Seeds of Discordia

“What?!” Artem asked. “What do you mean you think?”

“Well, it’s kind of hard to tell with all the moving these guys are doing right now!” Roman shouted as he looked at Artem. “There’s more inside one of those holes. I don’t know how many more is in there, but I think they are waiting for something.”

Liam stared at Roman. He didn’t catch it earlier, but as he listened to them talk, he remembered Roman was able to tell that the monsters where about to appear. His ears had twitched, and he looked like he was focusing on something as he placed a hand down on the ground. Did he hear them?

No. That couldn’t be it. He had heightened hearing just like Roman, but he didn’t hear them moving underground. Was it a touch sense? That couldn’t be it either. What could it be that allowed him to tell?

Before Liam could ask, Blair shouted, “They’re on the move!”

Liam snapped his attention on the monsters before them. Racing towards them were the smaller monsters separated into four groups. Each group contained nine Possessed Zombified Goblin Warriors and nine Possessed Zombified Stone Fanged Wolves. The four Possessed Zombified Hobgoblin Warriors and the Possessed Zombified Infernal Silverbacks remained where they were.

As Liam tried to think about whether he should use more of his Chemicalized Creations or not, Blair pointed her weapon out towards the group farthest to the right and chanted, “O Gravity, powerful and dangerous. Bring the Force down upon my enemy slowing its movements. Gravitational Force Increase!”

As she chanted the spell, Liam looked at her as she gave him a slight smile. He knew what she was thinking and started chanting his spell at the group on the opposite side. As soon as they finished the movements of all the creatures clumped together suddenly slowed as gravity around them pushed down.

After the effects fell upon the monsters in the two groups, Liam and Blair started up their next spells for the remaining two groups. Each different from the other.

“Hidden within the dark, I call upon you to bind my target. Grasp them with the tendrils you possess. Remind them why they should fear their own Shadow. Grasp of the Shadows!” Liam chanted.

“O Gravity, powerful and dangerous. Condense into a single spot. Pull to you and Keep any and everything that tries to escape. Gravity Well!” Blair chanted.

An orb suddenly appear right in front of the group on the right side while black shadowy tendrils shot out and wrapped the legs, arms, and stomachs of the creatures in the group on the left.

Liam reached into the potion pouch that rested against his leg and pulled out two flasks. Within the flasks were liquids swirling about with pale lines mixed with the swirling motions. He threw them at the two groups that were trapped inside the Gravity Well Blair created and the ones rooted in place due to the shadowy tendrils.

As soon as the flasks exploded, two orbs of swirling air formed and rose up. As soon as the orbs rose high enough the swirling air inside the orbs started spinning faster and faster. The pale white lines mixed with the air started multiplying until the air blended with them evenly. One second after that, sharp thin lines flew out in unpredictable directions and sliced into the creatures within distance of them.

As this was going on, Roman had raced over towards the left group on the outside, both hands crackled with lightning. As he approached the first monster, a Possessed Zombified Goblin Warrior, he jumped in the air and brought his right fist back. Before crashing into the monster, Roman extended his fist outwards as hard as he could causing it to fall to the ground. After that, he spun around and kicked the Possessed Zombified Stone Fanged Wolf that tried to catch him off guard.

Blair’s wings formed on her back as she bent her knees and pushed off towards the group of monsters on the outside to the left. Her wings flapped to give her an extra boost of speed as she swung her axe to the side and readied to swing the moment she was within striking distance. As she swung, she channeled mana into the axe and smoothed it out to give it an extra sharpness to it. The blade sliced through the neck of two Possessed Zombified Stone Fanged Wolves.

As Liam watched Blair he noticed she was swinging her weapon with a lot more ease than she normally did. Not only was she swinging with a lot more ease, she was also swinging faster. He activated his Mana Sight and expected to see the familiar color of Gravity Mana coating her body, but instead she had a different color. This one looked familiar, but he couldn’t remember where he had seen it or what it was. He made a mental note to ask her about it later.

The Lunar Air sickles finally stopped attacking as the two orbs disappeared. Both groups of monsters looked like they had taken a lot of damage, but they weren’t completely dead yet. Liam was ready to dive in himself to take care of one of the groups but stopped as Artem rushed towards the group of monsters that had been rooted thanks to his Grasp of the Shadows spell.

