“Luna, wait!” I rushed to her, but the elf parked herself right beneath the flower.
“Prettyyyy.” She held her hands up. I felt a vibration through the soles of my feet, and in an instant, the ground beneath Luna collapsed. It crumbled within the blink of an eye and the elf fell through.
“Luna!” I stopped at the edge and peered in. The light entering the forest was dim enough as is, and so the pit beneath me was thrown into completely darkness.
“I’ll help.” Valentine stepped beside me, and directed her hand down at the darkness. “Jehal.” The light around us shifted as though it were a liquid, and flowed into a spot within the black. A small ball of light formed within the darkness and illuminated the depths.
“Luna is okay.” The elf waved at us. She held her weapon in one hand and looked around.
“That seems about twenty feet down, doesn’t it?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Stan nodded. “I’ll go grab one of the creepers from the curtain we just passed.”
“Take my dagger.”
“I already have your short sword.”
The vampire scurried off, and I turned down to the pit. “We’ll have you up in a flash, Luna,” I said. Look at where trusting her got you to.
The elf looked behind her, into the darkness that was too far off from the light. “Luna thinks she found a rope-thingy.”
I frowned. “A rope? Down there?”
The elf looked up at me and nodded. “But it’s creepy looking. Luna don’t want to touch it.”
A faint sound filtered into my ears. I perked up, stared into the darkness, and then frowned. “Luna, how well can you see in the dark?”
She shook her head. “Not well at all.”
I heard the sound again. “Do you hear that?” I asked.
Valentine frowned. “Hear what?”
It grew louder.
“I-I hear it now.” Luna spun around inside the depths. Panic painted her face.
“Catch me!” I leapt down to the pit. The elf dropped her blade, and the next thing I knew, I was in her arms.
Still hurt, though.
I stepped down and stood on the ground. At least I don’t have any broken bones, I thought. I looked into the darkness before her and traced any kind of shadow I saw in there. Something flickered, like an object moving. A creature moving, I corrected. I focused deep into the darkness, and with my Emperor’s Eye ability, made out a few shapes.
There was a line on the ground in front of me. “Is this the rope?” I asked.
Luna nodded. “It’s creepy.”
I knelt and touched it. An adhesive substance gripped me. What the heck? I pulled hard and my fingers cleaved off it, but only after I applied a lot of force.
Damn it. I gritted my teeth, and looked closer at the object. “This isn’t a rope, Luna.”
I looked into the darkness, and my vision improved. A creature appeared within the hidden air, with eight legs and at least as many eyes.
“There’s a spider in here.”
***
Luna screeched out loud, and held her weapon up.
My vision in the darkness improved more, and five seconds later, I could see the spider in front of me—silver-grey body and everything.
Damn it. I held up my daggers. The creature’s looked at us, and it came closer.
“No, no, no!” Luna shielded her face.
Scared of spiders, I realized. I held my daggers up in the air, and waited for the creature to come into the light. It had stopped now, close to the boundary between the darkness and the light.
I focused on its eyes, the most terrifying part for me, and activated my Analyze skill.
DING!
Race
Giant Cave Spider
Level
39
Nearly twice my level. I gripped my daggers tight. There was no way I was beating this thing at its own game. A spider was basically an insect assassin on its own. Distracting it would be hard.
My pulse quickened. Damn it, what do I do? I caught Luna out the corner of my eyes. She stood there, trembling.
What’s taking you so long, Stan? I gritted my teeth.
“Levi,” Valentine called from above. “Let me—”
“Stay where you are!” I yelled. “Don’t come down.”
The spider stared at me, and then at Luna. It stood where it was, and didn’t move. One leg tapped the ground every few seconds, but that was it. It still stayed right behind the boundary of where the light reached.
My vision improved to a much higher level now. I couldn’t see anything in the deep darkness far behind the spider, but everything in a five-yard radius was game.
I grinned. This is my way out. “Valentine, shut the lights.”
“Eh?” Luna and Valentine said at the same time.
“Do it!” I yelled.
The ball of light dissolved, and darkness consumed the depths. The spider immediately moved, and headed right at me. I waited until the last moment, and then dived. One of its legs swiped through the dark, catching me mid-air and smacking me to the ground.
My health was already at 55% from just that one move. Of course a spider’s reflexes are better than mine.
“Levi!” Valentine said. “What was that? Are you okay?”
I stared into the darkness. The beast was heading right to me once again. “Summon the bright flash on my signal. Luna, shut your eyes!”
I ran towards the edge of the pit. The spider scurried toward me, and the creature’s sharp-tipped legs shot out of the darkness. I avoided one of them, but the other caught my hand and cut me deep.
I side-stepped anyway, and ran to the middle. “Now!”
The spider turned around, screeching, and charged. And I just closed my eyes. The spider shrieked as Valentine summoned the bright flash; I opened my eyes an instant later. The creature thrashed about, spinning and jumping in confusion.
