CHAPTER 235

Tom worked on Michael’s hand. Each piece of dead flesh cut off was small and the fresh stuff grew back immediately. The primal part of Tom’s brain wanted to puke in response, but the real him, the one melded and shaped by surviving as long as he had in the tutorial did not care.

When you had suffered a magical wound in your leg that literally produced maggots every ten seconds and smelled like an infected boil on a creature the size of a mountain, you logically became desensitised to these sorts of things. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw the other healers drift over. Everlyn added her skill. Then the first of Selena’s squad arrived followed half a minute later by Clare and the woman who had been helping her. As each person joined, the speed that the new flesh regrew at accelerated.

Finally, he replaced the tip of the pinky finger. Tom cast Clean on himself and walked away from the bits of Michael that he had cut and left on the ground. The healer followed him and flexed his rebuilt hand in fascination. It was perfect, pink skin and completely unblemished. Michael raised his other arm and compared the two. The differences were immediately apparent. The newly regrown hand was a few shades lighter, and it lacked the calluses that should have been there from all the spear work.

“You don’t realise how much you’ve changed until you see something like this.”

He looked at the healer sideways. “I know how much I have changed.”

“Do you?”

Tom looked at his hands. They had a rough look to them. Big callouses from the hammer that no longer belonged now that he had switched to spear fighting. They were no longer needed. Almost absently, he brushed a finger over them, and they flaked off as Touch Heal activated. “Yeah, I do. I remember the first day. The differences between what I had been and what I was reduced back too. I recall it plenty well.”

Tom glanced around him and noticed that all the goblin bodies had vanished and then out of the corner of his eyes he saw it. Just a glimpse, but it was enough to ensure that the location of the loot portal blared in his awareness. He couldn’t forget it if he tried. It was positioned almost exactly over the spot where the warlord had originally stood.

“No one has touched it yet.” Everlyn told him.

“Why?” Tom looked at her, confused. “We’ve chosen individual loot. There is no point waiting.”

“Because it would be rude.” She said with a small laugh. “And with our two groups no one wants to create a scene and do anything that could cause hostility.”

“Like that would.”

“It might.” She said firmly. “We’ll check it together. Now tell me how did the GODs judge your performance?”

“Is there any point checking?” He asked. “I’m sure you can already guess from how much experience you got awarded.”

Her face gave the game away.

“From your expression I suspect I snookered most of it.”

“Well, your meteorites did kill most of the boss monsters.” Michael interjected.

“Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t. Have you checked?” She challenged.

He shut his eyes and stepped sideways into his system room.

High experience gain with individual loot reward has been selected for clearing the warlord lair with 94% support.

Bonus awarded for the speed of final boss room clear.

Bonus granted for average combat ranking gap.

Bonus bestowed for eliminating the boss in 3.2 seconds after engaging it in combat.

Personal contribution assigned is 67%.

Experience reduced by 24% because of the impact of diminishing returns.

Allocated share is 550,000 minus direct experience already awarded.

He had been expecting an outlandish number and secretly hoping for even more than five hundred and fifty thousand he had been given, but the practical side of him had thought he would only be getting two or three hundred thousand.

Half a million was a lot.

It took his breath away.

With the various modifiers in play, it was hard to determine the exact value of the clear, but it seemed like the lair had awarded possibly a full million points of experience. With four war lords and a supreme commander plus all the smaller lairs, it was quite possible a squad could have extracted over four million from this zone. That was, in addition to whatever bonus was granted for the overall quest completion. That was a lot for a few day’s work.

The obtainable number would be less of course due to the penalty of diminishing returns, but it seemed likely that each zone they completed might give them a third of a million experience each. Speed wise, if they removed the equivalent of a warlord a day, which felt more than possible, it would mean they could clear four zones per ring. If they were lucky, it was possible to do five.

The trial was an incredible experience source.

A couple of zones, if they chose could pump their levels up into the sixties. Then they had all the layers of the trial to complete before they reached the dragon. If they were all so experience rich… then there was no saying what they might end up with.

But ultimately, that didn’t matter. Eventually they would reach the dragon and in that fight extra class levels could be pointless. Rank fifty, a hundred, a hundred and fifty, two hundred? How powerful would he need to be to reach the point that he could challenge that creature.

A hundred and fifty?

