191 - Grind

Sitting cross-legged under the midday sun, Alexandra watched the valley spread out below her from atop a jagged outcrop halfway up one of the smaller peaks of the mountains behind Balrum.

The warmth of the sun heated her skin and fed her core while the rumble of a nearby stream flowing down from a glacier filled her ears.

In her hands, she held a page torn from her journal on which a simple adventuring contract was scribbled. Like everything in this world, ambient mana flowed through the page, though it was already bending to a superior will.

Alexandra didn’t understand how her contracts worked. Her friends told her it was natural. Class perks weren’t meant to be understood, but felt, lived through. They were an expression of the system itself, magic too high for mere mortals to wrap their heads around.

Of course, she didn’t believe them.

To her, an adventuring contract was an enchantment. A terribly complex enchantment, but an enchantment nonetheless. What else could it be?

So Alexandra took the time to inspect the contracts, and while she was far from being able to manually replicate such a feat of magic, she understood a few things. First, the paper of her journal wasn’t normal. This didn’t come as a surprise. When she tore a page off, it regenerated itself. Of course it wasn’t normal.

But the peculiarities didn’t stop there. She found out that the pages weren’t paper per se. They looked like paper. They felt like paper. But when seen under the lens of mana, they didn’t behave like paper. She couldn’t tell what it was.

As for the way the contract was structured, she sensed threads of mana connect from her journal to her core when she drafted the contract. Once she severed the page, those threads were nowhere to be seen.

“Alright, that’s beyond me,” she said, brushing off her pants as she stood up.

“Yes,” Speck said.

“Let’s train.”

The day of the guild’s inauguration was fast approaching. Alexandra had done all she could. She’d cleaned all three floors, purchased furniture, briefed the Paladins and Zeynep on their roles, commissioned tokens for those who would sign up, ordered enough beer to feed the entire town, and mapped out a few quests she might purchase to get started.

At this point, they were only waiting on Willow to finish setting up the lighting and Torak to complete the preparations for the opening ceremony.

All of this meant Alexandra and Speck only had a few days before they would attempt to fight the solar elemental. It was at the Platinum rank, so they couldn’t afford to take it lightly. With the limited time they had, it would be hard to make meaningful progress, but Alexandra had a plan.

Out of her entire skill set, there was one skill that would definitely help her fight against a Platinum: Giant Slayer.

At level thirteen, she could still squeeze seven levels out of it before it reached its cap, and leveling it was straightforward: she had to hunt beasts of a higher rank. Luckily for her, most elementals were at least Silver. Hunting Silvers had become relatively easy for her, so she prepared to go on a rampage.

This was the reason she’d come to this specific valley behind Balrum.

It wasn’t her first time here. The first time she came, she’d dispatched a wood elemental. With her sun skills, it was too easy, so she hadn’t bothered coming back, but now there was no reason to delay.

Besides, if she could get a few more contribution points for her guild, and perhaps start saving for a skill that would help her defeat the solar elemental, it would be even better. The Giant Slayer training quest still required her to hunt Silvers. She expected it to switch to Golds in the final levels, so she wanted to take advantage of it while she still could.

Climbing down from the outcrop in the mountain, Alexandra surveyed the valley as she took mental notes of the wood elemental locations. This type of elemental lived in trees. Or they were trees. The distinction wasn’t relevant. Both would burn.

She kept her head down, acting inoffensive as she walked through the forest just in case the elementals could run. She didn’t want to scare them away.

Readers can find the author's chapter at , though this copy was made without permission; reading there supports them.

Once her survey was complete, she climbed back up the rocky outcrop and prepared the skill she’d chosen for this job.

Rays Of The Sun was the natural candidate, and the reason she’d spent so long sitting under the sun earlier. She would need a lot of mana for what she was planning.

Alexandra located the edge of the area she’d marked down as having the highest density of wood elementals, and started planning her spell.

She cast Rays Of The Sun at low power, summoning a small ball of fire in front of her. It was warm, but not searing; bright, but not blinding.

With deliberate precision, she wove her veil over the miniature sun, focusing the light toward the forest.

She wasn’t strong enough to wash the entire valley in flames. Not yet. And it felt excessive. Killing a bunch of elementals was one thing. Wiping out life in the valley was another.

