New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

Chapter 978: Hidden In The Sky

David offered Kary a wand, carved out of the horn of one of the Raiju. It was the only horn they managed to salvage after Alexander's mutated self had ravaged the corpses.

But Kary looked at it and frowned.

"This isn't as attuned to the fire element as the one you made for me when we hunted the goblins in Nebraska..." she complained.

"Yeah. It's lightning attuned, which is fire and wind-based magic. It should work just as well. Unless you want the old wand I made a while back. Luckily for you, it comes without strings attached this time. Well, mostly," David grinned as he produced the wand from his personal bag.

Kary grimaced at the 'Mostly' but still took it.

"I feel like every bit counts right now. Give the other wand to Liu Yan, at least for now. I'm sure he'll be happy," she said flatly.

David shrugged before turning to the young man, who was looking at all of them getting equipment with a slightly jealous expression.

"Rejoice, uncalculated ally. The guild leader has decided to relinquish to you, at least for now, this wand. Hold it for a little while, before we send it into the sky. You'll need to get used to it. Circulate some mana inside it, so you know you can use it properly," he mocked, before handing him the wand.

Liu Yan looked at it with a glimmer of happiness, as he took it with reverence.

"Thank you. I don't know-" he started saying, before realizing David had already walked away.

Jonathan, who happened to be next to him at that moment, chuckled.

"Don't worry about his attitude. He may be a dick, but he's a trustworthy one," the child said, smiling at Liu Yan.

Liu Yan looked at the kid, who looked entirely too young to be part of a hunting expedition, and sighed. Then he realized something.

"Where is your wand?" he asked the kid.

He was seeing everyone get a weapon, yet this kid had nothing passed down to him.

Jonathan smiled at him again, pulling out a necklace from inside his shirt.

The necklace had a bright blue stone ornament, or at least what could be mistaken as a stone, hanging in its center.

The engravings on it resembled the ones on the armours and weapons, with a slight difference. They were engraved infinitely smaller.

The wand in his hand pulsed as Jonathan stepped closer to show him the necklace.

"I don't need anything encumbering my hands. This is plenty, and, judging by your wand's reaction just now, it knows what this is more than anything," Jonathan said with a snide grin.

All he was seeing here astonished Liu Yan. He knew there had been monster sightings around the world, and had even heard about some near his town in China. But he hadn't heard of anyone hunting them down and assumed the government had dealt with it.

Yet, here he stood, with a group of strangers from across the world, as they carried around so much magical gear, made with monster cores and monster materials, almost like they were still inside New Eden...

It was mind-boggling to him.

"Where did you get all this?" he asked the young boy.

Jonathan looked at him, making a grimace, before looking at Alexander and Kary a few meters away from them.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

"I don't know if I can tell..." Jonathan replied hesitantly.

"Then forget I asked," Liu Yan said, shaking his hands sideways as he heard this.

But Jonathan, being only seven, had never been very good at keeping secrets.

He scooted closer to Liu Yan, putting his hand near his mouth, and whispered.

"We've already been on a few hunts. Plus, a lot of the gear comes from a horde of rats that David, Alex, and Kary defeated in the subway tunnels in Montreal. But don't tell them that I told you!"

Liu Yan looked at him with wide eyes.

"All of you have already hunted monsters? How long has this been going on?" he whispered back.

Jonathan shrugged, unsure how long it had been going on. He had only been told about the rats after it happened.

The oldest incident he was part of was the incident with the teenager demonizing in his gramps' underground compound. Which, the thought alone, made him shiver, an itch passing through his arm where it had been severed.

Seeing the child's face suddenly turn pale, Liu Yan understood he had pried enough, and he walked a bit away from him.

'What kind of crazy things have happened around the world?' he wondered, as he looked at the wand in his hands.

Once everyone had been assigned armour and weapons, aside from Liu Yan, who had been an uncalculated addition, they all set them into a pile, and Violette stood before it, soon followed by Jonathan's whose face had gone back to normal.

That's when Liu Yan understood it was time to send the gear up.

He put the wand down into the pile, now used to the feeling of it in his hand, and put himself across from Jonathan and Violette.

He could do magic without the wand, that much he was confident in. But he wondered.

'What kind of difference in power do we have?'

He was confident that he was already way stronger than a normal human being, and could summon forth some pretty decent magic. But these people kept pulling out secrets from their

bags like it was nothing.

Could their level of magic far surpass his?

Violette started the ball, raising her hand at the pile of items, as a puddle of water formed

under the pile, before rising off the ground.

Liu Yan was rather impressed by her control, as she did this effortlessly, but this was far from powerful magic, in his opinion.

But that quickly changed when Violette started enveloping the entire pile in an enormous bubble of water, seemingly effortlessly, and even separated the items by owner inside the

bubble.

The bubble was ten feet in diameter, and nothing inside was touching. But what was most impressive was how the clothes and armour within it almost seemed like they were still dry. 'Is she keeping the water from actually touching the items? How much fine control does she have on her magic?!' he mused, before realizing it was his and Jonathan's turn. Shaking his thoughts away, Liu Yan started focusing on the ball of water, trying to imagine it turning into a cloud, which he knew he could do. But his focus was quickly shaken when Jonathan suddenly shoved the ball upward with a powerful gust of wind.

In a matter of seconds, the ball of water had already shrunk down to the size of a bead in the sky, before he could even change its outer appearance.

Liu Yan had to force himself to concentrate, changing the appearance last second, before the orb of water reached out of his mana senses, and heavy beads of sweat had already formed on

his forehead.

'What in God's name are these people?!' he thought, realizing Violette and Jonathan seemed unfazed by the magic they just performed, whereas he was already feeling tired.