CHAPTER 312 – NEW GROUPS
Tom woke to a prod on his shoulder.
Adrenaline blasted through him and years of sleeping in non-fortified locations had him springing to his feet. His spear manifesting in his hands by instinct and Spark domain crackled into place, letting him know all the surrounding threats. Lightning was ready to arc out at anyone nearby who challenged him.
Then he stopped.
Memories of Existentia assaulted him. The effects of True Dreaming and his companions having to wake him. He forced his instincts to settle.
Harry was grinning at him. “I even tried to wake you up gently. To be honest, I thought you had moved beyond that sort of reaction?”
“I…” he scratched his head with one hand and realised he was still holding his spear. It vanished. “I guess old instincts die hard. And when my mind is so fuzzy… I just.” He trailed off into silence. A plate of food was handed to him and he saw looks of surprise from the new members of the group. Gerald had his mouth wide open. Usko raised an eyebrow. Tom flushed in embarrassment, and he knew he had to explain himself. He started to talk but his throat locked momentarily as the joke was cut off by his social skill.
“Tom?” Harry asked probably catching his pained expression.
“Oh, it’s nothing. Hopefully, everyone can pretend you didn’t see that. My precog skill has draw backs and rough wake ups is one of them.” He looked hopefully over at them.
Vidja grinned. She looked a lot better than she had the previous night. Her arm had been restored and the bone dead tiredness that had been almost etched into her features was gone. “We were warned.”
“Yeah… I… um… I’m not actually that violent.”
“No, it’s okay. I get it,” she smiled at him. “Lots of people in the camp I came from were twitchy sleepers as well. Makes a hell of a lot of sense when you think about it.”
“We have a plan for today,” Everlyn interrupted them. “We’ve got a maximum of fifteen days available in the layer and I want to finish this and two more zones. As much as I want to deepen bonds and all that, we don’t really have time for chitchat.”
“Just point me in the right direction and I’m ready.” Tom really couldn’t be bothered with planning or arguments. Tiredly, he took another spoonful of the breakfast he had been handed. It was a meat and grain heavy creation that was nothing like what was normally served. It must have been something the other team had cooked. As a culinary dish, it was not the greatest, but he could feel some of his exhaustion fading. It had to be magical. .
“Tom,” Vidja said. “I just want to say thanks again. If you hadn’t come like you did, both Gerald and Bao would have died.”
“It was a joint decision,” Everlyn told her. “We all voted and agreed on the approach. in any case you don’t owe us anything, you would have done the same for us.”
Vidja shot her an annoyed glance. The tone had been slightly patronising. “I know that isn’t completely true. Choosing to save us was hard. I was told about the Selena dilemma and I’m just glad you went down this path.”
“Speaking of bottom feeders,” Keikain interrupted. “Pray tell us Tom did you have a dream last night. Maybe you spied on our problematic cousins?”
Tom shook his head. It felt like everyone wanted to talk to him and part of him wanted to demand time to eat, but his throat constricted before the words came out. Keikain was still looking at him expectantly. Apparently, his non-verbal communication had been ignored. “Depending on how long today is I’ll try to do it tonight.”
“Is it really that bad?”
Tom paused and glanced at the leader of the other team and was unsure how to respond. Pretty much every alternative he thought of caused a tightness in his throat.
“It definitely is,” Michael interceded. “Too much leaves him effectively catatonic. That exhaustion drawback is horrific especially in these conditions.”
“Unfortunately, sourcing intelligence on them is probably required,” Vidja agreed with Keikain with an expression of distaste. “I mean, if you’re up for it.”
“I’ll make sure I am.”
She nodded. “There’s no pressure if you’re not. As for what we’re doing today Lyn and I spoke in depth last night about team composition…”
“Everlyn,” the scout interrupted. “Use Everlyn please. I’ve never liked Lyn as a nickname.”
“Sorry. As I was saying. Everlyn and I agreed to minimise the time in this zone. To achieve those aims we’ll split up to hit multiple objectives at once. For now, we’ve agreed to keep the changes as small as possible.” She smirked. “There was a significant debate about whether it was best for you or Michael to join my team. One of you had to come to make sure we were protected from the curse. Unfortunately, to bring you over, Tom, it would have required other moving parts. Usko, at a minimum would also have needed to switch teams… which would have unbalanced numbers and… Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The decision we arrived at was that Michael and three of the chosen will switch to my team, which will give us two strong strike forces.”
“We’re losing Michael?”
