After a tense but uneventful night's sleep, Jun, her teammates, and Shiori left Arwen and their camp behind to scout in force. The shitty advisor had outright refused to leave his tent as they set out on what could be a dangerous outing to figure out what was going on in the area, so they left him to watch the camp, not that they left much besides their tents and bedrolls behind. The beauty of storage devices was that they made it easy to keep supplies with them, even traveling light.

  Guided by Keira, the team slowly made their way across the landscape, the smoke of their target becoming more obvious the closer they got. What had been a couple dozen miles on the map proved to be much farther as they were forced to trek up and down ridges, adding significantly to the distance. If only they could fly across the gaps instead of hiking up and down. Blinking, Jun paused as an idea came to her. Stopping the rest of her party as they finished hiking up the next ridge, she explained her idea to them, convincing them to let her try it.

  As the others looked Casting a barrier in the shape of a bowl, Jun stepped into the spell, slipping and falling into the center of the magical force as she did. Flustered, Jun brushed a few stray locks of hair from her face and tucked them behind her ears before she concentrated, slowly lifting the barrier up with herself inside of it. Glancing down through the shimmering force, she was excited to see her hovering in the bowl a few feet off the ground, but when she checked her mana, she couldn't help but frown.

  Normally, moving her barriers around didn't take much mana, barely a point of mana every 5 seconds, well below what she regenerated. But with her inside, it was different. The constant strain of holding her weight was enough to slowly weaken her barrier, forcing her to feed extra mana into it to keep it stable, and moving it while carrying her had drained as much mana in a couple seconds as it cost her to cast the barrier. Riding her barriers for flight was beyond her.

  Defeated, Jun set herself back down on the ground her experiment in flight both a success and a failure. If she were stronger, it'd be possible, but as it stood, she could at best move herself a hundred feet before her mana bottomed out. As they descended the ridge, gingerly stepping down from one ledge to another, disaster struck as Aya slipped on a hidden patch of ice! With a short scream, Aya pitched forward, desperate hands reaching out to grab at a thin plant clinging to the frigid slope. The girl managed to grab a handful of the plant's limbs, arresting her fall. As Keira hurried pulled a rope out of her bag, tossing one end to Michael and Cian to secure it, the shrub Aya held onto started to rip free, snow and soil tumbling down the ridge as Aya struggled to find a footing.

  Instinctively, Jun reached out to her friend with her hand as she cast [Sapping Snare], the magical binds anchoring to her shoulder as they shot down and grabbed Aya just after the shrub ripped free, cutting off Aya's cry as she started to fall again. With a mental tug, the spell pulled Aya back up, setting the battle mage down on one of the few flat surfaces.

  "Thanks Jun!" Aya gasped as she sat back against the slope, catching her breath.

  "N-no problem. I just acted on instinct..." As Michael rushed over to check Aya out, she replayed what she'd just done. The magic had come instinctively. She didn't know she could anchor the spell to her own body, and she'd barely felt Aya's weight as the spell grabbed her, which in retrospect was lucky. If her spell hadn't taken the brunt of Aya's weight, she would've been pulled over too.

  While the rest of her team checked over Aya and discussed a safer way to get down the slope, Jun followed a ghost of an idea that carried her back to her life on Earth. Checking her mana, she was surprised to see that her spell had barely cost her anything, her pool already nearly full again despite its draining nature. Or rather, she wasn't being drained at all even though the spell was still anchored to her shoulder. Still, her mana was higher than it should be even without the drain and her own regeneration.

  "Cian," she called out, beckoning the warrior over.

  The boy carefully stepped over to her, looking at her questioningly with a tilt of his head.

  "Can you try grabbing one of these?" she asked, pointing to the tendrils streaming from her shoulder.

  "...Okay..." As Cian grabbed one of her snares in his hand, Jun gasped, feeling a slight trickle of mana add to her regeneration. It wasn't much, barely a point every few seconds, but it revealed a whole new realm of possibilities for her spell!

  "Thanks, that's enough," she said, Cian simply nodding as he released the tendril.

  The ghost of an idea tickled at Jun's brain, luring her through her memories back to her life on Earth. The few good memories she of spending time with her father as a child, reading comic books and going to the next town over to watch movies, before things changed. Dates to the movies with Ash as an excuse to get away from her family for a night.

