Duty Session 419: Sher Kar Challenge

The Holy Empire Westelande. In the Desert. In the Summer. When there is barely any wind.

Cyrus has probably had worse ideas, but this one is pretty bad of one. The young man has actually abandoned his coat in favor of various leather straps hanging over his body that are bound at the waist and shoulders. The various potions slosh visibly as he moves through the desert sands towards the depths of the desert.

"You were there for the initial issue around this, weren't you?" He asks Mikage as he wipes some sweat from his brow, and lets out a long breath before taking a heavy swig of drink. It's no 'proper desert' like you might expect in the middle of the Sahara, but the deserts of the Holy Empire are still fairly rough for Adventurers who are not made for this kind of heat.

Approaching the Quarry ahead, he slows down and takes a momentary breather. "I think I see some of the ants. Shouldn't bee too much of a problem for the two of us. Let's stay sharp." Cyrus notes, and grabs a potion, then goes for a full shot-put turn and flings it at range towards the ants, hoping to catch the critters by surprise and detonate the flaming potion in their midst.

"Actually, I don't think so." Mikage replies, looking a little bit uncertain. Her mind has been pretty well occupied as of late, but she likely would have remembered something related to the insect problem in the area. "I mean, I'm aware of the rite of passage, if that's what you mean?"

The girl is currently covered in a fine layer of sand, which is being held on by magic, allowing her to blend in to the surroundings. She crouches, looking at the enemy while maintaining that magic. "I think I can get up close to them and spring a trap on them. Back me up with some ranged damage?"

So, keeping that magic built up around her, Mikage does some subtle sneaking until she gets up close, then explodes with a blast of sand and earth magic. It's enough to wrap up the enemy insects in a swirl of sand and start doing damage over time as she maintains the force of the spell.

"Yeah. The Rite of Passage." Cyrus answers her. "It's how the Holy Empire indicates whether or not someone is grown up. Just thought you might have been there last year, when it was disrupted. I might be misremembering." He's hardly the pinacle of memorization.

Mikage luckily makes up for Cyrus' flask going just a bit off to the side, catching only one of the two. With Mikage sneaking in with her own technique, he ends up sliding down the sands to follow her, until he gets to the stone and then runs down to meet up with her as she finishes off the last remaining ant with the efficiency that Cyrus has come to expect of her; the swirling sands crushing the creature to pieces.

"Nice." He remarks, patting her shoulder as the path deeper is open to them now. "Let's see if we can do this without making too much noise and stirring the entire anthill." He then adds, knowing full well that he's not the greatest at the whole sneaking business.

However, they are left with a lot of routes they can pick. Cyrus ends up kneeling down, looking at the remainder of sands on the ground, trying to catch sight of any footsteps. He's been studying slowly from Mikage's own techniques, and practicing back at Shibuya from time to time in the preservation. "I think they came from this way."

"Oh, I was around for that, yeah." Mikage explains, some bit of confusion written on her features. It's almost an attention-deficit situation, it seems, where she sometimes isn't completely tuned in to the moment and lost in her own thoughts. "I thought you meant the bugs."

The pat on the shoulder causes some of the sand to fall off, so Mikage drops the spell and it all falls down around her feet. "That would be a good thing. And a good test of my techniques I've been working on." She could already move quietly, but this is an opportunity to focus on using her environment.

Crouching near Cyrus, she tries to read the same markings, "Rama is a bit better at tracking than I am, but... he doesn't like the giant litter box that is the desert." The cat had stayed behind, not wanting to overheat in the sun, perhaps. "But I do think you're right. Let's go, but let's go quietly."

"You'd think the big cat would like the big litter box." Cyrus answers her, "But I guess with that much fluff, he'd overheat faster than I would in my coat." He nods to her as she acknowledges his reading, and begins to sneak onwards.

His heart then sinks as they come across where they need to go, and there's a rather sizable Sher Kar in the way. "Ssssh..." He mutters a curse under his breath. "Let's try to get by." He whispers to her. "If we have to, we run. If we end up having to defend ourselves, this will be bad." He tells Mikage.

Before breaking off slightly, creeping along the wall, hoping he can be quiet enough that the beast doesn't go for him. But before he knows it, he ends up stepping on a shard of pottery.

