Chương 213: Look at this

"Yes I read all of them, actually I bought many more! You should really take the time to shore up your ignorance in basic magical knowledge." My nerdy girlfriend said. Rhea was right, but with all that I had to do, sitting down to cram magical texts into my brain would have to wait, though the basics on curses I should read sooner rather than later.

"I will, I will, just need to find some downtime, how are your study sessions going then? Learned anything useful?" She practically started to shine as she kept pace beside me.

"Oh you have no idea! I started using those magical circles already a week ago, remember? They are highly inefficient due to me not having any traits geared towards that kind of magic, though! They allow me a great deal of flexibility while casting spells, actually they are not really spells, more like a mix between real spell matrices and rituals, I'm still trying to find a way of making them work as rituals and thus making my achievements and traits work on them... I'm missing something though."

"I'm sure you'll figure it out." I told her with a smile.

"Nerd..." I heard Andrea mutter.

"I may be a magic nerd but at least I'm not a one-trick pony." Rhea spat back. What was wrong with them? They couldn't really get along, usually Rhea was kind and understanding, but she behaved like the woman was an enemy, and when I asked about it she told me that I wouldn't understand. Women...

"What did you just say!?"

"I said you're a one-trick pony, you can just shoot your arrows and that's it, at least with my magic I can do this." A magic circle of a deep green colour came to life around me, I could tell that the magic wasn't offensive in nature, on the contrary, it was nourishing, for lack of a better word.

"Nice, I feel well rested, like I'm ready to run three marathons." I said while examining myself.

"Hey hey! Do me too!" exclaimed Quinn, appearing in front of Rhea in a heartbeat. Another circle appeared around him.

"Daaaamn! This is some good stuff! Hey can you increase my speed like you did before? I want to test something." Rhea looked at me and I shrugged, we were still to reach the monsters, and she wasn't so low level as to need 100% of her mana for the upcoming fight.

"Ok, give me a moment." Rhea took my arm while closing her eyes, from her bag started to come out a series of objects, floating around Quinn as the kid walked backwards, still looking at her.

"What's all this junk?" he said while swatting what looked like a lock of hair that was getting too close.

"Stay still Quinn! It's already hard to do it while moving!" Rhea answered back, while still keeping her eyes closed.

"Ok ok... sheesh..."

"Very useful indeed, can't even cast while moving around." said Andrea.

"Enough," I said. I was fed up with all these jabs and insults.

"I don't mind some light banter, but this is getting ridiculous, you are a grown woman, behave accordingly."

"Well, maybe if she didn't boast about her superior magic and then show this pathetic display I would give her some more credi-" A flash of light came from the objects floating around Quinn, the objects themselves burst into flames and connected one to the other with lines of light, then the magic circle shrank and entered Quinn.

"Wooah! 21% increase in speed! That's awesome! Rhea you are the best! It's so much better than the beginning!" Quinn was positively vibrating as he praised Rhea's magic, silencing Andrea with his exuberance. Stolen story; please report.

"If I had the time to set up a proper ritual I could do a bit more, maybe reach thirty percent, but raising percentage-based effects is really tough, it's exponentially harder after the 15% mark, and I read that it would be even harder later on." Rhea said while still keeping hold of my arm.

"Whatever, I need some of that magic too! Can you make some rituals ready to use and then let me activate them on command? That would be fire!" Quinn was bouncing on his feet.

"Hey! Look at this!" He turned around and pointed at a monster very far away, at least 300 yards. I enhanced my vision and saw that it was a kind of crossbreed between a chicken and a velociraptor, I could see currents of air aiding the big monsters, probably as tall as me, to jump and dive at great speed.

Quinn disappeared, and two seconds later he reappeared for a moment near the closest monster, beheading it with a single swipe of his knife, then he disappeared again only to reappear near another monster, piercing its brain, and repeated the process a dozen or more times. He disappeared again, but he didn't continue the massacre, I felt a disturbance on our left and turned to see him reappear out of thin air, startling Andrea, Chloe and Tom. Between the cursing and scolding of the others he just beamed.

"Did you see that! That's what I'm talking about! They were only in the fifties but still! This is crazy, if I continue like this I would reach the speed of sound baby!"

"Fucking hell kid tone it down, ok you're fast, congratulations. Can we continue our trip now?" said Andrea, clearly still annoyed from before.

"Quinn, you know your role, let's be professional about this, we are going to hunt high-level monsters. Andrea, stop antagonizing everyone and help keep a lookout. Rhea, I would like to know the extent of your enhancing capabilities, so to make the best decisions in battle." Tom looked at me as he finished, and I nodded to him. This is the exact reason I wanted him with us, to assume field command and give his expertise in fighting together, other than bolstering the group with his skills.

He was a war veteran, and his class was geared toward fighting and commanding other fighters, I was hoping that he raised in level and accrued some more achievements, I wanted him to become stronger while making our group less amateurish. I had much to learn from how he conducted operations on the field, and while I remained the de facto leader, I would relegate command in case of battle to him, while I moved as I pleased.

I was decidedly more powerful than most of my teammates, well, now less so, but I wouldn't be fighting together with them all the time, and I wanted him to improve the vanguard.

He changed our formation now that we were moving towards the stronger monsters, and we set up rules of engagement, the long-range fighters were to kill a maximum of a third of the monsters while letting the remaining ones approach so the melee fighters and the mid-range combatants could gain experience too, that and to not waste all our resources, mainly mana.

We started moving quicker, slaying any monster or beast in our way, actually there was only one instance of danger as a set of vines grabbed Chloe, but Marcus was there in a moment, cutting them apart with a bone knife and then Andrea shot the opening in the ground with an explosive arrow while Alya sent forward a blade of aura that killed the thing, apparently it was a level 71 Kaleari, a kind of monster that looked like an opening in the ground, perfectly camouflaged, with poisonous vines and a giant mouth that was ready to chew you as soon as it managed to drag you inside.

Chloe was swearing up a storm as Mary tried to calm her down and heal the poison, I saw the healer and Marcus share a look, something passed between the two, but I had no idea what, in any case we had to be more careful, even our scouts failed to notice this particular breed, so I went to the front, between Quinn and Marcus.

While my stats were much lower than theirs, my Arcane Sense and aura managed to detect the creatures and we used them as distributable experience, with the monsters being stationary, even Mary managed to kill one, with a frankly disturbing use of healing magic, apparently while very draining she could sort of overheal a target, in the case of the monster she made the vines composing it swell in size, they looked like an engorged tumour, growing until they made the monster choke, stopping the airflow, basically it died of asphyxiation.

It was more terrifying than I would like to admit. At the same time it made me think of all the kinds of magic and their uses, more than that I was thinking of the defences one had to have to resist something like that, I thought I was quite well protected, my aura alone would have eaten the magic, given that it took the healer minutes to grow the vines enough, while it took even more for the monster to die, still she wasn't the only one with dangerous magic, actually she was the least dangerous.

Rhea could prepare a ritual in a room, lure someone in and kill them easily with enough preparation, I could curse even targets way higher level than me with some really nasty effects, Quinn was a ghost in all but name, he could murder anyone in the party easily if he wanted. The more physical classes were those that worried me the least, but their raw power wasn't to be underestimated.

Rhea was right, I needed to shore up my magical knowledge, actually my knowledge of classes and skills too, I needed to be better prepared than just this, I would have to add cramming sessions into my schedule. I thought I left uni behind, but it seemed that it caught up to me.

"There, I see them." alerted Marcus, I focused in his direction and saw them. Well, those drakes would give us a challenge for sure. I wonder how much bigger real dragons were?