As far as fights went, the final push towards the Rift's entrance had been surprisingly painless. A handful of factors worked together to achieve that, of course, from the soldiers — all of whom were now starting to close in on level 10 — to the fact they knew where they had to go. It also didn't hurt that the worst they had to contend with were platoons of armoured Wolflings throwing javelins off the backs of their mounts.

It was challenging, but nothing like how a Rank 1 Ex-Guardian was. With the soldiers now all helping out, their enemies got torn to shreds by overwhelming firepower. One soldier wouldn't have amounted to much, even with charmed bullets, but there were a hundred of them just within Mia's sight.

Quantity had a quality of its own, though diminished now with the System's esoteric Ranking system in place.

The five metres high pile of metallic corpses down the side of the grassy hill made that apparent. Some of those corpses, Mia made herself, or others from her team did, but the majority were blown to scrap by soldiers.

Up on top of the now bare hill stood a familiar archway made of pure white marble, and inside it was a portal that vibrated with power to Mia's senses. She tried to ignore it as she blasted another tree's trunk out from under it, jumping out of the way of the great oak she'd felled.

Heavyset men rushed in the moment it smashed into the dirt, the thunderous crash of its fall still rang in her ears when they had the whole tree up on their shoulders and set off towards the nearby processing site.

Mia's heart ached a little with yet another ancient monument of nature dying at her hands. To her Fae blood it felt like slashing a beautiful painting just because it was in the way. A travesty, but one she could handle.

They needed to be able to see their surroundings after all if they wanted to secure the Rift, and the damned thing spawned right into a densely forested thicket. Which meant some speedy deforesting had been ordered and was now well underway.

As for why she was blasting trunks instead of cutting them like any sane person would do with her set of spells at their disposal? Well, she only had half of Spectral Blade's runes reinforced as absorbing the duplicate runes from her leftover conjuration Lexicon was taking far too damned long.

Even with her upgraded runic-model devouring the basic Rank 0 Runes at thrice the speed it had been capable of before the upgrade.

That left blowing the trees to smithereens with Blasts instead. Like some barbarian.

"That should be enough for now," the lead lumberjack as she'd started to think about him said, wiping sweat from his forehead. "Thanks for the help, Miss."

"Right," Mia said sourly, nodding at him before she jogged off and joined back up with the rest of her team. "Hi. I'm back."

She received little waves and Helene held out a paper bag filled with drool-inducing scents for her, which she happily took. Settling down on a cut tree trunk like the rest of them were, and fished out a sandwich from the paper bag.

Looking around, she found Mark and Lina missing. A quick check of her Spirit Sense revealed both of them not far away working their magic. Glancing up, she noticed the familiar weave of the Air mage's catching net she'd been perfecting for the nasty diving birds. Mark's magic was much more apparent, as the earth rumbled under their feet, walls of hardened dirt and ground stone rose out of the ground inch by inch around the Rift on top of the small hill.

Neither were they alone in their work, and Mia felt dozens of Earth mages working on setting up some battlements and fortifications around the archway. However, Lina still seemed to be the one doing the bulk of the work. Mia saw some … pitiful attempts at replicating her magic. She almost grimaced. The other Air mages were dumping just as much mana into the air as Lina was; that much was clear, but they struggled to control even just films of hardened air wider than a handful of metres.

That was still more than Mia could do with her own mana though. Lina might have had gripes about her lack of firepower, but her control was a league above the rest of the mages in turn. Hopefully, seeing that for herself will smoothen her ruffled feathers a bit.

Sitting near the centre of the bustling camp, watching people hustle about with clear intent, Mia felt more of the invisible weight slip off her shoulders. People had things well in hand, in control. Society, frayed as it was and diminished by the end of the world as they knew it, was getting back on its feet. It was still limping and stumbling, but it was moving steadily forward. Into the future.

