Douglas Miller
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MiP Chapter 38: Confrontation
🕑 Added 2023-11-14 19:57:55 +0000 UTCCarlos leveled a glare of his own back at the sword-wielding woman who had just stormed out of the surrounding forest. "Who the hell are you?" He didn't know what protocols there were for unfriendly high nobles talking to each other, but he figured returning her lack of politeness right back at her was fair.
Her face reddened and she extended her right arm to point a sword at him. "You dare pretend ignorance of the fourth scion of High House Tostral? I will not forgive such an insult lightly!" Slowly, her scowl changed into a smirk, and she pulled back her sword. "Or... Is your house so pathetic as to have failed to properly educate you before sending you out? Perhaps such failure is to be expected from a house so pathetic they couldn't even get you to the third compression with their own resources at home."
Carlos shared a glance with Amber, and frowned as he looked back at the self-proclaimed Tostral scion. "Are you going to tell me your name or not? And how do you know we didn't reach the third compression at home?"
"I am Jamar Tostral, fourth child of High Lord Tostral. And to further rectify your inadequate education, the patheticness of your house extends to your efforts at hiding your nobility. I sensed both of you absorbing mana in the Adventurer's Haven yesterday evening. Do I need to explain how that revealed your mana density and noble soul rank too?"
"I may be ignorant of certain people and events, but I know how soul ranks and absorption of ambient mana work. So, you sensed that a pair of other young nobles was here, and you decided to follow us out and confront us where there are no bystanders. Did I get that right?" Carlos raised an eyebrow and gave her a small smirk.
"Congratulations, you can match the deductive skills of a five-year-old." Jamar casually crossed her swords in front of her. "Now answer my question! What is your house, and why do you dare break the rotation agreement? Do you think you are somehow immune to reprisals?"
"Hmm." Carlos raised a hand to his chin and cocked his head a little. "Colonel Lorvan, what do you think? Should we tell her?"
Lorvan stayed in his guarding posture, spear and shield held ready to strike or block as needed, not turning his head at all as he replied. "Your decision, my lord. She will most certainly inform her house, and you may have to answer for the consequences of that."
In other words, the Crown would not protect them from House Tostral if they provoked a response. Or at least the Crown wouldn't give any additional protection. Lorvan and Ordens would help as much as they could, but two guards could only do so much, however elite they might be.
Carlos shifted his feet slightly as he considered. They seemed to be tingling a little. He smiled at Jamar as an idea came to mind for turning her taunts back at her. "If you are so superior, shouldn't you already know exactly who we are? After all, you said yourself that knowing about each of your peers is part of a high noble's proper education."
"Ha!" Jamar sneered at him. "You think yourself my peer just because you are noble? I am a high noble, you fool. Adamantium rank. Not mythril. Paying attention to all the riff-raff of minor houses would be a waste of my time."
Carlos blinked. She had sensed them absorbing mana, and her soul including the structure that let her sense that was at about the seventh to tenth compression, but she hadn't sensed the rate clearly enough to know it was too high for mythril? How did that work? Did she just not know the upper limit for mythril? Or... What if her mana sense was just part of something broader, instead of having a structure specifically focused on it?
He shook his head, and refocused on Jamar. "We are not 'riff-raff'." He shook his right foot for a moment, trying to relieve a little soreness. "And as for your 'rotation agreement', we have more right to be here than you do. Does Mayor Stelras know that Jamar Tostral is using his local Wilds to advance her development?"
Jamar gaped and stared for a moment. "What the hell does a peasant mayor have to do with the affairs of nobility?"
"He governs the city in direct service to the Crown, does he not? Last I heard, the Crown is the highest of nobility."
"Hmph. The Crown." Jamar's voice dripped with disdain. "If you bring the Crown into this matter, I don't care what house you are, your house is ruined." She raised her swords and adopted a combat-ready stance. "You don't want to bring your own house to ruin, do you?"
