Thank god for the extended time between waves, Adam thought as he attempted to run out of the forest. The extra 5 minutes afforded to the participants between waves two and three was proving to be crucial for Adam in his quest to escape the forest.
Seeing the many Gorillagliders traversing the tree canopy above the Hippobulls was an eye opener for him. Originally, he thought that getting higher above the ground would let him escape the stampeding monsters but after watching the young woman from before get mercilessly slaughtered by one of the gliders, Adam knew better.
He had spent the last 7 minutes or so running straight towards the nearest wall of the canyon, hoping that he would be able to escape the tree coverage and maybe find a cave or something within the sides of the canyon that he could hide in. Wait, that's not right, he thought, I need to find a place that I could also try to defend myself in.
The idea of fighting against any of the monsters he had seen caused his legs to start shaking even more than they had been. He had never really been a fighter. Growing up, he had always been picked on by his classmates for not having a Mom and Dad at home. While it hurt to hear the other kids say those things, he knew that he was better off living with his Grandma so he just did his best to ignore it. His best friend Dante however, did not take those statements well. He had a similar situation at home, he was raised by his single Mom because his Dad had died while on a military campaign. He had always led with his fists and got scolded by their teachers afterwards. I hope he is doing ok… actually, he’s probably thriving in this situation. I need to worry more about myself. Stay focused.
Letting his thoughts wander was dangerous in his current situation but the thinning of trees and the increase of ambient light brought Adam back to the present. Carrying his boar skull in his right hand, to be used as a potential shield or club, Adam stepped out of the forest into what looked like rolling grasslands. Or at least as picturesque as rolling grasslands could be when they were only a couple hundred meters across.
Seeing the canyon wall so close, Adam was reinvigorated. These grasslands were much easier to move in and he quickened his shuffling steps to look for safety. He checked the system messages again to check how much time he had.
The Third Wave of the Trial will begin in 118 seconds.
Prepare yourself, Human.
Prove that you are worth what you have been offered.
He had a little under 2 minutes until the third wave started. He would be cutting it close but he should be able to get most of the way to the cliffside if he sprinted.
The longer he was in this trial, the more Adam became frustrated with himself about how out of shape he was. He should have just listened to Otto and worked out with him when he had offered. Hell, he should have actually gone with Dante when he had invited him to join the Jujutsu gym he went to back in Boise. Then he would have had years of physical training under his belt.
He shook his head and started running. These wandering thoughts weren’t helpful. If I make it back alive, I am getting Otto to train me, he vowed to himself.
The hills were very gradual and allowed for Adam to run in almost a completely straight line without having to climb up any large slopes. A major bonus considering his limited time.
As he crested another small hill, Adam caught sight of three people running together in the same direction as him. They were all beat up and as he got closer he realized that the two on the outside, a dark skinned boy of no more than 17 and an elderly man of average stature, were essentially carrying the third man, a beaten and bruised man of indeterminate age, between them. As Adam approached he could hear them speaking to each other.
“We should just leave him, Charles!” said the younger boy, “He isn’t even conscious anymore and we don’t even know him!” The boy showed obvious signs of exhaustion and didn’t seem to have any animosity towards the man he carried, he just looked young and very scared.
“No, Damian, we cannot just leave him here. You and I both know that there is no way that either of us would have survived the last wave had he not held the beast back with those stones he was throwing. We owe him this much.”
The child had spoken a familiar name before but the sound of the old man's voice sealed it for Adam. He knew that voice!
“Professor!” Adam called as he ran towards the trio. The old man was Professor Charles Greymore, the man he was hired to work under as part of the program he was piloting for the college.
Charles turned to look over his shoulder, “Adam! Oh it's so good to see you. What the blazes happened to your arm?” While he had turned to speak with him, none of them stopped moving. They were running out of time.
“I’ll tell you about it if we survive this hell hole” Adam turned to the kid “Thank you for helping the Professor out during this time. I am sure he had a hard time understanding the game elements associated with all this system stuff.”
Damian nodded his head and side-eyed Adam. He seemed like he was worried about Adam and clearly didn’t want him to get too close.
Charles looked at Damian, “We have nothing to fear from Mr. Abrams, he is a colleague and someone I trust”. As he spoke the dreaded system message flashed in front of him.
The Third Wave begins in…
5…
4…
3…
2…
1…
FIght, Flee or Hide.
The Choice is yours, Participants.
Sponsorship Opportunities Remaining: 8/50
Prove yourself.
Only 8 Sponsorships left?! Adam thought there would be more but the number of available slots was decreasing between the waves. Somehow, people were demonstrating that they were worthy of a sponsorship even without the threat of the beasts. Based on the way that Damian had been looking at Adam with distrust he had a couple ideas as to how.
“Unfortunately, Damian, Terrence and I have had a run in with some other participants in this trial that believed the best way to be sponsored was by…culling the pool of participants.” Charles softly confirmed Adam’s fears.
