(TLO) Chapter 132: Falling Moon (Patreon)

From behind the group Fray screamed like a broken banshee. The sound was useless in the heat of battle but did much to draw the attention of the Nooman.

Its head snapped in her direction with the same equal efficiency it had used to kill Natsuki. Then it charged the rest of the team.

With a resolved expression, Pride stood in its path, arm crossed before his head. He peeked at the creature through them and activated a skill.

“[World Bound]”

The ground shook beneath him and a wall of rocks grew from it. It stood between him and the charging beast, a demarcation between raging violence and a need to survive.

The beast broke through. It charged forward, shrugged off the debris of the skill from its massive shoulders as it trudged on.

“[Armament]’ Pride barked immediately, panic filling his voice.

His body glowed a murky yellow just before the beast ploughed him down, trampled him in its slowed but continuing march.

Fray let out a few more balls of fire. They struck the Nooman’s chest, crawling up with each strike to its face. Each one only seemed to annoy the beast more. Each one only proved harmless.

Seth wracked his mind as the beast continued to torment his team, pulling through the knowledge of reia beasts the seminary had given him.

Nosam held his own against the creature, playing the part of a damage dealer without activating any skill instead of a tank. He ducked in and out of its attack, slashing and cutting, leaving inconsequential lines not deep enough to draw blood with each stroke of his sword.

Pride had survived the encounter with the beast and was rising to his feet, struggling like a man with a concussion. His suffering did not come as a surprise. When the Nooman had mowed him down it had stepped on him a few times. Even with whatever the effect of his skill was, against a silver rank beast of its size there was no way he was coming out of it unscathed.

Scott ducked a particularly vicious blow from the beast. He rolled to the side and came up beside the beast. He activated his skill with a quiet chant Seth did not hear. It made his hands glow silver grey and he punched the monster in the gut. All it did was cast the wind aside and announce itself just as Natsuki’s barbed bat had done before his death.

Unlike Natsuki, however, Scott was wise enough to get out of its way before its attention turned to him. It seemed its silver rank speed was only present in the movement of its neck. The rest of it bore only the strength of its rank. That and its durability.

Seth tightened his hold on his twin blades, excitement forcing them to tremble. So this was what it meant to fight against a silver rank beast with only Iron adventurers. One of them had lost his life in a single mistake. With his original team, the one Jim had put him in, William punched beasts like he was dueling a punching bag. There were close calls and strong injuries, but there were no deaths. Nothing truly life threatening that could not be handled.

With them he had cleared nests. Three in the span of a month, not counting the beasts they had dispatched in search of the nests.

Maybe we can’t take Silvers, one of Seth’s minds thought.

Seth did not agree. In the brief encounter he’d had with the Nooman, he’d learned something. It gave him the same feeling he’d gotten from the creatures he’d fought during his training for Iron.

This one’s faster, a mind pointed out.

Seth shrugged. “And we were slower.”

Then he activated [Quick Step].

The skill carried him all the way to the team. He stopped right behind the monster as another fire ball struck its face, followed by a splash of green liquid. A droplet splashed in Seth’s direction and he stepped aside just in time to avoid it. It hit the ground with a sizzle, raising smoke where it landed. Seth breathed in relief as he turned back to the beast. He found its attention held by Nosam. And while the green liquid on it continued to sizzle, its effect on its skin was superficial.

With a martial skill set developed from his training under Igor and Oscar, coupled with an inherently developed technique born from constant use, he joined the battle.

He cut and slashed with the same grace and precision he always had. he ducked vicious blows and [Quick Step] carried him away from attacks no Iron mage should dodge.

The first real injury he inflicted on the beast was with [Quick Strike]. He held his blade to his hip and prepared himself for what would come. When he used it, it was awkward and clumsy, unfamiliar. He blamed this on the sword of choice.

The skill drained his core of the same amount of reia but produced a subpar result. Still, it managed to draw a line along the breath of one of the beast’s leg. To Seth’s surprise it was too shallow a cut. It sufficed only to anger the beast.

Pride and Dare continued to play their path as proper tanks while Nosam played the part of distraction. Pride raised stone walls from the ground and pulled out his taunting cry every now and again. He used a skill that added a range of force to each of his blows and jumped to heights humans should not be able to. He showed his skill in the way he used his skills differently now. They were meant to hold an opponent’s attention and stop their movement, to crush and destroy. Against a silver rank beast, he used them to blind side and distract.

Fray used her balls of fire generously. As ineffective as they seemed, it was common knowledge that any beast could be worn down with time. It was evident in each attack that this was the intent. The Iron adventurers didn’t think their skills would bring the beast down. What they believed was time would play its part in doing so.

