Tom studied the insect. With its energy drained like this, it did not feel like such a big deal.
“Are you certain? Tom.”
He looked up in surprise at the fact that Everlyn had used his name.
She arced an eyebrow at him. “While I’m sure we can heal you, deliberately subjecting yourself to the poison feels a little extreme.”
“We need to know,” Tom told her. “I need to know whether I can survive if lots sting me and one is not a danger. I did a trial that lets me isolate poison.”
He remembered the rewards from that trial:
Touch Heal has been upgraded for: Now grants the ability to isolate areas of the body. The seed of Healing Tranquillity has been granted–Complete further trials or raise Touch Heal to grow. Touch Heal has been increased to 45 from the starting value of 42.
The increase in levels at the time had felt huge but then again it had been a terribly difficult trial. In hindsight the secondary reward that led to Healing Tranquillity had been the best of the three, but it was that first line he was using today. Even if he couldn’t deal with the venom, he would be able to isolate it.
Tom rolled his eyes at that memory and to think he had been disappointed with those two first rewards.
Ludicrous.
“I’ll monitor.” Everlyn considered Sven, Andros, and Gina. “After this, can you all please tell everyone what we just learnt? Useless, I’m ready to save you.”
Tom tensed at her using that name, but then he saw the teasing smile on her lips.
Innocent teasing. He told himself, probably. He stuck out a tongue, and her entire face transformed as she grinned. She was radiant, with flashing white teeth.
The insect stirred. Tom forced the stinger into his thumb.
There was a sharp pain. Healing tranquillity instantly kicked in and he used the time it granted to suppress the healing. It was not beyond the realm of possibility that Dux telling him to try that trial was for this moment. He was not sure how extensive the oracle questions were and whether they could affect Existentia.
Forcefully, he stopped thinking about the past and focused on what he was doing. He dropped the insect back into the energy draining field now that he did not need it. His thumb was stinging.
“Was that deliberate, Useless, or just clumsy?”
Tom looked at Everlyn in annoyance, again. “You know the answer, and stop calling me Useless.”
The agony intensified, and he waved his hand instinctively reacting to the rising pain.
She quirked an eyebrow. “Hurts.”
“Yeah, the struggle is to not purge the venom immediately. Harry?”
The ritualist startled. “Yes.”
“Can you put down your mana ritual?” Tom pointed to a spot closer to the centre but next to the status fields. Harry nodded and hurried away to start the process.
“When I call you Useless, don’t think of it being mean,” Everlyn said. “Well, I am being mean, but not to you. You should consider it as a term of endearment.”
“Because that’s how it’s normally used.”
“No, just how I use it?”
Tom grimaced and waved his hand once more. It hurt.
“What’s happening?” Michael asked, coming over to join them.
“Tom’s doing an experiment,” Everlyn answered.
Michael grabbed his wrist and studied the thumb. “It looks painful. I can heal it?”
“I can too,” Everlyn said. “Like Useless, I have Touch Heal.”
“You heard that,” he grumbled.
She laughed. “I think the entire group heard it.”
“Should I heal you?” Michael asked him again.
“No. This humble Useless has Touch Heal and would not like to inconvenience you unnecessarily.” If they were going to call him that he might as well own the term.
Michael smirked.
The alchemist rolled his eyes. “If we’re done. Can I?” he nodded back to where it had come from.
“Go,” Tom waved him away. “Thumb’s going numb.” Healing tranquillity was fully engaged, and he tracked the flow of poison. It was slow till it hit the bloodstream and then sped up. “Bad news: It goes through the blood.” The first tendrils reached his heart while most of the venom was still pooling in his thumb. When he tried to move the limb, the muscle at the base of the thumb was already paralysed. “Fast acting. I’ve lost the use of my thumb.” He held up the offending digit and poked it to demonstrate. “I’m getting some impact on the heart and lung. For others, a single sting could be lethal.” Mentally, he thought about its potency and how different levels of vitality would affect the spread. “I’m estimating that every ten points of vitality over forty will let you resist an extra sting, going to every five once your vitality is above eighty. Anyone above two hundred vitality is probably immune, at least from heart failure.”
