Nidra divided the group again and she and Hirrus led their respective charges into the forest around the camp. Her plan was to hunt down adventurers in the region and kill them, learning their Arcana and stripping them for supplemental gear.

There were indeed some adventurers in the area. Some of Fire’s masked followers were still about, having fled into the forest either as the fight ended, or shortly after the fight began. They usually had banded together, but never anywhere near a large enough group to be a threat.

He had about sixteen companions with him. When there were fewer than three adventurers in a group, he directed them to fight without his direct involvement. Hirrus had enough healing Arcana to support them from behind, letting them learn to work together to fight stronger foes. He was anxious about their safety, but staying close at hand meant they were never in real danger.

The first adventurers they found was the largest. Fighting alongside his charges, Hirrus wiped the enemy out in seconds. Between his blades and breath attacks, the fight was barely worth remembering once it was done. A spectral blade weakly whirled through the air in an expanding spiral orbit around its now-dead caster and over the bodies of their dead friends. It was a new Arcana, though it wasn’t terribly powerful.

Blessed Blade

+5 ATT, +52 Crit Rating

Damage: 0.75xATT + 0.5xRES

Cast time: 0.25 seconds

Cooldown: 25 seconds

Added Effect: does triple damage to demons and undead. Each enemy hit reduces its cooldown by 1 second.

To Hirrus, the damage rating wasn’t worth seriously considering, but the enthusiastic reaction of his allies told him that they didn’t have many options at all.

Nidra had been right to have them engage in this hunt.

He’d thought that Rumi had done all he could to empower his followers to earn their loyalty. It turned out that he hadn’t done that at all. These people were going to need all the help he could offer.

Running down adventurers, he did end up learning two useful Arcana, in addition to a half-dozen near-useless attacks that were too weak for him to bother with.

Walk The Wok was an interesting area-of-effect attack. It conjured a large metal pan - the wok in question - and striking it caused a resounding racket, powerful enough to do reasonable damage. The added effect for the Arcana was a brief stun. Despite the moderate damage, the Arcana had a sixty second cooldown, presumably to make it nearly impossible to apply enough cooldown reduction to continuously stun a whole group of foes.

The other was actually somewhat exciting. It was called Suppression Roar, and it blasted an area with reasonable physical damage. The multiplier was less than his breath attacks, but just barely. The real prize was the added effect. It reduced enemy RES by thirty percent for fifteen seconds. When the adventurer hit him with it, it had a tremendous effect on his healing Arcana, which all had RES-focused multipliers. If he was going to be facing coordinated adventurers again, this would be critical to his success. Though it was certainly nice to add another physical area-of-effect Arcana to his arsenal as well, regardless of its utility.

In addition to hunting down lurking adventurers, Hirrus also directed his group to find and fight natural monsters in the region. This gave them some much-needed practice, as well as valuable experience points, even if the Arcana were mildly unimpressive. They learned the Boar Charge, Cricket Scream, and Constrictor Wrap Arcana that he had learned on the trip here, as well as a Viper Bite Arcana from a naturally camouflaged snake he hadn’t encountered when he was with Nidra and Alric.

The trip was not without excitement, though. One of his charges identified a monster lurking in a nearby clearing as something worth dealing with. A local Reputable Monster that was the frequent target of quests out of Shemil due to the threat it represented to the town. Hirrus ordered the rest to stand back and let him deal with it - once they had all dealt some amount of damage to it in order to earn the Arcana rewards that victory would bring.

The clearing was small, with the forest close in around it. This close to the mountain foothills, the ground was dusted with frost, and the off-white ground camouflaged the gray-skinned beast. It was some manner of serpent, though instead of coiling on the ground, its body was underground, with only a three-yard length of it sticking up out of the ground, along with its head, which looked like that of some sort of eye-stalked lizard. Four eyes on the ends of tentacles peered around, watching its surroundings. Its mouth was full of serrated teeth, and a forked tongue stabbed out periodically, tasting the air.

As Hirrus watched it, its name appeared in his mind’s eye.

Interred Ingrid

100%

Hirrus moved to attack it first. He wanted to do as he always did and power up before smashing it hard, but he was afraid it wouldn’t survive. This monster didn’t have a long series of intimidating titles. If he killed it outright in just a few seconds, his allies would not be able to share in the kill and get credit.