Joy stood at the back of the team. With her orb of acid that continued to glow green, she gave them a light source that cast the creature in bright green. On occasion she cast a skill or two, drawing skills ranging from short lived mists of acid that eroded the floor and inconvenienced the monster to throwing her acid orbs directly at the creature. From what Seth could tell, the girl was unable to activate two skills at once. It left her shuffling between the orb and the mist. Whatever else she had in her arsenal of skills she kept to herself.

Scott and Ned hovered somewhere between determined and useless. Against the Nooman, their skills were significantly subpar. Ned used a long, black retractable pole. With it he attacked the beast from a distance. Sometimes he would strike the beast and find himself completely ignored. He also had a movement skill that shot him across short distances and allowed him a level of escape he only used twice. The first time he used it, it was to push a sagging Pride from an acid splash from one of Joy’s attack. The second time it was used to evade one of the beast’s swinging arm.

In the larger scheme of things, Seth and Nosam were the only ones that did any real damage. It brought Seth a level of annoyance to know he played an equal part with a silver mage when the mage was yet to trigger a skill.

Still, he took pleasure in the lines of red he’d crisscrossed along the beast’s body. If not for Nosam’s constant annoyance there was little doubt he would’ve been the beast’s focus.

Momentarily free from the beast’s attention, Seth swung his blade in an arc, spilling blood that stained its edge onto the floor. In front of him, Nosam darted in and out of the beast’s reach, cutting and slashing with the efficiency of someone who’d used a sword for a long time.

Seth’s continuous use of [Quick Step] and [Quick Strike] was now taking a toll on him. It was evident in his constantly depleting reia core. Right now he had less than half of his reserves left and his minds were coming up with ideas of victory that depended largely on Nosam revealing he was Silver.

Nosam ducked a biting attack, then staggered out of the way as an acid orb tinier than what Joy usually produced struck the beast’s face.

The remaining team members kept their distance from the beast, panting like people who’d been forced to run an unreasonable distance in an unreasonable amount of time. They were tired, their cores evidently depleted from how sluggish they were beginning to seem.

As luck would have it, the Nooman was suffering the same fate. It might be silver rank, but against so many Iron adventurers they were bringing it down. It was true that an Iron stood no chance against a silver. But with enough numbers, anything was possible.

“They’ll tire out before it does,” Nosam said beside Seth, making the same observation, deducing their intent.

Seth kept his eyes on the beast as its neck snapped at a slightly trembling Scott only to come up a few inches short. The adventurer darted back, terrified eyes still looking for a chance to attack.

Nosam spared Seth a look. “Are you tired? Or are you still just breathing that way?”

“This is how I breathe,” Seth answered. It was beginning to seem this group comprised of two teams. There was him and Nosam, then there were the others.

“Yes. But are you tired?” Nosam asked.

“Do you want me to be?”

Nosam’s brows furrowed in momentary frustration. “Please be serious,” he said. “I have a plan but it depends on how much reia you have left.”

“I’m running out,” Seth answered honestly. “But I still have more than the rest of them.”

“A little help here!” Pride shouted. He raised another stone wall and staggered back then fell to his knees.

The Nooman swung its hand lazily and brought down the wall only to have a ball of acid strike its face. It shook its head and Fray struck it with a ball of fire. The only one of the team who still seemed to have reia was Ned. But he was of little use. Having skills that made no impact at all on the opponent was cause to not use them.

“At this rate none of them will make it,” Nosam continued, ignoring Pride’s call for help. “If Joy survives, we won’t be able to count on her for her source of light anymore. She can barely create a drop of acid with that skill at this point.”

As if to prove his point, her next acid orb didn’t even complete its path before fizzling out. Behind it Joy panted like a dying animal, legs trembling beneath her, fear making her eyes wild as a skittish cat.

Ned used his movement skill to cover the distance between him and her. He took her by the arm as she fell and activated the skill again. He tossed Joy ahead of him a moment before the beast’s head snapped at them. Cutting the skill off, he dived to the side and saved himself from what had seemed an inevitable death as he crashed to the rough ground.

But fear was as much a deceptive foe as it was a saving friend. In his need to survive he’d landed himself barely a foot away from the beast.

It raised its leg as if taking its time and dropped it on him. Scurrying away like a man in the passionate grip of terror Ned saved himself once more. Unfortunately, his life was all he saved.

The beast’s foot dropped on his leg, crushing it beneath its weight. The sound of something breaking followed and Ned let out a cry loud enough to be the envy of a tank’s taunting cry.

Beside Seth, Nosam’s face was smooth and expressionless. For an adventurer who’d been adventuring with them, their suffering was proving to have no effect on the him.

“At this rate,” Nosam said, “we won’t survive. But I have a skill. It’s overpowered for an Iron like myself, but it should work.”

Sure it is, one of Seth’s mind thought sarcastically.

