CHAPTER 230

Tom observed the consciousness disappear from all the surrounding people. The flat glassy faces, the hands that settled not quite naturally to their sides and the way the faces looked waxy. Everyone had immediately gone into their respective system rooms without bothering to coordinate. Tom decided to wait a moment before following them. The lair had just been cleared, so technically it was safe, but there was no reason to not have one person on guard.

A few seconds later, Clare reanimated.

“That was quick.”

“Well, I have a patient to look after. And I already had my purchases queued.”

“Chaos bolt?”

She shook her head. “Later.” She was focusing on his wound and her healing was excellent. If Tom was rating it, he would have said that it was almost as efficient as what he could do with his own healing. It was at a minimum amazingly focused. She was fixing up the lung around the hole. “This is to make it easier for you to breathe.” She looked at him suspiciously. “Tom, I’m here and I’m not incompetent. I can multitask. Nothing will sneak up on us. You can go and spend your thirty percent contribution.”

Tom wanted to joke with her but with his lung how it was he couldn’t bring himself to do so. “Won’t be long.” He shut his eyes and stepped into his system room.

The familiar grey metal walls greeted him and he stretched and subconsciously touched the spot where the hole had been. Stepping in here, to a place where his health was restored perfectly, felt like the elephant sitting on his chest had got up. Everything felt more achievable. The lingering pain was gone, but mainly it was the lack of weight and the ease of each breath than he noted.

“Buy,” his voice rang out unhindered.

Lung wounds, he decided. Were nasty. He hadn’t even realised how constricting it had been.

“Buy directed range heal,” he ordered, before returning to the real world.

The download of information occurred immediately. Mostly it was procedural items around how to do directed healing at range. There was a cost a distance, and the more he wanted to direct the greater the cost was. At a base level, the undirected healing provided by this new spell absolutely smashed the efficiency of Touch Heal. That was excluding his expertise, knowledge and Healing Tranquillity. Once they were factored in, his personal heal was better, but the new one was impressive. Even while using the more basic components, those that a novice learning the spell for the first time would have access to, the spell kept its efficiency. That was truly outstanding. For example, it was almost costless to convert a general heal to one that would focus only on someone’s eye. However, the spell ran into the problem that the greater the distance the more wastage occurred. There was a range where even attempting to use Healing Tranquillity was ridiculous.

Before opening his eyes, Tom examined that arrangement. The version of detail orientated healing that he had championed with Touch Heal was more efficient than the base spell. However, the cost of Healing Tranquillity increased with every metre from him. At a range beyond seven metres, he was better off not using Healing Tranquillity because the expense of maintaining it was so much.

Tom was not concerned about that. Seven metres was a long way. When they were fighting in formation, everyone was almost always within that distance of him.

The spell performance exceeded his expectations, and it was compatible with Healing Tranquillity, which was the main feature he had been searching for. Now, in the unlikely event that he was offered an evolution to a regeneration trait, he would be able to take it without worrying about losing one of his advantages.

He opened his eyes and discovered that Michael and Everlyn were also back to healing him.

“Did you get an interesting spell?” Michael asked him.

“What do you mean?” Tom asked, wondering how they had known.

Everlyn barked out a laugh. “Thank god you’re so socially inept. If you weren’t you would be a menace.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Michael patted his shoulder. “I think she was saying you were transparent. We know you got a spell because you came out of the system room and then took about thirty seconds to open your eyes. You were obviously exploring a new spell. Sorting out the download of information, possibly running some mental calculations.”

“I guess that’s accurate.”

Everlyn and Clare both chuckled.

Michael shot both of them an annoyed glare. “So, was it interesting?”

Tom nodded, then shook his head. “Not really. It was only directed ranged healing.”

“That’s high tier three.” Michael observed. “It should be a decent upgrade.”

“Not exactly. If I have body contact, Touch Heal is better.”

“I feel like slapping you.” Michael confided. “I won’t because you’re my patient. But a tier three spell in the same school should be fifty percent stronger than a tier zero version.”

“Should,” he agreed readily.

“Well, why are you claiming otherwise?”

“Healing Tranquillity more than makes up for Touch Heal’s weaknesses.”

