CHAPTER 193

Tom suffered through a barrage of questions about the third race, but there wasn’t much more he could tell them. He had shared the champion’s mind during a period of introspection, which was the only reason he had extracted the breadth of knowledge that he had. It had been at night, in a dark cave there and while it had worked through its thoughts on various issues, it hadn’t opened its eyes ones. He received little in the way of tangible information about the species.

The interrogation broke down, and everyone fell back into their normal roles. They returned to their usual spots in their temporary shelter. Tom jumped to his feet and went through his standard fitness routine. Simple stuff starting with push-ups, sit-ups, squats and burpees before he transitioned into the various spear kata’s he had learnt in the tutorial. An hour and a half later, with his legs trembling, he sunk down, ate a snack as he watched the team he had brought together.

They still were not bonding and he sort of wished he could get everyone drunk and solve the problem that way. That wasn’t about to happen. The cursed were involved in a heated, secretive conversation. As always, they had their cloaking magic covering them and he only noticed when he forced his brain to focus on where they sat. Their body language was in its normal state. Sven, with his slightly defensive expression, Keikain cool and collected and Clare as she was during most of their private moments appeared visibly frustrated.

Tom didn’t bother trying to read their lips. Experience had taught him it was a hopeless exercise.

Michael sat down next to him. “I bet this isn’t going how you expected it to go?”

He chuckled darkly. “You could say that. I never intended for us to descend into the underground for one.”

“Yep. That was a screwup, but who could have predicted a monster driving our team down here and now being pinned by other monsters battling. It’s like the GODs conspired against us.”

“If they did, there is nothing we can do but endure.”

Michael slapped him on the back. “That’s not the fighting spirit I expect from you.”

“Oh, I’m just biding my time, but True Dreaming showed that eventually I’ll get my chance of revenge.”

“You mean the whole glimpse of you fighting gods? Do you think that was real or a whimsical illusion created during skill integration?”

“It doesn’t feel like it could be real.” Tom admitted. “The gulf in power is unimaginable… Was…” Tom corrected. “Now I’ve had the vision I can imagine it perfectly well.”

“Fever dreams.” Michael agreed. “Are they are going to crack?” The healer’s eyes were on the killers.

Tom sighed. “I don’t know how they won’t. The deadline they have is real.”

“Yeah, Sven mentioned it.”

“And there really hasn’t been an opportunity to go after the sapient? No point while I slept that we couldn’t have escaped this.”

“Would you have supported that?”

Tom hesitated, then shrugged. “I might have let the three of them leave and attempt it on their own. I’m not sure I would risk the entire group.”

“That was our consensus, too. But it’s a moot point. We have a system to judge whether it is safe to sneak out. A danger rating, so to speak and if it drops below five, we can leave.”

“Out of ten?”

The healer nodded.

“And let me guess it has never dropped below nine?”

“Close Tom.” Michael leaned back against the wall. “There was a thirty-minute period when it fell to eight and then those sparrow things arrived and drove the risk straight up to ten. Harry had to rush out front and spend a shit load of auction credits to strengthen our protections. Eighty percent of what you gave him.”

Tom whistled appreciatively. “Well, I’m glad he was holding them.”

“Yes. But that’s the other problem. Even if the threat drops, it doesn’t mean that something else isn’t about to come that will drive it up. If we had snuck out when it was eight…”

“Was that ever a realistic option.”

“Everlyn theoretically could have, but she would have been discovered and died when those sparrows came. I hate this waiting.”

“I don’t mind it too much. The movies are interesting for a while,” Tom nodded at the ritual that Harry maintained to let them see outside. He had boosted the size of the image displayed, turning it almost into a home theatre level display. “And when it gets repetitive… well that’s when… well I just go and have a nap.”

“The Skills I suggested.”

“Helping… I reckon I’ve got it under control. I know when to push and when I need to have normal sleep.”

“Great.” Michael handed him a scrap of paper.

Tom picked it up and examined it. “What’s this…” He read the line that had been printed. “A prayer? You’ve changed the words. Was the other one not working?”

