Even though they had journeyed hard and deep into the night, the members of the Wanderers party all woke up without issue as the sun began to rise. Astrid had taken the last watch, enjoying the quiet of the night as she sat comfortably on a log and spread her awareness into the surroundings. She couldn't understand her surroundings to the level that other, higher tier people could do, or even what Muti could, but there was a solace that came in allowing nature to envelop and change her.
The trees creaked as the breeze passed through them, small bugs in the air flashed iridescent green lights at each other as small rodents scampered from one hiding place to the next. All the while, owls and bats hunted their prey and larger predators approached. A grass lion, a meter and a half tall at the shoulder, began to approach with less than an hour before sunrise. Not wanting to kill the mundane predator when it posed no threat to her and was in its home, Astrid didn't use her sling as she grabbed a small stone, barely too big to be called gravel, and threw it accurately into the creature's snout.
With Acumen-aligned mana flowing through her, Astrid could see as the creature froze and stared in her direction. Its mane, thick and bushy where it sprouted from its neck, bristled as it looked at her while its tail lashed behind it. Seeming to come to a decision, it slowly padded backwards and into the forest once more without attempting to attack the delvers.
Other than that, Astrid allowed herself the brief relaxation that the dark of the night filled with stars, moonlight, and the flashing lights of the insects in the air allowed her. That, accompanied with the constant sound of the rushing water and the heavy press of moisture in the air, let the time pass quickly and comfortably. When the sun's first light began to peek over the horizon, she couldn't help but set about waking the rest of the party to witness the sunrise over the waterfall.
"I get you're excited," Benedict grumbled, though he didn't resist as Astrid pulled him into a sitting position, "but I wouldn't mind getting some more sleep."
"Then sleep," Astrid laughed as she stopped pulling and instead pushed him back down in the bed where she pulled his blanket over his face. "Don't allow me to keep you from your beauty sleep for now. The rest of us will watch the sunrise, and once the sun is truly risen, you can get up."
"That's not what I said," Benedict chuckled standing. "I just like complaining. Thank you for waking me."
"That gratitude is fitting of your position as the singing minstrel," Muti said with a laugh as she idly played with the cords to her new ranged weapons.
"Okay, wait a minute," Benedict raised a finger as he started to put his camping cot and bedding away, "where did you learn the word minstrel? You've always spoken formally, but that seems more to do with how your people talk than because of some deep desire to sound old-timey. Where did you learn the word? I've never heard anybody say it, much less someone who's speaking their second language!"
Muti threw her head back and laughed as she gave no answer. Instead, she pointed to the horizon, where the falls could be seen in all of their beauty. With her calling everybody's attention to it, the reason for them being awake so early was quickly made manifest and they all went silent.
In the light of day, Astrid could see how the waterfall spread. In the brief vision from Ssthall, they had flashed past the waterfall without consideration, but now that she could take her time to look at it, the series of waterfalls spread over a kilometer wide. A series of rapids, gone white and frothing with the force of their fall, stretched across the massive river in cascading steps. As the sun rose, the mist in the air created a constant rainbow patina as the sky turned pink. The clouds seemed to burn with the sun's light, and Astrid enjoyed the thick smell of water in the air. For the first time, Astrid found herself speechless simply from looking at the beauty of the world, and she watched as the rest of her party experienced the same phenomenon.
"The light of the sun has lit the mist on fire—no, that's not it. It's the flaming arrival of, no, that's stupid," Benedict muttered to himself. Astrid looked at him as he struggled over the words and he waved her off. "Yes, you were right, I can't describe it to somebody. I'll practice and see if I can."
Minutes drifted into nearly an hour as the party watched the sunrise, but eventually, they all prepared themselves to leave. After a day of traveling hard, they better understood their own capabilities and quickly fell into a comfortable rhythm of running at a breakneck speed through the forest towards their goal.
The kilometers passed without any issue, and by the time midday came around, Muti was warning the rest that they were getting close to their destination. Astrid wasn't sure exactly how it was that she knew their relative location so clearly, but she also wasn't able to follow the instructions that they had been given, so she didn't question it.
