“You ready for this, Tom?” Everlyn asked.
Tom held himself still, not wanting to move and cause extra pain. Talking was definitely a no go. He blinked twice.
Her cheeks reddened. “Sorry no need to answer. Keikain and Sonya, I’m going to hold the wasp corpse down. The two of you then have to lift Tom off.”
They were going to struggle. Tom weighed more than Sonya and none of them had invested a lot into strength. Part of him wanted to suggest a different plan, but nothing good presented itself.
Everlyn ducked down and her arms encircled the strange monster. He saw her place both hands on the arm that was through him.
The bladed arm!
She winced, and he was sure that it had cut her but she didn’t say a thing in protest.
“Ready Guys. Lift him.”
Tom could feel the two behind him, Keikain with his hands on his shoulder and Sonya under his lower back.
“Tom.” Everlyn said. “You’re going to have to help. You need to push yourself up. One, two, three.”
He pushed with all his might. He jerked up the blade. It cut deeper as it bounced from side to side. His body naturally adjusting to relieve the pain, but it made him shift and wobble as he reacted to the latest twinge. Healing Tranquility patched his flesh as he did so.
Under his own power, he had forced himself about two-thirds of the way up the arm, which in death was like a segmented sword. Sonya was supporting his legs and lifting them. Keikain the bulk of his torso mass. Abruptly the earth mage stumbled and suddenly his left side was no longer being supported.
No!
His body tilted and slid. Keikain with a gasp let go and Sonya couldn’t support his weight on her own. Suddenly, he was falling.
“Ahhh.”
Tom screamed in agony as he slipped back down the arm. He smacked hard into the ground knowing that he should have made more effort to slow himself but the white hot burning pain… His muscles were not responding properly… his brain short circuiting.
Healing Tranquility clicked into action in response. Touch Heal fountained out over the affected area. It fixed the most critical damage almost instantly. The rents left in his flesh closed and then the sliced bones fused back together.
“Shit, I’m sorry, shit,” Keikain said, garbling the words. “Sorry.”
Healing magic flooded into him. When his eyes flicked in that direction, Everlyn was crouched next to him, concern on her face.
“Stop.” He gasped in pain at the effort of saying a single word. He had wanted to prevent her from wasting mana. With the pain the effort had caused it wasn’t worth it.
The power stopped flooding through him. At least that much was successful.
Tom groaned and then relaxed his arms and legs, which were holding him up off the ground. He slid further down the arm and was surprised that no new wounds were opened up.
“Sorry… I slipped… It won’t happen again. It was a mistake. ”
“Enough.” Everlyn interrupted coldly. “It was a poor plan. Tom, can we consult?”
Her bloody hand had not left his cheek and when he saw her face lose vitality, he stepped into his system room.
Everlyn Louise Campbell has invited you to her personal system room.
Do you wish to accept the invitation?
Instantly, he appeared in her space. She was in her casual clothes, pacing angrily.
“Everlyn.”
She froze. Her back to him with fists clenched tight.
“Evie. What’s up?”
“That was a stupid plan. I’m furious at myself.”
Tom shrugged. “It was my plan—”
“No!” She spun to face him. She was livid. “No. I should have known better.”
“I don’t know how you could have predicted…”
“Stop being such a fucking stupid, macho idiot.” She screamed.
“I…”
She took a deep, calming breath. “It was obvious neither of those two was strong enough for the plan. I knew, and I didn’t say anything.”
“I sort of suspected too.”
Her face softened. “Wait…” she raised a hand. “I shouldn’t have yelled.”
“It’s okay.”
“Stop it!”
Tom smiled, and the tension flooded fully out of her.
“Stop being so nice. There is no excuse for swearing at you. I was angry at myself, and I lashed out. When I’m stressed… I have anger issues.”
Tom said nothing.
“The plan was dumb. There are better options. Like, can we cut you out?”
“What?”
“Pull you sideways and then…”
“No, there are too many bones in the way.”
“Alternatively, chop the wasp’s arm off. Leave just the stump inside you and then you can probably get free under your own steam. Even if we do it at the joint… that’s only about a foot above you. You’ll be able to push yourself that high.”
“That might work.” Tom conceded.
“If that doesn’t then we can get Keikain to build a platform to lift you off slowly.”
When she said it, Tom could have slapped himself. The solution was so obvious when someone else suggested it……efore that… He hadn’t thought of either of them. “That’s two good options.”
“Lets get you free.”
He was kicked out of the system room and once more lying on the corpse with the arm impaling him.
Keikain was hovering over him and looked concerned. “And?”
“First plan. We’ll try to hack off the arm.”
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“Oh, I should have thought about that.” The earth mage admitted immediately.
