by H. C. Mills
Boris is sporting a nasty cut on his cheek, but he also has Alec in some kind of chokehold.
Bruce turns back to me with a sneer. “Looks like your friend isn’t doing so well.”
Please. I used to torture—I mean, train—Alec. He may be flailing wildly, but I can tell when he’s faking.
Squeezing someone’s neck may halt the flow of blood, but I doubt it would affect the flow of Lavi. With his current Lavi Pool, Alec can hold his breath for fifteen minutes, meaning he’s playing for time, either waiting for that purple glowing scratch to do its job or for Dave to show up.
I hold my tongue and just smile.
Bruce’s eyes flick towards the entrance, and in the split second that mine follow suit, he jumps forward.
Damnit, he got me again!
He uses his club to brush aside the dangerous head of my spear, then slams into me with his full weight. We go down in a tangle, with him on top.
He sits up, straddling me, and starts whaling at my head, which I quickly cover with my arms. But again, the blows raining down don’t hurt nearly as bad as I’d expected. Honestly, they leave me more confused than sore.
Wait, of course! Since I trained a lot and then levelled, I have a Toughness of 13! If Bruce never trained his Toughness, well, the average starting point for humans would be about 8. If he wore knuckle bracers of some kind I might’ve been in trouble, but right now it’s like he’s hitting me with two boiled potatoes.
Emboldened by my insight, I activate Boost Physical. I stop covering my head in favour of grasping his legs, and buck up with my hips. He looks at me in surprise as he’s launched about two feet in the Aether.
“Nice try,” I say, bringing my feet up under his chest. “But I’m level two, bitch!”
Honestly, jumping me wasn’t even a bad tactic on his part, he just failed to realise that—especially with Boost Physical—I outperform him in every physical stat.
I push up with both feet, launching him high into the air. He flails and twists, trying to turn it into a kind of backflip, but ends up smacking his forehead into the ground. He gets up dazedly, and unarmed.
I roll back over my shoulder, ending in a crouch. I grasp my spear and rise to my feet.
Dave bursts in through the entrance.
“Help Alec!” I shout at him.
But he doesn’t need to, because right at that moment, Alec slams an elbow into Boris’s gut, and frees himself from his opponent’s clearly weakened grasp. He then scrambles for Boris’s club, and turns around to mercilessly bring it down on the guy’s head.
Twice. Thrice.
In the silence that follows, the sickening crunch of bone somehow still seems to hang in the Aether.
Bruce pales at the sound, and he can’t help it. He looks.
I jump forward and jab at his throat as fast as I can.
At the last moment, his Focus Crystal flashes yellow, and my spear comes to a halt, the tip a hair’s width from his throat. I hold it there, lightly pressing against his jugular.
That makes four uses of his Skill.
Alec turns to face him and Dave closes in from behind.
Bruce slowly, wearily, turns his head to look at me. “Fine, you got me. I surrender. So, now what? Are you going to kill me, too?”
[Not a bad suggestion, if you ask me,] Suri chimes. [Your team has already killed four today. What’s one more?]
What’s one more? Yeesh, that’s easy for you to say... I glance at Kaitlynn. She’s slumped over but still breathing, and her wound has closed up. I shift uncomfortably.
Before, we were in a battle, in the heat of the moment and fighting to save Kaitlynn. Now we’ve won. Kaitlynn’s safe and Bruce is unarmed.
Jacob comes in, looking pale and clutching his side. He takes stock of the situation, brusquely walks over, and snatches a bag from Bruce’s belt.
Bruce stiffens, and his face darkens.
“Don’t bother coming back for these,” Jacob sneers, having retreated to a safe distance, behind Alec. “We’ll have already eaten them.”
Bruce glares at him but doesn’t respond. Instead, he turns to me, his jaws set. “Well, what’s it gonna be?”
Intellectually, I know the answer. Morally, I also know the answer. Unfortunately, those answers don’t match. Even if I want to, could I really execute someone in cold blood?
Dave picks up on my hesitation. “Perhaps it’s best if we tie him up and let the council handle him.”
