Chapter 306: The Most Dangerous Game II

I quickly found my way to the Drunken Stallion.

One look at it had me utterly convinced that said Ranger wasn’t one. It wasn’t the seediest bar in the town, but it had to be in the top 10. A type of place that I’d expect to find the most reprehensible scum of the earth - [Adventurers], of course, [Thieves] were at least somewhat honest about their villainy - not a guard or a Ranger.

I forcefully reminded myself that I had a deep well of prejudice against adventurers, and going in thinking I knew all the answers was a surefire way to be completely wrong, and end up with egg all over my face.

If I was lucky, it’d even be a metaphorical egg!

I gave my “disguise” a once-over check, and yup. I mostly looked like a normal 20-year-old woman. The lack of scars would be attributed to being a decent [Healer] - almost everyone had small pox or other scars from diseases or injuries - and it was the rare person in Remus who didn’t look fit.

I did have to consciously slow myself down though, and ugh. I couldn’t have my super reflexes. Just hoped I wouldn’t have to dodge any mud sprays from a passing wagon, or a horse splashing through dirty water.

I walked into the bar, and wanted to roll my eyes at the sheer stereotypical nonsense going on. Dark figure with a hood brooding in the corner? Check times five, with two of them awkwardly shuffling around, trying to occupy the same corner.

A [Bard] was performing on a table that she’d forcefully converted to a tiny stage. She had flaming red hair, and if that wasn’t because of a skill I’d eat my sandals. Without cooking them first.

She was as tall as I was, which was to say tiny, and danced a merry jig while strumming away on her lyre, filling the bar with lively music. She was singing a lovely rendition of a popular song, and had a number of admirers. Two men were wrestling, surrounded by some cheering men and a couple of women, almost all with a drink in their hands.

Some people were sitting at the bar, turned around to get a good look at the entertainment.

I was sure that the bar had a vaguely reputable clientele when it wasn’t in the middle of the workday.

The supposed Ranger was blindingly obvious. He had that look that suggested he’d spent years as a soldier, with a Ranger’s badge prominently pinned on his beer-stained tunic. Didn’t get much more obvious than that. A quick [Identify] had him as a level 225 [Warrior] - in the right level range, at least. He grabbed a fresh mug from the bartender roughly at the same time I came in.

A few eyes turned towards me. I hadn’t exactly made a huge entrance, but the few whistles I got instantly had my blood boiling.

Calm. I reminded myself. Control the anger, don’t be controlled.

However, most of my plans on being subtle went out the window. The small spark I had of pretending to be a meek mild-mannered healer was smothered in the crib. I just wanted to be done with things.

The “Ranger” in question was looking at me, and, well, might as well directly get to it.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

“Oh wow, a Ranger!” I tried to channel how I felt as a kid meeting Artemis and the rest of the Rangers. I really did.

Being a bad actor, and wrestling down my anger made it somewhat unconvincing. I briskly walked over to him. He’d started to take a drink, but my beeline had him putting down his mug.

He gave me a lecherous grin that had shivers going down my spine. He was totally in for it. If he was real, I was going to make him do pushups until he dropped. If he was fake…?

“Why, aren’t you a pretty thing?” His voice gave me shivers.

Don’t murder him in cold blood. [Oath] would be upset.

“Do you have a whole team?” I asked, trying to make my eyes go wide, and my voice breathless.

An inch. Give me an inch.

I heard a familiar choked laugh coming from behind me. I despaired slightly.

I didn’t like everyone I’d grown up with, but I didn’t think any of them would’ve stooped so low. Couldn’t quite place the voice though.

The supposed Ranger slapped his chest.

“Nope! I’m one of the best. A lone wolf. Other Rangers couldn’t keep up with me, so I travel alone!” He roared, getting some approving looks from the rest.

Fine then.

That made this easy.

Didn’t mean I liked putting my hand on his knee, but it let me use a bunch of the utility gems I had.

“Right.” My voice went from my bad attempts at playful and flirty - honestly, I’d need a strong drink just to wash the taste out of my mouth - to serious. I mentally flipped my Deception Ring to level 700, because nobody could really tell past 300 what was going on. The deeper, darker red I displayed, the better.

