CHAPTER 288 – AVOIDING A LONG SWIM
Everlyn led the way to the new zone. The passage down was the same as usual. Dull normal stone, and for humans spacious. It was wide and tall enough for even the giant to crawl through, so the roof was almost three Tom’s tall and they could walk six abreast comfortably. When they reached the bottom, the large doors were open and the tunnel to the next zone was revealed. The second passage was different even if it had the same dimensions. The walls, the floor, the roof they were all shiny. Tom touched it and his fingers came away wet. It was like the rock was sweating. They looked at each other and then followed the abnormally steep tunnel upward.
The walk was shorter than usual and they emerged straight from the tunnel into open air. Apparently, in this zone, there was no safe room to transition through. Tom’s mood dropped as he observed where they were. Behind them, stretching out into the distance was a massive unnatural cliff. The white stone, tinged with green, almost certainly imprisoned the entire zone. It radiated a hostile presence, looked poisonous, and clearly warned all of them away from investigating further.
It was irrelevant, so he turned his attention to what mattered. In front of them was a wide expanse of water. Dark, almost black water, with the swell of waves being the only visible sign of life and movement. The colour and those uniform waves spoke to how deep it truly was. The island they stood upon was solid rock. Half of it was a marble like stone which was perfectly polished and the rest a dark brown rock that had been eroded away to leave sharp edges. You had the choice to watch your feet position carefully or stand upon the marble and risk slipping with every step. Then at the centre of the island was a couple of forlorn palm-like trees which were the only visible life present. They may be on a wind and wave swept rock with the sun beating down upon them but there was no algae, lichen or moss taking advantage of the growing conditions. That lack of life felt as artificial as the cliff that designated the end of the zone.
Spear out Tom approached the edge of the island. He glanced down at the two metre drop to the water below. A wave struck, and that distance was reduced to half a metre and a spray of water slapped him. There was no need to jump into the water to gather more information. While staying on the relatively dry land, he could see enough to know that his initial impressions were correct. There was no lightly sloped beach leading away. Instead, he was looking down into the depths of the sea.
This was one of the situations they had been worried about. “Damn it.” Tom slammed the butt of his spear down on the rock to express his frustrations. “It’s not a swamp, it’s a god-damn ocean.”
Everlyn moved to stand next to him. Her bow was drawn, and she too glanced over the edge, a frown marring her face. “We knew that was a risk.”
“Do we need to retreat and choose a different door?” Michael asked.
Tom raised his eyes and looked outward. He didn’t want to swim, but he needed to understand the full extent of the challenge. Large waves crossed the surface and he could see a scattering of islands that popped up every hundred metres or so.
He licked his lips and checked the quest they had received.
Possess and cash in ten redboon fruits to gain access to all connected zones.
Tom glanced up at the single red fruit on one of the palm-like trees above him. If it was one per island, then they needed to visit a hundred sixty of the islands to get their quota. That is if it was one per island, but with the number of the small islands he could see he doubted they would be that plentiful.
Fifty metres away, his eyes snapped as it saw movement. Water sprayed up far more than what occurred when the waves crashed against the island. There was a brief glimpse of a whale sized monster. It looked like a fish, but he had no doubt that it was dangerous.
“What was that about airborne monsters?” Michael asked. “That was no flyer.”
“Monsters above the water and below.” Tom said tiredly, remembering the tile. “However, there were no pictures of what was below. We thought maybe the written warning just meant the flyers rested in the muck of the swamp.”
“Yeah, well, that theory was wrong.” Michael sighed. “That thing looked like it belonged in a jaws movie. And as Tom so eloquently expressed that’s a goddamn ocean. It’s not shallow, it’s not a swamp, and we don’t have the option of wading through it like I know you guys had planned out. I hate to make the call, but Everlyn even if the zone has a treasure room, this is not a layout we’re suited for.”
No more monsters broke the surface of the ocean, but that didn’t stop the deep water from being foreboding. If anything, the lack of visible action made it scarier.
“If we could fly or jump far enough, it would be different,” Rahmat said. “For a flyer, this is hardly a challenge. But we’re not natural flyers, so I’m with Michael on this. We need to choose an alternative zone to challenge.”
“Don’t be silly.” Everlyn said quietly. “You all know how the zones work. This isn’t a special zone like the tile one. There is no retreat. The way is closed until we complete the quest. We can’t swim, so we’re all going to have to buy a transport skills.”
“We should check. We might get lucky,” Michael suggested.