"The others already heard this," Brent spoke up, breaking Mia's silent daze. "But the Rift's apparently … weird. The Colonel's research team going through system books think it's about to break through to Rank 2 soon and that's what's causing the oddities."

"Oddities?" Mia asked sharply, the news sending a small shiver of uncertainty down her spine. "What oddities?"

"The portal's unstable," Brent said. "And the number of maximum participants is fluctuating between ten, twelve and one time it showed as much as twenty apparently. Its level is also shown as 20."

"That's …" Nikki said, worry creasing her brows as Mia asked her about the Rift's oddities. "Not normal. There is supposed to be a zone-wide alert sent out when a Rift breaks into Rank 2, but that's about it. None of this fluctuation you describe sounds like a phenomenon I know about."

"We didn't get any 'alerts' when a bunch of them broke into Rank 1 though?" Mia asked.

"Rank 0 and 1 are not … how do I say this?" Nikki frowned. "They are not 'true' Ranks. In the Cosmic Realm, they are usually called Mortal Ranks, or Novice Ranks. People in those two Ranks are … limited, but Rank 2 and onwards is where Users start to truly shrug off the shackles placed on them by the laws of reality."

"Interesting," Mia mused, then shuddered as it suddenly occurred to her just how fucked they all would be if this Rift really Ranked up. Then she hastily shared what she learned with the rest.

"Feels like something's holding the Rift back," Lina observed. "Maybe it's trying to Rank up but failed to fulfill some hidden requirement?"

"I doubt it," Mia mused, trying to get a feel for the Rift with her Spirit Sense. Unfortunately, she got nowhere with the truly immense quantities and density of broken mana miasma pouring out of the Rift. Her supernatural senses were muddled and nearly blind so close to it. Still, there was something she could feel in the movements of the miasma itself.

Like they'd described, it too was fluctuating. If one saw the Rift as a valve, and the miasma as water, it seemed someone was jerkily turning the valve up and down every quarter second or so.

She almost felt the sheer mass of miasma wanting to pour out, but being unable to. As if some invisible hand was clamping down on the hose, not letting the truly massive quantities of mana just come bursting out.

But what could stop a Rift? Or at least hold it back like so?

What else than the thing that made it in the first place?

"What if it's the System?" Mia threw out her idea for the others to chew over. "The one stopping it I mean. It supposedly made Rifts to protect us, to funnel chaotic mana into like some mana sink. All that effort goes to shot if one of its own creations wipes us out."

"Half the city's dead," Brent said in a morose tone. "Killed by the monsters it made."

"But we could theoretically fight back against those," Mia said, feeling defensive of her idea. "Nikki said Rank 2 is a huge step up, a much larger leap in power than the one between Ranks 0 and 1. We'd be utterly fucked with Rank 2 monsters walking about."

"Why would it care though?" Brent asked, his voice not quite accusing but clearly just angry at everything happening around him.

"Promote Growth, Safeguard Life," Mia said, quoting Nikki's words. "Those are supposedly two of the System's tenets, its primary directives. I think the conflict and struggle from the 'beatable' monsters fell under Promote Growth, but when a Rank 2 Rift is about to wipe out a city, Safeguard Life kicks in to at least give us a fighting chance."

"Sounds plausible," Lina agreed with a half-hearted shrug. The girl's focus was mostly on her spellwork spreading out above the camp so her heart wasn't really in the debate.

"We can hope," Helene muttered, patting the big brooding Brent next to her on the knee. "It is about time we got luck on our side. Still, I can't help but worry that it's just temporary and that the Rift's about to explode in a shower of monsters at any moment. It seems … unstable."

Mia hummed in agreement, the fluctuating pulses in the ambient miasma feeling like heavy waves crashing against her mind. Mark came back around a short while later, having exhausted his mana and deciding to take a lengthy lunch break to recuperate some.

Mana. Such a curious phenomenon. Supposedly it was the watered-down essence of pure concepts turned into energy. Feeling a lull in conversation, Mia sank down to the grassy ground and crossed her legs, sinking into a meditative trance with only some middling trouble.

