-Break-
Location: Orb's office
ΦFrom the table in front of him, Orb slowly raises his head and opens his eyes. Looking down at the table, he sees drool and says, "It seems I fell asleep again. I need to find a way to remove that disease."
Slapping his checks, he says, "Whatever, today is a new day, and there is more than enough work to be done, so let's get started!"
Orb gets up and takes a few steps forward, and then he sees a mirror that reflects his face, which has a bunch of drawings on it. Seeing this Orb's hair turns blue, then red and he shouts, "ANTO, MIME GET HERE RIGHT NOW!"
The two kids outside the room start to laugh as Orb's scream reaches them.
-Break-
Location: Lower area of Nialathrú
ΦAs a swarm of Waptors rushes towards our group, along with a parade of Norka swinging through the tree tops. Dumnorix and a group of beastkin come out in front of the warriors of Aplos, who prepare for the flood.
There are two types of clothing worn by the beastkin. The first is a uniform one which includes a rather thin white tunic, and black breeches with two black boots, along with different coloured reinforced tabards, usually in green, white or orange. All of their clothes have slight modifications for their individual beast parts.
The second type of uniform has breeches, and a plain white dress shirt with embroidery that represents the animal the beastkin is in some way, along with an under-bust corset with two buttons, and two gauntlets made from the same material as the corset, all with either gold or silver designs on them.
But unlike the first uniform, this one varies a bit. Some of the women wear skirts and hosiery, while some wear breeches or even dresses. Some people wear capes, and long jackets as well, some even wear doublets. There is more freedom in the choice of clothes. Though one thing everyone has is some kind of cavalier hat.
Each of them takes out a blade with the main one used being a needle-like sword, and says, "Red branch battle arts: Star flower." With speed nearly incomprehensible to the humans beside them, they rush forward and cut down all of the wonderbeasts in front of them.
Looking at this, Buloke leading another group says, "We can't be outdone!"
Him and a bunch of the other warriors jump into the treetops to fight the Norkas, who constantly move around trying to outmanoeuvre them.
With the mobility and resilience of the Norkas, the warriors of Aplos struggle to fight back, and soon a Norka prepares to smash Buloke with a lariat, but it is shot by an arrow and stops.
Maple then shouts, "Now!"
Buloke uses this opportunity to strike the norka in its neck, killing it, and then Maple starts to move around, slowing the speed of other Norkas or increasing the speed of her allies until all the Norkas fall.
But then a series of trees start to fall, and Buloke looking down shouts, "It's a kovosaurus."
All of the warriors of Aplos jump off the trees where they see the Kovosaurus with its bladed finger that it uses to create a giant sword on each hand.
14 of them rush forward, swinging their blades that cut through the thick trees of Fimbulwinter in a single blow. Some people, seeing this are scared, but then Maple fires a series of arrows at them, which they are able to block for the most part, but as the arrows travel, she slows down and then speeds up some arrows to throw them off and manages to him them.
Then she says, "Don't worry, warriors, these things are no greater than us."
Many of their nerves calm down, and then with her legacy, she lets out a series of shots boosting the speed of everyone around her, then she says, "Move forward!"
The warriors of Aplos go to meet the Kovosaurus, and with Maple's support, they manage to fight back at the start. But as they fight, Dumnorix comes up behind her and says, "You sure that's a good idea?"
Maple elbows him in the face and says, "Don't spook me like that in the middle of a battlefield."
Holding his face with shock, he says, "How could you not sense my esteemed presence the moment it came close to you?"
"Stop being arrogant, and go kill the rest of the waptors. We've got this."
Dumnorix moves up close to her, directs her eyes towards the Kovosaurus, and says, "That would be incorrect due to the mistake you made."
Maple looks at the battlefield, and notices the wounds and the downed warriors are increasing. "Are the kovosaurus winning? Are they that much stronger than I thought?"
Dumnorix prepares to speak, but then Maple puts her finger to his mouth, and then with her enhanced vision pays special attention to the battlefield, and says, "I see it."
She instantly cancels the enhanced speed on a majority of the warriors and shoots at the kovosaurus, slowing them down instead. Then she says, "Too many warriors weren't used to the enhanced speed and started messing up!"
"Exactly. Now let us help."
The beastkin who wear the second type of uniform step out in front of Maple and bring out their sword. Then they hold their hands against a spike placed close to the handle, and then their swords drain their blood. The swords turn blood red, and then Dumnorix says, "Red branch knights-Morrígan squadron, it's time to let our fury bloom."
On each one of the knights that Dumnorix leads a type of plant blooms on their body; for Dumnorix, it is a giant flower against his shoulder that forms a mantle.
The warriors of the Red branch knights rush forward and meet the kovosaurus for combat. A single kovosaurus required Orb's intense senses and legacy to beat, but each of the knights manages to easily kill one in one-on-one combat, blasting through their enemies. As they finish they come up to the warriors of Aplos, who look rather embarrassed at their showing, and with a gloating face, Dumnorix says, "Don't be sad. It is too be expected when facing us."