"Of course I don't want to ruin my own house!" Carlos frowned. He knew Lorvan's and Ordens's souls were more developed than he could sense, but not by how much. Lorvan was confident about beating the strongest adventurers Dramos had, but he wasn't sure the same would be true for fighting Jamar's guards. How did guards of the Crown, but low rank enough to be loaned out, compare to guards of a "mere" high noble, but who was the direct child of the house's lord? He might need something extra.
He looked down and muttered a few words under his breath, guessing that Jamar's mana sense might be too unfocused to pick up the retargetable levitation spell he was activating on himself. He made sure to have the lift strength start out already dialed down to zero. His eyes wandered to his feet. Why did they keep tingling? He hadn't stood still long enough to make his feet go to sleep.
"What was that? I didn't hear you. Tell me again that you won't bring the Crown into this." Jamar stood still, but ready to move in an instant, one foot forward and knee bent, arms tense and both swords ready to strike.
Carlos looked at her and raised an eyebrow. "You seem concerned about the Crown. They don't know about your rotation agreement, do they." It was a statement, not a question.
Lorvan answered it anyway. "The Crown was not aware of it, no."
Jamar narrowed her eyes. "...You did not know of it, either. How unfortunate. For you."
The tingling in Carlos's feet grew stronger, and he looked down again. Wait. That wasn't a tingle. His feet weren't falling asleep, they were vibrating. He lifted his left foot just barely off the ground, and the sensation stopped in his left foot but got stronger in his right. The ground was vibrating? No, wait, the ground was shaking...
Carlos snapped his head up and looked around rapidly. A moment later, suddenly loud sounds of something crashing through foliage came from his right and slightly behind. Lorvan looked in that direction as well, turning his head to look over his shoulder, so they both saw when a large shaggy beast thundered out of the trees on four hooves, charging with wild eyes straight towards them. It reminded Carlos of buffalo, though he'd never seen one in person and wasn't sure quite how similar they were.
In a flash of movement, Lorvan turned to face the buffalo-like animal, plunged the point of his spear into its face, then pivoted to slam his shield into it. The creature's dead body kept moving on momentum for just a moment, then astonishingly rebounded from Lorvan's shield, its heavy weight thrown back in the direction it came from by the impact.
Jamar chose that moment to yell a command. "Attack!" Her guards charged forward, one at Lorvan and the other at Ordens. Jamar herself ran towards Carlos, swords raised.
Lorvan spun back to face his attacker, smoothly interposing his shield to block a heavy hammer blow. Sparks showered from the impact as the hammer skidded off the unyielding barrier, and Lorvan thrust his spear at his foe's eyes, but his helmeted target leaned just enough that the spear point's edge deflected off the side. Mana erupted from Lorvan's right gauntlet in some kind of powerful spell form, but that too was blocked by a barrier of mana embedded in the enemy's plate mail armor.
Ordens, not distracted by fending off a wild beast, was better prepared and counterstruck before her opponent even reached her. Her spear lashed out at the arms behind the hammer that was approaching her, and Jamar's guard was forced to divert their hammer to parry the strike. Ordens stepped forward, her spear almost blurring as she attacked again and again, executing a coordinated series of blows with the perfection of long practice. Her enemy's parries quickly grew more and more desperate.
Carlos didn't react quite as quickly as his experienced guards did, and Lorvan was too busy at the moment to intercept Jamar, but fortunately he had a response prepared that he could use very quickly indeed. With only an act of will, Carlos changed the target of his levitation spell to Jamar, and adjusted it to pull down with enough force to double her weight. The mana of the spell screamed feelings of wrongness at him, but he pressed on anyway. His life was at stake, and he did not want to risk the possibility that he might not respawn.
Jamar stumbled under the extra weight, grunting in surprise, but quickly stood up with a strong push of her legs, and firmly raised her swords again. Carlos waited for the precise moment she started taking another step forward, and amplified the pull. She staggered, and fell, pressed down by ten times the combined weight of her body and gear. Carlos could sense her soul pressing against the spell, trying to shrug off the effect, but the extra mana the spell was gaining was too much. Her soul's resistance depleted the spell's mana too slowly.
