by David Burke
All of those near him jumped slightly, some more than others. Huong rushed in and gave him a hug followed by Kenzie and Mia. Jasmine simply said, “See I told you.”
When Amelia came up and Jay thought he was about to get another hug but instead he got a slap to the face. “Don’t you ever do … well whatever it is that you did, again.”
Jay would have been more angry at being slapped but his new Hardened Body skill must act passively like his Enhanced Strength did. He knew she had hit him. He felt the warmth of her skin against him, but it was more pleasant than anything. The impact didn’t move his neck at all and the slight amount of force he felt was quickly gone.
“Sorry to say but I think we are all going to have to do whatever that was.”
“What do you mean? What was it? You were glowing for goodness sake,” Amelia said in a rush.
Just as Jay started to answer, Jasmine interrupted, “This is probably something the council should hear first and we need to talk about the attack and what to do about that anyway.”
“That’s fine, but I am resigning from the council. You all didn’t trust me when it counted so I think it would be better if you had another member rather than me. Oh and Amelia comes with me when you are questioning me,” Jay said.
Huong spoke first, “Why Amelia?” Jay couldn’t tell why but she almost sounded hurt. “I thought you didn’t trust her.”
“Amelia and I have come to an arrangement. We are partners now.”
“Partners?” Huong gulped as she spoke.
Jay started to say, “It’s not some big deal, we just have each other’s backs.”
Amelia started to speak over him though while looking at Huong, “Yeah, partners.” She dragged the word out and infused it with as much sensuality as a mundane word like that could hold. Then she looked at Jay. “Backs? Hmm, I don’t remember you being on my back.” Jay thought he was beyond this after a couple of days surrounded by all these beauties but apparently not as he blushed. “Is that something you wanted?” she asked with that same seductive tone.
Obviously annoyed, Jasmine said, “Enough about that.” Then she looked at Jay. “What are you talking about? Of course we trust you, Jay. We just had some questions. You took it all way too personally.” The way Jasmine spoke made Jay want to believe her, maybe she even really meant it. “I don't want you to leave the council. We need a male voice to balance us out.”
“I think you will have to settle for Liam then. I have some things that I need to do and being on the council may get in the way.”
All the girls looked at him; Jasmine had a look somewhere between worried and ominous on her face but Jay decided he couldn’t spare any more time. He needed to focus.
“Fine…. If that is what you want. Please eat some breakfast and meet at the top of the ziggurat for debriefing in say an hour.” As soon as she spoke she turned and began walking away, not giving him a chance to dispute. He couldn’t help but notice the sway of her hips. He liked the way that all the girls walked but Jasmine had a sway that was just pure seduction, worse, he couldn’t tell if she did it on purpose or not.
It occurred to Jay that figuring out women was probably going to be an essential survival skill in this place. That of course made him laugh, since basically, no man in all of human history had ever truly managed that, or at least if they had, they had kept it to themselves.
As soon as the rest of them were gone and it was just Amelia with him she said, “Ogle much?”
In response, Jay just shrugged his shoulders. They had agreed that their arrangement was nothing romantic but he still wisely decided not to poke the bear so to speak. Last night had been too much fun, well at least until the attack. He didn’t want to risk missing out on that, and truth be told he actually did like Amelia.
“So shall I buy us some breakfast?” Jay asked, trying to change the subject.
“Sure, but I want to talk about what happened to you.” Amelia had a strangely intense aura about her now. He wasn’t sure if it had been there before or if it was something new since the attack.
“Amelia, I promise to share everything with you, even some stuff I’m not gonna tell the council, but I’m famished and want to eat now. I feel like I could eat a cow, hooves and all right now.”
Jay started walking towards the terminal so that he could purchase food but she followed. “What and you can’t eat and talk at the same time?”
“Eww that’s gross,” Jay said while pantomiming what he imagined was sloppily eating with your mouth open.
Obviously trying not to be amused even if she did crack a smile Amelia said, “You know what I mean.”
