Explorer of Edregon

Vin and the team didn’t bother asking the skull many more questions after that. Once they confirmed that this wasn’t a rare occurrence by any means, and that the dead ranker had witnessed a large handful of their fellow warriors meet the same fast that they had, Vin tossed the skull back into the fragment where they’d found it. He was more than a little tempted to go back to the bodies they'd tossed into the darkness fragment and try using False Life on them for more information, but there were some lines Vin refused to let himself cross. A long-dead body was one thing, but Vin wasn't about to even partially reanimate someone who had only died a few minutes ago. He had no idea how long it took the soul to actually leave the body after death, and he wasn't about to play around and find out.

“While I don’t think we should head into it ourselves, I feel like we should still check and see just how deadly these bugs truly are,” Vin decided, turning toward Scule. “Got any meat on you?”

And so it was only a few minutes later that a small bundle of jerky wrapped up in a ball passed through the fragment barrier, held up by another cast of Mage Hand as Vin slowly directed it forward. They needed to see for themselves just how nasty this swarm supposedly was, otherwise-

Vin blanched and Lumel gasped as the short grass of the fragment came alive. He had no idea if the bugs had been buried beneath the ground or were just camouflaged that well, but once the ball of meat passed around a hundred feet into the fragment, thousands of bugs flew into the sky, quite literally blotting out a section of the sun before they descended as one upon the floating meat. Within seconds, they dispersed, revealing a completely empty Mage Hand.

The group was silent as they stared in shock at the utter efficiency before them. The bugs had vanished just as quickly as they’d appeared, spreading out across the ground like a vast blanket before vanishing amongst the short grass once more. Vin turned to stare at his friends, who were staring at each other in turn.

“Okay… I think birds just shifted down to my second greatest fear,” Scule said, shivering as he rubbed his shoulders. Reginald nodded along with him, wrapping his tail around the poor petian and pulling him in close.

“That was definitely unnerving,” Vin admitted. “But also good! Let’s not forget we’re trying to confirm that the rankers are trapped here. And no matter how you look at it, I just don’t see any warriors making their way through that fragment alive.”

“No kidding. The jerky didn’t even last two seconds,” Alka snorted. “I will admit, I’m highly tempted to head in there myself, though. It’s not like the bugs would be able to do anything to me, and I’m curious about the people that live in there.”

“It’s either a people without flesh and blood like yourself, or more likely, they might have a method of keeping the bugs away from them,” Vin said, scratching his chin in thought, “You know, Familiar Pheromones might actually be enough to let me move through the fragment as well. That said, I am in absolutely no rush to experiment and find out.”

“Sounds like you and I need to come back for a duo adventure later!” Alka laughed.

“Maybe. Though for now…” Knowing that the bugs didn’t attack anything until it had gotten a certain distance within the fragment, Vin carefully stepped through the fragment barrier, before immediately stepping right back out. Simply feeling the warm, dry air of the fragment and crossing the barrier was more than enough for his current needs.

Fourth ring fragment discovered! 2,000 exp gained.

“And that’s all we need from that!” he said, clapping his hands together and turning toward his friends. “Shall we head over to the next fragment?”

Nobody had any desire to stick around and poke the quite literal hornets’ nest, so they turned and began following the fragment border again, more than content to hug the border and check upon each fragment as they hit it. So far, they’d confirmed that four of the fragments bordering the alliance were all but impossible for the rankers to pass through on their own, but that still left five more they needed to check out.

Unfortunately, their genius disguise of a few pieces of cloth tied around their arms wasn’t quite as strong as he’d hoped, as while they were on their way to the next fragment border, they were finally stopped by another roving trio of rankers.

“Halt!” the lead man demanded, narrowing his eyes as he levied a gleaming longsword in their general direction. They were a good few dozen feet away, but having witnessed the speed of which the ranker with the lunging skill had closed a similar distance, that didn’t really reassure him all that much. “What are the four of you doing out here? You certainly don’t look like orcs!”

“Well, I guess that answers which fragment we’re currently in at least,” Scule muttered from his pocket. “Want me to, you know?” Seeing him mime shooting a dart from his blowgun, Vin rolled his eyes and gave his head the barest of shakes. It would probably come to that soon enough, but they might be able to get some information out of these guys first. Already they’d let slip which of the alliance members’ fragment this was.

“We’re allies of the orcs,” Vin tried, wondering just how much about the orcs the rankers truly knew. “They asked us for our assistance in finding a way through the surrounding fragments out to the rest of Edregon.”

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“Why would they only ask for your assistance now after so many months have passed?” the man called out, his frown deepening.

“You know, that’s a pretty good question,” Alka admitted beside him, her voice low. “Bit of a flimsy excuse, Vin.”

“You know what, I don’t see you guys offering up anything,” he hissed, before clearing his throat and responding to the ranker. “We’re special forces that the orcs have in reserve. Top secret, which is why they didn’t even tell the other members of the alliance about us!”