“Another cost,” Keikain groaned in annoyance at the same time. “We don’t have the experience for that type of expense.”
“The rewards from the last zone will be enough.” Toni reminded him brightly. “We’ll be okay.”
“Not what I meant.” Keikain snapped. “Long term we can’t keep absorbing those types of costs. We don’t have enough experience as it is.”
Everlyn looked back from where she still stood at the edge of the island a single step from plunging into the sea. “Inefficient expenditure versus death. That’s not a choice worth debating.”
“I know that.”
“Then why did you raise it.” She demanded eyes blazing.
“I was just complaining,” Keikain snapped. “I’m allowed to do that. I’m allowed to be human. There is no rule demanding I be a machine at all times.”
The eldest moved to shift in front of Everlyn. “Perceptive one, before you make choices you will regret, please consider what we bring to the table. At a minimum, we can provide safe and efficient transport.”
“Really?” she looked sceptically.
“Yes, perceptive one. You humans do not weigh too much. We could easily ferry you from island to island. We’ve already shown the capacity with the sled last night, but that was an inefficient and clumsy way to do it. If you sit on us, probably it will be safe. The only real risk will be a threat coming from the sky and if something approaches, we will drop you on an island where you could defend.”
They glanced at each other.
“That’s a lot of trust,” Keikain said finally expressing the thoughts of all of them. “I wouldn’t want to be dumped into that ocean.”
Tom noticed the chosen around them trembling slightly at the earth mag’s barbed insult.
“I’m confident in the contract we’ve written.” Michael stated firmly. “If they have this capacity, we can trust them.”
Tom tried to step into the conversation, but his throat contracted and choked off the words. He grimaced… yes, the reason the skill had reacted was obvious. That phrasing he had been planning was too aggressive, and he suspected the tone and the double qualifiers he had considered were also objectionable. “I too am confident in their character.”
The humans stared at him strangely.
“What? I know I got it wrong once.” His tongue felt like it was moving through molasses. His mind searched for things to say, but there was a long pause until he found a path to express himself. There were more than a few smirks directed his way, which told him they had all correctly interpreted his forced long pause. “I’ve shared a True Dream with them. I can vouch for them.”
“You failed last time,” Keikain interjected. “Why would we trust you now?”
“Now I understand, how I…” The words stopped. The resistance was absolute. Apparently stating the word strakan was a hard taboo that couldn’t be tiptoed around. “I recognise the thought processes that allowed the incident to occur. I have a better understanding of their psyche now. I can guarantee that, contract or no contract, they will do this safely.”
The elder shifted in front of him. “Blessed of Sanatories, do I assume that you agree with my suggested approach?”
“Elder I do.” The words were allowed even though they clearly annoyed over half of the humans. “But how do we do it?”
“Leader Tom, that is easy. You just need to sit on us.”
He did not like the sound of this. Cramming them together last time had been awkward. “Do you mean we gather together in the sled like last night?”
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“Leader Tom, that is not required. It was useful for the trip in the dark, but for a longer period it is impractical not to mention the sled is unwieldy. It will be better for all if you sit on us.”
He stared at the large rock in front of him. It did not look like a comfortable ride. “Humans have the concept of a saddle.”
“Blessed of Sanatories, please enlighten me. I do not understand that term.”
His throat constricted up when he tried to talk to describe the contraption. He was not surprised he had already guessed that it would cause problems.
“It’s what we use in order to…” Toni started.
“It’s not important,” Tom blurted out and interrupted the air mage. Why the explanation of a saddle was taboo, but mentioning the name had been fine was a mystery. “If we sit on you is there a danger of us sliding off. I mean, if you have to do any evasive actions.”
The elder moved side to side in a slow no. “Leader Tom, our magic will hold you. Here, test it. Sit on me.”
The elder lowered itself and spun to the side. Tom realised despite their complicated and evolved relationship he had never touched the chosen before. “Are you sure this is okay?”
The second elder moved. “Blessed of Sanatories, this is just logistics. It will be a pleasure to help.”
“And I just sit on the elder?”
The second elder bobbed happily. “Yes, Leader Tom. It is that simple. You’ll see.”
Feeling more than a little ridiculous, he sat as per the request. The skin was hard and not at all wet but as he settled his bum against it, the surface softened. It adjusted itself and began to feel more like the soft substance that you would see in gyms under your feet rather than living flesh. Cautiously, he wiggled, and the skin under him conformed to his backside effortlessly.
Abruptly, the Elder rose in the air and they were flying.
