[TEA] (226) 5.12. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a man! (Patreon)

In the end, it turned out there was one last thing Asher hadn’t really considered all that well when it came to them finally bringing the fight to the lich. They had the staffs with the lich’s scent, and they had Rulfar to track the lich down using them. What they didn’t have, was a very good method of moving quickly while doing so.

Their usual method of rapid travel to a location that Asher didn’t already have an Eternal Mark near involved pulling Moxy and Rulfar into Asher’s Personal Rift, and then relying on Samantha’s Wing element. Asher would hop onto her back both to keep her company and to navigate, using a map he’d already Incorporated and his various Eternal Marks scattered around the kingdom as reference points, and she’d fly them to wherever they needed to go. Thanks to her Long Flight skill, she could fly for quite a while before needing to rest, allowing them to travel far faster than any caravan ever could.

The only problem was, Rulfar couldn’t track anything while tucked away in another dimension.

In his partial bear form, the bloodhound was fast. Not nearly as fast as Samantha was in the sky, but fast enough that Asher certainly wouldn’t want to challenge him to a foot race, even with Distortion on the table. Yet despite Rulfar’s speed, according to his nose, they needed to cover a few thousand miles. While he certainly could run that distance given enough time and, largely thanks to his Strength element giving him some incredible endurance, none of them wanted to spend the next few weeks slowly moving across the kingdom as they followed the lich’s scent.

Which meant they had to get creative.

“I can’t say I like this method of travel very much!” Rulfar shouted from underneath Samantha, the man’s face looking a bit pale as he glanced down at the ground zipping by a good half-mile below him. His legs were dangling below him, and the bloodhound looked like he was having second and third thoughts about agreeing to this. “You know, we could just track the lich like I normally do! It would take longer, but I don’t think I’d mind!”

“Don’t worry, if that potion of Feather runs out, I’ll just pop over to Dormaul and buy a new one!” Asher grinned, safely tucked on Samantha’s back like usual. “I bet Polly would be more than happy to see me again!”

“Are we still on track, Rulfar?” Samantha asked, ignoring their banter as she focused on flying in the exact direction Rulfar had indicated a few minutes ago. Samantha was currently holding onto Rulfar’s wrists, flying with the man dangling below her like some sort of muscular kite. Along with slowing down the speed of which a person fell, the potion of Feather reduced a person’s weight to almost nothing. That made it not only the perfect emergency potion for when someone was falling, but also the best method of carrying a particularly large man across the sky so he could continue tracking his prey.

“Five degrees more to the right,” Rulfar said, his fear vanishing for a moment as he focused on his skill and stared out at the horizon. “You’ve veered slightly off course again from the wind.”

“Sorry, dragging you is making us more susceptible to the wind than Asher and I normally are!” Samantha shouted, adjusting their course with a powerful flap of her wings. “Asher, I’ll need to touch down soon to recover my energy. How long does the potion last?”

“The magic will disperse as soon as Rulfar hits the ground,” Asher said, remembering his own experience having drunk the potion. “Otherwise, a warrior might find themselves in trouble when they land and try to fight, only to realize they weigh a tenth of what they once did!”

“In that case, you might as well grab another few potions while we recover,” Samantha admitted. “I know that puts us over the safe limit, but Polly said the potions weren’t at risk of detonating if we only do that for a little while, right?”

“Yeah, if we’re planning to use them immediately, it should be fine,” he confirmed.

“As much as I would enjoy being on the ground again, I think the two of you are forgetting something!” Rulfar called out, doing his best to point with his head, seeing as his hands were currently busy clinging on to Samantha’s wrists for dear life. “Your boots! You don’t need to land on the ground anymore!”

“Yeah, I can stand on clouds,” Samantha snorted, shaking her head. “But the two of you can’t! I don’t think I can carry you both for the next few hours, even if you do weigh practically nothing right now!”

“Ah… fair point,” Rulfar conceded. “In that case, I will happily take a break down on the ground!”

Rulfar got the break he wanted, as it wasn’t long before they touched down after that. Pulling Moxy back out of his Personal Rift so she could stretch her legs, Asher Recalled over to Dormaul and popped back into Polly’s shop, commissioning another half-dozen potions of Feather. Samantha was fast, but they had a lot of ground to cover, so they were going to need each and every one of those potions.

While not surprising, it was still unfortunate that the lich’s second base seemed to be on the very edge of the kingdom once more, not even remotely near any of Asher’s Eternal Marks. Even so, that was to be expected. The first tower had been constructed on the outskirts of the kingdom as well, deep within the Lavash forest that served as a natural barrier between the Noala Kingdom and the Lambit Republic.

Once Asher had the potions in hand, he Recalled back to Samantha and they took off once more, continuing their flight across the kingdom.

The four of them traveled like this for an entire day, carefully following Rulfar’s nose as they steadily grew closer and closer to their target. They had to Recall back to the palace to sleep for the night, before continuing their hunt into the next day. Samantha even ended up hitting the level cap in Long Flight, using her own shards to evolve the skill to the second tier. On top of being able to keep herself in the air for longer, Long Flight obtained a glide feature, which was almost too perfect for their current purposes. So long as she was flying in a straight line, Samantha could reduce her energy cost of flying to almost nothing. She still needed to adjust her course every so often to stay on target, but they no longer needed to touch down nearly as frequently.

Largely thanks to that evolution, it was the during the evening of their second day of flying, as they approached a rather impressive mountain range that stood between the Noala Kingdom and the Eight Crests, when Asher finally spotted something new. They’d seen the occasional carriage being pulled by a pegasus every few hours, no doubt giving some nobles quite the interesting dinner topic if they’d looked out their windows and spotted them flying by with Rulfar dangling like he was, but that had been all. Now, something else was in the skies with them.

