Pity

"I have a plan, guard me," Christopher backs away from the beast. Slivers of green vine burst from his palms into the shifting ground. The ground deteriorates beneath the pressure of the centipede's frantic movements. The sand moves like an ocean as if it had changed to water and was finding its way to the bottom of the bedrock. Xiao lowers the palms of her hands to the earth, bursting forth earth mana with a great force and solidifying the ground. The radius around them turns to sandstone, Dunder follows suit, supporting her and continuing the sandstone radius further to prevent the beast from escaping into the ground.

"Distract it," Dunder says. He runs towards the beast, wielding a sword, knowing full well he wouldn't be able to damage the beast. "When Christopher traps the beast, I'll burn it." chance says to the group.

Yuto and Xiao try to slash the beast. they stumble with their naive and slow movements. Wind is useless, Lightening seems to damage the beast, but Yuto isn't able to expel enough to seriously harm the monster. Scorch marks decorate the exoskeleton. The beast thrashes out of fear. It's realized it's no match, it wants to escape, but Christopher's vines shoot through the sandstone floor and wrap around the beast. The vines come back down and cement themselves firmly to the sandstone, trapping the manic beast.

Chance rushes forward, placing his palm on the disgusting exoskeleton. a fire erupts down the length of his arm that spreads to the centipede. It shrieks and screams a horrible and frightening sound. The mana beast was large but stupid. It couldn't expel mana to harm them, it was defenseless. Only a giant bug looking down at them with a gaze of arrogance.

"Wow, that was quite a big one," Dunder scratches his head. He approaches the torched carcass. "What are you doing?" He takes his sword, swinging it with his entire body. A hard and human length leg slices off from the main carcass. Dunder ties a slice of fabric around it and attaches the leg to his back. "Taking back proof that we've completed the mission."

"Gross," Chance squirms, his face morphing to disgust. "Look at that, we have the whole day to ourselves now!" Dunder shrills in excitement, eager to see his wife.

… "why did we want the whole day to ourselves?" The soldiers sit at the edge of Amelie's Seamstress shop, beneath the cover of swaying fabric. "Get up you workaholics!" Chance comes in screaming, "I've brought fruit popsicles!"

"How'd you afford that?"

Chance's eyes seem to gleam for a second, "with this!" He pulls out several white envelopes and sprawls them in his hands like playing cards. Xiao reaches over Nel, impatient for the envelope. She opens the envelope nervously. Thrown astray haphazardly are 20 brawn coins.

"You've got to be kidding me, this isn't enough for anything!" Yuto complains. Xiao smiles to herself, content with the money she's made. She thinks excitedly, "If one butterfly knife is one brawn, I could buy twenty knives!"

"You're lucky they even paid this much, there's been budget cuts lately," Dunder sits down beside the boys, taking the final fruit popsicle from Chance's hands, "hey that's mine!"

He eats unsympathetic. "You already had one, I'm your teacher you should be paying me."

They bicker back and forth for a while. Chance begins to talk about the fight in an arrogant way. "Cut it out, just because this beast was compatible with our skills doesn't mean the next one will. This one couldn't even use elements and you're acting like hot shit."

"There are beasts who can use mana?" Dunder hits the back of Chance's head. "Of course there are! if the beasts were all like this the war would've been over by now!"

"So how strong are the beasts?"

Dunder wears a look of desperation. "They're-" he stops himself briefly, "They're monsters who wear the skin of humans. These large beasts with low intelligence are nothing. The type of animals Zelisthia is against are a threat to all of humanity, they don't know anything but death."

"Wear the skin of humans?"

"They look like us."

"Then how do we know who's human and who's a demonic beast?"

"We don't"

"Well, no wonder we're losing the war," Chance blurts. Dunder gives him a heavy stare, "I'm going to go receive the next mission, stay here."

"Way to go," Yuto languidly takes a bite of his popsicle.