by Dakota Krout
“Throw a handful of sand at me.” Luke ordered after a small snort of annoyance left his nose.
“No.”
“Zed. C’mon.” Luke motioned at himself, so Zed grabbed some sand and stone shards and tossed them at the Murderhobo.
“Happy, you-?” Zed’s retort stopped as Luke’s silhouette lit up to reveal mismatched blue armor, which faded away in less than a second. “It appears you have armor. However, I wasn’t wrong; you aren’t wearing any.”
“A speechless Bard is something I’d pay to see, normally.” Taylor turned from her pet project and studied the twisted remains of the Scuttler. “Fallback point is set; it has water, air supply, and is designed to hold off anything up to tier five for at least an hour. We can rest there tonight. Tomorrow, we need to make our final call on what we are going to do about this situation. Zed, can you share any information on your Mastery?”
“Taylor, I can see everyone’s notifications in combat! I lost all the Potentia I somehow gained, but it turned into a permanent feature!” Zed proudly announced. “It’s… oh. Oh, my goodness. It’s tier four! Multitarget! I can talk to all members in my party at up to five kilometers away, see their health and mana values, and the damage they take and deal! Damage types, as well!”
She met his eyes and nodded approvingly. “Good to know. Group-style support powers are a rare thing, according to the records of the Hollow Kingdom. You just became useful. If I don't need to handle coordination, I’m freed up to be more active in combat. How far away can you be?”
“No idea! I can talk up to five kilometers, but can I hear you? Ambiguous!”
“Just to be clear, you have figured out a way to handle long-range communication?” Taylor’s words held a deeper meaning that Zed didn’t catch.
Zed’s voice seemed to speak directly into her ear. “Oh, yes. I can cast my voice, and I’ll work on improving this Mastery even higher when I can.”
“Well… congratulations. You now have a combat role, and now I can’t justify leaving you in a safe location when we go off to fight, like we had all planned to do.” Taylor walked into the stone safe room, followed by Luke and Andre.
Zed simply stood outside, his face frozen in shock, with a single finger in the air as if he had wanted to point something out… but couldn’t.
Chapter Forty-Three
The night passed quickly, with the four of them taking turns on watch. Though it was past sunrise, their encampment was still dark thanks to the towering mountains. The four began their information-gathering mission, pausing every once in a while for Luke to check on ‘suspicious’ boulders.
“These are all fine.” He stopped testing after about fifteen minutes, and they began to pick up the pace. The thorns and other hardy plant life in the area bent away from them as they passed, allowing passage without the group having to tear through them. “That Scuttler must have been a scout of some kind.”
“It is fully possible, as we discussed, that the enemy knows we are here.” Andre nodded as the others looked at him for clarification. “Whether it was pheromones, telepathy, or perhaps it might just be the fact that making a stone room is loud; we need to assume they will be on guard for us. Constant vigilance! Whoa! Look at that flower! I’ve never seen that before!”
Everyone else was fairly nonplussed as they watched the normally cheerfully competent Druid leap at the flower like a toddler and start inspecting it closely. There was a flash of mana, which drew Luke’s eye, but in that same moment it appeared; Andre finished his investigation. He walked away from the flower, smiling, and the flower itself seemed to stand a little straighter. “It's a Mountain Willow Wind! It has stamina-restoring abilities, and I bet it would be useful to you, Zed!”
“Oh?” Zed appeared intrigued. “I do get tired…?”
“Right, well, not exactly for the medical properties. When the wind flows over the flower, it produces a crisp sound. Depending on the age of the flower, the tone will change. If you had a bouquet of them at different ages, you could literally hand a lady a singing bouquet that makes her feel invigorated as she smells them!” Andre had barely finished speaking when Zed had scurried over to Andre’s previous post by the flower, now also inspecting it just as gleefully.
“There aren’t any seeds! Andre, can you grow these things at will?” Zed’s hopeful voice and desperate stare made Andre start laughing hard enough that he doubled over. “Stop laughing, man; I need answers!”
