Laikerns.
That was the name given to the various spiritual beings that existed in this world. They sprang up from all sorts of origins, though the rarest—and most infamous—were those born from the convergence of innumerable dissatisfied wills of the dead.
Long ago, such a being came into existence, and it terrorised ancient civilisation so horrifically that the imperials of multiple continents had to step in and cull the threat.
That entity was referred to as a sage—a unique class granted to only those who reached the peak of mana or ki.
As such, destroying it outright would prove to be too costly. So instead, they sealed it away, permanently binding its essence to a trivial relic that had been carelessly completed at the very last minute.
A century would pass before that being would resurface again. This time, as nothing more than a nuisance, harassing holders of its vessel by bringing minor disasters their way.
With its name long forgotten, it would continue to survive the passage of time until one day it would fall into the hands of a man that even it dared not provoke.
It remembered him clearly, despite the period of being owned by him having been exceedingly brief.
An apocalypse made manifest in human form. None it had witnessed before or since then could compare...
Which was why it was surprised—all these years later—to come into the possession of a boy who gave off the faint traces of that monster. All while possessing all manner of unknown, forgotten, and forbidden knowledge.
"So you started a miniature stampede?" Reoloy asked, idly swinging the mirror, the motion alone enough to disorient Gaiskas. "That's it? You're not hiding anything else, are you?"
"No!" the ancient laikern cried, scrambling to appease the one who held its tether. "No, I'm not!"
Reoloy frowned, gaze drifting off to the side.
"I'm not satisfied with just that," he said flatly. "Cough up some other valuable information."
"What...?"
The unearthly chant left Reoloy's lips once more, sending the spirit into a frenzy of pain and panic.
Its form convulsed, unravelling into shrieking fragments before snapping back together.
"Okay! Okay!" Gaiskas screamed. "There's something I can tell you! Please just stop!"
The reincarnator stared at it like it was nothing.
"Out with it."
"So..."
---
Green mana flared at the blunt spearhead's edges, shaping itself into a blade. In the same motion, the weapon shot forward—piercing a dark-orange, dog-ferret hybrid creature mid-lunge.
Lavere shifted her focus to her feet, triggering her boots' ability, as a shockwave launched her into the trees. She landed gracefully, driving her mana spear into the bark and using the shaft as her leverage.
She scanned the scene, assessing her next move, her frown deepening as more of the same creatures poured out of the woodwork.
A blur of brown leather and short cerulean hair streaked with pink snapped Lavere's attention upward as the figure vaulted over her, landing on a nearby branch.
"There are timber scouts up ahead," the girl reported gruffly, pushing up her brown-and-orange goggles. "I picked off a few sabres on the way here, but as you can see…"
The blonde gave a curt nod. "There's no end to them."
"I should ask…" the girl said, idly toying with the loose collar of her shirt, which doubled as a face cover. "Do you regret coming out here for that guy now?"
"Not in the slightest," Lavere replied without hesitation.
It was no secret to them that she had forced her way into the expedition. The argument she'd had with Gordoi had been loud enough for everyone outside to hear.
It was also no secret why.
She stuck her neck out, even involving the Chieftain, to be here to help Reoloy.
"Edam."
"Yeah?" the colourful-haired girl answered, glancing at her squad captain.
"You came to report the scout sighting," Lavere said calmly. "But you could've handled them yourself, couldn't you?"
Edam grinned, raising her knee in her sitting position and resting against it.
"Not my stage. And I've got no stake in this."
She pulled the white fabric up over her mouth, her grey eyes sharpening as they locked onto a pack of sabre wolves bursting through the trees.
The creatures built speed rapidly before flipping into a spin—the thin edge running from their backs to the tips of their tails gleaming sharper with each rotation.
Edam raised her right hand, forming a gun with her fingers. A small pellet of mana gathered at the tip of her index finger, spinning faster as the beasts closed in.
"Bang."
In a single, fluid motion, she fired—each shot threading perfectly through the brief openings in their spinning forms, punching cleanly through their foreheads.
"But if you're the one giving the order, I'll feel inclined to help out a bit more."
A small smile tugged on Lavere's lips.
"Do what you can to clean up the backline," she instructed. "We'll handle the ones that scurry over here."
"Got it," Edam said with a quick salute before standing and leaping off.
Lavere watched her until she disappeared from sight. Then she turned her attention back to the battlefield below, taking stock of her equipment and the state of the battle down below.
"Now then..."
"There's more to casis than just that, you know," Reoloy said, observing her actions.
Lavere stiffened. She hadn't expected anyone to be watching.
"What?"
She was repairing a plant, long withered, already beginning to rot. It was her training. She didn't know how to expand her reserves, and no one in Cardana understood the nature of her power.
All she could do was work with what she knew.
"It seemed like it," Lavere started slowly, keeping her hopes low. "But you really do know something about this power, don't you?"
"Ah... isolated people, right," he muttered, recalling where he was. "You see those knives over there."
She turned toward a set of practice throwing knives laid out on the porch. Her father had brought them out for the afternoon group training later on.
