CHAPTER 168

Tom once more found himself in an alien body. It was unnerving, and he took the cues from the mind he was in while trying to understand what he could about the situation.

The person was seated on hard packed dirt.

It was humanoid, or at least sort of… The perception was strange. He had a wider field of vision than he was used to as he could clearly observe everything in a two hundred degree arc… He could kind of see behind him, though there was a large blind spot.

Next Tom tried to place where he was. The landscape was weird. It was like he was surrounded by a series of dwarf trees, though the mind he was in registered nothing noteworthy about the environment. The dwarf trees were not even a curiosity to him, which suggested that it had probably been in the territory for a while.

All of its attention was focused on the mutalag, the divine mouthpiece that sat casually opposite him.

They had been parasites. A group that back on Snowfall had worshiped a false god but had pivoted awfully quickly when a true one came along. Though the traditional robes had not changed.

The errant thoughts confirmed that the creature across from the mind he was riding was of the same species. Tom studied the second person. It was clothed and masked in a robe made up of miniature pelts probably from rats or something similar, though they were proper ceremonial robes despite the choice of pelt. The robes, as disgusting as they might have been were flawlessly created. They were bulky and completely shrouded the features of their wearer. All he could tell was that it had two legs, two arms, a tail and a far shorter torso than a human possessed. It was almost dwarven? Thick broad legs into a small body, muscular arms, or at least bulky ones, and a large head.

“You predict the existence of a competition trial.”

The divine mouthpiece said nothing, playing its petty power games and not responding.

“You claim it is a place of death, but the lord GOBUS bids me to steal glory to prepare?”

The mutalag stirred. “There are three.” Her voice sounded ancient, fragile through the mind he was in understood that was primarily an act, under the robes she would have reverted to a young adult. Their old deceiving tendencies raising their head. “Three trials,” she continued unaware of the scorn felt by the one she was addressing. “One will be certain death, but in the others it is up to you and FAMES’ champions to ensure the trials becomes death for everyone else.”

There was a throb of pleasure in the creature that Tom was sharing the memories of. “Ensuring death. That is something I’m good at.”

The mutalag’s tail slapped the ground in a warning gesture. One of the nearby dwarf trees toppled with a surprisingly loud noise. “You’ll be fighting competition races. SUPREME will balance. This is not something for you to take lightly. You must gather resources to maximise your personal power. You must turn your tribe to this task. GOBUS demands it.”

A feeling of deep offence and wrongness went through the body that he was possessing. He did not like that suggestion at all. “That’s not our way.” Their traditions demanded that the warriors grew their strength themselves and even more so for him. Champions were not to be propped up by their people. Everything they owned had to be earned.

“It is important to GOBUS. This is a once off and necessary.”

“It is not our way.” The body he was in growled out.

“We are no longer at home. We have new ways.”

Complete fury at what the mutalag was suggesting flashed through the body. “That’s convenient for one such as you. You abandoned Adrog without a second thought.”

That divine speaker raised its four hands in a gesture of peaceful intent. “Adrog either never existed or was too weak to matter. I grew, adapted and changed and I now serve a purpose as per the accords. It is time for you to do the same.”

“Me? Change? You’re not asking that. You’re asking me to betray all that I am!”

“By doing what it takes to save your people. Champion.” She almost sneered the last word. The religious class had always been jealous of the champions.

“I’ll find trials and challenge and destroy them to strengthen myself. I’ll do it the right way.”

“That would not meet the mandate. You must be strong. You must dominate your fellows and take their strength.”

“No.”

Once more, the divine spokeswoman moved her forehands to ask for peace and calm, but it was a mockery. The look in the eyes was one of malicious joy. It was enjoying forcing him the great chieftain to break with tradition. She would revel in his honour’s death. “It has been declared. There are two outcomes open for you. You obey your GOD and gain strength, or you cling to your honour and don’t. You heed my council and you go into the trial and you make them a place of death or you don’t and are sent your own death. That second outcome is guaranteed for you, providing you take the power of others. If you are too stubborn, then it will be your death the trail brings.”

Doubt filled the creature’s mind. It knew exactly what the divine speaker was saying. Betray his people’s history and bring glorious death to others or resist the threat to their heritage and be sacrificed for his effort.

She, the person he was in knew would always choose herself like she had demonstrated in how quickly she had abandoned Adrog. She didn’t care about their traditions and spiritual scarring that the choice she was demanding of him would bring. He could not accept it.

