Hi all, I won’t often put items outside the author’s notes, but I felt that this was justified.
I just want to say that I recognise the frustration everyone is feeling about the killer and the distraction it is causing. The revelation is thirteen chapters away at chapter one hundred and sixty, that’s two and a half weeks.
Unfortunately, I can’t consolidate the chapters as a fair bit happens over those chapters, which for reasons becomes important for later development. In response to the frustration, I genuinely considered publishing all thirteen chapters today and then not posting for three weeks.
I don’t feel I can do that for business reasons.
Ultimately, I’m trying to turn this novel into a business and I feel from other author’s experience that a three-week break will lose readers and I’ve had an annoying virus that has crippled my writing output for the last couple of months. That means I have no backlog to compensate patreon readers and keep giving them value for their donations.
What I can promise is that the last three chapters will be done together. That reduces the wait time to two weeks and avoids a weekend.
I’ll also consider eating into the patreon advanced chapters based on arbitrary milestones… you know I can be bribed. Stuff like a jump in patreon numbers, social media posts, follower count growing, all those nice things.
Anyway, I wanted to say to those people who found this component of the story boring, frustrating or dragging on too long. I’m sorry.
CHAPTER 148
“Evie?”
She continued to look down at her hands. A minute passed.
“Evie.”
She looked up. Even here her eyes were bloodshot. “I don’t know how you are so calm about this.”
Tom looked at her in confusion. “Why wouldn’t I be calm? It’s not like getting angry will change anything.”
“Four people are dead.”
“I’m aware of that. It’s a brutal world. Excluding the murders we’ve lost over ten of us.”
“Four people who didn’t have to die.”
“We’ll get the killers. I hope with my skill, it’s just a matter of time.”
“Don’t you care about them?”
Did he? He didn’t like the waste, but he hadn’t known them. Reilly was the exception. He had liked her. She had been wonderful, but even she had only been an acquaintance. “Of course, I do.”
“They’re dead and you’re talking about catching them.”
“I’m not going to let them keep killing. I don’t want to see anyone else killed.”
“They died because two bastards wanted to grow their power. They were people.”
“What do you want me to say?” Tom snapped her adversarial attitude getting to him. “I know. That’s why we need to stop any future attacks.”
Everlyn sighed. “Do you care?” she touched her heart. “Or is this a ranking point table and lost opportunities?”
Tom flinched at that accusation. “That’s below the belt. Just because I don’t show my feelings doesn’t mean they’re not there.”
Everlyn’s eyes softened.
“But if there’s an issue to solve,” Tom ploughed on. “I’m not going to let emotions get in the way.”
“I…”
“Don’t accuse me of not-caring. I do… It’s… I process things differently.”
“Sorry,” Everlyn apologised, raising her hands. “Sorry. This has been a lot for me. The whole Existentia has been.” She looked down and sighed. “But two killers.” She shook her head. “Two killers.” Her voice rose. “Threw me and then you barely blinked when you found out. I thought…” She didn’t finish the sentence. “It doesn’t matter. We don’t mention this dream tomorrow and when we get something definitive, we act.”
“What do you mean by act?”
Everlyn said nothing.
“I mean it’s not up to us,” Tom continued. “But if it was, what would we do? Execute them, use a contract to guarantee good behaviour or exile them, which is as good as an execution?”
She shook her head. “As you said, it’s not up to us.”
“But if my skill finds the killer we’re sort of morally responsible after that.”
Everlyn hesitated. “I don’t want to decide.” More tears formed in her eyes. “It’s not up to me.”
Tom realised she was not coping. Her lashing out had nothing to do with him and everything to do with her own emotions. But this was important. He couldn’t shove responsibility away. Everlyn might pretend she wasn’t accountable, but he didn’t have that luxury. “But it’s sort of up to me.” Tom said morosely. “Michael?”
She rocked her head back and forth wildly. “We can’t bring anyone else into this till we know the killers.”
“Michael’s not the killer.”
Everlyn looked away. “I don’t know. I don’t understand how anyone could do these murders, so how can we rule him out. They are killing people.”
Because they believe what they are doing is best for humanity. Tom thought, but was wise enough not to say it out loud in her fragile state. She wouldn’t appreciate it.
“I know, they’re monsters.”
And something is driving them to kill, but they’re trying their best to do it subtly.
“I hope it’s not someone in our group.”
“I’m sure it isn’t.”
His words, as banal, as they were seemed to help her recover her calm.
“Two of them killing.” Everlyn continued. “It makes it worse because it’s not psycho acting on their despicable desires but a logic decision of a team. It’s calculated.”
“We don’t know that. We may have just been unlucky enough to get two serial killers from Earth in our group.”
She laughed bitterly. “Do you really think that is possible?”
The sense Tom had gotten when he was in that person’s head was not what he would expect from a serial killer. It was more the thought pattern of a man who had chosen to kill humans to empower himself. Tom could understand the logic. He would never consider doing it, but he could see the allure. If you kill someone and get twenty percent of their power, then why wouldn’t you.