“We all should have,” Everlyn agreed. “But I doubt it was going to work. Without my transformation, I could barely hurt it at the end, and the only way we’re cutting the arm is if it gets substantially weaker in death.”
There was the noise of what sounded a lot like an axe bouncing off tough metal. It took a moment to place the noise and then he realised that it was Everlyn hacking at a different arm. Of course she wasn’t going to test on the one going through him. He felt like a dolt for thinking that.
After about six strikes, she stopped. “Well, that won’t work. The second idea is for you to build a platform to lift him slowly.”
Keikain slapped his forehead, and then immediately searched for materials. “I’m stupid. I should have thought of that immediately.” He looked around and then pointed. “Let’s collect the robot bodies. The more starting mass I have available the easier this will be.”
They bustled around and pretty soon a vast pile of the metallic remains were left. “Not as good as a pile of rocks.” Keikain said.
Tom heartedly agreed. Earth magic was something that he had experimented with in the trial and the closer the base material the easier the magic flowed. Metals needed a couple of steps to turn them into the type of rock an earth mage could use easily.
“You want to go straight up, right?”
Tom blinked twice in response to try and convey the word yes without talking.
Keikain smirked. “This will be smoother than the last attempt.”
Very slowly he felt himself rising. The ground under him cradling him. Tom focused on staying still and using his magic to ensure that his flesh did not stick to the arm. He inched up. Ten centimetres, twenty, then a metre. Then a metre and a half.
He healed continuously the entire time and the contrast between their first attempt and this one was immense. He was surprised by how easily it went when they used the correct tools. In short order the long sword arm slid out of his body and Tom closed the gaping wound.
With a relieved sigh, he rolled off the makeshift rock pedestal that Keikain had constructed.
“I assume everyone needs healing?” Tom asked
Keikain nodded. “I’ve got a few broken bones.”
Everlyn held up her hands. Long, straight, ugly scars ran across them. They were new and had to have resulted from her holding the leg still.
Sonya pushed open her leather armour where a gap shouldn’t have existed. There was a long cut there. He immediately reached out a hand and slid it through the gap in the armour. Healing Tranquillity kicked into action.
The wound was worse than she had let on. Sonya was far tougher than she looked and multiple of her rib bones had been nicked. His magic regrew the bone and then he moved backwards towards the skin, mending each layer as he did so.
Twelve more mana gone.
He caught her eyes. “Do you want to keep the scar?”
Her eyes were wide. “No, definitely not… who would?”
“Okay give me a few minutes to regenerate.” Tom shut his eyes and went over the entire battle. He was impressed by how well everyone had worked as a team. The difficulty had been far greater than expected but they had survived.
When his mana had recovered, Tom reached out and flexed his mana and the ugly red line that remained on her faded away. It closed up easily, costing only three mana.
Next, he grabbed Keikain. Two broken ribs only and some bruising. He fixed up the bones and the worst of the bruising.
Finally, he turned to Everlyn. She held both hands out for inspection.
Tom was surprised by the request. Scar tissue was something that he had learnt to mend within the first ten years during the tutorial. “Your own healing can’t fix it?”
“Nope. You know Touch Heal’s restrictions at low levels.”
Tom nodded. He knew them very well. Luckily, he was not constrained. He ran a finger over each of the lines and they vanished after his fingers passed.
“That tickles and I know you didn’t need to trace the scars.”
Tom said nothing. She giggled and ruffled his hair.
“Thank you.”
Tom looked around at the results of their fight. There was damage, but it was all superficial. The marble was almost untouched, and even the alcoves that had the mechanical wasps blowing up within them seemed unaffected. There might have been an occasional chip here and there, but give the place a solid clean and it would be as good as fixed.
The body of the humanoid wasp lay at his feet. Tom ignored the corpse. The GODS would not allow them to take any of that out. If you killed an animal in the wild you were allowed to harvest it but in here if animals gave loot then the loot portals would appear for you to grab it. Which was unfortunate. Given their communities’ lack of high quality crafting materials, the body would probably be worth more than their rewards. Especially for a rank seven monster dungeon.
That thought was jarring.
That run had definitely been too intense. After all, they were highly skilled, aided by a ridiculously overpowered elemental, Keikain’s magic driven by twenty-five years in the trial, whatever transformation that Evie had managed and they had almost died.
Something had gone wrong.
He had a full elemental active with favourable resistances and the fights had still been close.
Dimly he remembered randomly accepting all those prompts at the start when they had been in a rush.
A sinking feeling filled him. What had he agreed to?
The thought that kept going in Tom’s mind was had he put them all at risk by not reading the details of the trial.
