Awakening the Divine Spark-Chapter 240: Nevin.

The profitable struggle ended when the expedition arrived at a tall rock formation that separated jungle from the rest of the world. When they got to the top, everyone was slightly out of breath from the quick pace they were climbing at, and it was decided to camp for the night.

Lee, similar to the other newcomers, was caught by surprise at the contrasting change.

Behind them, in the distance, was the sea. Few miles further ahead, across a river, stretched vast, yellow fields – probably savanna. Far to the left, Lee could see the insect nests sticking out from the middle of the jungle, towering over the trees. That was probably the place they were trying to avoid.

"Want some?" Just when Lee sat at the side and closed his eyes, a youthful voice disturbed him.

It was a guy in early twenties, maybe still a teenager. He held an actual piece of cake in his hand and was offering Lee to have a taste.

"Thanks, I’m good!" Lee said, glancing around. To his surprise, everyone was having dinner, even though no one had brought any supplies.

’Seriously?’ Lee thought, ’Everyone here has a spatial treasure?’

It finally made sense where all the looted sparks went during the journey through the jungle, and Lee began to feel silly for hiding his ring upon arrival. Since he was the only one not eating, the guy had probably assumed he was poor. In fact, the primitive hatchet that was lying next to Lee only reinforced the impression.

"Enjoy, I’ve got my own." Lee politely said, "I’m just not hungry."

"First time in Skalara, huh? When I came the last year I couldn’t eat for half a month." The guy said, biting off a large piece of the cake, and continued with a full mouth, "You’ll get used to it. My name is Nevin, by the way."

"Lee." Lee nodded, "You come here often?"

"Second time." Nevin said, "It’s not that easy to get selected, you know."

He said it with a knowing wink, and Lee could only reply with an awkward nod.

"How many did you get?" Nevin asked, most likely about the sparks.

"Only a couple." Lee said, realizing he hadn’t played the role of a spark hunter well.

"That’s ... not a lot ... and I thought that with mere dozen I’m the biggest loser around here ..." Nevin said, but then quickly added, "I didn’t mean it that way. Why don’t we team up? I was kind of hoping that Senior Brother Seren would take me under his wing, but he refuses to acknowledge anyone but his four goons."

Lee didn’t care for inner drama of a sect he didn’t have anything to do with, but to appear polite, said the neutral – I understand.

"It wouldn’t surprise me if they tried to take the whole thing over." Nevin continued to blab, "With how filthy rich the guy is, he never cared for the sparks. He comes here only to hone his skills."

Then he threw a quick glance around, leaned closer and whispered, "It’s been said he’s about to become an elemental lord! Imagine that! At the age of sixteen!"

"Some people are simply more talented." Lee said something neutral again.

"Right ... talented ..." Nevin said, stuffing the last piece of cake in his mouth, "Let’s stick together from now on. It’ll be much safer – you won’t regret it, trust me!"

Lee didn’t care, but having someone who naturally acted as his acquaintance in the group of hundreds wasn’t the worst option. The next day, though, he was glad he accepted Nevin’s offer.

At first nothing noteworthy happened.

The hunters came down from the rock formation at sunrise, and crossed the river on simple rafts. According to Nevin, the river wasn’t that dangerous, but there were aquatic bugs, and no one wanted to risk having their manhood bitten off.

When the group stepped on savanna, everyone immediately summoned their weapons and ran forth. There were no bugs around, and Lee’s first guess was that they were expecting ambushes from under the ground. Pretty soon he realized he was mistaken – everyone’s weary looks toward the sky pointed at the real direction the danger was coming from.

Incoming!

As always, it was Elred who noticed the bugs first.

Hearing his shout, the group didn’t stop and Lee heard nothing but the heavy stomps of two hundred and fifty men and women running. Few moment’s later, all of the sudden, the sky turned dark.

A swarm of insects eclipsed the sun, covering the blue sky like a storm cloud. Their collective buzz arrived louder than a thunder, and they dropped at the people like eagle-sized hail. Contrary to Lee’s expectation, these weren’t locusts, but more resembled dragonflies, although in such quantities the insect type didn’t really matter.