Apparently his go-to move was becoming the exaggerated shrug because that was what he did again as he said, “I’m a guy, you know we can’t multi-task; but seriously please just be patient. I’m still processing everything. Now would it be too much to ask for you to go start packing up the bungalow. We only get it till 2 hours after sunrise. I will be there with the food in a couple of minutes, then I really need to change clothes. In case you didn’t notice, I didn’t have to get a shirt and these jeans feel too small now, afraid they are gonna rip open.”
To Jay, Amelia simply said, “Fine, I’ll see you there,” but as she walked away he could have sworn she said, “I definitely noticed.”
Chapter 21 - Finding the “I” in Team
An hour later, Jay was sitting against the wall of the top room with Liam and five women staring at him. Oddly, the main thought in his head was about how they really needed to get some chairs. The Shop didn’t have any so he assumed they would have to learn to build them. There wasn’t much to work with though.
“So are you going to tell us what happened?” Jasmine asked, interrupting his thoughts.
Before Jay could say anything, Liam said, “First let me say thank you. You really pulled my bacon out of the fire. Second, are you sure you don’t want to be on the council. I mean at first I was kinda upset that they picked you and not me, but I can be honest with myself. I’m kind of the fun guy. I never got asked to organize anything other than maybe getting the kegs for a party.”
“I won’t say it was nothing because honestly, that just minimizes the value of your life. What I will say is that I hope you would do the same thing for me. We are all in this together.” Liam walked over and Jay stood up as they shared a fist bump. Jay was taken back by the mixed reactions he observed from the girls, some shook their heads and others looked on dreamy-eyed.
“Now, if that is out of the way, can you please tell us what happened?” Jasmine asked again.
“Well, first things. I think that we should have seen this coming,” Jay replied.
“How so?” Huong asked.
“Well a couple of things. The first night when we were scouting we heard animal roars as it started to get dark. Then second when we first entered the dungeon there was a statement that said something about the animals on the first floor being free to leave the dungeon at night.”
All those listening looked around and Jay could see the expressions of fear on their faces. Kenzie was the one to ask what they were likely all thinking, “You mean we have to deal with that every night?”
Jay said, “I can’t know that, but it’s safe to assume. That way we will at least be prepared.”
“This just makes obtaining credits all that much more important. We are going to have to buy housing for everyone every night,” Mia said.
“Um, about that,” Jasmine began. “Apparently as soon as it was two hours after sunset the entire area around the bungalows shimmered. Yeah, I know, it’s not my word, I am just reporting what witnesses told me. Anyway, the long and short of it is that there are only six bungalows left.”
“So we'll just have to cram,” Mia responded.
“Easy for you to say, as tiny as you are, but ten people would have to fit into each bungalow. I can see maybe six if they are stacked on top of each other,” Amelia said.
“Says the girl who got to
share a bungalow with only one other person. Did you even have to spend credits to stay in the bungalow or maybe you paid some other way?” Huong snapped.
Hands on her hips, head cocked in a defiant manner, Amelia snapped back, “Jealous much?”
A wave of what he could only describe as emotional pressure swept across the room emanating from Jasmine who said, “Enough. Last warning or I will kick you out of this meeting, both of you.”
“There is another option.” Jay’s softly spoken words captured everyone’s attention. “All we have to do is clear the first level of all the hostile beasts.”
“Dude, I know you are like Superman but that feather bear thing nearly took me apart. And don’t forget that some of the girls are pretty badass too but some of them just ran or hid.” Liam shook his head as he spoke.
“I totally get it,” Jay began, “but it’s not like any of us chose to be here and if my math is right; we are down to 57 out of 100 in basically 2 days. If this pace keeps up we are all gonna be dead in less than a week. So it is kinda kill or be killed.”
“So maybe you should tell us why you were glowing,” Jasmine said.
“Since I was unconscious, I can’t say for sure but I assume that was when I was experiencing another awakening.”