Buloke looks angry, but before a word could leave his mouth, Maple walks forward and says, "YOU THINK YOU CAN SAY THAT TO US!"
Placing his hand on Maple's shoulder, Dumnorix says, "The results say it, I am just reinforcing it."
Turning to everyone, Maple says, "You see these smug bastards! They think they can never come to our forest and beat us? We will crush them into paste for this!"
Buloke and the rest of the warriors feel a wave of vigour wash over them, as their little leader's passion hits them right in their hearts. Standing up they rush away, and Dumnorix says, "This might be fun, Morrigan order, let's annihilate them."
As Dumnorix runs off, Orb, looking at them from a treetop in the distance, eats a sandwich and says, "It seems Maple is getting more efficient in her hunting."
He then takes a look all around Fimbulwinter from his vantage point, and sees different groups of beastkin rushing around, then says, "The beastkin can withstand the cold and fight in higher areas so our hunting range has increased. So it seems our food problems won't be an issue anymore."
Staring at the weapons of Dumnorix and the other members of the Morrigan Order, Orb says, "Though those weapons are giving me a little bit of a headache, have I seen them before?"
-Break-
Location: Great tree of Anucroí, break floor 4.
The great tree of Anucroí is the home and base where the beastkin keep all of their Wonderbeasts. The 12 floors are artificial habitats called the eternal gardens of Medb, created by the druids for different wonderbeasts, and between each floor is a break room, which is used to store things needed for each floor.
In between the fourth and the fifth floor, together with both Avram and Iancu, Orb stands in front of a group of druids ripping the carcass of the wonderbeasts apart.
Iancu, with wonder in his eyes, looks at the contraptions that the beastkin have. Each of them is made of plants, and each of them is capable of performing complex tasks. A machine that allows the beastkin to scan the inside of a wonderbeast, a jelly that makes the leftover meat on the bones easy to remove, and a fridge that freezes the food, keeping it frozen along with room that allows them to reheat it in seconds.
In disbelief, Iancu says, "You have all really optimized this, haven't you?"
A druid walks up and says, "Food production is the most important role for the survival of our people here. Constantly innovating technology to allow us to store food is a must. And in the long history of Nialathrú, no matter how bad things have gotten, it's the one thing every single ruler has supported, as it was literally life or death for them."
Orb one up to the scanner says, "Hey, Amelia, how does this thing allow you to see the inside of the wonderbeast?"
Amelia the goat druid says, "It uses soundwaves to map the inside of the wonderbeast and then sends it back to us, then we simply map it and use it to draw inferences.
It required us to take man-eating plants and combine them with the tiritrex you named Suzuka the 2nd. Since Suzuka the 2nd had adapted to become a semi-plant, it became possible for the man-eating parasites to infect it. which allowed us to create a plant with something mimicking a brain but its functionality was far too low. We then took some of the dancing flowers parts and combined them with our little parasite which allows us to add it's reactive nature to it, and through a little thinkering we made it so that as the sound waves pass through this little bio machine here it's body automatically morphs into a reflection of the same from the sound waves."
"Then couldn't this be used on humans?"
"It could be, but the issue is that we don't have enough funding or time to use it for such a thing. And we sort of don't know how to build it anymore?"
"Huh?"
"Well, you see most of the research done to make things here has been gathered through generations, but almost all of it was built 500 years ago, when a certain engineer was born with the skills to make it happen. Since then, we haven't been able to build it again, so if it breaks, it's lost."
Suddenly, we hear someone shout, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!"
Turning, we see Avram with stars in his eyes, ripping one of the machines apart, which causes Amelia to faint, and for me to put him in a headlock. "You're always telling Iancu not to do rash stuff, but look at you."
Avram then says, "Don't worry, it should be good now."
The machine in front of them is a series of coffins in which wonderbeasts are placed inside, and then a machine that causes intense vibrations makes sound waves pass through the beastkins bodies, and the coffins reads all the information from the sounds waves sends them towards a flower which models itself into models of the insides of the wonderbeasts. Though there is a long pause between each one as the vibrations made ate intense.
But after Avram finishes tinkering, the strength of the vibration lessens and the rate at which the machine works is increased multiple times over.
The druids moving over to him say, "It's working better than ever. What did you do?"
Avram, moving over to the machine, says, "The internal wiring of the plants was a mess, so I fixed it up some. We had something similar to this in Elpída, though we used a form of radiation, so I am pretty used to these systems."
Moving over to the beastkin, he says, "I am not good a many things, but when it comes to engineering, you can leave it all to me."
The druids, along with Amelia, start to smile profusely at his words. "With this, we may be able to actually build all our different ideas."
Avram turns to me then says, "Maybe bringing the kids from Skydust here to help would make it so they feel at home again."
"I will keep it in mind. But I think I should start getting all the food here, and move to the next stop."
Rubbing my head, Avram says, "You should but don't push yourself too hard."
"I won't."
Looking over to Iancu, I say, "I hope you can make some more friends."
"PISS OFF!"
I smile as he get's angry, and start to head off.