Tom was woken by a spear gently nudging his shoulder. Instinctively, his hand shot out and seized it while simultaneously he activated his Spear skill in order to purge it of foreign contamination and will. He could feel the grain of the wood, its weight and the distinctive lack of anything animating it despite the fact it had been prodded at his shoulder an instant earlier. His conscious mind reached out to assess his surroundings. There was no one within twenty metres of him, but a series of pressure points on the ground just beyond that told him that he had an audience.
“Thanks, Rahmat,” He called out as he rolled to his feet and packed up his bedroll. Thor was not present, but Everlyn was, and he immediately addressed her. “Has the plan for today changed?” She shook her head. “So, two teams. Where does that leave Selena?”
“She’s getting an invitation. Against my better judgement, I might add. Michael convinced me to slot the four of them into the secondary team.”
“Not in ours? I would have thought you guys would take the opportunity to make plans with her. She’s got a keen mind.”
“Or so she projects. Personally, I think she’s probably adequate at the minute battle strategy but struggles with the wider arching stuff. It’s why she wasn’t given control over strategic decision.”
“She’s felt switched on whenever I’ve spoken to her.”
Everlyn appeared frustrated. “It doesn’t matter. She isn’t with us. We’re with the strike team to do the hard route. You, me, Michael and everyone with a fourth class. The only other person we considered letting join was Keikain, but in the end we decided against it.”
“We’ve taken all the strongest. Surely one or two of the heavy hitters should be in the second group.”
She shrugged. “The three of us, plus Vidja made the call. That means Keikain who was left out of the team was part of the decision making and agreed with the strategy. We’ve got the harder journey to complete, and this split makes the most sense. The aim is to clear all personal quests within the first ten days. The remaining time will be spent preparing specific strategies particularly how to negate the insects. That’s something we’re going to have to get you to actively scout.”
“And how did the prototype of the teleport stone go?”
That question made her frown, which meant there were problems.
“Everlyn, what’s gone wrong with the effort.”
“It’s bad news,” Harry called out from near the doorway.
Tom’s eyes snapped up to check.
There was a group standing just outside the range of his earth domain, which had made him complacent. It was Bao, Keikain and Harry and they were cooking around a makeshift campfire. When indoors, he kind of defaulted to, assuming he could sense everything through the domain and that misplaced belief had made him complacent. This room was too big for that, and he shouldn’t have relied exclusively on the skill. So many of the survival instincts he had built were fraying because of the continual proximity of people. He had to do better, but he had told himself that before.
“Maher and I tried to create a prototype last night, and it failed.”
“In what way?” Tom asked in increasing alarm. “Is it catastrophic the technique won’t work, or was it just a minor setback?”
The personal teleport artefacts were not a hundred percent required. He could see a basic strategy where they could distract the dragon long enough to allow the giant to land its blow without the items, but the cost in lives would skyrocket under those conditions. It could cast a breath attack every couple of seconds. That was potentially over a dozen of them dying before the dragon itself perished. “No Harry. We can’t afford for them not to work. They can’t fail.”
“I know! I know!” Harry snapped. “Something’s missing in our procedure. And no, we don’t know what? And yes, it’s currently a fatal error, but we’ll solve it. I guarantee we’ll get it working.”
“They’ll succeed,” Everlyn agreed confidently. “The two of them are staying here to continue their experiments.”
“No, we’re staying so that we can get an audience with the inventor the moment it gets back, which should be in a day or two. Even then, delivery to the timelines won’t be easy. When we get the process working, it’s still going to take two weeks to craft a device for all of us”
Tom scratched his ear puzzled at the first part of the speech. He got the reasoning, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t faulty. “But Phil warned us about delaying. Shouldn’t you be focusing on finishing your personal quests before throwing yourself into crafting.”
Harry grimaced and touched the consol and the door to the outside clicked shut.
Everlyn shrugged. “Selena assures me that the personal quests can be brute forced. The wider group can do all the work and have a laggard come in at the last moment to claim the credit. To get a single person over the line will only take a day or maybe two of dedicated effort. Those two can focus on the teleporters and we can power complete their personal quests later.”
