[[Volume 1]]: Humble Beginnings

  Chapter 7: Duty Calls (1)

  Tyrith controlled his breathing as he was doing pushups. He focused on nothing but the next pushup, or else he would collapse.

  It had been a week since he had upgraded his core a minor level, and he felt he had really gotten into the swing of things. His classes were going swimmingly, he had given his parents a visit, and he had won and lost some duels.

  Learning the first step of a sword dance had inspired him greatly, but he hit a massive wall as soon as he tried to learn the second step. Although he did it exactly according to instructions, something was off.

  Tyrith collapsed as he finished his 100th pushup. He had finally managed to do all 100 in a row.

  <"I should keep this a secret from Verrick, or he'll probably increase the amount...">

  He laid on the ground, recovering, and thinking about his future. After his first year at the upper academy, he would be able to choose a specialization, and then take classes accordingly. At the Bladespire, he could choose the Research specialization, and he would be able to put less focus on combat, and instead focus on learning the intricacies of magic, developing his core.

  Perhaps after he graduated, he would be able to move to the Democratic States of Arcana and become a researcher there, at one of their top institutions. He would be able to spend his days diving into runes and magic, neglecting all else.

  He shook his head as he stopped daydreaming, and got up, planning on showering to rid himself of the sweat he had worked up as he completed his workout plan. As he walked to the showers, he checked on his dueling status.

  ["Rank."]

  {Tyrith: Unranked 1st Year (4/7) Currently Calculated Strength: 316}

  {Red Core: Solid Bright Stage}

  <"My estimated strength is pretty high so far.. three more battles to go then I can rank on the leaderboard.">

  Just before he turned the shower on, Tyrith heard an earsplitting alarm break the silence in the air.

  ["Attention all students, please report to you and your instructors' designated gathering place!"]

  Tyrith frowned, but rushed out of his dorm, towards the training hall.

  ---

  The alarm blared as he ran through the streets of the Bladespire, and he saw other students running through the streets, some panicked, some trotting along calmly.

  Tyrith got to the door of the training hall and went in.

  He was greeted by Verrick, sitting in a chair and picking at his fingernails.

  ["Hey. We'll wait for Saelyn and then we'll head out."]

  ["Head out? Where? What's happening?"]

  ["A rift is opening near us. We're to go there and pacify it."]

  ["We?"]

  ["Yes, all the instructors, and all the students, at least those who signed the secrecy contract in their classes. Although there are none who didn't."]

  Saelyn burst through the doorway, panting and out of breath.

  ["What the hell is going on?"]

  Tyrith spoke up, acting like a know-it-all.

  ["It seems a rift has opened, and we're due to close it."]

  Saelyn smiled, then cracked her knuckles.

  ["It was about time!"]

  Verrick stood up.

  ["All right kids, come with me."]

  He sauntered out of the room, heading towards the center of campus.

  Tyrith followed with a mix of trepidation and excitement.

  A stream of teachers and students were all congregating towards the Bladespire at the center of campus, filtering into the strange metallic building.

  <"Come to think of it, I haven't been inside here yet. I wonder what goes on here...">

  Tyrith, Verrick, and Saelyn passed through the steel doors of the Bladespire, walked down some stairs, and entered a large underground chamber.

  Gathered in the chamber were most, if not all, of the teachers and students of the Eubukor Bladespire.

  Tyrith walked into the chamber and glanced around the room, seeing his fellow students with mixed looks of concern and boredom.

  He looked at the stone ground of the chamber, and saw that a massive runic circle was inscribed upon it. In the center of the runic circle stood a plinth, glowing with purple light, and the headmaster of the Bladespire stood there, manipulating his mana and sending it into the plinth.

  ["Is this... a teleportation circle?"]

  Verrick responded.

  ["Good eye. It was built by one of our famous purple core mages in the past, Kilin. He was very good at both runes and teleportation magic and installed a programmable, limited-range, teleportation circle, in every upper academy in the Empire. He was a strong proponent of fast response times to rift outbreaks. A shame he died like all the others."]

  ["We will be teleporting to the location of the rift shortly, so prepare yourselves. You shouldn't be in any real danger though. According to my information, it is a Rank 3 rift, although there are always some fluctuations. Stick nearby me. Also, here."]

  Verrick waved his hand, and a short, black sword appeared in his hand. He gave it to Tyrith, and waved his hand again, summoning another black sword, and handed it to Saelyn.

  ["These are far better than those swords in the training room. They should cut through almost anything."]

  Tyrith observed the sword in his hand and looked quizzically at Verrick.

  ["How did you get this?"]

  Verrick winked at him.

  ["Trade secret."]

