CHAPTER 303 – THE HIDDEN THREAT.
“Ronald was a guy in Vidja’s group. He died late yesterday.” Everlyn answered his question. She hesitated a moment. “I know what I’m going to say is callous, but in this case. Yes, someone died, and that is horrible. But honestly, his death is nowhere as significant as the loss of strength his absence represents.”
“None of us knew him,” Keikain said with his usual haughty tone. “Move on. We need to keep going.”
“You can’t say that Keikain!” Toni squealed.
The earth mage shrugged. “There’s no reason we can’t continue the conversation while running to the next fight.” He gestured impatiently in the direction that Tom realised that they were supposed to be travelling. With a sigh, Rahmat took off at a run while Keikain jogged beside Tom.
“Which one was Ronald?” he asked.
“It really doesn’t matter.” Keikain grumped. “Head in the game, none of us knew him. Let’s focus on today.”
Tom forcefully shifted his mindset. They were running through hostile territory and while they were rarely ambushed this close to the zone walls; it was still dangerous.
“Good man,” Keikain told him having obviously seen the change in his facial expression. “We spent over an hour this morning polishing our plans, but to be honest, while we tweaked bits and pieces nothing much has changed.”
“You can only kill things in so many ways.”
Keikain snorted. “Exactly. We think it’ll take around three hours to clear up the outside. We’ll have an early lunch and then, as a single group, fight into the central area.” The earth mage wiped his brow. “Don’t take it lightly. This zone’s balance is off or at least its an awkward configuration for us to fight.”
“Because the main threat is near sapient?”
“That and more… the loaka are a problem. There’s lots of them and they’re small. Each of them only has one or two skills which are weak, but they’re random.”
Tom grimaced. From the previous engagements, he had sort of guessed how they worked. “We’re going to have some fighting us that have a perfect counter for our defensive abilities aren’t we?”
“That’s the truth and those will create options for others to strike.”
He remembered the ghost axe attack and while he had evaded it easily, others wouldn’t. If they flooded them with numbers, because of the random skills, their defences would be dispelled and some dangerous creatures would get through.
A winning position could become something else very quickly.
“Good, I can see you understand the problem?”
“I do.”
“Don’t take the ambushes lightly. Both Everlyn and the chosen think that once we enter that central area, we’ll be attacked regularly and with numbers. It’s going to be tough.”
“Got it. Anything else?”
There was a slight shake of his head, and Tom took it as his cue to end the conversation. He had no desire to run with Keikain, so he lengthened his stride and used a lunge to open distance between them. The world froze as with his spear leading he sprinted over the abruptly more solid ground and left the back where Keikain was running to reach the front of the group behind Rahmat.
For a while he ran alone, trying to focus on his environment and not think too much about mortality.
His mind wandered anyway. The risk of the loaka and the more dull chill of the trial as a whole was effecting him. It was a killer trial. He had been logically aware of the threat these fights represented but he hadn’t known it.
One of Vidja’s team had died!
Jingyi had too, but the scouts death had been by the insects and not the trials. Roland’s on the other hand. It felt more significant because he had been part of a team and then in a zone, a challenge that Tom’s group had been taking lightly had finished him. They were only on the fourth layer, less than halfway through, and humans were already dying.
The design of trials was always consistent in a single dimension. The further you progressed the harder it became. Every layer they descended it would become more deadly.
He licked his lips.
Was the dragon the thing he was obsessing over even the worst threat they faced? Or was the environment as equally dangerous?
Tom shook his head. He couldn’t answer that question.
To date, it hadn’t felt like it. They had steamrolled the challenges they had faced, but would their dominance last? Were the loaka the start of the decline? Were they about to learn a lesson like Vidja’s team.
He sucked his breath in. “Fuck.”
He hated uncertainty. He was much happier seeing a monster and working out how to kill it than worrying about unseen threats where his imagination could falsely trivialise an encounter or vice versa turn a mouse into a lion.
See enemy kill enemy was the best approach. He heard panting behind him as the others caught up to him.
“Tom?” Toni asked. “Are you okay.”