Slowing their pace, the party began looking for any signs of Verdant Walkers being nearby so that way they could coordinate what they were supposed to be doing with their hosts. There was no telling exactly where they would find the Warden who was assigned to speak to them, but they fortunately didn't have to wait long before one of the nearby trees stretched into motion and leaned over them. Astrid stopped and nodded at the Walker as they extended a branch towards her. When their branch made contact with her hand, a familiar voice filled Astrid's head.
Welcome to the outskirts of the heart of the Verdant Sanctuary. I am glad that you were able to come.
"Cresche," Astrid replied with a grin, "I never knew that you would be the person we would speak to here!"
It was not absolutely positive that my Grove and I would be able to reach here in time. Regardless of my own unwillingness to move, I am here to give you the instructions that you need to proceed with your task. Are you ready?
"Of course," Astrid answered. "One small thing I am curious about is why we are being asked to take care of this flock of harpies when there must be plenty of much stronger people around who could do the job with less difficulty than we'll face."
Foremost among the reasons, Cresche answered, is the difficulty in reaching flying enemies for us. For obvious reasons, we pushed ourselves in the Trials, but it should not be difficult to imagine why it is that a tree struggles to kill a hostile bird.
Astrid nodded in acceptance and waited for them to continue explaining. The description of what these harpies looked like, where they came from, and where they had gone passed between them quickly, and the Wanderers quickly understood what their task was. When they asked clarifying questions about what the enemy monsters were capable of, though, the answers they got were frustratingly vague, except for their numbers: seven harpies to kill. Regardless of a dearth of information, they faced plenty of monsters in the final weeks of the Trials without any information to guide them besides what they found for themselves.
"Then we thank you for the opportunity to find sanctuary within the Verdant Sanctuary," Astrid smirked a little at the accidental play on words. "We look forward to proving that trusting in us was worth it."
Without any further communication, the Wanderers settled into more of a battle formation than they had traveled in until then. Muti took the lead, as she was their primary scout, Felix behind her to take the enemy aggression if necessary while Benedict and Skandr walked behind them. Astrid stood in the back in case something managed to ambush the party, and they began their path.
After effectively 24 hours of hard travel, Astrid was surprised at how much energy she retained to keep aware through the forest. Time and time again, it seemed like the world conspired to remind her how she was no longer, in the strictest sense of the word, a regular Human. After all, it wasn't a Human that could run at over 100 kilometers an hour for hours on end, jump twenty meters straight up, or command gravity itself to do as she commanded.
Before she could lose herself in those thoughts, though, Muti slowed down and pointed forward. Her intent was obvious enough, and Astrid uncoiled her sling from her wrist. She'd taken to keeping the finger loop permanently on her right index finger while the rest of the cord was wrapped around her wrist and tucked back in under itself. Due to the limitations of an equipment Skill, she couldn't have two weapons stored away as well as her shield, but this solution worked more than well enough for her to be able to use either weapon whenever she needed without compromising her ability to use her shield.
With enchantments applied to the braided tendons that made the cord applied by one of the journeying Steel tiers, Astrid knew she had a dangerous weapon in her hands. In fact, it gave her a passive boost to both her Power and Alacrity, +10 to each, so it was, technically, a better weapon than her hammer. It was very nearly a Steel tier weapon, considering it wasn't her primary equipment, but, in reality, due to Steady Load and how it was enmeshed into her equipment Skill, the sling couldn't hope to give her nearly as much of a numerical bonus to her. Regardless, she'd enjoyed filling in her sheet with the description of her newest weapon.
Dragon Turtle Tendon Sling: enchanted to strengthen the ammunition it throws. Provides: +10 to Power, Alacrity.
She couldn't help but feel that there was certainly something missing with regards to eloquence or showmanship in her own description, but Astrid enjoyed looking at it when she had some time. For now, she finally could take it on a test run.
Where Muti had pointed, there was a large nest in the crown of a tree; the branches that made it sticking out haphazardly in every direction. Crusted white droppings dripped onto the leaves of the proud oak, and the screaming chatter of the harpy monsters filled the air. Muti slowly swung her blades on strings, something she called an extended rope dart, around herself, but waited for Astrid to make the opening attack.