“I’m Sentinel Dawn. You’re under arrest for impersonating a Ranger.” I declared, as I unloaded all available disabling skills from my charged gems.

[Watery Manacles] bound his hands and feet with cuffs made out of Water, [Shocking Paralysis] sent painless Lightning coursing through his system, locking his body up and stopping him from moving entirely, and [Mana Void] deleted… probably his entire mana pool, although I didn’t have good numbers on either side of things.

I’d still bet on Hunting’s Void magic power over the random warrior’s mana pool though.

There was a discordant screech as a string on the bard’s instrument broke. Tables scraped the floor and chairs got knocked over as everyone cleared a ring around us.

The fake Ranger slowly toppled over, his eyes frozen forward.

A huge hand landed on my shoulder, coming out of nowhere.

“You have the worst timing, Dawn.” A gentle giant grumbled at me.

“Toxic!?” I looked up at my friend, who grinned down at me. I wasn’t going to ask how I hadn’t noticed him - hiding in an open field was just one of his skills.

He looked… better. Less haunted. He had a well traveled tunic on, a lute strung over his shoulder, and a twinkle in his eye.

“I’d finally managed to get a sleeping poison in his drink. Would’ve made the entire thing easy, painless, and subtle. Just another man who couldn’t properly hold his liquor.” Toxic gave a slow, mock-sad shake of his head.

There was a spray of beer as the lowlife who’d nabbed the fake Ranger’s mug spat it out, then overturned the mug, to the displeasure of the bartender.

“Well, excuse me for ruining your master plan. Let’s catch up somewhere else?” I eyed the rest of the bar, who weren’t giving us the friendliest of looks.

‘Terrified’ and ‘not looking to pick a fight’, but not friendly.

“Sure.” Toxic easily hauled the frozen man over one shoulder. The bard scrambled off her table, and fell in behind him, following us.

Arthur seemed to know what that was about, and I didn’t comment. He’d let me know soon enough.

We dropped the fake off with the local guard, then found a much nicer place to catch up.

“I never expected to see you here!” I repeated, nursing a nice cup of wine.

The difference between me drinking here, and the people from earlier drinking, was I had already done a full day’s work. I’d earned it.

I ignored the little voice suggesting that maybe they’d also earned it. The bard and the bartender had also been working…

Speaking of the bard, she was carefully tuning her instrument or something. I wasn’t fluent in instrument maintenance. Mostly staying out of our way, but clearly listening in. I’d have to get the full story from Arthur at some point, but they’d definitely been working together for some time.

“Same.” He agreed. “No offense, but you’re near the bottom of my list of picks for Sentinels to be sent on this sort of thing.”

“Well, you’d think that. See…”

I gave Arthur the quick rundown of what I’d been up to since the Formorian war.

“Of course,” I leaned back in my chair, sipping on my fourth drink as the moons started to rise. “To get the real, full story, you’d need to head back to Arminium.”

“There’s more?!”

“Oh yeah, you got the short version of Auri’s egg, for example. Anyways, what have you been up to?”

Arthur’s face instantly fell, and I immediately felt guilty.

“Still getting notifications?” I gently asked.

He gave me a stiff nod.

“About two a week now.”

Arthur’s mass poisoning attempt had worked. The price was his conscience. It wasn’t a clean success, people succumbing to the poison he was using against the Formorian Queens.

The brutally pragmatic call had been made without me though - continue with the plan.

And Arthur - Sentinel Toxic - had done so. He’d pushed the domino that had won us the Formorian war, forever securing our borders against the threat, no longer throwing people into the endless meatgrinder.

“It’s ok. You can tell me.” I gently told him.

I didn’t know if he was looking for forgiveness, absolution, or what. I just knew being a friendly, supportive ear, someone who’d been there and knew what he’d gone through, was the right move.

Arthur started rambling about it. How every death notification told a life story. How he was dreading checking his notifications, but felt obligated to.

Throughout it all, I just made sympathetic noises. The bard was also clearly a source of some comfort, having heard it before. Seemed to be good for him.