Not only did they have to watch out for the oncoming horde of monsters, they also had to be wary of humans they came across.
For a third time, a shattering noise echoed throughout the canyon, reminding them that the third wave was upon them. Briefly looking in the direction that the previous waves had come from, Adam witnessed the translocation of the beasts that were meant to test them. The shattering noise was accompanied by a visual fracturing of space in various places throughout the canyon and pouring from each of these spacial fractures were hundreds of creatures. Hippobulls and Gorillagliders were both present but this time, a third creature seemed to ooze out of the spaces alongside them. Being in the rolling grasslands, they were able to see much further than when Adam was in the woods and he watched as the newest of the shapes seemed to be nipping at the heels of the hippobulls.
Charles looked towards the beasts in the distance, “It looks as if we have roughly 1 minute until they catch up to our position” For someone so old, he had exceptional vision. Adam would have never been able to judge the time it took for the beast to catch up to them. “Adam, can you help us move this man towards that crack in the wall?”
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Adam had no relationship with this Terrence fellow but he could appreciate the effort that the professor was putting in to save his life. He could also see that while the Professor was spry and quite nimble for his age (he claimed it was all due to yoga and taichi) his physical weakness was the reason they were moving so slow.
Grabbing the arm of the unconscious Terrence, Adam took the professor's place and fought through the pain as the four men hurried towards a barely visible crack in the canyon wall.
At this point, Damian's fear radiated off of himself so densely that Adam felt that he could taste it. The boy was tripping over his own feet while carrying the man and kept looking back towards the approaching beasts, unintentionally slowing them down.
“Face forward kid! If you keep looking back, we won’t make it in time!” Adam snapped at the boy. His sharp outburst did nothing to help the young man's fear but at least he stopped turning around while they ran.
As they got within 50 meters of the wall, disaster struck in the form of a Hippobull. The first of the beasts arrived faster than expected bugling as they charged directly at the group.
Damian, scared for his life, let go of Terrence and sprinted ahead, almost flying across the remainder of the grasslands. By letting go of the unconscious man, all of his weight fell onto the injured Adam, knocking the both of them to the ground.
Just when he thought all hope was lost, Charles grabbed hold of Adam and pulled. As he was pulled mostly out from under Terrence’s weight he heard Charles mutter, “I am so terribly sorry, Terrence.”
His tug pulled Adam out of the way just in time to see the charging hippobull run straight through the spot where they had been standing. Terrence, who Adam had never gotten the chance to speak to, was trampled underfoot by the rampaging creature.
“Quickly, Adam. We must make it to the crack. It's our only hope for survival here.” The professor was a jovial man by nature but in this moment, Adam felt the sadness that he felt over abandoning the man he didn’t even know.
While the previous beast had been ahead of the others before, the rest of the stampede caught up to them now. As they ran, he noticed that the newest creature was more horrifying than the last two combined.
Darting in and out of the groups of hippobulls and gorillagliders were creatures that looked to be about the size of wolves but infinitely worse. Their leonine bodies covered with a spattering of hardened plates similar to those of a pangolin were clearly built for slaughter and they seemed to be herding the larger creatures towards them as they ran. Their massive fangs that dripped with the blood of other beasts were only the second most terrifying thing about them though, as throughout their time nipping at the larger beasts and occasionally throwing a swipe of a clawed paw at Adam and Charles, they were letting out a horrible cackling laugh. The laugh echoing from around the beasts that were charging them and the cruel intelligence in their eyes caused a primal fear to well up in both of the fleeing men.
The canyon wall was only 15 meters away now and Adam could make out Damian huddled in the back of it. He was silently waving at the other two trying to get them to hurry to him. A look of confusion flashed across his face followed by a flash of joy before his eyes locked back on Adam and Charles. Adam couldn’t hear anything he was trying to say over the sounds of the many monsters that he was trying to weave through but he did manage to see the boy form two silent words, “I’m sorry”, before he was encased in an egg of light and removed from the trial.
Jealousy flared in the back of Adam's mind. He knew that he shouldn’t get upset with a scared boy but at that moment, it didn't matter. The kid was sponsored and escaped this hell and yet, he was still there. He and one of his closest confidants, an elderly man in his 70’s, were left behind to face a wave of monstrous beasts alone.
In his frustration, Adam lost track of his surroundings and felt a searing burn across his back as claws slashed his skin to ribbons through his shirt. He screamed in pain but refused to fall. He just needed to make it to the safety of the crack.
Next to him, Charles was doing oddly well. He was moving in front of the charging hippobulls and would then bend or twist his body out of the way at the last second. Every so often he would wince as a joint popped in a way that he didn't like but, he had hurt himself millions of times over the course of his 76 years of life so what was a little joint pain in the face of all that?
Right as Charles was about to step into the crack of the canyon wall, a place that seemed to be relatively safe at best and defensible at worst, a shadow fell over his head. From along the cliff face a gorillaglider leapt into the crack, effectively crushing their hopes of safety.
