Chapter 63: Developing Danger

Moments later, I was moving deeper into the wilderness on top of a faux air elemental, still carrying an unconscious Cornelia on my lap, trying to find some prey worthy of hunting. I wanted to test the limits of the temporary skills I had received, with both Fire Magic and Swordsmanship active, curious about the level of improvement. When my mana was halfway drained, we finally arrived at the target location, and I immediately found a small cave to set up another safe house, but only after laying Cornelia on a soft pile of leaves and kissing her on the cheek.

[-4620 Mana]

"Wake up, sleepyhead," I said as I pulled back, only for her to grab my arm.

"Five more minutes," she murmured as she shuffled, trying to pull me to her side. And as much as I wanted to lay next to her while resting, I had more important things to focus on, so I gently extracted myself, but let her sleep for a bit more. After all, I still needed to finish reinforcing the cave. Luckily, after setting up all those safe houses, creating one was a trivial task that didn't deserve my full attention. Instead, I started thinking about the Companion System progress of Cornelia.

The latest improvement, reaching the third stage of the completion, surprised me. Considering our initial belligerent start, I hadn't been expecting her to reach such an impressive point that quickly. Her level cap must have been distressing her even worse than I had expected, and power-leveling her on top of that must have gone a long way to ensure her loyalty. After all, progressing from level fifteen to sixteen usually required either weeks of concentrated dangerous solo hunting, or a large team invading a dangerous area for the sole purpose of power-leveling a young noble.

Essentially, it was a miracle not that much inferior to breaking through her level cap. No wonder she was truly impressed.

I racked my brain trying to come up with the final step of the relationship. With Helga, I had a feeling that it was about allowing her to finally get the acknowledgment of her skills, which required me to either bring Titania into the inner circle or establish a healthy connection with the faculty before I could do that, which required quite a bit of progress. Of course, that was just an assumption, and the fourth stage might have a completely different requirement. Aviada was also a mystery, as it might be about either dominating her or helping her get even stronger. Her personality was too weird to properly predict as she seemed to like dominating and being dominated in equal measures.

As I thought about the girls, a sudden inspiration hit my mind. Cornelia was wired to power, so maybe showing overwhelming strength to her, especially on her chosen area of expertise, might do the trick. Even better, it worked my plan to help her level up perfectly. Even if it didn't work, there would be no loss, and I would still achieve my aim of testing the extent of my new fire magic abilities. As I worked, my mana reserves recovered thanks to my insane regeneration despite the expenditure, signaling me to finally start to move.

[-926 Mana]

Cornelia started to wake up as I put the finishing touches on the safe house. She stretched, which gave me a beautiful glimpse of her tight body since she was wearing a robe and nothing else, and the front of her robe was conveniently parted, allowing me to observe her beautiful peaks. "You're finally awake," I said with a chuckle as I walked to her, and offered my hand.

"Where are we?" she asked curiously even as she grabbed my hand, and I pulled her on her feet, but rather than answering, kissed her aggressively, while also using the opportunity to inject a fresh wave of mana into her soul space, reinforcing the borders to make sure she could continue to level up. Since I had already discovered the way to do that, achieving that was a trivial achievement.

[-737 Mana]

"We're about one hundred and fifty miles south of the school," I explained. "It's a good night for hunt."

"One hundred and fifty," she gasped. "How long I had been asleep?"

"Something like twenty, twenty-five minutes, why?" I said with a dismissive shrug, despite being fully aware of the reason for her shock. The ability to move that quickly was a very precious commodity, almost as impressive as my combat capabilities. And it was hard to replicate without some very precious magical items, because not many people had my mana to burn. Not only my mana reserves were bigger than even Titania at this point, but also I had an insane regeneration capacity. Hence the reason I could pull the insane trick with the imitation air elemental. Cornelia's fascination was understandable.

And it was just a small part of my plan to impress her.

"Shall we," I said even as I presented her my arm, and she put her arm on mine, ready to walk out of the cave-like we were just about to enter a high society event. She reached to close the front of her robe to tighten, but I shook my head to prevent her. After all, we were in the middle of the wilderness, and I was the only one that could see her beautiful body. Why shouldn't I make our hunting trip more interesting visually?

"We shall, milord," she said mockingly, with a chuckle, surprising me a bit. It was impressive just how much she had mellowed after a merciless fucking.

We walked out, and I waved my hand, conjuring the faux air elemental once more. "Your chariot awaits, milady."

