CHAPTER 158
The moment the stone touched Tom’s head he felt it sink into him and a flood of information swept into his brain. There was a primer on how to use it and possibly because it was a higher tier skill hints about how to level it. The levelling required stretching the skill. A thousand unimaginative contracts would do nothing and then a single contract with non-standard terms might push you up a level and then if your next one had a creative enforcement clause that could be another level. Basically, after a decade of stagnation, doing things differently could suddenly advance the skill.
For Tom that was only good news. He was not running a business, and he expected all of his uses of the contract to be unique in their application, even if he couldn’t imagine what they would be at this point.
More data was imprinted on him. Alternative ways the contract could be used, the give and take available between enforcement clauses and duration. The ways it could be twisted to create set enforceable outcomes. Tom got the impression that it often took months, if not years of use to gain the proficiency to bump it up to level two, then it would grow more powerful quickly. As it levelled, the flexibility of what could be achieved with an individual contact improved substantially. The reach and availability would also jump at each level. Just raising it to the second level would double how often he could call upon the skill. If he continued to level it by mid-way through the competition, it would be available multiple times per day and capable of binding hundreds of people with a single contract with terms, duration and punishments far higher than what he could do currently. Every facet of the Skill improved with each level.
It was tier five, so he shouldn’t have been surprised, but objectively it was an extraordinary skill. Maybe not a perfect match for him, but as a tool for the future, it would be huge.
How would he level it? What tricks could he use to manufacture opportunities to apply it?
They were troubling questions while he was stuck out in the middle of nowhere with only a few companions? But once he got powerful enough to enter cities, if he had five or six levels under his belt in Contract Binding it would be amazing.
Its utility was deep. Tom could easily imagine it underpinning a trading empire by guaranteeing the loyalty of all the key members of the company. Tom wouldn’t even have to run the business as once he had a contract with the CEO position he would only be required to guarantee the service of new hires.
Then there were the more nefarious purposes it could be turned to.
He smiled at that thought.
It would let him turn people to humanity’s side. Infiltrate, then trap your target. Give them an ultimatum and when they accepted bind them with an unbreakable contract. At that point, he would have a spy that couldn’t double cross him. Ethics? He would traverse that bridge when he got to it, but if they were evil people.
Yes, Contract Binding was not as restrictive a reward as he had first feared. It had a purpose beyond binding the killers even if that application was not in an area that suited Tom. Then again, True Dreaming and Binding Contract working in tandem could be the impetus to grow and change. The first to give him proprietary information on whom to target and the second to neutralise them. Those two skills had a scary amount of synergy.
There was no reason once he had completed his current quest that he couldn’t farm ranking points by creating a trading empire. A life of luxury after forty years of eating whatever he could hunt was something that Tom could get behind. Plus, once the main human population came through, having that sort of wealth available to help them could only be beneficial.
That was all future talk and while he liked to take a long-term approach, with a skill that wouldn’t be useful for forty years, this one felt extreme even to him. For now, he had gotten a single purpose skill and burnt a significant amount of immediate combat potential to allow him to both save the killers’ lives and to direct them to achieve an outcome that was tangibly useful to humanity.
Tom prayed it was worth it.
Everlyn was looking at him strangely. The gears were probably ticking over in her mind. She had known what he was thinking and then had spotted how quickly he had absorbed the stone. She likely didn’t know exactly what Skill he had acquired but had likely guessed the type.
“What did you get?” he asked politely.
“These.” She opened her hands and revealed two skill stones. She smiled. “It seems this loot portal is exclusively giving skill stones.”
Tom identified the first of the objects in her hand. The stone was a small pebble, a semi opaque aqua colour, with silvery streaks through it.
Skill Stone: Safe Camp Aura - Tier 4
The skill enables the user to emit an aura that will help ward away monsters from an established camp.
It scales on the skill’s level, and the users rank.
Provides a warning if anything malicious breaches the protection.
Note: Effective skill level can be boosted by the users’ stealth abilities, camping skills and perception relative to their rank.
“Wow!” Tom said in appreciation. “That boost? It’s makes this the perfect aura for you.”
She used the stone. A thoughtful expression appeared on her face immediately after.