Safe for the moment, Carlos looked around. Ordens was methodically picking apart her opponent's defenses, forcing parries that drew them out of position and opened opportunities for her to strike through, though she had not yet pierced their armor. Lorvan was trading blows, blocking attacks with unshakeable strength while battering his opposite number repeatedly. Amber was anxiously standing behind Ordens, watching closely and stepping quickly to keep herself precisely on the opposite side of her guard from the nearest enemy. She cast a distant cut, and frowned when the spell broke against her target's protections.
Carlos looked back at his own opponent in this sudden surprise battle. She was struggling just to raise her head to look up at him, her eyes bugging out as she stared. ...And now he could actually see that the ground was shaking. The shaking was even getting stronger. "Stampede!?" He yelled uncertainly. If there were enough other animals running around to shake the ground that much, why didn't he hear them?
He only had a few more seconds to wonder about that, before he did hear them. Thunderous noise erupted into existence, overwhelming all other sounds, and with a tremendous crash of breaking shrubbery, an endless tide of beasts of all kinds flooded into the clearing. More buffalo, some two headed deer, a carpet of rabbits underfoot, and more. They all ran heedless of anything in their path, pulverizing everything beneath their innumerable feet.
Jamar and her guards evidently weren't expecting this, as the one fighting Ordens paused in astonished surprise for just a moment. Ordens smoothly plunged her spear squarely into his neck with an extra powerful thrust, then turned and tackled Amber, pulling her to the ground and covering her protectively. Lorvan wasn't so fortunate, as his opponent didn't falter even for an instant.
In the brief moment he had before the stampede reached him, Carlos realized Lorvan wouldn't be able to break off and cover him, and desperately switched his levitation spell back to targeting himself, using the extra mana it had gained to lift himself above the deadly tide of stampeding animals. Jamar was suddenly freed from being pinned to the ground, but before she could adjust and reorient the stampede reached her. She was pummeled back into the ground by the hooves of beasts that had to weigh at least a ton.
Carlos watched the chaos unfold beneath him as he hovered. A bubble of force had sprung up around Ordens and Amber, and the stampede went right over it without touching them. Lorvan was standing in place like an unbreakable rock, smashing aside any beast that ran into him. Jamar's guard that he had been fighting was on the ground, knocked down by a combination of the stampede and Lorvan's efforts, and his armor was taking a savage beating. Jamar herself had let go of her swords and was curled up, covering her head with her arms and trying to make herself as small as possible. Lorvan looked up at Carlos for a moment, saw him hovering safely out of reach, nodded, and went back to bashing a tiny clear space.
Carlos waited, and watched, but the stampede only seemed to grow thicker. More types of creatures joined it, too. Things with mouths full of sharp teeth, indicating a predatory diet of meat, yet they were just as panicked as the rest, running full tilt and ignoring all the prey around them. He checked the remaining mana in his levitation spell, and gulped. It was depleting fast. Theoretically, he could recharge it by pushing Jamar down again, but the moment he started doing that he'd drop.
Jamar's armor was proving a lot more resistant against blunt impacts than its cloth-like woven appearance suggested, but even so it already showed several dents and depressions. As Carlos watched, he saw a hoof strike her head, and a barrier of mana flared and broke. The beast ran on, but left behind a bloody hoofprint. Jamar loosened her tightly curled posture, likely dazed and disoriented, and more wounds quickly followed.
Gripped by morbid fascination at the sight, Carlos realized too late that he should have used the time his levitation spell had bought him to cast it again. He had only prepared it once, but he'd had the time to cast it the slow way, if only he'd started doing it soon enough. He gulped as the last dregs of the spell's mana ran out, and he dropped.
He desperately tried to roll, to get to his feet and somehow dodge his way to safety, but he was immediately bowled over. Then the trampling began. Unbearably heavy hooves stomped on him, again and again. He tried to cry out to Lorvan, but something smashed into his chest and blew his breath away. He thought he felt some ribs break, too. It hurt more than anything he could remember, and it kept getting worse. When something struck his head and his vision started fading, he almost welcomed it just for the relief from pain.
