Author's Note: As a sort of Happy New Years gift, I decided to make two different chapters on the same day, managing to put in quite a bit of my free time into this. Hopefully you all are enjoying this as of now, and hopefully these chapters onward will start picking up the pace a bit better than it had been before, as I still had many ideas for the future rather than the present back then.

Luckily for the guild, once they had managed to escape the clutches of the Pirate Cave, they all managed to get regrouped in the beaches, as they all were somewhat exhausted from their fight. They all made sure that they were physically in tact for what they were most likely gonna go through next, with Lumu out of the bunch still concerned over Fabeus' injury, as he had no idea about Quendan's healing ability up to that point.

But Lumu decided to just brush this off as no big deal, he could trust his own guild members after all, and with Fabeus now having a much more deadly staff in her arsenal she can hold her own. As Lumu drew his Steel Dagger, he was reminded of the Silver Dagger he saw in the Pirate Cave, he clearly wanted that dagger badly, you could tell in his eyes that he was mesmerized by it. Damn it, Mortas. What is wrong with optimism in your mind? Honestly, you need something to help keep your cool during this crisis. Lumu thought, as he began getting carried away.

Lumu just continued thinking about this, until he heard a noise coming from closeby, as Lumu recognized it, it was, Lorsan? "Lumu! This isn't funny!" He shouted, as Lumu shook back into reality, noticing that just about every single member of the guild was glaring at him, "Oh, pardon me." Lumu tried to reason, but they just shrugged it off. "Now, we must continue going forth. After the Pirate Cave, the races we are about to face should not be too tough." Mortas instructed, as they followed his order, travelling through the Lowlands.

It was there that they noticed a group of bandits wandering through the lands, as they all wielded knives except for the leader, who had blonde hair, black hat and in a black and white suit, as he wielded a katana. 'Guilhem," Huvior stated, as the knight in question was giving him the attention he wanted, "Make quick work of him, will you." Huvior commanded, which Guilhem nodded in response, "These low leveled fools will be easy." Guilhem boomed in response, which infuriated the leader.

"Catch!" The Bandit Leader exclaimed in a rage, as he pulled out what seemed to be a sphere of red energy, as he tossed it above his head in an arc formation, as it began to fall down directly at Guilhem. "G-guilhem, look out!" Lumu croaked, as he saw Guilhem get engulfed in a red explosion, proving that it was a red grenade of sorts. Lumu was about to draw his Steel Dagger, as the Bandit Leader began laughing at the sight of this.

But the Bandit Leader would find himself not being able to laugh for long, as he saw the very person he hit with the red grenade emerge from the smoke that had risen from the explosion, as the knight Guilhem was mostly unharmed. The Bandit Leader had no idea what to think of this, as he saw that Guilhem began to take a leap forward, swinging his Short Sword forward at all of the other bandits beside him, which caused them all to be gutted.

"Forget this… Run for it!" The Bandit Leader exclaimed out of panic, now seeing that all of his comrades had been slain, he desperately attempted to get away, only to see that Guilhem was sprinting forward with his wooden shield up, as he got struck by the wooden shield, as the knight bashed him with it, causing the Bandit Leader to drop forward, having been slain rather swiftly.

Guilhem wasted no time making it back to the rest of the guild, as Lumu had no idea just how powerful most of the guild members including the knight had become, time clearly was flying fast. The Rangers of the Heinous continued to move forward towards the next region of The Realm, with Huvior, Fabeus and Citaz operating as their firepower, blasting a wave of projectiles all over the place in order to either make the opposing races flee or kill them off.

They continued this process, until they saw somebody out in the distance, he was a very oversized man containing a very burly appearance, as he was currently resting. "A-are we sure that, we should awake him?" Lumu asked, as he was intimidated by the burly appearance of the Sumo Master, even while he was resting. "Relax, these guys are supposed to be weaklings after all!" Lorsan replied, as he armed himself with his trusty standard bow, ready for combat.

"Hold on a second, shouldn't we just get to the Midlands!?" Eirika questioned, as Lorsan was about to fire a whirlwind of arrows at the unconscious Sumo Wrestler, "Well to be fair, we do need some health and mana potions for the future, and the sumo wrestlers are known throughout The Realm to store a bunch of these, we should however make this quick." Mortas ordered, as he drew his silver plated dagger.

