Chapter 65

Tom’s eyes fixated upon the creature that had been hit by the arrow. It had sleek grey fur, a long whippet like body and it stood unnaturally on its small hind legs howling silently in protest, its head reaching slightly above his belly button.

That ding had to have been a title. He was not sure whether it was the arrow or related to that automatic use of fate points, but now that he could see the injured ferret creature the rest became visible.

All of them.

The others were easier to examine. The closest pre-earth description of the creatures were giant ferrets with stone skin. They were sleek monsters designed for rushing through tunnels and they had that dangerous muscular flexibility that meant they could almost twist snake like around someone.

His mind assessed them, weighing their characteristics against his own. They were not high ranked, as most of them radiated a feeling of moderate strength. Lower magic, higher agility with similar strength and vitality. The enemies were a pack with all the variation that entitled. Some were stronger than him and others weaker, and there were hundreds of them.

How everyone had failed to see them was a mystery because there were so many gathered. One even had signs of being hit by an ice spike, but had remained invisible despite that. Tom suspected it was some sort of pack invisibility ability because of how it behaved. Now that one had been revealed the rest had become visible.

Tom’s eyes skipped to his left and right. They were everywhere in a half circle around them and probably behind as well.

Over half of them were still creeping forward, closing the trap. Bodies low as they moved with extravagant slowness in order to not draw the eye. Slinking close to the ground and using what little cover there was to get near enough to ambush them en masse.

He wondered how long the pack had been stalking them. It might have been since they had left the plains or later it was hard to tell. The only relevant information was that they were now surrounded and probably in trouble.

The ferret hit with the arrow suddenly started screaming.

The rest of the creatures froze.

Tom’s mind crunched the odds. One versus one these creatures were an easy fight for any of the combat orientated humans. But they were outnumbered just from what he could see by at least three to one and that was not counting the ferrets behind them or any still in the ground.

People were going to die unless…

“Use a quarter of your fate.” Tom screamed and at the same time he did what he had ordered. Fate flowed out of him, and he could feel it coming out of others around him. In a fight, fate would often be spent automatically. It was luck. In a very real way, it was impossible to die while luck was with you, and that was how the pool worked for most of the other sapient races and animals. While they had fate they were untouchable but the moment that precious resource was expended they became vulnerable. Humans could choose to use fate. It was a massive advantage, as Fate used proactively was far stronger than the passive version.

Tom didn’t know the reasons, but Dux had confirmed that his observation was accurate. Active fate was considerably more powerful than passive.

Tom of course had a hypothesis. He didn’t know if it was true, but it was how he explained his observations and Dux’s confirmation in his head.

If fate was in play before the arrow was launched there were lots of ways it could stop the projectile from landing. Things like; it could break the bowstring, create a twitch in a key muscle, have a glint of light blind the archer or even have an insect land on the arrow shaft. Any of those events could change the trajectory of an arrow. However, if your fate only kicked in when the arrow was already launched and on target to kill you, then none of those early interventions could help. Instead, you were reliant on stuff like a small bird swooping in the arrow’s way or the coin on your necklace spinning up to deflect or having air randomly harden just enough to bend the arrow away or your armour performing well above its tier or other equally improbable reasons. Basically, the closer to the event you were there were fewer ways to influence the outcome and often that meant the intervention took more juice.

Maybe.

He was one to question how GODs made things work, but not arrogant enough to believe that his hand wavey explanations were correct.

A couple of seconds had passed, and it was eerie. All the humans had weapons out and the mass of ferrets stared at the single ferret making all the noise. Then over half of the ferrets blinked.

It was like that broke the spell. A ferret next to the screamer lunged at it. There was a brief glimpse of razor-sharp teeth and then it latched onto the creature’s neck before tearing.

Blood fountained out and the wounded ferret, now mortally injured as opposed to only hurt, swayed before collapsing as it died.

The pack punishing the lack of discipline was like a trigger going off. The closest ferrets glowed red as they utilised an ability. Those immediately gave up all pretence of moving slowly and charged the packed humans. The rest, the vast majority, kept sneaking forward like they were still invisible, and Tom figured that to most of the humans they still were.

“Incoming.”

“There.”

Tom focused on his elemental and encouraged it to zap a ferret. Not to kill it, but to disrupt its free movement. With so few attacking now was the time to gather information.

There was a pause and then an acknowledgment. After that, Tom switched all of his attention to the coming fight. The ferrets accelerated. It was like the gap that had appeared significant was only metres wide instead of ten times that amount. The ferret in the lead reached just outside melee range and then rather than springing forward to engage with the waiting fighters it leapt. It was like seeing an antelope take off and it soared over the front-line fighters. At its peak it attained a height of over two and half metres and the warriors could have swatted it out of the air, but instincts honed over years recognised that at least for the duration of the leap it did not threaten them personally. They all ignored it and instead shaped their weapons outwards to meet the more immediate threats that were still charging it.

