CHAPTER 169

Minutes passed and half a tonne of material had been extracted but the volume of each chunk that Keikain produced was falling. Initially, he had pulled out twenty to thirty kilograms every minute, but that had decreased to only five.

Time, Tom knew had run out. It was almost light enough that by now even those who lacked a relevant skill could traverse the uneven ground without twisting their ankles.

Tom dropped his hand onto Keikain’s shoulder and squeezed. “Enough.”

Keikain startled, peered around him and with a groan he stood. “Tom! You let me work for too long. We should have left already.”

Tom chuckled. “No, we’ve got time.”

“No, we don’t. It’s almost full light. We need to go.” Keikain went to run back the way they had come.

“Wait!” Tom grabbed him by the elbow. “Stop! We’ve heaps of time.” He looked up at the sky. “It’ll be another ten minutes till it’s light enough to set off for those without skills like you. That’s plenty of time to get you back without risking a twisted ankle. Follow me.” Tom set off.

“I… Um… Fine.” The earth mage conceded grumpily.

Tom moved briskly, slowing when traversing the rocky sections and jogging over the flatter ground. When they reached the cave, not only was everything packed up and ready to go the others were waiting outside.

“Dangerous,” Tom muttered to himself. They should have stayed safe in the cave until the scouts got back. If a monster was stalking them, none of them possessed the skills to recognise the threat. Any semi decent ambush predator would have got the drop on them and with the rank discrepancy. “Stupid.” He stated firmly under his breath.

“No,” Everlyn disagreed quietly next to him. “Jingyi had over watch and I asked them to come out.”

“Oh,” Tom said, feeling foolish. They were all from the tutorial. Of course, they wouldn’t have made that type of basic mistake. He rubbed his forehead already feeling the start of a tension headache. He did not feel quite as on top of things as he normally did.

They headed off and once more Tom in the vanguard position set a punishing pace; it was the least he could do to thank Keikain for extracting all the granite for him.

The travel went smoothly.

“Wait.” Michael commanded abruptly, with a worried tone. The sun was almost directly overhead.

Almost instantly, everyone’s alert level rose as they searched for what the healer had spotted.

“There’s no imminent threat.” Michael said, sounding apologetic. “These stones.” He crouched down next to a stone that was as large as him. It looked like it had been smashed into the ground at high speed.

“It’s the remnants of an old battle.” Clare said, with a bored and uninterested tone. “You can tell by the moss.”

“Yes, I can see that.” Michael said grumpily. “But it’s not that old. Two years at most.”

Tom had noticed the stones and assumed it was the residual of some high-level spell and then ignored it because of how long ago it had happened. He was not sure why Michael was making a fuss. This was not the first one they had passed and if it was a problem, he would have expected it to be raised earlier.

Michael, appearing concerned was moving through the layout of the human sized rock shards.

While he did, Tom attempted to understand what he was seeing. Each of the ten or more rocks looked like shaped cones or wedges that have been driven in the ground with a massive hammer. Each of them was as tall as him.

“Why do you care?” Clare challenged.

The healer paused with a disgruntled expression. “Two years is not very long.”

“In this world, it’s almost an eternity,” Clare said dismissively. She was irritated and exhausted by the speed they were travelling. “Whatever caused this probably hasn’t stayed around. We need to keep moving.”

“This is the fourth of these this morning.”

“Sixth,” Everlyn corrected. They all jumped a little. None of them had heard her approach. “That’s the sixth that you would have been able to see. There are more out beyond your sight lines. I’ve seen fourteen.”

“Is it from a local dominant monster?” Michael asked.

She shrugged. “Presumably.”

“Should we try a different pass?” The healer pressed. “I mean, if this way is leading into its territory. It would be sort of stupid to keep going.”

Everlyn shook her head slightly. “Jingyi and I have been talking about it. We haven’t figured out a position. We’re not ignoring it. We don’t want to run into anything that can do that.” She waved at a spike that had cracked a boulder in half. “But from their age and distribution it’s not happening regularly and we don’t know anything about the cause. It might be a monster that flies over in the middle of the night in which case we’re not at risk. Or it might be a monster with a defined hunting ground.”

“If that’s the case surely we need to avoid it.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“Its territory could stretch across the mountains. We just can’t tell.”

“Could we survive if one attacked us?” Michael asked heatedly. “We can’t ignore…”

Everlyn raised her hands to stop the tirade. “It’s all speculation till we get more data. We’re aware of the risk and monitoring. We don’t even know if this is attacking anything. It might be art.”

“Bullshit.” Michael snapped. “You can infer how this battle progressed. A party, pack, herd, or whatever was attacked here. They scattered, and the attacks followed them. See that cluster.” he pointed at a group of smaller spikes Tom had not noticed about fifty metres away. “One escaped, and it got pinned down with a scatter shot equivalent.”

“It could have gone like that.” Everlyn conceded. “And we think it is probably evidence of something powerful hunting, but we don’t know if it is a threat to us personally. And whatever did this might not be around anymore. It’s not like any of the sites we’ve passed have been made in the last couple of weeks.”

Michael chuckled at her wording. “Not in the last couple of weeks. I assume that means that you found one only a month old?”

Everlyn did not respond, but that was answer enough.

“If that’s the case continuing seems dangerous.” Michael pressed. “Something has its home or hunting ground here and the attack sites have been getting more frequent haven’t they.”

“Probably not more frequent.” She did not sound convincing.

