CHAPTER 296 – GIANT’S FOLLY
The true dream drew him in. Tom was disorientated for the slightest of moments while he struggled to interpret the new flood of information. Ponderous but agile, similar senses to a human, a stinging pain on a… what was that… a leg? The jumble of sensory inputs was overwhelming like always.
There! He clung to the sudden identification. The mind he was in was distinct. The conviction and certainty couldn’t be mistaken.
This was definitely the dream he had been expecting. He was sharing a moment of time with the giant, a chance to understand what it had got from the equaliser box just like he wanted.
When the mind he was in glanced disdainfully at the trees whose crown was at head height, Tom was not confused. He understood the dimensions of what he was witnessing and that those eyes were fourteen metres high. What he stared at was not miniature trees, but mid sized ones made to look small because of the body he was in. Tom was embarrassed by the fact that he had been fooled by this perspective.
In many ways the giant was the most anatomically consistent to humans out of any creature that he had shared the body of. That should have made the skin feel more familiar, and it did… but only to a limited extent… the way the person viewed the world was totally at odds with humanity.
Power ruled absolutely and the rest of the world was required to recognise it and give him the respect he deserved. There was also the powerful tradition of their history… A correct approach to life and anything that deviated was problematic. It was a strange world view to someone like Tom, strict and unyielding in places and distressingly flexible in others. In the giant’s culture, there would never have been racism or sexism or homophobia because their brains didn’t allow it.
There was only power.
At the current moment in time, the giant was reading screens and flicking them away. Its first zone was a gather quest and then after that was the balancing notification that it read and pretty much dismissed immediately.
The giant paused, and there was a sense of annoyance at what he had just read. He would have rejected it as foolishness, as if there was anyone more powerful than him amongst the competitor race… but the memories of the priestess was an ugly intrusion in his thought and his gut ached like he had done something very wrong by coming here. It made him think that maybe there was an element of truth to the GOD’s message.
A portal appeared at ground height. He stared down for a moment. The flames had only grown to be about the height of his shin. It meant excluding the outside chance of receiving a knowledge prize there would be nothing useful in it.
Why would he receive a balancing box? The prize had to be a joke because he was as strong as this other competitor the priestess spoke about. Possibly it had an advantageous match up against him, but in terms of strength it had to be about the same. Nothing else made sense. He, the greatest of his kind couldn’t be overshadowed by another.
He plunged his hand into the portal and pulled an object out.
Curiously, he lifted the item to his eyes. It was tiny, a flat triangular piece of metal that was smaller than one of his thumbnails.
He scratched it against the club and it was hard because it left a mark, but what was the point of it.
Artefact: Deep Stillness – Tier 7
When incorporated into a weapon, Deep Stillness will install a single use instance of Hole in Space which for three seconds prevents the weapon from being noticed by any precognition skills, past, future or present. The target such a weapon is used against will never know of its existence.
The mind he was in shrugged. That did not seem like something useful to it. With a casual thought, it tossed the small piece of metal up and with a crackle of energy, another portal consumed it.
You have received experience.
The giant shrugged at the message. It was time to finish this trial so he could get back to real life.
The True Dream vanished, and Tom tried to understand what he had witnessed. The item had been intended to be included in a weapon. A tier seven artefact only granting a single instance of a spell felt ridiculous, but the wording of the spell was not one he had seen before.
Absolute protection against precognition abilities was an extraordinarily powerful thing to gift even if it could only be used once. It was clearly intended to attack the dragon. None of his dreams had warned them of the dragon possessing that type of defence, but it sounded like it had something, and that meant Tom was going to need to investigate it further.
He would discuss it with the others, but he knew he would have to use more of his targeted true dreams to get answers.
Normal sleep patterns started up. Tom collapsed ceilings on monsters. He was outside sprinting away from a pack of horned rabbits, he dived into a burrow, rolled, sprinted forward and then boom the passage collapsed behind him. Then he was eating with his friends. It was not completely pleasant as he could sense pressure building around him the whole time and then suddenly, he was in another True Dream.
He immediately tried to orientate and understand where this dream fitted with the others.
It was new!
Alien.
Weird and bizarre were the thoughts that passed through his head.
He was probably on Existentia… but nothing made sense.
His mind struggled to track down what was happening. There were none of the normal senses, no smell, touch, sight, or down…
What?
Understanding of his situation abruptly clicked into place. There was a down, theoretically at least, but there was no ground. The body was floating in the air and the mind knew everything nearby.
Excitement surged through Tom. It knew about everything nearby because it was a domain and one with multiple layers.
Its body was the first, a space where it had complete control of everything, then an area two or three times that where his air magic was absolutely supreme, and then the extended domain, which represented awareness. That third layer stretched an enormous distance. Not to the ground or anything ridiculous like that, but minutes of travel time.