“I have everything we will ever need to make as many as we want,” Andre reassured the Bard. “I think that you and I will have a very good time when we get to a city.”
The two of them high-fived, the slap sounding like an arrow landing on stone. No… wait. Luke pushed the two of them to the side and redirected an additional twenty percent of his mana to his cuirass. The boost to his chest armor granted sixty-two and a half points of damage absorption. With so much defensive power, the next half-dozen arrows that slammed into him caused no damage; though his armor was getting dangerously close to breaking.
Impact! Simple crossbow bolt, piercing damage: 9!
8!
16!
14!
5!
1!
Simple Metal Cuirass. Armor: 9.5/62.5. Mana devoted to upkeep: 30% (14.79/97.35 mana. Time until armor repairs and mana is unlocked for use: 15.2 seconds!)
“Turn off robust messaging during combat,” Luke growled at his Sigil, swiping the words out of his vision. “That Enchanter must have reset the combat settings to default, abyss him.”
His glowing phantasmal armor showed the damage as cracks all over his cuirass, though Luke knew from long practice that they were just visual aids for him, and didn't actually impact the protection of his armor. He currently had greater concerns; his eyes were locked on the creatures that had managed to attack them. “Taylor. Tell me how they snuck up on us.”
“A moment.” Taylor stared at the creatures, and her massive Senses allowed her to understand them with a single glance. “Ah. Just like the Scuttler, they were a part of the stone in the pass until just before they attacked. These are ‘Scuttler Sentries’, looks like they can use simple tools and such. Their crossbows are nearly reloaded, so prepare yourselves.”
Zed dove behind a stone outcropping as more bolts flashed through the air at them. The others, prepared for the attack now, used their own methods of defending against the attack. Luke slapped the bolts out of the air, Taylor slightly shifted and let the bolts fly past, and Andre allowed the bolts to pierce and therefore get collected by a swinging vine. The Druid looked at the withering vine and sniffed disdainfully. “Poisoned bolts, and a contact poison. I’ll start working up an antidote right now. Also, they use tools, meaning they must be smart-ish. Luke, since you touched them, you must be poisoned. Sit down and wait for the antidote, or you might die.”
“I’m fine.” Luke scoffed at the thought of sitting out a fight. “I love poison. Makes me tingle.”
“They’re smart enough that you’re out of the fight, Andre?” Taylor directed her question at him while keeping her eyes on the attackers that were clinging a few dozen feet up the rock wall on either side of them.
“Hmm? Oh, not at all. They just need to die from natural causes if I attack them. Or I can hold them down and you can kill them.” Andre demonstrated by linking his mind to a small shrub that was providing cover and using it to swat at a sentry. It screamed, jumped to the side, and fell off the ledge. “There, that one died from falling. Not my fault the ground killed it; all I did was scare it. Before you ask, no, I can’t grab people and throw them to their death; that wouldn’t work. Tried it. I get a warning if I’m getting too close to breaking the rules.”
“What rules?” Taylor wasn't waiting for an answer; at least she wasn’t waiting on an answer before attacking. She sprinted toward the stone wall, not slowing in the slightest as she reached it. Then she was running straight up the pass wall as if it were still flat ground, utilizing one of the effects of Fiss
ure to ignore the fact that she was defying gravity. The others watched as she drew level with the attackers, and a huge wave of ice settled over a dozen of the creatures before shattering and killing them easily.
“Mm. Nice boots,” Luke stated approvingly as he watched the Mage move. Realizing that there was an entire wall of enemies still remaining, he took action. Though he wasn’t as directly mobile as Taylor, his huge Body stats allowed him to grab outcroppings and hanging root systems and swing up the wall as if he were a gorilla moving through dense forest. In moments, Luke was at the top and slamming his fist into the first of the sentries.
Zed started throwing his voice, keeping the others updated as his Sigil gave him information. “Taylor managed to destroy a ton of those things with a spell called… Shatter Shot? Luke just killed his first… third… fifth… right, he's getting them pretty good. Oh! Andre! Luke just took a bolt to the head! No, wait. He’s okay, somehow; keep fighting. Luke, what was that? How did something like that hit you?”
