Chapter 220

“Damn it.” Michael cursed out loud, briefly forgetting where they were and deliberately pulling himself off party chat. “Tom, I don’t care what Everlyn thinks. We’re not clearing a goblin warren.”

Tom chuckled. He one hundred percent understood where Michael was coming from. Entering a lair was not a pleasant experience.

“Everlyn, we’ll join you soon.” He winked at the healer. “Everyone here is excited by the chance to get all that easy experience.”

“We bloody well aren’t,” Michael grumbled.

“I’m not convinced,” Clare interjected on party chat. “We killed these twenty goblins and there must be plenty more about on the surface. No need to go underground. We can farm them up here to get our levels up before pushing into the caves, where it is more dangerous.”

“It’s fine Clare,” Michael told her. “This is just a goblin warren. It won’t have an entrance to the underground.”

“Most of the experience is going to be in the caves.” Everlyn said. “If we want to level up, that’s where we’ll get the juice to do so.”

“We’re doing it.” Tom said firmly. “But what’s this about levelling up? I’m not sure about that concept. I think our current ranks are good and if anything, I’m too high. We should all be planning to stay well under the rank of our opponents for some time. At least four levels and maybe even more. We have a lot of skills and spells we want to purchase before driving for levels. For example, it’s clear that unless you have a strong specific magic affinity, everyone should purchase Chaos Bolt. And even if we’ve purchased all the abilities we want, which I’m not sure is possible, we’ll still want to stay low ranked to bank additional experience. It’s the sensible play here with the zone setup.”

“That’s a dangerous strategy. Tom.” Michael said, finally switching to party chat.

“Really Michael? Personally, I would have described it as an obvious one?” Everlyn interrupted. “Now I can tell no one has moved. Why? There is easy experience, so hurry, the day’s wasting… blah, blah, blah.”

“The caves are too short.” The healer complained. “I’m happy to sit this out. I’m an old man, you know.”

“Move.” Everlyn ordered with a laugh. “Everyone knows clearing goblin warrens is a pain, but it’s safe work and this is a lair… and they’re always worthwhile.”

They had chatted enough so without lingering to see if anyone else was following him, Tom went and entered the far too small opening. He had to bend at the waist to fit and his hands automatically shot out to help support the awkward posture. They held the weight of his upper body, each of them on the side wall rather than the ground. Immediately, he fell back into the rhythm of scampering through the tunnels. It was like he was an ape. He moved with the gait you would expect from a regressed human. Both arms and legs used for every movement forward.

As he travelled, he considered the various techniques that were available in these closed confines. His dodge capabilities would be limited, but that was how fights often went. However, the cave structure helped in a way because he would not be fighting in three dimensions and the monsters would be unlikely to flank him. They would be in front of him, which often would let him use his longer reach to advantage. It would also make his teleport ability become even more critical. It could be used to shift away from attacks and also to reposition to thrust from a different angle. If they crouched behind their spear robbing themselves of vision, then in an instant, he could change where he attacked from. It would let him exploit gaps in their defences that they would not even realise existed. “Don’t crowd me if we get into a fight. I need to be able to teleport.”

“Not get close? How else will I be able to stab past your fat arse?” Rahmat asked straight back.

“You just need to leave ten centimetres or so to give me freedom of movement.”

“Got it the first time.” Rahmat chuckled.

“And fat arse? Are you serious Rahmat? I’m not even close to fat. My body type is skinny athletic.”

“Rahmat, be careful or you’ll give Tom a complex.” Michael quipped.

“Very funny guys.”

“Quiet. I can hear you from here.” Everlyn hissed.

Everyone shut up and Tom went back to considering the coming engagements.

There were three modes of fighting goblins. In their larger cavern halls, he could fight them like outside. That changed if you ran into them in the tunnels. One or two you could kill quickly, but if they were aware of you, they would meet you with a wall of shields.

Earth manipulation would be the key in that situation. Either by directly manipulating the stone under their feet or failing that Throw Rock would open them up.

Tom glance behind him and saw Thor following. His heavy hammer was nowhere to be seen, and it was instead replaced with comically short spears. They were sharpened spikes that were less than a metre long and Thor held one in each hand. Tom guessed that on a practical level, they were superior to Tom’s own in these surroundings.