Lorsan agreed to this, and despite Lumu's lack of willingness to take part in this, he decided to play his role as part of the guild. Lorsan decided to take the first shot in order to arise the Sumo Master from his slumber, as once the burly warrior was struck he immediately jumped up to his feet, slamming his fists together. The Sumo Master roared right afterwards, as he summoned a large amount of smaller versions of himself, nicknamed Lil Sumos.

Lumu, Guilhem and the paladin Franque all dashed forward in an attempt to slice apart all of the miniature Lil Sumos, as they attempted to fire bullets of rapid fire red energy towards them, but this all proved completely useless as the trio rapidly and ballistically flung about their blades, causing them to tear through the Lil Sumos as they shrieked with their high pitched voices, before toppling over lightly due to their size, or rather the lack of it.

"You know what to do!" Franque told Mortas, as he nodded, as he began to ran towards the angry Sumo Master, as he tried to fire a large whirlwind of large red energy projectiles, which Mortas struggled to get away from, as when each of them hit the ground it caused a miniature explosion, causing the ground to shake a little. Each time however Mortas managed to regain his balance, as he leapt upwards at the giant sumo wrestler, as he had his steel dagger ready for impact.

But what actually ended up occurring shocked the members of the guild, as Mortas felt a gigantic pain in his stomach, as he looked down he saw that the Sumo Master had landed a direct hit to his chest region, the punch's strength having been amplified due to his immense muscle mass. Mortas was launched off further back into the depths of The Realm, before he found himself impacting a nearby tree, just like Lumu had done at the start of the quest they got themselves stuck in.

But the key difference between these two instances was that seconds after getting launched into the tree, Mortas bounced right back up to the hulking Sumo Master, as he looked down to his Wolfskin Armor to see how badly damaged it had become due to the attack. But Mortas brushed this off, as he made his dash towards his foe, as he pulled out his Silver Dagger once more.

Mortas treated this encounter as if nothing else existed, as he tried to repeatedly slash at the gigantic menace nearly three times his size, in both height and weight, the Sumo Master managed to dart himself backwards in order to avoid these frequent attempted slashings, as the last attack by Mortas was hooking his Silver Dagger forward in a stabbing gesture, trying to make one last hit, but he watched in horror as the beast tilted himself back to avoid this attack.

The Sumo Master was about to pound Mortas into the ground, but he was suddenly stopped for unknown reasons to the rest of the guild, but to him it was due to the look that Mortas had flashed. His eyes still seeming as if he was still in control of the fight, as his face had a wide smirk, with the look in horror now completely vanished. But it would have been best for the Sumo Master taking advantage while he could, as Guyon approached him from behind.

Guyon drew his sharp Saber, as he swung his incredibly lethal blade at the completely off guard Sumo Master, slashing two scars into the hulking foe in an X pattern. The Sumo Wrestler shrieked in pain as he began to topple over, as Mortas crossed his arms at what seemed to him to be a poor fool, before nodding at the warrior Guyon. "You played your part well." Mortas complimented, but like all responses, Guyon made zero interaction, as to him it was for the best.

I swear, at this point Guyon must be a mummy or something like that. Lorsan thought, as Mortas and Guyon casually stepped away from the fallen Sumo Wrestler, but while Mortas was still confident of his victory, Guyon grabbed him by the shoulder, pointing to the back of him. "Engaging super mode!" The Sumo Wrestler boomed, as he held his fists in front of him, as his skin began to change to a very dark shade of red.

"Oh, great." Mortas muttered in annoyance, as he drew back his Silver Dagger, Uh, hopefully this still remains, as he claims to be as easy as the Lowlands. I could use one of those health potions. Lumu thought, as he viewed on with the rest of the guild as Mortas charged forward, only to see that the Sumo Master began firing off a huge burst of yellow-ish, orange-ish energy blasts, as Mortas leapt away from them, as he saw them approaching the tree he was launched against earlier, and how they disintegrated it once the beams made contact.

"Holy!-" Lumu exclaimed, as he saw the tree getting engulfed in flames, now getting reduced to nothing but a large pile of ashes, as the sheer force of the wind brought up by the explosion launched all of the guild members up into the air, as the Sumo Wrestler began booking it towards Mortas while he was vulnerable, but he quickly shook off the added pressure gained, as he attempted to block the upcoming punch, shocking most of the guild.