Astrid put a regular stone of about the size of a fist into the pocket of her sling as Skandr slowly channeled a spell. Since they didn't know all of the Skills of these monsters, Astrid also went ahead and activated both of her Auras. Immortal Warrior's Aura was simple enough, just ensuring she could protect the two more vulnerable members of the party, but Heroic Aura ensured that the squawking, birdlike creatures couldn't turn the tide against her allies with an unexpected mind-affecting Skill.
With her allies all under her protection, Astrid swung the sling over her head two, three times before she unleashed the stone towards the nest. Once the sling was complete, she'd learned what its main function was, other than to hold together while she used it: to turn whatever she used as ammunition into a much sturdier material, just for long enough to smash against her targets. In this case, she knew that a regular stone wouldn't have been able to destroy a flock of Iron tier monsters' home, but her opening attack blew the nest into smithereens. Branches flew everywhere as two harpies tumbled out of the air and two more managed to get aloft before they tumbled through the tree's branches.
Astrid didn't wait for them to recover before she put one of Skandr's frostbite-enchanted pieces of ammunition into her sling and hurled it at one of the beasts. With Astrid's clear view, she watched as the harpy, its torso like a naked woman's, exploded into shards of ice. Her attack struck center mass, and caved in her chest as the frost magic froze every bit of her flesh. The shockwaves of the attack pulsed through the frozen body and reduced her to shards of frozen flesh that rained on the ground as the kill notification flashed.
Carrion Harpy slain. 480 experience gained, split among party.
Astrid slowed herself a little without thinking. How was it so simple to kill the monster? And it gave so little experience! She quickly pushed off that thought, realizing that it was a level 38, so under her own level, but still in the same watershed as her and the rest of the Wanderers. She'd gotten too used to being spoiled by the Wandering Trials' accelerated experience, and the regular amount offered had taken her by surprise. More than that, though, was the pitiful weakness of the monster in front of her.
Regardless of how weak they were, it was her job to kill them, and Astrid placed another of the enchanted, disposable pieces of ammunition in her sling. The other two harpies that had fallen swooped out from tree cover as Muti disappeared to deal with them. Taking that as her sign to keep going with the highest flying monster, Astrid whipped the sling over her head three more times and loosed her shot. The windburst-enchanted piece of ammunition flew fast and true, but right as the sonic boom of her sling's cords whipping through the air cracked out, a thought occurred to Astrid and she winced.
If the physical force of her last piece of ammunition had blown the monster apart, what would this one do to it?
The answer immediately arrived as the second harpy exploded into a fountain of red mist. Skandr's ammunition, more than overkill on these weak monsters, smashed into the monster's body and erupted in blades of ripping wind that splattered blood and gore in every direction. Where they stood some 60 meters away, Astrid wasn't safe from a thin misting of blood that she tasted more than she saw. She spat the iron flavor from her mouth as she saw Muti appear in a tree near the two remaining harpies in sight.
Both of her darts lashed out, one piercing straight through one of the harpy's heads and killing it outright while the other wrapped around the other's neck. She hauled herself close and her seax appeared in her left hand before she decapitated the monster with one quick motion. She continued falling after that, but Astrid only heard the thump of the harpy bodies hitting the ground, not Muti. Despite herself, Astrid couldn't help but chuckle a little at the immense competence that her friend had just shown.
With four of the seven monsters destroyed in simple first combat, Astrid breathed heavily through her nose and looked at Skandr.
"Do you know where the other three are? I don't think this is going to be too difficult."
"Yeah, we're finally seeing the results of having Classes as high of rarity as we do," Skandr answered without answering the question she'd actually asked. "In the Trials, everything grew comparatively stronger as we did, so we never really enjoyed the different in attributes that we can now. Please, don't waste my ammunition on any more of these. It's free to make, but still takes about ten minutes for every shot you take."
Astrid nodded her head and apologized as she asked again, "Do we have any idea where the others are? I want to get into the Dungeon and actually have a difficult fight."
"I do," Muti said as she popped out of a nearby bush. She'd left the corpses behind and pointed off to the middle distance as she spoke.
"Then lead the way," Astrid commanded as she rolled her shoulders. Maybe they could actually slow down now?