CHAPTER 222

They held their positions for two minutes before Everlyn relaxed. “They didn’t hear us. You guys rest. I’ll keep watch.”

“Best thing about Goblins,” Rahmat said. “Is that you can rely on them not to do things properly.”

They all chuckled quietly and Tom sat down on the thin layer of dirt that did next to nothing to soften the rock underneath. He would have preferred to stand, but even here at the merge of the tunnels it wasn’t high enough for it to be comfortable.

The others would be here sometime in the next ten minutes, and Tom decided it was time to take his training more seriously. The first thing he wanted was to forge a proper Earth Domain. He was confident he had the tools. All that was required was to combine them together.

The question remained was how to go about the process because there were no manuals for what he was about to attempt.

The first step was to the gain true insight into Earth Sense. He needed to bolster his understanding of it and specifically to master the sensory output that it generated. If he could do that, he would know where everyone around him was. It would give him an effective sixth sense if anything tried to ambush him on his blindside. It wouldn’t work for aerial monsters, but there weren’t that many of them, anyway, and if they were around, he would be more careful.

Tom pondered the issue of spell mastery.

There were several approaches to obtaining true control of the flood of data the ability produced. Most of them involved getting additional skills to allow multitasking or an extra layer of computation before the results of the spell hit him. The methods would work but would take him further away from his target state. Adding layers between him and the action would actually frustrate the attempt to create a domain and not aid it. What he needed to do was to use the capability within the spell to have it deliver better data to him.

Tom had to customise the inherent calculation capacity of the spell. Adjust it to produce the type of information that he could absorb. That was the crux of the problem. The spell was probably optimised for someone, but not him. It was clear there was a level of smarts in the flood of sensations it generated. Unfortunately, his monkey brain was not evolved enough to absorb them. Tom took a moment to recall every time he had used it.

The details the spell produced were impressive, and Tom knew he was, in a way, a victim of the artificial levels he had received from the challenge trial. If he had levelled the ability from scratch, he would be having a very different conversation with himself right now. Instead of trying to train himself to utilise more than the fraction of its capacity he would have been extending it like he planned to do with Touch Heal.

He forced his mind back on track and recalled the exact sensation and knowledge that had come to him every time that he used Earth Sense. There was a lot of flexibility built into it. He could zoom in on an item of interest to get more information or keep his focus on the whole domain. Tom remembered sensing the movement of the worms beneath the earth and the way a monster standing on the ground interacted with the dirt and rock under it. From that, he knew when they moved and whether it would bring the creature closer to him.

There was clearly a massive calculation engine built into the spells structure. Tom would just need to get it working for him, and it wasn’t like he hadn’t already established a domain. He had done it once, so should be able to do it again.

Then again, a lightning domain was inherently simpler than one associated with earth. For his Spark version, all he had to do was fill the empty air around him with electricity. The start of his domain had been the simplest of shells. An ovoid of electricity, a millimetre thick that fully surrounded him and moved with him. If it was broken unexpectedly, then he knew something was coming for him.

It had been grown and developed after that simple start into the complicated true domain version he had today. He had extended the functionality from that simplest of early warning systems progressively by adding more and more complexity. He had made numerous changes over a three-year period like making the field self-replicating and including calculations to measure how fast a threat was moving and whether his body was at imminent risk. That had been achieved by setting up multiple layers within the field, each less than a millimetre thick. After that, by tracking when and where each later was broken he could calculate the trajectory of the strike.

The earth domain was different and harder. The multitude of varying rock types in the ground was only the start of the issues. Luckily, that problem was solved by the spell’s high level. What all those levels didn’t do was address the fact his domain was the ground. If someone swung a sword, the dirt at their feet could not track it effectively. Worse, if all he knew was based on the easily observed contact with the ground, there was relatively little he could extract. He could sense when each foot landed, which could be useful, but battles were far more dynamic than that, with monsters leaping and changing tempo suddenly.

He needed to know more than how they moved when they stalked forward to attack him.

Like which direction did they choose? Are they still going straight or did they turn when they leapt?

How fast are they going? Did they accelerate or slow down?

Those were the critical bits of information that would help him fight. If their feet left the ground for all he knew, they might have triggered a levitation spell or been jumping up and down on the spot. A basic assessment of available sensations did not answer the question.

Luckily, there were secondary measures he could observe that would allow him to gain an instinctive understanding of the nature of the jump. In the simplest case, if you jumped straight up that would translate to you pushing directly downward. It was a basic physics concept like every action has an equal and opposite reaction or something like that. The exact rule was not clear in his head, but the concept was solid. Existentia obeyed basic universal laws like on Earth, at least most of the time.

