CHAPTER 289 – REVELATION THROUGH REPETITION
The circle of red on the island disappeared behind him.
Tom shook his head, impressed. That aura had been extraordinarily powerful, and he wondered if he would ever get anything that perfect manifesting again without it being forced by fate expenditure. Then he smiled to himself. The beauty of it was it didn’t matter. If nothing like that ever happened naturally again, Tom couldn’t care less.
This path that Selena had put them on was not about random chance in mundane battles. It was about creating the option of a powerful fall back that could be reliably triggered when shit truly hit the fan. It was about saving them from death and just knowing that it was in the spell’s capability to produce an effect like that was enough for him.
Underneath him, the Elder swooped down to another island to continue their search for fruit. The motion without the corresponding forces going through his body was a little disconcerting to be honest. He shut his eyes and reviewed the fight before that miraculous aura had popped into existence. Mentally, he constructed models of how the snakes had fought and adjustments he could make to minimise the damage next time he faced them. While they were supremely agile even when affected by the hurricane level wind, they had flaws in how they fought.
The primary one was how they fixated upon him. When he had moved quickly, they had all whipped around to follow him. At one point, he had leapt one way and realised he was running himself into multiple beak attacks, so he had retreated rapidly back the way he had come. Only half the snakes had followed the second movement. The rapid change of direction had even made some collide and get entangled with each other.
There was a lot to think about there and the more he played out the previous battles he noticed other anomalies. When they were using their beak or wings to attack, the snakes couldn’t fly up or down. When they cast their magic, they coiled up like a viper preparing to spring forward. Adjustments he could make to take advantage of their different tells occurred to him and he was satisfied that next time he would do better.
Tom knew he wouldn’t be able to consistently rely on Chaotic Aura to do all the heavy lifting. When his mana was recharged, he summoned a lesser fire elemental, as Everlyn had recommended, and pondered on other steps he could take to improve his efficiency.
The Elder swooped down and landed on another island.
Adrenaline shot through him.
Another battle was coming.
He leapt off the chosen with his spear in hand as the rest of them also disembarked. They were all watching the sky above them. Everlyn pointed once more at the sun.
“Same numbers as previously.” She warned them.
The winged snakes swept down upon them. Once more, Tom met the monsters away from the others. This time, he had a better grasp on what he was facing. He flashed through chaotic aura options, abandoning them one after the other as they proved to be ineffective. Finally, he kept the eighth he manifested. It was nothing special, just a shimmering energy that slowed down his opponent slightly.
Then he settled into a pattern to beat them. He was far more clinical in his actions this time. He would hold position until they clumped, then spring to the side, and when they reacted, leap back the other way. Chaos resulted, and that bought him critical seconds to create distance from the dangerous monsters. When he noticed lots of them coiling up, he now knew to throw himself into a roll so that the unleashed air magic missed him. His elemental dashed from one snake to another, burning a small patch of feathers near the base of the wing. It had learnt that the spot was vulnerable and it somehow almost halved their attack speed.
Half a minute in, his skill generated fate was running rampant and was causing them to frequently collide with each other. That and his deepening understanding of their attack patterns allowed Tom to relax somewhat. He swayed, dodged, and occasionally unleash his rapid leap sideways then back again with his spear, lashing out continuously to disrupt and hurt the creatures. The snakes were everywhere, but he teleported where required and with insight into when they were launching special attacks versus just trying to bite him he didn’t have to call on Touch heal to fix any badly damaged patches of Living Rock.
They won the fight with a minimum of fuss and then kept going.
Fifteen minutes later they landed on a different island. Snakes died, this time to one of Keikain’s chaos bolts that got a life of its own when it turned into some sort of absolute cold wisp. It flashed from one snake to the other and they dropped through the air and then shattered into pieces upon striking the island’s stone.
They kept fighting. Every fifteen minutes they would descend to an island and be attacked by monsters who usually approached by hiding in the glare of the sun. It was no longer exclusively snakes, sometimes large gull like birds assaulted them and once instead of a swarm a single wyvern like creature had attacked them.
Tom once more stood in a mass of dead flying snakes and sea monkeys as well. The fight was over. This had been a massive swarm three times larger than all the previous groups, plus the sea monkey’s joining had been a surprise. It should have been a desperate struggle that required the chosen to intervene, but it hadn’t panned out like that.
He glanced over to his left where more than half their enemies were dead and visibly rotting away. A chaos bolt that had expanded out of control. He rubbed his hand and the fresh pink skin on the back of it. Then he glanced back at the others. His face was grim. “That was too close. I think without the chosen it might have killed me.”
Around him, the dead bodies moved and shifted as they changed size as the decay process went through them. It was like something you would see in a time lapse video.
It was disturbing.
“Not my fault,” Rahmat said sounding almost defeated. “The point of impact was closer to seven than six metres from you. I was overly cautious, not reckless.”
