Kevin ran through the night. Hours after the sunset, Kevin heard voices calling out, literally whisper yelling “Who’s There?” to the dark. Kevin was not all that surprised he found another group of people, but he didn’t stop or even slow down. They didn’t see him, as best as he could tell, and in only a few moments he would be far enough away that it wouldn’t matter if they did. He pulled out his Kite shield and put it on his back just to be sure though.
Several hours after that, as he had done before, he stopped a few hours before the sun came up. He cleared the ship he was on and took a nap. He was almost definitely going to make it to the ship today. He took a low-tier healing pill and a low-tier recovery pill opting to save his last recovery potion for tomorrow so he could really push it. He was going to have to have a healer check out his liver when all of this was said and done. In just low-tier healing pills, he’d probably consumed thousands of points worth since he got on the bridge.
Kevin slept but the rest was fitful. Despite how tired he was, he just wanted to get there. He was worried about the state of his daughter’s cluster. To say nothing of how worried he was about her. Kevin was worried about what might happen to a pretty young girl in a world where people saw each other as enemies as much as they saw the monsters as enemies. People could be vile enough when there was the full weight of the legal system sat as a deterrent. They were even worse when the only repercussions were those of family feuding. Kevin really didn’t want to think about how bad things could get when you didn’t even have strong emotional connections with anyone sufficient to warrant reciprocity.
Kevin counted his heartbeats, he slowed his breathing and listened as his heart slowed too. If he couldn’t sleep, he’d cultivate and meditate and maybe that would help. He would, with any luck at all, see his sister today. He couldn’t wait to see the look on her face. He couldn’t wait to hug her. She’d probably pretend to be a little annoyed about it, but he doubted she would want to let go.
Kevin had moved into Samantha’s house when Katie was pretty little, but old enough to know that Kevin was definitely not, and would probably never be “Dad.” Kevin was OK with that at the time because he was pretty nervous to be dad. Kevin would never forget the first time Samantha left him to watch the girls by himself, actually with Ceaseless Mind he really would never forget. She had an evening shift she had to pull and wasn’t going to be there for bedtime. Kevin was not at all sure what to do with that because he hadn’t babysat anyone in quite a long damned time.
He cheated a little. He asked them what they wanted to put on TV. He let Katie do his nails, she made a huge mess and Kevin hadn’t had the forethought to put down a towel, but it all washed out later so it was Kevin and Katie’s little secret. Kevin had fallen in love that night, his new daughters taking a piece of his heart. Soon enough Kevin was getting the girls up for school and making sure their outfits at least half matched. He made every softball and soccer game he could. He went to the school functions, and let them give him flowers on veterans day.
The years past and Kevin and Samantha got married. They called him stepdad to his face, and often enough in formal setting or whenever their biodad was around but his heart still filled with joy when Katie or Delilah would say “My dad is here to pick me up.” Kevin had always tried to treat his time with his daughters like it was the last time he might see them, cherish them even when they were being right pains in the ass.
Then, one day. It was the last time. For Katie it had been only a little more than two months. For Kevin it had been over a year. He hoped she was half as happy to see him as he was to see her. In the least, Kevin was happy to say that he had outdone himself on presents. She probably wouldn’t care about most of them, but the artifacts stored in his ring were what all that morankai hunting was for.
Kevin’s last thought before he fell asleep was about Delilah and Samantha. He missed his wife and daughters. At least he could see Katie tomorrow. With that thought, Kevin fell asleep.
A few hours later, Kevin got up. Stretched and got ready to run. He fully intended to really open it up today and get to the cluster. Kevin started thinking about his day as he ate up the, what felt like, endless miles. He was going to find Katie. He wasn’t worried about entering the cluster. They couldn’t stop him from getting into the city even if they wanted to. Worst case scenario, Kevin would use The Cloud Step shoes to circumvent any perimeter guard. Actually, worst case scenario, Kevin would make blood flow like a river to get to Katie, but he didn’t really think it was going to come to that.
If this cluster was anything like his own, they had a lot less than 100 first wavers. The guys on the bridge had made it sound like they were fractious, but hopefully not too violent. On the one hand that fractiousness would cause trouble, because one group would be wary of the other, which means they would all be wary of a total stranger, but on the other hand, if Kevin did have to fight for Katie, at least he wouldn’t be fighting the entire cluster.
Stolen novel; please report.