She thought of what mana was, what arcane mana was to be specific. Among the training tips and guidelines she had, which were written by someone much more knowledgeable about both her affinity and bloodline, meditating on this question was quite high up on the list of things to do.

That didn't mean Mia didn't do any proper meditation exercises, but doing some of the simpler ones in the back of her mind wasn't taking up much of her focus with Multitasking.

Arcane. A gateway between chaos and order, the barrier separating light and darkness; the bridge connecting the positive energies of the cosmos with the negative ones.

Her mana spun, tongues of thin mana extended from her core down her channels and drank up the tiny trickle of ambient arcane mana wandering into her body. Her musings of what arcane was ever so slightly brushed up against the unknowable truth of the concept, or so the books said. Supposedly, that caused a resonance which drew in the ambient arcane mana.

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Duality, opposites and counterparts separated yet united in some way. That was what Mia thought arcane was. Her Wards protected her friends while her piercing Bolts killed her foes with lethal efficiency.

Shields and swords, barriers and blasts of mana. What else was there? Thinking deeper, Mia recalled some of the schools of Arcanism she herself had not managed to make use of yet. Illusion, Force, Divination and largely even Summoning.

Mia supposed most elements must have been multifaceted, but she felt Arcane was truly a versatile element capable of accomplishing just about everything a mage could want. Still, it wasn't a jack of all trades, master of none.

It had a speciality, one largely unique to it: dispelling.

The picture of her Arcane Blast eating through the Goblin Shamans' Aegis played out before her mind's eye. Versatility to answer any problem that came her way — taken, she knew the required spell — and the ability to unmake her enemies' magic. Truly, there wasn't a better affinity she could have asked for.

Only, her versatility was limited by her tiny Spellbook and her dispelling power by her Blast being the sole spell in her repertoire actually making use of it.

Or is it? Mia thought. Isn't that just a result of the spell making use of the Chaos Aspect? I mean, technically, the dispelling property comes from arcane fluctuating between Chaos and Order, Negative and Positive energy, but for now, the Chaos Aspect grants me a downgraded version of that.

That meant she was playing with a knockoff Light element to punch through enemy magics. How good would it be if I used true dispelling spells? Or even, the proper Flux Aspect?

There was even the advanced element of Silver, which supposedly grew from that very same Aspect and specialised in destroying enemy spellwork.

Silver, Illusion and Force. Those were all the Arcane-adjacent advanced elements she knew of at the moment. Though she supposed there had to be one or two for every school of Arcanism. Divination, Summoning and so on.

What else was there?

Mia thought long and hard, going over everything she knew of her sole elemental affinity and tried to dig deeper. Whenever the stream of mana coming in thickened, she grinned inwardly and made sure to engrave whatever she'd just thought about into her memory.

Ever so slowly, thought by thought, brick by brick, Mia worked to build up her understanding of the Arcane.

It was an element for planners, people who could make use of having the ability to choose a limited number of spells out of a truly colossal number of options. It also forced them to lean heavily onto spells for solving problems, not granting any body-enhancements or invocations to empower the mage's physical abilities.

Somewhere through her ruminations, the chime of a distant bell rang through her mind. Even without that, Mia felt the change, the mana in her core became just a bit more her.

Opening her eyes, Mia's eyes glimmered like a pair of finely carved sapphires. Pinkish motes danced across the facets, brimming with power and potential.

[Arcane Attunement: 39% -> 40%]

[Congratulations, you have reached the 40% Attunement Milestone for the Arcane Element!]

[Advancing your Attunement further will be considerably harder!]

[For this achievement, you have unlocked the Trait: Wisp Form]

***

[Wisp Form]

This Trait grants you access to a new sub-set of Arcane spells. You can now learn and cast Wisp magic.

For a length of time determined by your Willpower, you can transform your body into an ephemeral Wisp.