Seth ignored it and asked, “What do you need me to do?”

“That your sword skill,” Nosam said, as the rest of the team attacked the beast, fighting to keep it from noting how easy it would be to dip its head and claim the wailing Ned’s life. “Can you use it one more time?”

Seth nodded. He had at least a handful of it left before his core hit critical levels.

“Good.” Nosam’s eyes darted back to the distracted creature. It seemed more confused than distracted by its current opponent’s skills.

“It’s the only skill it actually pays any attention to,” he continued. “If you can take its attention for just a moment, keep it distracted, then maybe I can take its head in one blow.”

“With an Iron authority skill?”

Nosam shrugged. “I did say it was overpowered. And it drains too much reia.”

“Is it your convergent skill?” Seth asked.

“That’s not a nice question to ask,” Nosam chided. “Just know that it’s overpowered and we’re in trouble if it doesn’t kill it.”

Seth nodded once. He took the chiding like a silently belligerent child. That Nosam expected him to believe there was an Iron rank skill—even a convergent one—powerful enough to take a silver rank beast’s head in one strike was insulting to his intelligence.

“I just have one question,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“Do you have an ability that allows you see in the dark?”

There was a hesitant pause before Nosam replied. “Why?”

“The way you’ve been moving since we got here. It’s almost as if you’ve been here before.”

“I haven’t,” Nosam answered a bit too quickly. As if realizing it, he added: “The adventurers who cleared this nest mapped it out, too. I saw it when I was getting the contract.”

The lies were poor. Weak. He didn’t even seem to be putting much effort into them. Had he assumed no one would ask questions, Seth wondered. Did he think Iron adventurers that dumb?

To be fair, we wouldn’t have been this suspicious if not for the notification.

Maybe Iron ad—

Whatever his mind wanted to add was cut off by the wet crushing sound of flesh and bones between a monster’s teeth.

At the Nooman’s feet, Ned’s broken leg lay bloodied. But that was the only part of him left to the world. The rest was gone.

It was already too late for Ned, but perhaps they could save the rest of them.

“It doesn’t matter right now,” Seth told a still contemplating Nosam. “I’ll distract it. You kill it.”

Seth stabbed the ground with the blade in his right hand to Nosam’s surprise. He reached behind him and took hold of one of the scabbards. He jiggled it forcefully until it gave and ripped it free of its strap. If he was going to do this, then he needed to do it right.

He sheathed the shortsword in its scabbard and held it at his waist.

“What are you doing?” Nosam asked.

“Getting ready to use my skill.” He took in a deep breath and prepared to activate [Quick Step]. “I suggest you start getting yours ready.”

With that, he activated the skill and allowed it carry him over the distance. He stopped right behind the Nooman, hilt held firmly in hand. There was a momentous pause, a break in sync. It was the dreaded difference between the conclusion of [Quick Step] and the activation of [Quick Strike]. It was an issue [Echo Draw] resolved.

In that moment, the Nooman ignored the others and turned its attention to him. Scott stepped into the beast and threw a punch, struck the beast’s stomach with force reia powering the blow. It did nothing to dissuade the creature and Seth felt the muscles of its neck constrict in his senses before he saw them.

Its head barely moved before he activated his skill.

[Quick Strike]

He drew, and the blade sang free of its scabbard with murderous glee.

It felt right this time. His stance was perfect, the blade drawn the right way. It was not a katana or a longsword or a tachi. But it was sharp. It was a blade that could cut through the air.

It was enough.

It met resistance but completed its arc before his hand pulled it back into its sheath. Blood splashed across his face. It was warm. The blood of a creature strained and active. He closed his eye to prevent it from blinding him and darted back.

The Nooman screeched in a way none of them had heard since meeting it. Its wail was full of pain. Whatever touch of anger or retribution Seth thought he heard was drowned out in all its pain. The sound shook the walls and the beast dropped to a single knee.

The leg Seth struck was almost severed at the knee and it spilled reddened blood like a geyser. He had cut it all the way to the bone and had left a mark even in that.

The creature’s head turned slowly. It turned wary eyes on him and he found them rheumy. Worse, in them he thought he saw intelligence. Then it was gone. In its place was fear. But it wasn’t looking at him anymore. It was looking past him.

Seth reach all around him with his senses, refusing to take his eyes from the Nooman, and saw what held its fear.

Nosam stood far behind him, eyes closed and lips pressed in a thin line. He had both hands raised above his head. Above them the world warped in the same way he’d seen it each time the Barons in the seminary seemed to grow to anger. It didn’t take him much to know the adventurer gathered reia. In his senses it looked like a massive bubble of chaotic water tainted in hues of green and black and pink swirling in a ball of gray.

Then Nosam opened it and his lips moved. Glowing eyes watched Seth as he named the skill.

[Falling Moon].