Spell Card: Accompany.
After use, including the caster, all players within a twenty-meter radius can fly to a designated location, provided it is a place they have previously visited. Alternatively, they can fly to a designated player's location, provided they have seen that player in-game.
The group trekked along the damp, gritty sand of the coastline, heading toward a small seaside town in the hazy distance. The salty ocean breeze whipped at their clothes, carrying the rhythmic, heavy sound of crashing waves. The lineup was an odd sight for anyone watching. A young man, two women, a massive tiger, and a scattered flock of seabirds trailing above. Just like the seven other coastal settlements they had trudged through over the past month, this one featured a tall, weathered lighthouse standing guard near the docks.
"We are almost there. Why are you spacing out?" Bisky asked, stopping her march at the front of the group and turning around with her hands on her hips.
Shizuku paused and looked back as well. Liam was lagging slightly behind, walking with one hand casually stuffed into his pocket. His other hand was guiding his card collection book, which he had summoned from his game ring. The heavy binder floated steadily in midair, spread open to a specific page. He was reading the text closely as he walked.
"We have been searching for an entire month," Bisky sighed, blowing a stray strand of blonde hair out of her face. "How many locations do we even have left?"
"The one right ahead of us is the last," Liam replied, flipping a page.
"If we still cannot find any clues about Razor here, we will have to think of another method," Shizuku noted in her usual flat tone. She manifested Blinky in her hands. With a wet, mechanical hum, the vacuum cleaner spit out a few large chunks of stored meat. Lumos, trotting faithfully beside her, caught the meat smoothly in his massive jaws and chewed happily as he walked.
"I just hope my hard work will not be in vain," Liam said, keeping his eyes on his binder.
In his mind, he pulled up his Death Energy panel. Over the past month of systematically walking the coastline to hunt down Razor, he had not neglected his training. By steadily refining his energy day by day, his total aura capacity had finally climbed to roughly 33,000 points. In his own mental terms, he could now barely be considered the equivalent of five Morels.
As for the rest of his progress, he honestly did not know whether to credit good luck or bad. During their long trek, he had only witnessed other players die nearby on one single occasion. Two sudden deaths in a brief skirmish. Liam had no idea what the fight was even about. He just inexplicably absorbed two death energy points from the aftermath. He had casually dumped those points into the Transmutation system, pushing his upper limit in that category to 93 percent. The residual boost to his adjacent categories bumped his Conjuration affinity up to a perfect 100 percent.
At this point, Liam's potential across the six major Nen types was entirely satisfactory. Aside from Transmutation hovering slightly behind at 90 percent, he was maxed out everywhere else. He was essentially sitting at Kurapika-tier potential without the heavy life-span restrictions.
Liam reached into the floating binder and pulled out a spell card labeled Contact.
Bisky glanced at the card between his fingers. "Who are you trying to contact out here?"
"No one, really. I was just thinking," Liam said, holding the piece of cardstock up to the sunlight. "A spell card is essentially just a mass-produced, card-shaped Nen ability, right? In that case, I am curious about what would happen if I did this."
As he spoke, a large mass of dense aura separated from his shoulder. It quickly stretched and molded itself into the familiar, flowing wide-sleeved robes of the jade-faced Taoist nun.
Deep within his mental panel, the Yin Nen Sword that usually rested across the grey figure's lap suddenly vanished. A split second later, the dark, humming blade materialized directly in the hands of the Taoist Nen beast floating beside him. It was a useful trick Liam had accidentally discovered earlier this month. The Yin Nen Sword, refined and gifted to him by the True Martial King, could actually be wielded by his Nen beast.
When he thought about the mechanics, it was not that surprising. The predecessor of the Yin Nen Sword was a parasitic Nen beast, an entity designed to feed entirely on its host's aura. Since Jade, the Taoist nun, was constructed entirely from Liam's own aura, it made perfect sense that the sword would recognize the beast as a direct extension of its master.
Following Liam's mental command, the Taoist nun raised the Yin Nen Sword and brought it down hard on the Contact spell card pinched in his fingers.
The thirty-three strange, hollow divine characters etched along the Yin Nen Sword were no longer dull and grey. Right now, every single rune was brimming with pure energy, glowing with a brilliant, blinding light.
Bisky had kept her word. Over the course of the month, whenever they rested, she had allowed Liam to strike her with the blade, voluntarily letting it siphon her energy until the battery was completely full. Thirty-three Yin Nen runes were fully lit. According to Liam's internal math, that meant the sword was holding nearly 33,000 points of aura. It was the exact equivalent of draining Liam's entire body dry and pouring every drop into the blade.
Yet, even after having that staggering amount of energy violently drained from her system, Bisky had acted completely fine. She stretched, complained about the sand, and showed absolutely zero signs of fatigue. Even though Liam already knew better than to underestimate the fifty-year-old master, watching her brush off that kind of loss made him think she was utterly terrifying. He felt a little bad for poor Shizuku, who was still blissfully unaware of just how much of a monster their teacher really was.
The Yin Nen Sword had no physical cutting edge, but the moment it struck the spell card, Liam felt a sharp vibration, exactly like hitting a solid brick wall.
"Sure enough, it worked," Liam muttered, his eyes narrowing in focus. He ordered the Taoist Nen beast to chop the card a few more times.
