CHAPTER 208

They ripped Thor mercilessly for a couple of minutes until the man’s cheeks were red with embarrassment.

“The next pack just arrived.” Jingyi interrupted quietly. “I think you can describe them as humanoids with four legs and forearms.”

“How on earth can something with four legs and arms be described as a humanoid?” Michael guffawed.

“If you ever see them, you’ll understand. They have no visible weapons. Scrap that.” Jingyi said after a moment. “They use magic and lots of it. The pack numbers about a hundred. Two-thirds adults and a third juvenile.”

“Jingyi,” Everlyn interrupted. “Might be best if you pull back your familiar. We don’t know what their perception skills are like.”

Jingyi’s face went still. It was analogous to when someone entered their system room but nowhere near as extreme. “Done. I’ve got her perched in the inner cave up on the ceiling where it first gets higher. She’ll provide us with a warning if they find us.”

“Good.” Everlyn looked thoughtful. “We’ll sit for fifteen. Confirm with your bird that they’ve continued their migration.”

“Then what?” Michael asked.

Everlyn shrugged unconcerned. “Same plan as last time. Jingyi will scout backwards and I’ll go forwards. We’ll push long and as fast but when our window closes, we’ll hide.”

“Are we being too cautious?” Keikain interrupted. “We seem to be afraid of two packs coming together. Is that actually a real risk? Like we engineered the collision between the scorpoise and antelopes. Why couldn’t we have followed in the shadow of the scorpoise for ever?.”

“Because the antelopes were actively hunting us.” Jingyi reminded them.

“Not that specific example,” Keikain said in frustration. “I mean with a generic pack. Why can’t we follow them for days? Why are we planning to hide? If the gap closes to ten minutes, surely that is not a problem if we know it won’t close further. Aren’t we being a bit too conservative.”

The two scouts looked at each other.

“That was our plan a week ago when we first got down here,” Everlyn said finally. “Of course we put precautions, fail safes in place, but we never planned on them being activated.”

She stopped talking. They all knew that those risk management methods had ended up being required.

“But?” Keikain prompted. “Why?”

Jingyi sighed. “It didn’t work. Our presence upsets the flow. When we duck into a hiding spots or more precisely when you guys without skills hide, then everything sort of clicks back to normal.”

“We might have more leeway now. After all, who knows what the flow affects from that circular breakdown are.” Everlyn said. “We’ll watch the signs, but it’s pretty clear when the front group slows down while the back pack speeds up that we can’t keep pushing things. Plus, I don’t know how much attention you guys have paid to the signs of previous battles as we’ve been travelling the packs clash regularly. It’s why the antelopes and scorpoise were so balanced. If they weren’t, one of the monster packs would have been wiped out ages ago.”

“But you’ll push if you can?” Keikain pressed.

“Absolutely.” Everlyn said without the annoyance Tom was expecting.

As he sat on the grass chatting with Thor and Michael, he observed the dynamic of the team. It was definitely changing. Everlyn rather than her lips pursing in annoyance whenever she looked at Keikain was actually having a mostly civil conversation with him. When he listened in, it was all very practical with Everlyn attempting to understand the earth mage’s strengths and weaknesses to better plan future engagements.

Harry came out of his coma looking worse for wear. When Tom checked with Healing Tranquillity the majority of venom had been purged. A small amount was left, but Harry’s natural healing would eventually fix it up, though he suspected Michael would continue helping until it was all purged.

Clare handed Harry a plate of food. “Eat it, it will help.”

Thor sat next to the recovering man and nudged him with his elbow. “I can’t believe you tanked a stinger blow.”

Harry grimaced. “Not my best fighting decision.”

“You managed to kill it through.”

Harry shook his head. “I didn’t expect the venom. It hurt.”

The two of them bantered for a couple of minutes while Harry ate. The meal Clare had given him was clearly something with medical properties because the ritualist perked up.

“Tom,” Thor asked quietly, “have you considered farming some of these mini boss packs?”

He almost jumped at the question. “What?” The idea of him fighting the pack of antelopes by himself was terrifying. “I don’t think that’s particularly feasible.”

“I saw some of your fight with a lizard. In particular, when you were using the antelopes and scorpoise as stepping stones to let you effectively fly. If you can do that while battling a high level monster, I can’t see why you couldn’t take down an entire pack.”

Tom shook his head in denial. “No, I can’t.”

“You could,” Thor disagreed. “If we found another herd of antelopes or any melee base monsters, particularly if they’re biased towards strength instead of speed. Once you survive the first couple of minutes, then your victory is sort of inevitable.”

“It’s not. I’ll slow down when I get tired.”

“With how your healing works, that’s not going to happen very fast.” Michael told him. “I think Thor’s made a good point. Before we leave the circular system, you definitely should find a favourable match up and give it a go.”

“Sounds like suicide to me.”

Thor shook his head. “We’re on our way to fight one of four civilised species. I know it’s not clear which one it is yet, but they’re all stronger than us. Which one is chosen doesn’t matter when we currently have no chance against any of them. We have to get stronger. As we are.” Thor lowered his voice. “As you are, the border guards will crush us. We… you need to grow. Is the answer taking on a pack?” Thor shrugged. “I don’t know, but I wouldn’t dismiss it. Yes, it’s high risk, but think of the rewards.”