I nod, relieved. However, as the tension inside my body drops, so does the tip of my spear.
Bruce uses this moment to take the decision out of our hands. He suddenly turns and makes a run for the exit behind Dave.
Dave, to his credit, reacts quickly and lashes out with his club, but Bruce twists his body the other way around Dave like a professional American football player.
He sprints towards the exit, but I’m right behind him. I’m still not ready to kill him, but I’m also not about to let him run off unpunished, so I swing the blunt end of my spear towards his heels and skilfully whip it between his legs.
His back foot catches onto the spear, which subsequently locks his legs in place right as he crosses the exit. He smacks down face-first onto the branch.
Before I can jump forward to drag him back inside and tie him up, however, he does the last thing I expect.
He deliberately rolls toward the edge of the branch.
In a reflex half meant to keep him from falling and half to keep him from escaping, I stab down towards his hand.
He cries out in pain as my spear pierces through his right wrist, shattering bone and cutting tendons inside. For a moment he lies there on the side of the branch and glares up at me with hate-filled eyes. Then he rolls over the edge.
My spear, embedded in the wood, doesn’t give an inch as he hangs from it with his full weight. His wrist does, however, and the remaining flesh connecting his right hand to his arm either tears or is cut off.
I stare, wide-eyed, as he sails down towards the forest floor while picking up speed along the way. The tree trunk’s gravity pulls him in as he falls, but he’s stabilised himself in the air, and to my surprise actually kicks off from it instead of desperately attempting to grasp on to something and slow down.
I can’t tear my eyes away as he speeds towards his inevitable death. However, right as he is about to hit the ground and end up as flat as a pancake, a final yellow flash comes from his left hand.
After hovering inches off the ground for a split second, Bruce lands gently on his feet and starts to run off, cradling the stump where his right hand used to be. The right hand that’s still stuck under my spear.
Also, that’s five uses of his Skill. Man, what a cheater.
CHAPTER 46
Sweet victory
I WATCH BRUCE GET AWAY with mixed emotions.
I grimace at his detached hand. Yuck. I fling it into the underbrush with a well-aimed swipe of my spear. Nobody needs to see that.
Jacob walks up behind me and clears his throat.
He’s holding a Yang Qi Pearl and Minor Lavi Crystal in one hand, and Bruce’s bag in the other.
“Here,” he says, holding it up to me, looking kind of anxious. “The rest of Bruce’s stash. I only took out what I figure was already mine. Ehm, you don’t have to give me the other Qi Pearl, now, but I would still very much like a Stardrop.”
I accept the bag with a nod and attach it to my belt.
“Don’t worry,” I say, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “None of this would’ve been possible without you. We’ll definitely hold up our end of the bargain. We’ll be busting this joint soon, and you’re coming with us.”
He looks relieved at my reassurance. Poor guy—probably been through a lot. Then again, we all have.
With Bruce out of the picture, I head back inside for the reason we came in the first place.
Kneeling in front of Kaitlynn, I gently brush some hairs out of her face. Her brow furrows slightly at the touch, and she
murmurs something in her sleep, but I can’t quite make it out.
Dave kneels behind her chair, pulls out a sharp rock, and starts cutting the tough vines holding her in place.
“Alec, Jacob,” I call out. “Search this place, take anything of value. Be sure to grab their Focus Crystals at least; it’ll be nice to have some spares. Oh, and be careful with that bag hanging on Lego-ass’s belt; I think it contains whatever knocked Kaitlynn out.”
It feels pretty shitty to delegate away the looting of the guy I killed, but I tell myself Kaitlynn needs me more right now. It assuages most of my guilt.
I take out a bottle of Hydrum, pour some on my hand, and start gently washing off some of the tracks of dried blood that run down her neck and into her collar. Her lithe frame shakes slightly as Dave works the vines, and around when he finishes, she starts to wake up.
I give her my most comforting smile as she blinks in confusion. “Hey, Kaitmonster, how are you feeling?”
She perks up at my voice, her eye now wide open. She stares at me for a split second. Her head swivels left, right, and back to me.
