It took us less than an hour to hunt down the squirrels on the island. My (Sense) skill reached all the way out to part of Greenwood, after all, and with (Awakened Mind) I didn't even have to tell them where the things were, simply sharing the highlighted enemies via it and some (Void Gaze), which made the beasts easy prey for us. In fact the thing slowing us down most was myself.
My speed was still not quite what I'd like, especially when I gave them a boost, but it wasn't a large island. A twenty to forty minute walk from one end to the other in the swampy terrain, and we had looped the whole place, with me obliterating the corpses of the squirrels, which still left nothing behind, not even the mana core gem things that were common loot from so many of their brethren.
Not that they didn't come with their own rewards. In just cleaning out the first island, the two ladies had grown in level to almost the same one I was, and a lot of my level was from that whole fight with the T-rex monster back during the whole Rabier incident. It showed how much even double EXP meant in this world. Mixed, of course, with the boost that came from being in the Hero's Party.
By the time we were done, the land bridge was just forming with Greenwood, and we, along with an insistent Diwaniya crossed over. His knowledge, he said, might be useful. More importantly, at least to me, he was going to be able to see that we really did clear out the whole of the island. When we did, his people could crossover and gather what they might from beneath the boughs of the trees, while we made our way to the other islands.
In point of fact, I offered Ray the island in its entirety. A test of her power when boosted by the effect of the 'Hand of the Hero' skill, with her being my Right Hand, as far as I was concerned. Lucia was the Left. It just made alphabetical sense to me. Sadly, that joke, bad as it was, didn't translate, but regardless, I warned her it was coming, and told her to get as much done as possible as I brought up the skill, and slowly adjusted it.
I would give her a minute, at least by my calculations, of all the power possible. The boost would be MORE than what I could give to any single stat on its own, but at the same time, it would only be for her, and it would be costing me every second it was being done, so I told her to be as quick as possible as I readied myself, giving her info with my intelligence gathering skills. Then with a shout of 'Go!' she vanished, seemingly disappearing with a rustle of grass and leaves.
Over the next thirty-eight seconds, the sounds from the island were extreme. Cries of pain, terrible rustling, and in a few cases bodies being tossed in two directions above the canopy, visibly flying away from each other. All of it was done in lightning quickness, and when it was done, she came rushing up to us with a blast of wind that was nearly strong enough to knock the rest of us off our feet, before I ended the skill.
When it was done, Ray was smiling, cleaning her blades on her arms, and commenting on just how much fun it was to do this to monsters who had absolutely no chance to fight back. She looked for all the world like the cat that had eaten the canary, and it was a bit disturbing as she sheathed her blades, and I had to go around for the next hour eliminating the piles of bodies, which luckily exuded enough of a miasma to be easy to find.
When I was done, I'd managed to snag a few gems from the bodies, some cores that were apparently stable enough to stay, though even I could tell they were low quality compared to the things we'd gathered in the past. Still, they'd be worth something, and pocketing them, Diwaniya took us himself to a small dock on the west side of Harmony Island, and a rowboat that he rowed for us towards an island you could just see on the horizon, Dhonal's Island.
I knew enough of the history from reading it that the island had been home to one of Cal Mira's past kings, Dhonal obviously. The man had built a castle in the craggy terrain of the island, a fortress he claimed was unassailable by any means. He had indeed been correct too. A four year siege of the island had proven completely incapable of pulling down the fortresses walls, and the King had remained safe within.
For a given value of safe, of course. The island was far too isolated, and the siege had cut it off from all the supplies it might have had. In the end, the place had become a tomb, and during the earthquake that had sunk some of the islands and lost them their Dragon Hourglass, the fortress had been shaken into nothing but rubble. It was, in fact, to the point that looking at it, I honestly couldn't tell you where the fortress had stood…though perhaps that was just the passage of time reclaiming it.
Landing on the shore, we could hear the scrape and slurp of the slime population. Mind, I'd expected them to be small, like the balloons on the mainland, but was shocked when one of the things I'd thought was a good sized boulder moved itself, sliding along the ground, and leaving a trail behind it of goo, which hissed and bubbled, revealing the things were more like gelatinous cubes than the drop like slimes I'd expected to find.
I advised Lucia that perhaps we should have her clean out the next island, and instead do this one all together, but she assured me of her strength, and asked only that I allow her a moment to prepare. She quickly drew out her Replica Weapon, and shifted it through dozens of forms, some I knew, others I didn't, before finally settling on one that looked to be a seemingly plain straight sword, that she swung a few times, finding the balance, before nodding at me.
Activating my information gathering skills, I saw thousands of slimes on the island, along with other creatures, of all shapes and sizes. The whole of the rocky terrain was covered in the things, and I had to wonder how the people were ever safe here, but figured that, outside of the double EXP event, these things were probably dolce enough to make getting around them dangerous, but doable, as opposed to right now when they were mostly just the first one.
