บท 467: Charrings Wastes
"Your elbows are too high. You should be holding it closer to your waist, not to your chest," Lurize spoke in Hera's mind.
"Crap. I keep doing that. I don't know why," Hera sighed and lowered her stance.
"The weapons you use require wider movements. That's probably why you're having this problem," the blade continued.
"Wider? What are you talking about? The glaive has better range."
"Correct. But your arms are always linked to each other. This reduces your range of movement while allowing the weapon to have a better reach. Think about it. Even if you're going to do an overhead swing, your arms won't be straight up. One hand will hold the base of the glaive while the other guides its path by being along the midsection."
"Fine. Fine. I get it. I just need to keep my elbows lower, right?
"Correct," Lurize replied with the same warm and comforting voice it had used since it started to help her train. In a way, that only made Hera even more frustrated. She knew that the blade wasn't doing it on purpose, but it felt condescending every time it spoke like that. It was weird because usually she didn't feel that way. The way Lurize spoke was comforting and it would help her focus, but now, it was driving her nuts.
"Something wrong? You weird since up," Daskka asked while Hera continued to practice in one of the training rooms.
"Yeah, yeah. I just couldn't sleep. I'm still tired," Hera Continued following the movements that Her virtual trainer was showing. She had bought a compendium for a fighting style called Whirlwind Path. It required the use of a medium-range weapon such as a spear, a staff, or a glaive and focused on broad sweeps and spinning attacks that would both parry incoming blows and allow her to fight multiple enemies at once. Unfortunately, she was a bit too greedy. This particular martial art was on the more advanced side, which is why she had so much trouble grasping the basic movements.
"I saw you sleep. You woke quick. Why?" Daskka asked again. The snake was by the side of the ATR, watching Hera from a distance with Lurize by her side. Even this early in the morning, people were already using one of the two A-Heart training rooms in the Southern Reef. This place was one of those that had barely enough space and infrastructure to withstand one of those specialized training rooms. Because of that, people who lived here always filled up the reservations.
"I… I had a bad dream," Hera shivered as she remembered what happened while she slept. Usually, she had a hard time remembering her dreams, especially if they were surreal or nonsensical. This, however, was different. The memory was still vivid, even now, 5 hours later.
It started with her inside the interrogation room, and a detective appeared, slamming a folder on the desk. It was filled with pictures of the elf she killed. She didn't even have time to look over them when the man started yelling. But the voice changed to a woman and back to a man, then it just became a chorus of different people asking her why she killed someone. What gave her the right to take a life and walk away scott free? Then, the double-sided mirror vanished, revealing all her friends, family, and even her court on the other side judging her and calling her a murderer. As that was going on, hands came out of the ground, wrapped around her legs, and pulled her down. She tried to get away, but she was handcuffed to the chair and ended up falling into the black hole that appeared under her. The fall lasted just a few moments, and she landed in the middle of the red tower, surrounded by people who were killing each other. When she got up, all the people turned towards her and started growling and yelling. From the back, they parted ways revealing Vulmer Keller, bloodied and with an open chest. His half heart was still beating and gushing out blood. The man didn't say anything. It just lumbered towards her, becoming bigger the closer he got. His entire body had changed when he was close enough to grab her. His hands were somewhat bigger, but his gigantic head went all the way to the tower's ceiling. He opened his mouth, revealing that instead of teeth, he had smaller versions of himself, all clawing out and trying to grab something before biting down on her body.
That's when she woke up. She was so disturbed by the dream that Hera simply got out of bed, splashed some water on her face, and came to the guild to train. She wanted to focus on something else. That way, she could at least ignore or temporarily forget what her mind showed her. What she failed to notice was that her connection with Daskka had become even stronger. Because of that, the snake was able to see the dream Hera had as she thought about it. The snake flew towards the explorer, wrapping herself around Hera's neck, snuggling against her face, "Was just dream, mum."
"I know. I know," Hera scratched Daskka's head.
They spent a few moments like that before the snake flew back to Lurize's side. Doing so allowed her to glance at the tablet that Hera had put on the ground and notice a message popping up, "Mum, message. People worried."
Hera let go of her stance and walked over to Daskka, picking up her tablet and checking her messages. They're about 50 or so, and It was clear that dare worry was escalating. The last message talked about how they were heading to the guild before going out of the city to search for her. Apparently, they spoke with a few of the clerks, who confirmed that she appeared in the middle of the night. Hera quickly sent a message letting them know that she was already in the guild and that they could meet by the butcher since she already had to pick up the pay for her work the previous night. One thing that she found weird was that her tablet didn't ring. She looked it over and was in silent mode, but she couldn't remember activating that. With a shrug, she just changed that setting and grabbed her things to leave.
