CHAPTER 127

While Tom waited to see whether the monster was going to follow him he reviewed the brief fight and frowned at the results. He had got the drop on them and spent fate like he had unlimited quantities.

Boom!

Another wave of heat quickly offset by the breeze.

He laughed harder.

He had purchased the victory with fate, but that was what it was there for. Out of battle, it was a blunt object, a lever to get better results, but in the crucible of combat, fate became a scalpel. A precise instrument where millimetres and milliseconds could combine to reach perfection.

All those attacks missing him, the lump of rock crushing the antenna, the enemy’s spell blasting its ally if he hadn’t invested as he had of those events might have changed. A slight shift in the angled fired, a moment’s delays there, a bit of bad luck there and Tom knew the results were different.

Only a single one of those attacks had to land.

Everything had gone right. His initial positioning was the start. The ambush spot had been lucky and one devoid of fate pulling the strings. Then, from invisibility, he had sprung the perfect ambush. His movement precise his weapon craft immaculate and his spells had all been executed perfectly. Despite all that going his way he could not cross the tyranny of their physical attribute differences. They were only twenty percent faster and thirty percent more durable, but their magic advantage had been off the chart.

It had been noticeable.

The correct play now that he thought about it was to have invested ten fate the moment Everlyn had warned him not to engage. With that much fate in play, the tracker would have gone over his tracks without noticing it. The entire battle could have been avoided. Unfortunately, he had not considered it.

What else? Tom should have used his ring to take fate away from that last longjoule, but in the heat of the moment he had forgotten to use it.

Boom.

Hot air washed over him.

“Shit.” He cursed lightly when he realised the problem. The monster out there would not get distracted and leave. It was going to remain there trying to get them and Everlyn was going to lead another group back through here. If that longjoules was out there would that put her at risk? She should sense the creature in time and take a different route, but if she didn’t?

“Shit.” He focused. “Everlyn?” he asked through the party chat. His vision flashed showing that she was out of range.

Boom.

The noise was deafening, and a moment later the dry heat washed over him.

The monster was not giving up on its strategy.

An idea occurred to him. He had some mana and was under the earth. If it came for him? Tom smiled. The result was as near guaranteed as he could hope against a more powerful enemy.

He framed his idea. He wanted to kill it. Now. Not in two minutes. He needed an opportunity to eliminate it immediately.

He invested five fate figuring that the monster would choose to pursue him no matter what he did. So he didn’t need to over invest. He only had to make a scene and it would come. The fate bled away from him and up to where the enemy was peering down the hole he had exited down.

Boom.

“Come get me!” he yelled.

Then in his Earth Sense something changed. The monster shifted a step away, and he felt earth magic interacting with the bolt hole that he had escaped down. It had heard him talking and wanted to get in to kill him… Or possibly… No it was probably the scene he was making not that it mattered. Everything was falling how he wanted it too.

Tom chuckled to himself as it struggled to manipulate the rock to make the hole wide enough for its body to follow him and its deadly artillery magic turned to a different person.

Yet it was determined.

It was coming.

Tom stopped laughing and then quietly pulled himself further away. The adrenaline that had dulled his pain receptors initially had receded. Even slight shifts made the pain soar.

He was too close. He was on his knees, making jerking movements forward. Kicking with his single leg and balancing himself with his intact arm to push him along the ground.

His Earth Sense magic monitored what was happening.

It was coming down the hole.

Headfirst.

Hostile Earth activated.

Boom!

The concussive blast rushed past.

“Shit.” Tom yelled involuntarily as the wind of that blast buffered him.

He instinctively cowered away the heat singeing his eyebrows. He hadn’t considered what it would do when it got down and it was a monster with no sense of self preservation. The shallow curves of the tunnels where were useful for navigation worked against him when the blast was directed down the tunnel rather than exploding at the base of the bolt hole.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Tom moved. He scrambled along to create distance. The longjoule struggled in the cramped spaces. Its magic was briefly diverted to open up a larger gap for it to go down.

His fragile arm hit a rock.

He screamed.

Buoyed by his distress the longjoule behind him sped up. It was approaching the first bend at which point….

Tom kicked harder off the ground and scrambled with his good arm. His broken arm hit the side of the corridor. It was almost sufficient for him to black out.

Almost was not enough.

Tom paused.

It took another step.

Got you.

Tom’s power flared out as he channelled all of his remaining mana from both the crystal and what he had regenerated.

Creak.

The whole tunnel shuddered. The monster paused and Tom wondered if it realised its mistake of following an earth mage with Tom’s affinity and skills levels underground.

The rock above the beast creaked ominously. It brought its prodigious mana pool to bear on the top of the tunnel. Tom could feel its power opposing his own… but it didn’t’ matter that much. The conditions for a collapse had been met.

Now it was gravity not him that the longjoule fought against. Tonnes of gravity. Its magic hurriedly fused together cracks to stabilise the roof.

Tom’s own magic countered, undoing the enemy’s changes almost as fast as it could put them in place. The creaking became a rumble, then a crash with a wave of wind and grit that physically struck him. It caused him to whimper in pain even internally he danced in joy.

