"You are so bad at math, I can not even."


Today's lesson: The unintelligent can not be reasoned with.

Eve was walking besides Speka while following Aisha. Eve turned to Speka and told her, "Aisha has been a complex subject to talk about. You see, she was one of the most powerful magicians in the world by the time she was twelve. To have all that power stored up inside of her at such a young age, Eve is most perplexed about how she could have stored it all in without breaking down mentally or emotionally. She went on an expedition with her grand father to some ruins, and there she found a ring. She must have thought that that ring was just a normal ring, but it sucked out all of her magic and disappeared, and now she has to relearn magic all over again. Knowing that you are in a state of power, only to have it taken away from you, Eve knows that feeling all too well."

Speka was looking ahead towards Aisha. She nodded to signify she understood. "Yeah," she said. "I know what you mean, perfectly, I guess." Eve nodded back.

The three were walking towards their temporary residence in the village of Elder: a slightly worn down shapeless white and gold house, and average in size. The coloring of the house would have made it look extravagant, but the surrounding city dulled it down to a plain old building.

Aisha in the lead took out a key and inserted it into the keyhole. Twisting it, she unlocked the door and opened it with a creaking sound. Inside, she shouted, "We're back guys!"

Elsword looked over the couch and said in a toneless voice, "Great. Do you have any leads on where Banthus is?"

Aisha answered, "Yes. Yes we do." She motioned Eve to come over and told Elsword, "Eve will tell you all about it."

Eve bought up her console and looked for a file within it. When she found it, she read, "Hoffman reports that Banthus has hidden in a cave, code nammed: Banthus Cave, to the east of the castle, plainly visible by road."

Elsword looked over the couch and asked Eve, "What do you mean plainly visible by road?"

Eve answered, "When we were travelling to this place, there was a cave in plain sight during one of the extreme turns."

Elsword looked aggravated and said, "What the hell? Is Banthus that dull to hide in plain sight! Maybe we were looking too hard... No. There wasn't a cave back there. I'm fairly sure I would have noticed it."

Aisha said, "Elsword, we have a carefully recorded map, and there is a cave by the road."

Elsword got up and walked over towards Aisha and said, "Really then? Show me."

Eve then gathered the rest of the El Search Party together and headed towards the spot in the road that allowed the Banthus Cave to be visible. Looking in, the cave seemed to draped with wealth.

"Wait, there is a cave here? I swear it wasn't here before!" Elsword whispered to himself. He caught Eve glancing at him and commented on the gold shining towards them from the cave. "Probably stolen," Elsword remarked.

Raven said, "Hey, when did this girl get here?" Eve looked towards Raven and saw him pointing towards Speka.

Elsword jumped back and pulled out his sword. He said to Speka, "What the- Who are you and what do you want?"

Aisha said, "She's been here the whole time. She was there when we were briefing you about this cave."

Elsword replied, "But I didn't notice her!"

Eve said to Elsword, "How does one tunnel vision so much that they can't notice the company of another sentient being?"

Rena said in a scolding voice, "Tunnel vision does that to a person sometimes."

Speka said, "Look, I'm just here to help if you want. No need to get so... touchy? That's not the word."

Raven continued to glare at Speka and Elsword did the same for a few seconds before brightening up and smiling. He said to her, "Sure, why not? We could always use the extra help!"

Eve did not expect that kind of response from the boy.

Speka suddenly said, "Hey, where's the kid with the giant-thing?"

Eve looked around. She remarked, "Missing. Probably went to investigate the cave."

Elsword said, "Come on then! What are we waiting for? Beating up a bandit can't possibly be THAT hard!"

Aisha smiled awkwardly and said to him, "You'd be surprised..."

Continuing on into the cave, the party heard a yell that clearly belonged to Chung. Rushing over there, we expected to see him in some kind of battle. Instead, he was playing around in the gold. Eve asked him, "What are you doing?"

Chung laughed and replied, "I'm literally swimming in gold right now! I know that these bandits are bad for stealing, but you've got to give them some props for at least managing to steal this much stuff!" He laughed again. "What if we kept all of this gold when we're done here?"