“That’s accurate, but there’s more, Everlyn. If you can suppress the sound of this conversation, that would be helpful.” Harry said. She nodded, and the ritualist turned to face him. “These rooms are shielded against outside surveillance, but it doesn’t hurt to have extra protections.” As Tom watched, he brought out a number of extra artefacts that he activated one after the other. “Power completing my quests is one option. The other is to use an escape key to abandon the trial.”
“But that forfeits all the prizes.”
Harry scoffed. “Who cares about the trial rewards? For us, the experience is the biggest benefit of this place and even if we flee, we will still keep it.”
Tom hesitated. The context of what was being said didn’t make sense to him. There was something he was missing, but it might be as simple as Harry having been there when the chosen had discovered their key. But Harry had also shut the door… he had wanted to hide information from someone else.
Tom’s eyes narrowed. “But this is all theoretical, as we don’t have any of those keys.”
The ritualist looked slightly like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Not completely theoretical. Maher has one. He found it two days ago and Jenny’s team doesn’t know about it, so we have to keep it a secret.”
“Especially from the other competitor races.” Everlyn interjected and shivered. “I can see the giant, inventor and wador all liberating it from us if they find out we have one in our possession. I believe all of them would choose to avoid the dragon if they had the choice. And none of them would hesitate to slaughter all of us to give themselves that option. Maybe the inventor wouldn’t… but I wouldn’t be surprised if he prioritised his own life over all of us, so there’s no way I’m trusting him, either.”
“And if the giant gets hold of it,” Tom muttered to himself. “Then there’s no way to kill the dragon.”
“Best not to think about it.” Everlyn agreed immediately.
“It’s a back-up plan if we run out of time.” Harry told them. “If it’s required the two of us can focus on crafting and we’ll only have to power complete the quests for one of us at the end. The other person has the option to use the key to escape, which will save two days. That’s extra flexibility. To be honest, if we didn’t think we might need the key later we would already have destroyed it. Of course, if the crafting is easier than expected, then we’ll accompany you out there to fight for our own quest completion and only miss this first three-day loop. For now, the logical choice is to be here so we can consult with the inventor. We need to fix the issue as soon as possible. To allow us to plan better, if nothing else.”
The promise to destroy the liability the escape key represented was not spoken out loud. But the intent to do exactly that was clear.
Fully briefed the team gathered, and then they set out. It was almost immediately apparent that their combat potential was as terrifying as Tom had imagined.
When he had fought the six devourers on the first day, he had witnessed the power of Rahmat’s domain and Power Strike. The man hadn’t had to fight directly but had been the most deadly as he had been able to remotely boost everyone of Tom’s hits to ridiculous levels. The difference between Rahmat’s souped up skill and Tom’s was an impassable gulf. Blows that if Tom was directing them might have reached the bone instead had gone straight through the monsters without even slowing.
Within the first hour of travel, Tom discovered that Rahmat’s Power Strike was not the only terrifying ability the group possessed to kill the monsters they encountered.. Usko’s chosen strike reminded Tom of when Michael got his Throw Axe skill perfect. The axes he employed did not get bigger, but when they struck, it was as if they were a hundred times their normal size and wielded by the giant. The devourer’s body had a shadow aspect, but that meant nothing to Usko’s enhanced skill. They were torn apart like they were made of tissue paper.
The bonus to dismembering functioned exactly like you would imagine it would in a dream. It cared nothing for physics or consistency, it just worked.
Thiwck.
And a devourer would fall in two parts.
Thiwck,
And it would be dead and in three pieces.
It was a skill that Tom’s own defences would not be able to stop. If it hit, then he would lose limbs… it was that simple. From what he had seen, even a minor cut was enough to trigger a dismembering. Living Rock would be helpless. All was not lost because his dodge and teleport combination meant that Tom would probably be able to avoid all damage in a theoretical brawl between him and Usko.
He couldn’t see the same level of changes in Clare or Vidja, but he had no doubt they existed even if they were less flashy. Enemies around Vidja seem to die faster, and Clare was far more confident in engaging opponents in melee combat.
As for Toni? She was the one person who he didn’t want to fight. He suspected she could create a mesh of blades that he would be unable to finesse his way through.
Tom was also very thankful for the guide that the giant, Phil and Selena had provided through the use of that strategy chamber. The platform navigating mechanism was confusing and without help it would have probably taken them days to become proficient. The secret was to make an effort to tie all the significant journeys to a massive island. If you weren’t careful, a five kilometre link between two tiny platforms could take as long as a hundred kilometre glide associated with a connection to a major disk.