With each silent strike, the complex layer of aura sustaining the spell card grew visibly thinner and more unstable. Finally, unable to hold its structure any longer, the card shattered. It disintegrated into a chaotic ball of pure energy and evaporated into the salty wind, leaving Liam's fingers completely empty.
In that exact split second, Liam's vision went pitch black. The sound of the ocean vanished entirely. In the sudden, suffocating silence, he heard the heavy, distinct clatter of a massive die rolling across a hard surface.
"Liam?"
The darkness snapped away. Shizuku was standing close to him, waving her hand back and forth in front of his face. The sound of the crashing waves rushed back into his ears.
"Did something unexpected happen?" Bisky asked, her tone shifting to high alert as she scanned their surroundings.
Liam blinked, pulling himself back to reality. He frowned, replaying the bizarre auditory hallucination in his head. He quickly circulated his aura, checking his own body for any foreign traces of Nen. Nothing. If a curse or tracking ability had attached to him, he could have just used the Yin Nen Sword to peel it off, but his system was completely clean.
"Maybe it was just some sort of hidden game reminder," Liam guessed, rolling his shoulders to shake off the weird sensation. "Anyway, whether you use a spell card normally or forcibly destroy it like I just did, the end result is the same. The card is gone."
Bisky shook her head, crossing her arms. "I do not know much about video games."
"That is just how older people are. It is a generation gap thing," Liam smiled, brushing the sand off his hands.
Before he could even finish his sentence, a pair of small, white-gloved hands shot out and grabbed him by the collar. With a casual flick of her wrists, Bisky threw him high into the air, launching him straight down the beach.
With the sea breeze roaring loudly in his ears, Liam adjusted his center of gravity mid-flight. He flipped backward and landed softly on the damp sand, his boots skidding to a graceful halt.
With a lazy wave of his hand, the jade-faced Taoist nun standing a hundred meters away dispersed into a cloud of light, rushing back into his body. The Yin Nen Sword streaked through the air like a black line, diving straight back into his mental panel to rest quietly on the grey figure's lap.
It was the ultimate trump card. Any opponent would look at Liam and sense his 33,000 aura capacity, adjusting their strategy accordingly. But in reality, he had another 33,000 points completely hidden in reserve. He looked like five Morels, but he was actually carrying the firepower of ten.
"What are you standing all the way over there for?" Bisky called out, casually strolling up to where he had landed. "Take a good look at this coast. Does it look familiar to you?"
"Hmm." Liam put his hands on his hips and turned his back to the whistling wind. He surveyed the shape of the cliffs, the wide stretch of beach below, and the layout of the town ahead. The lighthouse in the distance was a very distinct landmark.
Shizuku pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, blinking at the scenery. "It seems like we have been here before."
"Wait, really?!" Liam blurted out, staring at her in genuine shock.
Bisky gave him a completely baffled look. "Why are you acting so surprised? Did you two not land together when you first get here?"
The reason Liam was so stunned was simply because it was Shizuku. She had a notorious habit of turning around and completely forgetting anything she did not deem critically important. Once something slipped from her immediate attention, it was wiped from her memory as if it had never happened at all. For her to actually recognize a random stretch of beach a month later was a miracle.
"Well, since you actually have an impression of this place, that is a very good sign," Bisky said, turning her attention toward the buildings. "Let's head into the town and take a look around. I really hope we can find some concrete information about Razor this time."
"Lumos," Liam called out.
The giant tiger instantly quickened its pace, rushing across the sand toward him. Mid-leap, Lumos activated his ability, his massive body dissolving and reshaping into the form of a simple tiger-skin skirt before he even hit the ground.
Liam caught the soft fur out of the air and wrapped it securely around Shizuku's waist, tying it off. Walking around a crowded settlement with a man-eating jungle cat was too ostentatious and would attract the wrong kind of attention. While Lumos's Seventy-Two Transformations drained a massive amount of aura when mimicking complex forms, acting as an inanimate skirt cost almost nothing. Operating in this dormant standby mode, the tiger barely consumed any energy at all. Liam was starting to think Lumos was secretly developing a latent Nen ability just to optimize his own laziness.
"Alright, we will do the usual routine. Split up and gather intel," Liam said, stretching his arms over his head. "Let's meet back at the town square in an hour."
Bisky and Shizuku both nodded in agreement. Once they crossed the threshold into the bustling seaside town, the group naturally dispersed. Bisky vanished into the crowds heading toward the east block, while Shizuku wandered off toward the western markets.
Liam stood near the entrance, watching the players and NPCs moving through the busy streets. With a soft rustle of feathers, a small gray bird dropped from the sky and landed lazily right on top of his head.
"I have been letting you run completely wild for a month, haven't I? You are getting way too lazy," Liam said. He reached up, gently plucking Jaku from his hair, and cupped it in his hands as he started walking forward. "I really should find something productive for you to do. Oh, right. I still haven't done the Water Divination test to figure out your natural aura affinity. I need to go find a glass of water. Stop staring at me. Go find a leaf and bring it back."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Writing takes time, coffee, and a lot of love.If you'd like to support my work, join me at [email protected]/GoldenGaruda
You'll get early access to over 50 chapters, selection on new series, and the satisfaction of knowing your support directly fuels more stories.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~