  He waved his hand again and summoned an exact statue of himself in his hand, of the same material as the swords.

  He then snapped his finger, and the statue disappeared.

  <"Well, it's either a spell he knows, or he has a spatial storage tool and carries around a statue of himself...">

  <"Probably the spatial storage tool.">

  As Tyrith was lost in his thoughts, the runic circle inscribed in the ground began to glow, mana particles drifting upwards towards the ceiling.

  ["Prepare yourselves!"]

  The mana activity came to a peak.

  Space and time seemed to blink, and Tyrith felt himself being whisked away.

  ---

  What he was seeing instantly transformed from the interior of the stone chamber to the night sky, thick with smoke.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned around to see Verrick behind him.

  ["We've teleported to the outskirts of the rift. We'll go inside as a squad, you and Saelyn will walk in front and I'll support you two from behind. We need to figure out what creatures, if any, are in this rift, and if the readings match the true strength of the rift. Do you understand?"]

  Tyrith nodded hesitantly.

  ["Alright, let's go."]

  Verrick released Tyrith's shoulder and cracked his knuckles.

  Tyrith slowly took a step forward, then another, and started walking at a steady pace.

  ["Wrong way, the center of the rift is behind us."]

  ["Ah, right, of course."]

  Tyrith spun around and saw the true body of the rift.

  It was hard to describe, but it felt distinctly alien. He felt that he saw ripples in the space where the rift had torn through Corpalis's space. In front of him, the ground transitioned from grass to a strange black and purple substance, and there was a slight height gap of just a few centimeters, but enough to trip on. On the craggy alien rock grew a flat layer of plant-like material, a light velvet in color.

  On closer inspection, one would see that the plant was composed of interlocking layers, holding each other tight against the ground. Dotted around the landscape were larger structures, spires of the same plant-like matter reaching into the sky. It seemed like they were slowly moving, almost as if breathing.

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  Further out, there were structures of some sort, built out of the alien rock, but shaped by intelligent hands into beautiful bricks, inscribed with dizzying patterns. Further beyond that was obscured by thick fog.

  Tyrith stopped for a moment and stared at the bizarre landscape which had torn into his world. A mixture of fear and discontent bubbled up from the depths of his brain before he steeled himself and moved forward.

  Tyrith stepped onto the alien landscape, holding his sword tight in his hand. The ground was soft and spongy thanks to the layer of plant matter, with strong support from the stone. He advanced slowly, deeper into the fog.

  Saelyn advanced with him, on his left side. Behind them, Verrick kept watch, bringing up the flank. After a couple of minutes of walking, getting closer to the buildings, he spoke.

  ["It looks like this place was once or still is inhabited by intelligent beings. This is not a good sign for the difficulty of this rift. The more intelligent our enemy, the more dastardly. Fighting beasts is like trying to fight a natural disaster, but fighting Sapients is like fighting a war."]

  ["We can only hope that this place was abandoned before it came here. There should've been signs... Anyways, exercise caution, and keep advancing."]

  The trio walked farther into the rift, approaching one of the buildings.

  The architecture was strange, obviously not designed by humans. They reached the base of one of the buildings. Tyrith reached out and felt the bricks the building was made of. They were warm to the touch, and he traced the patterns carved in the stone.

  He walked around the perimeter of the building until he found an entrance. It was almost 3 meters tall, yet only a third of a meter wide. He had seen no windows when walking around the perimeter of the building.

  Verrick stepped up to the doorway.

  ["Let me open this up a bit."]

  He grabbed one of the sides of the doorway and tore it away with brute force, crumbling the stone as if it were powder. He repeated this process until the doorway was more comfortable to walk through.

  Tyrith stared at him in stunned silence.

  ["Increasing the level of your core does increase your physical strength a bit, remember?"]

  ["I know... but that was more dramatic than I thought."]

  They walked through the now widened doorway, into a strange building.

  There were no rooms, it was an entirely open plan. In the center of the building, was a stone table, of an elegant yet simple design. Surrounding the table was a low bench, completely encircling the table.

  On the table were what looked like dried fruits and jerekyed meat. Besides the table, there were cabinets in the building, along with a circular bed, which sunk into the floor and was stuffed with soft-looking pillows and blankets.

  The interior walls were plain, nothing adorning them, except for more carvings in the bricks.

  Verrick looked around the room, took a piece of food off the table, and took a bite out it.

  He chewed for a while before swallowing.

  ["It's quite tough, but not bad."]

  He grabbed the rest of the food off the table and slipped it into a pouch around his waist.

  ["Judging from this building, we can't tell much about the inhabitants, except that they probably don't have a concept of clothing, and don't appreciate the arts. This doesn't seem to be a military building."]

