161 - Petty Revenge

“Where were you?” Alexandra asked, squatting to complete her daily.

“Night. Good. Dark,” Speck argued as it slid inside her body.

Alexandra stood up. Then she squatted back down.

“It’s dangerous. What if someone saw you?”

“Hide. In. Darkness,” Speck said. “Safe.”

Alexandra didn’t answer. She continued her exercises.

“Mostly.” Speck shifted. “Can. Face. Danger.” It paused. “Speck. Not. Weak.”

“I know you’re not weak,” Alexandra said between two reps. “But I don’t want you to get into a fight with the people here.”

“No. Fight. Only. Watch.”

“Good. But still…”

“No. Steal.”

Alexandra stopped. She wiped the sweat off her forehead. “What do you mean no steal?”

“Steal. Nothing.”

“Speck… What did you steal?”

Speck materialized a shadow figure in front of her. The elemental made it as small as it could. It looked down.

“Lie. Failed.”

“Don’t act all cute and spit it out.”

Speck raised the head of its shadow. “Darkness. Elemental. Source.”

Alexandra froze. “From the local shop, I suppose?”

Speck nodded.

She frowned. It wasn’t something she could force Speck to return. She let her senses wash over her familiar’s source. It was stronger, firmer.

“Well, you made the best of it. We should leave Izrum before the shopkeeper notices.”

“Shopkeeper. Strange.”

“How so?”

“Dark.” Speck hesitated, as if it couldn’t quite place the feeling it was trying to describe. “Bad. Dark.”

“Really?” Alexandra asked, not understanding what Speck was trying to say. “Maybe it's because he sells elemental sources?”

“Don’t. Care.”

“I guess you wouldn’t. Did Medh have the same darkness about him?”

Speck scratched its chin with a shadow limb. “Yes. But. Less.”

“Then it's probably the elemental source business. There must be a part of you that cares.”

“Impossible.” Speck grabbed its head in its shadow limb.

Alexandra knelt in front of the elemental. “Speck, do you care about me?”

“Care.”

“Nara?”

“Care.”

“Kam and Willow?”

“Don’t. Care.” It paused. Shook its head. “Care. Little.”

“So,” Alexandra continued. “You’re capable of caring. Why not care about your kind being harvested for parts?”

“Maybe.” It didn’t seem convinced. “But. I. Consume.”

Alexandra shrugged. It was a good point. Speck did consume other shadow elementals to grow stronger. She tried imagining a cannibal caring about humans. To her surprise, it wasn’t that hard. Surely they cared about some people.

“We’re leaving anyway. You don’t have to care about that man.”

“Okay.”

Alexandra finished her daily quest. She’d been lucky with today’s roll as it wouldn’t require her to take a detour.

Perform 1,000 squats (0/1,000) -> Quest Completed: +10 exp, +1 CON

Daily Quest Streak: 124 -> 125

With her Constitution approaching a hundred, it wasn’t even that hard.

Alexandra checked out of the inn and crossed the city gates without issues. She spent the best part of the morning crossing the stone fields, stopping whenever Speck found a rock that tickled its fancy.

For some reason, the elemental seemed a lot less engaged than the day before.

“Are you losing interest in rocks?”

“Speck. Standards. High.” It tossed a pebble back onto the ground. “Rocks. Here. Bad.”

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“Oh no. You’re already becoming a snob.”

“No. Snob,” Speck clarified. “Standards.”

“Whatever.” Alexandra cracked her fingers. “We’re far enough from Izrum.”

She hadn’t come all the way to the stone fields to return without beating up a stone elemental for her troubles when she and her friends landed in the Gray Basin. Alexandra activated Tracking and immediately found the traces of several specimens.

“All Bronzes.”

She frowned. There were a lot of stone elementals around her, but no Silver. She didn’t want to jump to Gold immediately, but fighting Bronze was a total waste of time. Not to mention it would prevent them from evolving to Silver and make it harder for hunters like Zeynep to make bank.

Figuring she was on the path between Izrum and Oldwater, she pivoted and headed to a less frequented part of the stone fields.

The low hills rolled, covered in yellow grass and a multitude of rocks. None of the Bronze-rank elementals attacked her. They had to understand the difference in power between them. Plus, Speck, a Silver-rank darkness elemental, was traveling with her.

Eventually, she caught the tracks of a Silver-rank stone elemental. Once she got close enough, she prepared to engage.

Last time, she had been too preoccupied by the stone construct controlled by the elemental to strike at the source. Today, she had the initiative and had already locked onto the source. That said, she couldn’t just blast it into oblivion and call it a day.

First, it would destroy the source, and she wanted to sell it. Second, it was underground, so she would have to reach it first.

“By the way, I hope you don’t mind that we’re doing that.”

“Told. You. Don’t. Care.”

Alexandra felt a little guilty hunting elementals right after sermonizing Speck, but so be it. In fact, she was about to do something way worse.

