by Aaron Oster
Katherine was wearing her enchanted armor, the same type she’d had made for Morgan, but with a few alterations. Hers was a dark red in color and showed a lot more skin than either of theirs. Her top was sleeveless, with a neckline that dipped quite a bit, completely defeating the purpose of wearing the armor other than as a fashion statement. There were also long slashes along the outsides of her legs, revealing the lightly tanned skin beneath.
The only metal plating on the outfit was over her shins, and that was just for decoration.
She let out a snort of derision as she rose from her seat.
“No armor will protect me from the beasts in there, as you well know.”
Gold shrugged, then stuck the key into the air and twisted. A swirling portal appeared right in the center of the room and he gestured for her to enter first.
“If this is some sort of ploy to trap me in there, I’ll make sure to find a way out. And when I do, I’ll tear you a new one. Are we understood?” she hissed.
“Perfectly. Now, ladies first.”
Katherine huffed, then with a toss of her golden hair, walked through the portal.
***
Arnold watched from a crack in the door, as both Katherine and Gold entered the portal and felt his heart rate quicken.
He’d been wanting to get away from the psychotic bitch for weeks and she’d given him the perfect opportunity. She’d be gone for at least four days, which would give him plenty of time to get away.
In the beginning, he’d been afraid that she could track him anywhere, due to her ability, but after careful study, he was fairly certain he’d figured out her limits.
He’d begun suspecting that she wasn’t all powerful when she’d dropped him in the middle of a swamp in the East Kingdom. She could get a general location in an area, but she could only track specific people if they contacted her first.
He took off down the large corridor at a swift walk, hearing his footsteps echoing down the lavish hallway.
The real question was where he should go. King Edmund hadn’t kept his promise, and the Assassins Guild was still after him, so who would take him in and offer him protection?
His mind whirled as he made his way into the main hall of the palace. Here, there were more people; nobles, servants and citizens, all waiting for a meeting with the King’s oldest son. He was in charge since his father was off fighting a war and his sister was supposedly helping with the effort.
Arnold snorted to himself as he made his way out of the massive double doors and out into the beautiful palace gardens.
He had a lot of valuable information about the princess, as well as the status of the war in the Central Kingdom.
Now, who would be interested in something like that? he mused to himself as he walked down the beautifully cobbled path toward the front gates.
The answer came to him as he passed under the massive archway and a smile slowly crept onto his face.
He knew exactly where to go.
***
Morgan yawned as he blinked the sleep away from his eyes and sat up slowly. His head felt a bit fuzzy, but otherwise he felt fine. He rubbed at his eyes, trying to figure out what was wrong with that when his brain finally kicked in.
He’d been pretty badly injured the previous day. Had he been sleeping for twenty-four hours?
“Good, I see you’re awake.”
Morgan turned, surprised to see Sarah already awake and kindling a small fire in the center of the cave. The events of the previous evening began coming back to him bit by bit.
“What happened?” he asked, rubbing at his head and wincing slightly.
Something definitely felt off, though he couldn’t place his finger on it.
“Samuel did something to you and then you passed out,” she said, standing from the fire and walking over to him.
Morgan’s eyes followed her as she walked to the small crack in the wall and pulled in a leg from the badger she’d killed the previous day. She was wearing her armored pants, but all she had on besides that was a bra. Her hair was damp as well, meaning that she’d just washed herself and was likely still in the process of drying.
Something wasn’t right about that.
“Shouldn’t you be worried about walking around like that in front of me?” he asked, as she came back into the cave.
Sarah froze when she said this, looking at him wide-eyed.
“You never mentioned it before,” she carefully said as she set the leg down. “Why mention it now?”
Since Samuel had said that Morgan couldn’t even comprehend anything remotely sexual, she hadn’t bothered putting her shirt on when she’d finished bathing. She wasn’t about to go naked in front of him, but she’d felt comfortable wearing only this in front of him until he’d said something about it.
Morgan blinked.
She was right, of course. He never had mentioned it before. In fact, he’d often wondered why she was so obsessed with propriety when it came to clothes, bathing or anything else for that matter.
He looked up to Sarah, who was staring at him with a mixture of hope and fear.
“Tell me something, Morgan. Can you tell me why it would be considered embarrassing for me to walk around like this in front of you?”
Morgan thought about that for a few seconds as Sarah pulled her armored top over her head.
“From what I’ve gathered, a woman would only undress in front of a man if they felt comfortable doing so and from previous experience, I gathered that you felt uncomfortable doing so around me…” he trailed off, as his eyes widened.
Did he understand? His mind whirled through all his previous actions, the way he’d behaved in front of Sarah, and everything he’d seen and heard back in City Four. It was now so obvious to him, that he had no idea how he’d missed it all.
“Can you tell me something else?” Morgan looked back to Sarah, who was now blushing madly.
He now knew she wasn’t angry, but rather, embarrassed about something. This was incredible.