“Stay calm and give us updates that matter!” Taylor tried to force Zed to focus, knowing that he was unused to battle.
“Not used to ranged fighting,” Luke grunted angrily as he caught a metal crossbow and squished it with a quick squeeze. “Everything so far on Murder World was either melee or a mind-bending magic type. I can block things, but I’m used to fighting things that are there, not so much things that have been coming at me for a while.”
“Treat the arrows like they are snakes, then!” Taylor’s command passed through Zed, and Zed saw Luke actually pause for a moment before continuing with his rampage. Then, oddly, the Murderhobo was somehow better at slapping the bolts as they came toward him.
“How? How did that help him…?” Zed quizzed Andre, even as the Druid pulled back a huge vine and released an arrow at the opposite end of the long ledge that Taylor was fighting on. The arrow hit the wall far above the stone-covered ambushers, and exploded into fine particles from the force. “Also, how can you miss so badly?”
Andre laughed at the question, kicking Zed playfully as he crouched behind the stone. “Tell Taylor to send fire into them real quick, would ya?”
Zed did so, and a blast of flames instantly flared out, turning into a concussive wave as all the spores and particles caught and exploded. In an instant, Taylor’s side of the pass was free of monsters. She took a running leap, stayed in the air far too long, and landed a dozen feet behind Luke. Andre winked at Zed, “She helped Luke by making him think of arrows like… hmm, ambush creatures. Taylor said ‘snakes’, right? They pop out, and you need to kill them or get bit. She was just putting the fight in a frame of reference that he understood, and that seemed to have been enough for him to catch on to the new type of fighting.”
Though he wanted to understand the topic more fully, Zed held off. The main reason was that combat had ended, and he had gained Potentia. Lots of Potentia.
48 Stone Sentries defeated! Potentia distributed based on participation! Andre: 400. Taylor: 1,600. Luke: 1,200. Zed: 900.
“I got Potentia from combat? Bards can't get Potentia from fighting! How… why did I get so much?” Zed’s hands were trembling as he opened up his status sheet and read through what the top line was telling him.
CAL Scan
Level: 4
Current Etheric Xenograft Potentia: 1,311/800 to level 5!
You are able to increase in level! Do so now? Yes / No.
Level up initiated! Integrating Etheric Xenograft Potentia into host! You have one level to use, where would you like to add the bonus? Body / Mind / Presence / Senses.
“Presence, Sub-Characteristic Charisma.” Zed felt the Potentia drain from his Sigil and into his body, and he fell to the ground in ecstasy. When his eyes reluctantly fluttered open, he looked at his abridged status.
Current Etheric Xenograft Potentia: 511/1,300 to level 6!
Body: 4.5
Mind: 7.5
Presence: 24.5
Senses: 4.5
Health: 100
Mana: 158
Mana regen: 2.3 per second
“I knew traveling with all of you would be worth doing.” Zed stared up at the three faces glaring down at him. “What?”
“Zed. We had no idea if there were more enemies around.” Taylor reached down and pulled Zed to his feet, then backed away strangely quickly. “Did no one ever tell you that you should only level up in a safe place?”
“Ah… no. I guess I’ve never been in an overly dangerous place…?” Zed’s excuse fell flat.
Taylor shook her head and walked on, keeping her lips sealed tight. There was no need for her to rant or rave about his thoughtlessness. Luke went with her. Andre closed in on Zed, “You know that there is a physiological reaction to each sub-characteristic increasing, yes? You increase your Mind, you pass out as your brain resets itself. Senses? Prepare for pain and such. Body? Get ready to feel like snakes are coiling around you.”
“Thanks for the tip and the imagery; what’s on your mind?” Zed quizzed as they joined the others in the hike.
“You just increased Charisma, with your clothes on. Know how I know?” Andre pointed down. “Charisma going up makes you feel real nice. Might wanna calm down before you chafe.”
Zed flushed a bright red and hoped that Taylor had been too focused on his poor timing in leveling to… examine the area.
