TBATE - Lightseeker

Nightfall came swiftly, and the three of us made our move. "There will likely be fewer people at night. It should be easier for us to run to the tower. If all goes to plan, we can make it to the hut in just a few hours." Jack gave us the basic rundown of our strategy - wait until nightfall and run to the hut without encountering anyone. The problem with moving at night is that most of the strong opponents will likely be prowling around for any weak, tired easy pickings and any other strong adventurers planning to do the same. I really wish one of us were a sensory mage in times like these. We destroyed all evidence of us being here and exited the cave under the cover of the dark. Jack covered us in sound magic, saving his mana for illusions when they inevitably become necessary, and we darted through the trees.

.....

Jack landed on a thick branch ahead of me and Ada and raised his fist. The two of us came to a halt next to him and observed the battle in front of us. A short black-haired female augmenter was facing off against a trio of adventurers: A water conjurer, a fire augmenter and a wind augmenter. She was doing well, but she was clearly showing signs of exhaustion. In terms of raw ability, she was far beyond her advisories. Her wind augmenter opponent was far inferior to her in terms of wind abilities, but the 3v1 disadvantage was something she couldn't overcome. Her three opponents had incredible teamwork, the water conjurer always creating a perfectly timed water barrier whenever the black-haired lady was about to overpower one of her comrades. Her two enemy augmenters were perfectly in sync even using each other's elements in harmony to increase the strength of both. The black-haired wind augmenter lady was dancing around her opponents beautifully, and I wholeheartedly believe she could have won if not for the water conjurer's expert defence.

"Let's go around. No need to intervene. That lady, Jasmine Flamesworth, is the only solo adventurer in this exam - she's aiming for S-class. If she truly deserves S-class, she will handle herself. We have our scrolls and would get nothing out of helping her, so let's go." Jack instructed, and we quietly manoeuvred around their fight.

She's strong... I don't think I would be able to beat her...

 We continued on in complete silence, the hut now only a few kilometres from our position. It was now roughly midnight, and we couldn't see 5 meters in front of us. The darkness was making our travel dangerous, and if we used fire as a light we would give away our location, removing the whole reason for traversing at night. We agreed to take shelter at the base of a large, old tree for a few hours until the beginnings of Sunrise graced the forest. We each took turns keeping watch, and I was very thankful for my turn to sleep...

.....

"Solis, dodge!" Ada's scream forced me out of my dreams, and I narrowly dodged slashes of wind aiming for my neck. The wind blades sliced open my right arm, though didn't penetrate past my skin. "Show yourself!"

Three figures dressed in black robes with large hoods and identical plain white masks walked around the tree trunk in front of me. "So you're the cowards you attacked me in my sleep." The three cowards separated slightly and readied their weapons. Two augmenters and a conjurer, the most common adventurer trio. "Sorry, you lot. Most of the strong guys have already finished... So we need to pick on you." The conjurer on the left voiced with fake sympathy. "And you think you can defeat us? How foolish. Jack, Ada, we're taking these guys down."

Ada smacked her fist into her palm and clicked her knuckles and Jack cracked his neck. "I'll take the conjurer, you two take your pick." I dibsed the conjurer, Ada took the augmenter in front and Jack took the augmenter on the far right. 

I won't need my Eyes for this fool.

The conjurer stepped up and slammed his long staff with a large brown crystal into the ground, chanting "Mud Domain!" The forest floor around both of us turned thick and wet, and I felt myself sinking slightly into the ground.

It's not an ordinary earth domain... He mixed earth and water mana to create mud?

I stuck out my palm to the sky and conjured six spears of fire, launching them at the dual-element conjurer. He slammed his staff into the dirt again and formed a thick wall of earth in front of him. Taking advantage of his lack of sight, I conjured ravens of light behind me and they flew towards the hiding conjurer. He dispelled the wall and it swiftly fell back into the dirt. As it did, my light ravens continued their charge and pierced his body with their beaks.

He's not dead, is he...

His body turned into mud and sunk into the wet forest floor. "Mud clones!?" When a conjurer forms a domain spell, they gain many advantages, the largest of which is the fact that they gain almost complete control of everything to do with their element in their domain. For example, by opening a flood domain on top of a pre-existing body of water, they would gain control of the water beneath and around the domain. In this case, he has gained the power to manipulate the mud of his domain and the surrounding dirt that has turned to mud, giving him the ability to make clones of otherwise mana-less substances - like natural mud. "Unlucky, having me as your opponent." I heard his annoying voice come from behind me, and I tried to turn around to face him but my feet were stuck in the thick mud. He waved his staff in the air and conjured three roughly shaped swords of water, hurling them at me.

His ability to shape water is weak... Those can barely even be considered swords.

"*Sigh* I'm embarrassed I let you push me this far." I ignited a layer of fire around my body, blocking me from the 'swords' and creating a thick cloud of steam. Transforming my body into light, I vanished from within the steam to right behind him, hitting him on the back of the neck. The poor sod fell to the ground, face first in his own mud. "Luckily he didn't see my light. I'm becoming careless. If too many people start seeing my abilities I won't be able to hide anymore. I wouldn't want my future Xyrus Academy classmates to recognise my techniques from bounty posters. Tsk tsk."

.....

- Jack -

"You're strong, Mr. Wind augmenter, but I'm afraid there's nothing you can do against my sound." It is essentially impossible to truly defend against my attacks. Being a sound augmenter, I can imbue mana into any noise I make and can shoot sound waves along with every attack. Even if my opponent dodges my strike, as long as they can hear my sound waves, they will be harmed. Due to the fact I unlocked sound very early after awakening my wind element, my use of wind has always been quite superficial, and I use it simply for movement techniques like dashing and increasing my overall speed - I heavily rely on my incredible affinity for sound.

