Hunting a Nightwalker: B-Rank Exam

Exam Details:

A number of new things had happened with Lucius after his mission with his team in the Haunted Village, he had completely disappeared for several months, but to everyone's surprise he had returned to the guild in a completely new body, not sharing the details of the what or the why. They were questionable about it at first but realizing that he now had two ripple-patterned eyes instead of the one, they couldn't dismiss that it was definitely Lucius since he had one of those eyes in his previous body. After a letter request by her teammate Samira Nassar, or more importantly... one of the guilds Aces, he has been sent on a mission to hunt a certain monster.

He was no longer the shy or incompetent shut-in that he used to be, and to some's surprise at the guild he had started to show a more distant, cold attitude, whether him going into his new body or somehow developing that mental state throughout his journey that took months, nobody has any idea, he has physically improved himself however as that's what Lucius had tried to aim for by going with this new body, and now he shares it with his trusty spirit, the Sage of Wisdom. Lucius held the reins most of the time but the Sage takes over when he believes it's necessary.

"Thinking about something?" the Sage's voice had spoken out, breaking the silence as Lucius is walking across the silent, dead lands that is the Cursed Lands. "Nothing important." Lucius replied, as he seemed intent on the objective at hand. "Open that letter again, I want to check on this "Nightwalker" again." Lucius then reached into his pants pocket with one of his hands, grabbing out a rather ruffled paper now but starts to open up the barely folded paper, going over Samira's letter once more. "Just skip to the bottom." he held up the letter higher, to get a better view of the bottom that carried the details of the monster they were hunting.

"Victims who get slashed by it's claws or bitten by it's teeth are transformed into a Nightwalker by a slow, corrupted process." Lucius gave a slight "Hm." to what the Sage said, suggesting he's thinking on it. "That must be why they sent me, this monster is a nightmare for mages who use physical magic, my gravity magic is ranged and should do the job." he folded the paper, but more neatly this time and placed it gently into his pocket once more, walking through the lands. Lucius suddenly eyed a cemetery in the distance, believing he had saw the shadow of something moving in the distance but as soon as he tried to look at what he saw, it's like it vanished instantly from that spot. "Hm... I think that's the graveyard were looking for, and I believe it's already playing with us."

Lucius had started to walk towards the cemetery without much regard, maintaining a very calm composure and didn't seem worried about the creature at all. "I get that you want to draw this creature out, but don't fall for any obvious traps." Lucius had completely ignored the statement, in a way that he already knew to be cautious about this Nightwalker. He finally reached the cemetery itself and walked in through the already open up gates, most of the cemetery appeared to be somewhat barricaded by a metal fence, some parts of it ripped off, with a 1/3 of the iron gate at the entrance meant to protect the cemetery looked like it had been forcefully torn off. "It seems were not the first to walk into the Nightwalkers playground."

He started to look around the cemetery, a majority of what covered it were gravestones, a few dead trees here and there and some parts of the land itself was just dead. The long, boring walk that Lucius was just on a minute ago is completely replaced by a menacing, dreadful feeling that he can't shake off, as if something is definitely watching him from the shadows and he can't pinpoint where exactly. "If it's too much for you, I can take over." the Sage offered, but Lucius lightly shaked his head. "No, I need to do this alone." Lucius replied.

Lucius continued to patrol the cemetery until suddenly, two hands had popped underneath Lucius, both hands appearing to have long claws accompanied by long fingers, Lucius had quickly let out a gravity exclusion, resulting in a massive replusive force being unleashed in all directions, forcing the monster to lose it's grip allowing Lucius to go free, he jumped back and saw some form of darkness liquid on the ground, which is where the hands retreated into before Lucius could do any form of counterattack towards it.

He then jumped towards the tallest gravestone and stood on top of it, from what he saw the monster can manifest it's limbs through some sort of darkness portal on the ground, so he had reached higher ground to try and get out of that reach. He eyed a certain shadow bolt that came behind a certain dead tree, the bolt itself landing right underneath the tombstone and with long arms and hands with long claws reaching for Lucius at the top of the tombstone, which he managed to quickly jump off before the monster could take a slash at Lucius.

As soon as he could, a magic circle had appeared beneath Lucius, he slightly took a step back bot kept his focus upon the circle, keeping it running as suddenly, all the tombstones and trees in a 60 meter radius had started to be affected by some form of an forceful attracted force, attracting all of them to the center of the circle, the spell he used for this is Gravity Center, the tree that Lucius suspected the monster is at could be visibly seen as it started to also be dragged into the center of the circle, the nightwalker is immobilized by all the tombstones and trees piled in the center, Lucius let go of his grip on the Gravity Center spell, and started to activate his Gravity Punch, he jumped up onto the pile and as soon as the monster started to try and claw his way out, his face would be collided with Lucius's gravity punch, punching a hole straight into it's head with it collapsing into the ground, with a form of black liquid which assumed to be it's blood had started to pour out. "It's done." Lucius said, letting out a sigh of relief.

He jumped off the pile and started to make his way out of the cemetery. "Tsh, I could've handled that a lot smoother... I disrespected all those graves by putting them into the center to try and immobilize that monster." the Sage tried to reassure him, saying "That graveyard was turned into a killing playground for an inhuman, merciless monster, the ends justify the means." Lucius didn't continue the conversation any longer, his job was pretty much done and he started to make his way back to the guild.

WC: 1189/1000