Cursed Explorer of the Arcana

Nobody wanted to volunteer for the delegation no matter how comfortable the ride or the other accommodations were because of one simple reason. Dealing with nobles is bothersome enough to offset any kind of escapism and peace this journey can provide.

Not to mention lying in bed for days with little to do besides eating, sleeping and looking at two equally bored faces. That’s why the representatives were picked by drawing lots as usual, except this time instead of two people they elected to send three. Special cargo requires special care.

Not that they needed to do much for the past five days with the knights taking care of everything including cooking. They’re fairly competent and strong enough to accomplish their task in case any of the nobles’ hounds show up again. The earl has been surprisingly generous with the escort.

Maybe I really am too old for this… Bennett licks his thumb and turns another page of the book he’s engrossed in. One a man of his age and decorum would never admit reading. Life is gonna be weird without those six brats. Way easier and a lot more quiet but still weird. I hope they stay sa-

The old veteran enjoyed his quiet reading time for too long and it seems the Gods have finally decided he had enough. Out of nowhere, an invisible force picks him up and everything and everyone else in the room before dragging them in the same direction with increasing strength.

Then a moment later it stops and everything comes to a halt… before the same force bursts outwards much more violently than before, tearing even the carriage apart.

Already in mid-air, as the fractions of a second tick by Bennett assesses his situation, injuries, his comrades, potential enemies and what might’ve happened. The last one is surprisingly the easiest, namely the biggest flaw of every expanded space.

The otherwise compressed space inside the structure stayed stable due to the extensive inscriptions, however when the lines got damaged…

The space within the confines of the carriage first imploded, pulling everything to the compression core as it all collapsed before expanding to its original size and pushing matter outwards with incomparable force.

One would ask ‘Why build something this dangerous?’ Well, for comfort obviously, and because nobody is stupid enough to attack an Earl’s marked ride accompanied by a detachment of knights. Almost nobody.

Bennett has lowered his guard, having grown complacent throughout his years as an instructor, instead of the tension on the battlefields. He has heard of space inscription collapses before but never experienced one himself, the party trick being a bit too costly.

After hitting the ground in a practiced fall, Bennett quickly regains his footing, having been lying on his bed and indulging in his secret hobby. Neither his armor nor sword is at hand, scattered beneath the debris similar in size to that of a bigger house that was the carriage just moments ago. Yet he needs no such tools as he is the weapon.

A quick glance to assess the situation paints a bleak picture of the upcoming fight. Bellard, his mercenary comrade, is already engaged in combat against one of the academy personnel, while the other pompous bastard just blinks around like a newborn goa, surrounded by destruction. At the same time, Reena is… she’s locked in combat with four of the knights while the other three are already rummaging through the wreckage of the once majestic carriage.

They’ve been had. Bennett has had his suspicions about the knights from the start, after all, the crown prince’s faction seems to be the one pulling the strings, but he never expected the Academy to be in on this. The incorruptible institute answering only to the Emperor and not bowing to any other authority…

And it seems the knights are not the only ones they need to face. Shadows, two of them coming from the south. Just from a glance, Bennett can tell that the two new arrivals are gonna pose the greatest problem since the knights only have an average level of 550 while those two…

[Ranger lvl 810]

[Warrior lvl 795]

They’re incredibly strong.

We have to flee.

As if reading his mind Reena calls on the wrath of the wind in the path of the approaching duo, dragging it around the scattered remains of the carriage in a circle and creating a full-fledged tornado. Standing in the eye of the storm isn’t exactly safe, just less dangerous but that’s more than enough for Bennett to act and start reducing the enemy's number.

The mounts the knights are riding be that a horse, a lizard, a bird, or even a damn bug are all powerful beasts in their own right and the first thing they need to do is get rid of them because outrunning those things is not an option. Especially not with the kids.

Bennett calls for his trusty sword but before it can slap into his palm the winds he grew to trust whisper into his ear, telling him of imminent danger. He allows himself to fall backward, instincts kicking in before his mind can comprehend things and dodging the projectile darker than the moonless night.

The Ranger seems to dislike being left out of the party but getting bogged down here is the worst thing that could happen. Bennett instead ignores the two shadows pushing themselves through the storm strong enough to rip up the ground and focuses on accomplishing his task. Protecting the kids.

Snatching his sword up Bennett dives into the fray, helping Reena first to have someone search for the kids while he holds back the two assailants. They’re a bit hard stretched but complaining won't solve anything.

The woman looks quite preoccupied, weaving between swords and beasts while trying to strike back at the knight with little success. Their armor is strong and Reena excels in single combat due to her elements of wind, dark and time. With that said, she’s also incredibly hard to kill.

Bellard on the other hand seems to have no issue suppressing his opponent while making sure the knights aren’t the ones to dig out the kids first from under the wreckage. Mage against Rogue is a famed matchup for being unfair and that’s exactly what he’s dealing with, although the prick from the Academy is holding his ground better than expected.

We need to move quickly, kill the isolated ones and escape the Ranger’s line of sight, there might be more coming.

What God just picked me up, and smacked me against the wall before sneezing in the middle of our ride? It was fucking awful. I can’t feel my left arm under the debris and the sounds coming from the outside make me question if I want to be dug out or not.

I kinda panicked when I first started floating and then screamed my throat dry when everything turned upside down after the explosion. I’m still scared shitless but during my three years of hunting and dueling I’ve learned to cope with fear to some degree and I also know that waiting for someone to solve my issues is a fairytale solution.

Stay lying in the dust with an entire building’s worth of weight about to crush me any minute now or stick my head out and hope I don’t become collateral damage… I’ll take my chances outside I guess, being crushed sounds like a slow and painful death.

