60 Slow Start

It sounded like something serious had happened between the Jaguars and Spectres as all the Jaguars in the audience began hissing and growling at the mention of them. Stanis stayed his mouth and didn't ask, although Serb had watched him all this time and thus knew he had to explain.

"How many Jaguars are there here, Stanis?" asked Serb.

"About 350 or so" answered Stanis, a bit of confusion in his voice.

"How many do you think were here when we first left the tutorial?" asked Serb.

"…". He was met with silence as Stanis stared at him blankly.

"Over double that number. Now take a wild guess why over half our whole population has died so far?"

"… The spectres" answered Stanis.

"I think you can now understand why we won't enter a partnership with you until the second task is completed. You see, we have a debt to pay back and you better believe that we're paying back in full!" said Serb, his lips curling at this.

There were cheers from the audience in response, the Humans overwhelmed by the hatred the Jaguars had against the spectres as the sheer volume threatened to knock them over.

"I'm sure you're thinking why we can't do it by ourselves, no? I think you know the answer to that already."

Stanis thought back to what he knew about the Spectres but was beaten to the punch by Sil.

"It's because you need mana to kill the Spectres, isn't it? That's why you wanted all the Jaguars up to tier-two, otherwise they can't even touch the Spectres"

"Ha-ha. You've got competition Stanis" answered Serb, "Yes you're right. Those wretched things can't be hurt by tooth or nail, only by mana. I think you can now see the scene of what it looked like when we first arrived on Earth..."

"Now, don't worry just yet" said Serb just before the silence could cut through, "I'm not asking you to kill all the Spectres for us. Instead, you weaken the Spectres, after all you have magic abilities far beyond us, and you allow us to take the kills. Eventually, we'll be trained enough to take down their whole base. So, are you up for it?"

In truth, Serb was actually worried behind the confident mask he was wearing right now. The top 50 Jaguars, who were tier-two even before the Humans had come, could kill the lower tier-one wraiths but no higher. This was because the Jaguars had much higher potential and strength in physical ability than mental or in magic.

If Stanis decided not to help them, after all this endeavour would take a few months in total, then Serb was already too indebted to him to force them, which he now doubted he could even do against Stanis after seeing his strength, and thus it would take close to a year to wipe out the Spectres instead of a few months.

Stanis looked back towards Caleb, Orena and Sil. Caleb impassively nodded his head, whereas Orena did it enthusiastically, her body raring to fight, and Sil nodded her head respectfully.

"I guess that's a yes from all of us. I just hope this doesn't take an eternity." joked Stanis.

"You have my word." responded Serb, the whole crowd going wild as cheering louder than before broke out.

_____________

Stanis smiled as he walked towards the Spectre's base. His plan had currently gone well so far, their relationship with the Jaguars only improving over time. This was the final part of it, and he'd be damned if he let anyone ruin his work till now…

Walking around Stanis was a group of about 30 Jaguars. These were the newly baptised Jaguars and so they incessantly chattered away around him, excited to kill their race's banes. It wasn't but 20 minutes into the walk that Stanis noticed a toxic shine in the distance, coming closer every second.

Perfect.

It wasn't too long of a wait until 6 Spectres entered his sight, all screeching and screaming as they saw him. These Spectres consisted off just plain, ripped shrouds with toxic light shining off them. Stanis had learnt that these were the tier-one Spectres: good practice for the Jaguars.

He released some mana outside of his body as icicles began to simultaneously form, each about an arm's length long. These were mana-efficient shots for him, each icicle taking just less than 1 mana each. He loosened his control and multiple icicles stabbed into each Spectre who shrieked louder than before in pain. However, Stanis was wrong if he thought that they would simply go down from this as they moved with greater speed and drive as they tumbled towards him, claws sticking out of their shrouds.

He quickly formed more icicles, just as large as before and shot them out, this time the Spectres collapsing onto the ground but not disintegrating. Stanis rubbed his brows and commanded the Jaguars to kill the downed monsters, going Jaguar by Jaguar as he told them exactly how to attack with mana. Sure, they could just attack the way they wanted but that would be at the cost of their whole mana reserve. If Serb really did want to take down all the Spectres, each Jaguar would have to kill 10s of Spectres each, meaning they had to learn how to be efficient when attacking.

This was the time-consuming bit as Stanis treated these Jaguars like they were already his own troops, not cutting corners with any of them. It was a fair while later that all 6 Spectres had disintegrated into the ground, the Jaguars who had killed them gleeful.

The day passed like this and Stanis managed to get all 20 of the Jaguars to a decent level of mastery, although it would be at least 2 or 3 more days like this until this batch of Jaguars were good enough to participate in the raid. That meant it would take about 2 months just to get all the baptised Jaguars up to a level where they could fight tier-one Spectres, countless more to get all the Jaguars up to a level where they could fight tier-two Spectres, and then even more for higher tier-twos… This was unacceptable!

Thus, he returned with the Jaguars and immediately picked out Sil to take with him. The white-haired, lithe girl was a bit worried when she realised she was going alone with Stanis but then relaxed her guard as she realised what they were actually going to be doing.

Stanis took her to a cosy cave just a minute away from the Spectres' territory and told her to circulate her mana. Due to the fact that she was magic-based in fighting style and class, she already had some ideas about this and thus could roughly circulate her mana. Roughly…

Stanis held onto her shoulders and checked her circulation, only to be shocked as he realised the number of mistakes in her circuit. It wasn't as bad as Rikky's had been but it was the fact that she was dealing with more mana in the first place, meaning even the smallest mistakes could have disastrous consequences.

Since he didn't want to impart Yils training onto anyone else, mainly due to mistrust, he had to create his own method to give to others. Rikky had allowed him to create a beginner version of this but Sil worked much better as a lab-rat.

And thus the night flowed by and Stanis made countless changes to her circuit, testing the effect of each change by telling her to fight Spectres in-and-out. It was hectic for Sil as she was constantly pushing her limits but satisfying for Stanis as he realised the effect he was having, grinning from ear to ear whenever one of his changes worked.

One thing he noticed while shaping her circuits was about her body: her skin was scarred all over. You wouldn't notice this when she was fully clothed and wearing her cold mask over her face but it was now clear to him that she had gone through a lot of shit ever since the apocalypse.

Considering her beauty and intelligence, she had obviously been riding the high road back before the apocalypse, meaning she must have drastically changed to still be alive now. But then again, who hadn't suffered ever since the apocalypse?, thought Stanis while donning a melancholy smile, after all, he was now basically a connoisseur on the art of suffering.

Sil, who had initially been extremely polite and respectful around Stanis ever since realising his power, had softened back to a truer version of herself after discovering his more human-side.

"What are you smiling at?" asked Sil.

"Nothing," responded Stanis, quickly putting over his smile a cold mask," Get back to circulating."

"If you say so, Master" she replied, a soft smile on her face as she heard him "tsk" at her addressing.

__________

It was two days into her training that Stanis finally perfected his method. She, who had initially only been able to kill about 3 Spectres with all her mana, was now able to kill more than 20, all due to the changes he had made to her mana circuit.

Stanis smiled as he thought about what he had created. His smile wavered, however, as he thought of the complications this had brought alongside, after all, his feelings for Sil were no longer as simple as before…