When a weight departed the ground theoretically, Tom had the information to calculate how. He could measure the force imparted. When Tom jumped forward, his toes curled to give him that forward momentum. It was transferred to the ground.

How did Tom know that?

Well, for one it was observable. If he leapt forward while standing on sand, it left a different footprint to a normal step. You could see the extra depth and how the sand was pushed backwards. The same effect, or at least similar, occurred when jumping on gravel. Every now and again, the attempt would fail. When it did, it was because he was pushing off a loose pebble as opposed to the ground. That rock would go flying and his leap would barely cover a tenth of the distance it normally managed.

Conceptually, to Tom the different ways the earth would be impacted by a jump were obvious. He had enough personal examples to know that it was a real thing.

Furthermore, Earth Sense picked up those forces. When something kicked off a rock, he could see in all that data that the force was both down and behind it. The impact was measurable, which meant you could tell what was going to happen. The type of creature didn’t matter. If two monsters weighed the same, one being the size of a rabbit but incredibly dense and the other being as large as a human. If they both jumped with the same force on the ground, they would travel the same distance. If you knew their weight, which he did from Earth Sense and then measured the force you could theoretically calculate how far and how fast they were jumping… Well there was some mathematics required to produced the numbers but it could be done and Tom was confident from previous uses that the spell already had that capability built in. He sure as hell didn’t want to program it. It felt like something that needed calculus, and he had failed that subject.

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His job would be to make sure that the answer was sent to him in the appropriate form.

So what did he have to do to develop the senses how he needed? How would he make the existing skill into a domain? Tom mentally stated what he thought had to happen.

The first step was to change it to be permanently active.

Second would be to seize control of the tsunami of information.

Third was to build capability to ensure the presented data was useful.

Finally, he would need to extend the spell. Learn how to incorporate Remote Earth Manipulation and hopefully gain direct command over the hostile earth condition.

For each of those steps, a host of ideas occurred to Tom. Ways to flex the spell to work toward those aims and so, just like he had done with his Throwing and Touch Heal he created a list of points that could be followed.

Tom mentally reviewed the list and focused on an entry about halfway down. It was perfect for their current situation and right now was the perfect spot for him to make the attempt. He had explored the surrounding area in incredible detail and knew where all the potential fault lines were. He wanted to update Earth Sense to give him that information passively.

He imagined what such an attempt would look like. He combined his knowledge from the tutorial with all of his experiences in Existentia. The process of searching for weaknesses in rock sheets in order to destabilize it to create a fall. He recalled how Remote Earth Manipulation had allowed him to understand characteristics of different stone layers, then find some small holes or larger spaces like he did when he had aimed to build an underground barracks.

That’s what he wanted.

He wanted a passive sense to do all that junk work.

Earth Sense theoretically was the perfect vehicle for the attempt. It was more sensitive than Remote Earth Manipulation, which was self-evident in its ability to calculate the direction monsters were moving through impressions generated by their feet when they launched themselves. It could already do what he wanted, but his job now was to take its raw output and have it present the information like the picture he had built using his Remote Earth Manipulation skill.

Tom triggered both of them simultaneously while pushing for Earth Sense to use the extra capability that was contained in his manipulation skill. As the spell expanded around him, he tried to focus it on absorbing all the geological details of the surrounding rock. He wanted it to identify all the fault lines and weak spots.

His concept and the two skills combined. The sensing envelope swept out, and it carried out calculations that would have taken super computers on Earth. It produced information and then that data rushed toward him. The quantity approaching told Tom that he had made a mistake, but there was nothing he could do. It slammed home. Tom winced and shut his eyes instinctively… it hurt.

“What is it? Tom?” Everlyn asked urgently.

He cleared his throat. He felt like he had experienced the final moment of that hobgoblin that had been shot at the start of the fight, with Everlyn’s arrow going straight through its forehead. It was an intense pain that had radiated out from a single point and even though logically only seconds had passed subjectively; it felt like minutes.

“Tom?”

“I was experimenting. It didn’t work.”

“Warn us next time.”

“My god that hurt.”

Rahmat turned to face him. “What did you try?”

“To improve my understanding of one of my spells. I’m going to keep testing until the others get back.”

“Don’t kill yourself.” Everlyn quipped.

“Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.” Rahmat told him.

“I will.” Tom promised as he once more focused his attention inwards. Healing Tranquillity activated, and he winced when he saw the results. Somehow, he had physically damaged his actual brain. With a tickle of magic, the damage was undone, and the headache vanished.

