Chapter 103: First Form
Chapter 103: First Form
"You’re in charge of the base again today," Silas told her with his voice sounding very calm. "Keep the defensive troops under control. Don’t let anyone open the front gates unless you personally verify their mana signature. I want this Keep boring and safe until we get back... If you see monsters coming, you have my permission to kill them."
Aeliana’s eyes shone as she gave a nod.
The fact that he was leaving her with complete authority over his territory for the second day in a row filled her chest with an overwhelming sense of pride.
She took a step back and bowed deeply with her bangs falling over her face.
"I will protect our home with my life, Lord Sy.." she murmured softly, adding the formal title to the front of his nickname like it was a sacred vow.
She looked up at him with her smile small and very grateful. "Not a blade of grass will be out of place when you return."
The other girls exchanged confused glances at the new nicknames, but nobody voiced a complaint.
Brida stepped off the porch and grabbed the heavy wooden handles of the lead cart.
"Alright, girls! Grab a set of wheels!" Brida barked, pulling the massive ironwood cart forward through the tiles with one hand like it weighed nothing. "Let’s go get some iron for the forge!"
Tasmin, Fenna, Gunnhild, and Elara quickly paired off, taking hold of the remaining carts and pushing them toward the territory’s reinforced front gates.
The heavy iron bars magically slid back as Aeliana channeled her starlight authorization from the porch, opening the path to the dense forest outside.
As the squad marched out into the rainy clearing, several other Vanguard units... Scouts finishing their morning patrols and infantry girls doing calisthenics in the dirt stopped to watch them pass.
Seeing their commanders dressed in skin-tight canvas and cropped leather while pushing heavy mining carts drew a chorus of whistles, laughs, and shouted encouragement from the barracks yard.
"Looking sharp, Captain Brida!" one of the archers yelled from a watchtower.
"Save some stuff for the rest of us!" another girl chimed in.
Silas jogged alongside the carts, waving back at the soldiers on the walls.
But as he looked at the sheer size of the perimeter walls and counted the girls left in the courtyard, a cold realistic realization hit him.
’I’m stretching my roster way too thin...’ Silas thought with his boots squelching in the mud as they entered the treeline. ’I’ve got my elite brawlers pulling rock out of a cave, two SSS-rank monsters acting like jealous teenagers, one dwarf who’s obsessed with explosives, and Aeli sitting alone in the command room... If a real team from the mainland where the regular Lords hit us or a very powerful monster decides to hit us while my heavy hitters are underground, we’re going to be scrambling... I need more hands really and also more troops to split into working on the caverns as well.’
They pushed through the heavy monsoon drizzle for thirty minutes, navigating the ravines and thick root systems of the Umbral Basin until the trees finally cleared.
Standing fifty yards ahead of them, built directly into the sheer obsidian cliff face, was the massive ironwood dome Eluned had constructed the day before.
The forty-foot wooden structure looked like an ancient fortress wall with its thick bark dripping with rain and the green runes carved into its surface pulsing with a steady, watchful light.
Suddenly, the dense brush to their right violently shook.
"EEEEEHHHH!"
With a squealing roar, a massive mutated boar erupted from the ferns.
The beast was easily the size of a draft horse, its skull covered in thick jagged bone plating and six razor-sharp tusks protruding from its jaw.
Its bloodshot eyes locked onto the wooden dome, and it lowered its armored head, charging straight at the barrier at full speed.
Before the monster even crossed the thirty-yard line, three of the green runes etched into the ironwood bark flared brilliantly.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The sound was like a high-calibre rifle firing.
Three high-velocity spikes of hardened green sap shot out from the wood, screaming through the air and punching cleanly through the boar’s thick bone skull.
The beast’s legs collapsed instantly and it slid through the mud, dead before its snout even touched the base of the wall.
Eluned floated a few inches above the wet grass, crossing her arms under her breasts and puffing her cheeks out in a smug satisfied display.
"See?" Eluned boasted, tilting her chin up at Silas. "Automated perimeter defense. I don’t even have to get my hands dirty... My wards do all the pest control."
Silas walked over to her, reached up, and placed his palm firmly on top of her silver hair, giving her a slow, deliberate rub.
"Good job, Eluned. That saved us some time."
The Goddess of Nature instantly melted.
Her smug arrogance vanished with her eyes fluttering closed and a deep red blush spread from her cheeks all the way to the tips of her pointed ears as she leaned her head into his hand.
’I love him... Thank you... world for bringing both of us together.’ Eluned thought.
Before she could enjoy the praise for more than two seconds, a second roar shook the treeline directly to their left.
Another bone-plated boar, even larger than the first, crashed through the ironwood ferns.
But this one didn’t charge at the wooden dome... It saw the squad of girls pushing the carts and pivoted, charging straight toward Fenna and Elara with its six tusks lowered to skewer them.
"I’ve got this one," Silas said calmly, stepping away from Eluned.
He didn’t reach for the hilt of his sword.
Instead, he stepped alongside Brida’s cart, reached into the rack, and pulled out one of Thora’s heavy thick-handled mining pickaxes.
He stepped out in front of the carts, planting his boots firmly in the wet, black mud.
Silas didn’t take a brawler’s stance.
He dropped his center of gravity slightly, loosening his shoulders and breathing in the cold damp air of the Umbral Basin.
He felt the heavy moisture falling from the sky, pulling the ambient rain directly toward the aura of his Gold Core.