“.... now I’ve been singing.” Arthur finished up. “Telling my tales. Seeing how many lives I can brighten. It’s not much. Nothing compared to your healing. But I’ve got no talent for it, and I don’t want to poison anyone else.”

I snorted at him, and punched his arm.

“Telling my tales more like it!”

“They’re not yours in the first place!” He argued back.

“Yeah. STILL!”

We gave each other stink-eyes, then cracked near-identical grins.

“I haven’t forgotten I’m a Sentinel.” He said. “Still solve problems that I come across, although I’ll be the first to admit I’m closer to a one-man Ranger team than a proper Sentinel. Still, I’ve got the flexibility to track down rumors, like that fake from earlier. Oh! Do I have a story for you! See, it all started with a rash of trees turning pink, and…”

I smiled as Arthur - with significantly better storytelling skills than the last time I’d met him - regaled me of his epic tale of The Pink Trees and the Seven Sisters.

“Gods, look at the time.” Arthur said, and I jolted awake from the doze I was falling into.

I let a yawn rip.

“Let’s get some sleep.”

Arthur hesitated.

“I’m probably going to head out. Bad dreams…”

I stood up, giving him an understanding nod.

“I got it. Come here.” I gestured, giving the way too big, practically a giant, a hug.

“It was good to see you again.” I murmured. “Come by and visit.”

“I just might.” He agreed, and we parted.

I had one more task to complete before I could sleep. Gripping a Moonstone, I infused it with a charge of [The Stars Never Fade]. Augustus had wanted the skill for him in a gemstone.

All the better for others to not know what his curse was, and I wanted the debt gone and cleared. Augustus had done everything right, showing good faith, and I was going to return it.

The guard barracks were loud, and in spite of my best efforts to bury my head under my pillow, I was unceremoniously woken up a few hours before I wanted to be.

Ah well.

My mission was finally over. It’d been a pain to chase down rumors, but bumping into Arthur made it all worth it. I wanted to blitz back home to Auri and everyone else, but I hadn’t been to Aquiliea in ages, and I didn’t know when I’d be back next.

Tour time, speed style.

I started off by visiting the home I’d grown up in. The place I’d lived as a baby, a kid, and a young teenager. I knew the spot like the back of my hand, and, well.

It was weird.

It still looked exactly like my old home, down to the striations in the stone. My instincts were muttering that I should sneak in before mom burst outside and scolded me for lazing around, or that dad should be grabbing me in his arms and spinning me around.

Weirdest of all?

It wasn’t home anymore. I couldn’t just waltz in, slap the groceries down in the kitchen, and throw myself onto a cushion. It was a stranger’s home.

“Can I help you?” A woman asked me suspiciously from inside the door.

I shook my head.

“No, sorry. I grew up in that house. Just wanted to see.”

“Ah! You must be Julia’s kid. You look just like her.”

“Thank you.” I awkwardly left, and quickly ran around town.

I bought an absurd copper contraption from Bakus, picking it out because it had clever flames twisting on it. Auri would like it… she’d probably like it more after she set it on fire, the troublemaker.

I walked the streets I had so many times as a kid, turning my head in wonder at just how different my perspective was. Both physically, and emotionally.

It all just looked different, while being the same.

I went to the park where Lyra and I had played, feeling the heavy weight of her loss.

The first one was the hardest.

I cried, as I failed to find any trace of her. There had been no grave. No stone. No marker of her life, no proof of her existence.

There was only one place to go after that.

The temple at the center of town. News hadn’t quite made it here, but before the year was out, no girl would be denied a chance to learn new skills at System Day. That old, lingering ghost had been put to rest, and if I had more time, if it wouldn’t have meant days away from Auri, I would’ve stuck around just to oversee one of the first times everyone was allowed to play with the temple’s toys.

“May I assist you?” A priest - I recognized Sacerdus - asked me.

“Just looking to pray.”

“Any specific god or goddess?”

I hesitated a moment, quickly running through the list.

End of the day, there was only one option for praying about Lyra.

“Selene and Lunaris, if they have their own altar?”

“Of course.” He led the way, and I was slightly amused.