“Yes, it starts at the equivalent of the level 5 version of itself because of my rank adjusted expertise in those scaling components.” She pouted. “Though apparently with no threshold bonuses.”
Tom laughed at the face she pulled. “You can’t…”
“I know.” She waved him off.
“Be seriously complaining about that.” Tom finished. “So how good is it?”
“The level one spell protects an area about three metres cubed from monsters with a perception less than three ranks of my own. The level five aura triples that volume and expands coverage of creatures up to six ranks higher than me.”
“So any camp you are in is guarded against any creatures up to rank seventeen?”
She nodded and then frowned as she considered that number in terms of the journey they were about to undertake. Tom did the same. At a high level, they would get protection up to rank seventeen areas, but if they hid in caves that might improve that to provide safety up to rank nineteen areas.
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“It’s useful.” He said approvingly.
“Much better than a physical artefact.” Everlyn agreed. “For one, as we grow in strength this scales with us.” She was pensive for a moment. “But depending on where I go this might not be enough.”
“True.”
“We might need to pause on occasion to hunt experience to bump me up additional ranks if we’re relying on this to keep us safe at night.”
“Yes.” Tom agreed immediately. He had thought the same. It was likely their journey would require them to pass through rank twenty areas or even higher and they would need to all rank up before tempting them.
Tom checked the second stone. This one was a dull yellow with no metallic effects. It seemed suspiciously ordinary.
Skill Stone: Treasure Sense - Tier 4
The skill grants a treasure sense ability that can be used every 64 minutes.
It’s effectiveness scales on skill level and the user’s magic attribute and perception skills.
“Same as the first one.” Tom said with a note of approval. “A very valuable skill to acquire.”
“Mus would be so jealous.” She quipped with an impish smile. “And you?”
He clutched her hands and stepped into a system room, knowing she would understand. A second later, the invitation appeared a moment later, which he accepted and materialised facing the wall she left bare for system notifications.
Tom nodded at the wood paneling. “I got that.” It blurred and the description of the Skill immediately came into existence.
Everlyn read it and pouted. “Tom! Why?” she yelled, rounding on him. Her hands clenched into a ball. “They weren’t your problem. You didn’t have to do this to try to save them.”
“I know,” he held up his hands defensively. “I went with my gut. It felt like the correct decision to use them, rather than destroy them.”
“I did only half as well as you and got two great tier four skills. You probably could have gotten both a tier four and five Skill. Imagine if they were both spear abilities. They could have become the bedrock of your build for the whole competition. You’ve given that away… To what? Get the reluctant service of three killers for a short period. Tom, that’s not a good trade.”
“It’s not that bad,” he protested. “Contract Binding will be a skill that I’ll be able to use through to the end.”
Everlyn chuckled in frustration. “Tom, surely you can see how terribly unsuited this skill is for you. You hate doing anything related to organising, crafting or socialising. What can you possibly get from this.”
“A dislike doesn’t mean can’t.”
She threw her hands up in the air to demonstrate her exasperation. “No, Tom. No.” There were tears in her eyes. “You have to live your life! You can’t sacrifice yourself forever and lock yourself into something you’ll hate… You can’t do that just because you think it might get some extra ranking points. You’ll break if you try. You should have spoken to me first. There were other ways to do it. Cheaper methods. This was a mistake.” Everlyn told him clearly. She shook her head. “A big mistake! I didn’t push it pre battle because I figured you would work it out. Recruiting the murderers is a misstep. We need to kill them.”
Tom pointed at his new skill silently.
“Yes, Contract Binding makes it feasible. But it’s a terrible trade. How useful will the killers be once you’ve muzzled them?”
“I can’t exactly return or exchange the Skill can I.” He spluttered in frustration.
“No, you can’t. I’m just… this is on them! The murderers, it’s their fault you burnt a prize that was the equivalent of a quarter of a million experience.”
“More.” Tom reminded her. “Skills sell for more than their experience value.”
She covered her eyes briefly with both hands as if to say, I can’t believe this. “Don’t make it worse. I hate them for this.”
Tom hesitated, they argued, and the issue seemed to be resolved, but it kept getting brought back up again. “Whoever is the killer made a terrible choice,” he said into the silence. “And I’ll make them pay the debt they owe humanity for making that decision.”