Within his Earth Sense domain, the movements of the monster stopped.

Tom wiped sweat off his brow and lay there panting.

Alive.

His resources tapped out both fate and magic.

But alive.

Give him twenty minutes and apart from the fate he would be as good as new. For now, he crawled back to the deadfall which had killed the final longjoule. Every movement hurt, but he refused to waste mana on healing till his levels were back at seventy-five percent full.

Right here, underground, mana used offensively through Remote Earth Manipulation was stronger than boosting his body via healing.

He leant against the rough rock that now sealed the tunnel very aware that he was almost hyperventilating from the pain. Shattered bones were not supposed to move this much.

It was tempting to retreat into his system room, but that was a fool’s approach. While he would wake if disturbed, the area was not safe. Most creatures could one shot kill him and it only took one to sneak up below the threshold that the wake up skill worked to finish him. It was a poor gamble to avoid a little pain. But thinking about the system room he remembered those trumpets.

A moment wouldn’t hurt.

He shut his eyes and stepped into the system room and almost gasped at the sudden absence of pain.

He hadn’t realised how much the broken bones were affecting his thinking, but there was not time for that.

“What were the trumpets for?”

The wall shivered and changed with a text running over the top of it.

Congratulations, you have met the prerequisites to be rewarded the Skill.

Skill: Safer Falling (Tier 1)

This skill is an Earned Skill.

Given this denotation, you will be restricted from discussing or communicating the steps undertaken to acquire the Earned Skill. Now that you are aware of the mechanism, it is acceptable to attempt similar feats to Earn alternative skills but you will be permanently blocked from any Earned Skill or Spell which you have gained a prior knowledge of the steps required to be awarded it. Given the rules researching this topic is not recommended.

The prerequisites you met to earn Safer Falling are.

* Use technical falling skills to stave off certain death when falling.

* Sustained crippling injuries when breaking falls on two or more occasions.

* Demonstrated technical proficiency of at least twenty in acrobatics.

* Do not possess the acrobatics or similar skill to aid body control.

Tom read the warnings with interest.

This was something that he had theory crafted about. Natives who grew up with their family groups or species could be taught skills and spells, but he had wondered what would happen to those separated from their support structures? Would they be put at a permanent disadvantage? These earned skills were the answer to that problem and would allow them to bridge some of the gap to those better resourced individuals.

He opened his eyes in the real world to blazing pain but he pushed through that and used Earth Sense to confirm nothing was sneaking up on him and then he listened for any unusual sounds while he considered the rest of the information his senses brought him. There was no way he was going to rely exclusively on a single spell even if it was as useful as Earth Sense was underground. It was just one of his senses and that was how he was going to treat it.

Nothing was threatening him so, while keeping his eyes open, he thought.

The prerequisites were interesting. Tom suspected that this was not a common skill even amongst those separated from civilisation. The first two points were problematic, though the twenty technical skill levels in acrobatics without a skill were probably the biggest restriction to people being awarded that skill. Most people in the years it took to train your technical skills up that high would probably receive an earned skill and he couldn’t see anyone turning down a skill in the hope of something better in the future. Especially when there was no guarantee that there was anything better to come.

Any skill was a bonus. He closed his eyes to determine what the new skill actually did.

Skill: Safer Falling (Tier 1)

Safer falling is not a physical skill but utilises fate to help the user when falling or being thrown.

Effectiveness scales with level, and the amount of fate available adjusted by class level. Cannot be purchased from the competitor store.

Tom froze as he read the description.

This was a skill that was tailored for him.

It worked off FATE!

Tom recalled those first two points of the pre-requisites the link to fate made sense. Survived crippling injuries, staved off death, they were restrictions that just screamed luck.

The skill scaled on fate and the extra mechanism.

Tom focused on what it meant by fate adjusted by class level in the more detailed Skill information.

Simple.

It was a simple relationship. The calculation was basically if you contributed anything less than a fate point every level Safer Falling would get weaker as you levelled up. If you invested more than a point the skill would grow in strength and do so more than you would normally expect from a tier one ability.

And with his trait Fate’s Agility his fate would always outgrow his level. The higher his level rose the more powerful this would be. Tom focused on the exact wording. It did not talk about reducing, protecting or mitigating fall damage instead it talked about using fate to help the user.

That meant… He considered his thought and checked the wording again and the underlying data behind the description.

It did mean that!

Tom was shocked by the revelation.

Provided he fell or was thrown through the air the Skill produced fate to aid him.

It was…

If he was a cartoon, his jaw would have hit the floor.

Free fate in battle. It was not a new and unique concept. Tom knew of several higher tier skills that produced the effect, but nothing below tier four and now he had a tier one skill that did it. A Skill with incredibly generous scaling though admitted it was limited by the finicky trigger conditions.

If he could evolve it…

Tom shook his head and once more returned to the real world. He bit his lip in response to his throbbing limbs and focused on his immediate safety.

Nothing.

He was still safe. He would heal, reset, kill the event wave and deal with the implications of his discoveries later.