Chapter 506 - Race
Riniya.
A beautiful elven name, but what did it mean?
Frankly, the bearer of the name herself had no clue. Much of the elven history in the cave of myths had been lost following a series of unprecedented catastrophes.
Although the surviving elves were never able to decipher the meaning of some names or lost some types of technology in their hurry. When it came to names they continued to use them as a reminder of their glorious past.
But this elven beauty wasn’t satisfied by the status quo of the elven society. Truth be told, she was very dissatisfied with that. She was hoping that she could make a change but…
Her status in her small underground village was not at all high. To clarify, it wasn’t high by her standards.
An elven mage in the underground was lauded but only when compared to their non-mage compatriots. This was because Riniya was an earthen mage.
Survival of the fittest dictated that only the strongest survived. In an arid desert where the earth even blew in the sky, the earthen mage was king. That resulted in the death of many other elemental mages.
The most horrible loss was that of water mages. With no water to be found their ability could not be at all used in combat. At least not for a prolonged period of time. This limitation was enough to land most of them in their graves.
Soon enough, there was an overabundance of earthen mages and water mages were practically extinct. While affinity was not always hereditary, as the elves ended up evolving into subspecies things were different.
It was normal for regular elves to have water and earth affinity, some might even have wind affinity, but for those in the arid subspecies, only earth was a common factor.
Riniya was an earthen mage, she was a dime in a dozen.
She and many others, despite being a subspecies of elves, still had elven pride. Riniya could not tolerate being another of the many.
That was why when she first noticed the anomaly of the warriors sent to the surface, she became excited. If she butted in and helped quell their ailment she could score some points amongst the warriors.
With this in mind, she opened a path to the surface and prepared herself to lend a hand.
Surprisingly, the warriors were fighting against an airborne skeleton monster. Even more surprising was the fact that they were in a stalemate. While her first instinct was to assist using magic, the creature could speak.
For Riniya who wished to be something more, speaking to a bone creature could mean a change of fate. Maybe she could even become an elven hero!
Of course, she knew these fantasies were just fantasies. She wasn’t keen on blindly trusting the bone creature due to these fantasies.
She decided that bringing the creature in was no problem, however. They would just have to kill it if there was any threat to their lives.
As for what she planned to do with the creature… it was just to show the bone creature to the leader of the elven underground. She knew that the most she could do was gain some merit from it.
That was until the creature mentioned a master, all pessimist thoughts left her mind then.
“You, go inform the leader. Remember clearly my instructions” She instructed for one of the elven warriors to separate and handle the task of informing the required elves.
“Let’s go, get in” Riniya said motioning the skeletal creature into the building’s hatch.
But the creature seemed somewhat suspicious and unwilling. Riniya felt somewhat seen through but she persevered with her motioning.
Realizing it was pointless, she took the initiative of going down the hatch. As to where it led… The answer was actually a large hidden storage. There were many entrances into this storage dotted around the village, this was just one of them.
After Riniya started her descent down the hatch using a dingy ladder, the elven warriors and ultimately the bone creature followed. The hole was a bit too narrow for it but fortunately, it managed to make it in without too much trouble.
Once they fully descended the hatch, they were in the storage room or more accurately storage floor.
The space was large, it had thick pillars obstructing vision into every corner of it but the place was nonetheless large. Even if the pillars weren’t there one couldn’t be sure they’d see the end. The most notable thing however was that there were cages holding in them all sorts of things.
They ranged from the dry remains of plants to the bones of unknown creatures. For the bone creature, W, however, there was one recognizable creature.
‘That’s Idrisi!’ Idrisi was situated in a medium-sized cell. His bones were scattered about suggesting he was tossed in carelessly. Were it not for the fact that W knew Idrisi was alive he would have assumed the poor orc skeleton to be dead.
In his hidden excitement, W almost rushed right into the cell. But he wasn’t that stupid.
‘So do you intend to return me the bones of one of my master’s minions?’ W decided to ask this question.
Riniya nodded, not an elven custom. W had told them to do the nodding motion when they agreed and to that they nodded.
‘Well, thank you in advance then’ W said before stepping forward. One of the elven warriors disappeared somewhere briefly before returning with a set of keys. They unlocked the cage’s door and motioned for W to enter.
To their surprise, W dismissed their kind intentions.