“None of us are near that.” Everlyn said quietly. “But you knew that. How confident of this are you?”
“Ninety percent.”
With a thought, he purged the venom.
Everly turned, and Tom realised that a small crowd had gathered while he had been monitoring the poison.
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“Rules. If your vitality is under fifty, get medical attention immediately. Under sixty can take one sting before getting healed. Over sixty-two. We might adjust this later but that’s the rules. If you feel faint, then get healing immediately. Go.” they all turned and ran. “Now,” Everlyn was addressing him. “Why did you grimace when you got rid of the venom?”
“It took a full point of mana.”
“That’s pretty efficient, isn’t it?”
Tom shrugged, not sure what was the best way to think about it. “The cost is too high.” He kicked the ground. “I can’t go out and attack the hive because they can sting me faster than I can heal.”
Everlyn thought for a moment. “I wonder if you’ll build up immunity.”
“It’s possible,” Tom agreed. “Then again, maybe that is not a concept that exists. Outside of a Skill or a Reward I never noticed gaining immunity to anything. But who knows? The rules are hardly the same as what was on earth.”
“I don’t know either.” Everlyn lapsed into companionable silence.
Two more insects buzzed past, and Tom whipped his spear at them. They darted in and out of the draining areas as he moved and kept whipping the piece of wood to stop them from stinging.
Then they lost energy and fell to the ground.
Tranquil healing slowed everything down, and he purged the sting on his face and the three on his legs. “Great, they can even sting multiple times.”
Harry had finished his ritual, and Tom shifted inside the space to improve his mana regain.
Tom nudged the other man. “You should go kill those three.”
“But you brought them down.”
“Your magic, you earn the experience.”
“Do it,” Everlyn told Harry and then nodded towards the centre of the camp, where Jeffrey and others were gathering. “I’m going to make sure they don’t decide to do anything stupid. Useless,” she chuckled at using the term. “You should stay here. I think your presence at the war council would cause good old Jeffrey to blow his stack. Actually, that might be fun.” Then she shook her head. “Maybe after we’re past this crisis.”
With a friendly wave, she sprinted off.
Harry, at his urging, squished the bugs. He had a staff, and on the hard clay, he had to launch multiple strikes before they died.
“1 experience for contributing to killing a rank 1 Trodaga Wasp.”
“3 experience for contribution in killing a rank 1 Trodaga Wasp.”
“2 experience.”
Tom muted the voice with a thought. He was definitely going to make a habit of digging into his logs in order to fully understand the system. After all, he had been warned it might be changed at the margins, but he did not need continual prompts.
“Harry, how much experience were you getting?”
“Seven to eleven. Why?”
“Experience is split. I’m receiving a couple of points for luring them into the traps.”
Harry came over and stood next to him. “That’s great.” Then he nodded back to the crafters. “What are they doing?”
The rest of the group was filled with frenetic activity. Crafters were pulling out spare clothes out of bags and using them to cover exposed skin. “Covering up. You should do the same.”
“I only have this robe.”
“You need to get something better,” Tom said uneasily.
“You’re wearing shorts.”
“But I have the mighty Touch Heal spell.”
Michael, who was standing near them, chuckled. The careful organisation of fighting groups that Jeffrey had put together had fallen apart. It was an eerie environment. All of them had come expecting to be fighting monsters larger than they were, and instead the threat that greeted them was insects no bigger than an Earth bee.
Zap.
Harry jumped beside him. Tom pointed to the smoking insect corpse.
“Ouch,” they glanced back towards the centre. A young woman was ripping off the scarf she had wrapped around her ankles. A small shape was thrown clear; it wobbled, oriented itself and then zoomed away head towards one of the nearby mounds.
A feeling of dread filled Tom.
