CHAPTER 271 – AN UNEXPECTED GIFT

Tom watched the sanatios chosen and the two killers disappear back the way they had come. He hoped the alien’s promise was not an idle one. If they could actually do it… if they could buy them that four months, then hopefully on the way out they would be able to sacrifice some insects and give them even more time. If… The word was so easy to say. But if it worked. Tom sighed. Then the killers might survive long enough to be useful. He knew he had misjudged the situation… he had failed to understand how crippling their curse was. If he had of been smart, he should have had them executed or exiled back when they were part of the main group.

Now, because of another competitor’s assistance the two of them might survive long enough to be useful. It was a humbling thought… that his attempt to save them might only end up working because of such an unexpected ally.

“Do you think they will fix them?” Michael asked finally. “Rip away the curse and make them fully human again.”

“No,” Tom answered shortly.

“They said for the rest of the trial.” Everlyn volunteered. “Not fix, delay.”

“Really?” Michael raised in eyebrow. “They had to kill a human every two weeks, and these aliens claim they can solve the problem for almost four months.”

Everlyn shrugged. “Just reporting what I heard.”

“Maybe they’ll deal with it by eliminating them.” Rahmat said harshly.

”Rahmat,” Toni almost squealed in outrage. “That’s harsh. You take that back. What they did in the larger camp was unconscionable, but since then they’ve done their best.”

Rahmat said nothing, but Tom could almost hear his thinking. ‘If you knew what I did, you wouldn’t be so forgiving.’

“Apologise,” Toni insisted. “That was out of line.”

In front of them, the corpses of the kobolds started to evaporate. “Look at that.” Tom said loudly to distract them from the situation. Rahmat, from his expression was not going to back down and allowing the conversation to continue would only end with one outcome. Discord, fighting and potential unveiling of secrets that were better kept hidden.

He pointed as their ire turned to him.

The bodies of the reptilian creatures were fading, melting, evaporating away, which, for everyone who had cleared a lair was not particularly impressive. That was not what had grabbed his attention. Two bodies were not disappearing in the normal fashion. The pair of them were glowing with bright colours and rather than the disintegrating material vanishing into the floor, the energy instead flowed toward the centre of their bodies.

In three heart beats all the corpses apart from the special two had been absorbed by the trial, but the process in the last pair kept going. The light grew more intense as the flesh around the centre cavity was eroded away. Then they could see the glowing ore in the remanents of the body that was continuing to dissolve and direct energy inwards.

Then the process was over and a dull dark grey ore was left behind, one for each of the special light displays.

“The ore,” Thor declared. “Who gets it? Or do we gather it up and distribute it later.”

“You can grab them and use them.” Tom said. “We’re not going to be splitting up, so there’s no point thinking too hard about ordering. But before you grab them, can I?” He strode forward touched the rock and used his inspect on it before stepping into the system room.

Two messages waited for him on the wall.

Do you want to absorb the Platningite Ore (0 of 20 absorbed)

Mentally, he rejected the request.

Platningite Ore – Tier 2 (200 grams)

This ore is a rare material that, when melted by a high enough levelled blacksmith will create Platagradium, a metal with magical amplification properties. In its current state, it is a hard but brittle substance that generates random magical amplifications when magic strikes it or is channeled through it.

That was the information that Tom had been after. He could definitely absorb it for living rock flexibility, but he wasn’t sure if it was in his best interest to do so. He would hate to be hit by a spell and have the rock amplify the attack instead of limiting it.

Tom returned to the real world, and after a short discussion they continued clearing the tunnels. Once more, he triggered every trap as they came across them, but without the benefit of continuous recharges he needed to take regular breaks.

They found another tight angle turn into a wide open cavern and paused.

“Do we change anything up?” Tom asked.

“Let me check if they are grouped. If they are, we’ll go with the same approaches last time. But instead of rocks, can you throw lightning balls. The kobolds are vulnerable to almost all magic, excluding fire. With how they are clumping the wider attack.”

“I get it.” Tom interrupted. “I had the same idea and was going to test it when the others got back.”

“No need to wait. It will work.”

She disappeared and a short time later they got called into attack.

The fight was brief and brutal and ended much the same as the previous one. His Lightning Balls wrecked havoc on his side of the dust storm and no chaos bolt morphed into anything deadly. Which effectively countered his improved efficiency. The golem survived with superficial damage and Tom was left in much the same state as last time with Living Rock being forced to absorb a strike on both his thigh and his stomach.