It was going to land near him, so Tom watched it and tracked its trajectory. Amongst the ranged fighters, his eyes flickered. On top of Clare, he clarified after a moment. His eyes watched for other threats, but there were none, so his fingers readjusted their grip.

There was no need for anything fancy. He took a big step backward that brought him to almost standing next to the healer and positioned his spear even as he moved. The tip was aligned with its neck. The ferret dodged in the air, twisting violently to avoid the threat. Personal skill rather than system enhanced ensured that the tip of the spear lined up perfectly with the ferret’s neck despite its evasions. No matter how agile it was, if it lacked something like air step there was only so much it could do while airborne and Tom took advantage of that.

He timed the movement and stabbed upwards violently. There was a jerk as its neck collided with the tip of the spear. Tom’s entire body weight leant into his weapon in order to absorb resultant force and to ensure any natural armour couldn’t knock the tip away from the target.

Stolen story; please report.

Tom jerked backwards as the force of the collision radiated down the weapon. The skin stretched without breaking and Tom considered alternative ways to kill it if its skin was too tough to cut. Then there was a ripping sound as the spear tip punched through the ferret’s skin. The full weight of the ferret landed on his spear, and Tom only controlled his weapons because he was braced.

His brain kept analyzing angles, so he thrust upwards, hoping as he did so that the internals of the animals were not as ridiculously tough as the skin. The spear tip moved and plunged through the creature’s internals and into the brain.

Interesting, he thought. Compared to the skin’s resistance to piercing attacks the bones were like termite infested wood.

It was dead, but its weight slapped into the spear, and Tom found himself supporting the body. It was so heavy that he was forced to shuffle his feet to get the leverage required to swing the dying body to the side in order to let gravity help free his weapon.

Internally, Tom cursed the way the battle was going to unfold. With their resistance to piercing damage, their agility and extra weight they were a dangerous match up. Spears would fail to kill, heavy weapons would be thwarted by the agility, and when they collided with the defenders, the humans would be knocked off balance.

That last was a problem.

Everyone here had ten plus years of experience fighting by themselves and none as a group. In single combat, when you stood by yourself, if you were hit with something with more mass than you, then you could usually roll with the impact. If that was across empty ground, then you tumbled till you bled off sufficient momentum to find your feet. If instead it was into a wall or tree, then you could kick off the solid structure to get into an advantageous position to counter strike. If you were knocked into an enemy, that was even better because a snap kick could kill it and rebalance you at the same time. However, in this situation, if you rolled into a human those techniques wouldn’t work.

Tom expected chaos.

His spear pulled cleanly out of the dead ferret and he suppressed his analytic mind in order to focus on the surrounding fight. Tom sensed his elemental going for its first strike, and he immediately focused on the spot.

The elemental struck. It had aimed for the ferret’s front shoulder to stun it rather than the more risky immediate attempt to kill it. A pathway Tom knew a majority of elementals would have gone for. After all, at this tier of elemental they were classed as monsters, so their natural instinct was to go for the kill. However, the one he had summoned had listened. Internally, he congratulated himself for selecting a personality that he could work with.

The ability to control and direct actions in Tom’s mind would beat raw magic energy every day.

Electricity sparked, and the target spasmed, flopped onto the ground, bounced, and landed right at the feet of Legen. It started to rise, having overcome the stun, but it was too late. Without hesitation, the tank brought his shield, which was bladed on the bottom end hard down on the animal’s neck with a flare of power which decapitated it. Other ferrets executed their attacks better. They avoided weapons and spells and crashed into people. Some tumbled backwards, others fell but overall, the group did far better than Tom had feared. Where people stumbled under the unexpected mass those behind adjusted to give them space and in some cases the fighter was even braced with a hand. Where a ferret survived the first clash, secondary attacks took advantage of the small windows of opportunity to butcher them.

In a moment, it was over. The first wave was eliminated, and his elemental was back with him, waiting for instructions.

He absorbed the lessons almost instantly. His analytical mind had been rigorously trained to use any advantage no matter how small. He replayed every fight and weighed each of them for actionable intelligence. Their vitality was low. No one had trouble killing them. His friends and companions were sufficiently competent to adjust to the complication of having allies around them.

Tom reached out with his mind to connect to the elemental on his head. It buzzed in response and he felt all of his hair rising. He wanted it to stun the ferrets at the right moments.

Confusion greeted him.

He reiterated the instructions this time exclusively with images. As they were about to spring, when they were descending through the air just before they reached people. The elemental’s job was to distract them at the appropriate moment.