  Jun blinked as she felt something brush against her cheek, bringing her back to the present as Cian wiped a tear from her face. Blushing, Jun recoiled slightly.

  "...Are you okay?" Cian asked, his voice soft and gentle.

  Wiping her face before her tears could freeze against her skin, Jun nodded and pulled her hood back up. "I'm fine, just had an idea," she said, shoving her emotions back down. "Do you mind if I try something else?"

  Before she could explain what she had in mind, Cian nodded. Though as she explained her idea, his mask cracked as doubt and regret crept across his face.

  Her first tests of her idea were shaky, but after a few false starts Jun quickly improved with Shiori and her teammates offering their opinions to refine her idea further. Her Master with great amusement, and her teammates with the reluctance of the condemned. As they traversed the next valley, Jun proved that her idea would work, and finally, reluctantly, her party agreed.

  Unseen by Jun, her friends looked at each other with regret as she cast her spells and Shiori's laughter filled her ears.

  "Aaaaghhh—" Aya screamed as they sped down yet another slope only to be cut off as another clod of snow flew up and hit her in the face. Spluttering, she spit out chunks of ice and dead leaves as she turned around, watching as another clod of snow exploded against Cian's shield next to her.

  A wave of warmth filled her as Michael cast another healing spell that pushed her creeping nausea back down.

  As the roiling sea in her gut receded again, yet another slope loomed up in front of them.

  "Just two more valleys!" Keira called out, a grimace on her green-tinged face.

  Jun blushed as her teammates vomited behind separate trees, their retching noises making her feel nauseous too. Beside her, Shiori's ears twitched with amusement.

  "Good idea kitten," her Master said smugly, flicking her tail back and forth. "You should use that more. It's much faster than the walking you humans do."

  As if Aya could hear Shiori, she looked up at Jun and her Master, glaring as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Never again," she said firmly.

  Still green, Keira finished consulting her map and the surrounding area, one hand clutching her stomach. "Well Jun was right, that was a lot faster."

  "It was also sickening. I have a headache," Michael muttered. Cian silently nodded in agreement.

  "S-Sorry, I couldn't turn the siphon off all the way. I'll get better with practice..."

  "Never. Again." Aya pulled a stray pine needle out of her messy hair.

  "It saved us hours of travel."

  "I'd rather walk."

  "It'll take a day going up and down all the ridges normally."

  "Still better than doing that again."

  "We'd have to camp the night without our tents and bedrolls. It'll be freezing."

  "...Jun... learn to fly next time."

  A few minutes after another healing spell washed over the party, they were ready to move, Keira taking the lead again as they crept their way across the last valley separating them from their target, the large source of smoke Keira spotted. The going much slower on their feet, though her teammates seemed relieved to be on foot even as they slipped their way across the next valley, hiding from the goblin patrols in the area.

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  As they darted across the frozen landscape on foot, Jun processed her experience as she thought of ways to improve on her idea. She'd been inspired by a movie and comic book character who used arms mounted to his back to move around, With the revelation that she could anchor her snare spells to her own body without them siphoning her own mana, she'd cast a pair of the spells anchored to her back, using the ten magical tendrils to lift herself off the ground and haul herself up and down the rough terrain. Controlling each of the tendrils had taken most of her concentration, pushing the limits of her practice with [Multicasting] as she used her [Sapping Snare] in a way it definitely wasn't intended.

  Still, as strange as the idea was, it worked surprisingly well and her friends had finally agreed to let her carry them along. The spells had sapped her teammates mana, easing the burden on her mana pool to maintain the spells and augmenting her own regeneration, though she'd done her best to tone down the drain until it just barely covered the mana cost to carry the five of them and Shiori. And even with the weaker siphon, apparently a steady drain on someone's mana made them nauseous.

  Another thing she learned was that skirts were not great for that method of travel. More than once the rapid descent had blown her skirt up, though thankfully the leggings she wore beneath it kept her modesty. Unfortunately, the thin fabric was terrible for actually keeping her warm. And once they started moving stealthily, dodging around goblin patrols in the last valley between them and their target, more problems with her outfit revealed themselves.

