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

Chapter 1528: Chapter 1528 A Week of Searching

--- Kat ---

The next week had moments of ups and downs. Most of the downs revolved around checking with D.E.M.O.N.S and getting no answer... right alongside admitting that fact to Sylvie, Vivian and Callisto in her regular messages back to them. Kat normally didn't mind her missions, she also didn't mind relaxing a bit after her mission was done... BUT THIS WAS NEITHER!

It felt like they were in some sort of awful limbo. The crew would get up, search around the area, meet up for lunch, move base camp, and then repeat. This had been going on for a week and nobody was particularly happy about it.

The girl's had volunteered to take Bower back home multiple times but he was sticking with them till they got answers... not that it was happy about it either, but they understood.

On the brighter side, it turned out that everyone had managed to go up in rank. Somehow. Even Bower, though for him it was more like he regained some power then gained new ones. It was unclear if his theoretical peak had changed but he could now comfortable use Rank 3 power once again. The group was starting to think that perhaps the explosion of the drake had more effects then the obvious.

Just a feeling though.

Lily desperately wanted to crack open her paper spellbook but she didn't bring it along! Lily was cursing the storage rings and praising them at irregular intervals as she practiced a bit between her searches. Just a bit though, as they days were regularly quite tiring.

They hadn't gone into the mist yet, but they'd covered a massive swath of area around it, and Lily contributed to that by flying around and doing her part. She slept well throughout the night.

Kamiko had learnt what her new ability was on the third day of their little excursion. When she was changing out the wrappings on Hunter, she let out a long sigh... and a whole bunch of bubbles. It was exhausting apparently, but they 'captured' injuries. This let Kamiko heal someone, and hold a bunch of injuries to throw at people in a pinch.

The issue was that creating the bubbles was massively draining.

There was also a bit of an odd balance. You needed a bubble large enough to cover the injury completely if you want to 'take' it, but bubbles increased exponentially in cost with their size. Except when Kamiko just blew out a stream of smaller bubbles they did still do some healing. It was strange.

Hunter healed up quickly once Kamiko discovered that... and Hunter was able to discover her own new ability moments later. Kat had no idea how Hunter worked it out so quickly but once she was up and moving she managed it in less then five minutes. Hunter could now break apart into a swarm of tiny little snakes and send them out to do things.

There were some restrictions. The first was that Hunter had to split her entire body, it was all or nothing. The other big restriction was that one snake left behind in the mess was a pure white albino snake that held her main consciousness. How Hunter knew that? Apparently she just did. Kat didn't question it overly much.

"Oh..." mumbled Kat. "Um... Kamiko have you heard anything important from your mother?"

Kamiko shook her head, "Nothing worth mentioning. I mean, I do send her regular updates and well wishes... but she hasn't told me anything that might hint at... bigger issues. Is it really that likely?"

Hunter shrugged, "I personally suspect that the explosion destabilised the dimension we're in and potentially a large area around it preventing us from being recalled. Instead of informing us that nobody knows when we can leave, it's instead sent us on a quest to find a drake that probably doesn't exist to stop us doing something foolish.

Then again, if I'm correct D.E.M.O.N.S likely also can't tell if the drake survived or not,"

"Um... that's... that's bad?" offered Kamiko. "I... I don't know how big of a concern that really is for me... I mean... there's all this stuff in my storage ring I could be messing around with... and like... my messages are going through to my family, who I don't normally spend that much time with anyway... so... this could be a fun camping trip instead!

Though... um... I don't know how easy it is for you all to be happy about it?"

"If... If that IS true?" grumbled Bower. "Then I'm going to be mighty annoyed. I stuck around to ensure that beast is dead in the ground, but if I'm wasting time I could be spending back at home training the youngsters? Then I can't be too pleased,"

"The offer to escort you back home is still on the table," offered Kat. "I can probably fly you there now actually,"

Bower just shrugged at that. Kat sighed and turned back to Hunter. "I don't know what to think of that idea... I mean... it does make some sense, but I feel like we'd be told something like that?"

"Politics," stated Hunter. "It comes back to politics. If they don't admit the mission is over, or that it needs to be extended they don't need to pay us more. Technically we were told this could be up to a month long and we're not quite there yet,"

"What about that?" asked Lily.

"Then they're still probably safe because traditionally leeway is given for missions of that size. I expect they could squeeze and extra week or two past that out of the situation before they're forced to actually announce a result," grumbled Hunter.

"Bother," said Lily, Kat and Kamiko together.