The Sumo Master grinned at the sight of this, he knew there was no way possible that he could block a straight on punch, even when using all the strength he had in his body. The Sumo Wrestler swung his fist forward, as he was anticipating the sounds of the bones in Mortas' body cracking upon impact, but what he actually saw through his expectations off to the side, as he saw Mortas had latched onto him.

The Sumo Master was blown away by this, as Mortas jumped off of the grasp of the mighty titan, before rapidly fencing his Silver Dagger at the foe, which caused it to drop forward, as he attempted to still keep on clinging to life. This would just prove futile, as Mortas made one last slash at the Sumo Master, right at the back of the neck, effectively landing a fatal blow.

Pouches of loot were scattered across the area that the corpse of the Sumo Master was laying in, as Mortas found exactly what he was looking for, potions. The rest of the guild ran back up to him, "Once again Mortas, you are proving yourself to be a valuable member of the Rangers of the Heinous." Huvior complimented, which sparked a smile on Mortas' face, "My pleasure." Mortas replied, as he drew back his Silver Dagger.

But the positivity quickly died down as Lumu said something he should not have said, "What is this purple crap? Is this even gonna help us at all?" Lumu asked in a way that he had no idea what he seemed to be saying, which caused Lorsan to walk up to him. "Take a chill will you! They probably know how to use this, how am I supposed to start babysitting while we have to keep fighting right now?" Lorsan responded with a question of his own.

"Do a barrel roll." Lumu answered sarcastically, which caused Lorsan to shake his head, "We're trying to save the human race!" Lorsan exclaimed, "Of course I needed you to tell me that!" Lumu replied, before they found their fight to be broken up by, Fabeus. "That is enough, we will figure this out amongst ourselves." Fabeus stated, as she walked back to the guild, as Lumu's eyes widened at the sight of her.

"Alright, we have gotten all of the potions that these sumo wrestlers had dropped, we should get moving." Mortas instructed, as the rest of the guild agreed in on this, as they followed him out of the stalling Lowlands, hoping to advance to the Midlands as quickly as humanly possible. After what felt to be an extremely exhausting sprint down the Lowlands, which could only be described as sheer torture for their legs, the guild members noticed a change in the surroundings.

The trees along with the grass gained a slightly lighter shade of green in appearance, and instead of red capped mushrooms littering the ground, there were instead a few batches of white flowers. Lumu was currently in awe about his surroundings, this was what the Midlands looked like? Lumu wanted to walk around and explore, but he both feared that he would get slaughtered by the unknown beasts living in the area, or getting scolded by Mortas, and at this point he had no idea which was worse.

However Lumu would have this entire train of thought completely shattered once he heard stomping noises coming from the left side of where he was standing. Great, we have to face kaiju now? Lumu thought, assuming the stomping was coming from a kaiju, due to how loud it was. The Rangers of the Heinous turned to their left, as what they saw filled their minds with dread.

A complete and total army of beasts were seen in front of their eyes, many of which being gigantic golems about the same size as the previous Sumo Master, but they predicted that this time the beasts would be even stronger than the ones in the Lowlands, as you would expect, after all. Lumu was completely petrified by the sight of this, as he muttered "Um, I feel like we should get back to the Lowlands now. . ."

Mortas however did not listen to this friendly piece of advice, as he drew his Silver Dagger yet again. "We just need a bunch of you to work on backup firepower." Mortas instructed, as he was followed by Guyon, you could tell by their faces that they were about to charge at any moment, as Mortas gritted his teeth.

Well, here we go again. Lorsan thought, as he drew his Standard Bow, as well as drawing out an arrow from his quiver. Guyon and Mortas both decided to go first, as they bolted towards the army of beasts just waiting for the right moment to tear them apart. Following in their footsteps were the trio of Guilhem, Franque and Lumu, as they were the second line of offense in the Rangers of the Heinous, as the remaining ranged members took aim with their staffs, wands or bows depending on the person and class.

That was, when an oversized brown colored beast wandered up to the waves of the guild charging forward, as he gathered a collection of sand from the ground, being an Earth Golem. The Earth Golem tossed the pile of sand towards them, as it ended up covering both Lumu and Guilhem. Lumu tried to brush it off, as he coughed up some of the sand that was tossed at him, and once he did, he still felt considerably weaker than he did before when they entered the Midlands.