The system rewarded growth. If Tom had a choice between five rank ten or a single rank twenty, he knew which person he was picking. The individual double the rank would slaughter the lower ranked people effortlessly. It was just what happened when you were twice as fast, strong, with elevated robustness and magic.
Tom could easily see the type of person capable of thriving in the tutorial making that appalling decision.
“It’s possible.” Tom told her. “Especially if there was a hidden way to communicate when spending contribution points. With magic evening the playing field there would be safety for a serial killer to get friends. I don’t know if they would think of it but if they did, it would make sense.”
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Everlyn looked doubtful.
“How else could this have happened? This was on day three. You don’t look at someone and pick out that they’re a serial killer. Even if you could when Jeffrey died, it had been three days. A period where you’ve been packed together like sardines with no privacy. There wasn’t time for a single killer to recruit others. Whoever is doing this was either forcefully converted after they arrived or they coordinated beforehand.”
“You think one of them might have got a puppet.”
Tom hesitated and then thought about the emotions in the mind he had shared thanks to True Dreaming. “No. I don’t think either of them was a puppet. The thoughts, vibe, feel that I had during the dream doesn’t support that hypothesis. He was there willingly and the other, the silhouette they were not forced to be there either. If they had been, it would have been clear.”
“So there has to have been communication prior to coming here.” Everlyn pounced on that fact. “Was it possible to communicate with other humans when spending contribution points?” Everlyn called out and looked at the wall.
Full range of options to spend contribution points are no longer available.
You only have access to options you personally reviewed in the contribution room.
Based on them there was no capacity for communication revealed.
“That to me is pretty clear.” She declared thoughtfully, and then looked at him expectantly.
Tom cleared his throat and looked more than a little sheepish. He knew where this was going and what would be displayed. “How about me?”
You explored a number of examples that would have promoted collaboration with other humans for a price.
“You knew,” Everlyn accused.
Tom shook his head. “I investigated thousands, if not tens, of thousands of options. Until this conversation started, I had forgotten about this.”
“Let’s see the details?”
Tom Brayshaw will need to give permission.
Everlyn’s eyes immediately turned and challenged him. “Well?”
He sighed. “Share details.”
Singing Monk Class.
A rare class where the bleeding of harmonics together allows for an outcome greater than the whole.
Because of the power curve related contribution points can be spent to determine the number of people interested to allow for pre Existentia strategization.
Everlyn laughed. “So, it was possible to do it. You just needed to be considering a class, skill or trait that relied on others.” She summarised. “And what’s with the singing?”
“I didn’t want to do singing. I only looked at it because of the structure of the class. It was a basic class that would evolve to advanced at level eight and expert at level sixteen provided you hit certain pre-requisites. On top of those individual aspects, if there were fifty or more singers it was significantly more powerful than… well, everything.”
“For someone who claims they ‘didn’t want to sing,’ you sure did a lot of research.”
“I was looking for cheap power. Unfortunately, that class wasn’t the solution.”
“Can you sing something for me?”
“I can’t sing.” He repeated, and it felt like his cheeks were heating.
“Then why would you consider a class?”
“There were skills and I could be a support hummer.”
Everlyn laughed again. “Do you have any other examples?”
His cheeks went redder. “Show all.”
A series of similar singing classes came up and then a couple of grand ritual-based options.
“That’s all that I personally checked out, but they’re going to be others.”
“Basically, any classes that needed others to function effectively were given this option.”
“That would be my hypothesis too,” Tom agreed.
“I think that confirms it. We’re looking at power grabbers rather than serial killers.”
Tom hesitated. “I completely agree. But until we know for sure otherwise, we shouldn’t assume that.”
She looked straight through him like she was trying to bore into his soul in order to reveal the level of his deception. Tom kept his features neutral. “You’re probably right. Obviously, say nothing to anyone. We’ll find an excuse to get out for the day.”
“The detour yesterday was lucrative, at least in terms of credits.”
“Yes, we’ll use that as a pretext.”
“Plus, the settler faction needs to keep us on their side because they don’t want us abandoning them.”
“We should go to sleep.”
“Before we do, what should I concentrate on tomorrow night? The wards stopped my powers from seeing the second person today.”
She frowned. “I guess it sort of makes sense. If they had no wards, you probably would have had the answer by now. Do you think you should target something different?”
Tom nodded. “I don’t believe it’ll be fruitful trying to pierce any more murder scenes. I think even getting as much as I have was pushing things. My intuition tells me that there’ll be more gaps in the wards away from the murders.”
Everlyn hesitated. “I’m not an expert at these things. Is that how it works?”
“Yes… Or at least I think that’s how it works. The mind I was in definitely thought the ritual itself was providing protection.”
“Then you target them outside the ritual. Maybe you can find out the name before the wards are in place? Zero in on them in the contribution shop?”
“We can try it, but I’ll be surprised if DEUS’s setup would allow something like that.”
