[h3][b][color=f49ac2]Natalia[/color] and [color=bc8dbf]Moira[/color][/b][/h3]
After changing landboats once, Moira and Natalia get off at the second stop nearest Langdon Mountain. The landboat route curved around the mountain, and Moira had chosen to climb the mountain from the shadowed side -- hopefully she’d be able to find more Darkness manabeasts that way. The pair pause for a moment, staring up at their rocky goal. 

Langdon mountain was sparsely forested at the base, with sections of hardy shrubs and jagged rocks breaking up the greenery. The shrubs and rocks became more common as one rose up the mountain, until the spare forest was entirely gone. Two thirds of the way up, the grey-brown of mountainous earth is covered by white. That snowy area was Natalia’s preferred hunting ground, where she hoped she’d find Ice element manabeasts. 

“Let me scout out the area,” Natalia states, linking her mind to a bird circling overhead. 

“Let me know when you’re done scouting then.” Moira chirps sarcastically. “I’ll just... stand here.” With nothing better to do, Moira imagines slipping an arm across Natalia’s neck and ever so slowly depriving her of air - her struggles weakening until she hung loosely in Moira’s grip. 

If Natalia knew what was going on in Moira’s head, she makes no sign that she notices. “Alright, there’s a pack of rocky looking slimes east of us,” Natalia comments, beginning to head toward their direction. 

“Let’s go then!” Moira responds, following. 

Before long, they come across the Earth slimes, bouncing around some rocks jutting out from the ground. Eight of them, each slime was about a foot tall and wide, with an earthen brown hue. Sharp rocks were fixed in a sort of crown around the top of each slime, jutting out menacingly (for a slime). If one were to be tackled, the rocks would cause serious damage. 

The shadow of the mountain, combined with deeper shadows cast by the tall rocks dotting the landscape gave Moira plenty of Darkness to work with. She could feel just how much stronger her element was, compared to somewhere well-lit, like Liravel. Raising her hands out toward the slimes, she went to work. 

Slimes were one of the most harmless manabeasts the wilderness had to offer, but not necessarily the easiest to deal with for the unprepared artificer. Regardless, they were good for beginner artificers to make reagents out of. Although slimes had the ability to divide, these were too small to be able to -- at least, that’s what they’d learned at the orphanage. That left Moira with cutting, stabbing, and crushing as viable options. She figured that while crushing would leave the bodies the most intact, it’d also be the hardest attack to apply -- darkness was better at cutting. Cutting would be messier, so stabbing it was. 

Before the slimes could even bounce close enough to jump at her, Moira impaled the nearest with three spines of darkness. Hit from the sides and beneath, the gelatin body offered no resistance, and the Artificer flared her the spines wider before dissipating them. The swiss cheese slime plopped to the ground and didn’t move. The rest of the slimes died the same way, spikes of darkness extending from their own shadows or the shadows of rocks and bushes around them. It turns out only two thicker spines were needed to kill each slime. 

“These might as well be hole-y slimes,” Natalia jokes as she starts drawing a circle around one of the slime corpses. 

“Would you become a Psyche Artifact if I stabbed you?” Moira tilts her head, replacing Natalia with a nice necklace in her vision. 

“I don’t think it works like that,” Natalia replies, “Plus, it’d be a downgrade from my current capabilities.”

“Yeah, but at least it wouldn’t make puns. “ Moira gets out her own stick of chalk and starts drawing circles. She chooses a small slime-rock as the Regent. 

“Who else is going to stick with you aside from me?” Natalia teases, as she begins the process to channel the mana into one of the former crown pieces. 

“Sniff. So mean to me...” Moira mewls pitifully. “What kind of ability do you want to use? Shard shot? Rock bullet?” 

“You do this to yourself, you know. And I think materializing a boulder and having gravity do the rest would be efficient enough.”

“A whole boulder is a lot of mana though. And what if the thing moves before it’s crushed?” 