Kevin was going to find Katie, hopefully well before the sun went down. He’d spend some time with her making sure she was OK, hurting anyone who hurt her, and then he would take her hunting for a golden morankai, probably all of them in the cluster. He wasn’t sure what powers she had or how many points she started with. She could have started with more points than him, she could be set up like a queen. Kevin didn’t know. He did know that in his cluster, the average points for the First Wave people was around 75,000 points. For the second wave, Cameron had told Kevin that the average was a lot smaller, barely 25,000. Some people still had more than 100,000 or even 200,000 points, but there was no way for Kevin to know where Katie would be. He desperately hoped she was a lot and that she happened to choose something good, but he really didn’t know.
Kevin sent a Soul Tracker ping toward Katie to reassure himself that she was still there. Then, as he often did, he sent one towards his mom. Kevin could tell that Kev wasn’t to Alicia yet. It was hard to tell how far off he was though, the angle between the two wasn’t the same, but he couldn’t really tell by how much when talking about the distances he was dealing with. He might have been able to figure it out better if he stopped but fuck that completely.
Kevin pinged for golden morankai not really expecting one. He didn’t find one which was good because he didn’t want to stop to take care of it but would have felt bad leaving that many points on the table. Kevin watched as the sun climbed. He was actually starting to get kind of bored despite the anticipation of finally getting to Katie. For the 1000th time, Kevin went into The Shop while he ran and checked to see if there were any music playing devices smaller than a big ass record player. He knew there were not but still.
Around noon, Kevin took a walking break and ate while he walked. He took his last recovery potion and a low-tier healing pill. He took an Calming Aura Pill too, his soul starting to feel the strain again. He hardly had to fight at all today, likely due to the second group he had passed during the night taking out even more of the morankai, but he was still straining himself with the Cloud Step shoes to keep his pace high.
As Kevin finished his food he noticed something on the next ship over, Kevin saw an abnormal mornakai that sort of startled him. It was the only fat morankai Kevin had ever seen. It was absolutely rotund. It was 700 lbs at least, the fat rolls hanging off it in grotesque ways. Its color was more sickly and it shambled particularly slow. It sensed Kevin much earlier than normal mornakai would, but it was so slow Kevin could probably easily just run around it, which is probably how at least two groups had managed to get by it without killing it or being killed by it.
All the same Kevin decided he’d take out the beast, it wouldn’t necessarily be quicker than just running around it, but he figured it wouldn’t be that much slower either. Kevin started by running directly toward the creature, which was lumbering towards him, slowly picking up speed. Just before Kevin reached it he leaped into the air, flipping himself up and over the morankai then using the Cloud Step shoes to launch himself back down quickly.
His axe came down on the creature just beside its fat bulbous head. It sank into the fat there, the intermediate axe energy combined with the activated Light Heavy to deal a blow that could cut the ship below them in half.
The axe stopped. The fat suctioning to the bit of the blade and holding it fast. Kevin was so surprised that he wasn’t at all prepared for the creature to backhand him full on in the chest. Kevin hadn’t even put on his armor, not expecting this abnormal to be particularly deadly, especially compared to a lot of the other monsters he’d fought. He was wrong.
Kevin dropped his axe, still stuck in the fat of the creature, as he was blasted off the side of the ship flying over the grasslands, flipping head over tails as he approached the ground. He was briefly disoriented from the strike but managed to make himself extra light with Light Heavy and pulled out his kite shield leaving it heavy. Doing so oriented Kevin and he was able to catch himself less than a foot from the grass. Kevin looked up and started taking great leaps to reach the ship bridge. He hadn’t taken two steps when he saw another unexpected thing. His fucking halberd was flying end over end at him, launched with all the force of a cannon, unerringly flying towards Kevin. He juked with his Cloud Step shoes and held out his hand, the shaft of the halberd striking hard against it. In the moment it hit his hand, with all the practice of juggling cannon balls, Kevin activated Light Heavy and changed the weight of the large halberd into less than a few ounces.
He still almost lost control of it as it was spinning on top of moving faster than an arrow, but he was able to maintain control just long enough to tap his storage ring and put it away. He continued running up, noticing a rib or six were definitely broken as he crested the ships rails and found himself back on the deck with the fat morankai.
Kev decided he wasn’t going to muck about. He was already hurt, already tired, already sore. He turned and ran. The creature was slow, it couldn’t keep up. Kevin ran around from the port side, through the bow and to the starboard side. He scaled the outside of the ship until he was on the roof of the vessel some four stories up.
He did the exact same thing, leaping from over thirty feet above the morankai, armor on, kite on his back, his halberd coming down like the fist of god. This was the same strike he used to cut the orbs in half, minus the extra weight in free weights anyway.
This time, even without the free weights adding force, Kevin did manage to cut the fat fuck in half.
— Points Obtained: Points 432 —
“Not worth it at all.” Kev said. “Stupid thing.” Kev used his newly acquired points to purchase another low-tier healing pill and took it immediately. Then he started running again.