I coated my body in a whirl of wind and dashed toward my opponent. I punched for his chest but he pushed himself slightly out of my range with his own wind, before falling to one knee, warm blood dripping slowly from his ears. "H-how"

"I told you, didn't I? There's nothing you can do. Augmenting your ears will definitely help, but there are many other ways to influence your body with sound. The human eardrum breaks at sounds above 150 dB, an average augmenter's mana-coated ears can withstand around 200 dB, but my powerful sound waves can easily reach heights of over 220 dB! Bones are also a conductor of sound. Even if you're deaf, I can still harm you! For reference, an ordinary human's body would rip to shreds at sounds of 300 dB - it's unfathomably loud. An increase of 10 dB means tenfold the amount before it, e.g. 210 dB is 10 times stronger than 200 dB.

In other words, you are completely outclassed."

I pulled back my fist, imbuing it with sound magic, and punched him in the side of the jaw. My generated sound waves danced over my arm and into his jawbone, likely turning it to mush.

I think I overdid it... He's gonna need a bloody good healer to fix that.

I turned my attention to Ada and watched her fight as Solis' figure walked through the trees and sat against a tree, also observing Ada's fight.

I'm surprised she's still going. Her fights never normally last longer than half an hour. She's the 'go all out at the start' kind of fighter. A testament to her opponent's strength.

.....

- Ada - 

I blinked behind my opponent and hit them with a lightning-charged kick to the lower spin, sending her flying into a thick tree. As she was getting up, dark green snake-like vines rose up from the ground between us and formed a large figure that looked like a plant version of my beast will. "A Tree Sentinel, AA-class beast, the little cousin of Elderwood Guardians..! This must be one of the mana beasts added into the forest by the overseers!"

Slim vines of light wrapped around my opponent, and I understood his intention. I blinked in front of the water augmenter I was fighting and punched him in the temple, knocking him out. The vines of light grew longer and threw the augmenter out of our way. Solis and Jack appeared beside me and we exchanged nods of understanding. I reached for my beast will plastered over my core and felt the surge of adrenaline. Immediately, a deep ocean blue guardian of lightning mana formed around my body, standing at least 5 meters tall with four long arms, each holding a different weapon. The top pair of arms held a bow in the left hand and an arrow in the right, and the bottom two held a sword of lightning in the right and a lightning bolt in the left. Solis formed dozens of various weapons around him, and a long sabre of light, holding it with both hands.

"Jack, this thing doesn't have ears or bones, are you sure you can -"

"I have plenty of throat medicine. Don't worry about me."

"Alright then, let's do this!"

I knocked the arrow into the large bow and pulled the string back as far as it could go, shooting the arrow of thunder at the large sentinel of vines. The large arrow split off into tiny needles and penetrated the various vines making up the sentinel's body. The needles were numerous, but they had little effect on the large creature of vines. The sentinel dug its tentacle-like vine arm into the ground and a large flower garden blossomed around us.

Sh*t... The flowers are messing with our will to fight... They're so pretty though... Can't I just sit down and admire them~

My lightning guardian sent a small voltage down my spine, snapping me awake from my delusion.

The flowers have illusion art properties... Jack and Solis seem unaffected, that's good. I need to protect Jack until he's ready to cast his vocal spell.

Solis charged at the tree sentinel, his conjured weapons protecting him from any vines sent his way. He grabbed onto a thick vine and used it like a swing to jump onto a nearby high branch. "Ready when you are!" He shouted.

"Jack! Any time now!" After I spoke I heard Jack let out a deep exhale next to me...

"Don't. Move." 

The tree sentinel immediately froze and Solis and I readied our final attacks. Solis volleyed his conjured weapons at the sentinel's head, setting them all ablaze as they made contact with the sentinel's skeletal vines. 

My guardian grabbed the lightning bolt from the lower pair of hands and knocked it behind the bowstring, pulling it as taut as it could go.

"Zeus' Arrow!"

The large arrow of lightning shot at the sentinel far faster than anything could react to, and pierced into its centre, sending countless thousands of volts throughout its body.

We did it!

The vines sunk into the ground and a shining green core fell to the floor with a thud. My lightning guardian receded into my core and Solis and I ran to Jack, who was lent over coughing up blood. He down bottle after bottle of throat medicine, and lay down to rest. "*Sigh*, that hurt."

"I bet it did. Thanks for doing that despite the pain." Voice manipulation. A sound mage's trump card. By imbuing sound mana directly into their words as they leave their mouth, they can control their target with simple commands. It takes unbelievable skill to even achieve this, and to do it as well as Jack can? Incredible. Most sound mages who can use this trump card struggle with selecting targets and often end up affecting their allies too, but Jack can easily designate a target and leave his allies unharmed. Unlocking such a powerful trump card is incredibly rare, with easily less than 10% of sound mages ever unlocking this skill, and even fewer being able to do it as well as Jack can. The technique of imbuing mana into your words is incredibly hard and can only truly be comprehended by a powerful sound mage with insane mana control because the thought of imbuing mana into something that doesn't physically exist - at least for non-sound mages - takes unimaginably fine control.

From what I understand, sound mages with this technique imbue mana into the sound waves their voice produces and amplify it into something that can't be defied, like how all sound mages can imbue mana into sounds like bell chimes or music to hypnotise enemies. The biggest reason Jack's is so strong is because - thanks to his Spectre beast will - his sound can influence the psyche and mana of opponents, therefore allowing him to harm foes that don't have ears or bones.

Sound mages are truly terrifying...