Raven scoffed. He said to the boy, "Then we'd be no better than the bandits."

Aisha said, "Stealing from stealers is still considered cheating."

Chung's 'hair ears' fell down a bit as he said, "Oh."

Elsword scolded him with a face that couldn't tell if it wanted to smile or not, "That's bad and you should feel bad. I'm dissapointed in you, bro." Elsword looked off towards the ceiling, probably daydreaming. Eve shoved him a bit and they continued walking through.

Chung got up, grabbed his cannon, and he blasted his way up to the ledge that his friends were waiting. He said, "Well, it was just theory-crafting anyways." He smiled and then looked at Speka. He asked, "Hey, who's this?"

Speka introduced herself. "My name's Speka. Pleased to meet you. I'm a dark magician of sorts."

When Speka said that, Elsword, Raven, and Chung tensed up. Chung said, "Dark, as in the power found in Dark El?"

Speka said, "No no no no no. Dark as in the Dark variant of the normal El shard."

Chung said, "Oh. Good. I have bad experiences with the dark El."

Speka tilted her head and said, "Huh?"

Rena smiled. She said, "It's a funny story. I'll tell you when we get back, okay?"

Speka asked, "Do I want to know?"

Chung answered simply, "No."

Eve spoke up quietly, as to not disturb their conversation too much. "Eve thinks we should be going now. Inactivity will cause you to lose muscle mass, in case you did not know."

With Elsword leading the way, the group walked deeper into the cave. It had a lot of sunlight, as the cave opened up to the outside with a clear waterfall flowing down a big chasm.

"It's beautiful," Aisha said. "I can see why this would be a good hiding spot."

Elsword looked back and smirked a bit. He said, "And then that awkward moment when you realize that the really big hole isn't exactly inconspicuous, is it?"

"Oh look at you, using a word bigger than three syllables!"

"Shut up."

Eve said to the two, "We have got more business to take care of!" and pointed towards a newcomer.

Elsword said, "Yeah, yeah. I get it. I'm sorry, Eve."

Aisha shouted out, "Oh, apologize easily to her, but struggle to even thank me!?"

Elsword closed his eyes and turned around to Aisha and stuck his tongue out. Turning back, he opened one of his eyes and yelped in shock. "What the hell?" he said.

Elsword was pointing towards a gigantic bat, easily the size of two humans, maybe Ignis and Leviathan stacked on top of another. The bat grinned and bared its teeth, then sung aloud, "Will you look at you? Puny humans walking into my den! You woke me from my slumber, and now you're gonna ten!"

Rena put her finger on her chin and asked the bat, "What exactly, does that mean, sir bat? I'm pretty sure that's not ten's not in the right context, and you just used it for the sake of rhyming!"

The bat said, "I am the Bat King, my dear wood elf. I would put your head on my shelf, but I'm in dire need of food!"

Speka raised one hand towards her mouth to block sound from reaching the Bat King and she said to the group, "Can we get this over with? The poor animal can't sing!"

Following that statement, two explosions shook the cave. One flashed red, the other blinded blue. When Eve opened her eyes, she saw the Bat King flying into the chasm. She heard the animal screaming.

The group looked towards Raven who was walking away. Seeing as glaring at him wouldn't do anything, they turned to Chung. He put his hands up and said in defense, "What? It's not like I hurt him or anything! I mean, bats can fly right?"

From the hole, Eve heard the Bat King say, "Did I mention I can't fly? There's a reason I'm so big, and it's because I'm actually overweight!"

Tilting her head toward Chung again, he said, "Uh, I'm sure he'll be fine! Perfectly fine!"

Chung turned around and yelped in surprise and pointed his fingers towards the newcomers. "What the hell?" he said.

A swarm of bats flew past the group and out of the caves, murmuring lines such as, "The King is dead, retreat!" and, "Help us!" and, "I don't want to die!"

From the chasm, Eve overheard the late Bat King say, "I'm not dead you morons! I just can't get up! A little help here?"

Speka leaned over the chasm and shouted down into the pit, "Shut up! I'm trying to think!"