“I’m not going to argue with that. I’ve seen how efficient your magic is.” Michael slapped him on the shoulder and then stepped away. “Give us three minutes in Harry’s ritual to recharge and we can close this fully.”

Tom assessed their work and agreed. They were rebuilding a lot of connective tissue and some bone which had been blasted out of him by the lunge so the large cost to heal made sense.

Five minutes later they exited the cleared lair via one of the two tunnels they had already identified as leading to the surface. Once more, a group of goblins guarded the exit. Tom charged them and the others followed behind him. Collectively, they were more efficient than previously.

Everlyn immediately led them deeper into goblin territory and, in short order found another untouched goblin camp with the singular tunnel opening in the middle of their group. They didn’t change their tactics, which had been proven to work.

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This group was not identical to the previous ones. Primarily, there were four specialists, as opposed to the usual zero, which required some tweaks to their opening salvo. Toni and Keikain were both tasked with taking out a spear gob each. Tom threw two stones at one of the shaman while his lightning elemental and Everlyn burned down the second. The start of the battle had changed, but the rest of it felt the same. The goblins tried to hit him and he evaded them while using weak dagger slashes to enrage them beyond reason.

Upon completing the fight, Everlyn immediately led them downward. Once more, Tom scrambled through the short tunnels. The four limbed gait was feeling almost familiar.

“We’ve got a problem.” Everlyn declared abruptly.

“How bad?” Tom asked.

“Maybe a better description is we’ve got a complication.”

“What?” Michael asked. “Do we need to do?”

“Come down you’ll see soon enough.”

They hurried through the last fifty metres and then they burst into what they recognised as a typical feast hall. The dimensions were similar and there were piles of bones. The only noticeable difference between the room and what they expected was that all the goblins were dead.

Every single one of them and Tom couldn’t see any signs of archery.

“What?” Harry stammered in surprised, dropping his party chat. “What’s this?”

“One of the other groups clearly beat us here.” Keikain said quietly as his eyes scanned the room. He licked his lips. “The lair is still active, so they’re still going.”

Everlyn nodded. “This fight finished less than ten minutes ago. Based on the spread of injuries my guess is Selena’s group is responsible.”

Tom took a moment to examine all the various corpses and was not sure why Everlyn had come to the conclusion she had.

“None of the kills were delivered by a mace or hammer,” she explained, answering the unspoken question. “All the bodies I’ve checked were killed with spears, short swords, and magic.”

“What should we do?” Keikain asked. “Should we leave?”

Everlyn shook her head. “The lairs are getting harder and as much as Selena might imply otherwise we are not that far behind them. In some ways, because of Tom’s tier five dodge skill we’re superior to them. I think we need to wait a few minutes and then at least offer to clear it together. I’m worried about Phil and him clearing all the sprites.”

Everlyn made a point of escorting them over to a spot as far away from the various entrances as possible. “My prediction is they’ll come from there,” she pointed. “If I’m not mistaken, that leads to a barracks.”

“You don’t think they’ll clear the breeder warrens first.” Toni asked sarcastically.

“They might,” Everlyn said thoughtfully. “But I reckon they will go easy fight, followed by the unpleasant ones and then a couple of more easy ones before the final fight against the chief or general, maybe.”

“No way,” Harry declared.

Tom actively tuned them out and decided to practice. He glanced through the list he had put together to help develop his earth domain. There were lots of items and he searched through it while considering which one he wanted to address.

He stopped when he reached a single line.

* Sense earth magic influencing the area of the domain before the physical effect starts to materialise.

That was the next obvious development.

It was clearly something that would be critical to prompt a domain evolution and it was also likely to have more immediate benefits. One of the many zones they were going through in this strange trial would be almost certain to be populated with monsters capable of casting earth, rock or metal themed magic. If he could sense the power before it erupted into a physical attack, that would be a huge win. But a small part of him went further than that. If he could sense it, then why wouldn’t he be able to disrupt it? Gain that ability as well and then his nascent earth domain began to look dangerous.

“Keikain, can you help me?”

The earth mage looked surprised and glanced around. “Sure… um…How?”

“You know my domain…”

“I know you want to evolve your sense skill into it.”