“Which one was Ronald?”
“I think he was the sandy blond medium tall guy. Looked about twenty-five.” She answered.
“Definitely,” Thor agreed from the other-side. “Back at the start he was rank seventeen.”
Tom frowned at that. He had been strong, one of Vidja’s higher ranked members and had still been killed by the environment.
“How did he die?”
“He made a mistake,” Thor responded, and then fell silent.
He glared at him absolutely certain that the big man was hiding something.
“That’s what it was. A stupid error. He wandered away from his team and was attacked and killed before they could help him. It wasn’t even a boss that got him.”
“Fuck. They had an argument didn’t they. And Ronald stormed off…”
“They had a fight.” Thor agreed. “They split up briefly. From my understanding, it was less than fifty metres.”
Ahead, Rahmat slowed to a walk. Their next fight was ahead of them.
Their next fight was ahead of them. Tom looked down the hill, thinking about Thor’s explanation. Fifty metres that was only half a sports field. Clearly long enough for something to go wrong but it really wasn’t a long distance. He could hit someone with a stone at that range every single time.
Thor nudged him in the side with his elbow. “Focus Tom. We need your head to be in the game.”
Another mid-boss fight, a water elemental, was waiting a mere hundred metres down the hill. As she usually did for the harder battles, Everlyn had joined them.
“Chaos bolts or aura, all the way for this one.” Everlyn told them. ““If we keep hitting it with true random, we’ll eventually get something that it’s vulnerable to.” It was left unsaid that none of their specialities were a perfect match for the monster. That was the beauty of the chaos approach. If they could survive long enough, the law of large numbers would kick in and they would get a combination that could kill it.
It was different from everything else they had fought, but ultimately the fight was similar to all the others. They had boiled their engagements down to a repetitive factory line. None of them specialised in heat or light, so they couldn’t steamroll it, but that wasn’t a problem. After all, it was just another monster.
It relied on physical strikes and black dodge allowed Tom to escape the flashing blows while taking only small cuts in return. It was a familiar pattern. He infuriated it and survived its frenzy assault while the rest attacked without having to worry about dodging. This time he applied his chaos aura and on the third trigger got a basic heating effect that did continuous moderate damage to the monster. Unfortunately, it was a magnitude too weak to be a difference maker, but it enraged the creature, so was worth keeping. He spun, ducked and weaved while healing himself while the others wore it down until after two minutes it was reduced to a fifth of its initial size and then a crackling attack by the elder caused it to burst.
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Water rained down and flooded the ground it had been hovering over.
They collected the boss stone and moved on… it was just another unremarkable battle.
One after the other bosses died, and they stopped for their early lunch.
Like clockwork, Tom went to take a nap expecting a True Dream, but as was usually the case with his midday nap he was woken before one occurred.
There was a gentle but insistent prodding of his shoulder. It seemed Harry had realised he had been going too far in how he was being woken up and had adjusted his approach.
Tom rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and ate the sandwich which was handed to him. The bread was white and soft and not something that could have been cooked over the fireplace.
It was clearly purchased, and he found he didn’t care about the expense. They were swimming in auction credits making a hundred thousand per day and the cost of the luxury goods was in the hundreds. He was a miser when it came to resources, but he enjoyed the sandwich and was intelligent enough to understand that others in the team appreciated the finer things in life. For them, the expenditure was more than worthwhile.
The chosen Tom noticed had caught up with them while they had been sleeping.
“We’re going into the centre. It’s dangerous,” Everlyn said when he saw where his eyes had flicked to. “rom now on until we clear the zone, we’re one team.”
“Why do the chosen look,” he struggled to find the right words… “More blobby than usual.”
The elder heard him and zoomed over. “Blessed of Sanatories you are truly special to have noticed.”
“Cut the compliments.”
The elder chuckled. “Blessed one. Your observations are accurate. The recent stress they were put under while fighting separate from us has been visibly expressed. It is an involuntary representation.”
“You turn more blobby when stressed?”