Michael frowned. “Not as well as we needed it to. Too many things, while not breaking the ritual were fixating on the spot and forcing us to burn energy to stop them from getting through. This new wording should fix that problem and Harry felt the mana drain wasn’t sustainable.”

That didn’t make a lot of sense to Tom. From what he could tell, the prayer had only recently been changed and the energy reserves were at full. If the threat was real, he would have expected them to be depleted. “I don’t understand.”

“Oh that,” Michael waved the complaint away. “I asked the same things. Harry feels that the danger level is increasing. The high perception enemies have an advantage in these conditions.”

Tom followed Michael’s glance at the ritual image. There were sections of the landscape where the ambient magic had aspected. Areas filled with billowing poison or white fiery flames and other more exotic outcomes where the laws of physics no longer fully applied. “He didn’t want any strain on the system because the sparrows were only a transitory threat, but now, he fears that something as perceptive as a sparrow might come along and instead of dying it would find a niche for itself and become a permanent menace.”

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“Fine. I’ll use these new words from now on.” Having memorised the prayer he went to hand it back but Michael shook to his head.

“Keep it. I wrote that one out especially for you.”

On the broadcast image, a fresh wave of monsters was moving in. You could tell because the fighting stopped and all the survivors moved towards the welcoming cliffs. They moved from the centre so they wouldn’t be the primary target of whatever new monster wave arrived.

Tom watched the instinctive cunning that let these diverse creatures achieve the truce to allow themselves to fold away like that. It was a rapid fire evolution. All the individuals or species that were unwilling to delay a fight based on the fear of something else approaching had long since died.

The images brought by the ritual had stilled. They watched quietly, and it was almost five minutes before the new monsters emerged. They came up the dead centre of the canyon. A party of five giant lizards. A clear family, a dad a mum and three juveniles. Unfortunately, the ritual was limited to the visual spectrum and did not let the magic frequencies go through. If it did, Tom knew they would absolutely glow with power. Five individuals, but really two if you discounted the children.

That was interesting. Each of those adults individually would be almost as deadly as that white gorilla had been, and it had nearly singly handily opened the blockage.

“This should be good.” Michael muttered to himself. “It’s been over a day since we’ve had a Titan. That half dog man thing.”

“Gorilla.” Tom snorted.

“Well, I can see why you would say that, but no. It was a far closer to a were-wolf than a gorilla. It didn’t have the muscles.”

“It doesn’t matter, Michael,” Tom interrupted. “Whatever it was died and there was only one of them, so I don’t think it was breeding.”

The lizards knew something was up. It would take a particularly moronic creature not to see the desolation and the mountains of corpses, but some of the more instinct based monsters ignored the signs. Not these creatures. They stopped.

The lead lizard raised its head. Just like it had in the dragon and wyvern, energy gathered in its throat. This was black and condensed. It breathed coughed and blobs of blackness burst out of its open mouth. Not one, but hundreds… they rained down on everything in front of the lizard from five metres out to two hundred. The black pellets guided by magic formed a perfect half circle.

Everything that had been too arrogant to retreat to the cliffs or to slow to recognise the need to flee died as those globules dropped upon them. Living or dead, it did not matter. Everything rotted and decayed. Flesh was the fastest, but the bone was not far behind. Within thirty seconds, the rock of the underground in an imperfect half circle around it was revealed. The mass of flesh that had rested upon it had vanished and been replaced by a thin black mist that swirled on top of the impenetrable rock. There was most likely a slight sound of hissing as the mist continued to attack the occasional piece of stubborn matter that hadn’t given way immediately.

“Wow, that’s impressive.” Michael said.

Tom, if anything was unimpressed. It had been a flashy ability, but was probably not something it could use regularly. If the beast was smart, it would have kept it for later or used it as a smaller area of effect attack to preserve its magic. The grand gesture was wasteful.

Against the creatures arrayed against it and the subtle ways they applied their own powers now they had been forged in this monster crucible Tom was confident of the outcome. If they had been a dozen of the lizards, it would have been different, but there were only two. He watched the fight anyway.

