costs.

In a mixed group of silver and gold beasts, there was a lacking certainty of who they could actually face. But by the fourth day, they set aside whatever disagreements were brewing between Seth and Fin and took to their training. So when each priest took a prey for themselves, unable to easily distinguish the strength of the beasts they came across, they attacked each one as a team.

During these fights, Seth learned one simple but hard lesson. A lesson that almost crippled his usefulness to the team as a whole: Manasteel bullets were useless within the crack. Even up close all a shot from a sniper rifle was capable of was pushing one back, and only by mere inches.

He’d once come up on one of the beasts he and his brothers had weakened, placed the mouth of his rifle against an eye that stared back at him, and pulled the trigger. Its knocked its head back and drawing a single drop of blood that leaked from its eye like a shed tear.

His twin blades, however, proved useful, digging into flesh under the weight of [Quick Strike], and it didn’t take him long to discard of his guns. He submitted them directly to Dozie who tossed them aside unceremoniously.

“A mage has no need of guns,” he said.

Another thing he learned during the week was why this world was so rife with reia beast. It was a worry that had bothered him since their third encounter. Every now and again they would find tracks of the beasts that seemingly came from nowhere. When they did, Dozie would send them off in chase of them. Each time they would find a horde of them and each time they would fight. Eventually, they stumbled on the reason.

It was on an afternoon hot enough for Seth to feel through his Iron authority body. One of the priests had stumbled upon a track that suggested a significant number of Noomans, humanoid beasts with long serpentine necks, clawed fingers and the head of a bird.

A gold priest named Nuller with short blonde hair and yellow eyes led the team as they tracked them. When they found the nest, they also found the source of them. The sight of an active fissure, already broken and expelling beasts was a surprise to some of them. The priests who had experienced the world crack before, aging veterans on the path of gold remained unperturbed.

When they’d cleared out all the Noomans, they sealed the fissure with a dilator. It was the first Seth had seen, a box of mundane, austere iron with a red beast core at its centre. The priest placed it at the base of the fissure and activated it in a way Seth didn’t know.

When it came alive, it sucked reia to the red core then expelled it at the fissure in a white line that seemed like a thread. It spread upwards, weaving through it like a needle sewing shut a rip in a cloth. In five minutes it was sealed shut. Anyone who hadn’t been a witness to its existence would never believe a fissure had ever been there.

The crack continued to prove itself full of surprises. Apparently, the fissures appeared at random intervals in random places. They witnessed a fissure reappear in a spot where they had closed one not even two days after its closure. They witnessed a fissure appear in the sky. Fortunately, the dilator sufficed to close it, regardless.

But that was not the worse of its appearances. The worst came twice. They were taking their rest in the dark red night of the crack. Priests stood watch, keeping their eyes out for mages a little too daring or beasts out for a bite or two when it happened.

A fissure broke out in the middle of their camp. The air cracked in the way fissures do. However, where fissures take a while before expanding at the hands or claws or paws of passing beasts, they opened instantly, pouring forth beasts by the seconds. The priests rallied quickly and stood their ground. A battle had come to them and they faced it in the same way they always did: dauntless.

Suffice to say, they lost at least eight priests to each fissure.

The encounters helped Seth and his brothers understand why John woke them with a burst of reia at odd hours of the morning. When the fissures appeared, they did so with a burst of reia that mirrored the force of a Baron’s reia.

Seth sat alone on the hard ground. On the nights when they did not advance, unlike the other groups from the other organizations, they laid on the bare ground under the open sky instead of sleeping bags and under camping tents.

He was caressing the flat of one of his twin blades when Barnabas eased his way beside him and sat down. For a while he was quiet, allowing Seth the silence as he ran a finger along the grooves of his blade.

Seth knew his peace would not last long and when his brother spoke, it came as no surprise.

“I envy you.”

The beginning of a conversation did not surprise him, however, the choice of words did.

Seth looked at him. “What?”

