D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

— Kat —

Kat tried and failed to find some subtle way to bring her understanding of Hunter and Meg’s relationship up to them. Instead everyone had a nice but quiet dinner, Lily fell asleep early and Kat volunteered for night watch as a way to think on the problem some more. Nothing really came to her. It was just a constant night of wheel spinning where one potential solution opened up several other problems.

In the end, Kat decided to ignore it for now and perhaps the right moment would present itself.

When breakfast came along, and Meg called everyone’s attention to her, Kat wondered if perhaps that moment had come. Sadly, it had not. “So, I’ve been checking the device and I have some good news, and some bad news,” said Meg.

Kat glanced around and saw that everyone else was still eating. *Guess I’ll be the one to indulge Meg this time.* “What’s the good news?” asked Kat.

“The good news is that the piece we’re looking for is pretty close!” answered Meg with a smile… clearly waiting for the follow-up.

Kat bit back the urge to roll her eyes as she asked “What’s the bad news?”

“I’m so glad you asked!” said Meg with a smile. Kat spent the small gap wondering how Meg could get away with saying it at all. “The bad news is I’m not quite certain that it’s ended up underground somehow,”

Kat made agreeing noises as she picked up her glass of water. Meg saw that Kat didn’t know what the next question ’should’ be and decided to bring it up on her own. “What this means is that way have two real options. The first is we take a winding path to the goal and look for various caves or whatnot to use. The second option is to just go straight for it and dig down.

Personally, I suggest we go for the winding option,”

Everyone immediately heard the unspoken ’It can also cost us a lot of time’ in there as well. Kat debated for a few seconds mentally before shrugging and saying, “I vote we just dig for it. We don’t have a good idea of how large the major pieces are at the moment and I’d hate for it to be like… a toe or something that some small critter took into their borrow because it was shiny.

The ’cave’ might not be big enough for us even if it exists,”

Meg clicked her tongue but didn’t say anything to contradict Kat, she was right after all. Lily of course nodded along with Kat. Even Meg’s slightly sour face wasn’t enough to change her mind. It was Kat’s idea, and it sounded right so Lily was happy to go along with it. It even lined up with her plans to practice more shadow magic.

Lily was planning to work out if using her shadow as a shovel was more efficient then using her shadow to hold a shovel, or multiple if she could manage that.

Kamiko just sort of shrunk downwards while nodding and trying not to draw attention to herself. Hunter looked ready to agree just because it was the option Meg least favoured… but Bower had other ideas. “Now, I get what’s going on here… but my old back really won’t be good for helping you young girls dig.

I might still be fairly strong, but the ground here is tougher then it seems and thick with even stronger root systems. If ya’ll doing this I’m afraid I’ll have to supervise,”

Kat shrugged, “That’s fine,”

“Um… yes… well… I don’t mind either…” mumbled Kamiko.

Meg nodded along in agreement as well, to the shock of many. “Yeah you can just relax old man. I might not prefer this course of action but I ain’t going to force you to injure yourself,”

“Well, as long as you all know,” said Bower with a shrug.

That seemed to be the end of it. Not much else was said over breakfast and the team quickly got moving. It took all morning, and trekking through two separate bubbles to get to the dig site. Some debate over if they’d bother with lunch was had and ultimately it was decided that those who were hungry could eat leftovers if they want. Which basically amounted to Hunter and Bower.

The rest got to work, even Meg. She first marked out the area the piece ’might’ be in, as the compass started to spin wildly once they got too close. Meg implied it was probably in the centre but not certainly. So instead everyone got a section of the squared off area and then started to dig.

Looking above it was an interesting site to see. Kat quickly got into a rhythm with the provided shovels. She’d simply dig what was nearby and throw it up into her pile and keep going. The ground was harder then it looked but not too hard. The only time Kat needed to pause in her regular digging was when she encountered roots.

Kat simply threw some demonic fire at the roots in question and then got back to it. Minimal fuss.

Meg on the other hand, looked quite chaotic with her digging. She’d pick some dirt from here, and then some over there, making full use of her assigned are with a clear focus on structural weak points. Meg always picked the area that would give her the least resistance, and when it came to roots she dug around them until they could be cleanly ripped out with a hand.

Despite this, her piles of dirt where a bit smaller then Kat’s. Though in truth it was unlikely Meg was putting in her full effort, simply enough to be seen working without looking lazy.

Kamiko made slower progress. Mostly because she couldn’t quite get the shovelling technique down. The quick dig, and then over the shoulder motion that Kat was able to make use of regularly resulted in dirt flying everywhere when Kamiko attempted it, getting dirt both on her and back in the hole.

It was not a comfortable time so she switched to this side to side motion which was limiting the dirt she could gather. At least she could remove the roots just as easily.

Lily was going a bit wild. She had a bunch of shadows all around her digging and it was eating into her mana a decent amount requiring her to take the occasional break but all in all she was making pretty good progress. At the moment she had the largest dirt pile but the others would catch up next time she was on break. As for Lily’s experiments?

She was finding that using shovels meant you didn’t need to spend as much mana, but it was harder to keep multiple sets of them digging. If Lily was using a bunch of smaller shadows to dig or even one big shadow she could get a lot more dirt out… but the mana cost shot up. So it was a balancing act between focus and mana.

Hunter took a unique approach that different drastically from everyone else’s. She wasn’t bothering to dig at all for the moment. No instead she’d dug until hitting roots and then split off into a bunch of tiny snakes turn burn away the entire system. Sure she was dipping into the other areas, but it was fine. Soon she’d have a completely root free section and would be able to dig rapidly.

Already her section had ’collapsed’ in a number of places, loosening the soil a bunch and showing her work to the others.

It was this method that let her find something interesting. Slightly off-centre she found rock. Ridiculously hard rock. A few more tests later and Hunter made her way back to the surface to reform. “I think I’ve found it guys!”

Everyone paused in their work to look over and Hunter continued to explain, “I think the things encased in some type of rock or ore. Ridiculously hard and not reacting to my demonic fire much. It’s in the centre but slightly more towards Kat and Meg if anything. I’m betting the piece is trapped inside somehow,”

Meg shrugged and moved over to the centre and started digging. Kat, Lily and Kamiko joined in to help and not long after they struck metaphorical gold when the shovels bounced off the hard surface. A bit of clearing up later and they could see the top of the rock. “So Meg… can you tell if this is it?” asked Kat.

Meg pulled out the compass and moved it closer to the rock. When she did so it went from spinning somewhat loosely to spinning around rapidly. “Yup this is the rock… but I’m not sure how we’re going to get into it. Have to excavate the area around it and see if there’s any weak points…”

“Wait can’t you see that already?” asked Kat.

“I can… but it doesn’t have any convenient ones so far. I’m hoping with it out of the ground I can make a better assessment,” answered Meg.

*I thought her weak point spotting ability was much broader then she’s currently implying… hmm…*