Chapter 40 - Growing

"Congrats!" Rose shouted with a big cheesy grin. "Your second ever monster kill!"

Lily finally breathed; she hadn't even realized she was holding it until now. "Thanks… But it's kind of my first. I don't think the dire hawk counts?"

"The dire hawk totally counts!" Rose disagreed. "Anyway, that was a pretty nice flame! Very precise!"

Lily blushed. "Thanks… I'm just glad I didn't miss."

"That would have been a little embarrassing." Rose teased. "After defeating a dire hawk, you're defeated by a mere slime."

Rose laughed, and Lily found herself joining in with a giggle.

"So, do you feel any different?" Rose asked.

"I'm not sure… I don't think so?" Lily questioned, tilting her head.

She placed her hand on her right chest before closing her eyes. She wanted to try interacting with her Mana Core when she recalled what Arakil had mentioned about monsters. Instead, she began a spiral cycle and nearly gasped in surprise.

There's more ambient Mana!

She quickly started cycling it. Although there were faint traces of black specks in the Mana, she increased her spiral to give it enough time to purify the black specks before they reached the center of her silvery moon.

The monsters turn into black flakes when they die, so this must be from the slime, right? Lily wondered.

She was relieved when the black specks turned into the pure, glowing motes she was familiar with; much like how she had purified the red Mana that came from Rose's blood. When she was done, she sighed in relief, although she was slightly disappointed at how little there was.

It was only a slime… Can't be too greedy.

"Well?" Rose asked when Lily opened her eyes.

"There was more ambient Mana; it looked a little like the black flakes the monsters turn into," Lily explained.

"Awesome! So your Mana Core grew?" Rose asked excitedly.

Lily held up her hand and pinched her thumb and index finger. "Maybe a tiny, tiny bit. I would have struggled to notice it if the ambient Mana wasn't so bad."

"Makes sense," Rose nodded in agreement. "It was only a little slime. Hopefully, we can find a gremlin or something!"

Rose held out two fingers from her closed hand, then made a shooting gesture before a mimicry of the firebolt spell Lily had just produced shot out from her fingertips into the ground.

Rose grinned. "Then we kill it, and both grow stronger!" She tapped her chest, "I got a tiny surge of energy from your kill, so it looks like we do split the power! You and me, all the way to the top!"

"Yeah!" Lily agreed, trying her best to match Rose's enthusiasm.

They couldn't see anything nearby after the slime, so they went to the forest. However, before they reached it, Lily remembered that she hadn't applied her shield talisman.

Pulling out the small piece of paper, she slapped it against her chest to activate it. The paper glowed with silvery light before fastening itself to her. A few inches away from her body was a semi-translucent glow covering the front of her body. One could, if they looked closely enough, see the interlocking hexagons on the glowing outline.

Lily pulled out another one and handed it to Rose, who slapped it on her back so that she could reproduce the effect.

"I don't understand why you couldn't just make one that surrounded your whole body like the last time?" Rose wondered aloud.

"The glyph ink isn't strong enough for that. Well, at least not for any reasonable duration," Lily explained. "I have a slightly different type that Arakil suggested as well; I can hold it in my hand and activate it like a shield. It's much larger and better, but I can't leave it on passively like this."

"I guess this is more to protect against surprise attacks…" Rose suggested.

"Yeah…" Lily replied. "Hopefully, once I can imbue my own ink or learn spells, I can just use those instead. But these work for now."

With their preparations out of the way, they continued into the forest. Rose's presence immediately made some of the creatures flee, so the dragon girl rushed them down and swiftly dispatched them. It seemed to mostly be animals, like wolves.

Rose swiftly dealt with them before Lily could even think about it, and when she tried to perform the spiral meditation, she noticed it produced significantly less than the slime had.

Is it because it's not technically a monster? These aren't even dire wolves yet. Or is it because Rose killed them? Lily wondered.

The next wolf they came across, Lily quickly tried to claim it, but the wolf fled out of the range of her firebolt, and the spell dispersed into nothingness.

Rose quickly finished the job with her own firebolt and then turned to Lily with an apologetic smile.

"You almost had it!" Rose reassured her. "If you weren't limited by range, I think that would have been a direct hit!"

Lily's ears drooped. "Yeah… If only they would stop running away."

"Sorry… Looks like the forest critters don't like me very much," Rose replied as she scratched the back of her head.

"Don't worry about it," Lily dismissed Rose's concerns. "I'll get my chance eventually. Maybe I need to adjust my next glyph to have a 30-meter range?"

"Or… Maybe sneak around with the shadow cloak?" Rose suggested.

"If it's daytime, I don't know how effective that will be, but it might work!" Lily answered.

They continued their trek into the forest when Rose spotted something hanging from under a large tree—a giant spider.

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"There's something for you to shoot at!" Rose said excitedly.

Lily shuddered a little. "I hate spiders…" She whispered.

Rose giggled. "Well! If you hate them, you can take it out by burning them! Nothing like solving your problems with a thorough application of fire."

Rose gave a teasing wink with a playful expression, but Lily failed to find the humor. She really hated spiders, and the giant variety certainly made things worse.

To try to calm herself down a bit, she did a quick cycle of her Mana Core. The refreshing sensation seemed to help a little, so she gathered her courage and pulled out her scroll.

"I hate to say this… But I think you need to get a bit closer," Rose informed Lily.

Lily gulped and began carefully sneaking forward. The spider seemed not to even notice them, or perhaps they were lucky, and it was distracted or uncaring about their presence. Eventually, Rose held out a hand for Lily to stop and pointed towards the dangling creature.

Lily held her breath as she pulled out another page. She wanted to scream as she began lining up the shot, which unfortunately meant she had to pay very close attention to the monstrous spider.