The dead bodies from the spell stretched out over a thirty metre wide circle.
“Not your fault,” Michael agreed. “This is a known danger of chaos options. Sometimes it releases things it shouldn’t. But I think you’re wrong Tom.” The healer caught his eye, squinting because he was looking into the sun. “The chosen fixed you, but if they weren’t here, I would have been able to do it.”
“I’m not sure you could have.” Tom disputed him quietly. The memory of how quickly that touch of rot had taken hold and began to spread was clear in his memory.
He involuntarily shuddered.
One of the water monkeys burst and then deflated. The rot had killed it, but it had been infected toward the end of the battle, so it had taken this long to rot away its stomach walls.
Michael licked his lips and glanced at the devastation. “You might be right. But that risk of it backfiring on the user is why it’s so cheap for its effectiveness.”
Tom frowned and rubbed the smooth skin on his hand. “We’re like toddlers playing with fire. It’s all fine and dandy to acknowledge the problem, but it’s better to act on the issue. We all should invest fate in stopping friendly fire.”
“We’re already doing that every morning.” Michael told him.
“Not just you guys who are using the spell. I mean all of us as a personal protective measure. I’m going to start throwing my fate at the risk too.”
“Tom, are you sure?” the healer asked. “I’m not convinced that’s the best choice. We can continue to rely on the chosen. Not that I’m demanding it, mind you,” he said hurriedly. “I’m just playing some devil’s advocate here. Leaning on them will let us avoid spending our reserves unnecessarily.”
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Tom considered the idea. As much as he hated the concept of being dependent on someone, it had a lot of merit. It would let them direct more resources to personal evolution and to make sure they had fate on their side when they fought the dragon. But their journey was about more than this trial and the chosen wouldn’t always be here. “Tempting, but maybe not. I don’t want to build bad habits. Plus, I’m thinking a general fate investment to prevent unlucky magic procs from killing us is a good choice. It feels natural. Fate works better when it influences random outcomes and has time to act. That’s its sweet spot. Preventing spells from randomly becoming more powerful and killing us feels like something that fate’s designed for.”
Michael grunted non-committedly which Tom meant he wanted to ignore the problem and let the chosen with their super healing and shielding they had available do all the heavy lifting.
“Just spit balling.” Tom advised him.
“I know you have a good point.”
“And so did you,” he conceded.
“Yep, and unless you waste an oracle question, we’re never going to know which is the darker shade of grey.”
“Yeah, I’m not doing that.”
Michael laughed. “No, an oracle question is way too powerful to waste. And I think it’s clear some proactive fate investment is sensible, but we don’t want to go all in.”
The elder zoomed over to hover over him. “Blessed of sanatiores it grows dark. We were planning on staying here but with.” It shuffled to face the rotting corpses.
“Yes, let’s find a different island.” He agreed readily.
Three fights later they were on a land mass large enough for all of them.
While everyone else prepared the camping site. Tom pulled out his bed map and went to sleep.
The True dream swept him up.
Instantly, he knew he was in another alien race. A species he hadn’t experienced before.
The senses were far closer to human, but their anatomy was all wrong. Its body was kind of like an inflatable ball with arms. It had vision similar to humans and with its large eyes and proportions they were the earth’s definition of cuteness. Even the adults caused the type of reaction a puppy or kitten would generate. The, ‘oh my god so cute and helpless… I want to hug it’ sort of reaction.
Unfortunately, its internal thoughts that Tom also had access to were not so cute. Its brain waves showed that it was a hardened killer towards everything but its own kind. It liked to kill like a fox in a henhouse, but directed that murder lust to everything.
He had only touched the other mind briefly, but a significant amount of information was exchanged; he guessed he had caught it in a moment of self reflection or possibly it was continually thinking about its species and its place in the wider Existentia.
They were a physically weak species, probably even more so than humans. There growth curve when leveling up was lower. With a basic class, it took humans ten levels to progress a rank. These creatures took almost fifteen for the same advancement and it was not like they started out strong. At level zero, all monsters and beasts could kill them.
On their home world, they had risen by mastering tools and then out hunting everything else. They had destroyed every other predator and ruthlessly slaughtered everything that could threaten them physically until they were undisputed masters of their planet.
Despite their looks, or potentially because of it, they were vicious on a level that humans couldn’t conceive of. They loved hunting, and it was killing was like a blast of religious ecstasy.
The creature he was in looked around at the remaining fighters. They were a long way from the safety of the tamed lands, and six of them were not enough. The ambush two days ago had been costly.
“We retreat then.” His second said.
“The Shantga do not repeat,” the body he was in snapped coldly. “No, we replenish our killing armaments and then head back for reinforcements to finish the mission.”
“We’re going to do crafting?” Todga their youngest of their group asked, sounding disappointed. How she had survived when the other, better young ones had perished was a mystery. It was probably cowardliness.