"Wh-what is, happening to me all of a sudden!?" Lumu muttered in panic, as he attempted to swing his Steel Dagger at the Earth Golem responsible for the feeling he received. The Earth Golem despite Lumu's best efforts casually blocked the attack with his own skin, as it felt like trying to punch through a brick wall. Lumu saw a spherical jelly-like figure orbiting the Earth Golem, which were nicknamed by Oryx to be the Gray Satellites.

Lumu quickly caught on that this was not the gelatinous cubes out in the beaches or the Lowlands, but a new entity all together. The rogue had no time to ponder this new species he came across, as the Gray Satellite began to launch a burst of violet rays down at Lumu. Lumu flailed his arms around in a panicky manner, as he booked it away from the Earth Golem and it's satellite in order to avoid the full on assault.

Lumu quickly felt his strength coming back after his encounter with the Gray Satellite, as he tried to swing at the jelly-like figure while it kept on orbiting the Earth Golem, as he ripped open a large scar into the Gray Satellite. But the being did not even bother to flinch at this, as it just continued to revolve around the Earth Golem, before firing another barrage of beams made up of violet light, as Lumu tried to tilt himself to the side so he would not get killed.

But he was still bulldozed by a small amount of the violet bombardment of light, as he was hurled off towards the long ranged firepower that the Rangers of the Heinous had set up, which caused them to stop the ambush they were pulling off in order to prevent afflicting the agony that they were firing off. Lumu fell flat on his face as he attempted to break his fall, as he dusted off the dirt covering his face.

"This is relentless. . ." Lumu muttered, as he hurdled himself up to his feet, brushing off the dust that the Steel Dagger received while it was getting dragged across the ground when Lumu fell. But Lumu watched as the Earth Golem was suddenly charged down by the duo of none other than Guyon and Mortas, who seemed to consistently get along perfectly despite Guyon being a complete mute.

Guyon made a single swing at the Gray Satellite that was constantly circuiting the Earth Golem as he went, causing it to get torn apart into two small pieces, as it was so small that it was swept off by the wind in The Realm. The Earth Golem was shocked at what he saw taking place right before his eyes, as Mortas and Guyon did not hesitate even a second before moving on to the one that the Gray Satellite was revolving around.

Guyon and Mortas spiked the Earth Golem with their blades, as he attempted to try and push them away, in desperation to weaken them with his sand attack. But while Mortas was pushed away a few feet, Guyon stayed completely put in place, as he used his Saber to hack and slash the Earth Golem back into the ground, where he belonged.

But Guyon and Mortas were not given so much time to rest, as a herd of animalistic beasts on two legs made a break for it at the Rangers of the Heinous, as Lumu tilted his head in curiosity at one of them, before walking up to it. "What is this, a cat is supposed to give us trouble now?" Lumu taunted, as he pointed to the one he was referring to. But he should not have been so cocky about this, as that was the leader, the Werelion as it is known through The Realm.

The Werelion made a loud roar that could be heard for miles, as it bashed Lumu off of the ground, as he was flung back once more, this time with a visible laceration shown on his left shoulder, as he clutched it before falling into a batch of white flowers. "Shouldn't have done that." Lumu admitted, as he pulled himself back up. Which caused Quendan to dash up to him, as he began chanting, which casted his healing spells.

"Another hit like that and you might have met your fate, Lumu, try to be careful from now on." Huvior advised, as he was still in the process of firing the projectiles, before he pulled out his trusty patterned card, as he began getting engulfed in his inferno aura once more, as he fired it towards the ambushing animalistic beasts, causing a few of them to burn down on the spot.

Mortas and Guyon managed to leap back in order to avoid the flames, with the former landing beside Lumu as he watched. "M-Mortas?" Lumu asked, as he managed to clip his attention for a moment. "Do you know how to activate the special abilities, like the one that Huvior is using right now? I feel like I'll get gutted if I don't start using them." Lumu questioned, as Mortas put on his grin in response to this.

"Well firstly, you will need an item in order to pull this off as it is very important," Mortas answered, as he turned to his light green cloak, which Lumu had been dragging around this entire time. "Well, it looks like that cloak will do just fine."