Excluding the fact that his soul storage and teleport mitigated a lot of the issues associated with his longer weapon.

They soon reached where Everlyn was waiting. She had halted where the tunnel branched off into three others. Despite the extra passageways, the space available to them was not significantly larger. If they huddled together, they could just fit in the space created by the merge.

“Feast hall.” She pointed at the centre one, which looked slightly wider than the others. “Alternative exit.” She shoved her thumb at the one on her left. “And last the Breeding warren.”

Next to him, Michael groaned, and Tom scrunched up his nose. He had just arrived, and he could smell the stench wafting up from that final tunnel.

“Tom, Rahmat and I will hold here while the rest of you clear the warrens.”

“You have got to be kidding me.” Toni said. “I thought we were friends, Everlyn. Is going down there really necessary?”

“Yes, we need the collective experience and you are all low enough ranked to benefit fully from it.”

“I would prefer to sit out.”

“You know we’re going to go through dozens of these.” Tom observed. “The other teams here will kill the high priority targets and, while they are doing it, we’ll mop up the easy experience. In later zones, we’ll solve the quest objectives and get the bonuses, but for now, we kill goblins.”

“Correct. Phil will clear the zones by destroying the sprites.” Everlyn said. “We can’t turn down opportunities. The dragon will be waiting in the final zone. Unfortunately, we’re on the clock to grow sufficiently before all the outer zones collapse.”

“I know,” Toni said, sounding disgruntled. “I know, but why did it have to be goblins first up? They’re like the worst things to fight. They stink, they run, squeal.”

“Cry,” Clare interrupted. “Cower and beg for mercy.”

“Then immediately try to stab you if you grant it to them.” Toni finished for her. “Foul things. I guess we might as well pull off the Band-Aid and get going. This won’t be the first breeding pit we clear.”

Tom watched as they started to go down the stinky corridor, with Thor leading them. “Remember, even if they beg, it’s not real. You’re dealing with monsters and seeded creatures,” he reminded them. “They can’t be redeemed and any pretence of sapience is false.”

“They’re still sentient Tom,” Michael said. “They feel just as much as household pets.”

“Apart from them being irredeemably feral.” Toni said with a shiver.

“Not household pets. They’re more like rats carrying rabies and the black plague.” Keikain observed. “I for one, will have no problem eliminating them.”

The others disappeared, and because he trusted Everlyn’s senses to pick up any threats before they got too close, Tom sat on the ground and pondered what to do.

The discussion with Selena had been eye-opening.

Fate was suddenly a hot commodity and despite possessing over two hundred of it, he did not have enough of it to go around. His gut was firm in the need to build up an overwhelming tsunami of swirling fate to kill the dragon. Even if the balancing items alluded to in that second quest were specialised for dragon slaying, it wouldn’t be sufficient by itself.

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They needed everything to go right, hence the requirement to continually invest in shaping that final battle. After all, the best case when they met her was that she would be three or four times faster than them. Strength wasn’t even worth considering a single blow from her would kill any targeted human, no matter how much experience they milked from this trial. Then there was her vitality and scales to consider. They wouldn’t be able to hurt her unless they got some tier five or six weapons from somewhere.

Their only hope was to get an item capable of delivering the killing blow to her neck. Tom did not know what that looked like, but the oracle question they had asked basically confirmed that it was available. He suspected the problem would be solved by the result of the balancing quest.

Yet the item would not be an instant kill type because that was not how the GODs worked. It would require a perfectly executed plan. Yet that by itself would be insufficient. A perfect plan and a weapon gifted by the gods would not by themselves trump the dragon’s inherent advantages. Unfortunately, no matter how many times he played the battle scenario in his head, they failed. Twenty humans even at rank thirty would not create an opportunity against that creature’s speed, magic, scales… and all the tricks and experience she possessed. They would be found wanting…. They needed something extra. A slice of good fortune to land the deciding blow.

Investing into the dragon was required, but daily use came first. What would be needed to keep them alive through any unexpectedly tough encounters. Most days, Tom hoped the intervention of fate would not be needed. If it was, they would be failing in the scouting, planning and execution. But when mistakes were made, having something extra to save their lives was important. The fate he was focused on divvying up was the discretionary budget above and beyond what was needed to triumph in each zone. Did he push it toward the dragon or apply it for personal gain?