“How do you feel, now that you understand?” she asked, biting her lip and looking down.
“I don’t feel anything,” he replied, thinking that it was quite odd that he didn’t. “That isn’t right though… I should be feeling something. You are well proportioned and you are pleasing to the eye, so why don’t I feel anything?”
He put his hand up to his chin as he tried to figure it out.
Samuel had said the previous night that he would fix him, then he’d said that someone had messed up his ability to feel, or comprehend anything remotely sexual.
“But I do understand!” he exclaimed, looking up at Sarah, who now looked quite crestfallen.
“Why are you so upset?” he asked, reaching out and grabbing the badger leg.
He needed to do something with his hands while all this new information settled into his mind.
“You do understand, but you don’t feel anything. It looks like Samuel decided to give you a taste, just to prove that he really could fix you. Damn that bastard!” she yelled, slamming her fist against the cave wall.
“Calm down,” Morgan said as he began skinning the leg with Sarah’s knife. “Samuel said that if we depose Edmund and place Katherine on the throne, he’ll fix me completely, right?”
Sarah looked a bit sheepish at that and nodded, sitting down on the ground next to him.
“What will you do about Katherine, now that you know?” she asked in a quiet voice. “Will you take her up on her offer of marriage?”
Morgan’s mind traveled back over his interactions with the Princess. With his new understanding, he knew that she’d been acting extremely provocative towards him the entire time and had to wonder if she had any real interest in him, or only in his power.
Then again, he’d only made the deal to gain power, so he really wasn’t sure where it would go.
“I’m not sure,” he replied, slicing the meat into strips and handing them to her to begin cooking. “For now, we need to focus on g
etting out of here. Then we have to worry about the world ending.”
He gave her a weary grin as she set the meat to cook.
“Ask me again once the world isn’t in jeopardy of being destroyed.”
Sarah nodded, content with his answer for now.
“So, did anything else happen after I passed out?” he asked, leaning back against the wall.
A wide smile worked itself onto her face and she nodded emphatically.
“Samuel did something incredible! He made it so that we don’t need to work hard to gain the maximum attributes in between ranks! While we’re in here, anyway.”
Morgan sat bolt upright at this.
“Are you sure?” he excitedly asked.
She nodded, her grin growing even wider.
“I tried it out as soon as he left and got the maximum attributes per rank!”
“Where are you holding now?” he asked, pulling all his cores from his pockets as well.
Sarah gave him a smirk.
“Rank 17.”
Morgan was utterly stunned.
The god who had been going on and on about rules and the end of the world actually did something to help.
“How much do you have until you reach 18?”
“About 1,300,” she replied with a shrug. “I’ve never gone up this many ranks at once. The feeling is indescribable!”
Morgan quickly began opening all his cores stats and adding up the energy in his mind.
He had nearly 200,000 energy to use, so if he absorbed it all, he should get a good way into rank 18. He wanted to know exactly how much it would be from 18 to 19, though.
“Here,” he said, holding out a core to Sarah. “Absorb the energy you need to get to rank 18 and tell me how much it’ll cost to get to 19.”
Sarah nodded excitedly and took the core from him. After a few seconds, a shudder ran through her body and she let out a light sigh. Then her eyes focused on the air in front of her, as she looked over her status.
“It looks like it will cost 114,000 energy to the next rank,” she said, closing out her status and handing the core back to him.
Morgan inwardly winced at that number, but Sarah was quick to reassure him.
“That badger I killed gave me over 10,000 energy and it was just a basic beast. Can you imagine what the Arc will give us, or what we can expect to get on the next stage?” she excitedly asked.
Morgan thought that through before nodding.
“I see your point. This won’t be nearly as difficult as I believed.”
He then looked at the cores with both excitement and apprehension.
“What’s wrong?” Sarah asked, seeing his hesitation.
“I’ve been slowly regaining my memories as I ranked up, but I’ve never moved up this fast before. I’m afraid that the new influx of information will incapacitate me, but at the same time, maybe I’ll be able to remember exactly who screwed with my brain.”
“Samuel said that he’s stopped the memories from returning for now,” Sarah said, trying to break the news as gently as she could.
“What? Why?” Morgan asked.
He hadn’t been looking forward to the pain of regaining them, but he did want some answers.
“He said that the information would only hinder you for now.”
Morgan gritted his teeth in annoyance, now seeing why the god had given him the capacity to understand.
The crafty bastard hadn’t done him any favors. He’d just replaced one thing with another.
He let out a long sigh, then shrugged.
There was nothing he could do about it, so there was no point in getting upset.
“It’s fine. At least I won’t have to worry about the splitting headache,” he said, then turned his attention to the cores and began absorbing them one by one.
29
Morgan shuddered as each new rank hit him, feeling his muscles strengthening and his mind expanding with each newly acquired rank.
At last, he was completely out of cores and he took a deep breath, opening his status.
