Chapter 347: Chapter 335 – Making the Rounds

With the first house taken care of, there were still five left to clear. The same approach wouldn’t work on the next house, even though it was fairly obvious they hadn’t been alerted yet; not only was the house not abandoned, they’d have to approach from the house they’d just taken care of instead of crossing a field to get to the door.

Like the first house, there were three entrances to worry about - the front, the back, and the garage. Only one of the houses had a side entrance to the garage, fortunately, and it wasn’t this one; it was the fifth house, and Serenity doubted they’d be able to get that far without the Sterath being alerted anyway.

Instead, they were going to walk up to the front door. Ita wasn’t with them to handle locks, so either Raz would try or Serenity or Katya would simply make a hole. Of course, that assumed the door was even locked; so far, they hadn’t been. It was fortunate the houses weren’t really that close together, unlike a normal subdivision, but they would probably still not catch the Sterath by surprise. Hopefully they wouldn’t send for help; there wasn’t a great way to split the group to block even two entrances. There simply weren’t enough of them.

It was still daylight outside, and none of them felt like playacting the way they had on the way to the first house. When they reached the second house, it was much like the first, with no lights or obvious movement. The most obvious difference was that it was in far better shape; yes, the paint was peeling and the yard was unkempt, but it was generally more intact.

Serenity knew from his earlier reconnaissance that the roof didn’t have any large holes, so the second floor would be lit only by the sun shining through the dirty windows. Hopefully that wouldn’t matter; if everything went well, they’d handle the second house just like the first.

They were similar in floor plan, though the outsides looked different; the second house had only two bedrooms on the ground floor, which meant that the second floor was nearly as large as the first. They didn’t connect to each other, either.

“Still good with the plan?” Serenity had to ask as they walked along the street to the second house.

“As long as they’re mostly Tier One, I’ll be fine. They can’t even get through my armor.” Katya had a lot of confidence in her armor. It made sense; it was very good armor. It could have belonged to a Tier Four or maybe even Tier Five light armor melee specialist without any issues.

That reminded him, actually; Katya had been acting like a melee specialist lately, but he’d have sworn she was a magic specialist on Tzintkra. “Katya? I thought you mostly used magic. Why aren’t you using it here?” He seemed to remember her using some large-area spells on Tzintkra, but she hadn’t offered anything but melee combat in the planning sessions.

Katya took a deep breath, then let it out again. “Two reasons, really. Mana regen on this planet is terrible. I don’t know how you and Raz cope. Second …”

“Second?” Serenity hadn’t noticed a difference in his mana regeneration; it was pretty quick here, like it had been on Tzintkra. The fact that he hadn’t noticed a difference was interesting in its own right; it ought to be slower on a lower-Tier planet, especially since on Tzintkra he’d had Eat Death supplementing his mana regen.

Katya sighed. “Second, I’m going for a true spellsword Path. Not a charge-your-weapons Path, actual spellslinging and combat. Something where I can stand back and cast or get up in people's faces and still cast spells. I’ve trained for it for years. But I still can’t fight and cast together worth a damn. You do. So I’m trying to figure out how.”

“What do you mean? The Far Strikes are just a thrown version of an Infused Strike, a charge-your-weapon thing as you said. I’ve been fighting heavily melee.” Serenity was sure there was a misunderstanding somewhere. He had barely any Path Skills that used magic, and any other magic was too slow to be used most of the time.

Katya shook her head. “It’s the way you use them. They’re just something you do; you don’t have to think about them. I have Path Skills that use mana, but switching back and forth? It doesn’t work. Plus, you always have your Mana Sight up in combat, don’t you? Is it ever distracting?”

“Yes, of course? It shouldn’t be any more distracting than using your eyes. Maybe less so, at this Tier there’s not really that much to see with Mana Sight.” Serenity was beginning to get the idea of where Katya was going, but he was still puzzled about what it had to do with fighting without using her magic.

“That’s it. You see? You have a style, you know what you’re doing, and you use all your Skills. I can’t. I can’t cast and fight at the same time. I can’t cast and keep Mana Sight up. I can almost fight and keep Mana Sight up. Almost. So that’s what I have to do. I have to make it so normal that it just happens.” Katya stopped and pulled one of her knives. “This knife was made to carry spells. My brother made it for me. If I don’t figure out how to cast while I move, I’ll never be able to use it.”

Spellblade’s Storage

This blade can hold a fully cast spell inactive for up to a minute. It will be released as though it were cast at the point of the blade when the blade injures an opponent.

