Tom’s question silenced everyone for a moment.
“Guys, how have we been communicating?” Tom asked again. “Because this is news to me.”
“If you didn’t spend all your time being anti-social hitting hives…” Everlyn suggested cheekily.
“Excuse me for trying to save us.”
“Yes, you’re a good boy,” she agreed. “But that’s your answer. The rest of us have had time on our hands to browse the auction house. Almost since day one there’s been a trend to sell an information package to the auction house for a single credit. Delivery drives the cost up to twenty, but it’s worth the cost. A folded piece of paper that records as many facts as possible. Size of starting group, average levels, survival rates, credit generation, conditions, monsters, trials, all of it.”
“What Everlyn said,” Michael answered him calmly. “Per person we’re generating over five times the number of credits when compared to the average.”
“Wow, how many of these have you bought?”
Michael looked around the circle. “A couple of hundred.” He admitted finally. “We wanted to know if we got cheated or not.”
“Did we?”
There was a shrug from Michael. “Yes, but maybe no.”
“We got screwed,” Sven declared.
Michael shook his head. “We didn’t.”
“I did. Apart from credits, we’re way down.” Sven stated.
“Calm down.” Michael snapped. “There’s enough drama happening already. Yes, against the info packages we’ve seen we’re doing worst. But they might be misleading.”
“Why would they be?” Sven challenged.
Michael laughed to ease the tension. “This is not worth fighting over, and why would people misrepresent their situation?” He shrugged. “They’re probably not doing it deliberately, but if they read that the average level is ten, then they might stop including the camp failures because they think that everyone else is leaving them out.”
“I don’t think so,” Sven argued. “Most of the ones I’ve seen have the average over the entire group and then a breakdown by rangers, camp defence and crafters.”
“However,” Michael overrode smoothly. “That was not my primary objection I have. The main issue is survivor bias.”
“What’s that?” Sven asked.
“It’s pretty simple. The only people writing messages are those with the time and security to do so. We don’t know how many groups got wiped out immediately or the number that are desperately struggling to survive and can’t spend money on frivolous stuff like how well the rest of humanity is getting on.”
“Sven,” Everlyn said, leaning forward. “We’re only seeing messages from those rich enough to send them. As a high level group, we’re generating far more credits than the well off, which is impressive.”
“At the cost of levels.” Tom observed.
“Obviously,” Michael agreed his eyes running over the split camp once more.
“How many?”
“Ten.” Sven said instantly.
“It’s not that much.” Michael objected.
Sven raised both eyebrows. “Nine? Eight?”
Michael said nothing.
“And almost a third of us don’t even have a single class.”
There was an uneasy silence.
Then Michael nodded. “You’re right, but the credit advantage shouldn’t be undersold. Providing we get to fight rank appropriate enemies soon we’ll catch up with them. Especially since we have a head start on equipment. Anyway, we got side-tracked. What I was saying is that everyone’s agreed to stay together for now, but that’ll break down if there’s another murder.”
“And then they’ll try to repurpose our money.”
“Our?” Michael queried gently, in amusement.
“Mainly Tom’s but I’ve got two thousand of my credits in the pot and I know you guys have more.” Everlyn corrected with a laugh while sticking her tongue out at him.
“It’s not a risk.” Micheal told her. “I’m the dedicated holder of the fund. The council can’t spend it unless I transfer it and I won’t.”
Tom held up a hand. Part of him wanted to not be distracted, to continue to press to find more about the rest of humanity, but the concentration of wealth couldn’t be ignored. “I don’t think we should focus the auction credits on one person. What happens if you die? It’s better to spread it around till we’re ready to making another teleporter purchase.”
“Tom, you’re too trusting.” Michael observed. “People have an infinite capacity to disappoint.” He waved at the distrustful camp around them.
Tom shrugged. “It’s not about me is it? I mean there are larger stakes.”
