Decision made, though one he almost immediately started to doubt, Alex continued trolling through his system interface, eventually ending up on his status page. In all the chaos of the last few hours, he’d forgotten to assign his free points. There was a total of twenty-three, the few from his most recent level adding onto those unlocking A Cut Above The Rest had awarded. Spending a few minutes considering his options, Alex let the contemplation fend off his boredom for a little while longer. Adding them to any one attribute would represent a significant boost to his survivability, but it didn’t feel like that was his best option.
While his classes didn’t provide him points in every attribute upon leveling, Alex had managed to keep all but one of the characteristic measurements relatively close to each other; but that final one was the problem. That might not have been the case if it was a less important attribute, if he could truly argue the insignificance of any core stat, but Willpower kept his mind safe, skimming on its power could quickly turn deadly. Placing the majority of his points in the mental protection trait, Alex considered what to do with his remaining eight.
A couple more slow minutes passed, and he decided to toss them into Wisdom. He had a few well-thought-out reasons, but that was the case for every stat. In the end it came down to the fact that Alex wanted to have another attribute at the hundred mark, this would leave it just shy of hitting.
***
Wisdom: 99
Willpower: 70
***
The rest of his watch passed smoothly, but the lack of anything stimulating had him introspective. In an effort to keep away from the more serious topics, Alex considered how impatient he’d grown in these last few weeks. He’d never been the calmest of people, but prior to the tutorial he could stand a short wait, even without his phone if necessary; now it was a chore. A lot of that came from being tortured he knew, but that was the exact type of trauma he was trying to keep away from, so he considered other factors. It was fair to say the only breaks he’d had recently were while he was sleeping, and even those precious hours were shrinking. If he was awake, he was fighting, training, or scouting; just sitting around like this felt like a waste.
When it was finally time for him to pass the proverbial torch, he did so with glee. Ronald took over without complaint, allowing Alex to head back to his bedroll. He’d felt awake earlier, but the two hours had drained him, and the Planestrider was more than ready for some more sleep. There was only one problem, his new bedfellow wasn’t as open to sharing as himself.
Pulling his hand back after the kitten’s half-asleep greeting nearly broke skin, Alex forwent any attempt at being gentle. Snaking his hand around the back of her neck, he lifted the beast by her scruff, the feline screeching as she panicked at her unceremonious relocation. The action clearly hadn’t improved their relationship, but once she was awake enough to understand the situation, the cat only spared a moment to glare at him, before curling back up in her new spot. Taking that as his cue to climb into bed, the cat repositioning slightly as they both got comfortable, he was asleep in minutes.
Blinking himself awake for the second time that night, Alex stretched, glad he’d managed to get some extra rest. He’d clearly been more exhausted than he’d assumed, not having even noticed himself falling back asleep. A glance at the space’s sole entrance showed the archer to still be on watch, but the noise from the other side of the room told him the noble was up and packing. Giving a greeting to both men as he shuffled out of his own bed, Alex got to work on waking the only member of their group still sleeping.
“This rock,” Jason began, his words trailing off into indecipherable mutterings as he went on. He’d spent the few minutes verifying their position using some nearby landmarks, and was now leading them in the direction of his original party’s last known location.
Even with a general area to work with, a search like that might have taken days, but they weren’t moving in blind. As Jason had explained it, the coordinator of his party was a rather detail oriented individual. For every dungeon they entered, she would force the group to memorize a set of rendezvous points in case they were separated. She even went as far as testing his fellow party members, and not allowing them entry unless they knew every single one. Alex could imagine why that might be annoying, especially if they weren’t going to be in a dungeon long. Not everyone had his over-inflated attributes and in larger dungeons like these there were over ten predetermined meetup locations, but the noble had made it obvious this wasn’t the first time they’d come in handy.
While Jason was in charge of picking their general direction and destination, Alex was left to decide how the group got there. The noble would select a set of tunnels his map pointed out, and the assassin used Sixth Sense to determine the safest path forward. At least, that’s what Alex was supposed to do. In reality, he was a bit fast and loose with the definition of “safest.”
Stolen novel; please report.
With the others in the group lacking any wide scale scouting abilities, he had something of a monopoly on their information, leaving the others unaware when he strayed from the suggested guidelines. It wasn’t that Alex was ever malicious in betraying their trust. He would just sometimes lead the party into avoidable fights, or force a confrontation with a larger group when a smaller contingent was in a parallel tunnel. If they ever did find out, Alex doubted they’d think kindly of his deception, but avoiding easy fights just to save a few minutes of travel time felt like throwing away free levels.