He always read everything. It was a point of pride. That was what had kept him safe and this time when it actually mattered… But they had been on the clock… but… he couldn’t finish the thought.
Everlyn sat down tiredly next to him. She seemed to read his mood. “Cheer up. We won.”
“I think I stuffed up?”
Her head tilted quizzically. “What do you mean?” Abruptly she went from her relaxed self to the focused, deadly, lethal Everlyn that he occasionally caught glimpses of. “Tell me.”
“Everything was too strong, and we were under time pressure, so I pressed accept multiple times when entering. I don’t know what I agreed to.”
She gave him one of her quirky half smiles and punched his bicep. “Don’t scare me like that. You’re worried that we ran a trial that was ranked above seven?”
Tom nodded.
“We clearly did. And we survived. The added rank only means better rewards.” She caught his frown. “You probably accepted a rank up option but we won’t find out till we leave.”
Tom shook his head in denial and slapped his thigh.
“Stop it,” she commanded, grabbing his wrist. “If you keep that up I’ll have to tickle you.” She punctuated the threat with a quick attack that Tom ignored though he couldn’t stop his lips from quirking.
“I’m not ticklish.” He told her even while shuffling away.
She laughed at that. “Stop being grumpy, and I won’t need to prove it either way. One, two and four,” she said, pointing at Tom, Keikain and then finished with her finger pointed at herself. “We are a great team, with a lot of fate helping us. If we were given an option to increase the grade of the trial, we should definitely have taken it.”
“Still, it’s not how I want to be.”
“And you may not have done anything. We won’t know till we get out whether you accepted a prompt to fight at a higher level.”
“But I didn’t read. I’m concerned about the act, the incompetence. I didn’t give you guys a choice.
Keikain cleared his throat. “I’m with Everlyn. We were fate dumping, and you had summoned an Elemental. If you had had time to ask, then we would have agreed.”
“I wouldn’t have,” Sonya told them.
The earth mage shrugged. “The majority would have voted for it, but as your girlfriend said, if it did happen then it’s all upside, anyway. Now that you’re no longer skewered at least.” His eyes darted to the pedestal, teeth flashing.
“You don’t have to…” Tom stopped talking. He had spotted the loot portal out of the corner of his eyes.
The shift was abrupt and absolute. He was now very much aware of it, and it was now like a brand burning in his awareness. He glanced at the others. The way Everlyn’s eyes kept flicking in that direction she had to had seen it already but the other two had not.
This one presented differently to the one at night. It was a white flame that floated twenty centimetres off the ground and then blazed up for almost half a metre. It was narrow, being only slightly too wide to be encircled with his two hands, and while it looked bright, the lack of shadows that it cast clarified that it did not actually generate any light itself. If the room was all pitch black, they would have been able to see those flames, white and pure, with nothing else illuminated no matter how close they got to the portal.
It blazed pristine and clean, which told him at a glance that no one else had already raided it and it was a miracle that the other two had not seen it. Then again, they had probably been focusing on trying to save his life while suffering broken and cut ribs, respectively. “I see none of you jumped on the loot early.”
Keikain looked around. His eyes froze when he saw the flames. “I wouldn’t dare,” he joked. “I’m not sure what the etiquette is. I don’t even know if these things are group loot or individual.”
Everlyn patted him on the back and stood. “I guess we’re going to find out. If it’s communal, then we do Need first. Then, for Greed, we roll for first selection on the remaining items, which we will then value in the auction house and attempt to ensure everyone gets the same cut.”
“Agreed,” Sonya whispered.
None of them moved. Then they all looked at each other and Tom couldn’t help it he smirked. “We’re all a bunch of antisocial introverts. Who votes Everlyn is the party leader for loot distribution?”
Everyone’s hands apart from Everlyn were immediately raised.
Tom winked at her. “Looks like you’re up first.”
Everlyn thought for a moment, then she grinned evilly. “I’m party leader for this.” She clarified carefully.
“Yes,” Keikain said.
Her smile grew broader. “Well, my first act as party leader is… Useless.” She stressed the name and ruined it by poking out her tongue. “Find out what’s in the loot portal.” She pointed haughtily.
Keikain and Sonia snorted at the byplay and, knowing that he couldn’t fight this and he had walked himself into the corner, Tom pushed himself to his feet. He was fully healed and there were no complaints or arguments that would deter her. He crossed the distance separating him from the portal and all of his senses confirmed it was the same portals he had experienced in the DEUS’s tutorial. Just like every other time he plunged his hand in. The subconscious part of his mind still expect it to be burnt by the dancing flames, or at least for them to have some sort of effect, but there was none of that. It was like he was just pushing his hands through the air. His fingers closed on some fabric and he pulled it out.