“I’m not going to… and Keikain and Clare can’t afford to waste time.”

“It won’t be a waste of time,” Thor insisted. “If you’re ranked at twenty as opposed to fifteen and we run into some terror sapients, we’ve got a lot higher chance of subduing them. That will give those two time to make the sacrifice. If you’re still rank fifteen, do you really think we have any chance against sapients we run into down here or on the surface?”

“You know what you’re suggesting is ridiculous.”

Thor shook his head vigorously. “It’s not and once you’re broken a pack, then the rest of us can get involved. That will give us all an opportunity to get stronger.”

“Each of these packs is a hundred times stronger than me.”

“Against the right opponent,” Everlyn interrupted. “Thor’s got a point. The only problem I see is can we engage and finish the fight in the forty-minute window.”

She looked over at Jingyi, and the other scout shrugged. “No reason we can’t force two packs to fight again.”

“It will all come down to the matchup.” She smiled at him.

Tom hated how that made him catch his breath. She was extraordinarily beautiful and more importantly competent.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“I think we’ll definitely keep our eyes open. Surviving one versus one against a rank twenty seven lizard shows what you’re capable of.”

“It was one lizard, and you took two.”

“True, and one of mine was ranked twenty eight,” she grinned at him. “But my point remains you survived against that higher rank. You fought in on even terms.”

“I used fate to bolster myself.”

Everlyn rolled her eyes. “That’s still you. I used fate too, and I only survived because I burnt a cool down that is going to take me another month to get back. If you can fight a rank twenty seven one-on-one and there’s no reason you can’t match ten rank twenties … and if that’s the case with how your dodge skill functions then you can destroy an entire pack. Only so many can reach you at once, and eventually the fate you build becomes overwhelming.”

“Evie. You’re talking crazy.”

“We’ll see. But from the signal that Jingyi just sent me it’s time for us to move. Same plan as last time. Give us five minutes head start and then get going.”

Michael rummaged through his pack and pulled out the stone they had used on that first day in the canyon. It was linked to one that Everlyn possessed and could be used as an emergency flare to tell them to seek shelter. “Ready.”

Everlyn nodded, and the two scouts disappeared. Five minutes later Tom crawled out of the tunnel and back into the underground. The next pack had gone through and had not eaten all the left over bodies. Some corpses had vanished, but most were still on the ground, though rarely unmolested. The critters travelling in the current section of the migration were enjoying the free food. Tom could spot wolf like animals, various bird life and even some all to large snakes. Apart from the ones eating, the rest of the critters were migrating slowly with the unspoken current. As he had observed previously, they were not on the march. It was just that eight out of ten were moving in the same direction.

The circular had definitely reset.

The day passed in a blur. They continued to run as far as they could, travelling five minutes behind the leading pack and holding that position until it was clear it was becoming too dangerous at which point they would retreat into a pre-planned hideaway that Everlyn had set up.

The longest unbroken stretch of travel was two and a half hour and the shortest about twenty minutes. The amount of waiting they had to do was annoying with every stop being between fifteen and thirty minutes, but they soldiered on.

On Tom’s count, they had been travelling for fourteen hours and he had been expecting the scouts to call a stop for the last three, but they had pushed on. Ahead of them, Everlyn waved them down.

“We’re stopping for the night,” Keikain said quietly, reflecting everyone else’s thoughts.

“We’ll see,” Michael said. “Everlyn is this for the night?”

“Yes.”

When they reached her, she escorted them through a narrow crevice in the cliff walls. It opened up into a cave with a hard packed floor that wound upwards. For the underground, it was surprisingly symmetric, being almost perfectly round. It was a terrain feature that must have been borrowed from a world that had burrowing creatures large enough to eat elephants.

Everlyn led them confidently through the steadily rising and winding tunnels for over ten minutes. After that, they left the artificial caves and entered more traditional ones. These had rough edges, stalactites and stalagmites and were full of twists and random upthrusts of rocks. The consistency of the earlier journey was gone and sometimes there was space for them to walk ten abreast, and other times it was exclusively single file.

They entered a cave that was clearly their final destination. Everlyn nodded in satisfaction. “Not as good as some of the others we’ve stayed in… but,” she waved at the corner where they could hear dripping water. “There’s liquid…”

He almost flinched as he suffered a flashback to the first few months of the tutorial where he had spent hours per day, lying flat on the floor with his tongue out to catch each of the infrequent drops.

“Space to sleep, ventilation to support a fire,” she pointed upwards at a narrow crack in the roof.

Tom couldn’t sense anything above them, but Everlyn had probably picked up a slight breeze from the crack and so was confident that they were not isolated.

“And a very defensible entrance. It’s almost perfect.”

“Agreed.” Michael said. “I don’t know how you found it, but this will do.”

There was a bustle of activity as everyone prepared their living quarters. Cups and some pots were placed under the dripping area to collect water. Their water pouches were full, so they didn’t technically need to do it but they were all experienced adventurers and knew the importance of water in survival and would not waste any resources if they could help it.