Of course his real gains weren’t anything so dramatic, the experience split made certain of that, but the group's improved cohesion made up for the minimal increases. Even if it was just scraps compared to what a solo kill would net him, Alex was willing to take whatever he could from the higher leveled reptiles. He still had a dungeon to finish, beast wave after that, and was eventually supposed to kill a king or two. There would be plenty of truly harrowing fights in his future, no matter how much he recoiled at the idea. Letting out a breath as the burden of responsibility weighed heavily on his college aged soul, Alex scanned the tunnels for the best group to fight next. Every bit counted.
They continued on like this for a while with little trouble. It took under an hour to reach the first rendezvous point, the group taking fights and avoiding them in equal measure, but Jason’s friends were nowhere to be found. That wasn’t much of a surprise to the group, the noble having expressed his doubts before arriving. Jason had decided on the order of approach through some combination of distance, and the actual likelihood of his team being there. The first few were the closest, but also the least likely for his original party to be at. Alex and company had the highest chance of running into the others at their third, fourth, or fifth stop, since they were closest to where Jason had been taken, but even that was uncertain.
They made it to the second checkpoint and third in short order. Jason’s warning had kept their expectations low, preventing an undercurrent of disappointment from overwhelming the group, but that wouldn’t be the case after their next stop. They were only five minutes into the next leg of their walk when the party seemed to pass some sort of unmarked boundary. Everything looked the same, except the number of Kidree in their path began to rapidly increase. It took Alex a moment to notice since he hadn’t been as steadfast in ignoring the kidree as the others had hoped, but when he realized he immediately warned the group.
There was a brief discussion, mainly between himself and the noble, but they decided to continue on within the minute. Jason was adamant that his group would be in this direction and the faster they reunited, the better off everyone would be. Alex was just happy to be getting more experience, while the other two didn’t care since continuing held the highest chance of them escaping.
The extra fights added time to their journey, but the group pushed on unwavering, at least until they reached the fourth spot, only to be greeted by nothing but more kidree. Sure, they were still uninjured, but the number of close calls combined with the extra time sink made it obvious their current method wasn’t sustainable. That didn’t mean they’d stop their current search. No one had any better ideas, and there were still two more checkpoints with high odds, which meant another two hours to figure something out, but it soon turned out they wouldn’t need to wait that long.
Only five minutes into the fifth leg of their journey, Alex spotted something not listed on Jason’s map. That wasn’t entirely uncommon, they had occasionally come across unmarked tunnels, or others that were missing entirely, but the size of this inconsistency was all the difference. Rather than a small corridor or some other tributary passageway, the excavated space was the size of an auditorium. If Jason’s internal clock was to be believed, less than a day had passed since the man was separated from his party, and this was close to the area it had been done. The idea that the kidree had somehow mined this massive space in such a short period of time was troubling, but the group could only continue on.
Alex wondered if the noble had gotten lost. With how repetitive the mud colored stone was, no one could really blame him, but he avoided revisiting that idea for the moment. Instead, the group slowly moved closer, dodging patrols and mineral movers as Alex used his sensory skill to get a better view of the interior. What he saw would have been nightmare fuel a month ago, but his muted reaction was a testament to how much he’d changed. Hundreds of creatures filled the space, and it took nearly a minute for Alex to realize not all of them were Kidree. The majority, in fact, weren’t the lizard creatures, but those mole-like beasts he’d encountered in the Fourth General’s chamber. He didn’t know if this was where the one he’d killed had originated from, but he was glad he’d dropped its trail earlier.
Curiosity kept him on the fringes of the large area, but Alex didn’t want to risk a confrontation that would alert the entire group. They were near a corner of the space, ready to turn away, when Alex spotted something odd. Positioned behind a section of rocks in the large cavern was a set of four creatures. Their spot would have been odd no matter what, but it was their sizes that alerted him to the difference between them and the other kidree. In fact, there weren’t Kidree at all, nor were they lizards, they were people. He tried to make out finer details, but the distance that separated them made it difficult to spot anything discerning other than a large sword. Still, Alex thought he knew who these people were.
Just as he was turning to explain to his current party, however, the other group moved from their crouched position and launched themselves straight into the congregation is unsuspecting beasts.