He wasn’t taken aback by the suddenness of Artem racing towards the monster, but rather by the color that had outlined his body. It was a blue color. The one that represented Water Mana. This confused Liam because he didn’t remember Artem ever taking the Field of the Elements Water Focus Point.

Artem slammed his shield into the first monster he came across, knocking it off its feet while swinging his mace down on another. Liam noticed a Possessed Zombified Stone Fanged Wolf jump at Artem’s back and tried clawing at him. Liam was about to throw a dagger at the creature, but stopped as he watched as a three inch layer of water suddenly appeared around the claws, slowing the movement down enough for the claws to barely do any damage. Artem swiftly spun around and slammed his mace across the Possessed Zombified Stone Fanged Wolf’s face, knocking it down on its side.

Liam was amazed and shocked at what he was seeing. Even though it had been only a few days, Artem, Blair, and Roman had grown stronger and gained new abilities. They found new spells that seemed to work great with the path and fighting style they were trying to create for themselves.

As Liam stared in awe at them he realized that he hadn’t heard him chant any spells before racing towards them. In fact, he hadn’t heard Blair chant whatever spell or spells she had used as well.

Was I so focused on what I needed to do that I didn’t pay attention to what they were doing? Liam questioned as he watched each of them. Back in the Tutorial Dungeon I always tried to pay attention to what they were doing so I could aid or compliment their attacks. However, not once have I looked at them when we fought these creatures so far.

Liam continued to watch the three attack and fight each creature within the group they chose. The last group was still struggling to get away from Blair’s Gravity Well spell. Seeing it still going told him that Blair’s level in the spell must have risen quite a lot.

A smile slowly grew on Liam’s face as he continued to watch his teammates. He felt happy. At first he didn’t understand why, but after a second he realized he was happy because they were getting stronger. Not just in terms of strength, but in terms of teamwork. It might be just coincidental that they didn’t communicate what they were going to do and just did whatever they wanted to do. If that was the case then…

Liam’s attention was taken away from his thoughts and right onto the creatures starting to move after the Gravity Well disappeared. He pulled out his daggers and raced over towards them. As he attacked them he saw the damage his Weak Lunate Sickle Air Blast creation had caused.

Some of the creatures had one or two limbs missing while the ones who didn’t had major gashes across their bodies. Each of them were bleeding badly which caused their health to drop with every movement they made. After seeing that, Liam thought that he could have just let them try to bleed out, but at the same time he didn’t want to let something happen just because he had gotten too cocky over how well his Chemicalized Creation went.

It didn’t take him long to finish off the creatures on the verge of dying. He aimed as well as he could for the heads of each creature to take both the body and the Toxo Corpse Controller hiding inside the monsters heads. He wasn’t sure if that was where they were hiding, but after the first Possessed Zombified Goblin Warrior had died when he stabbed his dagger through its skull, he had received a notification stating he had killed the spider creature as well.

He didn’t want to assume so he continued doing the same thing with the others and found that his theory was correct. During the middle of his fight he had relayed the information to the others. They had only grunted in reply, making him think they had come to the same conclusion.

The others had finished off their group of monsters almost at the same time he had. As soon as the last monster had fell, loud screams caused the four to swiftly look at them. This was good for them because as soon as they looked they noticed the Possessed Zombified Infernal Silverbacks had started glowing a fiery red indicating they were readying a spell of their own.

“Get back!” Artem yelled as he started running away from the creatures.

Blair, Liam, and Roman did the same. As soon as they started running, streams of flames poured out from the  monsters’ wide open mouths. Liam felt the heat of the fire as it ran across the ground and chased after him. As soon as he made it out of the spell’s reach, he turned to get a good look at what was happening. He was surprised at how far the attack was able to go and was worried that Artem, who was the slowest of them all, would get swallowed up from the flames.

Liam suddenly grew worried as he found out that the flames had in fact caught up to Artem and had surrounded him. He was about to yell out his name but was stopped as Artem came charging out of the flames encased in a layer of water that looked like it was outlining not just his body, but his equipment as well.

Liam stared at the man astonished by what he saw. Artem let out a big burst of air as he slowed to a stop and placed his hands on his knees and breathed heavily. “I am so glad I worked on that water spell.”

“I agree,” Blair nodded. “It seems like it was the right choice.”

“What the hell was that?” Liam questioned as he looked at him. The flames still burning close by.