“We demand the orcs and beastkin tell us everything,” the man said, lowering himself into a combat stance. “You are lying, and based on your group’s unusual appearances, I can only assume you’ve come from outer Edregon somehow. You can either come quietly with us to the keep for questioning, or we will kill three of you and bring the survivor in by force.”

“On the plus side, that confirms this ‘alliance’ is really just the rankers having already conquered the beastkin and orcs,” Shia muttered, transforming her staff into Blossom preemptively, the wooden cat growling at the offending rankers. “Once we’re done here, maybe we should try and pay the orcs a visit.”

“We need to finish here first,” Vin said, sighing as he realized Scule was still mimicking firing darts from an invisible blowgun, bouncing his eyebrows all the while as he stared at him. “Yes, Scule, go nuts.”

Before the Rogue could even get a chance, however, the rankers attacked. The man with the sword must have decided Vin was the one in charge, as he made a beeline straight for him.

“Entangling Thorns!” Shia cast, going straight to the tier 2 spells this time around. Unfortunately, the only vegetation they had to work with at the moment was the grass growing under their feet, which meant her spell was far weaker than it could have been. Even so, all three of the warriors were forced to divert a portion of their attention to dodging or cutting through the thorny tendrils sprouting up out of the ground between the two groups as they charged.

Blossom lunged at the woman on the right with a studded mace, and Alka went straight for the leader, clearly eager to test herself against one of the more powerful rankers. That left a man with pointed ears and a sword and shield for Vin and Scule to worry about, who’s eyes were glued on Vin’s own.

Popping out of his pocket like the world’s deadliest whack-a-mole, Scule fired a dart straight at the ranker’s face. Yet to their dismay, the man easily blocked it with his shield, shouting as he ran. “Cowards! You would dare attack with a ranged weapon of all things?!”

“Hells yeah I would!” Scule shouted back, firing three more darts in quick succession, aimed at the man’s leg, arm, and face. With shocking speed, the ranker deflected the lower dart with the flat of his blade, before using his shield to block the following two, never once breaking stride as he ran.

“I am no longer having fun!” Scule shouted as the warrior finally reached them, stabbing straight for Vin’s chest. Vin tried to catch his sword out of the air, but the man seemed ready for that, and instead jerked his sword back at the last second, lunging forward and smashing his shield into Vin’s face. As Vin stumbled backward, temporarily disoriented from the unexpected attack, he learned something quite valuable about Threat Detection.

It was surprisingly easy to confuse the warning about an impending attack with that of a feint.

Vin expected to feel a strike to his chest and the golden light of his divine boon being activated, which made it all the more jarring when instead, the world suddenly twisted around him. Shaking his head to clear it, he blinked as he realized they were suddenly standing a good fifty feet behind the ranker who had potentially just broken Vin’s nose based on how much his face hurt. Lumel was beside him with a hand on his shoulder, which explained what had happened.

Scule didn’t waste a moment, taking advantage of their sudden repositioning to fire two more darts at the man’s back. Vin thought that was it, yet the ranker proved to have at least one or two more tricks up his sleeve. A large, see-through shield manifested out of the air behind him, blocking the darts fired at his back as the man spun around.

“You have no honor!” he shouted, immediately beginning to rush back toward them once more, sword and shield at the ready. “You flee from a challenge and fight from range! The dishonorable must die!”

“Vin, seeing as that guy just shield-bashed you in the face, that means you can actually do something now, right?” Scule asked nervously as the distance between them and the ranker quickly dwindled.

In answer, Vin ignored the throbbing in his face as he raised a hand and took aim. He had a good feeling the warrior would just deflect a Stone Shot with that shield of his like he had Scule’s darts, but that wasn’t the only offensive spell he knew these days. “Fireball!”

The ranker’s eyes widened at the ball of fire that shot across the ground toward him, and he narrowly managed to get his shield up in time. It didn’t matter all that much, however, as the resulting explosion knocked him off his feet and sent him tumbling to the ground. To Vin’s shock, his spell didn’t seem to do all that much actual damage to the man, who immediately began getting up, but it did give Scule the opening he needed.

Twin darts impacted the man in his neck and cheek and he froze, his veins turning a sickly green as he collapsed back to the ground. The poison did its work in record time, quickly putting him down for good.

“By the Gods, these rankers are terrifying,” Scule muttered. “I’m realizing I may need to work on a new method of poison application that’s harder to dodge or deflect.”

“The good news is they’re not the only terrifying ones,” Vin said, grinning as he took in the rest of their team. The woman with a mace who had gone after Shia had been impaled with what looked like half-a-dozen sharpened roots jutting out of a tree that hadn’t existed a minute ago, and the man in charge of the group who had demanded their compliance before rushing Alka now lay dead on the ground, his head separated from his body. Alka stood over his corpse, wiping his blood off her sword using his own pant leg. Once Dream Eater was clean, she turned to look at Vin, her eyes flaring with excitement.

“I don’t know why you guys dislike this fragment so much, I’m having a ball!”