Acceptance flowed back.

“Incoming.”

Tom’s head snapped up. A second wave was approaching, but the numbers were low. Only ten instead of the hundreds they could probably launch.

Why?

There were times for feints, but this behaviour suggested something else. Maybe the pack was not confident that they could take the packed humans and were instead testing them just to confirm in either way.

With only ten, he was not needed, so he assessed the group’s performance. He spun on his heels, completing a full three sixty. The first thing that confirmed was that they were surrounded. Second, while the first wave had been slaughtered, they had done damage. Healing spells were flying and despite the small numbers in that first wave two people had been significantly injured.

The second wave was effortlessly put down, but what concerned Tom was what was going to come next. If it was ten animals every ten seconds, they would weather the fights easily, but that technique made no sense outside of games. In real life, most pack animals focused on an all-or-nothing philosophy.

There were over two hundred left and as his eyes scanned over the enemies he saw more and more flashing red. They were about to swarm them en masse. There was no doubt about that.

“Fate. If you haven’t done it, do it.”

Steeeeek!

Tom clutched his head in reaction to the cacophony. Every single one of the creatures that had encircled them was screaming at the same time. It was a tsunami of noise hitting from every side. He wanted to fall and clutch his ears, but instead he activated Healing Tranquillity. It allowed himself to distance himself from the racket even as he delayed using it to preserve mana. Clinically, he assessed the damage. Ear drums were blown and there were hairline fractures in his feet. The broken bones continued to spread, entering his shins. Tom guessed some of the sound of the attack was coming through the rock he was standing on.

The screaming stopped and seven mana fixed his issues, one each for his ears and then five for his feet.

In the external world, all the ferrets, hundreds of them, were charging and inflicted by the sound attack the majority of fighters that were meant to meet them were crouched on the ground, either clutching their head or feet.

Clare next to him glowed and a wave of healing swept over all of them. She fell to her knees immediately afterward a pained expression on her face. Exhaustion filled her and the way she slumped Tom was certain that the mass healing spell was her final contribution to the fight.

Around him, almost everyone leapt up to meet the enemy. They were still grimacing and given that it had taken him seven points of mana to fix himself there was no chance that Clare’s healing could have done anything more than patch over the most grievous of their internal wounds. Legan took a step and then nearly fell as his ankle failed him but by grounding his shield he avoided toppling over.

Then the wave of monsters were upon them and there was no time for thinking.

His elemental had already left him to attack. Out of the corner of his eye, Tom saw a flash of light hit a ferret just after it jumped. It flew limply through the air and had its skull carved in by a hammer. Meanwhile, his spear enhanced with a fragment of power strike impaled the first ferret that had leapt over the frontline and had the misfortune to land near him. The lightning elemental kept flicking between targets carefully choosing its victims. In the first two waves, the heavy weapon users had struggled to land a blow on the agile ferrets. The time his summoned lightning elemental stunned them as they got within range and then it was relatively easy for the heavy weapons to destroy their targets. A single hit with the heavy weapons was more than enough to destroy the fragile creatures.

A ferret was rushing at him. It was using tiny steps to keep in contact with the ground and maintain its dodge ability.

Zap

The ferret in the process of changing course found its legs lock up and slid forward helplessly. Tom focused as he did so. A bit of blue light flared on it as he engaged his power strike to increase the strength of the blow and guarantee penetration.

With a flourish, he pulled back his spear and immediately stabbed an enemy that was flying through the air admittedly not on a collision course with him. He had been worried about getting through the skin, but his spear tip slid through almost undefended. The spear went in far enough to obliterate the heart and then he was focusing on another one galloping toward him.

Zap.

It slid unable to dodge for an instance. It’s back legs kicked off the ground, causing it to flip, but it was too late. Tom’s power thrust with the enhanced weapon pierced through its backbone.

It might not be a fatal wound, but if it was paralyzed, it was not fighting for a period.

Blood splattered over his him and not almost fluorescent red of the ferrets. Someone next to him had been hit.

Tom pivoted.

A ferret with blood on its claws was preparing to leap into the central group.

Zap.

A very surprised ferret could not do anything. His spear plunged into it. Unless he was terribly out of practice that was a clean heart blow. His spear wrenched as its delayed orders to its back legs triggered. He pulled his spear out of the now far wider hole confident that it was out of action. Blood spurted out like out of a fountain.

Another dead.

It was a very familiar dance to Tom, but this time he had company to worry about.

His eyes dropped to Clare. Blood covered her armour and her cheek and neck had been torn open by the ferret’s attack.

He reached out to see if he could save her. She needed to live because her mass healing had saved them all.