Maybe? That felt like it should be sufficient, but Tom remembered the natives and bumped it up further.

It was easy to be arrogant. The experience store gave humans a massive advantage by having access to lots of skills. Eventually, a human of the same rank as a native would dominate them.

Eventually was the key word.

That time was not now. While those extra skills were all level one, they really didn’t help combat rank that much. Once purchased, they had to be embedded in fighting styles and trained up to a high level to match the skill and spell levels the natives would possess. No matter what they did, they would not reach the levels those natives who had died had possessed.

The dragon would have rushed to the centre. It would have forgone the personal growth the trial could have gifted to ensure that no competitor races got past it. Already, or at least in a day or two, it would be waiting for them and strength purely from upgrading class levels would not stop it.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

While the amount of experience available seemed limitless, it was not. There would not be sufficient for them to even get close to matching that monster in a straight contest of strength.

They needed a plan to kill her and while they had clues about what was required; they didn’t have the full picture. Tom knew that there would be more True Dreaming in his future.

He wondered idly what he was going to spend the experience windfall on. Eventually, he would need to invest in levelling, but that was a consideration for later. For now, he would avoid increasing levels and ranks, as it wasn’t required. There were so many non-level investments, including skills, spells and, if he could afford it, traits. He would save for something good and delay increasing his rank until the deadliness of the monsters they fought forced him.

Tom’s mind went through the options, and it was overwhelming. With the force of his will, he put them aside and decided it was something he could consult with the rest of the team about.

He returned to the real world. “Two thirds.”

She smirked. “I thought it might be something like that. Selena can’t be happy.”

The two of them trailed after everyone else as they were all drawn like moths to the loot portal.

“Are we doing this in any order?” Selena asked, directing the question to him and not Everlyn. That did not surprise him. She had witnessed the results of him launching the hellish destruction of his meteorites in perfect conditions. The spell was flawed but when everything was set up for him it was deadly. “You guys go first. We’ll wait.”

“Smart choice.” Selena said with a brilliant smile.

One by one Selena’s group went forward. Tom saw the flair of fate that accompanied each of them as they approached the portal.

The first person invested almost forty fate. He shoved his hand in confidently and pulled out a skill or spell stone. It was too far away for Tom to tell which type it was. The man, however, smiled happily and consumed it. The female healer who had helped Clare approached next. She pushed thirty fate into the action and also got the same reward.

She glanced at it and then used it straight away.

Tom could see a pattern forming. They each went up and invested less than the person in front of them and they all got the same valuable reward. Most of them would examine it and then a moment later, use it. In only a single case was the stone removed not used by the recipient, but was instead passed to another of their squad.

Michael next to him was becoming more and more agitated. “How are you doing that?” he called out.

“Fate,” Everlyn whispered in party chat directly to him

“No,” Tom said confidently. “Well yes. But there is an extra mechanism at play they’re not putting sufficient into the process to get these sorts of results. They’re doing something special.”

“Find out what.” She demanded.

“I…Why don’t you ask?”

“Tom, don’t be an idiot. She’ll answer you, but not me.”

“Can you share your trick?” he called out.

“It’s a secret.” Selena said with a teasing smile.

Next to him he felt Everlyn tense.

“Only joking. We’re careful with when we influence loot portals. It depends on estimated value and the skills and spells used by the mobs. We note their abilities and construct a list of what we think the creatures use. Any skill available to monsters will be included in the primary rewards table. That means we’re already far more likely to get one of them. Then, to lower fate costs each person requests an item is selected from an extensive list of skills rather than driving for a single specific one. The bigger the pool, the less they have to invest to influence the result. We’re trying to receive the best outcome that we can with the least investment of fate.”

Everlyn appeared far from convinced. “Do loot tables even exist. In the first lair we got a fucking Thornbird Imbue Chamber.”

“A what.?”

“Exactly. It was useless and totally did not belong in the loot table of a goblin lair. Are you sure these lists exist or is that a throwback to earth computer games?”

Selena shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. The technique works. I don’t need to understand why.”

All of her soldiers had already got their loot, so Selena stepped forward. The pattern of investing less and less fate was maintained. She only used two points in total.

At the portal she plunged her hand in and pulled out a skill stone. She glanced at it. “However, the method doesn’t always work. You need to average things out.” She tossed the stone to one of her healers. “That requires the archery skill. Not my role, so we share.” Despite not getting anything she could use herself, she seemed satisfied with the outcome. She looked pointedly at the portal. “I love it when we’re lucky enough to find a portal primed for skill stones.”