“Your wound,” Barnabas nodded at his thigh.

Seth looked down at it and understood. Two days ago, they’d stumbled across what were massive scorpions larger than a man. During their endeavor to put them down, one had run him through the thigh with its stinger. His only luck was that they carried no poison in their stingers.

“I don’t know any Silver that heals as quickly as you do,” Barnabas continued. “I mean, we always suspected, but this is actually too fast. Perhaps golds heal this fast?”

Seth moved his sword gently then moved his cassock so that he stared at the healing injury through the hole the stinger had gone through.

Staring back at him from beneath another hole in his trousers was a wound that was completely covered but not entirely healed.

“It’s still healing,” he said.

“Yes,” Barnabas nodded. “But that looks like you got wounded a few weeks ago, not two days ago.”

Seth nodded in acquiescence. He’d known his healing wasn’t normal for his authority, but he hadn’t it was this strong.

“It was the same with when Forlorn almost killed you, wasn’t it?” Barnabas asked with a touch of guilt. “That’s how you came back from the healer’s room in only three days.”

Seth nodded again and moved his cassock back so that it covered it.

“I am sorry for it,” Barnabas said.

“For what?” Seth asked.

“What Forlorn did.”

He could’ve reminded the boy that he was not Forlorn and had no need to apologize. He could’ve also taken the apology. He could’ve done a lot of things in possible response but did nothing. He hadn’t necessarily forgiven Forlorn, but he had accepted the boy for what he was. Holding a grudge against Forlorn for his actions was like hating the weather for being cold.

It was who the boy was.

“But Timilehin got him back for it,” Barnabas said, after realizing he would give no response.

Seth still didn’t look up from his shortsword. “He did?”

“Yes.”

“I guess that’s why he’s scared of him now.” He thought back to Monsignor’s Faust speech after coming from the healer’s room and Forlorn’s arm in a sling came to mind.

We knew it was Timi, one of his minds thought. That was a whole lot of mercy.

“But I don’t think breaking his arm was all he did,” Barnabas went on. “It’s not enough.”

“Not enough for what?”

“To scare him that much. Forlorn’s terrified of our brother.”

“All of you are.” Seth raised his head to look out the group of sleeping and wakeful priests. “Most of them too. And with good reason.”

He didn’t hold their fear against them. With how strong his hearing was, he heard the whispers and murmurs. He heard their fear in their voices.

It wasn’t their fault. In the past week, Timi had proven himself to be something unnatural.

When they came across a horde of beasts, he didn’t hunt with his brothers, he hunted with the priests. When they’d been slipping up and making mistakes in the beginning, Timi had been charging soul beasts and ripping into them in vicious sprays of blood and flesh. He was how he and his brothers deciphered beast ranks. Silvers died at the hands of Timi faster than they had any right to. Golds were the only beasts that gave him any difficulty.

Two days ago, when Seth had gotten pierced in the thigh, Timi had charged into the horde of giant scorpions to drag him out. He had saved Seth—and his brothers by extension—but had left a flood of death in his wake. Even now, no one was able to tell if the cacophony of beasts he’d torn through had been silver or gold. But Seth suspected there had been some golds mixed in there. If not, why would the golds whisper at a silver taking on a bunch of silvers.

Jim’s words from long ago slithered into his mind and he thought better of his opinion: I’m gold and I wouldn’t walk into a nest of silver beasts alone.

The number of beasts Timi had torn through to get to him certainly rivaled a nest.

“Our brother may listen only to you, Seth,” Barnabas said with his now usual touch of worry, “but you should be wary of him.”

Seth spared a glance at Timi’s balled up sleeping form beside him. He looked so peaceful in his sleep. So harmless. His size was the only thing that hinted at what he was capable of.

He turned his attention back to Barnabas. “You think it’s a good idea to say that when he’s sleeping right there? He could’ve heard you.”

Barnabas shrugged, then gave him a warm smile. “You wouldn’t let him hurt me.”