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As he fought more and more enemies, Tom could feel the benefit of his ranks. Their choice to remain under levelled to maximise experience had gotten him used to always fighting monsters who were faster, tougher, stronger and possessing boosted vitality that made them difficult to hurt. Those equations had been turned on their head and he felt like a god against the creatures he was facing.
Intellectually, he knew he had only matched their attributes as the zone was technically a rank forty two one, but it didn’t feel like that.
Black dodge put him on a different stage to them. Even the ones that focused on speed were only twice as fast as him at a base level. Then, once he added the greater than six times multiplier, he got from his dodge ability they became slow. Then there was his domain that, in addition to offensive uses allowed him to do nifty things like air step and change directions mid-air. He still didn’t have his anti-magic projectiles available to boost attacks launched out of his domain. The process of absorbing the base stone was still a couple of days away from completing, but against these opponents that extra power was proving to be unnecessary. Normal rock could stop one of those devourer bolts, especially combined with his lightning armourer as the next layer of defence.
Then, offensively, the uptick of active fate from his dodge skill created massive openings for him to exploit. A Rahmat super Power Strike against a critical weak spot that all that directed fate had presented to him was unsurprisingly a lethal combination.
“Stop making it look so easy,” Michael complained to him.
“It’s Rahmat. He keeps putting Power Strikes on my spear thrusts.”
“It is not. It’s your stupid titles and all the extra attributes you’ve received, punting you to twelve ranks ahead of me.” The healer chuckled and then winked. “I’m sure you’d agree that if I had those raw attributes my Throw Axe would be showing you up. At least in the amount of blood we both generated.”
That was not something he could dispute. Cutting monsters in half tended to create far more blood per kill than a well-placed puncture wound that destroyed a critical organ. “You’ve got a point, but honestly your offense is better than mine. The only reason I get close is how I evolved Black Dodge. The fate opportunities to counter strike that it’s generating combined with Rahmat terrifies me and I’m the one using it.”
“Why would that terrify you?” Michael asked, and then shook his head ruefully. “No! Don’t answer. I get it. If you can become this powerful so quickly, what are the true native monsters out there going to be like?”
He nodded agreement, and they kept going
They attacked multiple platforms and half the group was able to complete the personal quest to seize an island. That was both the generic quest and the optional one that required a significantly larger land mass.
Tom allowed everyone else to claim the islands in preference of himself. He was making great strides on his elimination of the devourers and didn’t need to satisfy the platform requirement as he was delivering the killing blow against most of the ones they ran into. So, he could finish his optional quests via that pathway.
Thanks to the planning they had done prior to setting out they were making extraordinary progress. They were on track to complete the requirements a long time before the ten days they were aiming for.
Tom yanked back his spear as the last of the devourers died. They were not on a large island and having forty boil out of the innocent-looking lighthouse style tower had been unexpected. To be honest, the monsters must have been packed within the structure as tightly as they could fit.
“That was a tough battle.” Michael commented. “I noticed you used your chaos aura.”
“Just mucking around.” Tom admitted with a laugh. “But the fight got easier when it chanced on a light aura. It was only tier one, but it really suppressed their movement.”
“Yeah, I saw. Do you think the aura is a long-term part of your kit?” The healer asked curiously.
“Guys, we have a problem.” Everlyn yelled before he could respond with a neutral answer to indicate his uncertainty.
Tom looked up and saw that all the pavers on the rim were flashing red. “What the fuck?”
“Who is it?” Michael demanded almost simultaneously.
The two of them were right at the lighthouse and everyone else who had been further back was running to the edge of the island to find out who or what had tagged them.
“Over here,” Rahmat shouted.
Everyone immediately sprinted in that direction.
Everlyn cursed when she reached the spear man. “It’s the wador.”
“You can confirm that already?” Rahmat asked in surprise. “That platforms over twenty kilometres away.”
She shrugged. “It’s them. I spotted two of the five.”
“Is Jenny there?” Michael demanded.
“I would have mentioned it if she was. Plus, Selena thought they were on a mission in the opposite direction. That was half our reason for going this way…” she snorted. “Or we were being naïve again. If I wanted to ambush us, then I would have given Selena the same false information.”