While in Wisp Form, you are:

Immune to physical damage.

Resistant to most forms of magical damage. (Exceptions: Siphon spells, Silver magic, Spirit magic, etc.)

Weightless. Your mass becomes equal to zero.

In this Form, you exist both on the physical Plane and on the Spirit Plane. This might make you susceptible to some forms of spiritual attacks.

***

Mia grinned, a giggle bubbling up in her throat that she barely managed to stifle. The others were still brooding, wearing grim looks and staring at the ground or at the bustling camp.

Rising to her feet, Mia stretched like a lazy cat and cracked her neck.

"I have something to test," she said, drawing some looks and nods. "I'll be over in that copse of trees … uhm, Camie? Wanna come?"

"Uh? Sure!" The vampiress said, the sound of her name having snapped her out from whatever had kept her in a deep daze.

"We'll be back in a bit," Mia said, waving as she started into a brisk walk. Jogging would have been a hint embarrassing, so she settled for a walk just short of that.

"Take care," Helene called after her and Mia waved back lazily.

"So, what got you so excited?" Carmilla asked as they stepped into the woods.

"Sorry, I hope I didn't interrupt," Mia said. "You were in the middle of something, right? I mean, Brent and the others were just aimlessly brooding … but you didn't seem like you were."

"I was just listening in on random conversations around the camp." Camie shrugged shamelessly. "Nothing important, just a time killer. Happy to do whatever this is, I'll always have time for you."

"Awww," Mia cooed, melting a little as a lopsided grin stretched on her lips. Happy little butterflies danced in her stomach as she sent an adoring look at the vampiress, who shrank back slightly under her stare. "Thank you … that's sweet of you."

"Didn't you want to test something?" Carmilla asked evasively, though she wore a smile tinted with some shyness on her face as she did.

"I did, didn't I?" Mia decided to let the topic shift, taking pity on the girl. She grinned and then spun about, hopping back a few steps so she faced Camie from a few metres away. "I got a fun new thing. Check this out!"

Practically buzzing with excitement, Mia pushed. The Trait had ingrained itself into her very being, and using it had instantly become second nature to her. A limb she never knew she had.

Mia's body shimmered like she'd dumped a bucket full of glitter over her head and then she burst into a cloud of bright pink motes that swarmed to gather into a … Wisp.

All five of her human senses faded into nothingness, leaving behind only her feel of her own mana and her Spirit Sense. With the latter, she felt her vampiress near her, the redhead's dense core of mana shining like a sun amidst the dark mists of miasma.

Holding Wisp Form was an effort of will, and Mia'd thought she'd manage it with little effort. She was wrong. Holding the Form was growing harder and harder with every passing second and only after a few short heartbeats of time, Mia's grasp on it waned and then snapped.

The motes of energy making her Wisp Form expanded and then she was back, lurching forward and nearly planting her face into a tree.

"Mia!" Camie exclaimed, her powerful arms wrapping around her shoulders and saving her face from kissing the trunk. "What was that!?"

Mia shuddered and forced the rising bile back down her throat. Finding the action disturbingly similar to how holding her new Form together felt like.

"New Trait," Mia managed, patting Camie's hand around her waist soothingly. "I'm fine. I just feel a bit dizzy. Still! That was great! … though I hoped to hold it together for a bit longer."

"You're really fine?" Camie asked, her hold on Mia loosening as she looked her up and down searchingly.

"Yep," Mia said. "Perfectly fine. The dizziness is already gone."

"What sort of trait even was that?" Camie asked, seemingly calming down. "You just … exploded. I think my heart almost stopped."

"Good thing you barely need it anymore then," Mia said. "Sorry for worrying you. I got ahead of myself a bit! Wanna hear what this thing does though? It's pretty awesome."

"Sure," Camie said, her lips now curling into an indulgent smile.

"So, I got it from getting my Attunement to 40%," Mia started. "It's called Wisp Form. Gives me immunity to physical damage while I hold it and resistance to most forms of magic."