Mia snapped her fingers. “So that is why you said that we will all have to experience it. Are you level two now?”
“Yes, I leveled up. From what I can figure, you gain stats based upon the skills or stats that you use the most. I also gained two new skills, Life Sense and Kinetic Dampening. Beyond that several of my skills went up, mostly based upon the skills I was using the most.”
“Why don’t you just show us your sheet and then we can all see what you are talking about,” Jasmine said.
“I’ve come to think of that as an invasion of privacy. I will talk about my Status if you all talk about yours. Mostly though if we are talking about them it should just be to help each other practice the skills. For example let me show you what I can do with Accelerate.”
Jay then proceeded to show how he could throw a rock and push its speed up greatly. Now with his increased score he could make the rock fly along so fast that it could barely be followed by the naked eye and made a loud cracking sound when it hit the inside of the ziggurat wall. “I’m guessing that it would have even more impact on something that was moving faster to begin with, but it also takes significantly more PSI energy every time I stack another level of acceleration,” he explained.
This set off a buzz of discussion about possible uses for that ability as well as for abilities that the others possessed. In the end though as the meeting was dragging on Jay finally said, “Look, I’ve told you what I know. I will add something that may or may not mean anything. I keep having dreams where a voice is telling me that we need to descend and that we have a limited amount of time to do so, specifically now 998 cycles which I think means days.”
Jay paused half-way expecting or maybe hoping that at least one other person would echo that they too had been having dreams like that. Instead all he got was an awkward silence as they stared at him. He did his customary shoulder shrug and said, “Now, Amelia and I are going to go hunting and see how many of the creatures we can clear out.”
“What, that doesn’t make sense. We still have three more people who are still alive that need to finish the first quest. After that we should start the gathering quest so that we can get a steady supply of credits,” Kenzie said.
“We won’t get in the way of others going into the dungeon but we need to get started. Maybe if other groups come in we will be able to clear more of the dungeon floor.”
“How do you know that more than one group can come in at the same time?” Mia asked.
Jay responded honestly, “I don’t, but I guess we will find out today. The initial instructions when we entered for the first time said that more than one group could, so I am sorta taking that at face value. Either way, Amelia and I are leaving today. We will try to check back in a few hours to see how it is going out here.”
“Wouldn’t it be safer if you had a full party, or at least a healer,” Huong said.
“Tomorrow, we can talk about you coming with us, but today it needs to just be the two of us. Nothing personal.” Jay was focused on how Jasmine was taking all of this and so didn’t see either the pained look on Huong’s face or the quick flash of triumph on Amelia’s.
“I don’t suppose we could stop you even if we tried and fighting amongst ourselves is only going to hurt us, but remember there are 57 of us here and we all get a say,” Jasmine lectured.
Jay simply nodded and said, “Okay,” before he grabbed Amelia’s hand and headed down the stairs towards the dungeon.
Chapter 22 - Truth, Lies, and Skill
Once they reached the doorway to the first floor, Amelia said, “Hold up. I think I’ve been pretty patient. Now, I’d like to know what the plan is.”
“Fair enough. I didn’t want to talk about it in front of the others. I feel like you and I can test our skills, and if it works the way I hope it does then not only can we make this place safer than it was before, but we will also be able to teach the others what we learn.”
“If we want to teach them,” Amelia grumbled.
“What is your problem with everyone else and don’t think I didn’t notice you trying to antagonize the others, especially Huong. I mean what did she ever do to you? Hell what did any of them do to you and if you don’t like them, then why put up with me?” Jay’s tensions came out in his questioning.
“Do we really have to go through this again? I have never lied to you. I told you the first day that I don’t trust anyone. I don’t know where we are or who anyone is. For all I know one or more of the people here are in on whatever this is.”
“I would have thought finding alien animals and stuff sorta made it obvious that no humans are in on this,” Jay retorted.