The pile of the bones in the cage did something unexpected instead. The bones shook and started to form together!
The orc skeleton Idrisi stood tall and mighty anew and sauntered out of the cage. The orc skeleton even had the leisure to finally look around with curious hollow eye sockets!
Riniya was momentarily dumbfounded but her expression soon turned ugly.
‘We will take our leave now then, I will tell my master of your sincere reception’ W said ignoring the obvious signs of scheming and hatred on Riniya’s face.
W hoped that the elven woman would realize her intentions were too obvious and give up but… things in reality never went as planned. ρꪖꪕᦔꪖꪕꪫꪣꫀꪶ
“Don’t let them out! It can’t fly comfortably in here!” Riniya roared to the elven warriors. They didn’t waste a second and immediately shot into action.
Although Riniya’s ranking was greater than theirs, they weren’t her subordinates. Nonetheless, they were impressed by her scheme of restricting the evil creature’s flight and were thus willing to temporarily submit to her will.
W on the other hand had to admit he still wasn’t cautious enough.
‘I should have just let Ed handle this…’ The underground storage’s roof was tall enough for him to dodge the attacks of the elves under normal circumstances but every single one of the elves uses a stave as a weapon.
‘Idrisi! Run!’ W commanded before furling his wings around his body and charging towards the elves.
“Argh!!” “Aaah!” Multiple elves up front were immediately thrown back by the charge. Some flew back into pillars and others skidded along the ground receiving hideous scrapes. If they fought normally this wouldn’t be an easy battle even after the creature couldn’t fly too high!
To their luck, they had a magical helper. The earth rose to entrap the charging W.
‘Woah!’ Fortunately W noticed and unfurled his wings. He quickly rose towards the ceiling and-!
‘Urgh…’ The ceiling suddenly lowered causing W’s wings to scrape against them and spin out of control towards the ground.
Riniya pointed her wooden staff towards the point where W landed but before she could cast another spell or shift the earth something hit her head.
“Ouch!” The force caused her to stumble back but she quickly regained her wits and narrowed her eyes. Idrisi just threw a part of his arm at her!
“Get that one too!” She commanded furiously.
By now W realized there was no point in directly confronting the elven mage and the warriors. W decisively charged towards Idrisi with much more vigor than before. The elves wanted to attack but any staves that went for the kill would break or deflect back.
W was able to grab Idrisi from right under their noses and he then began to fly past the many pillars in the storage floor.
With the size of the floor… There had to be other exits! On the chance that there weren’t any, W would just have to make one.
But he also had to inform Ed of what was occurring.
***
‘Ed!’ W’s transmission came through just as Ed picked up his brush to continue inscribing runes near Azalia.
“Hm?” Ed muttered noticing the urgency in W’s transmission.
‘The elves here are hostile to me!’ W said not knowing how else he was to describe their scheming.
‘So you need my help?’ Ed asked immediately dropping what he was doing.
‘It’s very likely!’ W responded causing Ed to frown. He hadn’t expected the elves to be so hostile considering their initial friendly approach.
‘Looks like I’ve been too optimistic’ Azalia’s happiness must have infected him with optimism somehow.
‘Azalia, I will be back’ Ed told the tree before thinking about what the best method to quickly assist W might be.
‘Awww…’ The tree was greatly disappointed by the news.
‘Let me come!’ She asked cutely. But Ed willfully ignored this message.
‘Running over might not be fast enough…’ Ed wasn’t linked to W either so passing on some of the system’s skills seemed unlikely.
‘Status’ Ed decided to have a rapid overlook of his attributes to get a better feel for things.
[Name: Edwa&!]
Type: Elf (Arid)
Health: 760/760
Mana: 209/209
Vitality: 8
Strength: 2
Agility: 3
Constitution: 5
Dexterity: 1
~Skills~
[Survivalist lvl. 0]
[Formationist lvl. 5]
‘I should have invested less in vitality…’ Ed thought regretfully. Since he used the link skill to pass vitality onto Azalia rather often he mainly assimilated things with vitality. That also gave him some constitution but his agility stat was not ideal.
Without further ado, Ed entered the system space.
‘Let’s make a mount!’ Ed thought as he scoured his brain for speed-based mob skills. The mushroom caverns had all sorts of skills for him but he never got to extract all of them.