Sil, hearing the urgency in his wife's voice, shot an ice arrow the size of himself into the air pushed by telepathy. Sil was rained on by black blood. Lana watched as the black blood that would have hit her went around her instead on its way to the ground. She exhaled, Thank you Dilly!
The beast was injured but very much alive. Lana felt her MC drain the rest of the way without even using it. Another massive lightning strike erupted, this time flaming tentacles attacked the forcefield that once again appeared. She screamed as she pushed her Qi toward the forcefield to prevent the tentacles from breaking through. She had never used her Qi that way before and had no idea if it would do anything.
The tentacles retracted as though they were burned.
"Caser! Get over here!" Lana called. He appeared to be trying to find a way to climb and get to the huge beast that was floating over their heads.
"Sil, touch the kids," she whispers in hopes of not allowing the beast to hear.
Confused, he quickly turned around as she did the same to face each other. A look of shock appeared on his face but there was no time to discuss it. He took the unexplained forcefield energy from his son, borrowing his MC as well.
"Hope this works!" Sil fired a forcefield arrow at the beast, used telekinesis to manipulate it and encased the beast. The beast started falling. Sil grabbed his family and they went to the side as Caser pushed from behind.
Lana looked back. "It's still not dead."
Sil built several earth walls and encased the beast, squeezing in until the beast was undeniably no longer drawing breath. Earth was much easier to use on the ground than firing it into the air.
Lana stared at the dead beast while Sil cut the crystals out of all the beasts. It turned out the big one was emperor tier while the smaller ones were king tier. Lana wondered to herself how she could be thinking only a king tier when only a year ago, intermediate beasts were a challenge.
She looked back to her children and they were once again sleeping, no longer holding hands. Yeah, I can imagine that being pretty exhausting considering you aren't even supposed to be able to do what you just did. You guys are already troublemakers. I guess you get it honestly. She smiled at her beautiful husband as he collected his last crystal.
Sil stood back up and looked at his wife and babies and his confused look returned. He walked up to them and placed his hand on his son one more time. Now his frown deepened as his confusion grew.
"Did you know they both have abilities?" Sil asked.
"Not until just now. What are they?"
"She has yours, which I knew. That's not so much of a surprise considering your history. When I touched him, he had foresight, forcefields, and telepathy. Now when I touch him, there are no abilities present, just like all the other times I touched him previously. Wait…" He paused and concentrated. "This is strange…" He looked at his wife. "Lana are you out of MC?"
Sne nodded.
"How?"
"They took my MC."
"TOOK? Not Copied?"
Lana nodded. "Both times they used that forcefield. Given what you said he could do, he saw the attack coming and knew it was the only way to protect us from the lightning."
"But how did he have 4 abilities and now he has none?"
"You're guess is as good as mine. I suggest we keep this between us at this point. Besides, it's a little embarrassing the reason we are standing here like this right now is because our infants saved us." Lana smirked up at her husband.
Sil smirked, "well, at least this means he won't get my ability because he has some other strangeness going on." He leaned down and kissed his wife tenderly. "Let's get you guys back to the shelter before the babies need to protect us again."
They smiled at each other, held hands and exited the cave.
Lana saw all her friends as they stepped back into the sun, blinking. It would be going down in another hour or so but it was still bright. They decided to set up the shelter just outside the reach of the dumping baits and set a watch. Lana fed and changed the babies. She needed to rest and regain some MC before she could grow food to cook.
Sil snuggled with them on the bed while Lana closed her eyes for a while. About an hour later, she was feeling refreshed and they left the lab portion and asked Mandy to grow the food for dinner. She wanted to wait for her own MC to return in case she needed to demonstrate something. Mandy had a few mishaps but ultimately succeeded.
Mandy had also recently taken an interest in learning to cook. Initially, she wanted to focus on food as a farmer for the family and faction. For the last week, she had watched what Lana was capable of doing. She realized this ability wasn't just about making the people well-nourished. A lot of good could be done. She felt like she could be part of something bigger if she could step up more.
Mandy entered the kitchen area and watched for a few moments and asked if she can help.
"I want to do more than just shadow you. Your ability can do amazing things. I want to learn everything."
Lana smiled, "I'm glad to hear you say that. Do you know why I ultimately chose to form this family?"
Mandy shook her head.
"This is between us. Actually… Let's discuss it in the lab once we are done in here for the night, before we go to sleep tonight."
Mandy nodded and they focused on getting everyone fed.
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In the privacy of the lab with just Mandy, Sil and Shalt, Lana was able to explain rather succinctly to Mandy the idea of intelligence gathering with the mission they had already undertaken being about finding missing people. Hearing that, Mandy immediately stated she wanted in. Lana explained the level of training required and the amount of dedication it required. Mandy stated she was the girl for the job.
Mandy climbed into her top bunk that night thankful she was rescued by Lana because now she could help rescue others as well.
Sil tenderly placed his wife in bed, babies safely attached to her chest since they were still in the field and there was no bassinet, and climbed in next to her. They would be back at the Plantwell shelter tomorrow. He'd be able to give all his crystals to Dilly and get measured. He knew Quinn had big plans and was part of them. He didn't want to disappoint his family. That fight he had earlier was more of a challenge than he expected. He wasn't going to complain about it though. They both gained experience from that.
Sil looked at his sleeping family with pride. He then reached over and turned off her light crystal, cuddled with them and soon drifted off to sleep.
After doing their normal morning routine, they struck their little camp and headed West toward home. Lana didn't want to wither the dumping bait beasts on the edge so she had the team enter the forest to the south then went up to the field of them. She made everyone stay a safe distance except Mandy who was tasked with helping her wither them. Eventually, her trainee had mastered the skill to this level. Lana beamed a smile at her.
It rained twice. Both times the ladies had to dash into the trees and wait for the rain to stop. This slowed their progress. It was late afternoon when they arrived. The couple went straight to log in Sil's crystals. He insisted she get credit for the emperor tier as well. Sil went from rank D to rank B. Lana had the feeling it would have been A if he had not shared the points for the emperor tier with her. Noone really knew how much each crystal was worth outside of the Green family who created the system.
Next stop was Dilly. The others all broke off to go rest and get dry clothing. It started raining really hard not long after entering the cleared area just outside the shelter. However, now that those dumping baits were cleared, next time the vehicle could make it to the other side and pick them up.
While Dilly was examining the crystals and measuring Sil, Lana checked in with Sam.
"I'm glad he ranked up! We have another problem here. With Quinn out hunting, the Parasites are once again being a menace. We are waiting to hear from them about what an acceptable solution is. They are not listening to us or respecting us in any way."
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