  Jun suppressed a shiver as she lay in the deep snow, waiting for the goblin patrol to pass by. Every time she had to crouch behind a boulder, duck behind a tree, or flatten herself out behind a bank of snow, her skirt got in the way. The flowing fabric would flutter in the wind, snag on plants and rocks, and let snow into sensitive places. She had to hold the loose fabric tight as she hid behind trees, move carefully to avoid snagging it on any stray branches or brush, and more than once suppressed a shiver as snow got inside and started to melt, making the thin fabric of her leggings damp.

  It was a miserable experience and more than once she found herself staring at Keira's ass with jealousy as she followed behind the girl as they worked their way past a series of goblin patrols. The scout's formfitting pants never snagged or got in the way. Once they returned to the city, she vowed, she was buying pants, even if they cost her all of her savings.

  Several hours after they descended into the final valley, they made their way up to the top of the ridge and crossed it while avoiding an outpost of lookouts at the top. The three goblins seemed weak and isolated, easy enough for them to take care of quickly and quietly, but if nothing else, the goblins had demonstrating surprising organization. They needed to be careful. There was some debate on if they should just kill the lookouts first or not, with Jun hesitantly feeling that they should, but it was Keira that made the best case against it, pointing out that they needed to figure out what they were actually dealing with before they alerted anything they were in the area. With that settled, Keira led them on an hour-long crawl across the top of the ridge in the late afternoon, the lengthening shadows helping to disguise their movements until they were past the small tower and made it to a growth of pine trees at the edge of the ridge where they could see down into the next valley.

  What they saw chilled them to the bone. It wasn't just a raiding group. It was a full horde.

  Garug schooled his face as the meal finally concluded, his fellow raid leaders boasting of honor and impending glory as they sat in a circle with their Seconds and the horde leader Kranesh. The hulking man was massive for a goblin, nearly as tall as many humans and with muscles as big as the average goblin's torso. As a Second Step warrior, Garug was large himself, nearing five feet tall with a muscular but lithe build, but Kranesh was enormous, a full head taller than him and three times as wide, all of it the hard muscle of a Third Step warrior. As the raid leaders stroked their egos in front of Kranesh, each of them trying to outdo the previous with greater and greater claims of prowess and valor as they drew closere to human lands, Garug schooled his expression, reminding himself why he sat here amongst braggarts, waiting for a chance to report to the horde commander. The pyre. His vow of vengeance. His raiding group's sacrifice of honor.

  His scouts had followed the trail of the humans for a day through the woods, finding where they'd made camp after slaughtering and mutilating his men. The cunning humans left few clues behind, only a few hairs and a pile of ash that marked where they made a small fire. Still, it was enough to tell them they hunted at least five of the barbaric savages, one of them well beyond the others. Long hairs in three different colors told them at least three of the murderers were human women, while the shorter hairs they recovered probably belonged to human men.

  His shamans said that three of the different hairs reeked of mana, probably belonging to mages. Second Step mages.

  An unknown number of warriors and scouts, but at least two more. Plus, a single small paw print. Either one of the humans kept one of the noble forest creatures as a slave, or it hunted the humans too. Even if it was only five and an enslaved forest creature, the number of shamans was cause for concern. The level of mana had been enough for shamans of the Second Step. If they traveled with only two guards, then the shamans were powerful, and their guards even more so. Or there were far more of the humans than the traces left behind indicated. Either way, it meant they were a great threat to the People.

  After they found the humans' abandoned camp, his scouts were able to trace their path to the foothills of the Great Shield, where the harsh winds and drifting snows erased their passage. Sending runners to recall the rest of his raiders, he and his scouts had fruitlessly scoured the foothills for any hint of the humans with no luck. As much as his honor burned him to seek vengeance for his men, his cooler side prevailed and he took his raiders back to the horde.

  Their arrival in the horde's valley war camp hadn't gone unnoticed, and before his raiders did more than secure an area to set up camp, a runner had come from the horde commander demanding Garug and his second Drecu attend to him. What followed had been a drawn out dinner with the horde's commanders, each of the raid leaders boasting of their accomplishments and reporting their successes. The monster cores seized, trinkets of honor shown from past raids, and more. While none acknowledged Garug and Drecu's missing trinkets, he knew the raid leaders had noticed them and sensed blood. Their attacks hadn't been subtle, the digs at incompetent raid leaders that led their men to death had carried on throughout the meal.