“I’m not stupid. I won’t take unnecessary risks. For example, Clare carried the credits when I did the trial.”
“Still, every human needs to remember the bigger picture. That means we don’t abandon anyone or stupidly lose resources that might help us get ranking points in the future.”
“Tom. How can I say this? The people who survived to be here are not the smartest or the best or anything like that. Most of us got through the trials by spending everything we had the moment we got it. That’s what worked in the trial and people are creatures of habit. We’ve all been conditioned to follow the patterns that worked in DEUS trials. They’ll keep doing it and that was not saving up. If they have access, they’ll spend it. They’ll justify it as necessary for the good of humanity, but it will ultimately be a selfish purchase.”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Which part?”
“That…” Tom stopped talking and he sort of knew that Michael was right. Everyone had experience. All of them could fight and probably had sublime skills in certain areas. They were not necessarily the best humanity offered. Potentially not even the best fighters. In the trials, if you had been cautious and didn’t push hard, then average skills could carry you for years if you could bear the loneliness. Though that was its own type of strength, but not one that was at all useful here on Existentia.
While some level of fighting prowess was a given, the rest of the abilities that were best for creating a future for humanity were not. Making good strategic decisions, respect of other people’s property, caring about others. The trial did not select on any of those traits, well maybe the first, but not to any great extent. “Fine, you’re right. I’m still uncomfortable. Maybe the pot should be split between us.”
Michael nodded. “I can do that. Tom, I’m not trying to break your faith in humanity. We’re all on the same side.”
“The serial killer has a different view.” Toni said quietly, and the silence deadened.
“I hate this start.” Sven grumbled eventually after flashing Toni a charming smile. “Bloody wasps, nothing good to fight and a serial killer.”
“It sucks.” Harry agreed. “I wish it had been normal. So many people have been stunted by it.”
“The number of rating points we’ve missed out on.” Thor agreed.
“It’s just a pause,” Michael reminded them. “It’s frustrating, but we’ll catch up.”
“Collectively, for the good of humanity, we haven’t done too badly.” Tom said quietly. “I’m fourth on the ladder.”
Silence deadened and not just around the immediate campfire. The conversation in the surrounding shelters noticeably muted. Apparently, the entire camp had been listening in to their discussion.
Sven rotated to face Tom. “I didn’t know that. How?” Sven asked.
Tom looked at Everlyn. He had spoken up in an effort to blow away some of the despair that had seemed to creep in, but now he had everyone’s attention. He really didn’t want to talk to them. It was only a small audience and most of them knew him, but he suspected, given the absence of distant conversation the entire community was listening. “Everlyn?”
She patted his leg.
“Everlyn,” Sven parroted.
She rolled her eyes at him. “Lots of titles for unique feats is the superficial explanation. The more accurate one is that he has been cheating with fate.” She told them, raising her voice loudly so everyone across the whole camp could hear. “Fate is not useless, like lots of the manuals in the DEUS trials suggested. It’s possibly the most important attribute there is.”
“It is?” Sven asked doubtfully. “Nothing I read suggested—”
“You read?” Harry interrupted.
Sven looked at the smaller man in annoyance. “Yes, I do, and I read nothing suggesting that.”
“I think that was deliberate.” Tom interrupted. “I think the other GODs feared humans’ active ability and blocked DEUS from teaching us.”
“Well, please enlighten us.” Sven ordered. “Oh oracle.”
Everlyn smiled. “Nor do I understand it fully. And while Tom has a better grip on it than most don’t be fooled by his attempt to appear wise and mysterious. He doesn’t know everything either.” There was a long silence. “But it is a weapon we collectively need to use better. From what I know, Tom’s used a significant amount of fate three times. First, while we were in the dome at the start. It was a random situation. Anything could have been beyond the energy barrier, so he dumped everything. It was not a coincidence that the first hundred hives were vulnerable to electricity. Without that stroke of fate, we would have been in a lot of trouble. That first section had the most stability out of everywhere. We were very fortunate to be there.”