“There are eight slimes here, I could easily have another artifact create earth walls to trap it. Or you could trap it with Darkness. Also, because shards and bullets won’t be effective on everything. I doubt manabeasts look up frequently either,” Natalia explains, now sealing the reagent to make sure it didn’t leak mana.

“Mm that’s true. “ Moira shrugs. She finishes the appropriate design for forming a boulder with the blue chalk and picks up the new Earth artifact. “I’ll turn these four into boulder artifacts then. 

“Okay, I’ll do the same, but make one of them into an Earth wall artifact,” Natalia responds, “That way we can split up to kill weaker manabeasts.” Moira nods in agreement. 

A short while later, Moira dumps her Artifacts -- a pile of rocks -- into Natalia’s hands. 
“These look like stones I could throw at someone,” Natalia says nonchalantly, “Anyways, I’ve located a water manabeast further up the mountain.”

[hr]

The water manabeast turned out to be a water slime - a giant one. Moira immobilized it with darkness -- Natalia with walls -- and Natalia squished it with a boulder while it couldn’t move.
“There’s a wispy looking cloud that might be a Wind manabeast up ahead. Do you want to get that while I turn this slime into an artifact?” Natalia asks.

“Sure. Don’t get caught by surprise while you’re crafting. I’d hate to have to carry all those Regents myself.” Moira cautions jokingly as she walks on ahead.

“Manabeasts still have minds, and I’m flattered you think of me as a pack mule. Take care as well though,” Natalia replies.

“At least you’d be useful!” Moira shouts as she walks out of sight.

After another thirty seconds? Of walking, Moira spots the cloud Natalia was talking about. It was pretty obviously fake as clouds went. First off, it was hovering only 80 feet off the ground. Second, it wasn’t a cloudy day at all, so there was just this lone white puffball in the sky, about seven feet across. 

How am I going to get up to that? Moira wonders as she stops and stares up at the manabeast. She didn’t have to wonder for long -- the manabeast made the first move. Shrinking slowly as it floated directly toward Moira, the manabeast managed to get 30 feet closer before a black thing dropped out of the cloud and sped toward Moira. 

She barely managed to get up a thin wall of darkness before the manabeast -- all sharp claws and speed -- tore through the wall, colliding with Moira’s shoulder before swooping away. She hisses in pain, clutching her shoulder as she spins around, looking for the manabeast. It hovers in the air, glaring at her with unsettling entirely white eyes. The manabeast resembled a cross between a crow and a vulture, and looked particularly bedraggled. It hung in the air without flapping its wings, its gaze still locked on Moira. Carefully, Moira formed a bed of spikes behind her back, making sure the bird couldn’t see them from its position. A moment later, the bird dived and Moira threw herself sideways with darkness while the manabeast ran headfirst into the spikes. 

Sighing, Moira dusts herself off and takes out a stick of red chalk just as Natalia arrives, slightly short of breath.

“Are you alright? I sensed some pain coming from you,” Natalia says worriedly.

“I got a boo-boo...”  Moira pouts, showing Natalia her arm. Blood was dripping from the wound freely. Natalia rifles through a rented dimensional bag and pulls out a roll of gauze and a small bottle of antiseptic, “Hold still.” Moira clenches her teeth and looks away as Natalia treats and wraps the wound gently. 

“You should be fine until we get back to the orphanage now. Do you want to continue?” Natalia asks. 

“Of course, it’s fine now that it’s bandaged.” Moira responds, shrugging with her good shoulder. 

“Alright, just making sure. It would be pretty silly if we died on our first outing after all.”

“It’d also be pretty silly if we turned back so soon.” 

“If you insist, I’m not going to stop you. Let’s keep hunting then -- I want to test out my new Water artifact at least once,” Natalia smirks, twirling a sleek Water gunblade in one hand. Moira just oggles Natalia. Something about girls with gunblades...