“Well, I want to be able to sense when others are manipulating earth and when you did it earlier, I couldn’t see it.”

Understanding flared in the other man’s eye. “Sure. Where do you want me to do it?”

“Here.” Tom waved at the area directly in front of him.

The other earth mage nodded and then a look of concentration filled his face as he stared at the area of stone that Tom had indicated.

Tom immediately focused his Earth Sense on the same section of rock. It was normal enough. No burrowing worms, a thin layer of dirt, then impure sandstone with a seam of iron ore running just beneath the surface. Tom could perceive all that at a glance, but as for the presence of hostile magic? He could not sense a thing.

Frustrated, Tom compared the ground he was studying with a section behind him. It lacked the iron ore, but apart from that it was the same. There was no difference in the feel of the two sections.

“And you’ve definitely started.”

Keikain chuckled at the frustration in his voice. “Yes. Tom.”

Earth Sense was currently heavily filtered for a very good reason. It was possible what he was looking for was being hidden by the filtering he had put in place. Very carefully Tom released some unfiltered data from the two spots and compared them. It was exhausting the rush of data each time threatened to give him a migraine. But he cycled through what was available. Density, water content, stress vectors, strength of bonds between the molecules, sheer pressures, earth mana density, air mana density… the list seemed to be endless but none of them showed the difference he was looking for. Not even earth mana, which he double then triple checked to be sure.

Tom knew what Keikain was doing. He could do it himself. Prime some earth to obey his bidding and then, when he wanted to cast a spell or get it to do something with Earth Manipulation it would leap to his command.

“Can you do something physically?”

Tom felt the earth shift instantly. Abruptly a thirty centimetre wide block thrummed with potential. He suspected that as Keikain took full control of it all the atoms had reacted, which was something his spell picked up. Then, only a moment later, all the rock flowed.

A hand rose up from the ground. It was a perfectly sculptured fist which opened up with a single middle finger pointing right at him.

“Juvenile.” Tom commented absently even as the artwork crumbled away and then sunk back into the initial rock. The magic was what he was interested in and not the results. When Keikain had cast his spell, he had felt the stone react but nothing beforehand. The priming bit had been completely hidden from him.

The earth mage chuckled.

“Give me a break!” Tom glared at him. “This isn’t easy. Do you have smart ideas.”

Keikain raised his hands defensively. “No, I’m sure it’s not. If you crack the code, I’d like you to share it with me.”

“Of course, no problems,” he answered robotically. His mind was still on the problem that was vexing him. “I’m trying to work out how to sense your magic. When you physically shift the earth, the movement screams out at me. It’s when you’re being passive that’s the problem. It’s like your presence is shrouded or made fully invisible.”

“Maybe it is.”

“It can’t be. Rules in Existentia are crazy, but they exist. Everything has a reason for how it worked and if you’ve seized control of something I should be able to see it.”

“Maybe your view is not detailed enough?”

“I thought about that but… mate… you have no idea how much data Earth Sense channels. I’m sure the faults on me. If I go through enough of it, I’ll catch what you doing?”

“Rather than holding steady command of it. I will oscillate between seizing control and doing nothing. Maybe that will help.”

Tom gave him a grateful look and threw himself into his analysis.

“Seize, release, seize release.” Keikain chanted, so Tom knew when he had control of the rock and when he didn’t.

He was sure Keikain was doing exactly what he claimed, but Tom could not see it in any of the data slices he looked at. “This is going to take a while. I want to go through systemically.”

“What percentage?”

“Maybe two.”

Keikain stopped his chanting. Instead, his fingers continued to tap to the same beat, communicating the knowledge Tom needed. In sync with the earth mage, Tom reviewed each slice of detailed information one by one.

They could hear voices.

Tom abandoned his testing to listen.

“Anything?” Keikain asked.

He shook his head. “But we got eight percent of the way through… well almost it was seven point nine or something like that.” He touched his forehead. His brain felt heavy, like a great pressure was on it. “It’s a good time to stop anyway, as I’m getting a migraine.”

He stood and helped Keikain up and they turn to face the passage that the noises were coming from.

“Hello.” Everlyn called out.

The voices stopped.