The dream broke up, and Tom soon found himself in a transition to standard sleep. In those brief moments of clarity, his mind absently mused over the bits and pieces he had learned. A process little more than his subconscious being applied to unravel a perplexing mystery. He hadn’t got anything directly actionable, but he could see the threads of the conspiracy being formed. On one side was the dragon and on the second was the GOBUS’s species. The humanoids with tails.

Both GODs were expecting the trials to wipe out the champions of the other competitor races. It was a little disturbing, especially if he was expected to be involved, but if it was a trial, he could refuse, which was good enough for him. Either he would find a way to beat the odds or decline the opportunity.

Tom drifted into normal sleep with a vague feeling of optimism despite the apparent threats being lined up against him. He was, of all things, learning to grow wood like Sonya had. He was busy constructing a home out of a massive tree, then his surroundings shifted again.

Once more, he was not in his own body.

It took him a moment to realise what was happening.

Horror filled him.

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He mentally tried to throw himself out of the vision.

But he was helpless against the power of True Dreaming. It did not care about his feelings.

This is not right! He screamed internally as he tried to yank himself clear.

He was inside Everlyn, experiencing a moment of her life… sharing her thoughts. He wouldn’t have worried about anyone else, but being in her mind was a violation. His skill completely disregarded his efforts. It was from late the previous evening. The sky was dark and visibility fading, not that affected Everlyn’s sight much. Context was immediately apparent because she was focused on the task. Jingyi had found a cave that they could stay in, and all she had to do was to ensure there were no enormous threats in the immediate area.

Fortunately, she was completely concentrated on the job.

She emerged from a crevice having checked and confirmed that the den was an old one. She sprinted through one of the strange groves with their thin trees and something twinged as her eyes flicked over a rock. It was yellower than the others around it, and Everlyn’s senses didn’t directly feel anything different. But in the dream state, Tom was aware of everything that Everlyn could sense even if she was not actively using her abilities. He could see that the rock was clearly tier three.

The dream thankfully broke up and Tom decided he would need to harvest the rock tomorrow. Tier three on the surface in such a low ranked zone was an unexpected windfall. It was like being back on earth kicking the ground and exposing some ancient gold coins.

Normal sleep crowded in and he was sucked into his more standard dreams before he was woken up by a hand on his chest.

He almost leapt up instinctively to fight.

“There’s no danger.”

“What? Why?” Tom glanced at the cave entrance. A curtain had been put up so he couldn’t see out, but if it was light enough to move, he should have been able to look through it. The edges were dark. “Why so early?”

In the soft light of the cave from the glowing embers, Keikain shrugged. “I left you till last.”

Still feeling disorientated Tom searched the cave. “Not what I asked?” his heart beat was normalising once more.

“I wanted to make sure that nothing delays us from leaving once it’s sufficiently light to travel.”

“Fair enough.” Tom’s massaged his temples as he tried to remember his dreams. There were lots of fragments of more mundane variety, but he remembered both of the True Dreaming visions and he shot a guilty look at Everlyn. He did not enjoy sharing her existence so intimately. Nothing personal had been revealed, but… The risk was there. “Good choice.” Tom admitted.

“Why?” Keikain asked suspiciously, catching the subtext of his tone.

“There’s some tier three rock. I need to harvest.”

“No. Absolutely not. Tom, I know you. I understand the desire to extract every bit of value you can, to etch out even the smallest advantage. I’m the same, but I can’t stress how important it is that we push on and keep going. We can’t afford the delays.”

“Relax. It’ll be quick. It’s practically on the way.”

The earth mage did not look convinced.

Everlyn was openly listening to their conversation. “Was it me or Jingyi that spotted it?”

Internally, Tom cursed. Of course, she would have picked up on that. “Spotted it or missed completely,” Tom said teasingly. “A tomato, tomato sort of thing.”

“So me then.” Everlyn interpreted matching his teasing tone. “Care to explain? When, where and in what circumstances?”

Tom recounted the vision as accurately as he could.

She nodded immediately. “I know where it is. If Jingyi and I escorted you and Keikain we should be able to harvest it and still be ready to leave at dawn without taking on too much risk.”

Keikain looked outside into the darkness, uncertainly.

Everlyn laughed at his expression. “What? Scared of the dark? We’re not on earth anymore.” To illustrate her point, her bow appeared in her hand, which let her radiate a dangerous vibe.

“Come on!” Keikain snapped. “The fact we’re not on Earth means we know that something nasty is out there.”

“We can wait for first light. It’s your choice, but you were the one in a rush…”

“And you’re sure it’s safe?”

She shrugged. “As safe as everything else.”

The earth mage still looked uncertain.