Her face scrunches up, and she starts full-on ugly crying, though somehow, she manages to make even that look cute.
“Emma! I was so scared!” she blubbers as she launches herself around my neck. “They woke me up sometimes to feed me some jicca nuts and Hydrum, and let me pee, and then they’d just knock me out again with that powder. Once I tried to whisper to Kai to call you while I was eating, but they heard and I was under again before I even knew it, but—”
She pauses to take a deep, shuddering breath while I rub circles on her back and whisper soothing things into her ear.
“But I knew you’d come for me,” she finishes, a little more calmly, squeezing me extra tight.
“Of course,” I say softly in her ear. I bury my nose in her bright blue hair and inhale her scent. “You’re safe now. Well, relatively speaking, of course.”
Damnit, way to be sensitive, Emma! Stupid, stupid, stupid!
Thankfully, Kaitlynn doesn’t seem to mind. She snorts.
“I’m crying here. Stop making me laugh, you weirdo.”
“Sure thing,” I say. But I am, of course, crossing my fingers behind her back.
Kaitlynn lost quite a bit of blood, but she claims to feel fine, if a little lightheaded. My remaining concerns quickly fade away on the way back to our hut, as she curiously pokes my new horns, so I decide to check out the contents of the bag Jacob gave me.
Wow. Looks like Bruce really did keep all of his subordinates’ level-up items on him. Even though Jacob took out his own, the bag still contains two Yang Qi Pearls, two Yin Qi Pearls, and four Minor Lavi Crystals.
We still have two Yang Qi Pearls back at the hut, so after Kaitlynn and Jacob have levelled, we’ll still have three spare Minor Lavi Crystals, two Yin Qi Pearls, and three Yang Qi Pearls, which we should probably just consume for an immediate boost to our Qi and Lavi Pool.
The spare Qi Pearls are easy to divide, obviously, since we’re with exactly three Yang and two Yin. I guess we’ll be giving Jacob Carol-Anne’s pearl after all. Well, he’s earned it.
As for the Minor Lavi Crystals, I guess those should go to Alec, Dave, and I, as Jacob and Kaitlynn are already getting one each from this stash.
As I go over our spoils, a still very hyped-up Alec is telling Kaitlynn—who finally lost interest in my horns—all about our rescue mission.
“—so I manage to kick Sherlock off the branch and he smacks down hard. Bruce and Boris immediately stop kicking Jacob, and they head back up the tree, right? Now, we’ve got Dave up top, and he starts slinging rocks at them, but guess what? He sucks at throwing!”
“No, look,” Dave cuts in, “it’s not that easy, okay? I thought I could just drop the rocks down along the trunk, but the trees have their own field of gravity. So if you just drop it, the rock gets pulled in and then bounces off one of the twines that make up the trunk.”
Oh, damn. He’s right; we totally failed to consider that.
“So I had to throw them out a little,” Dave continues, “but not too far either. It had to be just the right distance that they’d be pulled back in around the time they approached Bruce; it was really difficult!”
“Right. Well, anyway,” Alec continues, “Bruce and Boris are heading back up, so I shit bricks and run inside to see what’s taking Nonya so long—”
Kaitlynn’s hanging on his lips, wide-eyed, as he rambles on. God, I’m still shaky with adrenaline. I still can’t believe she’s back, alive and well. I eye the jagged line still slightly visible on her neck.
If not for that Heartbeet... I shudder to think what might have happened.
Something Alec says pulls me back into the conversation.
“So he starts choking me, right? Man, that was scary! I really thought I was a goner.”
“Hold up,” I interject, eyes narrowed. “You do realise you don’t really need to breathe other than to replenish Lavi, right?”
“Well... yeah,” he says sheepishly, “but the ten seconds before I remembered that were the scariest of my life. Once I realised I wasn’t actually choking, I just started pretending to be, until the Moonshade Sap in the cut in his cheek kicked in.”
I knew it. I can always tell when he’s faking.
As Alec continues his tale, Dave taps me on the shoulder. “Emma, have you checked your notifications yet?”
I blink. “Ah, no, not yet.”