“I’ll give you that it makes it less likely, but for all I know those are weird creatures cooked up in a lab somewhere. And besides, just cause someone looks like a human doesn’t mean they are a human. If aliens could take us all to an entirely different world then why couldn’t they masquerade as one of us. We don’t even know if this is another world, or if it's a world at all. We could be in hell or purgatory or whatever weird afterlife there is. It might be demons messing with or even angels testing us.”
“Still doesn’t explain why you’d trust me.”
“I told you that last night too. You have been a pretty decent guy and I came to the conclusion I can’t do this all on my own, so I need a partner. You seemed like the best choice and hopefully the least likely to be a demon or an alien or whatever.” Amelia started laughing as she spoke.
Jay was confused at first but then realized why she was laughing, “Oh what, you just suddenly realized you might have slept with an alien.”
She smiled at him and he was once again struck by her beauty. It wasn’t the perfection of Jasmine’s features or the delicate doll-like qualities of Huong. Her beauty was like the girl-next-door type, well at least it was if the girl next door had a rocking body. “Again, I figured you were my best bet, so no I’m not really worried about it. As far as the other girls, I told you; you are a limited resource. Liam is a hunk, but a bonehead. All I was doing was marking my claim from all those other bitches who were sniffing around. As for why I like you, I tend to be favorably inclined to any guy who can make me scream out their name…. repeatedly.”
“You really think the other girls were interested?”
This time her laughter took on a sharper edge. “What, aren’t I stroking your ego enough. Yes, they were. Huong especially wanted you. She was obviously jealous that you were with me and I have to admit that is sort of a turn on. Geeze you really do have to be dense to not see it. Even Mia and Kenzie were trying to figure out how to get with you. Call it the aphrodisiacs in the water or call it the fact that you are one of only two guys here, but whatever it is, I’m s
ure that at least half the remaining girls would gladly jump your bones now.”
Jay’s head spun as she both complimented him and insulted him at the same time. He wasn’t sure what to make of it. Maybe she was right. It wasn’t like no girl had ever checked him out before. Just back home it was always more subtle. Some of these girls, Amelia included, looked at him like he was a lamb chop and they were hungry wolves. He couldn’t help but wonder if he had ever looked at girls like that.
As if reading his mind, Amelia said, “And yes you have been doing your fair share of ogling too. You’re just lucky I’m not the jealous type.”
A part of Jay wanted to ask if she was trying to make an exclusive claim on him, but he just let it lie. “So that explains why you were rude to Liam and most of the girls, but not Jasmine. She certainly wasn’t fawning all over me.”
“Okay that confirms it, you really are dense. Only one type of girl that a woman hates more than one trying to get with her guy.”
When she didn’t expand, Jay started to ask what that meant, but she cut him off and said, “Enough of this, now what is the plan?”
“First we have to trust each other enough to show our Status. I need to know what you are truly capable of and you need to know what I’m capable of.”
Amelia frowned but lost that expression as he set his hand on her shoulder and called forth his Status page for her to see. After a minute of looking at it, she said, “How the hell are you level 4 and how do you have stats like that?”
“From what I can tell, I started out much higher than everyone else. Then after the battle last night, when I experienced another awakening, there was some sort of overload and I ended up gaining three levels,” Jay said. He had already decided that while he was going to share his full page with her that he wasn’t ready to share any more details about the voice or his guesses about it and he certainly wasn’t going to tell her about getting extra stat points for killing people.
They talked about his skills and what he knew about them, both the old and new skills. Some like his Precognition, Enhanced Strength, Hardened Body, Regeneration, Enhanced Speed and Accelerate he understood fairly well. He was certain that there were more ways to use them but those would hopefully reveal themselves with more practice. Others like Life Sense and Iron Will seemed fairly self explanatory. Then there were the ones that he had some ideas about like Kinetic Dampening, Body Modification and Kinetic Bolt. Finally there was the one that he had no idea about and admitted as much, Psionic Construct.