"Move one of them," Reoloy said, yawning.
Lavere's face remained perfectly still as she returned to her training.
"What's wrong?" he asked, squinting slightly.
"How exactly is picking up a knife supposed to help me get stronger?"
"Well, control for one but—"
Reoloy blinked, then let out a short laugh.
"You didn't get me," he said. "You're supposed to pick it up from where you're standing right now."
That caught her attention.
She looked at him, eyes burning with curiosity.
"How?"
He went quiet, seemingly trying to organise his next words and then raising his finger and pointing at his heart.
"Mana is sometimes called the power of the heart," he started. "Obviously, because that's where it's collected."
Sliding his finger downward across the dark fabric of his jumpsuit, he stopped below his navel.
"Ki is the power of the body," he continued. "It's cultivated in what's considered to be the centre of the vessel."
"Yes, and?" Lavere cut in impatiently.
"Do you know where casis is stored?" he asked.
Lavere paused, frowning.
"In the brain."
"And so?" Reoloy asked expectantly.
Silence reigned for a moment before he sighed.
"It's the power of the mind," he explained tiredly. "Exercise your will through your thoughts and the power that flows through them, and you'll be surprised what you can do."
He clapped three times as if to jolt her awake.
"Now make them float," he said. "I'm trying to see something."
Lavere stared at her palm, thinking about Reoloy's words but still not entirely grasping them.
Her brow twitched at his incessant chants and calls for her to "just do it," but she extended her hand toward the porch and thought just like he said to.
'Move!'
...
"Your explanation sucked."
"There are too many for you guys to clear all at once!" Lavere yelled, grabbing her squad's attention. "Gather them all in one place!"
Immediately, like a well-oiled machine, the warriors shifted their stances, pivoting to herd the sabre wolves toward the tree Lavere was on.
She waited a few minutes, holding until a significant number had pooled beneath her, all while regulating her breathing.
"It doesn't have to be perfect," she muttered, eyes darting across the battlefield. "It just has to be the start."
Her casis roared around her frame. At first spreading up to a metre away before slowly shrinking around her.
The mana knives strapped across her back, waist, and ankles began to lift from their sheaths, floating unstably in the air around her.
Green mana ignited along their blunt edges, forming blades just as it had with her spear.
"Weapons can be made for casis," Reoloy said, patting the stump he was about to sit on. "But that's beyond you right now."
Lavere scowled. "Why?"
"Cardana can't produce them," he said simply. "And you don't have the capacity to handle rogue casis."
"...Rogue?"
Reoloy sat. "That's what you call energy generated from specialised weapons."
He pointed at her spear.
"Mana spears, for example," he continued. "They're faux relics. For someone like you who has no mana, they're perfect."
He pulled his hand back, crossing his arms.
"They produce rogue mana, and you're able to fight just like that."
Lavere nodded slowly, absorbing the explanation.
"So I just use these for now?" she asked, glancing toward Amali as she dragged Roy and Avron over. "Along with that thing you taught me."
"It has a name!" Reoloy snapped, then cleared his throat. "Remember it well—"
"Telekinetic Onslaught No. 1," Lavere muttered as the soldiers finished funnelling the monsters into position and cleared out.
She deactivated the spear's blade, falling forward from the side of the tree. The knives held their positions for a split second—then shot forward in a coordinated burst, raining down on the gathered enemies.
"Chaotic Bombardment."
She steadied herself mid-fall using her boots' propulsion, landing lightly as the attack concluded. Without hesitation, she casually pulled the knives from the corpses and redirected them to pick off the remaining stragglers.
"Boss!" a soldier called, running up to her. "Are you alright?"
Lavere frowned. "I said not to call me that."
He ignored her, already waving the others over with excited shouts of, "She's perfectly fine!"
She looked down at her gloved hands with barely restrained excitement. Reoloy's words were right. This was a start.
In her own way, she had just taken her first steps to a more promising future despite how things looked or how she currently felt.
Her gaze swept over the eleven that stood around her.
"We're moving forward," she declared. "We need to catch up to Edam and find the den before we get encircled again."
"Yes, ma'am!" they shouted in unison.
Lavere twitched slightly in annoyance.
She then stared in the direction they had left Reoloy. It seemed like hours ago. She could only hope for the best now that the situation was like this.
"...He'll be fine," she muttered, pushing off into a sprint at the front of the group.
---
"Whoa..."
Unlike most of the others, Amali was predominantly a magic user. Her fighting style relied heavily on maintaining distance and firing off spells from safe positions.
It was for this reason that she had constructed a squad of four others like her and eight frontliners to keep the pressure away from them while they were casting.
"This is a lot, isn't it?" a blue-haired man said from a branch to her right, carefully adjusting his white cape.
A wave of beasts that stretched as far as their eyes could see.
It was unprecedented in the history of Cardana. Even in the records of past stampedes, monsters of wide varieties hadn't been reported to congregate and move as one like this.
"Reollie was right," Amali said, sweat beading on her forehead. "Things really did get interesting once he got here..."