Eve turned and saw Raven conversing with a rather large man in a green shirt and mask covering his whole face. Looking towards us, the man started walking and dragged a club along with him. When he came within a respectable distance, he said, "So, are you guys the pest control we hired?"

Elsword said, "Pest control? Of course no-"

Aisha covered his mouth and quickly explained to the man, "What he meant to say, is that he doesn't consider bats pests. Our definition of pest is usually bugs! Toads too."

The man looked down at the floor for an unreasonably amount of time. Finally, the man looked up and asked the group, "So, I suppose you want your payment."

Eve heard Elsword try to shout, "Of justice!" but it was very muffled by Aisha's hand.

Rena said, "Of course, it IS our job after all." She beamed.

The man started leading us deeper into the cave. The group saw bandits sleeping on large gold piles, playing cards, and more often than not, simply playing with their stolen goods. However, Eve could feel the El coming ever closer. As if on queue, the man said, "We're getting close," so Eve did not have to.

The man led the group to a door and said, "Alright, the boss is right through here. Take care not to piss him off, okay?"

Chung said, "I'll try, Mister. No guarantees though, the red-haired boy can quite an idiot sometimes."

"You too? I'm just misunderstood, damnit!"

Raven pushed the door open with his nasod arm and said to Elsword and Chung, "Come on, let's go."

The door opened into a wider portion of the cave, but with only one set path carved out by humans. At the end of the straight path was a large amount of gold, and Banthus, who was quite large, rummaging through the treasure.

Closing the door silently, Raven spoke up, "Sir, we're the pest control that you guys hired. We would like our payment now, please."

Noticing us, Banthus slowly turned towards us and said, "Pest control? Oh right. So did you get rid of the bat infestation."

Raven nodded and said, "Well, we got rid of what appeared to be their king, and a large amount of bats left after that."

Banthus sat down and crossed his legs. "Ah good. It was annoying hearing that bat sing late at night when everything echoed throughout the cave. Come over here, and we'll discuss your payment, shall we." He looked up and smiled a toothy grin with one eye that stared into Eve's soul and the other that was scratched out and replaced with an X-shaped scar.

The group walked over towards Banthus, but only Chung sat down, on his cannon as well. The group eyed the heaping pile of shine, and Banthus, noticing this told them, "You can take anything you want from that pile, equal to about, eh, say 2,000 ED each. Provided I give permission."

Elsword, being the blunt idiot that he is, said immediately, "I'll take that shiny blue thing," and pointed to Ruben's El.

"No," the bandit said.

Elsword murmured, "Well, it would have been funny if it worked that way anyways."

Rena said to us, "Huddle together everyone, group discussion time!"

Forming a circle, Elsword spoke out first. He said, "When are we gonna kick Banthus's butt? He's right there."

Raven said, "Very soon. We just have to be careful. We choose our prizes, then when we're about to leave, we get him."

They nodded and went about selecting their loot. Eve tried to eye anything useful, but she couldn't. She looked at the others. Rena and Raven seemed more keen on watching Banthus than anything else, but Aisha, Chung, and Elsword were actively trying to find something worthwhile. Soon, Aisha gave up, but Elsword found a sword scabbard and picked it up. Chung was choosing for everybody else, a.k.a. grabbing everything he could and stuffing it into his Destroyer. When it was full, he said, "Alright, I'm done. Hopefully this isn't too hard to carry." Using two hands, he lifted the beast onto his shoulders and stumbled back a bit, but regained his footing.

Banthus looked inside the cannon (because that is very smart to look inside a weapon) and then at the scabbard that Elsword picked and said, "Eh, I guess that would do. Now, our business is done here, you can leave now."

Raven nodded. "Agreed." He nodded towards Chung then glanced at Banthus than back to Chung. Something went off inside his head, and he started walking towards Banthus. Meanwhile, Elsword was walking back towards the pile and waited. When Chung got to Banthus, he swung his cannon filled with gold, and it sounded like it hurt.

Banthus definitely did not see this coming and Elsword picked up Ruben's El.


When he did, a bright light shot out of the crystal and filled the land. Then, the world was sundered into light, darkness, air, fire, water, and earth.