Instead, she focused on the area she’d marked. But even then, the surface was too large, and she was too far to scorch it in one go.

She wove her veil specifically to surround her target area with razor-thin beams of solar energy.

The beams pierced the canopy, striking the dirt in a precise ring. It looked like a ring of pale threads of golden light shimmering against the forest floor.

Then Alexandra began to push more mana into the spell. The solar curtain went from diffuse to a wall of scorching fire.

She pulled on her mana threads to constrict her veil, drawing the perimeter inward step by step. The wood elementals caught on fast. Sensing the sudden spike in heat, several trees burst their roots from the ground, their bark groaning as they lurched toward the safety of the deeper woods.

It didn’t matter. They were trapped. Alexandra pulled the ring tighter. Every mundane tree that it met went up in flame, and only ash remained after the curtain had passed.

The boundary caught up to a slow wood elemental. The moment its outer branch brushed against the light, the beam flared, igniting the sap in a blinding flash of heat. The creature shrieked and fled faster toward the center.

Alexandra maintained her position high on the outcrop, her core vibrating as it fed steady threads of mana into Rays Of The Sun.

As the cage shrank, the elementals were forced closer together, their leaves and branches pressing against one another. With every step the perimeter shrank, Alexandra poured more power directly into the beams.

The heat inside the cage spiked. The elementals didn’t even need to touch the walls anymore. The solar energy trapped inside the shrinking box was enough to ignite their foliage. One by one, then in clusters, the wood elementals erupted into bonfires.

The ring closed down to a single point of light, crushing the burning remains of the elementals into a ball of solar plasma. A thump echoed up the mountain as the last of the magic collapsed in on itself, leaving behind a large, perfectly circular patch of ash.

Not a single stray ember escaped into the surrounding forest.

Giant Slayer 13 -> 14

Solar Core Control 4 -> 5

Rays Of The Sun 7 -> 8

Solar Affinity 6 -> 7

Giant Slayer Training Quest Completed x 2 -> 18,000 contribution points

Contribution Points: 65,310 -> 83,310

“Damn. At this rate, I might be able to afford a rare skill.”

She still needed to purchase the quests for her guild, though. So it was far from guaranteed. A single rare skill cost 500,000 contribution points. Even if she took the ten percent discount and kept to the skill quest, it would still be a massive expense.

“And I don’t know if I’ll have time to do that skill quest,” she whispered.

She looked down at the burned patch of woods below and exhaled. “I don’t think I’m getting any elemental source from that.”

“Waste,” Speck said.

She shrugged. “Silver wood elemental sources aren’t worth much. I prefer doing things like this. That’s efficient. Now... let’s see how many more of these patches I can clear before sunset.”

Alexandra checked her core. Her bloodline was already at work absorbing solar mana. She should be ready to continue by the time she mapped out another cluster of elementals.

For the rest of the afternoon, the valley burned with localized fire, scaring the wildlife away.

When the sun began to dip behind the jagged peaks, Alexandra let out a long breath. Her core thrummed with exhaustion, but she was satisfied.

She wiped a mixture of sweat and ash from her forehead, pulling up her journal to inspect her progress.

Giant Slayer 16 -> 17

Rays Of The Sun 8 -> 9

Contribution Points: 83,310 -> 133,310

The next training quest switched targets from Silvers to Golds, letting her know it was time to stop for the day. Her shoulders slumped slightly as she closed her journal. “Well, there goes the easy grind.”

Reaching level seventeen in a single afternoon was a massive leap, but as expected, the system had cut her off well short of the finish line. Silver elementals would no longer grant her progress toward her training quest. She’d still get some skill experience, but the message was clear: it wouldn’t be much. To squeeze out those final three levels, she was going to have to hunt Golds. Doable, but a much taller order, and far less suited for the method she’d used today. Finding such large groups of Golds would be hard, and she would have trouble defeating so many at once.

Her contribution point gains were good, but she’d gotten ahead of herself, hoping for a rare skill. At least she’d be able to purchase one more quest for her guild, which would pay off in time.

“Let’s head back to Balrum,” she said, stretching her arms above her head until her back popped. “I need to discuss the inauguration with Torak.”