“Well talk about that later,” Blair interrupted. “They are going to attack again.”

Liam turned as he felt the heat of the flames die down. The four Possessed Zombified Hobgoblin Warriors brandished their long swords as the four Possessed Zombified Infernal Silverbacks thumped their fists against their chest.

Liam stared at them. They separated into four groups of two, mixing themselves up. They were stronger than the monsters they had just fought and while there were fewer of them, the fact that one set of monsters could use fire magic would go well for them if they tried to fight them in a two against one fight. They needed to try and fight them either two on two or even three on two.

Liam thought about what he had that he could use. He had a couple more items he wanted to test out, but he wasn’t sure which of the two items would work great. While Weak Poisoned Mist could slow them down and poison the bodies he felt that he could use that for a much bigger crowd than just two.

That left his other one, Weak Crackling Lunar Flash. This one would be great to use since it could blind the targets, however, there was a chance it could also blind them as well if they weren’t careful. It would have been better if something was added to it to block out the lightning from blinding anyone outside of the radius, but he didn’t have time to try and make a new one with that added feature. If he could add his creations together by just mixing them right there then it would be amazing but…

His thoughts stopped after that. He wasn’t sure it would be possible to do what his last train of thought was, but there was another possible way to create a layer to prevent anyone outside of the radius the targets were in.

Liam searched for the Chemicalized Creations he wanted to use. As he did this the monsters started making a move. Artem started chanting a spell Liam didn’t recognize, but also didn’t pay much attention to as he kept searching for the second item he wanted to use. Blair and Roman started chanting as well as Artem finished his spell.

Liam grasped the item he was looking for and turned his attention forward. An orb the size of a beach ball had suddenly formed in between the four creatures on the right, above them. A sudden powerful push of gravity forcefully crashed down on them, making the four creatures fall face first down. The ground beneath the creatures cracked and caved in slightly around the monsters’ bodies.

On Liam’s left a water orb had formed in front of Artem’s shield. As soon as it had completely formed, a power torrent of water shot out and sprayed at the two on the far left. As the water collided against the monsters and covered the ground around the monsters, Roman, whose hands were crackling with sparks of lightning, plunged both of them into the stream of water. The current of lightning raced down the stream and connected with the Possessed Zombified Hobgoblin and Possessed Zombified Infernal Silverback. Their bodies seized up as the muscles tightened and locked their movements in place.

Liam, surprised at what they did, stared in amazement. Blair raced over to the last two creatures as Artem continued to spray water on the other two. Roman pulled his hands out from the stream and ran over to the area that was starting to fill with water. As soon as he arrived to the edge of the massive puddle he started chanting, “Crackle loud and strong, Keep the charge surging long, Don’t stop until their body goes soft, Don’t stop until the connection to their heart is cut off. Surging Arc!”  

  Sparks of lightning started to form and surge across Roman’s open hands. The amount of lightning was different than when he used Static Grasp. The color of the sparked was deeper as well. Then to Liam’s surprise, Roman pointed his hands at the creatures that were paralyzed in the watery puddle and watched as the sparks turned into a constant current of lighting as it shot out in a stream of its own, right onto the two creatures.

Artem cut off his spell, stopping the stream of water to continue to spray at the two monsters. As soon as he did that, he raced over to help Blair out with the two monsters she was taking on.

Liam stood there amazed and mesmerized, again as he watched his teammates handle these monsters like they were nothing. He thought about his earlier thoughts on them. This was no coincidence. They were able to connect their spells together, show off some new ones they were able to use, and show how much growth they had gained while they were away from him.

Liam gripped his hands tightly. He realized he was still holding the two Chemicalized Creations in his hands as he did this. He looked down at them before looking back at his teammates. They were showing him how much improvement they had made and the only thing he had shown them was how much improvement he had made in his crafting.

While these items were helpful when fighting massive groups of mobs, once he ran out of them he could easily whip up more. Sure, his crafting is a part of his fighting style, but that wasn’t all there was to his fighting style. No, he wanted to show that to them just like they were showing him this.

Liam smiled again. He placed his two Chemicalized Creations back in his potion pouch. This time in a spot he would easily find it. He then gripped his daggers and unsheathed them. He stared at the four monsters being crushed down by the gravity spell he had no knowledge of, and thought to himself, Time to show my growth as well.