"W-what, how," she gasped as she watched, her panic only subsiding after realizing it was a fake conjuration rather than the real deal. A true elemental, even the weakest one, was a disaster, after all. I took my seat before pulling her on my lap. When she felt my hard-on, rather than flinching, she started wiggling sexily, intensifying my little problem even further. I was lucky that the solution was not too far away.

I sent two waves of detection, one with a shorter range to detect any type of monster but only if the creature was strong enough, the other a biomancy wave to detect the presence of undead.

I wasn't expecting positive responses to both of the spells at the same time, and from the same location. "What's wrong," Cornelia asked, positioned perfectly to feel my body stiffen suddenly.

"Nothing much, I just need to check something," I said even as I moved toward the target. After everything, the necromancers' presence wasn't exactly a surprise. And the amount I detected wasn't even a surprise, but the same couldn't be applied for the living monsters I had detected. It felt truly overwhelming.

With the overwhelming speed of the elemental, it barely took a minute for me to get close enough to observe, only to met with another surprise. I saw a bone dragon, carrying three necromancers on top of it as it moved forward, but that wasn't the surprising part.

No, the surprise was the monster horde that was chasing after them. "Fuck," I murmured even as Cornelia trembled in fear.

I didn't begrudge her for that. After all, monster hordes were a unique phenomenon that was responsible for the majority of the lost towns and cities. It happened when a monster went through a unique transformation, getting several classes stronger in the process, and losing its sanity in the process, and started roaming the wilds, looking for an opponent. Most of the time, it was harmless, as it eventually died at the hands of the other monsters, or hunted by an experienced team if it was too close to a city.

However, sometimes, very rarely, the transformed monster gained the ability to dominate the weaker monsters, sharing its craziness with them as well. And suddenly, a crazy but strong monster turned into a growing group of crazy monsters willing to destroy everything on their way. If undetected, it took only a few days for a horde to form, and after a certain size, even the stronger monsters started to avoid them. And after that, if they were left undetected, they grew into a tsunami, dangerous enough to destroy the towns or even the cities that they faced. This way, even a weak rabbit could turn into a threat that could engulf a town. A rabbit wasn't dangerous, but thousands of them, all in a mindless craze, could overwhelm the defenses of a small town in minutes, before reinforcements could even be organized.

Destroying a horde also took a lot of effort. Killing the regular monsters was the worst way to do that, as their numbers regularly passed tens of thousands, and sometimes, even hitting millions, with a potential to destroy even the strongest fortresses.

The most efficient way to destroy a horde was to kill the monster in the core of the horde. Killing the monster usually caused the horde to lose its cohesion, and without the mindless recklessness, they were much easier to push back. Killing the leading monster before they could reach a settlement was even better, as, without an external threat, the monsters would probably start fighting against each other, dispersing harmlessly. Too bad that the team responsible for assassinating the leading monster seldom survived.

Trying to penetrate into a mindless horde of monsters strong enough to threaten a city was hardly an activity bookies would classify as a sure bet.

Luckily, the monster horde in front of us was still in its early stages, measured in low thousands, and only a few hundreds of them class five or higher. The core monster was an earth tortoise, which looked big enough to be mature, meaning it was likely class twelve or higher. That part would have been bad news for a city, because while earth tortoises were relatively weak creatures, they had a defense that was impenetrable for anything at their own level, which would have made assassinating it a difficult task for a town.

Luckily, it didn't apply to me. I was more worried about the presence of the necromancers. Their movement speed was not even close to the maximum a bone dragon could move. Moreover, one of the trio was carrying a bright gem in hand, and that gem was radiating a thick flavor of earth-natured mana, strong enough to be felt even from a distance. Such a strong magical material was not cheap, not even close.

Mana gems true magical miracles. They were different from regular crystals or monster materials, as they could recover their own mana, making them really excellent tools for forging top-tier magical weapons, or establishing strong wards that don't require constant supervision. There wasn't a noble family that wouldn't mobilize their strongest team just to explore the rumors of their existence.

However, getting one was always a difficult and bloody affair, and not because of the rivalry between the teams. Humans weren't the only ones that battled for their ownership. Monsters fought for them even harder than humans did, because their constant radiance could strengthen them significantly through exposure, even triggering bloodline evolutions if they were lucky enough, especially if the gem and the monster shared the same nature.