Just a few minutes after getting the message, Hera was already outside. Since she had to wait for her friends, she had decided to stop by the butcher to get her money from the corpses she delivered. Unfortunately, there was a big line in front of the desk. Dozens of people were carrying monsters' bodies to be processed. With a shrug, the explorer just got in line so she could talk to the butcher. She had received a message from them telling her that they managed to disassemble their bodies and give her a fair price, but at the time, she was sleeping, and when she woke up, she wanted to move and decided to come here later. Since this was her first time in this room, Hera couldn't tell if this kind of line was usual or not. But apparently, there were a lot of monsters around, and people were excited to make some easy money. Or at least, that's what she heard from the people around here carrying several different monsters' bodies.
She was the next in line when Alex and the others found her, "Hera! Where were you?" the assassin gasped.
"Sorry. After training, I went to my private room to take a bath, but I still wanted to move a bit. That's why I went out hunting. When I finally got tired enough to go to bed, it was too late, and I didn't want to wake anyone up. So I slept in my private room. I spaced out and forgot to send a message. My bad," Hera replied.
"That's fine. It happens. Just let us know next time. We were worried, and I woke everyone up," Alex glanced at the rest of the group. Helena and Bonnie mainly seemed fine, but Blue looked like someone who was still half asleep.
"Also, what are you doing here?" Helena asked.
"I brought some monster carcasses last night and they told me to come back later to get my money. It was just one guy working, so I guess he couldn't evaluate everything properly at the time," Hera explained.
"You went hunting alone? Are you crazy? There are a lot of strong monsters in this room!" Helena gasped.
"It wasn't that bad. I just went after some lobsters; they were all pretty easy to kill. I spent one hour hunting them, and I didn't get hit once. I left a lot of bodies behind, though."
"So you are the one that did that?" a woman behind Hera asked.
"That what?" Hera turned around.
"The massacre in the lobster field. That attracted a lot of monsters, so people went into a frenzy to kill them. Since they were all gathered in the same place and busy eating, we managed to kill many of them quickly. Thanks for that, girl. And you went on a rampage. From what I heard, there were like 50 corpses laying around when people started to notice what was going on," the woman said with a big smile.
"50!" Bonnie gasped, "You hunted 50 monsters alone?"
"She probably hunted a lot more than that. When people saw that happening, there was already a horde of monsters eating the corpses, and there were bones everywhere," the woman nodded.
"Hera!" Helena gasped.
"What? I'm fine, everything is fine. I didn't get hurt. You don't need to act like that just because I didn't call you guys. I can handle them on my own," Hera rolled her eyes.
"Can you handle them, Or were you hoping they could handle you?" Alex asked.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Hera turned to Alex with an angry expression.
"You know what that's supposed to mean."
"Fuck me, Alex. Just because I'm struggling with something doesn't mean I'm trying to get myself killed," Hera rolled her eyes. The woman behind the group took a step back, realizing that she might get involved by accident.
Hera was called for the butcher's desk right after that. This gave them a chance to cool off. In total, she managed to gather 25 000 gold. She could have gotten close to 40, but the most expensive materials in the lobster were their eyes. Apparently, the eyes had some sort of unique components that could be used to make camera lenses or things like that. The person talking to her wasn't the same person that took the bodies. This butcher explained to her that if she wanted to keep one of the parts, they could just deduct the price from the 25 thousand or if she wanted to sell everything, she didn't even have to come back there. They could have just confirmed the transaction and sent her everything digitally. Hera thanked the butcher after taking her money and headed back to the group. Alex apologized for the accusation, but it was clear that it wasn't the assassin's idea. Still Hera ignored her anger and they kept going.
Before heading to the doorway, they stopped by the hotel to grab their stuff. Now, they were only two rooms away from their destination. The reason why it would take longer last time was because they could stay in Dzviery, but now this was the only place where they could rest inside an actual city. When crossing to the next room, everyone could tell that the mood wasn't the best. Hera was still upset that Alex would consider that she was thinking about something so drastic, and, to make things worse, she could tell everybody was walking on eggshells around her. It was annoying, to say the least, and at times downright infuriating. In any other situation, they would have continued the discussion. Yet, now it seems like not even Alex wanted to continue talking about it.
The room connected to the shallow reef was called Bountiful Coast. It was a massive circular room almost completely filled with farmland and a gigantic inactive volcano in the middle. The reasoning for the name was pretty obvious, the soil. Since everything was made out of volcanic soil, it would help with farming and the general growth of any plant. The island was so large that this was one of the places where people had actual means of transportation. It didn't take long for them to find a place where people would be waiting for the carts that would take them to the top of the volcano. That's where the doorway to the Charring Wastes was located.
Less than three hours after they all woke up, they finally arrived at their destination. The Charring Wastes was a very unique room and home to fire spirits. It was a vast expanse of hot soil with some cracks that would glow beneath their feet for about 40 kilometers or so, surrounded by 41 active volcanoes and a single inactive one. This last one was the one they were coming from, and in the middle of the room, a large city towered over the area. That was their destination, where Helena's lab was located, and all they had to do was pack everything before returning home. But Hera had another plan. She wanted to do some runs in a dungeon here before leaving, which should help her overcome her issues.
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