Chapter 39: Chapter 39: The Cavalry Arrives

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

The Cavalry Arrives

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Once again, figuring out what ‘Memento Mori’ meant was left on the back burner because the battle was far from over. The horde’s big boss might be dead, but the surviving monsters seemed eager to continue the fight rather than escape back into the miasma surrounding the camp.

The clean-up would have been a lot harder too if the Crimson Corsair’s elites hadn’t properly dealt with most of the patchwork wolves that had accompanied the emissary. All but one of the hard-to-kill beasts managed to get away.

“That red one got away before we could kill it,” he explained. “Got it good in the flank though, so it shouldn’t bother anymore of you Academy folk while it runs away with its tail between its legs… We can count that as my third kill, L.”

Mistress Lorelai frowned. “If it’s not dead then it’s not a kill.”

“Then we’ll call it a tie for now,” Red Beard chuckled.

I watched Red Beard brush his shoulder against Mistress Lorelai and couldn’t help but roll my eyes at them. I’ve seen this type of mating ritual before on Realmsflix movies, the so-called frenemies rekindling their romance approach that usually ended up with the two leads making out before the movie credits arrived. I had a sneaking suspicion this was the direction these two were going in too, particularly thanks to the furtive glances they cast at each other whenever the other wasn’t looking.

“Adult romances are weird,” I chuckled.

“Don’t act as if you’ve got any experience on the matter,” Liara countered.

The she-elf was still leaning against me as we were both pretty tired from overusing our grimoires powers. And, yes, I was aware that we were also brushing shoulders, although not like how Red Beard and Mistress Lorelai had done it.

“I admit that I don’t have a clue about dating,” I answered in an ‘I’m not embarrassed to admit this embarrassing fact’ kind of way.

Liara glanced my way, and I was very conscious of how long she was staring.

“Wh-what?” I asked.

“I just didn’t think you would admit that out loud,” she said, giggling afterward.

Yep, for the first time since we’d met, I made Liara laugh. I just wish it wasn’t at my expense.

The roar of an ogre reached our ears, prompting Mistress Lorelai to remind everyone that the battle was far from over. Patchwork wolves aside, there were plenty of dangerous bastards we’d yet to defeat among the deteriorating monster horde, and our dökkálfar instructor warned us all not to be complacent.

“Studies show that newbie adventurer deaths have a high occurrence rate within the last leg of a raid battle,” she lectured. “So, don’t lose your concentration until the very end, novices!”

“Yes, mistress!” those of us gathered close by said together.

Team Six—with all its members and our strays still accounted for—came out of that crater feeling quite fatigued. Luckily for us, we didn’t have much to do in the end because reinforcements finally arrived from the Academy to relieve us.

“Heads up!” Delphine raised a finger at the sky. “The big guns have arrived!”

Except for the cloud that the Red Pearl floated on, the rest of the cloudy night sky cleared to show off a canvas of brightly twinkling stars. Then, right in the middle of basecamp, multicolored starlight burst forth from the ground much like the sun rising over the eastern horizon. From this rainbow portal came a streak of lightning that smacked into the chest of the nearest monster—a hobgoblin that disintegrated the moment the forked lightning speared its chest. Also, even before the hobgoblin’s ashes fell to the ground, the lightning bolt that had killed it bounced off into a nearby troll, turning the beast into a fried troll before bouncing off into a nearby crowd of ghouls.

“That’s one powerful fourth-level invocation spell,” I whistled.

After the ‘Chain Lightning’ cleared the landing zone of enemies, we all heard a deep-throated roar come from beyond the portal, and then Master Doomsday jumped out of it with his Executioner’s Blade raised high.

“Doomsday!” people cheered.

The half-giant leaped into the air and landed with ground-rumbling finesse right in the middle of more hobgoblins. Doomsday swung his curved black blade, and the number of hobgoblin heads he chopped off with that single swing was as impressive as his entrance.

“Doomsday!” people cheered again.

Without wasting time, Doomsday leaped upward once more. The next thing I knew, he landed right in front of me—the earth quaking at his arrival—and then the half-giant was patting me on the shoulder with one of his massive hands.

“You did well to hold out this long,” he said. “Leave the rest to us.”

By us, he meant him and the other masters who were now pouring out of the portal after him, with Grandmaster Dwalinn appearing last—his blue cloak billowing behind the dwarf while lightning danced in the palm of each of his hands. The number of monsters he’d zapped into fried corpses moments later was double the amount of kills Doomsday earned during his entrance.

“Makes one wonder why we didn’t just call them over straight away,” Lohgan commented in his usual snarky tone.

“Because I wanted to give you novices time to prove you were capable of managing this crisis without needing the Academy’s support,” Mistress Lorelai spoke from right behind him.

“We figured,” I chuckled.

Apart from Lohgan, the other novices were nodding their heads in agreement. We’d all gotten used to Mistress Lorelai’s approach of sending us headlong into danger to make us stronger.

“How did we do, mistress?” Liara asked politely like the teacher’s pet she was.

“I think there’s room for improvement, but your efforts were passable,” Mistress Lorelai conceded.

“That might as well be a two-thumbs up from her,” Dess whispered into my ear.

I figured as much. It wouldn’t do for the big bad dark elf to compliment us too easily. That was the kind of teacher she was.

Speaking of teachers, I spotted Mistress Ravenloft, our vampire Realmsverse History teacher, directly south of us, and I wish I hadn’t pointed her out to the others as I didn’t realize right away that she was, um, having an early breakfast.