No wonder the tortoise was following them recklessly. A gem of the same nature was a hard find.

The necromancers clearly using it as bait to lead the horde toward a town, but it didn't make much sense. How the fuck the necromancers had a gem in the same nature lying in their reserve free, ready to be used immediately as they discovered a horde. There was a reason using gems to pull the monster hordes away wasn't a more widely applied strategy. It only worked if the leading monster's type matched with the gem, and moreover, it was only effective when the horde was below a certain size. They had to react minutes after the monster was transformed, as communicating the news, bringing the gem, and enchanting the monster all needed to happen in a short window.

"Fuck," I murmured with a frown, unhappy with yet another mysterious ability the necromancers had revealed. The more I came across them, the more I'm starting to believe that they wanted something even more impressive than just destroying Silver Spires. I chuckled. Like destroying Silver Spires wasn't ambitious enough.

"We should go back and alert the Commander," Cornelia gasped in shock. "It's a crisis."

"What," I murmured at Cornelia's reaction.

"The horde. We need reinforcements," she spoke rapidly as she shook my shoulder, trying to goad me into action.

It took a moment for me to understand her reaction, then I chuckled. She clearly assumed my shock was about the threat the horde and the necromancers were posing immediately, and not the implications. "Honey, no need to panic, these guys are nothing more than a warm-up," I explained.

"Nonsense, it's a horde!" she exclaimed, forcing me to cast a silencing spell hurriedly prevent alerting necromancers. "You can't sacrifice yourself," she added, hugging me tightly, her naked body pressing against mine.

"Sweetie, as much as I like your hugs, this is not even a threat, trust me," I said. "Now, just step down for a moment and watch me."

Despite everything she had seen me doing until now, I doubted she would have believed me if I hadn't been blasting her with the full might of my charisma. Even then, she had a doubtful expression on her face as she stepped down the elemental.

First, I needed to deal with the necromancers to prevent any nasty surprise. Luckily, without a horde of undead around them, they were even less of a threat, so I decided to test my extended melee capabilities. I charged toward them recklessly, using the full speed of the elemental, not bothering to hide.

One of the necromancers let out an alarm, followed by a rain of death rays. I could have attacked them from range, or use life energy to shield myself, but that wouldn't test my new abilities. Instead, I pulled Aviada's sword, slashing every single bolt of necrotic energy, dispelling them effortlessly. They reacted fast enough, every spell creating a pile of arrows rather than a singular bolt, but even that was nothing for me. I didn't even bother changing my route, the sword moving fast enough to create a defensive orbit around me, the necrotic energy never coming nearer than several inches.

One of the necromancers pulled a talisman, no doubt to trigger some kind of an alarm or communication device, but they were too late. I was already in melee range, and a slash later, the talisman flew away, along with its bony hand. Three slashes, charged with biomancy energy, resulted in the destruction of the necromancers, and a fourth slash destroyed the bone dragon's head alongside the unholy magics that kept it together.

The whole combat lasted less than five seconds from the first spell to the destruction of the bone dragon. "Damn," I murmured even as I caught the earth gem in the air, impressed with the enhanced capabilities given by the specialized skill. It was definitely a notch above my usual capabilities.

With the necromancer dead —deader— the earth gem's aura started to dim, so I injected a few points of mana to keep it active. Just two points of mana were enough to make it radiate even brighter than the necromancer did, but it was likely about my elemental capabilities, making it much easier for me to manipulate it.

Then, I reversed my direction, sweeping up Cornelia into my arms before changing direction. "How," she gasped in shock, trying to process the fact that I had just destroyed three necromancers and a bone dragon in less time than it would take to prepare a plate of fruit into a delicious and nutritious salad.

"Honey, you haven't seen anything yet," I said as I moved deeper into the wilderness, a monster horde on our heels...

—

[Level: 24 Experience: 295400 / 300000

Strength: 28 Charisma: 38

Precision: 24 Perception: 27

Agility: 25 Manipulation: 30

Speed: 23 Intelligence: 32

Endurance: 22 Wisdom: 33

HP: 2899 / 2928 Mana: 2154 / 3840 ]

SKILLS

Master Melee [100/100]

Master Tantric [100/100]

Master Biomancy [100/100]

Master Elemental [100/100]

Expert Arcana [75/75]

Expert Subterfuge [75/75]

Basic Speech [25/25]

PERKS

Mana Regeneration

Skill Share