Tom could track the movement with his vision and his inner ear, but the rest of the forces he was expecting were completely absent. It flew around the trees in the centre of the island, going fast enough that the wind should have been smacking against him, robbing him of breath and ruffling his hair, but that was absent. The Elder spiralled downwards in a tight circle and he didn’t even feel the tug outward as expected. Some form of magic removed the forces of acceleration, centipedal and to a limited extent gravity, and also blocked the wind. He felt none of those sensations like he should have. It was as if he was sitting on a park bench rather than being in the equivalent of a jet doing emergency evasive manoeuvres.
Magic was the best.
They landed, and Tom hopped off with a thoughtful expression. “Is that magic is innate or…?”
The elder rose to face him. “Blessed of Sanatories, it’s a passive ability that we all possess.”
He glanced at the others and tested what he needed to say. His throat constricted, but he didn’t mind the feeling especially when he used it proactively and it didn’t interrupt him mid-sentence. If the skill, the curse, stopped him from saying something offensive, it was doing its job. The wording he was looking for to not make a social mistake formed on the tip of his tongue. “We will be honoured if you can fly us from island to island.”
“Blessed of Sanatories, the honour is all ours.” The elder shifted thoughtfully, rotating like it was studying the whole zone. A human characteristic that it had picked up for nonverbal communication. The spin for it was unnecessary, as the chosen had three-hundred-and-sixty-degree vision. “In fact, we can do more. This zone appears to be devoid of semi-sapient life. If we pushed, we could clear this by ourselves probably in a day, but we won’t. We know you require experience, so we will engineer fights for you. Our partnership will be tested in the final zones and for that you all need to grow in power.”
“Thank you, Elder.”
After a short discussion on the seating arrangement, the group of them took off, speeding over the ocean. The chosen did not stop to harvest the red fruits instead they would just speed past the palm tree like vegetation and if they were fruiting, they would magically pluck it. One, two, ten, forty islands got searched for a haul of only five of the fruits.
They were as rare as Tom had feared.
Abruptly, the chosen spiralled down to land softly on the hard rock of a medium-sized island.
“What’s happening?” Toni asked as magic gathered in her hands. Everlyn’s mythical level weapon was at half draw as she prepared to meet whatever threat the chosen had noticed. The entire team, Tom realised was ready for battle. Belatedly, he manifested his spear.
“Incoming,” the Elder said simply. “From the sun.”
Everlyn stood with her magic bow in one hand and the other over her forehead to shield her eyes from the glare of the sun while she studied the approaching monsters.
“Air based magic,” she said shortly. “Toni, you’ll have to use chaos. No specific vulnerabilities.”
“My lightning elemental?”
“Useless for this fight. Going forward you need to switch to something else. There’s a lot of them. Can we get the dust storm to disrupt them.”
Tom nodded and with a simple mental command the wind began to whip around them carrying slithers of rock up with it. The humans had formed a ring surrounding the chosen, with Tom standing a few metres clear in the direction the enemies were coming from. The flock of creatures swept down upon them. They were a form of flying serpents. Four eyes, two on top and two underneath the head, and they moved through the air like they were swimming effortlessly in water.
He leapt forward to meet them, trusting on his spear to give him the fate to avoid deadly injury in the first few moments. With a twist of his mind, Lightning Enrage was unleashed with a rain of sparks spreading to hit most of the snakes that were approaching them. Fate from his spear spun to protect him, and time slowed as his dodge triggered.
A mass of information assaulted him. The monsters were only the length of his arm and as thin as a finger. In total, there must have been over fifty of them and even before he targeted them with the taunt they had hyper-focused on him as the closest sapient. His senses screamed in response. Twenty of them were trying to land a blow. There were bladed attacks from the almost transparent membranes that ran down their sides, their wings were like sword blades with a razor-sharp edges to them. Then their mouths were not used to bite like most monsters on earth but instead shot out a beak type knife contraption that was like a stalk of grass but far more deadly. They were a hundred percent weapon. Wings were blades, the mouth like a nail gun and their tails ended in a protuberance the size of a fist that acted like a mace head complete with spikes for extra damage and then finally they had their core magic abilities. A host of air magic struck out at him.
All of those sources of threat came at him at once. Over thirty different attacks across the couple of dozen monsters.
There were too many for his spear to be effective in this battle. What would a minor wound or even fatal one on just one of these achieve. Thankfully, the stone in the howling gale that surrounded them buffeted the creatures and disrupted what would otherwise have been effortless flight.
