CHAPTER 129
The following hours for Tom blended.
It was repetitive.
Hide, wait, explode into violent combat and eliminate the longjoules usually before they got a skill off and if they managed an attack, it was always a panicked one that did not directly threaten him. The numbers he fought were also reduced. The largest number Everlyn guided his way was three, though a group of five entered his ravine when she was not around. Tom had wisely let those past unchallenged, figuring Everlyn’s approach was working and attacking five without fate was too dangerous.
“Tom.”
He glanced over to where Everlyn was. She had just entered his Earth Sense domain and waved. She had proven every time she had lured some longjoules to their deaths that she knew his position there was no point pretending otherwise.
“Follow.”
Tom did exactly as ordered. She took him out of the depression he was in across an open section of land and then squeezed through a tight crack of the wall.
Too tight.
With a grimace, he removed his pants with a thought and slipped through further. Then came to a grinding halt when he was caught despite losing his thick armoured pants. His mana was not full from the last battle, so he didn’t want to waste it unnecessary. “Help.”
Everlyn looked at him quizzically because she knew he could widen the gap if necessary and then tugged him hard. Despite his skills, titles and vitality all of which boosted his skin resistances he felt the tear as he slipped through the narrow space.
She saw his expression and glanced down to see the blood. “Sorry. I thought…” she was whispering because this close together there was no benefit using party chat.
“One mana.” Tom answered after Touch Heal closed the gap. “Four or five times cheaper than moving the rock.”
His girlfriend nodded. “Stop being such a masochist.” She grumbled before leading him deeper through the corridors. They broke out into a small cave that was only a little larger than their bed, but it had four exits. The one they had come through, another in the roof and the last two off to the sides.
With a relieved sigh, Everlyn slumped down on the dirt that covered the floor and patted the ground next to him.
“What’s happening?” Tom asked while he held his half crouched half standing posture in the tunnel. Another step and he would have abandoned standing and drop to crawling.
“Break.”
“The settlement?”
“This area’s cleared.” Everlyn continued. “There’s an active group on the other side of the battleground based on the light display.” She sounded exhausted.
“We should help them.”
She shook her head. “Won’t make it in time. I think that’s the last group and when they’ve finished, the dome should come down.”
“Now we what? Wait?”
“Yes. There’s no large groups anywhere near us. Give me ten and if the event wave isn’t finished by, then I’ll go out and scout again.”
“Where do you want me?”
She patted the ground next to her.
“Not what I meant.”
“I know. I think your part of the fight’s done.”
Tom sunk down beside her. “Did we win?”
“Define win,” she said with a tired smile. “The fortifications have suffered extensive damage. Your golem is probably destroyed.”
Tom flinched at that. It was. There was no need to guess. He had felt it occur and then shortly after dismissed the elemental. The mental images he had got had suggested it was happy. Which meant multiple kills. “It is.”
“I’m sorry.”
Tom shrugged. “It can be replaced. Deaths?”
She leaned her head back on the wall behind her. “I hope not. But I haven’t left this area, and the longjoules spread out. Jingyi said that the evacuation was successful, and that’s all I know.”
“Jingyi?”
“Yeah, he got pinned by cross fire. I eliminated the enemies and went over to get a status update.”
“How many did you kill?”
Everlyn chuckled. “More than you.”
Tom considered arguing or inflating his numbers, but restrained himself. The attempt at deception would fail. She knew the exact number she had lured in for him to defeat and he had already told her the numbers from the meteorite.
“Only a few more, but don’t be too disappointed if I get a heft chunk of credit for your kills. That is the problem with getting the GODs to evaluate.”
“Yeah, you will. I hope no one died.” Tom repeated his mind focused on the important things.
“I think we’re good. Yes, the fortifications were overrun, but we were ready for that and if Jingyi can be believed it was a success. I didn’t see any panic anywhere. The only risk is to fighters in the independent attack teams.”
“That’s a gigantic risk. Those things hit like a truck.”
“Yes, but everyone’s battle hardened and we have an excess of healers.”
“Against the ferrets, people died in moments.”
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“Could happen.” Everlyn agreed. She rested her head on his shoulder. “It was dicey at the start because there were so many of them. But once they spread out it got a lot easier. They weren’t very challenging after that. Worse than the goblins, but not greatly so.”
Tom nodded, and they settled down in silence. A thought occurred to him. He ducked into his system room and then out. “Golly was attributed nine kills and four partials.”
Next to him Everlyn smiled in approval. “That’s probably a couple of percent contribution to you.”
“Hopefully.”
Trumpets went off in their heads. They couldn’t see the sky, but it was clear the dome had come down.
Congratulations!
The second challenge of the settlement event has been successfully completed.
For personal rewards, please check the loot rift in the centre of the fortifications.
“Complete.” Everlyn said, sounding relieved.
Personal rewards are calculated based on GODs Allocated Contribution.
Your personal contribution has been assigned as 11%.
Total experience awarded is 4000 per participant plus tailored loot from the portal.
70 participants for a total experience reward of 280,000
Your proportion of experience is 30,800.
“What did you get!?”
Tom frowned.
There had been over twenty of them who had left the fortifications as an independent kill team. If you assumed that those who had stayed behind had contributed nothing, and the points were split between those who put their lives at risk, then his share was five percent. He should have been happy with eleven percent but… He had killed so many with his initial meteorites and then over following hours with his regular brutal ambushes and then there were Golly’s kills. Tom flicked to his kill logs, and they were what he had mentally calculated. Fifty personally eliminated and there were only a couple hundred of the bastards in total… that should have given him twenty-five percent… well Everlyn helped lined up his kills but even factoring that in he expected at least a fifteen percent share. To get that scaled down to eleven was almost a kick in the guts.