“Do we flee with the chosen’s help or wait?”
Everlyn pointed at one of the islands they were shooting past. “We’re moving too quickly. The only way to evacuate will have us scatted over multiple platforms… If the wador are hunting us that is a bad idea…”
Michael frowned. “Reading between the lines they’re just after Tom. So if we send him away.”
She shook her head furiously. “There are buildings on the island. Jenny could be hiding in one and if she’s there, then it might not be about Tom. It could just be a case of robbery.”
“But, even if that’s the case we’ve got nothing to give. Thor holds all of our reserves.”
Everlyn barked out a harsh laugh. “Do you think Jenny would accept that. And if she did, would you bet on her walking away and accepting the loss or taking hostages to get what she wants?”
“She wouldn’t do that…” Michael started, and then paused as he reconsidered the facts. “I would like to believe she wouldn’t, but you’re correct. Sending Tom away is not the best plan. Then I guess we prepare to fight. I don’t think running from a carnivorous hunting pack is ever a good idea.”
“We’re assuming hostile forces,” Everlyn said, taking over. “We’ve got ten minutes, so let’s shape the battlefield.” She clicked her fingers. “Right there, I need two walls at least five metres high. Then secondary walls…” once more she pointed to exactly where she wanted them. “To act as bulwarks for us to fire around.” Then she hesitated as she thought of something new. “Unless Tom you want to stop the farce and strike them with meteorites.”
“I’ll pass.” He answered simply. “If I hit them with a volley, I’ll probably kill them and even if they survive, it’ll knock the platform out of the air.”
“Which brings its own bad mojo,” Michael said in a defeated tone. “The giant apparently destroys the smaller ones when he gets bored because it causes an upgraded champion to try to kill him. He finds them fun to fight. A larger island like this would probably cause ten to be sent against us and if one is considered fun for the giant, I can easily imagine how us fighting multiple of them would go.”
Tom’s domain was flexing, and the rock was starting to flow. “So no wanton destruction of platforms…” he joked. “Unless I’m after a good time. Got it.” The stone under his control gathered in the spots Everlyn had identified. Layer by layer, the bulwarks grew higher and thicker. Tom frowned at what he was producing. For the time constraints and the resources he had, it was impressive, but its usefulness in an actual fight was far more questionable. Michael was busily attaching defensive artefacts that glowed with power to the rock. They would help, but ultimately hastily constructed stone barriers even slightly magically reinforced could only do so much. “It’s what you asked for,” he stated hesitantly not at all happy with them. “But they’re not going to last more than a few seconds in battle. I guess they might give our ranged fighters a little longer to attack from afar.”
“If they’re that successfully that’ll definitely tilt the fight in our favour. A couple of seconds would be huge.” She said confidently.
He glanced over at her. “Am I fighting in the choke point to delay them further.”
“Hopefully not. We don’t want to fight, but if we have no choice then yes. If it comes to that you and Clare have to hold them off.”
“I wish we had Harry,” Tom said. “I’m sure he could have reinforced these to last the battle.”
“So do I,” Everlyn agreed her eyes focused ahead. “But you fight with what you’ve got, not what you wished you had. That’s interesting, all the wador are visible, but no sign of Jenny or any other humans yet. The wador have been busy since they engaged us, placing down offensive and defensive magic. It’s looking like an opportunistic engagement rather than premeditated. That’s massive for us.”
Michael readied his axe. “If they want a fight, we’ll kill them.”
Everyone else likewise had their preferred weapons ready.
“Damn. They’re all ranked around forty-five.” Everlyn reported.
That might have sounded like a gap they could cross. After all, it was the ratio they had been maintaining in the other zones where their rank was thirty percent less than their opponents. However, Tom did not believe it for one second. Excluding him, the humans were at the same disadvantage, but it would be in a fight against sapients and not dumb monsters. Worse, the enemy were the champions of their species.
He was not arrogant enough to think that he could take them. If it was a fight, they were going to be crushed. All they could hope was that they would bloody the wador if it ended in a battle.
Tom’s build was not suited to the situation. His primary ability was to be a cockroach and when sapients fought, offensive abilities beat defensive ones. If the fight was inevitable, Tom decided he would release all of his fate and try to seize the most powerful chaos aura that he could. He doubted it would be sufficient to trouble the wador but if he got very lucky, it might allow him to hold them long enough for the others to land a powerful counterattack.