“Yes, guaranteeing sufficient ammunition is what it means to be a hunter. It is not all glorious killing.”
There were jumps of agreement from the older hands amongst them. The mind he was in turned its attention to the pile of rocks in front of them. “Our crafting formation will be one shaper, three engravers and two infusers.” There was no need to assign anyone to a specific task, as it was already decided by their seniority.
Todga the youngest the designated shaper for this session immediately went to work. First, she broke the stones into more workable chunks and then smoothed them into the launching configuration. Each lump was shaped into a cross between a car tire and a spinning top before being carefully polished to a glossy sheen. When she completed the task, she passed the finished product to the waiting engravers.
They focused on the job. None of them finishing the piece. The first in line did the basic runes, empowering the untiered stone with durability and stability. They were passed down the line and more complicated battle orientated runes were like wise engraved. Once all three had placed the runes needed, the finished product was tossed carelessly into the pile.
Tom, with his access to the memories and thoughts of the person he was in knew that the runes were stable and would not be activated until launched from their slingshots.
“Are we doing quality control?” Todga asked. “I mean, after the infusion has been finished.”
His second next to him laughed. “With both Molk and myself doing the infusing it’s not required. I can guarantee all those are formed perfectly.
“It’s just regulations say that when crafting quality control is required.”
“So naïve, Todga,” the second scoffed. “Our numbers were quartered, but the two best infusers survived. Quality control is not necessary.”
They finished their task, and the completed ammunition was passed out. They were stored in a bag that settled comfortably below the belly and then the group headed off.
In short order, they ran into a herd of creatures that Tom would have described as a six-legged bear. While predators, they were not a direct threat and could be easily avoided by going around them.
“We can take them,” his second said immediately.
“Agreed,” the mind he was in stated. He, the mind he was in was imagining blood, death and more glorious blood.
After that, there was no hesitation. They pulled out their sling shots and started launching the donut shaped stones at the enemies. The initial volley was devastating with the explosion of rending energy tearing apart the gathered monsters. Most of the creatures on the outer flank closest to them died in moments.
The bears, probably due to some natural skill, orientated upon their group and charged. Like the disciplined fighters, they were the six hunters bounced up and down and did not care as they continued to throw their crafted rocks.
“The cubs are escaping,” the second reported.
The mind he was in checked and confirmed the fact. A young bear, which was about two-thirds of the size of a typical adult, was leading a pack of about fifteen cubs away. “Tulda and Sorna.” The person he was in demanded.
The two shantga reacted as ordered. One of them bounced into the air and magic let it rise higher and higher. It spun its sling shot around and the missile did not go towards the monsters that were still rushing their group. Instead, it arced over to strike the junior that was leading the babies to safety.
It exploded.
Sorna, in the meantime, stayed in his spot, but his sling glowed with energy and when it released, it flew over the approaching enemies to land amongst the fleeing cubs.
There was no time to watch them further because the bears were getting too close. His sling spun, firing the disks of rock without spinning to full speed first. “Todga,” he demanded as the bear that was a mere five metres from them fell as its leading two legs were blown away. “Intercept.”
A second bear leapt over the falling corpse of the defeated one.
Todga, as ordered leapt forward straight at the new threat, thrusting one of her arms into its mouth. It bit down. Rag dolled her and with a ripping sound she was sent flying. For a moment, the bear stood there with the arm in its mouth, its charge halted.
Then its head exploded as a missile from one of his companions struck. Tulda and Sorna were still firing their sling shots to clean up and the young and all the adults were dead. With a glance, his second went over to treat Todga. It was a successful hunt. The bears had been eliminated to the last baby.
Whooping with glee, they finished the fight. This was just for fun. The bear things were too low levelled to give experience, which is why Todga had only lost an arm. They were also too few to take advantage of any bounty from harvesting materials. That was okay, the bears were dead, and it was important to put your stamp on the world.
Eventually, this area would be considered to be tamed. Every massacre got them one step closer.
The vision ended, and Tom couldn’t make heads or tails of it. He compared the previous confused dream to this one. The last one had bamboozled him. But side by side, the dreams made more sense. They had a common theme.
True Dreaming was sharing them to draw attention to exploding ammunition. The exact use of such an insight was unclear, but he was not alone. This was something to discuss with the rest of the team. They would have their own ideas and from their collective wisdom they would add another strategy to incorporate into their plan for the dragon.
That eventual confrontation still felt like it was an eon away, but it was fast approaching. They were already a third of the way through the trial.
Every trick they could bring to bear was going to be necessary. Tom knew that in his heart. It had been reinforced by dreams and the other bit… The other fact the dreams had shared … the information that he wasn’t telling the others… All these advantages weren’t going to be enough. No matter what they did, no matter how perfect they were in their execution… there was no way for all of them to survive.
But some would and that would have to be enough.