She looked at him, horrified. “After your quest you’re planning on letting them go aren’t you.”
“We’ll see,” Tom lied. “What I can tell already from my skill is that my options are limited. I can bind them to my cause for a decade, but beyond that.” he shrugged.
“Is that long enough?”
“Of course, how long could it take to–” He bit the words before he admitted the plan. Everlyn would find out what he intended soon, but the important bit was that he didn’t tell her. “For what I’m planning it should be sufficient. Yes, it’s long enough.”
“Then what?”
He felt out the power of the contract he could create as level one. Give and take were needed on both sides and it could only persist for so long. “I suspect I’ll have to let them walk free.”
“Could they kill us afterwards?”
Tom focused once more. Examining the binding the spell had available. “No. we will be safe. I can lock that guarantee in forever, but only for co-signers of the original contract. It’s an unintended consequence of lifetime confidentially.”
“What happens? They aid your quest and then they go off and that’s it. That’s the extent of the consequences?”
Tom considered her question. From the restrictions inherent in level one Binding Contract, the answer was a simple yes. But he was more than a skill. “Evie.”
“What?”
“I’m happy to help you kill them afterwards.”
Everlyn froze. She swallowed eyes wide, and she took a half step backward before settling herself. A myriad of emotions flashed across her face and they finished in the realisation that justice she wanted was not a sentence declared but an action you had to physically complete. “No… umm… Are you sure? Do you really mean that?”
Tom frowned. He had half proposed the solution as a bluff. “Evie… I don’t… I’ve never killed a human before.”
Her shoulder sagged. Some of the fire going out of her. “This is shit.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“It’s so easy to say they deserve to die but…”
“I know,” Tom sympathised. “It’s different when you realise that you’re the one who’ll be carrying the action out.”
“Tom? If we leave tomorrow, we might not find out who the killer is till after we’ve gone. What then? Do we come back?”
“We can decide once we have the facts. But with what we know and my yes and no questions even if True Dreaming fails tonight we can unmask at least one of them. I don’t think my True Dreaming will fail if I target when they first came through. To choose and then kill Jeffrey, they must have interacted before then. In theory, they hadn’t had the opportunity to improve their anti-divination ability, they hadn’t cast the ritual yet to give them that layer of protection, they should be vulnerable to a tier nine divination ability. They’ll be exposed. I’m confident.”
She hesitated. “If you don’t find them tonight, then what?”
“We leave anyway and don’t come back.”
Everlyn nodded surprisingly okay with that decision. He had expected her to insist they stay and remove the threat. She took a deep breath. “So, when we exit here what’s the plan?”
“We pretend nothing has changed. We plan to go, arrange our companions for the quest, and remain silent about the killing. To everyone else we’ll be as much fleeing from them as doing our quest. Then if I get the names, either overnight or in the morning using questions we then gather our allies and act against them.”
“It’s like we’re running around like headless chickens.”
“I know what you mean. Forty years fighting monsters in solitude didn’t prepare me for this.”
“No. I don’t think anything could have. Bubs. Tom. For clarity, I need to say this. I was against this plan to recruit the killers. But it’s been made, and I’ll try and put that behind me going forward. I’m planning on helping you in every way I can. If your oracle plan, quest or whatever it is succeeds great, but even if it doesn’t I’m with you and the two of us will find another way to make a difference.”
“Thank you.”
She smiled with sad cheer, and the world distorted. Tom found himself once more out of her system room and back in the real world. Everlyn squeezed her hands a bright smile on her face like they hadn’t been talking about killing people just a minute before.
“You need to go check on Golly.” She reminded him brightly with what he could interpret because he knew her so well was false cheer.
Tom nodded. “Yeah, I should.”
“I don’t think we can spare Keikain to help you.” Michael said sadly having come up while they communed in the system room. “I know it’s pointless, but the crafters are going to want to construct fortifications in a new spot.”
“For a night?”
“Yes.” Michael answered. “And every night going forward they’ll do the same.”
“The GODs” Sven asked.
“They won’t care,” Michael declared emphatically. “Temporary structures are allowed.”
Tom ignored them and went over to collect the pieces of his golem.