(TPOR) Chapter 113: A Bit Kooky But Nice (Patreon)

Daniel’s armored head turned to Ronda. The movement was slow and simple. While there was no expression on a featureless face, Ronda could already picture the half-scowl her interim captain was most definitely spotting.

“Comms,” Daniel said. The word was slow and purposeful.

Ronda winced at the sound of it.

She took a moment to look behind them and found everyone staring at them. She’d drawn a crowd by challenging his authority in front of the others. Such an act between two friends might not be a big deal, but in the order of hierarchy, she had done something wrong.

Ronda nodded once and activated her comms. She waited for the scolding that never came.

“We will not be going after the death mage,” Daniel said calmly.

Ronda hesitated. Even now, he continued to embody calmness. Even when Ven was dead and Big Man Desolate had run off with the very thing Ven had lost his life trying to get. Did he care nothing for vengeance? If not vengeance, what about the mission; was he simply going to abandon it?

“Then what do we do?” she asked, smothering whatever tone might insinuate disrespect.

“We do nothing.”

They were reaching the end of the path now. The clearing ahead of them was slowly coming to full view. It felt like forever ago since they walked through the hedge just to be met with blatant loss.

“So we’ll let that fucker get away?” Kid asked, finally adding his voice to the conversation.

“Yes,” Daniel answered.

“Why?”

“Because a death mage is rumored to be capable of killing someone with a touch.”

“He won’t be able to get to us past our suit,” Kid argued.

“We can take him,” Ronda added.

“Can we?” Daniel asked. “We just saw him absorb mana from a mana surge crystal. We already know that is supposed to be impossible. When a person comes in contact with a mana surge crystal it absorbs the mana from them with so much force that it can kill them. We just saw a death mage do the exact same thing the crystal is supposed to do. And he did it to the crystal. Do you truly want to know what such a person is capable of?”

Ronda frowned. When he explained it that way, it was difficult to keep arguing without making herself sound like a child throwing a tantrum.

Sensing his victory in her silence, Daniel went on.

“We will be returning to the ship,” he said. “There we will patch Kid’s armor up and then I will make a detailed report to headquarters. I expect we will be called back. Although something bothers me.”

They stepped out of the pathway and onto the forest beyond. Daniel, ever aware of his surroundings, was the first to pause.

“What the hell happened here?” he muttered, displeased.

Ronda turned her attention to the chaos in front of them and knew she, too, wanted an answer.

Not far from where they stood, the non-mage was unconscious on the ground. Ronda could sense that the girl was alive but only barely. There were monster corpses scattered all over the place. It seemed those out here had fought a battle of their own.

Ash and Chris were seated on the ground next to each other. Each of them bore a worried expression for reasons Ronda could not immediately discern. On Ash’s face she could see a touch of fear.

Far off to the side, as if he had run off to get something done, the red haired mage, Zed, laid unconscious on the ground. Steam rose from his body in whiskers as if he was extremely hot. In his hand he barely held on to a massive axe. Something about the axe felt very odd.

“Where’s Abed?” Kid asked no one exactly, and considering he had asked into their team comms, it was safe to say he was merely soliloquizing.

“I would like an answer to that, too,” Daniel said.

“Do we really care?” Ronda asked. “The man was a slime who liked to prey on kids. Whatever happened to him, I hope he’s dead.”

“You are a soldier, Ronda,” Daniel chided. “Abed was a tactical part of this team, even if an external force. What he is or probably was, has no bearing on this. We will most likely have to fight our way back out of this forest and we will need all the fighting power we can get.”

“I still say we’re better off without him,” Ronda muttered under her breath.

“Am I the only one whose suit is giving them this reading?” Kid asked with a touch of worry in his voice.

“What reading?” Ronda asked.

“The mana is too thick here.”

Ronda moved her attention to her suit. She felt the mind rune trigger as she brought up the ambient mana in the atmosphere. The suit complied without hesitation and Ronda frowned as she felt her mana reserves lose a bit of mana. As an attribute mage, she didn’t need as much mana as the regular mage so mana loss wasn’t a serious issue for her. But she was also an Olympian, which meant now that her armor had run out of its own mana reserves, she was a walking battery for the suit. She needed to conserve as much of her mana as she could.

“That’s a lot of blood aura,” Daniel said, echoing the information her armor was giving her.

“A lot of dead monsters, too,” she opined.

Daniel shook his head. “Not enough monsters for that much aura.” Daniel’s hand eased to his thigh where his side arm was supposed to be.