Then again, they’d only been his allies for a few short minutes. He had to consider the possibility that this would be a setup. If any of them still had sympathy for Rumi or their fallen friends, a monster like this might be the best chance they’d have to get their revenge.

As the monster’s stalk eyes turned to him, though, the first attack from his group was a simple Arcana that flung sparkling stars at the giant lizard-worm, tickling it with a little damage. Before it could turn its attention to his ally, Hirrus’s hooked blade carved into it. Three thousand six hundred damage wasn’t much, but it was surely enough to establish himself as the true threat here.

The monster whipped its head at Hirrus, but he was just a little too fast for it, dancing out of the way of the beast. Its body extended as he backed away, more and more of it spooling out from underground to give chase, and it whipped its head at him again, jaws snapping at the air as he kept moving.

Several of his charges rushed in, their blades and clubs smacking at the base where it emerged from its hole. It turned and went to lash out at them, but Hirrus reached out with Icy Grief, dealing a thousand more damage, but afflicting it with a potent slow, giving the others ample time to get away after making their contribution to the fight.

“Good work,” Hirrus called to them as they fled back to the treeline. “When I draw it out again, I want the rest of you to come in all together. There’s no reason to waste more time on this than necessary.”

Hirrus got its attention back with Ascension’s Sands, flinging a blade of sand at its head. The attack blasted four thousand damage into it, taking a reasonable chunk of its hit points while also blinding it. Its eyes tried to blink the sand away as it whirled back towards Hirrus.

Instead of rushing him, though, it used its first Arcana, rearing back and spraying him with a ray of blue-and-red light from its mouth. The colors were separated into discrete bands that spun wildly in a pattern that dazzled the eye and confused the mind. Hirrus flinched at it, but instead of affecting his mind or senses, it affected his body. His legs were rooted to the spot, unable to move.

It meant that when his allies moved in, he was unable to stop as the monster turned its attention to them, thrashing its body about to menace them with its serrated fangs..

“Avert your eyes,” Hirrus barked, giving the order the gruff tone he remembered from his combat instructors in his youth.

He couldn't wait for them to obey or not. He blasted the clearing with Melisune’s Eye. The giant worm’s instincts kept one of its stalk eyes on Hirrus, allowing the gaze attack to connect. Without any of his buffs - especially X’ruhn’s Balance - he dealt very little damage compared to his normal output with the high-multiplier Arcana. The monster only took three thousand damage. But the purpose wasn’t the damage. It was the additional effect. The monster was Calcified by the attack, locking its body in place.

“Strike as one,” Hirrus commanded the people who had nearly blundered into danger. “Once it takes damage, the effect will end. Coordinate. Strike together and retreat immediately. If you can’t work together for something this simple, you should have thrown yourselves on my blades when you had the chance.”

With that harsh threat, the group exchanged a few quiet words. One of them took the lead, counting down, and they all brought their weapons down at once.

Their simultaneous strike dealt significant damage to the monster. But it did break the Calcified debuff, and the monster let out an enraged hiss at the indignity.

Hirrus’s legs turned from stone to rubber, and he staggered forward, charging the monster with a roar of challenge. It nipped at the heels of one of his impromptu students, but Hirrus made it pay for the attack, chopping his icy greataxe into its flank. The strike was a critical hit, and did over five thousand damage, drawing a scream of pain from its toothy maw. The blow was almost enough to finish the fight, and Hirrus whirled his greataxe around for another blow to end it.

But not before the monster’s flexible body flipped around and it sprayed orange dirt into his face.

Hirrus was familiar with Gritted Breath. Seeing it now was unexpected. He’d believed that each monster’s Arcana was unique to that beast alone. This proved that it wasn’t so. The monster did over six thousand five hundred damage to him with it, but the furred gauntlets he wore had a legendary property that negated effects that dealt damage over time. He only suffered the initial damage and not the debuff.

As such, undeterred, he smashed the blade of his greataxe into the side of the monster’s face. A six thousand damage critical hit was more than enough to finish the monster off, and the top half of its face - along with two of its eye stalks - hit the ground fifteen feet away. The rest of the beast thrashed, spraying purplish blood all over Hirrus in its death throes.

“That should be enough,” Hirrus announced, wiping worm blood from its mouth with the back of his hand. “Let’s get back to the camp.”