Skill Hunter -Kill Monsters, Acquire Skills, Ascend to the Highest Rank!

Wisp led them through the woods, to the next stand of trees, and to the one beyond that. She wound around the outer edge of the city, picking her way carefully. As she walked, she explained, "The last time I was here, the puppets were already here. I didn't really know what they were, but you know, I was a small little spider, so I avoided them. Wound my way around the city. There's still plenty of good eating out here."

"Guess puppets don't eat," Ike commented.

Wisp turned back, pointing at him. "Exactly. Don't hunt skills, either. There's probably good skill hunting to be had out this way, while we're at it."

"Oh? Wait, but then, Brightbriar really only replaces humans, doesn't he?" Ike commented.

"Eh, that's normal. Human wars be like that. You guys kill each other to death, and we beasts chill and wait to clean the battlefields afterwards. If you're dumb enough to integrate into human society, you might get swept up, but that's all," Wisp said.

"Really? No… that tracks," Ike said, nodding slowly. Why would Brightbriar bother to kill every single being in the countryside, after all? He probably saw them as lesser than him. Plus, he'd waste so much time hunting down every possible magical beast, when only a few of them might be intelligent enough to warn someone about what was coming, and, as Wisp had said many times, beasts often didn't have the best opinion of humans, not least because humans kept hunting them for skills. Most of them wouldn't be inclined to bother warning a human settlement about its oncoming doom.

And if they did, would anyone listen? Ike wondered. He couldn't picture any of the haughty lords he'd seen at the end of the trial pausing to seriously listen to a warning from a beast.

"We're going to see a beast, then?" Ike guessed, putting together the unsaid part of Wisp's point. Not that he'd really expected Wisp to lead him to a human, but who knew? She'd lived a long life. Then again, with the dolls, it would take a very special human to decide to live in this wasteland.

Wisp nodded. "They're friendly! Mostly. Kind of. Sometimes."

"Uh huh," Ike said slowly. "I mean, I'm going to hunt them, so… do I care?"

"Hunt them? Oh!" Wisp laughed. "No, no. They don't have the skill themselves. They just know where it is. They mentioned it to me when I was over here, but I didn't care. I mean, mental skills kind of suck, for the most part. Can't hit someone with one unless you find the perfect combination, and even then, a strong-willed person will just laugh off the attack anyways. So it's not worth investing in the offense, and the defense also isn't worth much, since, you know, they aren't the strongest attacks in the world. You're better off creating illusions. That way, you can attack someone's mind, but you also have the multipurpose bonuses associated with illusions. You can use them to hide, to distract, and so on."

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"You've really thought about this," Ike commented.

"I did pick not to go after the skill. I had to be sure I didn't want it, to turn down an easy hunt like that, so I gave it some good thinking," Wisp replied.

"Crazy how much thinking can fit in that tiny spider head," Ike replied.

She turned around and shook her head at him. "Yeah, yeah. Of course you remember that, of all things."

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"Sorry, sorry," Ike said, chuckling.

Mag darted down from the sky. "There's a doll patrol about a mile ahead, moving your way. Try heading a bit more that way," he pointed away from the city, "to dodge them."

"Got it." Ike turned his feet, and the party swung out, away from the patrol. Satisfied, Mag flapped away yet again, returning to his usual patrols.

A second later, he looked around the party. A centaur, a spider, a mountain, and a bird… "Are the dolls attacking because of me?"

Wisp clapped a hand over her mouth. Her eyes got wide with mock-shock. "He figured it out!"

Ike sighed. He shook his head at her. "Aren't you the one who's always like, 'ooh, Ike, what if you're a beast?' But look! Now we're being attacked because of me! I'm clearly human."

She shook her head at him. "How simple. What an incomplete comprehension. You think these dolls are complex enough to do something like ascertain the true form of an ordinary beast, let alone a being as strange as yourself? Foolish! Instead, it's because you're a human who cannot transform that we're being targeted. If we were a group of beasts travelling through the forest, they wouldn't bother us at all! But we're all in human form, so they see humans and attack."

"Yeah, yeah. Anyways, what kind of beast are… 'they?' Are there multiple beasts?" Ike asked, curious.

Wisp grinned mischievously. "You'll see."

Ike gave her a look. "Oh, come on."

"Tee-hee."

And that was all the more Wisp would say on the subject, no matter how Ike tried to push her. At last, he gave up and walked on, following her lead. Occasionally, Mag darted from the sky with small adjustments to help them avoid puppets, but for the most part, Wisp walked on, confident in her strides.

The land fell off into a natural dip, and a moment later, Ike found himself at the edge of a sharp depression. It dropped off as a sheer cliff, plunging down hundreds of feet to a narrow shore alongside a narrow stream. He frowned. "Almost reminds me of the Abyss."

"It should. It's a pretty similar place. Only lunam down there. Not great for mages, but that doesn't stop any of us, does it?" Wisp asked. She threw a thread down and started to descend it. "This one doesn't have any ward on top of it, so we don't need to worry about escaping."

Ike followed her, climbing slowly down her thread. "Are all holes in the ground full of lunam?"

"No? But a lot of them are. If it's fully encased by the earth, magic stays as mana, since it's basically not exposed to the world at all. Like the tunnels with the centipedes in them, from that trial realm. But there's something about the tall walls of a crevasse leaving the deepest depths in perpetual darkness, and the gash being oriented so that if you look up, regardless of the time of day, you'll see the night, and the valley soaking in the light of the moon alone…" She trailed off. "The guy who told me all that seemed kind of nuts, and he was talking really fast because I was eating him at the same time, so I'm not really sure I got it, but it's something like that."

Ike snorted. "Got it." He didn't need the fine details to understand the basic concept: underground, mana. On the surface, though, a deep depression might contain lunam instead of mana. "What about solam? How's that get naturally made, or collected, or whatever."

"Huh?"

"The sun version of lunam."

"Oh. I don't know. Never found a hole full of that. Or, no, I guess it would be a mountain…?" Wisp shrugged. "Come on. We're almost there."

Ike nodded and followed her down.