“While the rest of us still are Everlyn and Tom aren’t outranked by the area.” Jingyi interrupted. “Sure, I know the monsters are technically a couple of ranks higher than the two of them, but with their skills that’s irrelevant. They should be more than sufficient to meet the threat of whatever is out there. If it’s something stronger, then I would expect one of us will spot it earlier enough to avoid it.”

“Fine. We’ll go.” Keikain decided after a moment. “We’ll eat first.” The mage went over to the campfire his body language grumpy.

Tom smiled, amused by the situation. He would never have guessed the man would be so cautious about fighting, but then again you didn’t survive in the tutorial for decades without being careful and then selective around the battles you picked.

Everlyn sidled up next to him. “I don’t like him.”

Without clarifying, he knew that her skill was blocking sound. “Nor do I, but his strength will be welcome.”

“I still think…”

“Enough Everlyn. We don’t need every single conversation to be about this. It’s exhausting.”

“Fine,” she said, sounding annoyed.

Keikain brought over a bowl for both of them. They ate a strained breakfast of savoury porridge that he had prepared to get them through the day.

There was a ding telling him he had a buff.

Tom stepped into his system room and checked quickly.

Buff of endurance.

Non-combat activities tire you 35% less for the next 8 hours

He returned to their cave. “This has a nice bonus.”

“Yes.” Everlyn agreed distractedly still sending evil eyes Keikain’s way. “He purchased a cooking skill.” It was clear from the buff it had not been an altruistic purchase. It was purely to allow them to travel faster.

With breakfast complete. The four of them left, and the sky in the direction that he had deemed east was noticeably lighter. It would not be long till it would be light enough for all of them to move. Jingyi disappeared into the shadows almost immediately.

“Overwatch,” Everlyn told them through the party chat. “He’ll use party chat to give us advanced warning of any monster that gets near us.”

“Rodger.” They heard Jingyi whisper magically into their ears.

Everlyn led them unerringly towards the location she had identified from his description as their target. In short order, they reached a crevice that he recognised more through a strong sense of déjà vu rather than via precise memories. Tom focused, the colours were off and he could only tell it was the same spot from his dream because the geography surrounding it matched up and the intricate web in the corner was the same.

“Is this it?”

Tom was startled at the question. “Yes.”

She nodded and then kept going. Tom jogging behind her, recognised shapes that were consistent with his dream. Similar, but not the same. It was disconcerting, but he guessed it was something about their eyes being different so Everlyn saw more or focused on alternative features of the world than what he did. He wondered if there was something to be learned from that but True Dreaming was not near selective enough for him to explore that thought.

Despite the incongruity, he was confident that if Everlyn was not here, he could take over and find the way. There was no need. She unerringly tracked the same path she had in the dream. They entered the grove and almost immediately and picked through the middle, similar to what Everlyn had done the day before and then the rock was in front of them. Both he and Keikain went over to it and Tom extended his Remote Earth manipulation to get a feel for what they had discovered. He was impressed by the size of the deposit.

“This is high grade granite. Tier three plus, so to speak. It’s developed its own aura.”

Tom could see the aura, too. Not what type it was, but that it existed. It could be almost anything from making the stone more malleable or tougher or granting elemental offensive or defensive powers? Or pretty much anything that magic could do, but aura’s were free while magic required a source of power.

Unfortunately, aura’s fell into the crafting bucket of knowledge. They were not something he had cared about and while he knew about them he did not know how to assess their tier or even their effect without exhausting trial and error. “Can you tell what the aura is?”

“I would say mountain permanence.”

“What the hell? Kei… What’s that. Are you making stuff up now?” Tom smiled at the end of his rant to ensure that Keikain understood it was a good-natured one.

“No, not at all. That’s what it is. If you’re thinking about your golem, it will give it a boost in toughness, resistance to attacks that cause erosion and hot or cold strikes.”

“That sounds useful.”

Keikain’s power was probing the rock that the stone had emerged from. “The seam extends a fair way back. In total, there’s probably a few tons worth of stuff available, though only the components close to the surface are likely to have the aura. What do you want to do?”

“We could get it all and sell it.”

Keikain shook his head. “That’ll take both of us hours.”

“But the credits.”

“Are not worth my life.”

Tom considered his next golem. “Half a ton then. If you can generate twenty kilo bricks, that would be perfect.”

“Sure… Just get me to do the simple stuff.”

“It’s not that hard.”

“It is!” Keikain snapped. “The granite’s tier is three with an aura. Shaping the rocks will be difficult.”

“Fine, give me whatever you can get.”

The earth mage nodded. “Thanks.” His magic pressed into the rock.

“Should I help?”

“I can handle this.” As he watched, the first chunks fell out of the large stone mess.