“Blessed one, I’m not sure that’s a word in either of our languages, but practically yes. After an extended, difficult period our ability to contain ourselves deteriorates, we lose definition and our skin becomes less lustrous.”
Tom could have disputed the use of that word. The chosen were very rock like. You really wouldn’t describe them as shiny or polished but he could tell the ones that had been in their own party appeared more washed out than usual.
The second elder moved to be in front of him. “Blessed one, we have been closer to the centre of the zone. The loaka has made things difficult.”
“How?” he said sharply.
“It’s okay Tom,” Everlyn interrupted. “The chosen had already briefed us in detail. Providing we’re flying above two hundred metres we’re safe, but they’ve been ambushed when descending to fight, fighting and when leaving.”
The second elder bobbed up and down in front of him. “Blessed one, it is horrible. They are near sapient but almost suicidal in their desire to destroy us. They were willing to sacrifice themselves to scratch us. It was very stressful ensuring none of them died.”
Everlyn clapped her hands and everyone moved to climb onto a chosen. It was like the water zone. They lifted smoothly into the air and he was sharing the ride with Everlyn. Her presence he was certain wasn’t a coincidence.
“Tom, when we’re landing your job is to ward north and west. Same when we take off. During the fight, instead of compass direction, I want your spell guarding behind us.”
“I can do that.”
She then discussed their tactics in detail. He was impressed by the level of planning that had gone into how they were going to manage the loaka threats.
It was a short flight, little more than a hop from one pond to the next. As they travelled, Tom studied the vegetation that covered the ground. It was no different from what had been present on the first day, a quilt work of similar colours.
It appeared idyllic and innocent, but the state of the chosen who had been operating by themselves on the edge of the core loaka territory told a different story. He reviewed what they were like. They were fragile and their individual attacks at least those he had seen were weak. Yes, there was the risk Keikain had talked about, but… it was hard to see. After all, they should be able to blast them to bits with their area of attack magic. “Are they really that bad.” he asked.
“Yes,” Everlyn answered simply. “You haven’t seen it because we’ve had at most a hundred attack us at once and none above rank twenty. The chosen have face packs three times larger and those groups also contained a scattering of higher ranked creatures which possess three to five abilities instead of a maximum of two. That makes them demonstrably more dangerous, even if their attribute levels don’t change much.”
“Damn, I was hoping they were limited to twenty?”
“Nope, some of them go up to the twenty-two cap and they’re the worst kind of thing for us to be fighting. Small glass suicidal cannons. They’re terrifying.”
“Keikain pointed that out.”
She glanced in distaste in Keikain’s direction. “He’s smart and often useful, but I still wish we had brought someone else.”
Tom shrugged helplessly. It was too late for regrets. “At least he’s firmly on team humanity.”
“I guess that’s true. Even if he is a psycho.”
The chosen under them started cycling down and they prepared for the coming battle against knee sized wolves. They were non-sapient, so the fight was trivial. The humans guarded the flanks while the chosen went to town with their devastating ice and fire magic combinations. Their spells tore through the gathered monsters and the fight finished embarrassingly quickly.
The difference between the humans and the chosen when they unleashed their power was disturbingly wide. It was fifteen ranks, so he should have expected it, but the gap was more than that. They were better at magic as well. The spell levels of their core abilities must have been in the hundreds. it was the only way to explain their power.
When the monsters were eliminated, they kept their formation and collapsed around where the loot portal would usually appear. Additional barriers went up as they stood ready for an unexpected ambush. The moment the portal appeared Toni, who was closest grabbed the boss stone, and they leapt onto the chosen and spiralled into the air, expecting an ambush at any second.
None originated and then they flew across to destroy an eight-legged elk who was the king of the forest type of monster. They used the same pattern they had against the miniature wolves and Tom realised the plan was that the chosen would do the killing while the human’s role was to protect against the ambushes.
Seven bosses were down with clinical precision, and then they landed on a ridge. Below, six giant eagles had spotted them and were coming to destroy the creatures that had dared to fly in their airspace.
Tom focused on putting down his barriers in the right place while the chosen and Toni prepared to meet the mini boss.