Bees on Earth could communicate sources of food. They had a dance that could lead the rest of their hive to a tree full of flowers by communicating all the key details, distance and direction, and the size of the food source. There was no way the insects here would be dumber than those on Earth and… there were no large animals. The bugs were the dominant life form and when that insect reached its hive, then the thousands of insects in the hive would know about them.
Tom was pretty sure that the humans were going to be considered as a food source. That insect had escaped, which was disappointing. It would have been good if they could have hidden the human presence longer. Not that it mattered. There were so many bugs that it had always only been a matter of time till one had seen them and then slipped away. “Make another one,” he ordered Harry, before he pointed to a spot bordering both the draining and the mana recharge rituals. “Hurry, I think everything is about to go to shit.”
The woman who had been stung was being healed.
Tom hesitated. He wanted to yell for everyone to consolidate, combine resources to create an area the bugs could not get into, but the leaders were already arguing; and considering Jeffrey’s early treatment of him, over half the camp was against him. Anything he said would be counter -productive purely because Jeffrey and his little cohort would argue vehemently against it.
The arguing continued ,and when he glanced towards the mound that single wasp had shot off toward, he was sure extra wasps were already popping out of them.
Zap.
Two more insects died.
Tom ran out of the mana recharge towards the crafters. “Does anyone have protective gear to give to Harry?” He pointed at the ritualist. “Gloves, helmet, pants? Please, we need him out there casting!”
A young man with old eyes glanced at what Tom was wearing and then at Harry, who was drawing on the ground preparing to use his magic. He pulled off his gloves and tossed them over. “Make it count.” Then he started pulling off his pants.
Embarrassed, a warrior pulled off a full helm. She was female, and plump, red lips trapped his gaze. A face that would have given Dux on the first day a run for her money. He yanked his eyes away, completely embarrassed. He had spent too long in the tutorial.
“Thank you,” Tom said to both of them and ran back to Harry, who had just finished his latest ritual and was standing in the middle of the mana regain area. “Not there,” Tom repositioned him right at the edge of the circle and right next to the energy drainage area. “This way, if they attack you, they’ll spend half their time being knocked unconscious.” He shoved the pants, helmet, and gloves at the other man.
“What’s this?”
“Put it on.”
Zap. Another body hit the ground. That one was from the mound closest to where his team had started, but that was not the hive that Tom was focused on. His eyes went to the lump of dirt that a single wasp had fled to.
His fear was being realised. There was definitely a black cloud forming above it. The fact Tom could see it from eighty metres away with unenhanced eyes told him everything. “Hurry,” he yelled regardless of the damage it might do.
The leaders’ meeting had broken up.
“Put fortifications.”
“Hurry.”
“Centralise.”
Thankfully, they were doing the right thing. The entire camp was frothing with frantic, anxious defensive attempts. Everyone was shouting orders. Earth walls were being raised to create the beginning of fortification. Bolts of cloth intended for crafting and others purchased for bedding were being brought out and strung up. Individual tents were taken apart to act as part of a communal wall. Everlyn was amongst them moving the centre of the defence closer to where Tom was so the edge of the structure would be flush against the rituals Harry had already put down. That would better protect one side of the construction. He was glad Everlyn had understood the value those drainage areas were going to bring.
People were using swords to dig into the earth to create impromptu earthen walls. The earth mages were making progress and had switched from raising the walls directly to reinforcing the amateur barriers that were being set up. The otherwise almost useless dirt was turned to rock under their magic. Others took a more direct approach. Tom saw backpacks being converted into helmets. Those people could no longer see, but at least the insects wouldn’t be able to bite them. The entire group of almost a hundred had collapsed together and were disappearing into the tiny shelter they had created. There wasn’t going to be sleeping room for everyone.
The only people left outside were the small crowd around him.
Everlyn had grabbed the arm of another girl and brought her over. They were putting helmets on. Bandages were wrapped over ankles and hands, making them look a little like mummies.
“Toni is an air mage.” Everlyn patted the girl. “She hopes that she can force them into the drainage rituals.”
Tom nodded absently his attention caught by the dark cloud that he was observing. It was expanding, getting larger.
The first major wave of the enemy was coming.