"That's good," Camie said thoughtfully, her fingers tapping her chin idly. "You really needed some better defensive abilities. Can you move in that form?"

"Maybe?" Mia said, bringing the description back up and her eyes froze on a line she'd just skimmed over the last time. "I think so. Even better though, I become weightless and my mass is negated in that form. You know what that means?"

"That you can float?" Camie raised an eyebrow.

"That too." Mia giggled. "But it also means that if I can give myself some momentum, any momentum, then I'll be able to move really fast. Hell, with zero mass, I could move at light speed even. It shouldn't take much energy to get something without mass moving that fast."

Camie hummed in response, eying Mia's excited countenance with an amused look in her eyes.

"What?" Mia squinted up at her girlfriend.

"Nothing really," Camie said, smiling now. "I just thought of you zipping around like a fluffy pink ball of energy. It is … fitting."

Mia rolled her eyes, making a show of huffing in indignation at the mental image Camie had of her.

"What about you?" She asked, shifting the topic. "How's your Attunement coming around?"

"Well, since I didn't eat elemental attunement gems like they are candies," Camie said, squinting at Mia grumpily. Hopefully, it was just mock-grumpiness. "I'm still 16% away from 40%."

"Did you get something cool at 20%?" Mia asked curiously.

"Enchanting Blood," Carmilla said, shrugging. "Not a charming ability … well it is, it allows me to bypass the spiritual protection people have if I have some of my mana or lifeforce in them. Nasty thing, but it will be useful."

"Huh," Mia said smartly, then her brain connected the dots and her eyes widened. The reason healers like Life mages couldn't just warp other people's bodies without permission was the sort of spiritual protection Camie spoke of. They could only do so if they overcame the Spirit of their foe, which was neither easy, stealthy or quick for people of a similar level. But Camie could apparently bypass that by shoving a spike made of her mana into people. "You can just blood bend now, or what? Damn."

"For now? Not really," Camie said with a mild grimace. "The amount of mana I need to infuse into someone to bypass their spiritual defences would be much better spent on spells. Killing is much more cost effective at the moment."

"Still, that could be hella useful," Mia said with a growing grin. "You could take down huge monsters with that, couldn't you? You just have to keep infusing your mana into them until it's enough. Then, you can rip them to shreds with some Blood manipulation … you have that, right?"

"Not yet." Camie shook her head. "Maybe whe-"

The chime of a System notification cut Camie off mid-sentence, leaving the vampiress with her lips parted and eyes rapidly growing wider.

[Regional Alert! The Rift 'Forest of the Wolf King' is on the cusp of becoming a Rank 2 Rift!]

[Region has no Users above Rank 0, Region has more than 10.000 active Users, Region is on a newly initiated world.]

[System directive #2/678 triggered!]

[Rift instance 'Forest of the Wolf King' will be transformed into a Raid instance for the duration of 48 hours.]

[During this time, its advancement and monster production capabilities will be halted. Afterwards, the Rift will advance, bringing certain death and destruction to this Region. Good Luck, Users!]

"What the fuck?" Mia exclaimed, eyes wide and then she jumped as the miasma rolling in the air around her froze like some cosmic hand hit the pause button on it. Then it dissipated, disappearing like it was never there.

In its place, the nearby Rift's presence rose like an unmistakable beacon. From a bonfire visible only to her and others with her niche set of Traits, the Rift turned into a lighthouse, calling out to everyone with some smidge of sense for the supernatural.

The System wasn't done though, and another ethereal chime announced the arrival of its next notification.

***

[Regional Quest: Raid!]

Objectives:

Clear the Raid!

Destroy the Raid!

Kill the monsters inside the Raid! ( 0 / 551 )

Kill the Raid Guardian!

Assist in achieving the above-mentioned objectives! Contributions: None

Reward: A Skill Shard of varying rarity, chosen from a short list. Range and number of options will depend on contributions!

***

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