“Nope!” Sven exclaimed, standing in agitation.
“Nope,” Michael asked curiously.
“There’s no way fate points can change that much. It’s ridiculous.”
“Sure,” Everlyn agreed off handily. “It was just a complete coincidence that all the hives nearby were weak to the one element that would let us survive.”
“We would have been fine with fire.” Someone from a tent yelled out. Which was followed by embarrassed silence as they revealed they had been listening in.
Everlyn turned to face the tent. “Griselda, can you explain how you could survive a swarm.”
“I have fire armour.” She told them.
“And how many wasps could that tank?” Everlyn asked. “Five hundred, a thousand.”
“A couple of thousand,” she answered.
“Tom, how many wasps are in a hive?”
“Around five thousand.”
“And that first swarm? How many were in that?”
“A similar number.” He answered.
“Griselda, could you really have survived that?”
There was movement within the tent. “With healing support.”
“You couldn’t.” A voice from the same shelter as Griselda said.
“With other fire mages…” she responded defensively.
“We couldn’t,” a male voice from the opposite shelter answered. “Together, we could have killed ninety percent of them, but that last ten percent would have killed everyone. If they were vulnerable only to fire, we would all have died.”
Tom didn’t recognise the voice, but he wanted to find out who had spoken.
“More would have died.” Everlyn clarified carefully. “Tom only limited the losses because not only could he kill enough to create enmity his internal healing was so ridiculously efficient he could survive the consequences.”
“I agree,” Michael stated. “Most other combinations would have wiped us out as a group on the first day.
“And they only changed to different weakness just after I got sufficient experience to purchase an elemental class.” Tom said quietly.
“Two huge bits of luck.” Everlyn continued loudly. “But it wasn’t luck it was the use of fate.”
“How much fate does he have?” Keikain asked.
Everlyn turned and pointed at him. “That’s a good question.” She then checked with Tom her eyes wordlessly asking if she had permission to tell them. “Around a hundred.” She declared.
There were surprised hisses all around.
“Fate is really important. The second time Tom used a lot of fate was on the auction house. I used mine at the same time. Tom used his entire fate pool and a few items later in the Spectaculi a trait stone for his expert class popped up.” There were murmurs all around the camp. “It was better than that,” she said her voice if anything was projected up a level. While her trait was supposed to create silence, Tom wouldn’t have been surprised if she was using it to make her voice louder or at least improving its clarity to anyone trying to listen in by suppressing all other forms of sound. “Besides appearing which by itself was a near miracle the trait stone had a whole host of restrictions that made it useless to pretty much everyone else in the world. My less impressive thirty fate,” she tapped her helmet. “Made this came up. It’s soul bound, class locked and boosts the skill that all my class points were going into. One might have been a wild coincidence, but two within two minutes of each other.” She shook her head. Everyone was listening intently. “No way that was random. The third time was today before the trial. We all dumped our fate and…” she looked at Keikain.
“It was wild,” the earth mage said his voice cutting through the surrounding sound just like Everlyn’s had. It was possible that she was not boosting his voice but suppressing every other sound, so you couldn’t help but listen. “Tom summoned a lightning elemental, and we swept every room. Every battle was easy mode to the boss.” Then he chuckled. “Which must have been rank twenty-five and so almost killed us. The result of that is that we got two powerful titles, two affinity stones to learn skills and ten attribute points and two hundred and seventy-five ranking points.”
“That’s” Micheal whispered.
“Awesome,” Keikain agreed.
“Unbelievable,” Sven whispered.
“Impossible,” Harry agreed.
“The power of Fate.” Tom declared quietly. Around them, in the surrounding tents silence had descended. He gestured at her to keep going.
“Collectively we need to start spending our fate.” Everlyn told them.
“On what?”
“Survival,” Everlyn answered. “And ranking points.”