“Luna, hit its face with your blade!”
The elf trembled, but shot toward the large creature. I headed toward it, too. The moment Luna leapt into the air, the spider’s legs went up, swing where it heard her move—not accurately, though, since its vision was impaired. Luna sliced through the tips of its legs and landed on its head.
She jabbed one end of her double sword into its face and pulled out. The creature screeched, but still moved. Its health was at 40% now.
I guess impaling its head isn’t as much a critical hit as I’d expected. I looked up. “Valentine, again!”
I shut my eyes, and the beast screeched again, blinded once more by Valentine’s flash of light. I opened my eyes after a second and charged at the beast. Its legs flailed in the air, but it wasn’t doing much damage. Any damage, actually.
I ran to the creature, and fell onto my back just as I reached it. I slid onto the ground beneath it, and the moment I saw its underside, I stabbed my daggers in as far as they would go. Its skin cut open, and green blood spilled out.
My slide stopped halfway through, and so I dived out to the side. The spider screeched, and then collapsed to the ground. I glanced at its health bar. Dead. I exhaled.
“Valentine, you can summon the ball of light,” I said. The white sphere emerged and the place was illuminated once again. Luna stood next to me, with a streak of green blood on the side of her dark shorts. But other than that, she was fine.
I, on the other hand, had big splatters of blood on my white shirt, streaks on a part of my jacket, and more streaks on a part of my pants. I grinned. Helen would kill me if I went home like this.
“Levi!” Stan called out. His form emerged at the top of the pit, and he had a creeper wound around his arm. “I brought a—”
He took one glance at me, and then turned over, throwing up.
I laughed. “I guess green blood was a poor fashion choice.”
***
“Luna is sorry.” The elf looked down, and fidgeted with her feet.
I sighed. “Just be careful next time.”
She
nodded. “Luna will be careful. She promise.”
“I still can’t believe you killed that thing, though,” Valentine said.
“What can I say?” I grinned. “Spiders are super sensitive to light, and they just have a softer underbelly. At least these ones did.”
“So you got lucky.”
“Basically.”
Stan stood a yard away from me, and stared at my shirt. I’d changed into a spare one Luna had kept in her Inventory, so I was clean, but the vampire still stared.
“I’m sorry for scaring you away, Stan,” I said.
He shook his head. “It’s fine.” Then he pouted. “You didn’t have to laugh at me, though.”
“Sorry.” I grinned. “That reaction was pretty funny.”
I slid open my Ga’em menu. I definitely have notifications. And boy, did I. I tapped on my Player Menu icon and summoned up the suppressed screens.
DING!
Congratulations! Your party has defeated:
Giant Cave Spider (Lv. 43)!
Sure, only three of you actually took this spider down, but Stan’s reaction was the best part of the whole thing. Reward: 15000 XP.
DING!
Congratulations! Your level has increased!
Level 21!
You’ve now gained ten levels over the span of a little less than a week. Who knows where you’d have gotten to if you’d actually tried doing this before. You gain 4 stat points to spend on your skills. You also gain a 25% advancement to the skill of your choice.
If I was stronger, more people would be paying attention to me, I thought. Being weak has its downsides, but the lack of attention is definitely a perk.
DING!
Congratulations! You have learned a new skill.
Night Vision!
The darkness rules the world for half the day. Honestly, you’ve spent so much time in the darkness that you should have earned this skill a while ago. But, well, you needed to try harder to actually unlock it, and now you have. Yay! Reward: 500 XP.
Effect 1
Can partially see through 5 yards of regular darkness.
Finally. I grinned and then dismissed the screen.
DING!
Congratulations! You have advanced a skill.
Emperor’s Eye Level 3!
They say practicing in the dark enhances an individual’s learning speed. Well, you practiced with a spider, so you definitely leveled this up fast. Reward: 1500 XP.
Effect 1
Your perception of your surroundings increases by 2%.
I dismissed the final screen and left. We traversed the forest once more, with me leading and cutting the creepers this time. After what had happened, Luna didn’t trust herself.
We’d traveled for another twenty minutes when, suddenly, faint footsteps sounded ahead. I turned to everyone else and put a finger to my lips. They nodded.
I walked slowly to the next curtain of creepers. The footsteps had stopped now, but in their place was two voices. I froze the moment I heard the tones, and I turned to Valentine. She had the exact same expression as mine.
Damn it. I gritted my teeth.
I pushed a small section of the curtain of creepers to the side and looked through. My chest thumped. How much of my plan had been wrong?
I gazed at the forms before me. It was exactly who I thought it was—an old sage and a blond Knight.
Auron and Elya.
***
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Elya didn't trust the Sage anymore.
He didn't trust anyone.
He had been riding at the back of the pack for days, and he had seen everything that was going on. Men whispered to each other, and few of them glanced back at him with wide smiles on their faces. There were two hundred of them, and yet, all two hundred were acting odd now.
