Marked Ones: Advent of the Demon Prince

Rena, on the other hand, made sure to learn a lot about many kinds of creatures since she was going to become an adventurer again after the academy. Because of this, she was able to instruct them on the parts of the Ent they wanted to harvest. It had a core in its stomach that housed its mana, which was shaped like a seed. They were very popular ingredients in mana restoration potions.

"Stronger and older Ents have bigger cores, but once they get to a certain age, they become almost impossible to harvest without damaging. The diminishing return makes it unpopular to hunt the older ones." The redhead explained while expertly carving away at the monster\'s corpse.

Once she had everything taken care of, she placed the materials in the storage ring. Normally it was customary to burn the bodies of dead creatures, however, Ents were an exception. Without their cores, the bodies would rapidly decay and fertilize the ground they died on.

It was only an hour or so later that they happened upon the ruins. Grimspire was so named because of an ancient tower that still stood tall amongst the trees of the forest. Many people believed there were many such towers, but the one the one that gave the ruins their name was the only one still standing.

Another marker of the ruins was that the rest of them were carved into an artificial ravine. Coming up to the ruins, it would first look like you were stopping over a small ledge that dropped straight down almost twelve feet. However, the ledge was artificial as well. The walls of the ravine were perfectly smooth and lined with gorgeous stonework and carvings.

The area was covered in these perfect ditches and it was a dangerous place to walk if you were not paying attention. From above, it looked like the roads of a city were forcefully sunk twelve feet into the ground and then the walls of the stone were smoothed out and carved into. There were no other buildings of any kind save the one tower.

Along the \'streets\' of the ruins there were carved out rooms with doorways and windows, indicating that the ancient inhabitants lived partially underground with the areas over their streets being opened to the sky. There were a handful of demon ruins across the continent, but this style of building and design was unique to Grimspire.

Off to the north, rising up from the sunken pathways, was a series of smoke towers. They were small, but there were a few of them, indicating the research camp was off in that direction. The group opted to carefully leap over the gaps in the landscape and approach the research camp from above. That way they would not get lost in the veritable maze of roads.

Jade required some extra assistance from both her brother and Lucius on a few spots, but otherwise everyone handled the short trek alright. When they approached the campsite, they decided to go ahead and drop down into the ruins before finishing their approach. The idea was they would look less threatening coming up to the research site from the same level rather than from above.

"Hold!" a man yelled out as they approached the site.

He looked to be a standard adventurer who was on guard duty for the moment. Behind him a number of men and women in robes were rushing about and trading notes. Two of the robed people grabbed another adventurer by his wrist and yanked him along with them as they hurried away from camp.

Lucius deduced they wanted to go somewhere and the poor adventurer who was eating a meal, was the closest escort they grabbed.

"Lucius Kane. We are students of the Arcadios Royal Academy. We have taken up assignment to assist with guarding the research camp." Lucius proclaimed. "We have heard you experienced trouble with monsters."

"Aye, that we have."

"Yet, on our way here we met a single Ent, and while I am not perfect… I\'m not detecting anything at the moment."

"Aye, you won\'t. Not till the night falls."

Rena and Natali cocked their heads inquisitively while Desmond\'s face paled slightly. Even Lucius himself felt his body shudder momentarily.

Jade spoke up first, "What\'s the matter?"

"The undead, little lady," The adventurer answered, "During the day they vanish below ground and are nigh untraceable, but at night, they resurface to stalk the living. Naty beasts.

"On their own, they usually aren\'t much of a threat, but if they reach greater numbers, they become a bit of a problem. We are getting close to that problem part over the last few days. All we have been able to do is protect the researchers at night, so we haven\'t been able to cull their numbers."

Desmond and Lucius continued to speak with the man as the girls found themselves pulled away by a couple of female adventurers. Thanks to his acute sense of hearing, he was able to determine that the girls\' conversations were not meant for virgin ears.

When Rena disclosed her marital status, the adventurers began asking Jade some rather private information that Lucius was sure a sister would not know.

"And that about sums it up." The adventurer finished.

The plan was for them to rest during the day and send out the new fighters to assist with thinning their numbers. For some reason the undead were only appearing on the sunken streets of the ruins and none were appearing up on the surface. It was a blessing as they were able to avoid worrying about an undead mob falling atop their heads.

Of course, they did not rely on this pattern and made sure to maintain a presence up above, just in case that changed. Once they agreed on a plan, everyone dispersed which included Lucius being guided by Rena to a private space just for them to use.

They were on a mission in a dangerous area, so they had no intentions of disturbing the camp, however it appeared that she had something rather important to discuss.

"Lucius…" She started. "I have something that I really, really need to talk to you about. It\'s about our future. I\'ve been meaning to have a conversation with you about this for a few weeks now but…"