It stopped there, remembering what all of them knew: he was out of ammo.

“First, a death mage,” Ronda noted. “Now, a blood mage. Today’s a day that just keeps on giving.”

Blood mages weren’t exactly frowned on by the VHF. At least, not in the way they frowned upon death mages. But they were mages that the VHF was cautious around. Blood mages thrived in battle. Anywhere there was an abundance of blood was a place one did not want to go against a blood mage.

Their affinity with blood gave them something of a boost in a power. Ronda had never fought one, but from VHF records, she knew a thing or two about them. They manipulated blood better than most mages manipulated whatever mana type they were attuned to. But what was most worrying about them was in their ability to tap into blood mana. Apparently, blood mana was the most potent type of mana, barring raw mana. If a blood mage had proper control of their skills, they could absorb a specific amount of blood mana to give them enough of a boost to be deadly. With it, their affinity for any mana type they could cast increased for a brief period of time.

It made them a headache to deal with.

Then there was the blood madness. Some blood mages overestimate themselves and end up gorging on too much blood mana. The end result was a mindless mage with an arsenal of spellforms at their disposal but no intelligence to use it. Fighting a blood maddened blood mage was like fighting a monster at least one category higher.

Again, it was a headache.

“This is going to be a problem,” Ronda noted as she prepared herself to trigger one of her two attributes: clairvoyance.

“Wait,” Daniel halted her as the others caught up to them.

Festus, the Knight rank mage, sniffed the air once then grimaced.

“Too much blood aura,” he noted with disgust. “Not enough corpses for it. We might have a blood mage on our hands.”

He walked ahead of them as if his warning meant nothing to him. He approached Chris and Ash with casual steps. If he was bothered or worried in anyway, it did not show.

“What’s a blood mage?” Tulip asked.

Behind Ronda and her teammates, the Rukh mage was struggling to hold up, Madam Shaggy’s bulk with whatever strength he had.

Ronda opened her mouth to answer him but Madam Shaggy beat her to it.

“A blood mage is a mage with a specialization in blood magic,” she said, her voice tired and strained.

“Wait,” Tulip said, confused. “You can use blood to do magic?”

“You can use anything to do magic,” she confirmed. “But blood, like death, is a risky path to take. It consumes the mind, and the power can be addictive. Or so I’ve been told.”

“And,” Eitri added from where he was, piggybacked by Francis, “a blood mage is like an overpowered mage. They have this thing they do where they can fight with the strength of one category higher than they are. The more powerful ones can go as high as two categories. Luckily for other mages, it’s a temporary thing and has drawbacks.”

“And you’re saying there’s one here?” Francis asked.

“We are saying,” Daniel interrupted, “that it is a possibility.”

Ahead of the group, Festus stood over Chris and Ash. The others could not see his face so they could not tell his expression. However, Ronda felt they could deduce it from the looks on the two girls’ faces. Ash looked up at Festus with a touch of fear and Chris looked up with defiance. Along with her terrible personality, Ronda had learnt she was strong headed. Stubborn as a mule.

“What happened here?” Festus asked. His tone was commanding and broached no argument.

Chris’ scowl deepened and she opened her mouth to reply when Festus stopped her with a raised hand.

“I know you, child,” he said. “I know how you treat people. You are often rude and quick to brashness. So I will tell you this, now is not a time to annoy me. This expedition, or whatever it was meant to be, has stressed me more than I would like and has taken me away from doing what I like, only to yield no fruit. If there will be no respect in your voice, I would rather listen to your friend. At least fear will not make me want to punish her.”

The scowl on Chris’ face deepened but she said nothing. Instead, she took a deep breath and turned to Ash.

Ash remained staring up at Festus. Festus waited.

Festus continued to wait.

Ash’s lips quivered. It was not the quivering of a girl on the verge of tears. Rather, it was that of someone unsure of how to say what they wanted to say. It was as if she couldn’t articulate the very answer she wanted to give.

In the end, all she did was point.

Festus turned his head and followed the direction she pointed at. At the end of the line, off in the distance beyond a few trees, was Zed.

He was as they had met him; lying on the ground with a massive axe in his hand. Now that evryone’s attention was focused on him. There was no one who couldn’t feel the blood aura he was exuding.

At least, the residue of it.

“An attribute mage,” Daniel said, unhappy. “Then a suspected mind mage…”

“Now a blood mage,” Ronda said. “I don’t like this.”

“A shame,” Kid said. “I always thought he was a nice guy. A bit kooky, but nice.”