Or was he the one acting strange?
It was almost as though his men weren’t really his men. No one was talking about the princess anymore—not about where she’d gone, or how they were going to get there—and they all ignored him whenever he asked those very questions.
They all listened to Joseph now. That man and Auron had gotten very close.
"Just what is going on?" Elya wondered softly.
However, things only worsened. A man rode down the pack to where he was, and delivered a message from Sage Auron that said he was to come meet him at the front of the ranks. Elya obliged and rode his horse forward. Heads turned as he made his way to the front, but he ignored them all.
“Sage Auron.” He tugged on the reins, stopping the horse.
“Ah, Elya.” The Sage turned to him, and he had a wide smile on his face. “We have a special mission to carry out now.”
“Did we find something about the princess?”
“Of course,” he said. “One of my sources say she’s at the main range of the Kelras Mountains.”
Elya didn’t believe that for a second. “And who is this source, Sage Auron?”
“I cannot name him. He wishes to remain anonymous.”
What were they trying to hide? The statement that there was even a source was probably a big lie.
“What do you want to do, then?” Elya asked.
“We have assembled a force.” He looked to Joseph, and the man smirked back. “Around ten people. I wish for you to come with us, too.”
Elya frowned. “And what would these ten people be doing?”
The Sage pointed down at the edge of the plateau on which they stood, and right toward the miniature view of the mountains on the horizon. “We will be taking a shortcut.”
“To Kelras.” Elya scratched his chin. “Sage Auron, the path beneath us is quite dangerous, so just ten men may not work. However, taking on more is also not a good idea. How important is it that we take this path?”
“Very.” His voice was stern. “The remaining forces will serve as a distraction to the enemy, and while they’re distracted, we can use the shorter path to get to the princess.”
Elya raised an eyebrow. “The enemy?” he asked.
“The Ryder boy and his friends. Considering they have set our camp on fire twice now, I’d say they’re our enemy.”
“So you want to take a specific path and outsmart this … enemy.”
“Indeed.” Sage Auron smiled widely, and Joseph had a wicked expression on his face.
Elya wasn’t sure what was going on here. But he didn't like it one bit.
***
Why are those two here?
I had most certainly confirmed that the Knights were taking the long path towards the Kelras Mountains—the path along the plateau. And yet, a small force from the Zevalon Knights was here, on the other side of the creeper curtain.
“I-Is it really the Knights?” Stan asked.
I pulled away from the creepers. “Auron and Elya.” I kept my voice to a whisper. “There might be more with them. I can’t tell for sure.”
“But I thought the Knights were taking the other path,” Valentine said. “What are they doing here?’
I shrugged. “I’m as clueless as you are. It’s possible they broke off from the main force.”
“That sounds like a stupid thing to do.”
“It’s actually pretty clever when you think about it.”
Valentine raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
“What do we do now?” Stan asked. “They’re right in our path.”
“Going through them isn’t an option,” I said. “And going around them is still pretty dangerous. We don’t know what forces they might have here.”
“So, the only safe thing to do is wait here?”
“I think so,” I said. “Although I’m not really for doing something like that.”
“Why are these men even here in the first place?” Valentine mumbled. “Weren’t they in the squadron that was searching for me?”
“I think we stopped believing that statement a long, long time ago. The princess search is a simple cover for what they’re actually trying to d
o.”
She sighed. “Yeah.”
“What do we do now, then?” Stan asked.
“I don’t—” I froze. A faint voice sounded from the other side of the curtain, one that I recognized very well. I pulled aside a creeper and looked through once more. A brown-haired Knight walked in from ahead, and stopped before Sage Auron.
Joseph.
He had ten Knights at his side, mostly men, but a few women as well. They didn’t look very high-ranked, which I found odd. If I were forming a special squad of some sort, I’d want the best men and women with me, but that didn’t seem to be the case here.
“The area ahead is clear, sir,” Joseph said.
“Let us get moving, then.” The Sage stepped forward, and they headed deeper into the forest, disappearing from view.
We’ve got to stall them again. I pulled back from the creepers.
Valentine frowned. “Levi, why are you grinning?”
“Am I?” I kept the expression.
“I’m assuming you’ve thought up a plan.”
“How would all of you like to become Assassins?”
***
“I-I really don’t like this idea.” Stan’s voice was soft.
“Well, I didn’t think you would,” I chuckled. “But it’s not like we have many other options.”
We’d split up into two groups now—one with Valentine and Luna, and one with me and Stan. Each group had a damage-dealer and a support. Valentine would probably be annoyed I’d typecast her as a support, but it was a little true.
I scrolled through my Item Inventory once and made sure I could see an icon for the six health recovery potions she’d given to me. Why does she even have so many potions? I wondered. I’d have to beg Liam to get just one of these. Royals have it so easy.
Ascend: A World of Ga'em LitRPG (The Chaos Emperor Book 1) Page 24