Name: Morgan
Supermage: Rank - 18
Energy to next rank - 1,592/380,000
Ability - Divine Gravity & Air
RP - 920/920 (Regen - 9.1 per second)
Strength - 87
Agility - 100
Constitution - 91
Intelligence - 92
Wisdom - 91
Skills - Enhanced flight, Heavy impact, Gale force, Condensed wind blade
Traits - Gravity field, Recovery
Extra - Gravity storm
“What the hell?” Morgan exclaimed as he saw the amount of energy it would cost to get him to the next rank.
“What?” Sarah asked, looking up from her place by the fire.
“The energy cost to my next rank is 380,000!”
“Holy shit! Why is it so high?”
Morgan let out a long breath and shrugged.
“No idea. Maybe it’s a supermage thing.”
He went back to looking through his status to see if his skills had improved, now quailing at the amount of energy he would need for his breakthrough rank.
Enhanced flight - Manipulate gravity and air to reduce your weight and move quickly through the air.
Cost - 7.5 RP per second
Max. height - 60 Ft
Max. speed - 40 Ft per second
Max. carry weight - 200 pounds (Adding any more weight will reduce speed by 1 foot per second for each additional pound).
Heavy impact - Manipulate gravity and air to make your blows land significantly harder (Currently X2.25).
Cost - 10 RP per second
Condensed wind blade - Manipulate gravity and air to create a dense whirling blade in the shape of your choice. The type of weapon you create will determine additional effects.
Piercing weapon - Double damage is dealt to mages, or beasts with mage abilities.
Slashing weapon - Double damage is dealt to supers, or beasts with super abilities.
Cost - 300 RP
Duration - Until dismissed
Gale force - Manipulate gravity and air to significantly increase your speed (Currently X2.25).
Cost - 10 RP per second
So the cost of all his skills had gone down to a manageable level, and along with his massive RP increase, he would be able to use his skills a lot more than he had been. His traits and extra skill hadn’t changed at all, so he decided that they would probably only change once he reached rank 19.
“We’ll need to test the way we move before we head into any sort of fight,” Morgan said, taking a seat as Sarah removed the meat from the fire.
She nodded as he took a bite from the meat and grimaced. Apparently, badger wasn’t all that tasty.
“Are you worried?” she asked as he forced another chunk of meat down his throat.
“About what?”
“About everything! The whole Pinnacle Kings, world ending thing. The fact that someone out there messed with your brain and is likely coming for you. Or the fact that we’re still stuck in a damn Beast Zone, with our only escape being defeating the Arc on the final stage!”
By the time she finished her tirade, she was panting and out of breath. Morgan gave her an odd look.
“No time to be worried about things that are out of our control. Right now, we just need to focus on one thing: getting out of here. After that, we can focus on something else.”
Sarah glared at him as if she were indignant at his calm demeanor.
“Think about it this way,” he continued. “As long as we’re in here, no one can get to us, so there’s no need to worry.”
“Did you already forget about the other keys into this place?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.
“No. But the likelihood of one of our enemies getting their hands on one is slim to none. And if they do get in here…” He shrugged, swallowing the last of the meat, “we’ll worry about it then.”
Sarah blew out a long breath and allowed her
anger to slip away. Morgan was right, she needed to remain calm and focus on one thing at a time. Right now, that was getting to the next stage.
Morgan stood from his seated position by the fire and stretched, feeling his tight muscles relaxing as he prepared himself for the day’s fighting.
“I say we aim for stage 6 today,” he said, pulling his magesteel gloves over his fingers and flexing them as the gloves conformed around his hands.
“Do you really think we can make it?” Sarah asked, kicking out the fire and sticking the remaining badger meat in their bag.
“If the Arc is rank 18, then we can probably make it through without too much trouble. The next stage is a risk, as the Arc may be over rank 19. The chances are actually pretty high, but you’ve got a pretty good chance of hitting rank 19 today, so I’m not too worried.”
Sarah bit her lip as Morgan walked to the crack in the wall and squeezed out of it.
She really hoped he was right.
***
As Morgan had predicted, the stage went by fairly quickly. After their massive increase in their attributes, it was barely a challenge. They breezed through the stage, having only a little trouble against the Arc, a rank 18 inferno-badger.
Sarah was the one to take it down and since it was an evolved beast, she got about 13,000 energy from it.
They then took a break for lunch, after which they moved up to the fifth stage. Sarah looked around with wide eyes as they walked into another crystal cavern, this one filled with sparkling blue quartz and lit by small perforations in the walls.
The light bounced off the crystal, lighting the entire area in brilliant blue light beams. She soon discovered, that while pretty, the uncertain lighting wouldn’t help them in a fight. If anything, it made fighting the wolf-sized lizards all the more difficult.
The beasts on this stage so far had been ranked between 17 and 18, making Sarah wonder if they could actually defeat the Arc at the end of the stage.
They took a quick break after their latest fight against a black and blue lizard and she took a peek at her status, to see that she only needed about 10,000 energy until she reached the next rank.