Tom tried to put facts and distances into the feeling, but he couldn’t do it. Instead, he focused on the domain. This is what one felt like, he thought to himself in excitement. It was an air domain, not earth, so it wasn’t perfect, but it was still an amazing resource. What he was trying to create would have to be something like this. He concentrated on the feel of each of the separate sections and how information was exchanged between them. There was a lesson to be learnt here.
The domain was not a singular instead it was three different layers. Tom sort of understood the outer two, but he had no concept of that first one within his body. Everything he had done to date had been on trying to create those second two components. He wondered if this was the clue he was after, the missing step to allow him to consolidate his separate skills into a single one.
The air elementals that he was in sensed an enemy encroaching on its territory. Its opponent, a storm elemental, was stronger than it was, but there was no sense of alarm. It might be more powerful, but it was dumb, and it had prepared for this, so the storm elemental was walking into a trap.
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With a thought, the pre-crafted projectile launcher appeared. The launcher was six body lengths in size and constructed from precious wood. His domain then flexed to extract the enchanted spear from where it had been hidden in its body.
Now that the weapon was visible the storm elemental might notice it and run so it was on the clock.
The pair of objects had been stolen when it had risked approaching the ground. The spear, in contrast to the thrower was comical in its diminutive size. It was thin and only stretched to a quarter of a body’s length, but it was almost fluorescing when examined through magic. It throbbed with the power to slay any elemental that it hit.
Now it was only a matter of delivery. If it propelled it directly, it would be too slow and the other elemental would easily dodge it. That was what the launcher was for.
They had practiced this for the next time the storm elemental came around and it had been chosen. Out of the extended family, it was the most accurate with the spear throws. While forcefully pushing its nerves away, it attached the spear to the launcher and then started to spin them. The handle was held firmly in his second layer of the domain and the end with the spear attached was body lengths away. It started to spin and in moments the spear was travelling eight or nine times faster than it could ever manage within its own middle domain.
Leverage was the word.
Just like it had practiced with its family it waited until he got to full speed. Then it flexed the domain and slowed the launcher dramatically. The spear was released in a straight line at a velocity that was beyond anything an air elemental like him should have been able to generate and it headed straight at the storm elemental.
The dream fell away and Tom clutched the lessons to his heart. Like with Rahmat, it had been an opportunity to understand a little how domains work. It was a precious moment.
A spear end prodded him awake. He waited for a second poke and considered those domains as he did so. He internalised the feel of them. The way the manipulation at different levels occurred.
“Move, or at least do something to let me know you’re awake,” Harry said, sounding bored. “Otherwise, I’ll need to poke you again.”
“Don’t! I’m awake.”
“I have pen and paper,” Thor said in a hushed tone. “What do you have for me?”
“How do you know I have anything.”
Thor chuckled. “Because you triggered a dream before you went to sleep. Spill we’ve all been betting on the results.”
The other man was talking about the first dream Tom realised with a start. He had been so enamoured with the second that he had forgotten it.
The dragon killing artefact!
He sat up and sniffed deeply. Eggs, bacon and what smelt like fresh bread. His mouth watered in response.
“It’s not quite ready,” Thor told him. “In the meantime, what did you learn?”
Tom took a deep breath and concentrated on himself. “Two dreams. The second was teaching me about domain, so I’m ignoring it for now. None of you care about that, but the first was the triggered one and is showed that the giant received an artefact called Deep Stillness.”
“What’s that? Stealth?” Michael asked, sounding surprised.
“No, let me finish. It was a little smaller than the giant’s thumbnail.”
Michael’s face scrunched up in thought. “Doesn’t sound like it’s for a human. That’s the size of a saucer? Maybe slightly larger.”
“No, they don’t have human dimensions… everything is bigger, but their hands especially so. It was about the size of a shovel end.”
“That’s huge, definitely something that a human wasn’t supposed to use. Probably for the giant itself.”
“Anyway, Deep Stillness, when embedded into a weapon grants the weapon the ability to trigger a one off ability.”
“Are we talking a single once off use spell or one that can only be used once per battle because of its countdown?” Thor asked.
“Single use,” Tom confirmed. “The ability was to make the attack immune to being noticed by precognition, future, present or pass. I’m figuring the dragon must have a reasonably powerful skill that we have to get around.”
Michael cleared his throat. “When you say immune, what tier is that too?”
“I read the description and it didn’t say. Potentially immune to everything.”
“A blow unable to be detected by precognition abilities,” Thor mused. “That’s going to stuff up high-level dodge abilities.”
“Future and past,” Michael repeated. “It completely negates all precognition based defences. It’s absolutely an oracle killer.”
“More than oracle,” Everlyn said quietly. “I would say it’s a god killer.”
“What?” Michael asked… “That’s…”
Everlyn arced an eyebrow. “Immunity to all tiers… that’s too strong to have an oracle as a target.”
“You’re right,” the healer conceded. “Immunity. By itself, it’s not a god killer but in the perfect weapon. This would be the cornerstone of such an artefact.”
“The dragon’s not a god is it?” Toni asked. “We don’t actually need something that powerful.”