She summoned her journal.

Destroy Rock: Destroy a stone construct controlled by a stone elemental (0/1)

“Sorry, Speck, I’m about to break a lot of rocks.”

“Weak. Rocks. No. Pity.”

“I wonder what happened for you to say that…”

Anyway, Alexandra connected Drain Life and Aggressive Assimilation to the stone elemental and felt her perception extend underground. It was different from the feedback she got from speck. Where her familiar allowed her to sense the darkness, the stone elemental’s senses let her sense inside the earth, inside the rocks, where darkness itself couldn’t reach.

This was enough to alert the stone elemental. A boulder moved, and attached itself to another, then another. Before she knew it, Alexandra was faced with a giant of stone. It was larger than her previous encounter, but she was also stronger.

On the surface, her mana wouldn’t run out. As long as she didn’t get hit, there was no way she could lose.

“Time to blast.”

She fired a Solar Blast, intending to train the skill while she was at it. With another thread of mana, she cast Rays of the Sun and aimed it at the stone construct.

The beam and blast bore into the stone, sending dust flying in the air.

The construct staggered, chunks of rock falling off its shoulder. Before the dust settled, more stone rose from the ground and slotted into the gap, thickening the arm back to size.

“It's rebuilding,” Alexandra said. “Of course.”

She poured another Solar Blast into the same spot, trying to outpace the repair. The stone glowed orange, cracked, and still the elemental fed it fresh mass, drawing boulders up from beneath the hills.

Speck’s shadow limbs wandered off to her left, nudging a rock with a swift motion. It picked it up, turned it over, and dropped it.

“Good. Shape,” Speck said. “Too. Light.”

“You're really doing this now?”

“Priorities.” Speck picked up another one, weighed it, and tossed it over her shoulder. “Also. Bad.”

Alexandra ignored it and kept working. The construct swung a fist. She stepped back, let it crash into empty ground, and answered with Rays of the Sun aimed at the legs. The beam ate through one knee, making the whole thing lurch sideways before another rock closed the wound.

“Round two,” she said, and put a Solar Blast through the knee again.

The construct dropped to one side and hauled itself back up. New rocks crawled across the joint, welding it whole. She hit the shoulder next, then the other knee, then the shoulder again.

“Pathetic. Rocks,” Speck said. “All. Break.”

“That's the plan.”

“All,” Speck added, gleeful. “Cleanse. World. Of. Weak. Rocks.”

“Ugh…”

The construct was noticeably smaller than it had been three repairs ago, but the elemental kept pulling in stones from further and further away.

Still, it couldn’t last forever as the travel time for the stones got longer and her blasts and beams didn’t change.

Soon, the construct could threaten her. All the elemental’s energy was being spent repairing it.

“How's the rock hunting going, by the way?” she asked Speck.

“Bad.” Speck picked up a fist-sized stone and dropped it with obvious disdain. “All. Lacking.”

“I really don’t get you. You loved them yesterday!”

“Found. Better,” Speck said. “New. Perspective.”

Alexandra focused her beam on what was left of the construct.

“Better? Can you show me?”

Speck shifted inside of her. “No.”

“Speck… What did you do?”

“Nothing.”

“We’ll talk once I’m done with the stone elemental.”

It took a while, but eventually the elemental exhausted all the rocks within range. It left the earth overturned as if the field had just been labored. The landscape was unrecognizable.

Alexandra dug into the ground and collected the exhausted source.

Destroy Rock: Destroy a stone construct controlled by a stone elemental (0/1)

Destroy Rock — Common:

Shatter a rock through mana vibrations.

Each level increases the affected area and density.

If anything, it would make hunting stone elementals easier.

To her surprise, it wasn’t the only notification in her journal.

Manyfold Style Training Quest Completed x 1 -> 2,000 contribution points

Contribution Points: 13,290 -> 15,290

Alexandra had almost forgotten about this quest. Manyfold Style final training quest asked her to hunt twenty Silvers. Between the bone elementals, lizards, and now the stone elemental, she’d somehow crossed over the threshold.

“I could farm this,” she whispered.

Since the skill had evolved from Combat Sense, it would eventually level up even if she fought without weapons. Perhaps now was the best time to take advantage of it. After all, Silver stone elementals were not a challenge anymore, so she could probably complete the quest once or twice before Manyfold Style capped out.

“But first, what’s the deal with you?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Speck, I’ll kick you out into the sun if you don’t speak.”

Silence.

“I’ll do it. For real.”

“Fine,” Speck said. “Look.”

Speck took the rock out of its darkness dimension and placed it inside her palm. It was smooth, orb-shaped. She’d seen something like that before.

“That’s a fucking communication orb. Speck, where the hell did you get that?”

Before Speck could answer, the orb flashed with pale light.

A man’s voice, slightly distorted, came out of it.

“Brother Samos, I awaited your call.”