CRACK.

"Fuck."

"It's all the fur." Mikage confirms in a distracted tone of voice. "I don't mind the heat so much, so long as we stay out of the hottest parts of the day, it's at least managable."

Knowing very well that they don't want to upset the Sher Kar, Mikage pulls on more of her magical stealth techniques, making her way from rock to summoned rock. Each one lets her blend in to her surroundings rather than being out in the open.

However, Cyrus seems to be not quite so lucky. She winces at the sound of pottery cracking. "You know what, fuck it, run!" Mikage darts out, grabs Cyrus by the arm, and starts pulling him past the monster, knowing that it has certainly seen them.

"Running!" Cyrus answers Mikage the moment she calls out, letting her take his hand. His tail swaying quickly and puffed out as the Monster chomps at it. The Sher Kar ends up with a little plume of fluff in his mouth before they get away. It seems it was sated with just that much, or perhaps it simply decided they were not worth hunting after.

Whatever the case may be, they end up running straight across a few Guard Ants, wielding sticks made out of some kind of Chitin-like material. The upright monsterous ants pointing at them, chittering angrily, and rushing them. Cyrus quickly throws out a potion of Flame Wall to try and cut them off, so they can attack from the sides and flank them. "You go left, I'll go right!" Cyrus calls out, rounding around the flaming wall which momentarily makes it hard to see the ants behind it.

"So much for quiet." Mikage murmurs, though she doesn't actually seem upset about it. "Still, did you see? It didn't even notice me!" Yep, she's still far too caught up in her own technique work to really care about anyone else messing up.

Of course, running into the ants has her skidding to a stop, reaching for the blade at her side. There isn't much room for her usual ranged techniques, so it seems like there is little option but to go up-close and personal. "Right, be careful!"

She charges in, sweeping out her sword, brandishing a few elemental techniques that can be channeled through the blade. However, it takes longer than she would like, figuring the weapon has yet to be upgraded and is still low level. So it is mostly her magic doing the damage, rather than the weapon, itself.

"Clearly I will have to learn from you. Otherwise we'll get spotted any time that you end up dragging me around." Cyrus proposes to Mikage as the two work to deal with the guard ants. Cyrus takes longer than Mikage against them. The Flame Wall keeping them at bay, but Cyrus using his fist techniques to try and crack the Ants' shell takes a lot longer than Mikage's practiced and sharp blade techniques! Her magic ripping up the next one, and she ends up giving the finishing blow to Cyrus' target too.

"Thanks." He notes, before they head deeper, straight into an egg chamber with slow squishy ugly grubs moving towards them, making hungry noises, and slimy ribbons of saliva drooling from their winking 'mouths'. "Ewwww." Cyrus looks sufficiently disgusted by the sight and grabs a series of potions that are holstered beneath his arms. Eight in total, he spreads them out, letting them sail by means of his air technique to deliver them, before the watery-looking substances shatter out of the chambers, and fill the root with the smell of something caustic.

It isn't long before the eggs and grubs begin to /melt/ before their very eyes.

"I'm already teaching Yeowang, I wouldn't mind showing you a few things." Mikage answers. "If nothing else, it would help save your tail if you ever end up in a bad situation without me to pull your butt out of the fire."

She skids to a halt in the egg chamber, looking around and scrunching her nose up somewhat. "Well, this would explain the problem. Gross." She looks around, then back at Cyrus. "I'll keep the egg-minders occupied while you deal with the eggs." A few sparks rise from around her ankles as she bolts into motion.

The girl is surprisingly good at drawing aggro after all this time, able to cast certain spells that draw their attention and keep them occupied while she avoids their attacks, at least until Cyrus is able to do a lot of damage with his abilities and she can turn and burn them down with some DPS.

"So... I would say real world application of stealth techniques was a success. Wouldn't you?"

"I agree. Very succesful." As the final eggs and ants are molten down, Cyrus takes a long breath and sighs out loud. "Alright. Want to see if you can sneak back past the Sher Kar, now that it's on alert and has our scent?" He asks Mikage. "I'll try to make sure I am not distracting it this time."