A collective shiver passed between Team Six as we witnessed the blonde vampire’s mouth clamp down on the last surviving maenad’s neck, and we shivered again after we noticed how quickly that maenad shriveled up.

“Bet you that hag wished she’d just died with her queen after all,” Delphine said.

“Remind me never to get on that one’s bad side,” I whispered into Dess’s ear.

The fairy nodded despite her eyes transfixed at the sight of Mistress Ravenloft’s bent form. “Just as long as you remember to remind me too.”

Mistress Ravenloft wasn’t the only highlight among our teachers either. The secret section’s half-orc librarian, Mistress Grimsever, had conjured an area of effect spell that sent dozens of briar roses streaking out of the ground to snap their thorny spines against monster flesh while also wrapping around these poor fools in a prison of thorns that spilled much blood down onto the earth.

“Or that one,” I reiterated.

Dess nodded. “Aren’t they all monsters?”

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As Dess pointed out, other masters and mistresses were showing off on the field of battle, although I didn’t know who these people were so they didn’t catch my attention. More importantly, my interest was stolen away by the twenty or so novices who were just coming out of the portal as part of the Academy’s reinforcements.

“Vargr, what are they doing here?” Lohgan grumbled.

“To show us up?” Morph supplied.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“Ranks one through twenty,” Liara answered, sounding almost wistful for a moment there.

I grinned. “So, they’re the competition, huh.”

“Yes,” Liara stated matter-of-factly.

Even among these talented newcomers, there was one novice I couldn’t keep my eyes off. Not just because of the expert way she wielded the greatsword she’d brought with her, but because each one of those heavy swings lopped off monster heads nearly as efficiently as Doomsday’s kills.

She had the typical features of a California girl; wavy blonde hair that was braided on one side of a tanned face with piercing blue eyes. Her nose was long and pointy like mine, but her lips were fuller.

“Saga!” Doomsday yelled from his position near basecamp’s main gate. “There are more monsters to slay over here!”

“Coming, master,” the blonde girl answered.

Her path led her directly past our position by the emissary’s crater, and I watched her eyes glance in my direction, a smirk playing on her lips, and then she was past us with the scent of lavender trailing in her wake.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“Remember that novice I told you about who’d taken the Crucible nine straight times?” Liara prompted.

“No… that was her?” I glanced over my shoulder to watch the blonde’s retreating figure. Despite the broadsword on her back, she didn’t strike me as some psycho who laughed in the face of repeated deaths. She looked kind of like Liara, honestly. “…I don’t see it?”

Well, it’s not like I had the type of face that said I was good friends with Death either. So, what did I expect?

“That’s her,” Liara promised. “Saga Sorenson… but most novices call her—”

“Onion Knight,” a familiar voice I hadn’t heard since the day I arrived at the Academy chimed in.

I looked over to where that voice had come from and found a pair of amber cat-slit eyes appraising me.

He was shorter than Saga, and he looked human like she was too. Although the two jagged horns protruding out of the sides of his head to curve forward like bull’s horns gave this new arrival an extra-fierce countenance despite his obvious good looks. Patches of dark blue scales covered portions of his tanned arms. There were scales around his neck too.

“It’s been a while,” Draken said.

Yep, the dragonkin I’d clocked as my first worthy rival had finally appeared before me again. Honestly, I expected him sooner, but all I got was his sidekick Anal. Typical.

“Why did you call her Onion Knight?” I asked.

Onion Knight was such a strange nickname that I assumed it was meant to make fun of her, but this Saga person didn’t seem like the type of girl one could make fun of.

“Why don’t you ask Liara,” Draken suggested. “She’s the one who gave Saga the nickname.”

I glanced sideways at Liara who looked away from me, and I swear that I saw guilt flash momentarily on the she-elf’s face.

A smile appeared on Draken’s lips like he knew that he’d just made things awkward for her.

“The Onion Knight currently holds the fifth rank in the novice rankings,” he revealed, “but there are those who believe she’ll take the top spot before long.”

Taking the top spot from two hundred ranked novices… now that sounded impressive.

“Do you think that too?” I asked.

Draken shrugged. “It doesn’t matter to me who becomes number one before me. I’ll beat them all eventually.”

Gods, I knew there was a reason I thought of him as my first rival. Honestly, if I wasn’t so gassed out, I’d have challenged him to a fight right here and now.

Draken’s eyes drifted from me to Liara, which was when I saw the hint of concern flash on his face at how haggard the she-elf looked. It was quick to disappear, however, and he gave her a curt nod before leaving to help with the clean-up. Meanwhile, Team Six and friends were instructed by Mistress Lorelai to make our way to the recovery tents that were being set up for triage purposes.

I never made it there. I took one step forward, and then felt the world tilt around me, which was when pain exploded throughout my body.

“Will?” Dess called.

I stumbled to my knees, and I wasn’t alone. Liara was on the ground right alongside me.

“Aftereffect…” she managed to say, and then her head fell onto the ground.

I whispered, “Vargr…” and then I fell after her as darkness took over my vision and I blacked out too.

 

Glad tidings, fellow novices!

Two more chapters until the end of the volume I: (title pending), and then we begin Volume II: The Wolfsong XD

Alright, so I introduced a bunch of new characters here who will eventually make their appreance in the ranking arc of the second volume. But first, let's find out why Will and Liara passed out—tomorrow! 

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