He pondered what had gone wrong.

He knew what he had imagined, but the smooth flow of information had not occurred. Instead, all the data had gotten swept up, processed and then sent to him. He had received a download of every stage of the process. The raw data, then ordered raw data, then partially processed, then with filters applied, then with alien smarts, then an overlay of the results he was aiming for. He had been expecting to get only the last step. Instead, every layer had come back to him. It was more than a human mind could possibly handle, so it was not surprising physical damage had been inflicted. The quantity that had struck him had been massive.

Tom adjusted what he wanted. He figured filtering the flood of return data was a simple change. Preparations done he waited for his mana to be restored.

Then restored to full, Tom attempted it once more.

This time, the flood of information did not almost send him into a coma. Instead, he could almost sense what he was looking for, but the spatial components weren’t there. All the info was overlaid on top it each other. If he hadn’t explored, the nearby area he would have thought what was sent to him was garbage, but the patch of denser iron bearing rock was distinctive enough that he could see its fingerprint in the rubbish Earth Sense provided to him.

Frustrated, he dropped the spell.

Then waited for his magic to top up and then repeated the exercise. This time the scrambled data came with gut twisting vertigo. He almost lost his lunch before killing the spell and bringing himself under control.

The worst thing was that he was close. He could feel it in the order behind the garbage being presented to him. There were more than enough green shoots to give him hope and if he persisted… it would work and once it did the benefit of knowing the best spots to target to create a cave in would be a tremendous advantage, especially when exploring underground.

He prepared to go again.

“That was disgusting.” Michael said abruptly over the group chat. Everlyn had levelled her skill enough that they had been able to function in their own session. The healer must have actively opted to switch back to the general channel. “We’re not letting you guys get away with not helping next time. This whole waiting to defend the cave merging spot is ridiculous. It’s just not required.”

“We killed a rating party.” Everlyn told him quietly. “And if we were all the same rank, we would alternate who goes, but given the relativities, you guys get so much more against the lower ranked breeders and children. Sending myself, Tom or Rahmat doesn’t make sense.”

“You don’t make sense.” Michael shot back, but he chuckled.

“Report.” Everlyn ordered.

“Mission complete,” Michael answered simply. “The were around two hundred total, but only ten soldiers and they were spread out. There were no higher tier or specialised units.”

“Good.”

A minute later, they emerged from the tunnel. The amount of viscera on them was telling. Clean had failed to have an impact and Toni, Thor and Harry were the worst affected.

“Don’t look at me like that.” Toni grumped at Rahmat.

“Do you have a tradition of rolling in the blood and guts of your defeated enemies?”

Toni snorted and that image. “Not how it went down Rahmat. The bastard things set a trap. I entered a small cave, and they leapt from behind. There were a dozen of them and so many weapons. I instinctively unleashed all the air blades I could. They were only breeders, so my magic was strong enough to tear them to bits. But even reduced to chunks they kept…” She trailed off a disgusted look on her face. “Lets just say I’m looking forward to finding a stream.”

“I wasn’t judging.” Rahmat told her. “And if I did, I’d be judging the ones who are still clean.” He was staring pointedly at Keikain.

“I’m an earth mage. I killed them before they got too close.”

“No fighting kids.” Michael said, sounding exasperated. He peered briefly at the bodies of the raid party they had slaughtered. “Good job. I assume we’re going immediately to the feast hall.”

Everlyn nodded. “Standard confined cave exploration rules apply. Stay twenty metres back from me.”

They set out, and after five minutes of scrambling through the tunnel Everlyn stopped them. It had been an annoying journey. The height of the passage had increased to be almost high enough to stand. He could walk on two legs, but when he did, he had to bend his neck at an awkward angle so that most of the time he had resorted to his normal scramble.

Rahmat and Toni had been able to walk most unhindered. Their smirks were almost as bad as the annoyance of running while using his hands.

Everlyn had halted at a slightly wider and higher section of the tunnel. Her eyes met every ones to ensure they focused on the mission. “The hall is up ahead. It’s tall enough to stand in and you’ll have full range of weapon movements in some parts and partial in others. We’re going to engage in the usual way, with Tom in the lead as the primary tank. He’ll go first. We’ll count to twenty before following. But…” she paused for a moment. “It’s not a static battlefield. When I peaked in, I spotted thirty goblins but at least four exits. Unfortunately, there will probably be waves of reinforcements. Any questions?”

There were none. Everyone knew how to fight goblins.

“Great.” Everlyn said with a smile. “This should be fun.”