That’s right, we all asked our Personal Guiding Systems to hold off on showing us notifications until later notice.
“Well, maybe you should,” Dave says grimly.
Oh boy. “Suri?”
Before her name is even fully out my mouth, notifications start popping up, one by one.
Luke. Right, that’s what Jacob said Lego-ass’ real name was.
“We get to keep half the Trial Points if we kill someone?” I mutter. “These sick bastards...”
Dave casts his eyes down as he nods. Right, he took the first life in this fight.
I wonder how many Trial Points Weasel had. Or Wesley, I suppose I should call him now.
Still, even though this is a supremely questionable mechanic, I do love the fact that I’m cashing in on Lego-ass’ hard-earned points. He must’ve been saving up for a medium-grade Skill. Thank goodness he couldn’t afford it in the end.
Now that’s what I’m talking about. I had a feeling something like this happened during the battle; it was like the Aether in my lungs suddenly got more pliable, more obedient.
Oof, only three more. Well, no matter. We’ll be going through soon.
Wait, twenty-six? “Dave, how many participants were left according to the previous announcement?”
“Thirty-eight.”
So the Hub is down twelve people. If five of them left, and we took out another four, that means at least three more people died in the meantime.
That means there are likely other people in Hub Two who know you can collect Trial Points by killing here. Good thing no-one outside our little gang knows I received 50 Trial Points for breaking that record. Also, I’m suddenly very glad to have a scary reputation as the Toxic Dragon.
My eyes meet Dave’s, with a look no doubt mirroring his own. Grim determination.
We’ve gone too far to let anything stop us now.
Dave and I spend the rest of the way planning in hushed tones while Alec brings Kaitlynn up to speed, with Jacob joining in and listening to the parts he’d missed out on.
What it comes down to, is that we need to get Kaitlynn and Jacob levelled up ASAP, so we can blow this joint. However, we only have one Stardrop left, and no immediately obvious way to get another.
The easiest solution would be to renege on our deal and kick Jacob to the curb. However, I wasn’t raised as either a dealbreaker or a quitter. Getting a fifth member shortly before the Fourth Trial was always the plan anyway, and Jacob’s just done us a huge favour. I’m also convinced that he’s burne
d all bridges with Bruce and his—well, I guess it’s just Bruce now. Let’s not think about that too hard.
By the time we reach the hut, Dave and I agree on a course of action.
I gesture for the rest to join us in a huddle. “All right, Dave and I have a plan. Kaitlynn—”
“Yes ma’am!” Kaitlynn calls out, playfully saluting me.
I suppress a smile. “Kaitlynn, as soon as you feel ready, I want you to level up. Make sure there isn’t too much Toxic Energy in your system. Dave will tell you what to expect. While you sleep it off, he and Alec will guard the hut and prepare our gear and packs for travel. We collected plenty of extra food and water bottles from Brucey’s stash, so between that and the dried meat, we should have enough to last us a week at minimum. No need to risk going out foraging or anything like that. Especially now.”
Dave nods. Alec also mock salutes me.
“Wait, where will you be?” Kaitlynn asks, frowning.
“I’m taking Jacob here on a little trip to Moonshade Glade.”
“So, that’s really where the Stardrops are?” Jacob asks, growing pale. “Ehm, I gotta tell you, my Toxic Energy Tolerance is pretty crap.”
“We expected as much,” Dave says. “Don’t worry, Emma came up with a method to get you through the glade safe and sound.”
Well, probably. I doubt the council would award me three Minor Lavi Crystals for coming up with this, considering it requires my active participation for any expedition into the glade.
Alec scratches his head, then turns to Dave. “Wouldn’t it make more sense if she took you instead of Jacob, though? Since you can Purify yourself along the way?”
I shake my head. “We considered it, but Dave’s Skill won’t make much of a difference in there, as his Qi pool is too small. Plus, it’s Jacob that needs the Stardrop, so he should be taking the risk. Toxic Energy isn’t the only danger in there.”
Kaitlynn glances back and forth between us. “Hold up, I’m confused. If you’re already going, and you know where the Stardrops are and everything, why does Jacob need to go?”