“Do you guys see all those weird looking birds flying around the mountains?” Asher asked, squinting as he tried to make them out. At their current distance, he could see a few dozen winged creatures flying about, but they were still far away enough that they looked wrong somehow.

“Not birds,” Rulfar said, frowning at the distant creatures. “Harpies. Zone monsters which spawn all over the mountain range. Samantha’s Wing element almost certainly came from them. Harpies are the main source of the element.”

“Are they tough?”

“Not physically, no. In fact, they’re actually fairly weak compared to other monsters. The real threat lies in their speed and capacity for flight. They often divebomb their prey one after another, striking with overwhelming numbers. It is why few caravans chose to come this close to the mountains. The kingdom itself pays slayers to come out here and deal with them from time to time.”

“In that case, it sounds like we’re about to do Donvath a favor!” Asher grinned, watching the harpies react as the three of them flew closer and were finally spotted. A series of screeching caws rang out from the swarm of harpies, and they immediately turned to attack the foes who dared invade their sacred airspace.

“Sorry, Rulfar, I need to be able to move!” Samantha shouted.

“Wait, what are you-”

With a grunt, Samantha hurled Rulfar toward the harpies, and Asher got to hear the stoic bloodhound scream for the first time as he was unexpectedly tossed through the air. That said, Rulfar was still a professional, and that scream quickly turned into a roar of battle as he remembered he was still under the effect of a potion of Feather. Rather than plummet to his death, Rulfar soared in a direct line straight toward the approaching harpies, and the bloodhound ripped his gleaming battleaxe off his back, slashing it straight through the lead harpy and actually cutting the monster clean in two. Rulfar spun around as he shot by, cutting through a good four or five harpies before he was clear of the swarm.

And continued shooting through the sky toward the rapidly approaching mountains.

“We’ll get him later!” Asher said, laughing at Samantha’s expression. She clearly hadn’t factored in the speed of which they were currently flying when she’d unintentionally turned Rulfar into a living missile. “For now, focus on the harpies!”

“Right!” Thankfully, the two of them had practiced fighting like this a bit with their team, having Rulfar hurl targets up into the sky at them while Moxy tried to shoot the two of them down with air blasts. Just like they’d practiced, Asher locked his legs around Samantha’s waist, pulling out his two daggers and extending one with Distortion. He didn’t do it a moment too soon, either, as the harpies were suddenly upon them.

While Rulfar had killed a couple flying through the swarm, there were still a good two or three dozen harpies who were not at all happy to have to share the skies with them. Now that they’d gotten this close, Asher didn’t have any issue telling these monsters apart from birds. The harpies were about seventy-five percent bird, twenty-five percent human. While they had patches on their limbs and midsections free of feathers, most of their bodies were covered in feathers ranging from jet black to light grey. They had nasty talons where feet should have been, and jagged beaks on their faces instead of mouths. There was no real intelligence behind their large eyes, and Asher didn’t hesitate in the slightest to cut the first one down through a compressed tunnel of space as it approached.

But even as his elongated dagger sliced clean through a wing and sent the monster tumbling from the sky, there were plenty more to take its place.

“Whirl!” Samantha shouted, and Asher immediately clamped down even harder with his legs, ducking lower to Samantha’s back. As they hit the swarm and a chunk of harpies tried to rake their talons across them, Samantha pulled in her wings and spun through the swarm, using Razor Wing to transform herself into a living blender. Rather than inflict any actual damage, five of the harpies were sliced to ribbons in an instant, plummeting from the sky in pieces as Samantha flared her wings out hard. Not only did this stop her nausea-inducing spin, it ended up smacking another two harpies of the sky from Winged Shield making her wings stronger than steel.

Asher didn’t waste any time either, striking out with Distortion after Distortion at the harpies hanging farther back who’d been waiting their turn. Just as Rulfar had promised, the harpies proved to be rather weak physically, and he didn’t have the slightest issue carving through one wing after another. Letting gravity do the heavy lifting for them as the monsters fell to their death, he struck one after another, not bothering wasting time to confirm whether they’d actually died.

In barely a handful of seconds, he, Rulfar, and Samantha had culled over two-thirds of the attacking swarm. If the harpies had any sort of intelligence, they would have realized this was a fight they couldn’t win and fled with their feathers turned up in fear.

Yet in typical monster fashion, they attacked with fury in their eyes, not a single thought in their heads other than killing the humans before them.

Cleaning up the last few harpies was child’s play, and Asher realized he was grinning in exhilaration. The monsters themselves hadn’t been impressive combatants in the slightest, but seeing all his and Samantha’s hard work and training pay off felt amazing. Actually getting to fight as one up in the skies with his girlfriend was the greatest feeling in the world, and he let out a loud whooping cheer as the last harpy fell.

That cheer was nearly followed by a shout as Samantha twisted out from under him. But before he could fall to his own death, she caught him in her arms, pulling him in close as she kissed him with a hungry fervor unlike anything he’d felt before. The two of them stayed like that for a long moment, only Samantha’s flapping wings keeping them floating in the air. Finally, they pulled away with a gasp. Samantha gave him a sheepish smile, her face redder than he’d ever seen it.

“Sorry. It’s just… actually getting to fight with you like this… up here in the sky where I always wanted to go… It’s kind of exciting, right?”

“Don’t worry, I know exactly what you mean,” he laughed, giving her another quick kiss. “We can continue this particular conversation later, if you know what I mean. Right now, however, we should probably go and find wherever Rulfar ended up when you threw him.”

“Right,” Samantha winced, shaking her head as she chuckled. “I forgot about that.”

“Don’t worry,” Asher told her as they scrambled back into their usual flight position with him on her back. “I highly doubt Rulfar ever will!”