Understanding flared in Tom.

It was a clever strategy.

After two people in a row got skill stones, from what everyone thought was a random loot portal the most likely explanation for that streak of luck was not that it was lucky but rather that it was not a random portal but one tuned to create skill stones. Then, after the third, that outcome was almost guaranteed. The first few primed the portal and after that they only needed to invest their fate to direct it to deliver skills from a larger subset of skills versus the challenge of the first person who had to get a skill selected from options which included the Thornbird Imbue Chamber.

“Thank you, I think.” Tom said to Selena.

“You think?” She said, arching an eyebrow. “I don’t think there is any thinking involved.”

“Thank you.” Tom said unreservedly. “For converting the portal and sharing the method. Both gifts are invaluable.”

She smiled. “It’s a fun technique. Do you want a list of skills the goblins had?”

Tom shook his head. “No need. Let’s get our reward.”

“We’ll discuss what we got when we’re by ourselves.” Everlyn stated in the party chat. “Hide the stones when they came out.”

Tom glanced sideways at her while being careful to not show any emotions on his face. “Why are you suspicious? We’re all on the same side.”

Everlyn glared at him not bothering to hide anything from the others. “You’re too trusting.”

Tom moved forward as he digested the strategy. He deliberately trailed after the others to give himself time to think. There was a decision to make because his personal allocation was significant enough to justify fate expenditure.

Each person ahead of him reached their hand in and produced a skill stone. The reactions were mixed. Some of them clearly got complimentary skills others slightly less so, but none of them said anything and the stones disappeared almost immediately. Tom noticed no one used them, as they respected Everlyn’s instructions.

In his mind, he constructed what he wanted to receive. Something that would help either him or his team. He didn’t care about the specifics. His need was that it was something one of them would desire to include in their build. Forty fate left him.

Tom found himself standing next to the loot portal. He was the last by design.

He plunged his hand and his fist immediately closed over a stone. He pulled it out and sent it into his personal storage almost instantly.

The portal did not disappear.

Curiously, he thrust his hand back in and searched around the open space. His hand touched the stone, and he grabbed it, confirmed it was what he was expecting, and made it disappear.

There were five in total and with them all extracted he turned to face Selena.

“Definitely a thank you. That was impressive.”

Selena smiled at that. “The more we can share the better. Traditionally, we also carry out a review after the battle. Are you guys up for that?”

He glanced at Everlyn who nodded.

“Let’s all sit in the circle.”

Selena’s team reacted to the instructions by immediately sitting down to form a half circle. Tom sat on his side and waited.

“The customary way to do this. Is we each state something that went right and something that went wrong. You can’t repeat anything that someone else said. You guys aren’t used to this so you can go first.”

“And we can say anything?” Michael asked.

“Providing someone else hasn’t stated it already.”

“Well, I thought it was a pretty bad mistake that I almost died.” There was chuckling. “And I thought the meteorite strategy was appropriate for the conditions.”

They went around the circle with each person, raising what they did right and wrong. The level of detail was surprising. Jane was critical of a failure of her team to use fear spells to scare out the goblins at the end. It would probably have saved Michael from being assaulted.

There was a ding from the interface.

“Phil,” Everlyn said instantly.

“Twenty seconds to check.” Selena said.

“Tom, Rahmat, take first watch.” Everlyn said at the same time over party chat.

Immediately everyone else in his team’s face when inanimate and half of Selena’s team.

The boss herself stared him down the whole time. “At least you have that level of discipline. Just because it seems safe doesn’t mean it is.”

“I know.”

One by one animation returned to people’s faces.

“Go,” Everlyn mouthed at him.

He stepped into his system room and looked at the message on the wall.

Congratulations! The zone quest has been completed. The sprite generals and queen has been defeated.

Your contribution to the completion of the quest has been assessed to be 0.0%

Experience awarded is 0.

All monsters in the zone will now only give ten percent experience.

Lair’s and mission objectives will award no additional experience.

Tom went back to the real world.

“It is worse than we expected.” Michael said quietly.

“It doesn’t change anything.” Selena stated finally. “We need to finish the debrief and then discuss the next steps.”