There was following Selena’s path where he would obtain a high value random magic affect. With that back up in their pocket, they could drive themselves harder and take on stronger monsters than they would otherwise entertain. That would give them faster level growth, allow them to be reckless in selecting battles and then rely on their spells hitting beyond their normal weight to finish a fight against those monsters which would usually defeat them.

Then there was using fate for materialistic gains. Spending it on increasing the likelihood of loot portals giving something useful or in the auction house. Nope, Tom decided, auctions were useless and unless an item was worth over five hundred thousand credits, his fate for now would be better spent elsewhere.

It was the same for the spectaculi auction. The only reason he would use it during this trial was if the balancing reward didn’t give them an avenue to kill the dragon. Then he would gather a million credits and hit the auction hard with everyone’s fate to get something that could hurt it.

It was a contingency he hoped he would never have to use.

Finally, he had to consider whether to apply fate to level his skills instead of directed at the dragon. The perfectionist in him wanted to explore the opportunities to supercharge level gains and trigger evolutions.

If he chose that, then what would it look like?

The concept was easy enough. Whenever he came up with an idea to stretch the bounds of a particular skill, he would devote his fate to expedite it. There was no need to do it in battle, he could do it anytime. At least for the majority of his abilities. His dodge required an opponent to challenge him to expand it, but most of his skills didn’t.

Whenever he had excess fate, he could very well spend it on expanding his skills by a little. That would add up.

Tom opened his eyes and looked down the tunnel the others had gone down. He had mostly adjusted to the smell, but he kept his breaths shallow, just in case. He thought he heard some high pitched squealing from the direction. His ears were probably tricking him, because as he understood the tunnel system, those cries shouldn’t have carried to him. In any case they would have engaged the goblins by now. They would be fighting and if his experience in the tutorial was relevant, even with the large group of them, it would take them over ten minutes to finish clearing out all the monsters.

He shut his eyes and focused on his skill and spell list, intending to go through them one by one to assess what he could do to improve them.

Touch Heal was the first that he considered.

It had a couple of clear weak points.

The first was his ability to burn out poisons, venoms, curses and status effects. The first two he could manage via filtering them and pushing them out, but the second two he was exposed to. Within his mind, he rotated the spell form and examined it from different angles. He spun it and considered its strengths and weaknesses. It already granted him near immaculate control over his own body. The physical sides of it, at least.

How could he extend it to deal with foreign energy from curses and the like? It was, energy effects, that he currently had no defences against. Physically ingested poisons or injected venom’s providing he had mana, could be dealt with by his quarantining efforts. Though even that was insufficient, there was an argument that instead of quarantining he should be able to negate them directly. Biology already possessed mechanisms for dealing with substances on that level. Cells that were specialised in fighting foreign bacteria and viruses within him. Then there were the kidney and liver for purifying the blood.

Tom pondered that for a moment. There was no reason he couldn’t leverage and supercharge the body’s own defences to deal with these things. The spell would then be positioned to heal him from disasters like when that spider’s venom had spread through his body when he failed to quarantine it due to a lack of mana. Only Michael being close had saved him and he didn’t like that.

What about hostile energy?

His skill was manipulating his physical body, and there was no inherent biological process to address a curse.

But so what? He thought to himself.

He was using magic. Touch Heal was energy, just like a curse was. If he could focus the healing finely enough to destroy a toxin, then why not to do the same to decay energy? There was no reason in the spell’s makeup to restrict it to dealing with only physical contaminants. In fact, the base spell included the ability to remove tier zero magical inflictions. The capability was already there. He just needed to grow that seed into a more significant presence.

Slowly, Tom compiled a list of actions that he could take. Infect himself with a substance and use his kidneys and livers to eliminate it. Get something larger, like a bacterial culture and rely on his immune system. Then he could step up the potency of the foreign material that he was purging.

He constructed a detailed plan. First, he would do physical elimination without relying on quarantining and then extend it to foreign magic. In every case, he would start small and expand outwards. A test plan was created with over a hundred entries.