  ["We got here shortly after the rift broke out, so if anyone was in here, they can't be too far. Let's continue inwards."]

  Tyrith nodded while listening to Verrick, and rifled through the cabinets. He found more dried food, and a stone idol, twisted and bent into a spiraling shape. He grabbed the curious idol and stuffed it into one of his pockets.

  They exited the building and continued walking forward, deep into the fog.

  ---

  They walked for ten minutes at a brisk pace, passing similar-looking buildings, before Tyrith spotted a shadow in the distance.

  ["There's something on the ground over there."]

  Verrick responded to Tyrith's concerns.

  ["Yes, I see it. Approach with caution."]

  The group walked up to the figure slowly.

  As they reached within a meter of the figure, they were able to see through the fog and identify what the figure was.

  Laying on the blood-red grass was a human body. It was gray and looked to be drained of its blood, with puncture wounds all over its body. The crimson grass was slowly creeping over the sides of the body and dissolving it.

  ["Lord above..."]

  Tyrith felt his stomach churn as he surveyed the gruesome scene. The puncture wounds ranged from needle-thin to the size of his finger, and yet none of them leaked any blood. Judging by the clothes, it was a fellow student of his, someone he could have gotten to know. Yet his life was taken away in a flash. Tyrith had never seen a corpse before, and his first brush with death left him feeling queasy.

  <"I'm sure that Verrick will make sure we don't end up like that... I'm too young to die!">

  Verrick cast a diagnostic spell, a quick flash of green washed over him, and he spoke up.

  ["Looks like at least some of the creatures stayed behind. I think they eat by draining. His body is entirely drained of blood, as well as lymph fluid and bone marrow."]

  ["I recognize this person. They were a second-year student at the Bladespire."]

  He frowned, and cast another spell, with a flash of blue inscribing a wide circle around him.

  ["I've cast a detection spell. Let's continue to move forward. The second I sense movement, I'll inform you all."]

  The trio, now full of tension, continued their mission into the center of the rift.

  Before long, they came across another building, but this time it looked different from all the rest. It was long, rectangular, and short, with multiple thin entrances. The stones it was hewn out of were lighter than the other buildings and were supported by the dark red fibers. There were no patterns carved into these stones.

  The group broke into the building the same way as previously, making good use of Verrick's brute strength.

  Inside, they found dozens of short, sparse beds, with cabinets filled with preserved food.

  Verrick cast another diagnostic spell on the stones composing the walls.

  ["It is as I feared. These stones have been quarried recently. I believe this is a hastily constructed barracks, in order to facilitate the transport of veteran soldiers through the rift."]

  ["Usually, intelligent beings will evacuate everyone in a rift. But the more... entrepreneurial will try to send soldiers through and establish a foothold in another world. This seems like one of those cases. "]

  ["We should try to meet up with another squad. We can go outside and pop a flare spell which should help tear through the dimensional fog."]

  They stepped outside, and Verrick froze.

  ["I sense movement."]

  He raised his hand, and pointed to the right, at one of the large crimson spires.

  ["Behind there."]

  Verrick rubbed his chin for a moment before speaking.

  ["Tyrith, fire a full-powered 'Slice' at that spire. Push as much power as you can muster, and focus on destroying the spire."]

  Tyrith felt his whole body tighten at the thought of being ambushed.

  ["Yes sir."]

  Tyrith focused his mana with his circulation technique, which he decided to call 'Home is where the Heart is', and prepared to cast 'Slice.'

  He pushed as much mana as he could to his right hand, filling himself with a buzzing feeling, and he almost felt that his hand was not a part of his body, before he quickly cast 'Slice' and pushed almost 20% of his total mana capacity outwards, towards the outcrop of vegetation.

  A few microseconds after Tyrith released his 'Slice', the vegetation exploded into hundreds of pieces that fell to the ground with a soft clinking sound. Dust from the explosion shot into the air, and slowly floated in the air, settling onto the ground.

  Revealed behind what used to be an outcrop of hard vegetation, was a slinking, monstrous thing.

  Its skin was black as obsidian, and full of jagged and sharp edges. It was thin, but long, like a snake, and had many feelers extending from its main body. At the very top was a small mouth filled with sharp teeth.

  When the outcrop exploded, it realized it had been exposed, and it screamed and rushed toward the group, slithering across the ground at lightning speed. It moved with a deadly purpose, crawling across the ground in a smooth motion, using its dozens of limbs to propel itself.

  However, as soon as it started moving, a bolt of lightning shot down from the heavens and hit it, pulverizing it. The creature was split in two from the raw power of the lightning, and its blood was a sickly blue.

  Verrick shook his hand out.