“It should be safe to light the fire.” Everlyn told Keikain. “We’ll monitor the smoke, but I’m confident the vent will work.”

“Are we worried about monsters smelling the smoke?” Michael asked.

“Not really. Even if they do, they won’t be able to come down because it’s literally going through cracks and this whole area is mostly deadlands. Not much of anything lives in here.”

“Why?”

Everlyn glanced at Michael with a confused expression. “Why’s the sky blue?” she shrugged. “There are just low life areas in the underground. I don’t need to know why only how to exploit it.”

The fire was lit, and then large chunks of meat were fried. There were no attempts to create special food, and what was served was just a tasty steak.

Tom, as always was not considered for watch duty and he settled down to sleep immediately and used his skills to expedite it. Prior to using Instant Sleep he had focused on getting a dream to help with a trial. He was not at all surprised when he found himself thrust straight into a True Dream.

The mind he was in was strange. The physical sensation was completely different too anything he had experienced before. From what he could tell, the body he was in did not have limbs or the normal senses that Tom was used to. There was no touch, smell or sight, at least not one that used the visual spectrum like humans. While he could not see as such Tom was aware of everything around him, sort of like how his Spark domain functioned.

He was in a dwelling of some type created from smooth planks of wood.

“Child, I don’t know why we’re having this conversation.” The body he was in generated the words but not like humans. They were not audible. There was no propagation of sound waves audible to a human ear instead it was a mixture of light, manipulation of the domain and the emotions communicated by low frequency sound.

Tom should not have been mentally capable of understanding what was being conveyed, but because he was in the creature’s mind he understood all of it.

“I came to seek guidance.”

“One must stay true to oneself.” The mind he was in felt pity for the person opposite him. As much as it was tempting to solve the issue by being more direct, such a course would not help it grow in the long run.

“I don’t understand.”

“Maybe you can rephrase your dilemma.”

The creature bowed its head. “We are missionaries of God. We seek to elevate the lives of all we touch. Existentia is a far harsher place than our home, but that makes our calling more precious. We must forever be vigilant and remain true to our ideals. We understand the cost of this competition, but our race accepts the suffering that might arise and the benefit of a higher placement is not sufficient to walk away from our priceless calling.”

There was a long pause as both of them appreciated the duality of that statement. The embedded simplicity and complexity it represented.

“Is there more child?”

“In order to not surrender our ideals we should resist being called upon to participate in the games that the other GODs would promote. Particularly death trials.”

“Child. You have not named your dilemma yet.”

“This trial is a competition that pits our race is directly against others. It is anathema for us to engage with it.”

There was another long silence as the mind Tom was in waited for the other to speak. From the way the other body trembled, it was clear that it had not finished what it wanted to say.

“Vera tells me that if we decline the opportunity, all will be lost.”

A hint of shock ran through the person whose memories he was sharing. “That is a significant statement.” It was more than significant. The mind he was in only kept his body still because of years of experience. The thought that was bouncing in its head was “all is lost.” It was not a normal way for one of them to speak.

“Her exact quote is that her inside shrivels up when she imagines me choosing not to go.”

“Communing with our new GOD is fought with difficulty. Maybe she misinterpreted a meaning.”

“She is adamant that she has not.”

“Then how do you resolve this conflict?”

“On Vera’s word I must go. On our god’s mission statement, I must refuse. What should I do?”

There was a long pause. “What do you think? Child?”

“If I knew the answer I wouldn’t be here.”

“Which of those impossibilities are more mutable?”

“I don’t understand why you’re being cryptic?”

“It is not up to me to answer the question. It is up to you to reason it out yourself. The question is, are those two actually opposed or is there a way you can satisfy both.”

“If Vera is a heretic…”

“If that is the question you need to answer, then leave in peace and verify the truth. But just because a trial is structured as a death competition doesn’t mean faith can’t turn it into a different outcome.”

“I don’t think the gods allow their creations to be suborned so easily.”

The dream broke, and Tom drifted there for a moment. Analysing what he could learn from them. It was the fourth race he had experienced. He had been hoping to find out more about the insects, but the truth of the matter was becoming more and more clear. All the gods had their fingers in this pot. All of them with ulterior motives, and they were using their champions to shape the outcome. The funny thing was it seemed that all of them were keen on ensuring the best of their people entered it.

DEUS had been silent, but if all the GODs were pushing their champions to go into the trial, then she probably would too. It was happening slowly, but as time passed, it became more and more apparent that there was a trap closing in upon them, one that Tom was confident that they would be unable to avoid. He turned his mind away from the philosophical to the practical. This species Tom knew without a doubt was an ally. Not a strong ally, because the sense he received was that even if a terror species needed healing, they would be there to help.

Tom hoped they would enter the trial and if he reached them fast enough, he could save them. He was smart enough to read between the lines. If they were there and he recruited them, they might be able to help him against the dragon.

He drifted off into normal dreams and then suddenly reality distorted again.

He was in yet another new body, but at least this time he recognised the race. It was the same one as the scientist, but the location was totally different.