All too soon, the two islands stopped next to each other. His mana was full and his mind retreated into the depths of a singular battle focus. He was ready.
They didn’t attack instantly.
Seconds ticked by as the two groups stood in a standoff. It was one of those situations where something as small as an errant flapping of butterfly wings could set everything off in a blaze of glory.
Tom’s hand itched, but he held dead still while silently waiting for the inevitable moment when his perception of the world would slow.
“Humans, are you scared of us?” The leader asked, mockingly.
Social silence kicked in and stopped him from replying. Yes, no, a little. They were all an incorrect response and his mind touched a variety of concepts before finding one that would not be detrimental when expressed.. “We acknowledge your threat.” Tom said in a flat tone. He didn’t know why he said it, only that it was the only option he had been able to find.
There was a widening in the leader’s eyes and some of the tension of the situation left. “Why then do you provoke us by positioning yourselves to fight.” The weird cat waved at the rock barriers.
“We acknowledged your threat. We did not acknowledge capitulation.” The words flowed out and Tom’s eyes widened as much as his opponents had earlier. He understood the gist of what he was saying, but the why was a mystery. He guessed it was Social Silence working on fertile ground that had been prepared by True Dreaming.
The wador’s face did something funny, it scrunched far more than seemed natural.
“It’s smiling.” Michael told him via Everlyn’s party chat.
Tom studied the expression without reacting overly much. There were no teeth to be seen or even a twitching of the lip region.
“And you are the one they call Tom?”
“I am,” He answered his spear remaining ready to deflect any surprise attacks. He wanted to ask if the wador were there as Jenny’s bully boys, but his skill wouldn’t let him and logically he knew it was a bad line of questioning.
“Have you prepared reparations for your cowardness.”
“I’ve done nothing, cowardly.”
“You struck down one of us dishonourably.”
“It was an accident and a consequence of his pathetic weakness.”
“You dare!”
Once more, Social Silence closed off his throat. There were lots of choice responses he felt would be an acceptable retort to a human, but they would be overly provocative to the wador because of their weird mindset. Furiously in his head he created sentences, phrases and quips and tested them against his throat muscles. Not one was deemed to be acceptable. Loudly Tom cleared his throat. “My non-combat skill hurt him. How else would you describe it but as a pathetic weakness. Only the frail can be burnt by such an ability.”
The wador stared at him with narrow eyes. Tom had no doubt that it knew he was telling the truth.
“You believe what you said is accurate. But are you willing to swear on the GODs that your actions were not deliberately craven.”
“We acknowledge your threat and I swear on the GODs that your packmate was damaged by an ability I did not realise had any combat potential before he was inflicted.”
I also doubled down on its use when I realised it could hurt him, Tom thought, but did not express that sentiment.
“I am confused. You would acknowledge our threat and then spit at us for our weaknesses.”
“I acknowledge your threat,” Tom answered stiffly when no other responses were valid.
“And if we deliver on that promise.”
“Then we fight. Some potentially all of us will die here. Possibly, some of yours will perish as well. But the results of such a battle are less important than the fact it occurred. IF we clash today both the victors and survivors will all be doomed. The dragon will murder all of them, excluding those who turn tail and flee using an escape key.”
“A surprising bitter truth.” The wador said with clear annoyance. “When we spotted you, we resolved ourselves to punish you for your cowardness.”
“I acknowledge your threat, but not your accusation.”
“I acknowledge your threat, too.”
Next to him Michael almost sagged in relief. Everlyn was more composed, but because Tom knew her so well, he could tell she had a similar reaction. That response from the wador had apparently been significant.
There was a click and the lights on the wadors island glowed red and the paver under Tom’s feet remained blue. For the next thirty seconds, Tom stared into the eyes of the wador leader as the two platforms slowly drifted away from each other.
None of them moved until there was over a hundred metres separating them and then the wador spun almost as one and walked to the opposite side of their platform from where Tom was.
He did not sag in relief. Tom would not allow himself to do so. He was stronger than that. But even he could acknowledge that they had been far closer to disaster than any of them was willing to admit.
“You know,” Michael said quietly. “We really need to work out how to activate these pavers remotely.”