Why do they have to have so many legs!? And those creepy hairs on its back? And those fangs… And the web… Ugh…

She focused the Mana on her fingers, and the page once again burned into orange scraps. The firebolt flew out and struck the spider.

Direct hit! Lily cheered.

The spider fell from its web and hit the ground with a sickening sound. Lily thought perhaps it was dead already, but it then began to writhe on the ground and let out a hissing noise as it burnt.

"Ugh… Gross…" Rose admitted.

Lily grabbed her ears and pulled them down over her face as she closed her eyes, trying her best to put the sound and sights out of her mind. She started the spiral cycling, awaiting the sudden burst of black flecks when the spider died.

Moments later, there was another influx of the blackish Mana, and Lily got to work. It seemed like a larger amount than the slime, which meant it was either more monstrous than the wolves or doing the job herself was more rewarding.

Or maybe even both? If we encounter another spider, I'll leave it up to Rose.

When Lily was done, she explained the findings to Rose.

"Hmm…" Rose mumbled as she contemplated before she shrugged sheepishly. "No idea. But I'll gladly burn the next spider to a crisp."

"Please do…" Lily pleaded.

"Well, we are almost at the ritual site. After that, we better head back before anyone starts getting worried."

Lily nodded. They certainly hadn't planned on taking this much of a detour, but she was worried about the ritual site. They certainly hadn't done any cleanup since the event, and who knows what questions might be raised if someone stumbled across it?

To her dismay and relief, they didn't encounter another giant spider before trudging through the brush to the tiny glade they had used for the ritual. When they breached into the clearing, Lily gasped at what she saw.

A small pack of tiny monsters skittered across the stone disc. They appeared to be defacing it by either smearing mud across it or trying to scratch and break it with rocks and pointed sticks.

They had oversized heads bobbing atop wiry, hunched bodies. Each had an enormous mouth filled with rows of tiny, jagged teeth that clattered as they chattered.

Their colorful skin shimmered in a wild array—neon green with black patches, a jaundiced yellow, and swirling orange and purple stripes.

Long, pointed ears twitched with every sound, and their bug-like eyes gleamed with mischief. They moved as a chaotic unit, giggling and jostling one another.

"Gremlins!" Rose said in an excited whisper.

"Those are gremlins?" Lily asked, having never seen them in person.

"Yeah… We might have hit the jackpot…" Rose grinned fiendishly.

Lily gulped. She wasn't sure if she should be more afraid of the gremlins or Rose's glee.

"What's the plan?" Lily asked in a hushed whisper.

"I've never seen this many before…" Rose admitted. "They are pretty weak. I could go in and distract them while you take potshots and hopefully hit a few."

"That sounds dangerous!" Lily said in a hissed whisper. "What if I accidentally hit you?"

Rose gave a toothy smile. "No offense, Lily, but I don't think you can burn me."

Lily gaped but then nodded. It was a truth that you never wanted to get into a fire fight with a Dragia.

Lily had hoped or expected some more discussion or preparations, but that all went out of the window when Rose basically leaped out of the bush and charged toward the stone disc with fiery ferocity. Snarling, claws out, and tail whipped up into a frenzy.

Lily gulped and pulled out two pages, keeping one of the other shield spells in her left hand while holding another firebolt in her right before sneakily approaching.

Rose had no subtlety. Upon seeing the fiery dragon, the gremlins nearly panicked but masked it with a chittering cacophony of a laugh. The first one Rose made contact with, she punted with a swift kick—sending it skidding across the stone surface.

The hostile action sent the other gremlins into a frenzy. They gnashed their teeth and began to hop and bounce around. The ones with mud, sticks, and stones began flinging them toward her.

With a backhanded wave, Rose chuckled and sent a small gout of flame that incinerated the makeshift projectiles. She then charged at the nearest gremlin and landed a solid flaming punch against it before she started laughing.

Lily was so startled that she nearly forgot to fire her own attacks. She'd never seen this side of Rose before, or at least never to this degree.

I really hope her trip with Lady Desthu calms her down a bit… Lily secretly hoped.

Grasping the page in her hand, she lined up a shot at the gremlin recovering from the kick. The firebolt manifested and soared with blazing speed, striking the tiny monster. It let out an ear-piercing screech before exploding into black flakes.

Lily pulled out another page. She was rapidly running out of the basic attack ones, and if her memory was correct, she had, at best, two more left. She fired another firebolt at one, but in her panic, the shot went wide and missed.

The gremlin spotted her after the attack and grinned with its enlarged mouth showing rows upon rows of jagged teeth. Lily wanted to scream, but the sight was interrupted by the gremlin being engulfed in an explosion of flame—Rose!

Rose was a one-girl fiery tornado, and it looked like Lily wouldn't even have the chance to use her final firebolt spell. Lily was basking in the action scene when there was a cracking sound behind her, followed by something sending her plunging face forward.

Lily cried out in shock as she fell but remained uninjured. She noticed the remnants of the talisman burning up.

Something attacked me from behind!

In a frantic panic, she activated the shield glyph in her left hand and tumbled around to face her attacker. Another gremlin must have been hiding; its blue polka-dotted skin looked hideous as it gave Lily a sharky smirk.

The shield glyph activated, and a hemisphere of brightly glowing and interlocking hexagons manifested. The magical construct was anchored to Lily's left hand, which she held out defensively in front of herself.

The gremlin lunged forward but failed to break through the shield. It tried again and again but was unable to penetrate it. Lily saw cracks starting to form in the hemisphere, and she quickly grabbed the final firebolt talisman. She tried to dump Mana into it immediately, bringing it face forward to the gremlin.

The gremlin snarled moments before the bolt of flame struck it directly in its toothy maw and continued to soar out through the back of its throat. There wasn't even time for it to screech before it exploded into black flecks.