Okay, but how? The material used for the carriage is still oozing magic from the destroyed inscriptions so I can’t really influence that, it’s also really damn heavy, and lastly, one wrong move and I’m pancake.

Hold up, can’t I just go under it?

A deafening explosion not too far causes the deathtrap above me to creak and dust to fall so I throw all caution to the wind and start digging. With magic of course.

The perfectly Elyssia-shaped hole beneath me begins to deepen oh so slowly while the material I excavate is lifted upwards to the edges in order to reinforce my tunnel’s entrance.

Just as I’m about to reach around a meter deep underground, weird Earthish measurement, the wreckage above me finally collapses after a deafening explosion but it doesn’t matter anymore, I escaped like a rat. Or a mole but those are blind I think and escaping is more of a rat thing.

After a while, I judge the depth of my hidey hole to be enough and begin moving horizontally like a worm.

Okay, I don’t actually know how worms move but I’m lying flat and as straight as I can while using the earth moving out of the way of my tunnel to push me forward. It’s uncomfortable as hell but a lot less work in the end.

Not like that’s the only issue I have right now. For one, I don’t know how much air I have down here and two… how far do I need to dig?

So I just continue on completely blind until the space down here gets really cramped and I feel something wiggling against the back of my neck. That does it, I push the soil out of my way and burst through the grass like a very pretty overgrown worm only to pull my head back when I catch the first glance of the situation.

It’s like when Bennett and Wyat fought the shadows except with a lot less dust and much more enemies. The rogue dude I just dubbed Steve is currently tearing one of the knights apart while one of the pricks sent by the Academy is doing his best to blow him to smithereens. I was expecting a simple ambush, you know people jumping out of the forest and surrounding us but the double betrayal is almost too much.

Five knights, one fancy pants mage and… two shadows.

The cold runs up and down my back as my memories return at the sight of the two men with their clothes oozing black smoke. They’re locked in combat with Bennett who’s clearly on the backfoot although I can’t see much of their fight because they’re moving at such a frightening speed.

Before I can even think of my next step someone grabs my collar and violently janks me out of my hiding place. I lash out, of course I do, but stop myself the last second just before melting Hugo’s face off with a wisp of blue fire.

“We need to find the others c’mon!” He urges me, totally disregarding the fact that I could’ve killed him a second ago.

He drags me away towards the rest of the wreckage, very much unlike the gentle and calm Hugo I know, where I find August and Milara hard at work shoveling the lumber and stone from under a group of small birds.

It’s Kayla, obviously, or rather her animals she picked up on our way here aiding us in our rescue efforts. Which only leaves Victor. Since I’m not much of a tracker and the amount of mana saturating our surroundings makes Mana Perception pretty much useless I join the digging effort.

Now that I’m no longer under the debris I can just grab a chuck of earth wrap, it around an individual piece of broken wall and lift the entire thing that way. It’s heavy, it’s inefficient and I’m quickly running out of mana but it’s not like my resources will mean anything in the battle raging around us.

Soon we’re presented with the reality of how little our efforts matter when Reena arrives with a blast. She slams into the ground standing on the chest of a knight whose face looks like Rufus played with it all day. Damn, I miss that cat.

She gracefully hops off, looking somewhat tired but clearly nowhere near finished, before catching what looks like a ray of darkness in a bubble of distorted space where it slows down enough for me to make out what exactly it is. An arrow imbued with not just dark magic but also the feeling you get when you walk down the streets at night and glance into a pitch-dark alley, feeling like someone is watching you.

The pretty mage furrows her brows and shadows rise from her sleeves, reaching for the projectile and devouring it moments before it could burst the bubble. “That was a bit too close.” She sighs before turning her eyes toward us. “Four, we need two more.”

Yes, we’re fine lady, thanks for asking.

I’m obviously not gonna say that after watching her stop that bolt of a nightmare but it’d be nice to be treated with a bit more respect for once. I know I’m a child and weak as hell and didn’t earn said respect but still.

My complaints retreat even further to the back of my mind when the shadows once again reach out from her, this time creeping on the ground and burying themselves into the piles of debris. The mage woman’s eyes snap from left to right with her tongue sticking out a little in concentration before the corner of her mouth lifts into a tiny smile and she begins the cleanup.

With an indiscriminate blast of wind, she blows the entire house's worth of material away from us to our great horror. Victor and Kayla were still underneath there they’ll…be completely safe?

From the remnants emerge two cocoons of darkness unwrapping themselves and dumping two frightened children to our feet. I never managed to grasp how exactly these shadow structures work, how thin or tough they can be or how to make them in the first place. These things shouldn’t even exist according to Savant.

“Brilliant, we have everyone now we need to-” Her mouth decides to frown instead of finishing the sentence so I follow her eyes.

My heart sinks yet again for the third time in just a few minutes as the world just keeps throwing impossible situations at us. First freeing myself, then the knights and the shadow due and now this…

Twelve, that’s the number of dark silhouettes approaching from the north. All of them are riding weird lizard-like creatures running on their two hind legs and with tails reminding me of someone putting a bunch of hedgehogs on a massive skewer. Not that I ever saw something like that.

“Okay kids new plan, run! Go straight for the forest, we’ll cover you.” She quickly issues new orders and launches herself at the new arrivals to intercept.

Her voice carried a sense of urgency that made even the baffled Victor and Kayla hop to their feet in an instant and start sprinting toward the treeline. The fighting behind us intensifies even further with many more ground-shaking explosions and shockwaves conveniently pushing us right toward our goal.

I understand why she picked the woods, and it’s not because the trees might provide cover, those things are like chicken bones in the face of a war hammer. Breaking the line of sight and turning those porcupine-tailed lizards into a hindrance… that’s the best we can get.

And right now we don’t have the luxury of choice.