It was a well-made blade. Not as nice as Serenity’s ax and definitely without the antimagic properties, but nice in its own right and the effect was also quite good. “Very nice. Why can’t you use it? Just cast the spell before battle.”

“I can’t.” Katya mumbled.

Serenity was pretty sure he’d made it out correctly. “Why not?”

“The spell goes off, it doesn’t stay in the knife. It only works if I’m fighting - I cast a spell then, the knife sucks it up and it’ll discharge through the blade.”

That made exactly no sense. “May I?” Serenity held his hand out for the knife. Once she handed it to him, Serenity took a good look at the entire knife. There was a convenient input point on the hilt. It looked easy and intuitive to use. “You are pushing the spell in through the hilt, aren’t you?”

“Pushing the spell in?” Katya sounded lost.

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“Watch.” Serenity waited until Katya nodded that she was ready, then quickly built a simple Death-affinity disruption spell. It was the Death-based equivalent of a firetouch, and would work quite well in a knife like this. It was also extremely cheap to build.

“You make it look so easy.” Katya sounded bitter. “Not only can you get it in the knife, you didn’t even stop walking.”

“That’s because it is. You’re making it harder than it is, or it wouldn’t be working for you only when you’re not paying full attention.” Serenity knew that had to be the reason. Being able to cast on the move was like anything else; practice was needed. “Now, let’s get going; the knife won’t hold the spell for long, and we’re at the door anyway.”

Katya nodded and pushed the door open.

This time, the Sterath barely waited for the door to be closed before they attacked. It wasn’t any more difficult to kill them, but it was clear that they weren’t really trying to keep the “humans” from running away.

The reason for that became obvious once the group had cleared the first floor and went up to the second. Unlike the first house, this house had a significant number of spellcasters, and they all seemed to be on the second floor. The only Tier Two Sterath they encountered was also on the second floor, but he didn’t put up much of a fight.

He threw a firebolt at Serenity when Serenity opened the door to the room he was hiding in and Serenity replied with his ax. From the way he reacted, Serenity thought the Sterath probably had an extremely low-grade shielding spell running, because he didn’t even try to get out of the way of the ax and seemed surprised when it hit him.

The surprise didn’t last long.

During the fighting, Katya was injured; her armor was excellent against physical attacks, but it had limited protection against fire. In that sense, it was similar to Serenity’s - but he had significant Heat Resistance backing up his armor that Katya didn’t have. It wasn’t a severe injury, and Rissa was able to take care of it quickly. She left Katya with a red mark on her shoulder that ached, but wasn’t anything worse than shallow skin damage, equivalent to a first degree burn. If they didn’t take too many other injuries, she’d heal it before bed, but Rissa didn’t want to use up her limited mana this early on a relatively minor injury.

They combed the house, but didn’t find another Sterath child hiding anywhere.

The third house was annoying. Seriously annoying. Where the first house seemed to hold mostly melee Sterath and the second house had elementalists and their guards, the third house held Scouts. Lots of Scouts.

Serenity was slow to realize that, unlike the first two houses, the shadows in the third house weren’t helpful. The Scouts seemed to specialize in hit-and-run attacks from the shadows. It made Katya almost useless, because she couldn’t see them coming. Serenity could, and he could share Eyeless Sight with Rissa, but that didn’t help Katya.

Eventually, he decided to try turning the lights on. The house was in the same not great but also not completely abandoned state as its neighbor, and it didn’t hurt anything to flip a switch.

The lights worked.

That realization completely changed the battle for the third house.

They all knew there was no way the other houses weren’t alerted; Scouts wouldn’t have simply fought. They would send someone for reinforcements or at least to report.

Even so, there was no sign of movement from the remaining three houses before the third house was cleared out and searched.

The fourth house was empty.

The fifth house was not. As they walked up the entry path, spells arced out at them. The one piece of good news about it was that it seemed there were no Sterath mages with actual area attacks; they were able to dodge the attacks well enough to retreat to outside their effective range.

It was clear that the Sterath were no longer concerned with not being found. Serenity supposed that having half your detachment destroyed would do that. The question was if he could get them to surrender without a fight or not, and that didn’t look likely.

They also didn’t seem to have anywhere to go if they retreated, which meant they were going to stay holed up in the house they’d picked as their stronghold until someone dug them out or they ran out of supplies. Serenity supposed that if they decided the enemy was gone, they might run. Unless he could follow them, letting them run didn’t seem like a good idea.

On the other hand, it was midafternoon now, and a gloomy midafternoon at that. “Why don’t we wait for it to get too dark for them to target us? We can rush the front door, get inside the mages’ range, turn on the lights to reveal everything, and do what we’ve been doing.”