“Only temporarily,” Everlyn clarified. “And for the rest of the trial, we’re one team. We’ll adjust based on target difficulty and just like against the loaka zone I expect we’ll split up briefly where it makes sense and combine together for the harder objectives.”
He finished his meal and before he knew it, they were heading off.
“We’re closing only a single objective in the shadow area and then hitting the burrowers. We’ll complete all three there.”” Everlyn told the group. “Vidja’s team will do the other shadow ones, then the mushrooms and then we’ll meet together to fight the trolls.”
“Is that what we’re calling them?”
She laughed. “You can’t argue with the mushroom name… as for trolls. They’re too thick to be kobolds or goblinoids.”
“Four legs and arms doesn’t scream troll to me.”
“For some weird reason, our language doesn’t have good descriptions for monsters… you know, because they never used to exist. Troll was the best common language one we could come up with.”
They pushed forward a lot more cautiously than what they had been doing when Michael accompanied them. A wound now was far more serious than it had been. While Tom was confident he could hack out every infection apart from possibly ones deep in the chest area, doing so took time and a lot of mana. Injuries now meant they would have to stop to recuperate, so it was better to go slower. They weren’t in actual danger. If there were lots of injuries, then Tom would be able to stabilise them for long enough for Vidja’s group with Michael to save them. What he had done with Gerald was equivalent to probably fifteen fresh wounds, so he was confident in their resilience if things went to shit.
But none of them wanted to need a rescue.
As they jogged along and paused for each mini battle, the number of lesser light elementals he had summoned expanded.
“The objective is ahead.” Everlyn said quietly as she slowed to a walk.
Tom checked his mana reserves and noted he was topped up to full. “Do you want that elemental now?”
She nodded, and with a sigh he used all of his mana to create one. The spell took its usual thirty seconds, and then they snuck up to have a look. The shadows were too dangerous and perceptive for Everlyn to separate herself from the main group.
The tunnel they were in was one of many entrances to a large cave. Tom got only a single glimpse before Everlyn was pushing them backward. It was packed with shadows, potentially as many as a hundred of them.
They all retreated away from the dangerous territory into the tunnel they had come from with their weapons out. They were expecting a flood of shadows to hit them at any moment, but nothing happened. With a single finger on her lips to indicate silence, she had them back up thirty metres.
“Send the elemental now, Tom,” Everlyn ordered. “If we’re not safe here, then we’ve got larger problems.”
With a thought, it flew away. It shot down the corridor and into the main cavern, and he could feel how logically pleased it was. This was an enemy that it hard countered. The tantalising prospect of advancing closer to upgrading to a greater elemental made its logic circuits happy, and there were so many monsters to kill.
It started on the edges, picking off the monsters closest to the tunnel it had emerged from. Every four seconds, a shadow died. One, two, ten, eleven, Tom could feel it go through them. Then they… they scattered. He could sense the annoyance of the elemental to see its prey escaping. The monsters were making its job harder!
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“Incoming,” he stated flatly.
Technically, they were already in battle stance with weapons drawn and on full alert, but Tom saw Rahmat and Harry straighten and one of the chosen even rose slightly in the air as it prepared to fight.
Two shadows came first. One second nothing and the next they blinked in amongst them. Tom thrust his spear forward to restrict space, as everyone else did the same thing, apart from Thor and Everlyn who were both busily evading their respective opponents. Toni’s light magic grid snapped into being and there were sprays of magic to corral monsters. Both monsters did their first true blink of the fight without registering the trap that had been set for them. On delay, the chosen magic tore apart one of the spaces that a shadow had jumped into. It arrived literally at the same time as the destructive energies were unleashed. As for the other shadow; it got too close to the lesser elementals who pounced on its mistake, their light magic burning into it prevented it from blinking to safety.
These fearsome and horrifically mobile monsters were anything but terrifying once you understood their natures. With an in-depth understanding of the simple patterns the creatures used, it was easy to predict where they would appear.
Those two had died quickly, but more shadows blinked in around them as they fled the main cavern where the elemental was eliminating them so easily. The chosen and light elementals were busy, so it was slightly more complicated than previously to avoid the newcomers even with Toni’s grid doing the bulk of the work to restrict their space.
Tom saw there were at least five. It was too many… especially without Michael.
Lightning Enrage burst out in a storm of sparks that swept over his allies and dug into the monsters attacking them.
Tom was in formation, which did not suit him. He sprinted toward open space, then yanked himself to a stop as a shadow blinked in front of him.
Then ice and fire danced in front, above, to his sides and behind. He was ringed with the powerful magic.