“You look so disappointed.”
“Eleven percent.”
“Oh…” She patted him on the leg. “My fault.”
“What?”
“I suspect I got credited with major assists on all your kills. It would have diluted your contribution.”
“What did you get?”
“Thirty seven.”
Tom whistled in appreciation.
“Seventy out right kills.”
It was Tom’s turn to whistle, and she giggled at his antics.
“That’s a lot of arrows.”
“You’re telling me. Unless I put a heap of mana in most took six or seven to take down and if I was forced to move mid assault.” She shook her head. “I had to start from scratch afterwards.”
“Mine and Golly kills added to fifty-nine.”
Everlyn glanced upwards thoughtfully. “Forty-eight between us. I reckon we killed under that percent as we should have got significant credit for buying time initially, so I’m guessing that there were probably three hundred of them.”
Tom re-did his mathematics. It made the loss of percent seem less extreme, but it still meant that Everlyn had probably taken half the value of every kill he got. “That makes me feel better. Still eleven.”
“As I said I must have been granted major assists for your kills. I reckon I got fifty percent credit for them, maybe more.” She patted his arm, stating what he had already calculated internally. “Sorry.”
“I trust GOD’s allocation method.” Tom answered simply. “And without your help how many kills would I have gotten?”
She laughed. “A few. I imagine if Golly got nine, you would have got a handful back there defending the fortifications.”
“If I did that I might have ended up with a higher percentage allocation that way.” Tom mock pouted.
“Maybe,” Everlyn agreed. “But twenty solo kills defending the walls are not as valuable as your fifty out here. I was able to speed up the clearing at the end because they became far more hesitant about following me down into any of the ravines. That’s your contribution.”
“Should we head back?” Tom asked.
She looked at him with mischievousness in her eyes. “You know we don’t need to return straight away. And with your Earth Sense nothing can sneak up on us.”
He grinned. “No rush.”
Everlyn hesitated, then rolled on top of him and hit her head. “Ouch.”
One mana healed her.
“Cramped, but we can work with it.”
Ten minutes later they picked their way out of the cave system. Emerging a hundred metres away from the fortifications.
Tom’s breath caught as he saw their temporary home. It looked like a dragon had attacked it with its flame breath and then jumped on top of the walls and tore it to bits. Despite that, he could see the humans standing on the remnants of what they had built. Some were working on repairing it while others scampered around, chatting to each other and pointing at what had occurred. Hopefully, it was something useful, like a post battle assessment rather than sightseeing.
“Wow. I didn’t think it was that bad.”
Everlyn squeezed his hand in response. “I don’t see any signs of distress. Let’s find out what happened.”
Tom felt guilty about their recent activities given people might have died, but they had both needed the stress relief and no one would find out. They crossed the distance between them and the walls, skipping from embedded boulder to boulder. It was easy enough to see why when they first entered these foothills that they had assumed the ground was solid. The entrances to them were infrequent and even when you passed directly over the top of them, they were not obvious. They were just another small gap to step over. It was just that the gap continued beyond the metre drop that most of them had.
He kept moving and glanced down when stepping up onto an orange rock. He could see almost three metres straight down.
Everlyn caught where he was looking. “To narrow to get down. It’s an air and light hole. I think the entrance to that one is.” She pointed at a spot only about thirty metres away.
“That doesn’t look right.”
“It bends.” Everlyn told him in no nonsense voice.
Tom’s attention switched back to the fortifications. He was close enough to it he could clearly see the emotions on peoples face. Everlyn was, of course, right? No one he saw had a haunted or distressed look.
In fact, most people looked the most relaxed he had ever seen. That was probably more signs of the mental damage inflicted by the tutorial. Some people only felt normal during or immediately after a battle, and that is what he was seeing here. He searched for signs of grief.
“Any deaths?” Everlyn called out to Jingyi.
The scout glanced toward them and shook his head. “Not from any of the teams left at the fortifications. There are still a handful missing from the independent attack teams, but I expect like you they’ll trickle in overtime.”
“I’ll check the loot portal and then scout for anyone who hasn’t returned in ten minutes.” Everlyn told him.
Together, they entered the crushed walls.
Tom’s eyes went to where he felt the remnants of the golem. It was covered in a shell of earth, which was the elemental’s solution to weathering the attacks that were being launched at it. There were signs that the longjoules had attempted to blast their way through the barrier but had been rebuffed by what was effectively living stone that aided by the mana engine had grown too fast for the enemy’s magic to tear it down.
The elemental’s mind had communicated the bad news, so none of it was a surprise to him. Tom had hoped that it had been exaggerating, but now that he was close, he knew it hadn’t been. At best Golly was going to require a re-build. At worst, he would need to source a sizeable chunk of the components from scratch again.
Everlyn tugged on his arm. “And?”
She was perceptive enough to have concluded the result of his pause.
“Bad, but to the extent I’ll find that out later.”
“Wrecked?”
“Yeah. I’m just praying that the mana engine and the crystal I upgraded this morning survived. The rest.” Tom shrugged. He could get replacements for most of the other components relatively cheaply.
“Well, hopefully you’ll get something good from the loot portal.”
Tom shook his head. “I doubt it.”
“Why?” she mouthed the words.
“No fate left. That first fight was terrible, and I used my fate for its primary purpose.”
“Keeping yourself alive?”
“Yep.”
“You went through your entire pool.”
Tom nodded.
She winced. “That first group.”
“Primarily. But I had to use the dregs and what little regenerated a scattering of times after that.”
“Well, hopefully the RNG gods will smile on you.”
They approached the loot portal together. “Do you want to go first?”
He hesitated.
“Go,” she leant in close. “No need to let anyone know you’re out of fate. If the item is crap, put it straight into storage before anyone notices.”