  After an hour however, the meal concluded, Garug grunting as a servant quickly cleared bowls and trays away and quickly withdrew from the tent. As she left, another goblin woman slipped into the commander's tent. The woman was tall for a gobliness, as tall as Garug himself, with thick braids of black hair marked with trinkets of honor that contrasted with her pale green skin. She wore a finely woven loose robe that draped the curves of her body well. A true beauty. As the woman stepped fully into view, she drew the attention of more than one of the men in the room.

  "My daughter Prin," Kranesh said with a smile from his seat of prominence in the circle facing the only entrance to the tent.

  Prin bowed her head as she moved to a table behind her father and started preparing a pot of kaba. As the strong earthy and sweet smell of the fermented root drink filled the tent, Kranesh motioned for silence and regarded each of the assembled leaders and their seconds.

  "Garug," the titan of a goblin said, turning his attention and the pressure of his Third Step aura onto him. "You returned missing warriors and missing honor. Explain."

  The raid leader expected the pressure and had already been cycling his mana, bolstering his body and defenses against Kranesh's aura. As Garug pushed back against the horde commander's aura with his mana, Kranesh smirked with amusement and the pressure on Garug doubled. A grunt escaped Garug's lips as he cycled all of his mana into reinforcing himself against the pressure. Kranesh wasn't just Third Step, he was peak, ready for the Fourth, Garug thought to himself as he nervously swallowed. Despite the immense pressure on him, Garug spoke plainly, not too fast and not too slow as he told the story of his missing scouts, of the human party they tracked back into the region, and of the lost trail that led into the Great Shield.

  "I see," Kranesh said, leaning back as his daughter handed him a steaming cup of kaba. The horde commander downed the beverage in a single smooth movement, the scalding hot liquid making a sizzling sound as it touched his tongue. "The humans have come as the shamans predicted. You did well to inform me instead of pursuing honor for yourself. The horde shall find the intruders and deal with them together. That is the way of the People."

  Garug fought the urge to sigh with relief as the pressure of Kranesh's aura dropped by half, but the other raid leaders were caught off guard as the horde leader spread his aura out to pressure everyone in the tent. Several of the weaker raid leaders grunted as the pressure came down on them and Garug could see them struggling to cycle their mana against the horde commander's attention.

  Despite the sudden aura pressure, the sound of grating went uninterrupted as Prin continued to prepare the sacred kaba.

  As Kranesh continued to pressure them, Prin started to move around the circle, bowing to each raid leader and second, offering them both a steaming cup of kaba and a clear view down her robe. Many of the raid leaders struggled to accept the drink, the gobliness's beauty adding to the pressure of her father's aura. More than one of the raid leaders and seconds dropped the cup as she handed it to them, the precious drink spilling and scalding them. As the woman handed Drecu a coup, she smiled at his Second. A small amount of pride filled him as the man only glanced down for a moment as he accepted the drink, only a single drop spilling over to burn his hand as he held it.

  As Prin moved next to him, she bowed low, providing Garug an unobstructed view down her robe as she handed him a too full cup of kaba. "You're strong," she whispered in a sultry voice.

  Garug ignored the tantalizing view offered to him and met Prin's eyes with a smile, accepting the offered cup with steady hands. Holding the drink with two hands, he pulled the steaming cup to his lips, careful not to spill a drop of the sacred drink as he took a long drink. He kept his face straight as the scalding liquid sizzled like acid, burning his tongue and throat as he swallowed it. As the liquid hit his stomach, he felt a surge of strength spread through his body, the wounds from the sacred drink already vanishing in a wave of restorative power.

  "Delicious," he said as he drained the cup, repeating the experience. "Thank you."

  Prin pouted as she took the empty cup back and moved on to her next victim while Garug cycled his mana, feeling strength begin to surge through him, opening up a new sense as he took the Third Step. The kaba made them strong, and once they found the dishonorable humans, he would have vengeance.

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