With their usual efficiency, Keikain had levelled the ground and Harry was scratching out a mana regeneration ritual.
Earth Sense went crazy. There was a rush of bodies approaching from directly behind them.
“INCOMING NORTH AND SOUTH-EAST.” Everlyn yelled.
What? he thought in surprise. From the south?
Then he sensed them swarming from that secondary direction. The spot they had landed on had not been fully random, but it had been close. Did this attack on the top of the ridge mean that every hill top was crawling with the creatures.
It didn’t matter they were in a fight. He checked his mana reserves and including his soul bound crystal there was three hundred in total. Mentally, he started to plan the battle.
His lightning ward shattered.
Tom almost jumped in surprise… that was not in the script.
He focused.
It was gone. It had crumbled to nothing as a wave of energy had crashed over it.
“Replace it,” Everlyn ordered through her party chat. He knew the instruction was for his ears only.
Tom centred himself. The swarm of monsters were mostly past where his initial spell had been, but there was still space between them and the humans.
He recast the barrier. Choosing a spot a few metres in front of him.
Too Slow, he thought to himself angrily. About a third were already past his new ward.
Then all he could do was absorb in wonder as the spell he had cast started to spark and crackle and release its invested power in a wave of electricity as the rest of the swarm crashed through it.
There was no counter to his magic. No wave of energy to destroy it because all the one hundred and fifty mana vanished in moments as the lightning struck and killed almost eighty of the loaka in the two seconds that it was active.
The wave from that direction had been more than cut in half, with the dead reduced to blackened, twitching corpses.
The vanguards kept running at them.
Hostile Earth reacted like it was supposed to and with more zeal than expected. He wondered if his adrenaline and alarm had provoked a greater response than usual. Something to analyse later but it seized feet and tails and occasionally full bodies. It was not strong enough to kill outright, but the entire group of twenty in the vanguard instead of launching themselves at people and turning into an imminent threat they tripped and flipped and slammed to a halt right in front of the surprised humans.
For a moment, nothing happened. The humans with weapons acted as stunned as the loaka that lay there with their considerable momentum halted.
Then the ground exploded into life. It rose like a piece of farm machinery, a combine harvester. A spinning cylinder of earth with sharp edges on the outside that, while five metres long only reached his knees. It emerged from the stone just in front of everyone’s feet and then rolled forward.
It all happened in a blink of an eye and the loaka did not respond in time. It went over them all, leaving mangled corpses behind them.
The entire front had been wiped out, excluding about ten that had been at the back of the group.
Michael brought down his hand, and a creature of energy was released to target those final few. It bounded forward, tendrils spreading through the vegetation to find enemies. One of those feelers touched the loaka and then the energy zipped over to it. Its skeleton was pulled from its skin, flesh and fur flopped and then a moment later the bones dropped to crash into the ground.
The energy Michael had conjured flew off to target a second loaka … then it targeted another. The strength of the energy had not diminished significantly, and it was clear all the remnants of the attack would be consumed behind them.
Tom had not been involved, but a similar unleashing of overwhelming power had occurred int the other direction. To the south-east, Earth Sense told him that the number of loaka had likewise been reduced to less than ten. Like the cowardly monster’s they were, the survivors turned to flee. Without him even needing to consciously direct it Hostile Earth grabbed them. It disrupted their movements, held them in place for a moment as another area of effect spell was cast.
Then it was over. They were all dead.
He knew where everyone was. The brief but brutal eruption of violence had shocked them all to the core.
They stood there all of them in shock. Ten seconds that was it. From the first warning to the complete route of the enemy, that was all it had taken. They had unleashed their magic and gained an overwhelming victory.
And in the aftermath, a poignant moment of frozen time existed while they took stock.
“That’s how we do it,” Thor said, clapping his hands.
At the same moment in Earth Sense, behind them Toni collapsed.
Harry began swearing and jumping up and down.
Something had gone wrong. Earth Sense was reporting extra liquid behind him.
Tom spun to look. Red blood was everywhere.