His brain assessed options. If his lightning elemental was useless, then that also ruled out Spark.
What could he do?
They were too close for him to use a chaos bolt. Disintegration missiles were a good choice, but the monsters were probably too agile for him to hit them.
Tom’s mind raced through the various options. He suspected that if he had harnessed Meteorite active that the spinning rocks would have been effective at battering them away, but that was not something he could summon spur of the moment.
If all of his traditional stuff was blocked, it was time to test drive his latest toy.
Spell: Chaotic Aura – Tier 4.
Create an offensive shell that expands out from your skin via a random summoning mechanism.
This is a twenty-mana instant cast chaos spell with no cooldown on usage and produces an offensive aura that ranges from tier 0 to 6, with an effective mana yield of between 1 and 146 mana depending on the luck of the summoning.
Warnings:
* It does not differentiate between friend and foe.
* Do not use in a constrained space.
Michael and Keikain had crunched the numbers. On average, it would take five casts to produce a useable effect and a probable twenty or more to receive something truly powerful.
The monsters descended upon him. He started twisting and spinning to avoid the strikes. He converted sections of himself to stone and actively twisted away from the beak attacks that had the potential to not only tear through flesh but his Living Rock parts as well.
There were so many of them. A teleport took him clear, but right into another attack. A single beak strike left a two centimetre deep long scratch on his stomach etched into solid stone.
He cast the chaotic aura and a dull green cloud briefly expanded around him for a metre, but seemed to have no impact on the snakes.
Twenty mana gone, but he kept triggering them. For him as a tank, the aura was better than chaos bolts, as it would enrage all the enemies he was trying to taunt, while the chaos bolt would just kill its victims.
An aura appeared that made him glow like he was radioactive. He let it run for half a second and noticed that some of the closer wings were singed slightly, but it was surface damage and immaterial. He abandoned that aura again and triggered the spell once more.
A pink cloud blossomed. It stunned the snakes for a fraction of a moment, but beyond that it was useless. He kept triggering the ability. A ten metre cloud formed that was a deep blue, then a narrower effect that was silvery grey, a light yellow… all of which had no noticeable impact on his enemies.
A blast of Touch Heal closed the bleeding spots. He had burned a hundred sixty mana in ten seconds.
Tom borrowed another twenty from his crystal. He would unleash three more before stopping.
It felt like time itself ceased.
There was a boom as a golden white colour expanded around him. The surrounding space was then filled with a red mist and chunks of snake.
Time clicked back to normal.
He stumbled.
There were no alarms from his dodge abilities. Time sped up to the normal speed as the time slow vanished as there was nothing to avoid.
A rain of blood and gore buffered him from all directions. He searched for an enemy but there was none near him only minced body parts.
All the snakes were dead.
“Wow,” Thor whispered impressed. He was closest to Tom and was staring at the edge of his hammer that had visible scratches on it. “That almost broke my weapon.”
“I’m sorry…”
“Don’t apologise,” the big man waved Tom’s apology away. “That was an incredible proc. It was a Chaos aura, right?”
“Yes. It was the ninth I cast.”
“It must have been tier six,” Thor said reverently. “Fuck… it just… it went boom… then whoosh they were all dead.”
Michael was looking in wonder at the bite sized pieces of flesh that had survived. “That’s impressive.”
“Tom turn in a circle.” Everlyn called.
He turned to face her. “Why?”
A blast of water struck him and he spluttered as water mixed with snake stuff was pushed into his mouth. He leant into the stream and spun on the spot as the high pressure stripped the monster mess off him. He was left dripping, but most of the gore was gone. A couple of clean spells would fix him now.
The elder moved in front of him. “Blessed of Sanatories. The battle is finished. We must not delay to celebrate our victory as there is more to do.” It lowered itself to the ground, and Tom, taking the hint took a seat. Everyone else was mirroring him.
He half wanted to explore the aura that he had created further. Find out what it was. He marvelled at the power of the spell that had destroyed forty enemies in an instant.
The elder did not wait on his thoughts and took off. Behind them, Tom stared at the circle of red that his aura had painted on the rock. Buying that aura specifically was a pipe dream, but he wondered what it would be like to do that sort of damage consistently. Were their natives out there with that power? Tom knew the question didn’t need to be asked. Yes, there would be. There would be lots of powerhouses that could do that and more.
They flew on and the circle of red vanished, but the memory of what had happened didn’t fade. One day him wielding that sort of strength would not be a fluke of chance. One day, it would just be one spell in his arsenal of thousands.