He didn’t recognize me at all. I wasn’t about to point it out, because what would be the point?

I knelt at the altar, and prayed.

Selene.

Lunaris.

Hi, I’m Elaine. Sorry I don’t pray much.

I figured any excuse I gave as to why I didn’t pray much wouldn’t endear me much to the goddesses.

My friend Lyra loved the two of you, and she died. I’m praying to you on her behalf. It’s what she would’ve wanted.

Can you bring her back?

I still had an inner child, and she was the one making the plea.

It cost me nothing. Who was I to deny it?

Cheers,

Elaine.

I had no idea what else to do, and I just stayed there in quiet prayer.

I got up and left.

I was walking out when I bumped into Flavia again, who quickly waved me down. Naturally, I went to see what she wanted.

“Elaine! Oh thank goodness.” She gave a dramatic exhalation.

“What’s up?” I asked her.

“You haven’t heard! You’ll never believe this - the Ranger was a fake. A whole squad of Sentinels came in and arrested him and everything! A Sentinel! In this town! Can you believe it? I’m just glad you didn’t get hurt.”

I gave her a bit of an awkward look, having no idea what to make of what she was saying or why. I mean, yeah, I’d mentioned I was looking for the Ranger, but just what did she think was going on!?

“It wasn’t a squad, it was two Sentinels. One was there by accident.” I eventually settled on, figuring correcting the rumors might be worth it. Also, Sentinels needed their illusion of invincibility. If the rumor mill started on “one fake Ranger was worth a whole team of Sentinels.” that did us no favors in the long run. Like, yeah, “Sentinels crack down hard on fakes” was the counter to that, but I didn’t like the overall picture it painted.

“Oh? How do you know that?” Flavia asked.

Eh. I was leaving, and the mission was over. Might as well enjoy myself.

I pulled out my Sentinel badge.

“Because I was one of them. Sentinel Dawn, at your service.” I gave her a grin, letting it stretch uncomfortably large as she gasped. Never got old.

“Anyways, I’ve gotta run. It was great catching up Flavia! I’ll try to swing by now and then.” I’d seen most of the city, and had somewhere to be. A place with my family and friends, with Auri, Artemis, Autumn, Night, and the rest.

I’d made my peace with Aquiliea, and with a flap of my glorious Radiant wings, I took flight, heading north.

Flying was magical. I spent a brief moment with the wind in my hair and the sun on my face, closing my eyes to better enjoy the feelings as Pallos dropped away from me.

I opened my eyes, oriented myself, and started to fly north, back home.

I made good time, but as I flew faster, I spotted a problem.

One of the vicious flocks of ornithocheirus was circling, swarming like a deadly cloud.

Circling - not traveling.

I cursed as I saw the cloud of monsters ‘raining’, indicating that the deadly dinosaurs were diving en masse. I changed direction and headed their way.

Once upon a time, I’d only ever been able to run and hide from the beasts, their sheer numbers and weight able to literally bury any opposition. That was years and hundreds of levels ago though.

It took me some time to power towards the distant flock. There was nothing clouding my vision, my eyes were dramatically improved thanks to my vitality, and the flock was big enough to see from a distance.

Waste not, want not, in the forty minutes or so it took me to fly over, I did my best to study their flight. Only as I got closer did I have a chance at seeing what was going on.

It was a tragedy. All I could properly make out was a dozen ironclad covered carts, most of them wrecked or turned over. I couldn’t see any bodies, but the number of blood-stained ornithocheirus walking on the ground, or the clusters of the dinosaurs with their heads down in the right spot told a story.

I couldn’t see any survivors, but it didn’t mean there weren’t any terrified civilians, huddled inside one of the tipped-over wagons, praying for salvation.

The swarm was massive, one of the threats to Remus that not even a Ranger team could handle. A full army legion could, with a bit of work, fight one of the swarms, and possibly Night or the late Sky.

I wasn’t one of those, but I wasn’t helpless either. I had to try.

As I silently dove towards the broken caravan - I wasn’t an amateur who’d scream and announce myself ahead of time - I quickly formulated a plan of attack, rescue, and figured out my win and lose conditions.