Lucia, for her part, didn't seem to mind, and the moment I activated the power of the Left Hand, she stabbed her weapon into the ground, and shouted 'Towers of Steel' and then I felt a rumble that wasn't quite as bad as an earthquake, but was still noticeable. Suddenly the blade she'd thrust into the earth emerged beneath the boulder like slime, stabbing it through to its core, skewering it for an instant kill.
And not just it, I noticed, as more blades were coming from the ground at all angles, stabbing through slimes I hadn't seen with my eyes, but my skills had noticed them, so Lucia had known they were there. It was weird, honestly, seeing the blade's edge sticking out of the ground dozens of times in just our view, and knowing it was happening far more in the island's interior. A powerful move, one that left us to go around for a bit, collecting what remains we could, and purifying away the rest.
With Dhonal's Island behind us within the hour, and a small sack of much higher quality loot than before weighing us down, we still decided to head to Gull Island next. Here, I notice that the air chilled quickly, despite still being in sight of the relatively hot island of crags and cliffs. Asking Diwaniya, he said it was speculated to be a quirk of the local tides, or perhaps something magical on the nearby Isle of Spears, though no one had ever confirmed it either way.
Landing, I am shocked to see that, while Greenwood Isle was covered in trees more in keeping with the continent, the ones here are pines, like I hadn't seen before in the area. It didn't take but a few steps into the trees for our guide to point out some leafy plant growing just below the boughs of one of the trees, the reason the island was useful to them, as they had some properties to them that helped to heal injuries, and even increase stats, given they were saturated with magic.
I was so busy inspecting the one before me that it was only Ray rushing forward, grabbing my collar, and tossing me backwards that prevented me from getting killed, as a…squirrel with a sword, like seriously, a squirrel about a meter tall, with a blade made of teeth in one paw, swiped at me with his weapon. Still, the panther demi-human tossed me back far enough that I landed on the beach, as she blocked the first strike of the blade with one of her own, before drawing her second and slicing the monster in half vertically.
She reminded me, as Lucia helped me to my feet, that I was the Hero of the Bow, and should keep from putting myself in harm's way, getting an annoyed grunt from me, and a chuckle from both Diwaniya and Lucia. Regardless, when I was done, I asked which of them wanted the island we were on, and then the final one we'd give to the last one, if there were time enough, as the sun was already starting to move towards the horizon.
Ray was the one to propose that they should see just how powerful they could grow with the boost the 'Hands' gave to them, and I should set them as high as it would go. Looking through, it was quite high, though given it would last exactly one second if I went for it, I had to ask if they were sure, as I'd be drained, and we might even have to leave until I could recover, meaning this place would have time to fester, but Lucia agreed with Ray. They needed to see just how far they could go with this boost.
A flick of the dial, I set them to have twenty-two percent of all the stats of my 'Followers' for one second. Preparing for it, Lucia asked Diwaniya to stand beside me, and cast a barrier using a Shield from her Weapon around the pair of us, with him being asked to hold me up as I made ready, and then took a deep breath, before finally initiating the power of the Hand for the final time that day, letting all that energy flow from myself into the two women.
There was a blast of air, like the one that had accompanied Ray's return, as she flickered for a moment. Trees bent away from us at the touch of this hurricane like wind, and you could hear the shrieks of dying things echoing over each other, as monsters that had been so sure of their safety found themselves slain in an instant, most before they could even register there was a threat on their island.
Lucia, nowhere near as fast as Ray, still flickered, as she spun her weapon before her, the image of her in that single heartbeat showing her wielding a hundred or more weapons, firing bolts of light, steel, and raw power into the forest, most of which arced over it, and we heard the distant sound of explosions, with the horizon beyond the evergreen trees lighting up like some great storm was striking the other side of the island.
And then it was over. My (Sense) skill, even with (Void Gaze) saw no more monsters on Gull Island, and the Isle of Spears beyond it looked just as empty of foes. Ray, breathing heavily, sweat dripping down her body, slowly came up to us, trotting rather than running, as she wiped her blades on her sleeve again before flicking it to clear the garment of blood, and resheathed her swords in the small of her back.
Lucia, meanwhile, teetered over, and I immediately tried to rush to her side, but found I was not much better, falling forward into the sand, landing in such a way that I was reaching out to her. Diwaniya, still looking out to the island, unable to believe what he'd seen despite all the things we'd done, was just blinking, before he finally came back to himself, and with a startled cry, helped us back to the boat, carrying Lucia first, then aiding Ray, before finally coming back for me.
We made the trip back to his village, the three of us looking disheveled and exhausted…but also triumphant. The five isles of the Ashen Isles were cleaned of their filth for the moment, and Diwaniya was already speaking of the next day. The monsters would return, of course, but they would be weak, newly born to the world such that his people did not need to fear them, and would work around their areas, gathering more than they'd been able to in years thanks to us.
When we finally arrived, we had recovered enough that Lucia offered to take Diwaniya's people back to the central island with us, but he declined, saying that, thanks to our efforts, his people would sleep in safety tonight. Tomorrow, they would work to repay our efforts with their own. Seeing he was not going to be talked out of that, Lucia made a gate, and we returned to the hotel, to meet up with Naofumi and the other adventurers there, and maybe compare some notes.