Chapter Forty-Four
Luke paused as he felt something in the air. Something familiar. “I am uncertain what that is. Someone explain this to me.”
“You mean the increased mana density?” Andre stretched into a comfortable pose. “Yeah, that’s pretty high. Feels like going home.”
“Feels like there’s danger,” Luke rebutted with a grimace. “There’s a bug… it’s watching us.”
“Not a bug; it’s a Scar,” Taylor explained to the group. “There’s a portal to another world there, one that has more ambient mana. No one in our Kingdom knows how they are made, but they aren’t like normal portals. These ones are… torn. They are also actively hostile to people. The portal itself is hostile. There is a way to close them, but it’s a suicide mission. They are stabilized on the other side, and closing them means getting trapped as soon as you destroy the stabilizer. Then, there is no guarantee that they won’t get opened again in the future.”
“Why open them, then?” Zed spat at the thought of the people that would make these things, specifically designed to kill people over time.
“There has only been a single coherent statement from the Anarcanists.” Taylor made ‘spooky’ hand gestures with her hands as she quoted, “To save the world from devastation, devastation we will wreak! To prevent the powerful, the powerful we will create and destroy. Struggle, struggle! You deserve to exist!”
“That’s the coherent statement?” Zed pulled out a small instrument and started tuning it. “I’d hate to hear the others if that’s the best one.”
“The other one that was mostly understandable was, ‘Fear the caverns, for they too have teeth. The stars are gone when you look away, but they... can still see you’.” Taylor chuckled at the odd looks she got in return.
“What’cha got there, friend?” Andre got closer to Zed, examining the small… thing.
“New thing I thought up. I call it a ‘Ukulele’. Really helps to keep my hands busy when I’m nervous. Also, makes telling stories into a kind of singing!” Zed was about to dive into the specifics of his instrument when Taylor turned to face him.
“I do hope that you aren’t planning on letting everyone know our precise location by playing that. I know we made a lot of noise, but this pass widens out to become about a mile wide soon. Letting them know exactly where we are is a bad idea.”
“You worry too much.” Even though he argued, Zed still put the instrument away. “I bet you like violins better anyway, don’t you? You do; I can see it in your eyes. Ugh. Nobility. Also, how did you not see all these creatures the first time you came through here?”
“I like violins, but if you really came up with this… thing, then I have no basis for comparison. I might like this new instrument better. As to the creatures,” Taylor vanished from his view, reappearing next to Zed’s side. A glowing spark traced a line of heat across his neck. “You know that I specialize in Senses. If you weren't all lumbering around, those Sentries would still be waiting safely and quietly. I didn't see them because they were rocks. There was literally nothing special about them.”
“That’s not totally accurate.” Andre spoke up to counter her, getting a glare for his trouble. “Luke knew that there was something wrong with the rock back at the fallback point.”
“Oh… yeah, but did he?” Zed tilted his face down and arched an eyebrow to fully express his skepticism. “This is also the man that killed a tree, was suspicious of grass, and punched rain. Could it be that he’s just nuttier than a men’s latrine?”
“The regular rocks in the area are five-a-four-d-four-one. The Scuttler was four-eight-three-e-three-four.” Luke’s voice floated over gently, and a glance told the group that he was crouching and moving softly through the sparse cover that the rocky pass allowed. “How are you all so unconcerned about the fact that all these stone creatures are letting us pass them without attacking? I feel like it’s an ambush. Is it just that you’re all used to seeing your enemies coming? Or you just don’t care about the ambush?”
“You saw more of them?” Andre looked around, “Where?”
“This area is stuffed full of rocks.”
“What were those numbers?” Taylor cinched her robe carefully so that it wouldn’t get in her way. Thanks to Luke, she was now expecting a fight at any second.
“Color codes.” Luke blinked twice when Taylor didn’t react. “Really? You’re the Senses specialist. Tell your Sigil to assign everything a color code, then use your Senses to read all the numbers in real time. How do you not know how to do this? I didn’t have a trainer.”