Two patches of stone have been crumbled into nothing by the force of the blows. Tom couldn’t imagine how much damage it would have done against his flesh. The blunt instruments would probably have burst all the way through him. With the battle over, he scooped up some rock and in short order was fixed.

They cleared another tunnel and another battle against sixteen kobolds. They started on a fourth.

The elder arrived, and they stopped immediately. Keikain and Clare returned a moment later with the earth mage having a thoughtful expression, while the human healer looked more than a little sick.

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Alarm bell started to ring in his head. The sanatio’s chosen had deliberately not said how they planned on solving the issue. He counted them quickly. The elders and the small ones were there, but there were only four middles.

One was missing.

The one that Tom had first spoken to. He felt sick. It had to atone for something and had been ‘happily’ humming to itself. Were those events related. Was it really preparing itself to be killed. Tom could remember how desperately it had been fighting to be allowed to kill the semi-sapients. It was not depressed it had wanted to live and tried to bend their belief systems to allow that.

Yet the pieces clicked together in his head with awful finality, and while he hoped otherwise, he knew the truth. He had felt the religious conviction at the core of the elder’s body. It, too, would sacrifice itself for another sapient. In his search for clues, he examined Clare’s face more closely. She was certainly disturbed enough, and she felt noticeably stronger. He wasn’t the only one to notice.

“They sacrificed one of them,” Toni whispered.

“Voluntary. It must have been voluntary,” Michael mused at the same time.

“Speculation is not helpful.” Clare said angrily. “It might offend our friends. And you are all more than capable of putting the facts together.”

Silence descended.

“We need to keep fighting.” Tom said finally.

“Definitely!” Keikain snarled. “I need to be doing something.”

They continued on, and with the chosen continuously boosting his mana along with his improved proficiency he could do it at a slow jog. They cleared several smaller caverns and were waiting to clear another. His golem had its spear shield ready.

“I’m coming back,” Everlyn reported quietly.

“What?” Michael said in surprise. “What on earth is happening?”

“It’s a tribe. They have a pretend village with huts, well more like lean-tos, constructed from slices of fungus. But no young, old or pregnant woman just fighters.”

“How many?” Michael demanded.

“I was getting to that,” Everlyn chided him as she appeared out of the tunnel. “Eighty and a lot of magic users. There is no way the golem will be able to pin them down like it has been doing.”

“With the way they front load damage we can’t hit them straight on.” Tom agreed. “I can to easily imagine thirty of them trying to kill me at once.” He shuddered. “I’ll be torn to shreds.” He wasn’t joking. Individually, they only had twenty fate but thirty attacking him, with all of them releasing their entire pool to supercharge the first flurry of attacks. His own impressive fate would be helpless.

“That’s why I’m here.” She said. “My vote is to bring down this tunnel and find easier prey.”

There was a blur of movement as the elder left its position to zoom over and hover right in front of Everlyn, as they liked to do. “Perceptive one, we have observed your team’s battle failings. Only eighty kobolds are not a threat. The paths demand you fight them.”

She shook her head, denying the alien’s words. “Elder, with all due respect. This is beyond our skills. We lack both the firepower and tanking ability to fight so many. They’re individually stronger than us, and there are eighty of them as opposed to nine of us.”

“Perceptive one you show humble wisdom. But you are not blind. Santios chosen has not fought in a battle before.”

“And you can’t help in this one. It’s not like you can kill them for us. Or can you?”

“No perceptive one. Your insight aura is true. We may not play an exterminator. But we can keep you alive for longer.”

“Alive?”

“Exactly. The enemy’s weapons will not reap a toll.”

“Wait,” he interrupted. “You’re saying you can do more. I’ve been badly hurt when fighting smaller groups and you were unable to help. Then why would a larger group be easier.”

“Leader Tom, do not succumb to primitive objection to existence. You have not seen our paths acting in accordance with our will. Morally, the previous battles were not a field for us to join. No sapients were in danger. There was no twist of fate which would let us become more than scribes. In the coming fight, your life is at threat. Ethically, we may join our expertise to your own.”

“And you’re sure,” Tom started. “That together we are guaranteed to win?”