The lizards advanced as a group slowly and cautiously.

The battle hardened mix of monsters would then strike hard and fast. The ones attacking were those that the lizard’s advance had brought within the range of the big ability. The monsters left were not stupid. They had a good amount of cunning and could calculate who the advance had left exposed, and those creatures were the ones that attacked. A mixture of species with a range of abilities that complicated the lizard’s capacity to counter. The first, second and third waved died, but the lizards suffered small wounds. On the fifth wave, the second largest juvenile drowned in a flood of pink fish. On the sixth, the mum lost one of her legs. Then during the seventh the smallest was crushed, and the dad had a nasty burn delivered to it shoulder.

By this stage, they had closed almost to the wall and would start to face stronger opponents. It was over Tom decided. The lizards would win the next few engagements, but they had already lost the war. They were being too cautious and moving too slowly. By the time they cleared a quarter of the forces massed against them, the next monster would come up its backside and they would be swept away.

Bored, he looked away and decided he had been awake long enough. While he could use his stimulus skills that Michael had encouraged him to buy in order to artificially boost himself, he could also just accept the need to sleep. He lied down and had a nap without forcing a vision.

It didn’t help. Within moments of closing his eyes, True Dreaming kicked in.

Once more, he was looking down from the vantage point far above the bottom of the canyon where Tom knew his actual body hid.

This time, instead of watching the interactions in glee the mind he was in had several textbooks spread out in front of him and was scribbling notes down.

Instantly, Tom was able to comprehend what the point of the activity was. The scientist wanted to forecast when the breakdown of the circular migration would finish.

The mind kept focusing on the fundamentals. His eyes once more studied the numbers he had taken down earlier to drive his predictions. The key figures had been circled. The length of circular eight was two and a half thousand kilometres. That meant they were over six hundred boss type packs of monsters circulating. That was an estimate on the average distance between the groups, but he knew the estimation could be off by up to a hundred in either direction, but that didn’t matter too much to his conclusions.

Other numbers were circled, which were probably relevant. Historically, antidotes on the number of boss packs consumed. It was a large percentage that almost always finished up at between twenty and thirty percent of total packs in the circular. The prevalent theory that, of course could not be easily tested explained it as that was how long the propagation of a sudden lack of pressure took to travel around and slow the incoming packs.

For circular eight, that meant somewhere between a hundred and twenty and two hundred monster packs had to die before the plug that had formed could be dislodged. In terms of time that was four to seven days, which was more than he hoped, but obvious when you did the mathematics. He didn’t know why he hadn’t done the calculations straight away.

Below him there was a shift as a new type of creature appeared. Hopefully, this would be one of the ones in his list as the last few had been random monsters which had come at the wrong time. It was hard to predict anything when the information he was working off was so old and out of date.

Decay Breath Lizards, he thought in excitement even as he referenced the key book. He had seen them before. The fat furry finger traced down the page and then the claw came out and jabbed on a line halfway down. Two adults and eight stage one juveniles. The person looked again. Two adults remained and three juveniles, but they were stage three now. The dates and times lined up.

Finally, the list was back on track.

“Fixed.” The person muttered. “The order was screwed for a while. There must have been a mini break that hasn’t been reflected in the reports yet, but providing the next monster is a Metal Stork then we’re back on track.” He was tempted to use a scry spell to find out immediately, but stopped himself. That was wasteful especially when it would only save forty minutes.

His finger went down almost fifty monster names before stopping on a circle. There was a sense of excitement from it. “If we’re back on track, then there are still two full days before the next potential breakpoint. And practically the frost boulders only have about a forty percent chance of breaking the deadlock.” His fingers tracked down another thirty names before coming to rest again. Once more on a circle. Then the finger traced down further. Over the next fifteen names were a further five circles. Tom understood that the symbol represented creatures they could break through the barrier that had been created. “Potentially finished in two, but almost definitely in three.” The alien snapped the book closed in satisfaction. It had a timeline for the event and could stop worrying about it finishing prematurely.

The True Dream ended.