Melayne was getting closer to completing her quest.
Her quest required her to pay an exorbitant amount of opal stones to the Iron Hermit, all of which she had to earn herself. She had been working for months now.
Jax had been commissioning her for weapons and armor, which had been helping her gather the stones she needed. His orders alone had brought her nearly three hundred stones over the past few weeks. Other people had commissioned weapons too. Her reputation as a capable crafter was spreading through the village, and the steady work was paying off.
She decided she could afford to take time off and go fight in the forest.
She needed to acquaint herself with the two new people who had joined her party. She needed to understand them. Jax had spoken highly of both, but she preferred to judge for herself. Trust in combat couldn’t be built through words alone.
"So you’re a Sorcerer?" She asked Lucille when they met again.
"I am," Lucille replied simply.
"And you’re a spearman, right? Do you have ranged attacks?"
Ning shook his head. "I must get close and personal with the monsters to kill them, I’m afraid. Ranged attacks don’t work that well for me."
Melayne looked toward Jax and grimaced.
She quickly realized that their party was lopsided. There was no balance. Jax, Ning, and she were all melee fighters. Most parties she knew had at least one dedicated ranged fighter and someone focused on support. Still, she thought it would be fine since the monsters she would be fighting were weaker than what she was used to.
"So we three are all close-range fighters," she said, looking at Ning’s spear and Jax’s axe.
"More or less," Jax replied. "Though I do have a binding spell that can work at a distance."
"No ranged attacks though," Melayne said, sighing. "Well, at least we have Lucy."
They went into the forest as a party, but Ning and Jax took care of every monster they came across.
Be it Treehoppers, Cinder Ant, or Phantom Gorilla, all died within moments of appearing.
Melayne watched as Ning danced around his targets, finding their critical spots with practiced ease. His movements were economical, wasting no energy on unnecessary flourishes. Jax’s binding threads held monsters in place for devastating axe strikes that split chitin and bone alike.
Lucille and Melayne had no chance to even fight.
"You two are efficient," Melayne said after watching Jax cleave through a Phantom Gorilla in three clean strikes. The creature had been dead before she could even draw her sword.
"We’ve had practice; I more than most," Ning said. "These monsters aren’t particularly challenging once you know their patterns."
"Makes me wonder why I bothered bringing my weapon," Melayne muttered.
Melayne wanted to fight too. They met a Seven Crowned Treant next, and she wanted to fight it along with Lucille.
The massive tree creature towered above them, easily twice the height of a man. Its seven branch-crowns swayed ominously, each one thick as a person’s thigh. Bark covered its surface like natural armor, and its roots dug deep into the forest floor, creating a web of wooden obstacles around its base.
"Don’t you two dare interfere," Melayne said, hand moving to her sword hilt. She turned to Lucille "Come, we finally have a chance to fight something."
Lucille, however, declined the invitation.
"My spells take too long to activate. I might hit you by accident."
She told Melayne about her restriction, but didn’t tell her it was part of being an Ascendant.
"That’s quite a limitation," Melayne said, studying Lucille’s face for more information. "How do you manage in combat?"
"Carefully," Lucille replied, offering nothing more.
Melayne wondered why Jax had let her join the group. A sorcerer who couldn’t cast spells reliably seemed like a liability. She trusted him without question though, and turned her attention to the Treant.
She drew her runic sword, which glowed with subtle yellow light. The blade hummed slightly, pulsing with energy as she held it. The sword was her own work, crafted over weeks of careful preparation for her own use.
It was perhaps the best weapon she had ever created.
When she swung, fire trailed behind her sword. Each strike left a char mark on the Treant’s bark, the flames eating into the wood with satisfying hisses. She was great at dodging, rolling away from the creature’s grasping branches and returning with quick, precise attacks.
The Treant groaned and swung its massive limbs toward her. Melayne ducked under one branch, spun away from another, and carved a burning line across its trunk. The smell of burning wood filled the air.
"She’s faster than I expected," Jax said.
He helped restrain the monster with his Divine Threads when it became too aggressive for Melayne to handle alone, but other than that, he let her fight it on her own.
Melayne attacked again. Her sword strike ignited the Treant’s bark, flames spreading across its surface like wildfire.
The Treant was very weak to fire damage, and with active fire upon it, its death was moments away. As the fire spread, destroying the branches became easy. All of its seven branches were easily cut off after that, falling to the ground one after another.
Melayne swung one last time, cleaving through the last branch. As it fell, she too landed to the side, finally done with the fight.
She was tired at the end, sweat beading on her forehead, but she felt exhilarated. She had won. She hadn’t had a chance to fight like this in months, not since she’d started focusing entirely on her crafting quest.
Better yet, she had done most of the fighting all alone.
She gathered the four floating opal stones from the dead Treant, keeping them away with satisfaction. Every stone brought her closer to her goal.
"That felt good," she said, breathing heavily but smiling. She looked around at her companions, then deeper into the forest where stronger creatures waited. The easy monsters had been disappointing, but this fight had reminded her why she enjoyed combat.
"Let’s go find a boss."