“Oh, yeah.” She agreed immediately, sounding disappointed. “If you can’t penetrate the contribution shop there are other avenues. We know they knocked everyone out prior to Tiny’s murder. They put something into the food. They might be exposed then.”
“Yeah, or if they discussed their plans away from the ritual sites.”
Evelyn grinned. “That has potential.” Then she hit the couch in annoyance. “I was hoping this would be solved by your Mus upgrade, but instead there are more complications and questions.”
“Afraid so.”
“And it was two tiers, not one.” She continued sadly. Then she forced herself to brighten. “But we know more. We know there are two, we know that the ritual has anti divination properties. This implies that we can focus on them outside the murders.”
“Yes.” Tom agreed.
He found himself out of her system room abruptly. “Sleep,” Everlyn ordered tiredly.
They held each other, and Tom immediately fell asleep.
His dreams were disjointed.
Replaying bits and pieces from his true dream back to him. It added sections and subtracted others as his subconscious attempted futility to unravel the mystery of ritual. He re-lived that channelling of magic and tried to map that flow of power to a likely mana pool size. Height, weight and the feeling of the body.
On and on he went.
Abruptly, he was caught in a True Dream.
Tom had been drifting, but now he was laser focused. This was a non-directed dream, the type that had first shown him Mus. His intuition told him it was going to be just as fateful, just as important.
He honed in on his senses. While he was a passenger in something’s head. While he could influence nothing, he could at least observe all the information available, including stuff that the mind in its natural body would take for granted.
The body was alien, his thoughts even more so. It was like everything was there for her amusement and there was nothing more entertaining than despair unless it was despair created by physical and magical supremacy over someone who had thought they were her rival.
“LISTEN.”
The order snapped through her brain, demanding obedience. She lowered her head in deference. You did not stare at a GOD lest you were blinded.
“YOU WILL DO THIS.”
“Natives are more fun.” she complained, forgetting herself momentarily. This new existence where she was not the most powerful in the world was a new one for her. She had enjoyed fighting natives that were nearly as strong as her. It had been a wonderful change.
Her god, luckily was amused by her slip up rather than annoyed. “SUPREME will attempt to balance, but he will fail dismally. His meddling won’t make it a challenge, but it may add to the contest, cause it to be more fun than you expect.”
The dream shattered.
For the second time in the night, he jerked awake.
Everlyn was awake instantly next to him. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“It’s not related to our prior discussion.”
She relaxed. They had been the right words.
“I’ll tell you everything tomorrow.”
She went to sleep and Tom’s mind spun around and tried to interpret those couple of glimpses that had been shared with him. This was the major thrust of True Dreaming’s power. The undirected dreams.
The sapient experience that was important for his future.
In his head, he relived what he had experienced.
The problem was that there was no frame of reference to understand what he had witnessed.
There was an attitude that was easy enough to appreciate and categorize. They had been the thoughts of a terror race. She had been talking to a god, and she used to be the most powerful on her planet.
What else.
Natives are more fun.
He remembered how she had said that, and Tom shivered.
Natives are more fun.
The underlying images were like a cat with a mouse. But the mouse was a native. Someone like Mus reduced to a plaything.
Tom clenched his fists. His heart rate increased despite his attempts to keep his breathing steady.
Why would something like that apply to him?
Natives are more fun.
What did that mean? It was like she was being told to do something else and in Existentia there were only so many things that order could be. It had to be about competition races, her own or others. Tom hoped it was the first, but considering he had dreamed about this conversation.
Somehow, the scene was related to him.
The minor issue of a killer or more precisely killers in their midst suddenly paled to insignificance.
With Mus, there had been the clear overtones of this person as someone you could talk to. For this latest vision, there was none of that.
Just a general premonition of doom and insufficient knowledge to do anything about it. This wasn’t a run as fast as you can type of dream. No, it was much more simple. It was a tidbit of information that would someday be relevant.
How?
Tom wasn’t sure.
But it absolutely terrified him.
He slept with one eye open and tier two throwing stones clutched in his hand. His ears continually strained for the slightest sound, his senses straining for a fluctuation in magic.
Fate leaked from him almost subconsciously as he directed it towards making sure that he never meet whatever was in that vision. Who knew what a small investment could do? It might totally change events so that in a years time when he was destined to cross paths with that monster he would be elsewhere.
He was unsettled. It felt like the world was too. The rock around him groaning and shifting, fate fluctuating erratically with wider shifts than normal.
Fragments of dreams assaulted him. Natives are more fun. That unshakeable mindset that everything should bow to it. What he assumed was a God talking to it.
The discrepancy of power between the human killings and that creature.
He drifted on the edge of sleep.
The shadows above were deepening as the light stick lost energy.
He turned restlessly.
There was a distinct click.
Tom snapped awake at the noise coming from the emergency shutters.
His eyes went to them.
The gap to let sound in had been opened.
Everlyn was also moving rolling straight into a battle position her bow in her hand.
Then he remembered the unsettled world as he had flitted on the edge between sleep and wakefulness. The groaning stone and the fluctuating fate…
No!