“We need a different route?” Michael rounded on Tom.

He didn’t react in the least.

“Guys.” The healer opened his arms up and extended his plea to everyone else.

They all looked at each other, and internally Tom groaned. Michael was the only one amongst them who would be described as leadership material. If it was only Michael’s voice, he knew how this would end up, and he didn’t want that. “If Everlyn thinks it’s too dangerous, she’ll tell us. In the meantime, we keep going.”

Michael grimaced at that and smacked one of the spikes of rock next to him. That particular stone had not penetrated as deep as some others and came up to Michael’s waist. “Are you sure Tom?”

He shrugged. “We’ve all gone through the tutorial. Did anyone really expect a two-week trip along foothills and between mountains to be peaceful?”

“Well… No… But… Not anything as powerful as this.” Michael tapped a spike.

“Risk free and with no major fights.” Tom shook his head as he interrupted Michael. “I’m actually surprised that we’ve got this far without injuries.”

“You’re right.” Michael conceded. “I just thought that with a threat this large and…” the healer frowned. “With us being as weak as we are. I don’t want us to all be wiped out in a split second without even seeing our killers.”

“If they’re big, we’ll see them ahead of time and be able to run.” Everlyn pointed out. “If they’re small… Well, I don’t know how that is possible in a rank fifteen or whatever this area is.”

“Yeah, I considered that.” Michael told her. “But you said you’ve seen fourteen of these in a morning. Whatever did this is out there.”

“And striking once a month, on average.” Everlyn interrupted tiredly. “We’ll be unlucky to run into whatever it is.”

“We’re not retreating,” Tom declared having come to a decision. “We need to get to civilisation as quickly as possible for...” Tom scowled as he nodded to Clare and Keikain. He saw Thor’s dark look when he looked at his former friends. That was another potential future problem. Tom forced himself to smile. “Plus, we have a destination and I’m not deviating from the fastest route over a nebulous threat.”

“It’s hardly nebulous.” Michael slapped the spike. “This is solid.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do.” Michael acknowledged.

Tom watched the healer weigh up everyone else in the group, testing their resolve.

The fight sagged out of him. “You’re the boss Tom. If we’re accepting the risk, we might as well keep going.”

They continued on. Hours passed. They had lunch while walking, and they received another buff.

Buff of travel.

Travel pace increased by five percent while not in combat for two hours.

The buff was small, and not as good as the breakfast one, but it was better than nothing, and their speed improved marginally.

They no longer moved in formation. Tom remained in his vanguard position happy to travel in his own personal pocket of solitude. The killers were at the back in their own group with the other five alternating who they travelled with. Currently Toni and Thor were carrying out a hushed conversation while Michael, Rahmat and Harry speculated around the creature that had thrown, launched or conjured the rock spikes. They all had different theories.

“Prepare for battle.” Everlyn’s voice crackled abruptly over the party chat.

Tom jerked out of his trance. He had been zoning out and had been focusing only on his immediate progress, spending all of his focus on making sure he was not leading himself or others into an ambush.

Mentally, he cursed his inattention to the wider world. How? After all of his experience could he…

His eyes scanned for the enemy.

There was a twang and a projectile shot through the air and slammed into a large rock eighty metres away almost directly in front of him. The rock shifted stood and moved with a strange gait toward them. Its motion was an amalgamation of rolling and crab crawling.

“Rock elemental.” Jingyi said cheerfully via party chat.

The monster was enormous and easily the size of an elephant. “And why didn’t we just go around it?” Tom asked the scout in annoyance.

“Blame your travelling companions.” Jingyi shot back immediately. “It had seen us. And we’re following the course of an old river and that elemental is right in the way. The terrain further out is nearly unpassable, or at least a pain to navigate. Lots of large crevices, vertical cliffs and stuff.”

Tom could see what Jingyi was referring to. If he squinted, he could see that they were walking along the bottom of an old river with the banks almost a hundred metres away from him. Without the prompt from Jingyi, it wouldn’t have registered.

His lack of sleep, or at least the broken sleep was definitely affecting him. His usual awareness of his surroundings was failing. It was a problem for him to address later and maybe Michael’s suggestion about specific skills was not so stupid.

That was an issue for tonight. For now, he needed to focus on the coming battle. The creature was rushing toward them and Tom’s sighed. He might not have tank skills outside stopping charges, but in these situations he was the designated tank by dint of his ranks. Everyone else was more squishy than him, so he was required to take the lead. Not that he minded the extra responsibility. A central role would present him with opportunities to grow faster.

He sprinted forward to get twenty metres in front of the others and scooped up a small boulder that was a struggle to lift, at least till he got a proper grip on it. He put it on his shoulder and heaved it shot put style at the monster descending on them.

Throw rock.

He triggered his spell as the heavy stone left his hand. It instantly accelerated and crossed the twenty-five metres separating them to impact the elemental with an almighty crash.

The stone he had launched shattered completely while the elemental barely looked affected.

Tom groaned at that result.

He was not sure his attack had even chipped the enemy. Which meant its base composition had to be tier one or two. That suggested if he was going to hurt it, he would have to use his special ammo instead of random rocks plucked off the ground.

Crying a little on the inside. A chunk of the tier three granite appeared in his hands. It was only slightly larger than a golf ball and had been pre-shaped into a disk to maximise its aerodynamic properties.

He pulled his hand back behind his head, elbow out, and then launched.

Throw Rock.

That was sure to hurt it.