“Can you ride horses?” Cain asked Gracie who was sitting in front of him. She was sitting sideways with her legs dangling to the side.
“I never rode one before. Can I just sit on his back and wiggle the reins?” Gracie asked as he pulled the reins.
“It’s more complicated than that. I will teach you later.” Cain pulled the reins and poked the horse in the side with his ankles.
NeighAAAAAA! The horse lifted his front hooves and raced ahead like the wind. Cain steered it between the trees like a master, the horse didn’t even slow down in the middle of the forest.
“Don’t try this alone. It’s generally bad to mount a horse at this speed in the forest. The ground is uneven so he might break his legs and you can hit the trees.” Cain said as they weaved through the forest. Cain was making it seem easy but Gracie knew that they would have crashed if it was anyone else.
“Did you ride horses before?” Gracie asked. Cain understood that she didn’t mean just getting on the back of a horse. She was asking about where his skill came from.
“I did ride one to war, you have to be this skilled to dodge spears and halberds coming at you,” Cain replied. That did happen in his past life when he was in the elvish kingdom, wars usually broke with the dark elves so he joined them a couple of times.
The only difference was that he wasn’t riding a horse, he was riding a unicorn. Elves use unicorns while dark elves use bicorns.
After a few minutes’ ride, Cain and Gracie reached the dungeon entrance. The dungeon gate took the shape of a hole in a tree trunk. After Cain inspected the magic coming from it, he learned that it was an A-rank dungeon.
“Is it good?” Gracie asked as she saw Cain touch the gate.
Cain turned back toward her, “Yep, just an A-rank. You should be able to clear it alone.” Cain smiled.
Gracie stared at him. An A-rank dungeon this close to the city should be an emergency right? “What do I need to do?”
“We will go inside. You will start killing everything while I watch.” Cain replied with a charming smile.
“You won’t help? We would clear it faster together,” Gracie, said as she thought about how much time it will take her.
Cain entered the dungeon and she followed him. “I need you to get experience, as well as see how strong you are. Selena has brute force but she falls easily for mental magic like sleep, Sofia has unmatched firepower but she consumes a lot of MP and won’t survive long without me supplying her with mana. Alice is a problem to fight with her cursed Decay and holy magic. However, she is hindered by her kind heart and inability to transform in public. You on the other hand have multiple skills, weapons, and shadow magic on top of that for both stealth and guaranteed hits. Compared to them your weakness is that you lack emotions, they are necessary for quick decision making.” Cain explained as he cast [Darkvision] on Gracie, he didn’t want her to waste her MP.
“So what type of monsters live here?” Gracie asked and Cain smiled.
“Demonic monsters!” Just like how humans can transform into demons by bathing in the cursed energy of devils. The same thing applied to all living things.
“The boss is probably a devil. I want you to kill everything. Can you give me the wand that you use to cast magic and also one of your rings?” Cain pointed toward her wrist.
She took the small want she was hiding in her wrist and one of her rings and handed them to him.
[Summon Fey: Mei]
Cain summoned the Pixie Mei.
Yawn! “What is it, I was taking a nap.” Mei rubbed her eyes.
“Sorry for interrupting your sleep. I wanted you to enlarge this wand for me. I want it to be the same size as my forearm.” Cain asked gently.
Mei stared at him and then stared at Gracie. “You can do it yourself. You have the knowledge right?”
“It’s true but I’m not an expert on enlarging organic matter, I can do it for minerals though. Also since you are a Pixie, can’t you sprinkle something on it for me?” Cain smiled as he looked at her.
She gave him a weird look, “You want me to sparkle fairy dust on it? That will lock it to one spell you know?”
“I know, that’s why I called you here. I also have this.” Gracie’s ring glowed in his hand as Cain enchanted it to become a catalyst temporarily.
The moment Mei saw Cain’s magic her eyes started to sparkle. “What was that, it was magic but not a spell? It flew into the metal…Hey, can you show me again?” Mei started rubbing her body at Cain’s cheek, he quickly picked her up by the wings.
“I will show you later, now hurry as I don’t have much time on my hand.” Cain glared at her.
“Fine, here you go!” Mei stepped on the want and used her hands to rub her wings and sparkle some dust on the wand. [Enlarge]
They want to extend and grew thicker. Mei stopped when it was the size of Cain’s forearm.
“Thank you!” Mei disappeared after Cain thanked her.
[Enchanting: Fireball]
“Here, use the ring as a catalyst and the wand has a fireball spell. You can cast it just by thinking, don’t worry about the mana requirement.” Cain handed everything to Gracie who quickly hid the want in her shadow pocket.
“I have to kill everything right?” Gracie asked.
“Yes, kill anything that moves. Besides me of course.” Cain smiled as he saw Gracie walk into the darkness. [Invisibility] [Soundless] Cain hid his presence so the demonic monster won’t know he was there.
Gracie was alone as she walked down the cave-like dungeon.
Swoosh! She pulled one of her daggers as she felt something move in the distance. It was time to work. Cain saw that the thing that moved was a demonic spider. But it was significantly smaller than the boss they fought before being the size of a sheep.
Gracie’s body disappeared, as she became one with the darkness. Thud! She appeared right behind the small demonic spider. With a single swing, she gouged the spider’s stomach open.
Crack! When the spider died, a worm-like monster jumped from the ground at Gracie. The worm was about to hunt the spider so she now is going for Gracie.
With a swift move from her wrist, she pulled the wand and shoved it in the worm’s mouth to stop it. [Fireball] Kaboom! The worm exploded into small pieces as the fireball blew its insides.
When Gracie looked around, spiders surrounded her, they must have heard the call of spiders dying.
Since the entire place was pitch black. [Elemental weapon: Shadow blade] Gracie took a step ahead and swung her dagger in the air. A shadow blade flew from it and sliced two spiders ahead.
[Shadow cover: Shadow step] As she usually does, she jumped into the shadows and appeared right in front of her still flying shadow blade. Cling, she caught it with her dagger and deflected it toward more spiders.
At the moment she was bent over after deflecting the shadow blade, about four spiders jumped at her back.
Just before they land on her, they saw a wooden stick emerge from under her armpit. Kaboom! She blasted them with a fireball.
She disappeared into the shadows again and appeared in the middle of the spiders. Zip! She pulled her steel wire and tie one spider from the head. Thud! Gracie stomped the ground as she tore the spider’s head.
She then swung the wire around and entangled a couple more spiders. Just a slight pull was enough to cut their limbs off.
[Shadow cover: Shadow step] Gracie’s body started disappearing and appearing again, each time she appeared, she would slice a couple of spiders and blast some with a fireball.
Cain watched the carnage with a smile. ‘She is truly something.’ Cain didn’t expect her to be that good at using the wand of the fireball. Well, the weapon was simple, aim and a fireball will emerge but still. Her Skills were something else.
‘If I ranked them with skill and fighting talent alone, Gracie is unmatched.’ Cain thought about the girls and how would they face such a fight.
Alice will just spam her cursed Decay. Selena will start ripping them apart with her claws while Sofia will just spam fire at them. Gracie on the other hand is using her dagger, all of her skills, magic, and even the new weapon I gave her.
It was a good idea to bring her here.