It was a structured approach to spell leveling that did not specifically need fate. However, the use of the mechanism would make thing’s progress faster. In almost all cases, he would see if he could convert the spell without fate, but if he failed a couple of times, then he was a sure a simple boost would let him complete each step. It was not like he was trying for the impossible. Everything he listed down was clearly a small expansion of the existing spell, as opposed to a massive leap of intuition.

Tom briefly considered the other key issue with Touch Heal. Which was the first word, the need for physical contact. Possessing a range heal was important, but it was probably best not to attempt it from a Touch Heal base. The spell structure did not support ranged magic. It was completely ridiculous that if someone in front of him had a gash on his head, he couldn’t heal unless he touched the other man first. That contact did not need to be near the wound. Instead, Tom could reach out with a foot and touch the other man’s leg. That would count as a touch for the purposes of allowing his magic to function.

That was the crazy situation that he found himself in. Extending his magic through ten centimetres of air was impossible, but doing it by sending the power down his leg and then up the other person’s body to the head that would work. Any expert in magic would agree that it would be more efficient to send it across the ten centimetres of air, but Tom, because of the spell form wasn’t allowed to do that.

Unfortunately, adjusting Touch Heal to become a standard heal that could be used at range was not feasible, no matter how much he threw at it. The spell form didn’t contain any of the components that would allow him to remotely cast the spell. It explicitly required a physical connection to work. Adjusting it to cross an air gap would require him building that component from scratch. It would be better to buy a spell from scratch and once he had more experience, it was one of the first things that he would do.

Next, Tom considered his second bread and butter spell Spark. Unfortunately, it had recently evolved, so he doubt there was much he could do about it. He knew how to use the ability up to at least level a hundred and thirty and he’ll regain levels consistently just applying the spell how he had done so in the trials. His use of the Spark domain by itself would keep levels flowing.

Tom switched his focus to Throw Rock and its supporting skills. The spell itself would be difficult to improve because its level had been ridiculously inflated by the trial rewards. The skills he had purchased, on the other hand were fair game. Instantly, his mind spotted multiple ways to improve the tool set. Individually shaping the rocks, utilising spin mechanics when throwing, actively factoring in wind resistance, using Touch Heal to increase the power his arm produced, testing and working out where his aiming skill did its adjustments and then engaging it in micro pulses, separating the calculations of targeting from the physical action.

All the ideas, a huge number of them assaulted him.

Tom had been absently tossing a light stone he had picked up from the ground, and then he remembered where he was.

He was in a goblin den.

Hastily, he dropped it. He did not sniff his hand and immediately cast Clean, just in case.

Once more there was an opportunity to polish the Skills and grow his ability to kill by throwing stones at monsters. The question was whether it was part of his long-term core ability set. When he had first got it, he had been in a different role and had plenty of opportunities to use the spell. Now his role had changed and mana was at a premium. Would he use Throw Rock regularly? In recent fights, he hadn’t been.

That thought immediately focused his attention elsewhere. He needed to concentrate on improving his core abilities. They were his Spear skill, Dodge, Earth Sense, Lightning Feet, his teleport and finally Lightning Enrage. Those skills, along with Touch Heal and Spark, were currently his core set.

Those were the ones he should concentrate on developing. First there was his spear work. Very few opportunities presented themselves to him, but his Dodge skill and the fate being released both for parry and getting an opportunity to strike back would help the ability. For now, the patterns were chaotic, but he could see himself becoming use to the different openings and adjusting his footwork to create gaps in his enemies’ defence in the future without the aid of his fate. Only then would he focus on developing it.

Next on his list was Earth Sense. This was probably the most difficult ability he possessed. It was also highly levelled but Tom felt he was not using it to it’s fullest. Theoretically, it was only a small step from Remote Earth Manipulation and Earth Sense to a proper unified domain.

How deadly would he be then when that hostile earth condition upgraded into something he actively controlled and directed?

Obtaining an Earth Domain had a certain pizzazz to it. The challenge would be how to go about making it a reality?

“Everyone on guard,” Everlyn said suddenly. “We have incoming from the ground direction. Let’s ambush them when they reach the tunnel intersection.”