“It’s not a god,” Tom confirmed. “But to us it might as well be.”
“Then why so powerful?” Michael asked.
They looked around at each other. There were no good answers.
“I guess,” Michael continued after a moment, “that this has opened up more questions.” He grinned predatorily. “Tom?”
“Screw you.”
Michael laughed. “But seriously.”
“I know,” he interrupted. “There’s no need to ask. I’ll find out more about the dragon’s abilities.”
“Good,” Michael said. “But so strong, I wonder why?”
“We can speculate later,” Thor said assertively. “For now, Tom, what else can you remember?”
“Um… it was tier seven.”
“Shit.” Thor cursed. “There’s no way we’re buying that on the auction house.”
The conversation settled into the normal pattern of teasing out all possible details from the dream and recording them.
Breakfast was brought to him. He scooped the gooey eggs and fatty bacon up and placed them on top of the bread, which had been slathered with thick butter. He ate it greedily while he recounted all the other impressions he had received. To be honest, there was not much else to tell them. The conversation moved onto the second dream.
“A domain?” Rahmat asked.
“Yes, it was weird with three layers. The body that represented ultimate control, then a wider area with mastery of just air and finally a significantly larger presence that covered kilometres. It was mostly sensing, but the air elemental could extend that second layer control out to the third.”
“Ah,” the warrior said knowledgably. “They were separate, but not.”
“Exactly,” Tom jumped on that phrasing. “Separate, but not.”
“But that first layer is your body. That’s not what you need to focus on. It’s the other two. Action domain and sensing.”
“I sort of knew that… but I didn’t realise that you could use the sensing domain to briefly extend the action one.”
Rahmat grinned at him. “I told you that you could. That I can use my spear skills right at the edge of my power.”
“I know it’s just.”
The spearman laughed uproariously. “Don’t get embarrassed. Domains are hard. Learn what you can. Cling to these memories because they’re precious. If you’re crafting your own, they can only help. I can almost guarantee it.”
They ploughed through the day. They would run from each of their successful ambushes to the next site to prepare it as quickly as possible, and by the time they had finished setting it up another wave would be on its way. Now that they were deeper, every third battle was started off with five harnessed meteorites being thrown down a long tunnel. As Everlyn had hypothesised, the attack was devastating. Those swarms were often wiped out completely and their progress on the kill counter would jump by one to two thousand without anyone else being called to do damage.
They were progressing significantly faster than expected and soon he was settling down for a night’s sleep. There was only a single dream that implied that the dragon’s highest precognition skill was a standardish tier six dodge ability.
Michael accepted the update and shook his head. “That’s not the only one, then. Find out why SUPREME wanted us to have an ability to avoid precognition. Avoiding a tier six dodge can be done far cheaper, especially if it was a one off attack.”
The third day was repeated and went as smoothly as the second.
“We’re going to finish half a day early.” Everlyn reported.
“Then we take the extra time to get a head start in the new zone,” Michael said flatly.
“But this is great experience.”
“No,” Michael said firmly. “No rush, no taking risks for experience. Even starting a new zone with six and a half days to finish it seems risky to me.”
That night Tom skipped forcing a true dream, and he got a repeat of another wador peace ceremony. Their notes were updated with the double underlined words.
DO NOT DISCUSS ANY TREATIES BEFORE THE CEREMONY IS COMPLETELY FINISHED.
IT’S A MORTAL INSULT.
It was sort of clear from the first dream, but the second one had made the rule a hundred percent clear. One part of Tom wondered if the second one had only triggered because without it they would have died. It made him feel dumb that he had failed to draw that vital clue from the original dream.
“Do we even know where the wador are?” Toni asked.
Tom shrugged. “We’ve got meat in storage. I expect to get an update soon to find out where we can meet them. Until then, all we can do is to be ready if we see them.”
They fought on the way to the exit they were targeting. Close to an hour after they completed the quest they reached the safe room. One by one they went into their system room to get the quest completion notification and confirm their spoils.
“Tom, you’re going to like it,” Michael said with a grin when he emerged.
“Why?”
“The team’s total allocation is high and your percentage contribution will be impressive as well.”
“What did you get?” Tom asked curiously
Michael frowned. “Only a five percent weighting but I sort of expected that and a hundred eighty thousand.”
“What does that mean for me?” Tom asked.
“Just check,” Everlyn said, sounding annoyed. “It’ll be faster than doing maths and guessing.”
“How about you Evie?”
“A little over twice what Michael got. Not a great result but on par with expectations. I’m approaching the last zone’s cap but am still under it.”
Tom nodded and ducked into his system room.
Congratulation for completing your quest.
Your contribution is 41%
Experience awarded 1,476,000
He smiled at those numbers. There were no messages about hitting the cap, so it had probably doubled as they had predicted.
It was time to buy his traits. The team had been strong on calculating what they needed to keep pace with the monsters, and Tom had run his own numbers. The others might not be able to afford anything more than levels, but he had more flexibility than them.
It was time to upgrade his traits.