“Leader Tom all I can promise is that you will continue in your current state. Even if you renounce your foolish ethical code and adapt ours and wisely refuse the clamour of senseless fighting, we would still be able to guarantee a safety exit. Eighty Kobold’s if they combine everything into a single attack will be found wanting.”

The elder was claiming that when the Sanatios chosen used their powers that the kobolds even if all of them attacked the same person simultaneously that they would be rebuffed. It was proclaiming they had the power to stop him from being hurt. “Then why didn’t you…” He cut off his grumbles as he realised their futility. These creatures were truly alien to him and there was no point pretending otherwise. Prosecuting the illogicalness of their positions would fail. It was better to accept them as they were and act accordingly. “Elder, I thank you. Your aid will be appreciated.”

“Leader Tom, it’ll be our pleasure to be your floating stones to propel you to gaining experience from each level. The deeper into the trial we get the less ably we can express actions in absolutes.”

“So we’re going to fight?” Michael said. “Any strategies?”

The council of war was frustrating because the Sanatios were engaged and wanted to contribute to the fight. Unfortunately, what they came up with was questionable, but they insisted on getting their own way. The final battle formations felt ridiculous to him. The golem was abandoned and they would stand in a triangle shape with melee at the front, Tom in the middle and ranged at the back.

They would try to hold those positions with everyone pushing out as much destruction as they could without hurting their companions.

“Tom, are you sure you trust them?” Everlyn asked urgently. “Because if they want to kill us, we’re not surviving this.”

It was an important question. Based on their face-to-face interactions the answer would be no. They had acted exactly how he would have expected a sly evil race to do. First, conserve their own strength by staying out of the battle and then encourage the victims to over commit against another force. “Yes, I trust them.” He told Everlyn, having shared their thought patterns there was no way the elder was setting them up to die. They were mentally incapable of such an approach. “I know they’re weird, but they’re genuine in their reverence of sapient life.”

“Let’s do this,” Everlyn said brightly, and they shuffled into their fighting positions.

It was bizarre going into a battle without being in the frontline, but he stuck to the agreed plan.

The moment they emerged a hail of cross-bow bolts struck them and bounced off shields that suddenly appeared. Harry stuttered only slightly as the projectiles flew at him before he gamely kept running right up to the agreed distance of ten metres from the nearest kobold. Tom was a further five metres back and now that he was in range, he launched all three of the lightning balls that he had prepared. Other spells flew from beside and behind him at the packed monsters. Two chaos bolts fizzled, but one generated a puff of dust that made twenty of the lizard creatures fall over, hacking violently. They weren’t dead, but they were out of the fight momentarily.

Then the kobolds, realising that their arrows were doing nothing charged them. In moments, they were all around him. Tom fell into his standard forms. Dodging, lashing out with his spears and occasionally unleashing a lighting ball to disrupt groups of the monsters. Whenever Tom’s abilities went haywire, warning him of his approaching doom, a glowing shield of energy was inserted between him and the threat. It absorbed the blow that would have troubled Tom and he was freed up to go for the kill. Most of the others struggled against the lightning fast creatures with Keikain appearing to be the most successful. His earth spikes did a surprisingly large amount of damage often catching multiple monsters on the one upthrust of rock.

Tom gamely kept battling. The nature of the fight did not make the greatest use of his skill set, but he took the kills when they presented themselves and tried his best to minimise the work the sanatios chosen had to go through to keep him alive. Finally, the last one died, and he was surprised to find how few injuries he was at the end of the battle. There were lots of rips in his skivvy and a nasty tear on his thigh along with blood stains to show he had not gone through unscathed but that was all there was.

Tom glanced at the others. They were in a similar state to him.

Everlyn touched his arm and pointed at the sanatio’s chosen. They were all hovering low to the ground and none of them were zipping around like they often were. “I think this number is about the limit.” She whispered through the party chat just to him. “Lets move,” she called out loudly. “Elder, can one of yours absorb the ore?”

There were four bodies metamorphosing with a flashy light show.

“We have more kobolds to kill.” Everlyn said. “No dawdling.” She led them unerringly toward the tunnel on the right. They were approaching the treasure room. He wondered if being on a higher level mattered? If it did, would the rewards be doubled? And if so, would that come through as two loot portals or a single stronger one? To be honest, he wasn’t sure which outcome he would prefer.