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Yarutash lay comfortably within his glade. Surrounded by tall intricately carved stone spires covered in ancient runes and vines that were nearly just as old, the man had many system interface windows open before him.
Flashing across each of the screens were images of chimeric creatures he had crafted and then bred specifically for this purpose.
Why is it that I have been stuck overseeing these abysmal Trials? He wondered to himself. Yarutash knew the answer, even if he wanted to pretend that he didn’t. He and the other High Lords of the Chimaeric Order had drawn straws and he had lost.
His beautiful elven face was marred by a look of annoyance and his tail swished angrily as he watched yet another one of his babies get killed by a group of oddly muscular elves.
Yarutash looked them over with disdain. Elves of this world are so… brutish. While they might have been the same species at one point in time, Yarutash had been a member of the Chimaeric Order for tens of thousands of years and had made many modifications to his physical body. A majestic horn, glowing with holy mana, rose from his forehead and replacing his mundane elven lower body was a sleek and pristine equine form that had an additional set of golden brown wings that sprouted from its back.
Quickly bored of the elves of the previous world, Yarutash switched over to watching a new trial. In this one, there were five humans left in the entirety of the trial!
Pitiful things, they couldn’t even pass the third stage? He let out a heavy sigh. It’s tragic really, I can't imagine a world of such low potential producing anyone of worth to our Order.
As he continued to watch, one of the number of surviving humans dropped to three. A boy, a younger man and someone most humans of a pre-system world would consider old.
Yarutash glanced at the number of Sponsorships he had left to give within this trial and noticed he had 4 Sponsorships available to give.
Hmm… I have nothing better to do. I guess I can watch these three and see if they seem interesting. If not, oh well.
He twirled his hand and one of the stone pillars glowed. A vine rose from its surface and grew a series of fruits that glowed with a divine light.
Entertain me, Humans. Yarutash settled in to watch their end unfold.
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The gorillaglider swung its clawed paw down towards Charles and he sidestepped out of its way. At least he tried to, but a hippobull ran right behind him at that very moment, causing Charles to contort his body to try and dodge the blow.
The strike flew past him but struck the hippobull behind, slicing the creature's throat with its viscous attack. The panicking creature spun and in its flurry of limbs, hit Adam against the cliffside, pinning him in place as it dropped all of its weight across his legs.
Adam felt his legs crumble under the weight, breaking his bones and forcing a rage that he had not known he possessed, to the forefront of his mind. In the spin, he had lost his boar skull but still had Luisa’s makeshift bone knife. He ripped it from his belt loop and began to hack at the creature that laid across him. If he could just free his trapped legs, he would be able to survive. He could still get home.
Charles knew what was happening to Adam but could do nothing to help him as he was still being attacked by the gorillaglider. He knew he was running on fumes but his flexible body allowed him to bend out of the way of almost every strike. That said, he had received many minor scrapes and was bleeding profusely at this point. After trying to get to Adam and failing, all he could do was try to hold on a little longer. Maybe when the wave ended, they would be able to patch themselves up and get sponsored.
As soon as he had the thought of them getting sponsored he felt it. The instant clarity and security of the forming light pod that transported them to this trial.
Charles couldn’t believe it. He had been sponsored. He tried to step out of the pod and grab Adam but he couldn’t. He looked at his young friend and repeated a statement he had said not too long before, “I am so sorry, Adam”, and vanished.
Adam was beside himself. First the boy and now the professor?! He felt so many things in the span of a second. Fear that he was going to die. Joy that Charles had escaped. Sorrow that he would never see his friends again. Disappointment that he had not been able to progress with Jessica even though they had only been dating for about a month. But most of all, he felt rage. An inexplicable rage towards these monsters that were stopping him from doing anything with his life.
He hacked and stabbed into the flesh of the hippobull that was pinning him down and when one of the scalecats tried to jump on the corpse he stabbed it straight through the throat and watched as it died to his attack. It was the first time he had actually managed to kill another creature in his entire life.
The death of the creature awakened something in Adam that he had never felt before. A primal emotion that was hard to describe using just a single word. If he was forced to try and quantify the feeling into two words they would be hunger and pride. He was proud that he had killed it and felt an immense sense of power for taking its life. Additionally he felt a hunger to do it again, to dominate the creatures that looked down on him that caused HIM to fear THEM.
A primal scream left his ragged throat as he tried to drag himself out from the body he had mutilated. The loud noises and excessive blood drew many more creatures and it looked as if he was done for when a screen appeared in front of Adam's blood soaked eyes.
CONGRATULATIONS!
You have been selected to be SPONSORED by High Lord Yarutash Enquill of the Chimaeric Order.
Hold your head high, Human. You have entertained me. Return to the Integration Stasis and rise again as one of the Forerunners of your World.
Your SPONSORSHIP Reward will be awarded upon activation of your Multiversal Status prior to the completion of your Integration Stasis.
Light sprung up from the ground around Adam and solidified into a light egg as Adam let his exhaustion take over.
He had survived. He would make it home.