Lumu was now confused at this, he had no idea that his cloak had any sort of importance, Huvior only ordered him to carry it around with him while he was in fights, but he never gave a reason as to why. "Cloak? How would that even, work? I've carried this around for years and there has not been any supernatural abilities to ever come out of it!" Lumu retorted, but in Mortas' mind fussing with him over this was just not worth it.

"That is because you will be giving it supernatural abilities, as you channel your mana into it." Mortas explained, which only confused Lumu even more than he already was. "Me? Giving supernatural abilities? If my cloak doesn't have any supernatural abilities, or as you call it 'Mana' then how would I?" Lumu once again questioned, as if he were playing 20 Questions at this rate, but Mortas sighed, this was for his own good.

"Just close your eyes, and concentrate on the cloak." Mortas ordered, which Lumu decided to try it out, despite how skeptical he was about the whole ordeal. "I still don't see how this all matters." Lumu muttered, as he closed his eyes, concentrating on the cloak, despite Quendan still working on casting the healing spells in order to get him back in good condition, as he was unable to do so from long distances.

Lumu opened his eyes after a few moments ended up passing by, which felt like forever to the rogue as he still had no idea as to what was even going on at that rate, but what he saw after this would give that a whole new meaning to the word. His arms, cloak, absolutely everything that he was either holding or was part of his body was completely gone.

The rogue flinched at the sight of this, but he quickly caught on as he drew his Steel Dagger, as Quendan was now searching for where Lumu had ran off too. Nobody can see me huh? Well, does that mean, what I think it means? Lumu thought, as he began dashing up towards the Werelion, as it was struggling with the brute warrior Guyon, as Lumu was seeing that this was his chance to get in the spotlight after all.

Lumu rapidly swung the Steel Dagger at the Werelion, gashing many different lacerations into the animalistic beast, but it was too focused in it's attempt to triumph over Guyon to notice this. The rogue however appeared visible once more with a flash of light, as almost everybody in the guild turned to him in confusion, with the exception of Mortas and Huvior, who were not known to be seen confused to begin with.

The Werelion then ended up collapsing back to the ground along with the rest of the monsters in the Midlands that were killed off by the Rangers of the Heinous as they fought, as Lumu looked back at his cloak, now unable to see it the same way again, but in a good way. Now that, was sweet. Lumu thought, as he turned back to Mortas.

"Think I can do that one more time in order to take out those, dwarfs?" Lumu asked, but Mortas sighed in response to this, as he knew that Lumu was not gonna take this lightly. "No, you cannot." Mortas replied, which caused Lumu to raise his eyebrow, "Why not? You saw what happened, didn't you?" Lumu asked.

"Yes I did, and you have used up your mana for the meantime, and it is currently in the process of restoring." Mortas replied, which caused Lumu to start getting a little agitated, "Well what is the point of using abilities like this if you can only use it one at a time!?" Lumu stormed, which caused Mortas to just try to reason with him, hoping that he could understand this. "Remember the purple potions you were referring to earlier?" Mortas asked.

"Oh you mean those, are, you telling me that they restore your mana? Well then why didn't you clue me in earlier!?" Lumu asked, which Mortas just decided to keep his distance from him, "I do not have all of the answers." Was his response, as he noticed the Dwarf King as his fellow warriors dashing towards them, as they were all extremely long bearded men, but they kept the tradition of the leader being the tallest and the burliest out of them all.

But the necromancer, Bedrex took a step forward, knowing that the guild had no time for these guys. Bedrex took out the human skull corrupted with necrotic magic out of the inventory, as it began to discharge a small amount of necrotic magic, before launching a gigantic blast of it at the Dwarf Kings, as it began to literally take out their life force.

All of the dwarves along with their kings just dropped, succumbing to the necrotic magic, as their life force distributed to each of the guild members, healing them as they did so. "Well, that's mildly disturbing." Lumu commented, but Bedrex thought he should have been a bit more thankful due to it bringing his health back to good condition, and the necromancer hissed before walking back to the rest of the guild.

Lumu was a bit too disturbed to make a comeback, but he just continued on as he was followed by Mortas and Guyon, as they were all back to being assembled. They might have taken out the ambush of beasts in the Midlands, but there were still plenty more powerful beings in the Midlands alone, as Lumu would hope that the new ability he had received could be put to good use, as his mana would regenerate.