One of the issues with the ornithocheirus was killing one or two of them didn’t make them run away. They were cannibals through and through, and several of them dying simply meant there was more food for them. It brought more of the flock down.

It’s what I imagined happened here. That, or there had been enough beasts of burden, without enough protections.

I wasn’t terribly scary. Most monsters - and people, for that matter - looked at me and thought “yum”.

I needed to kill enough of the dinosaurs that they’d flee, which would steadily escalate in difficulty. The more I killed, the more would come down, the greater danger the survivors would be in until I entirely broke their morale, until their primitive instincts recognized that too many of them were dying, and the feast was not worth the risks.

I lost - in other words, died - if I ran out of mana. Mismanaging my mana stores and burning too many flying menances, too fast, was the biggest risk. Taking stupid lethal attacks was the second largest risk, and getting trapped and turning into an all-you-can-eat buffet until my healing ran out was the third way I could run out of mana.

The corollary to that was a trapped survivor that I needed to heal, only for the dinosaurs to come back for a bite.

I wasn’t built for a straight out slugfest. Getting my limbs chomped off wouldn’t help me at all, and staying still was just asking to get swarmed and dive-bombed. I couldn’t handle that.

It left a fairly straightforward plan.

I got in range, and the battle was joined.

The only greedy guts that had seen me were the members of the flock still high above, and I didn’t look tasty. Small, scrawny, with great big colorful ‘don’t touch me’ wings. My dive intersected me with the first ornithocheirus, and I twisted in the air. Studying Auri and Cordamo had given me unparalleled agility, and I practically slapped the dinosaur’s head.

I unleashed a small, careful Radiance blast, spending as little mana as possible while still being lethal.

[*ding!* You have slain an [Ornithocheirus] (Wind, 183)]

I didn’t even burn through its head.

I paused a brief moment to assess the impact of my actions.

Its body plummeted through the air, and I sucked in a cold breath through my teeth as it landed squarely on one of the carts. Its relatively fragile body couldn’t handle the impact, breaking every bone in its body.

My clinical eye pointed out a few small sections of bone that, technically, hadn’t properly broken, and were likely intact.

I kept diving, assessing the situation both near and far. There was a second ornithocheirus that I angled towards, making sure I’d get in nice and close from its blind spot.

The wagon that I’d dropped the first dinosaur in held, but it had a dent. Four more ornithocheirus hopped forward, greedily devouring their flockmates body.

Killing the dinosaurs this high up above the caravan wouldn’t work. I didn’t want to start raining bodies down on possible survivors. Heavy flesh anvils dropped from a few hundred feet up high were lethal to all but the strongest, most resilient Classers.

At least, of the Classers that Remus had.

I glanced behind me, seeing a few more start to dive.

Great.

I carefully aimed at the ornithocheirus’s joint, and a thin lance of Radiance sprang forth from my finger, instantly leaping through the air and severing the bird’s connection to its wing.

With a scream of pain, the dinosaur spiraled out of control, and I used it as a distraction, diving right behind it.

As I got closer, I flared my wings, changing the angle of attack from a dive to flying horizontally. I strafed the group of birds, carefully rationed Radiance shots killing them when I could easily get to their head, or crippling a wing when I couldn’t get a good angle.

A few careful [Kaleidoscope] butterflies were released into larger groups, the explosion maiming multiple birds. Their aggressive and greedy nature had them eyeing each other and posturing, instead of chasing after me.

Divide and conquer.

More of the ornithocheirus would be diving after the fresh meat I was providing. I was hoping their natural viciousness would make them turn on the weakened survivors.

The weakened survivors wouldn’t go down without a fight, and maybe bring another one of the birds down with them. It was too much to hope it’d snowball into a cannibalistic orgy of self-destruction. They would’ve wiped themselves out already if that was possible.

I scanned for survivors as I zoomed over the caravan with my deadly light show. I didn’t see any signs, but I wasn’t deterred. Anyone I could easily see from the sky, the dinosaurs could see as well. Anyone the dinosaurs could see, they could get to and eat.

I pulled a number of the vicious birds after me, squawking and shrieking in outrage that I’d dared to kill a number of them.