He didn’t recite a long complex incantation.
He just closed his mind around the exact footwork and hip pivot Morwenna had beaten into him during their spar in the rain.
The six-tusked boar was ten yards away with the ground shaking under its hooves.
Silas stepped into the charge, gripping the base of the pickaxe handle with both hands.
He angled the heavy alloy point fifteen degrees to the right, channeling his golden mana and his water affinity simultaneously into the metal.
"First Form," Silas muttered.
He swung the pickaxe in a sharp horizontal sweep.
Vwoosh!
The air tore open.
A compressed crescent-shaped blade of heavy blue water erupted directly from the blunt point of the mining tool.
It wasn’t a massive fifty-yard wave like Morwenna’s, but it was fast and packed with crushing pressure.
The water blade screamed through the rain and slammed squarely into the front of the charging boar.
Squelch!
There was no resistance.
The heavy water pressure cleanly sheared right through the monster’s reinforced bone skull, slicing through its thick neck and spine in a fraction of a second.
The twelve-hundred-pound beast was split neatly in two from snout to tail.
The two halves flew past Silas on either side, crashing into the mud behind him in a shower of dark blood and steaming viscera.
Silas slowly lowered the pickaxe, letting the remaining moisture drip off the metal point.
Total silence fell over the clearing.
Morwenna stood near the carts with her jaw hanging slightly open.
Her stormy gray eyes were wide as she stared at the bisected boar corpse, then at the standard mining tool in his hands.
"Captain..." Morwenna breathed out, her voice filled with genuine shock. "Did you... did you actually practice the edge alignment this morning?"
The rest of the girls stared in disbelief.
A pickaxe wasn’t even a edged weapon... It was a blunt digging tool designed to crack rock, yet their Lord had just used it to slice a Tier 2 monster in half with a swordsmanship art.
Silas wiped a drop of rain off his cheek, leaning casually on the handle of the pickaxe.
"I went over the footwork in my head while I was getting dressed," Silas answered honestly, looking at the blade of his tool. "It’s nowhere near as heavy or clean as your slash, Morwenna but the leverage makes sense now. It gets the job done."
Eluned snapped out of her lovestruck daze, her green eyes locking onto the dead boar.
Instantly, her competitive jealousy flared to life. She floated aggressively over to him, grabbing his bare bicep with both hands.
"If you can pick up elemental arts that fast, I am teaching you Nature magic right now!" Eluned demanded loudly, glaring across his chest at the pirate. "I felt your core reacting to the earth when I built those gates yesterday! You have the capacity for it! I’ll teach you how to grow ironwood spears directly out of the dirt!"
Morwenna marched forward, shoving Eluned’s shoulder with her bare hand.
"Back off, you overgrown weed! He just figured out the baseline timing for the First Form! He needs to learn the remaining nineteen styles of the Tide-Blade before he starts playing around with your gardening tricks! You’ll ruin his stance!"
"I am an SSS-rank Goddess!" Eluned shrieked, summoning a glowing green orb to her palm. "You’re a salt-logged trench rat!"
"I’ll bury this sword so deep in your neck you’ll sprout leaves!" Morwenna roared back, her hand dropping to her sword hilt.
Around them, the girls started shifting awkwardly with some stepping back from the two mythic entities while others began arguing over which style suited their Lord better.
The entire mining expedition was two seconds away from devolving into a full-blown brawl in the mud.
CLANG!
A deafening explosion of sound rang out over the clearing.
Thora stood on the front of the lead cart, holding two iron pickaxes that she had just slammed together with all of her raw dwarven strength.
Her goggles were pulled down over her eyes, and her usual joking degenerate grin was completely gone.
In its place was the fierce unyielding glare of a Master Smith who had work to do.
"Shut your damn mouths, all of you!" Thora roared, her abrasive voice echoing off the stone cliff face. "We are losing daylight! There are tons of rare unrefined star-iron and blood-crystals sitting inside that bedrock right now waiting to be dug out, and you two princesses are standing out here in the rain measuring dick sizes over who gets to teach the Boss first!"
She pointed a heavy pickaxe directly at Morwenna, then at Eluned.
"We are miners today!" Thora barked with her tone leaving zero room for argument. "No swordsmanship lessons! No gardening lessons! You grab a cart, you grab a tool, and you get your asses inside that cave before I start docking people’s rations! Focus up!"
The reprimand hit like a bucket of ice water.
Both SSS-rank entities actually flinched.
Morwenna grumbled something under her breath and pulled her hand away from her sword, while Eluned pouted, aggressively crushing the green mana orb in her palm.
Thora’s professional authority when it came to metal and mining was absolute.
"Fine," Eluned huffed, turning toward the forty-foot wooden dome.
She raised her slender hands, channeling a pulse of green mana into the bark.
The massive interlocking trunks of ironwood smoothly shifted and groaned, sliding apart like a heavy organic vault door to reveal the dark silent tunnel leading into the mountain.
Before they pushed the carts inside, Eluned turned around and swept her arms wide toward the clearing behind them.
Kra-koom!
Thick heavy roots erupted from the earth all along the perimeter of the clearing, weaving together into a dense, eight-foot-tall wooden wall that entirely enclosed the entrance zone.
Green runes flared along the barrier, sealing them off from the rest of the Umbral Basin.
"There," Eluned muttered, dusting her palms off. "Now no roaming trash can wander in behind us while we’re underground. The perimeter is secure."