One last thought crossed his mind. At least he was about to learn whether he could respawn.
Comments
Valderan
Yeah, good call man.
George
That... would explain a lot.
Connor Mcharg
I'm thinking they are nobles, and organising the rotation is the four adventurer's actual business - Esmorana was evasive when Liafra pressed about her concerns, and never actually said what those concerns were - just that she needed to evaluate them for her business, and “will their visit here disrupt normal adventuring activity?”, which does sound like she wants to continue adventuring, but she never said it was her party that she was worried about. In fact, a party of pros, like they seem to be, wouldn't be too bothered by having to trek a little further into the wilds - certainly not enough to feel the need to relocate instead, and if they did relocate, I doubt they'd be so attached to want to return later, unless their business happened to be something along the lines of training where Sandaras started…?
George
Dang, I'm still not sure if these are actual nobles or the adventuring party in disguise. Either way they have reason to be concerned that Carlos mentioned bringing the Crown into the matter. Either way we now know that they have reason to have found him out there in the wilds. We can be fairly certain the stampede was intentionally caused by the adventurers with their huge amount of collected fear-stink. If these are real nobles, they wouldn't be expecting the stampede, but then the adventurers' reaction to Carlos is odd, unless they actually were somehow unaware of the other nobles rotating through. If they are actually the adventurers in disguise, why did they get caught in their own stampede? I can't imagine they'd plan on losing soul development from a respawn on purpose. Maybe they were surprised by it because the timing was off? Maybe after respawning Carlos will recognize their souls and figure out who they were? So many questions, and week's wait till some are maybe answered.
Phoenix_7_
Jamar is almost certainly a fake name used by the high ranking adventurers a few chapters back to use as a bluff. The problem here is that there’s no good way of calling the bluff.
Valderan
Something tells me that the gear on Jamar slowly getting destroyed is really expensive and will likely be the true cost of he poor diplomacy in her house's eyes... oh, also threatening agents of the crown and attacking a High Noble in his own territory isn't super great.
Person
That's gonna leave a mark. Or will it? I suspect this rotation thing is about a resource (or resources) the wizard guy discovered and is responsible in part for his rise. There was probably a messy battle or three over it. Hard to imagine what got some number of noble houses to play nice with one another... inasmuch as "mutually assured destruction" can be considered playing nice.
Connor Mcharg
That would require that she charge it first.
Connor Mcharg
Well it's not me! …wait. *sniffs armpit* Yeah, definitely not me.
Connor Mcharg
Y'know, while I doubt I would've thought to re-cast, I would've at least tried to tell Lorvan that I couldn't move so that he'd know to get under me just in case - though I don't know if I'd be able to make myself heard over the stampede.
BeanerOO
C) Amber uses an inverted spell to save Carlos at the last moment
Douglas Miller
@Connor Mcharg My, what a suspiciously specific question!
Connor Mcharg
If so, that's not why this stampede is happening - the first mention of Carlos' feet “tingling” (aka, the ground shaking) was a full nine paragraphs before he even cast the new levitation spell, and if they were coming after him, they'd've stopped in the clearing, not barrelled through. As for why there's a stampede, who do we know with an axe to grind and a large amount of stench designed to cause terror, even in predators?
Isunavailable (Jeremiah)
This is probably the trap those people were setting up with the monster scent.
Connor Mcharg
A poll would require providing options, which would bias our guesses, and possibly spoil what is going to happen. That said, Lorvan knew to look for him in the air, so I assume he's got the ability to sense where Carlos' soul is, which would mean that he knows Carlos fell and is presumably moving to protect him as fast as possible.
Neshura
I've got a sneaking suspicion the negative mana rate of their spells act as monster beacons
Justin Drake
Tyftc
ReadingObsessed
Hmm. That was a blunder.
Louie “Blindy” Lichtträger
Gosh, the chapters feel so smallñ
Green0Photon
Welp, that happened
magic_person#1200
I wish there was a poll to guess what happens next, I expect one of the following A) He meets god B) He keeps his soul development
Maurice Brown
NOOOOOO!