Or they saw me as fresh food, hard to tell.

I carefully paced myself, letting them string themselves out, all while managing a pair of the dinosaurs who took the chance to divebomb me from up high.

A single [Kaleidoscope] butterfly in exactly the right spot managed to injure and disorient the two of them enough that they crashed into each other, and impacts at that speed, with those existing injuries?

If trees could level, the ones they impaled themselves on would’ve gotten a few.

I killed my pursuers one at a time, then turned back, golden beams of Radiance flickering in and out of existence as I strafed the caravan’s remains a second time.

I was the world’s deadliest disco ball. With little butterfly wings.

I repeated the process, but a third run was impossible. There were too many of them, shrieking and clawing, ripping and tearing. It was like a sea made out of limbs as they climbed over every inch, pecking and biting.

I circled them instead, picking off as many of the dinosaurs that I could, throwing in a few more well-placed [Kaleidoscopes] for maximum impact.

More of the dinosaurs chased me, and I almost felt bad for them.

Between my levels, abilities, training, and skills, as long as I didn’t do anything stupid I’d be able to easily outsmart them and pick them off. As long as I managed my mana. As long as I kept my head on a swivel. As long as I didn’t rush.

They didn’t have a chance.

The only thing that kept me going were the blood-coated wagons, a reminder of why I’d come here in the first place. At this point, I wasn’t looking for survivors.

There was no point, there were too many ornithocheirus, living and dead, to see or hear anything. I’d need to search later. It’d taken me so long to get here, that any survivor was well-hidden and secured, and would stay that way. The best thing I could do for them was clear off the dinosaurs, find them, heal them, and bring them back to civilization.

I didn’t know how long the fight took, but when the birds fled, they left waist-deep corpses.

“Hello?” I shouted, loud as I could. “Is anyone around? I’m Sentinel Dawn, it’s safe now.”

With a grunt, I dragged a body off one of the wagons, making it a little more accessible. I remembered I had a utility gem for exactly this situation, and was heading home. I used [Amplify Voice], letting my shouts roar across the battlefield.

“It’s safe now! Come on out!” I kept moving.

“Hello?” I called out, knocking on the roof of the wagon. “Is anyone in there?”

Silence. I wasn’t going to let that stop me, no. I was going to check every nook and cranny.

I moved a few more bodies, each one taking time. The doors of this wagon had been ripped off, but I ducked in anyways. No telling if someone was knocked out, had passed out from an adrenaline crash, or had screamed themselves hoarse. Or some other issue.

Crates and barrels were tumbled and jumbled, having gone every which way when the wagon was tipped over.

I found a small crushed torso under a particularly heavy crate of what I assumed was raw iron, the exposed legs ending in stumps.

The dinosaurs had chewed it off and eaten it already.

I only hoped that the falling crate had killed her first.

I cleared wagon after wagon, getting more frantic, more desperate with each one. Looking for survivors. Looking for the one person that meant it’d all been worth it, that my actions had made a difference.

It had taken me roughly forty minutes to travel over here after I’d seen the dinosaurs.

They’d been here for some time before that.

The last wagon forced the conclusion in my face, rubbed it in.

I’d been too late.

Half-chewed corpses were the most I’d found from anyone.

I knew I couldn’t save everyone. It was still an unpleasant realization. My best hope at this point was that some people had fled into the forest when the attack started, and they’d managed to get away.

Fighting back tears, I took off once again. I circled around for another hour or two in ever-widening circles, seeing if I could find anyone.

Of course, anyone hiding would have hid against people searching from the sky, but the odds of success for manually searching the entire forest on foot were too low for it to be worth the effort.

I was a bit lost, I needed to reorient myself. I followed the road the caravan had been on.

I only paused when the sun set, finding myself in a forest once again. I landed in a clearing, noting a ring of mushrooms.

Last time I left Aquiliea, I’d slept in a forest, in a ring of mushrooms. Funny how life repeated itself in those little patterns sometimes. I’d been an upset mess with the rain falling last time, and this time I was an upset mess with rain coming from my eyes.

At least the clearing was perfect for the night. A cozy ring of soft grass and everything.