  ["It's been a while since I've used that spell. Let's go check this thing out. Oh, good job Tyrith. Next time, it'll be your turn, Saelyn."]

  They approached the corpse cautiously. When they reached it, Verrick knelt down, and felt the wound where his lightning bolt had struck it. He brushed his hands over its obsidian skin, before picking up one of its feelers, which lay limp. At the end was a sharp needle.

  ["These things are natural predators. Their skin is almost as strong as rudimentary armor, and it can cut a normal human. If they move fast enough, they could kill someone just be moving over them. And it looks like they would then use their mouth to create tons of tiny puncture wounds and eat their blood, or whatever vital substance."]

  ["However, it looks like they're blind, given the lack of eyes, and these extra appendages. We should be able to use this to our advantage. They likely rely on hearing and smell to detect prey. I can cast a spell which will reduce our impact on the world, which will, in turn, reduce the scent we give off and the noises we make."]

  ["Tyrith, go ahead and try a 'Slice' on this thing. I want to see how effective it is on these creatures. I can't keep calling them creatures. Let's call them... Obsidiserps for now."]

  Tyrith stepped up to the dead Obsidiserp. He held his hand out, and cast a medium-powered 'Slice', which used about 5% of his total mana capacity. The skin of the serpent partially opened up, and some more of the blood flowed out.

  ["It seems like it works well. Even better than it does against humans. That's curious, isn't it?"]

  Verrick nodded, then gestured to Saelyn.

  ["You, use your 'Rotate' on it too, see if it works well."]

  Saelyn held out her hands towards the serpent, pointing towards one of its feelers. She then rotated both her wrists in opposite directions and gave a small chant.

  In response, the flesh of the Obsidiserp in a small radius separated from the body, and rotated in turn with her hands, causing blue blood to flow from the parted circle of flesh.

  ["It's effective too."]

  Verrick rubbed his hands together excitedly.

  ["Ah fantastic, that means I can have you guys use these as target dummies."]

  He stood up and rolled out his shoulders.

  ["Alright, help me prepare this flare so we can call some others over."]

  Verrick projected a complicated diagram into the air with a fancy application of a light spell.

  ["Draw this into the stone. You can use your swords, they should be tough enough to take it."]

  Saelyn worked on inscribing the exterior of the diagram, while Tyrith worked on the inner circle.

  Their jet-black swords carved through the carpet of red vegetation easily, and hit the stone beneath, sending up sparks as they cut small lines into the stone.

  Slowly, the complicated diagram took shape on the ground.

  After a number of minutes, they had finished carving the structure.

  Verrick stepped up after they finished.

  ["Stand back."]

  With a series of quick movements of his hands, he cast a spell that summoned a floating ball of molten copper. He then guided it into the groves carved by his students, where it filled them up and filled out the diagram.

  He then cast another spell which rapidly cooled and solidified the copper.

  He stepped atop the fresh diagram and stretched his arms.

  ["This is gonna take a while. Try to feed some mana into the diagram while I do the chant."]

  Verrick closed his eyes, and held his hands down at his side, pointing at spots in the diagram which had a cluster of sigils.

  He began a slow, low, chant, and a faint mist of mana began rising around him.

  Tyrith and Saelyn channeled their mana into the diagram, watching him chant.

  As Verrick chanted, the mana mist began to thrum and resonate with his chant.

  After a dozen minutes, the chant reached a crescendo, and Verrick raised both his hands to the sky.

  All the mana mist shot towards the area above Verrick's hands, compressing and brightening. A huge glowing red ball of fire took shape, before explosively launching high into the sky, tearing through any fog.

  It went hundreds of meters into the air before exploding and sending a burst of red light across the land, leaving a remnant that hung in the sky, sending off blazing red light.

  ["Well, I call it a Flare, but it's really adapted from an artillery spell. It'll hold for about an hour or so/"]

  ["We should get some other teams coming towards us now. It may take a while, so find something to entertain yourself."]

  Verrick crouched down next to the corpse of the serpent and took a jet-black knife out of nowhere, slicing open what appeared to be its head.

  He poked and prodded around inside of it, then stood up.

  ["That's certainly a brain. Fairly large in comparison to its body weight. I believe these creatures are the ones who built the structures. They have no sense of sight it seems, no optics nerve, but highly developed brain areas for their other senses. "]

  ["I haven't sensed any mana coming from it, it seems they are unable to utilize magic."]

  ["So although these creatures are physically strong and intelligent, it shouldn't be too much work to take care of them all. We just need to wait for the others to get here."]

  ["Once they get here, we can form an expedition and systematically clear the area. It'll be a good experience for you two. I want you both to practice the first step of 'Lament.' "]