Without a second thought many of the elemental masters immediately used their best skills, to eliminate as many insects as they could in one go. The problem was – there were so many of them that killing two or twenty with one move didn’t matter.

"Don’t fall behind!" Nevin shouted at Lee while continuously cutting around him with his sword.

For a split moment Lee had a thought that there was something wrong with him. He was shocked by how much he enjoyed the exercise. Using the same hatchet, but without any elemental skills, he focused on hitting the attackers right in the middle of their small heads.

Most weren’t bothered with such details and were trying to disable the insects by either killing them or cutting off their wings, but Lee invented this small game of insect brain surgery. It forced him to maintain maximum focus while attacking and prevented from unnecessarily wasting energy. In addition, his hits actually were lethal.

Actually all of it could be attributed to having Nevin at his side. Lee didn’t have to worry about the attacks from his right and the two young men steadily ran forward, cutting through the attacking insects.

Of course, there were people who surpassed them by a mile.

Five people took the lead, forcing the rest to keep up with their uncomfortably fast pace. Apparently those were the Senior Brother Seren, whom Nevin mentioned, and his four sidekicks. They quickly overtook the crowd, sending elemental blasts to the front and towards the sky – both – fire and water. Probably they used wind and earth elements too, but Lee was too busy to judge.

Clearly five of them did kill more insects than the rest combined, but at the same time they caused a wildfire that began to spread at alarming rate.

Now the rest of the group was forced to increase their pace even more to not suffocate in smoke and flames, but Lee could swear he heard the five youths in the front loudly laugh when they noticed how the others struggled.

The hunters ran for around fifteen miles when the remaining insects fell back, reluctantly forming dark cloud in the sky again. Apparently the group had left the area the insects normally patrolled and could finally relax. There were some injuries, but no human lives were lost during the intense event.

Despite that most people were furious.

"What the heck is wrong with you!" Vaerin, the leader of the expedition, shouted at the five people who created the chaos earlier, "We’ve been crossing these fields for years without taking unnecessary risks and ..."

"Fuck you! Who do you think you are to raise your voice at Senior Brother Seren!" Vaerin was interrupted by one of the five troublemakers. It was clearly still a teenager, but in his hand he held a sword that was definitely an expensive artifact.

"You ..." Not only Vaerin, the rest were similarly taken aback.

Hunters had survived in Skalara for centuries by cooperating and relying on each other. No one expected someone to create trouble out of nowhere, especially someone so young. The worst part was that it wasn’t over yet.

"If you wanna die, just say so! We can organize a proper burial on the spot!" Another jeering voice joined the first guy. It was another teenager with a similarly fancy weapon. He gave it a few quick swings, slicing the grass around him in tiny shreds. The way he was capable of controlling the wind element left many speechless.

While they were arguing, Lee came closer to take a better look, but other than five cocky kids there was nothing else to see.

"You, kids, should calm down a bit." Elred tried to mediate, "Take a deep breath and let’s forget about it. Just don’t start trouble again."

"I see that there’s more than one retard here!" The youngest of the five said.

He was tall and well built, but his attitude immediately stepped on quite a few nerves. Most hunters in the expedition had seen their fair share in life and weren’t happy with such behavior.

The teenager didn’t care, though. He said, looking at the crowd, "I have a proposition for the ones who still have brain cells left. You may join me, and I promise your earnings in one month will be double compared what you usually get. All you have to do is to keep up."

Lee glanced to his right, and saw Nevin nervously taking a step forth, but stopping, seeing no one else responded to the invitation.

"You can’t be serious!" Lee softly said, trying to not draw attention. He had seen rebels before and was certain that nothing good will come by joining the five teenagers.

"But that’s Senior Brother Seren!" Nevin replied in similarly hushed voice, "He’s one of the trinity! He ..."

Nevin was probably reporting on the reason for his man-crush, but Lee didn’t hear a word. He froze seeing the mark on Seren’s bare chest. Many of the hunters had the yin-yang symbol tattooed, but this wasn’t a tattoo! It was an exact copy of the mark Lee had on his palm!