Chapter 72: Path of collision (2)

Reem got another buff skill that she could only cast at her summoned beast.

As for Neil... disappointingly, he got two lousy spells. The first was a defensive spell – Fire barrier! In this spell, a dome-shaped barrier of fire is ignited around Neil, to protect him.

However, and after putting this spell to test… it turned out that this defensive fire barrier spell was really just a screen of fire that surrounds the caster! It has no apparent defensive quality. As even when they threw a small rock at Neil, it got through the fire barrier and hit him right on the head, leaving an embarrassing bump.

The only use they could think of for this spell was to keep the small beasts away, or to scare away the animals that are afraid of fire. The worst part about this spell was its high consumption of magic energy.

The second spell was an offensive one. It was called – fire arrow!

This spell basically makes and discharges an arrow of fire in a straight path. The fire arrow was very similar to the fire burst spell, and the only difference was that this spell uses more magic energy and had shorter range, about 5 meters. The only up side aspect about it was that the arrow inflicts continues fire damage to the target for a while after casting it.

Apparently, getting his Fire ball spell had used up all of his luck, as both of his new spells weren't really necessary, or efficient. Both were big letdown, at least when comparing to fire burst and fire ball spells.

This wasn't the only change in ramie's team. As after the levels advances, their total team's power reached new heights. And as a direct result of this power rise, many compound inhabitants expressed their wishes to join the team, and travel with them when they move to the capital.

After some considerations, Lance accepted ten people into the team, with all of them being normal. The reason he didn't accept warriors was because he didn't want to affect the compound's battle power by taking away capable hands.

Anyway, with the azure gazelle king advancing to the second tier, sending him out to hunt for tier-1 life energy cores wasn't a big issue anymore. As such, the ten individuals soon became Lv.1 warriors, adding to the team's power, and making up for the shortage of warriors in the team.

In the compound, another significant development happened.

Brent managed to comprehend two inscriptions. Both of which were of the defensive type. The first inscription forms a one meter diameter energy shield that can withstand multiple attacks from peak Lv.1 warrior. The shield is one time activation inscription; it lasts until all of its energy is used up or when taking damage that exceeds its defensive limit. This inscription could be used by anyone, as the magic energy for it comes from the stored energy in the inscription, and not the user.

The second inscription was also of the defensive type. It forms dome-shaped earth barrier that surrounds the user, isolating him. This barrier can mend itself even after taking damage, and can lasts up until the inscription energy runs out. This inscription too can be used by anyone.

Through all of these developments, the compound's total power rose sharply.

This rise of power encouraged Brian to attack the other types of herbivores beasts that comes to the river for water every morning, other than the buffalo beasts. Brian hoped through this action to increase the items on the compounds food menu. As so far, it was only the buffalo beast's meat.

Also, he hoped to increase the number of cores that they get every day in order to further increase the strength of the Lv.1 warriors in the compound.

However, this plan of his had backfired in a very bad way. As after they killed another type of beasts on the river side… a high tier-2 beasts attacked the compound only an hour afterwards, and wrecked havoc. Apparently, the beast that they had killed was part of the horde that this beast was overseeing.

If it wasn't for Brian's, Ramie's, and the azure gazelle king performance in the fight, which forced the beasts to retreat, the inflicted damage would have been truly disastrous.

Actually, the biggest factor why they didn't suffer any casualty in the high tier- beast retaliation was not because of how strong they were… instead; it was that the beast didn't intend to annihilate them in the first place and only wanted to get his message cross.

The reason why they believed so was because during the fight, the herbivores beast had many chances to kill people but it didn't, instead, the beast only injured few warriors.

This event taught them that even though their current state was far stronger than before… however; their level of strength was still too low when considering the big picture outside. This development deflated Brian's growing ego.

Apparently, getting a bit stronger had ruined his sense of judgment.

After that event, Ramie and the rest of the group started their preparation to leave for the capital. The only thing on their agenda before leaving was to try to get few other tier-2 cores and bring up the level of some of the warriors in their team to the second level.

They had no idea what type of dangers would they meet in the trip. Hence, they wanted to prepare themselves the best they could before departing.

Although initially, they wanted to get few tier-2 magical cores and increase the magician's levels in their team… but, tier-2 magical beasts were very rare and hard to find. So, they settled for the next best thing – life energy tier-2 cores.

In these days, and after exchanging for another APC, Lance and the group were very busy. They used the extra tier-1 life energy cores to exchange for many other things as well. Such as; bone shields, bone spears and bows made of tier-2 beasts that were inscribed with lightening inscription, earth barrier and energy armor inscriptions, and many other necessities for the trip.

Currently, in the central compound's square, ramie and the entire group were staring at the two APCs with satisfaction. The entire past week was spent in working on these two armored vehicles. Their group used the skeletons of the tier-2 beasts that they had hunted to reinforce each of the two vehicles to increase their defensive power.

Right now, each of the two APCs outer frames was surrounded with bone cage from five directions, leaving only small opening for entry. These bones defensive quality was much higher than the vehicle's armor. It was to the point that even Lance's full powered punch could only leave a small crack on them.

'Great! With this type of reinforcement, these vehicles now could even resist attacks from weak tier-2 beasts with ease!' staring at the two armored vehicles, ramie thought to himself.

In the past few days, ramie had a constant nagging sensation at the back of his mind that something major was about to happen. He didn't know why he had this feeling, as in the compound, everything was going well. Their strength was on a constant rise… the beasts around the camp were constantly thinning out, due to their wanton campaign of hunting… no excessively strong beasts appeared anywhere near the compound… so, why this unsettling feeling never goes away?

This feeling was making him very uncomfortable. It was very weak, like a distant noise that was about to disappear, however, it wasn't weak enough to the point of completely fading, and on the same time, not strong to the point of making sense, or giving him insights.

It wasn't just this feeling that was almost driving him to become a paranoid person, but in the last three days, ramie has being seeing the same dream, repeating itself in the same way over and over again. In this dream, he always sees 40 spikes of earth emerge from the ground in the compound and penetrate his four limbs, completely restricting his movement, pinning him on the ground, and preventing him from getting up. The ground would then weave itself around him and swallow him down. All the while, lance, Neil, Reem and the other members of the team run away from the compound, while calling out for him to catch up.

In this dream he keeps on struggling and struggling while digging his way up. And when he finally digs himself out, he only sees Reem and Neil waiting for him, while everyone else gone.

This dream has been eating up at him for the last three days.

These dreams seemed very real to him, and he didn't take them lightly. Ramie convinced lance and the rest to pull the date of the trip closer, to about a week. During this week, they would participate in two more hunting missions with the compound forces, to get two tier-2 cores, one for them, the other for the compound, and then make the trip for the capital.

To ramie, the capital was the safest place to in, in these times, as it is the place where most of the military forces are concentrated. So, if this bad feeling of his was on point, and something bad was really about to happen, then going for the well-protected capital should be his best chance to avoid this supposed dangerous event.

As for his appearance problem, he no longer cared about the issue at all. Seeing that Nora too had the bloodline artifact convinced him that there should be many other magicians in the capital with this type of artifact as well. So, his form shouldn't cause a ruckus or something, as there should be precedents.

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