Time slowed.
His instincts blared warnings, and he was cocooned in a shell of deadly energies. There was nowhere to run and all he could do was twist and contort his body on the spot. Six of them were attacking him simultaneously. Information told him where the enemies were. There were going to be no chosen shields to help him, only his agility and spear.
A spike stung his leg and another his shoulder, black dodge acted to turn the deep wounds into surface incisions. Instinctively, his healing magic quarantined both wounds and then all of them popped nearly simultaneously as the fire and ice energies tore them to bits.
Time sped up to support the evidence of his eyes. He was no longer in danger..
Hurriedly he retreated to reform to their preferred fighting formation. Darting forward like that was a tactical pressure release valve. If he was only fighting a couple at a time being isolated was inefficient.
Shadows continued to attack them, but it was no longer a flood. It was only one at a time and Tom went through the routine of filling space with his spear to force favourable blinks. Working in tandem, it was easy to take them down. His job was not to kill. That honour went to the light elementals, Rahmat, Toni and the Chosen all of whom had skills and spells suited to the task.
Then the stream of monsters slowed. There was time between each new fight and then they stopped coming. Through his link, he could feel the overall battle was not complete because his light elemental was still hunting in the nearby corridors. It was relentless as it tracked down its victims. .
They had as good as won.
Not all the shadows had been killed, but most had been.
“Ease positions,” Everlyn ordered.
Tom spun to face inwards so he could see everyone. “Is anyone injured?”
“My Leg.”
“Arm and foot.”
“Stomach.”
He immediately took the two steps needed to stand next to Everlyn.
Stomach wounds were potentially dangerous, and not one he was willing to delay, especially if she received it early in the fight when it had been the most hectic. Clare had also broken formation to be next to him and ready to apply her powerful healing.
Healing Tranquillity activated, and he could sense all of her body. There was lactic acid buildup in the calves and a minor quad strain that he ignored to focus on the main wound. His magic jumped to quarantine the curse. The physical damage was not particularly nasty in the Existentia context, but pre magic it would have terrified surgeons. Her bowels had been pierced in eight different spots. A couple of points of mana for him to fix but on the surgical table it would have been far more confronting.
With his walls built from scratch, Tom separated them down the middle. Then he used his fingers to pull out a cylinder about two centimetres wide and ten long. He threw it on the ground in disgust. The black of the infection was already polluting the surface of the cylinder. He knew in moments it would become rotten flesh. Within the slowed time of Healing Tranquillity he swept through Everlyn and confirmed that all traces of the curse had been removed and then he dropped the skill and his senses rushed back into his body
“I’ll fix her,” Clare promised. “Do the others.”
He then dealt with Thor and his multiple wounds before fixing Toni.
The elemental returned its job done and all shadows within one hundred metres dead. Its mana pool was near empty, so with a thought he dismissed it.
“Everything nearby is dead.” He told Everlyn at her inquisitive stare.
“Well, if we’re all no longer injured let’s go.” She led, leaving at a brisk walk, and they all followed.
Together, they entered the large cavern and now that it was not filled with monsters it looked far less imposing. The roof was moderately high, the dimension sort of on par with a sports ground with a large altar right in the middle of the space. Tom pointed at it. “Do we smash it?”
“We smash it.” Everlyn agreed.
“That’s a job for my trusty hammer.” Thor agreed. Happily, he went up to it while the rest of them spread and prepared to meet any threat that emerged.
Thump, Crack.
His blows rained down quick and thunderous. They made it feel like the ground itself was shaking. There was a larger crack than as usual as the altar split in two.
“You can stop now,” Everlyn called out to Thor. “The quest refreshed. One objective down. The burrowers are next.”
Against the burrowers, they went back to running right at the edge of what their endurance was capable of. They were probably moving at the equivalent of sprinters back on earth, but the tunnels were windy, so they made less progress than they would have liked.
All too soon, Everlyn slowed to a halt once more.
The new altar that they had to destroy was in a similar cavern to the previous one. However, unlike with the shadow cave, there was a new type of monster guarding the room.
“Don’t be put off by their appearance,” Everlyn said after a moment. The new version looked more deadly than the previous monstrosities, extra width, teeth that protruded more suggestively and white markings down their body. “They’re not tougher or more deadly they are just adapted to spend more time out of the stone. We should be able to kill them as easily as the standard version.”
“We don’t want to fight them, while they’re in the air.” Keikain said quietly. “We need to get them to go through the stone.”
She pointed to where one of the burrowers with the extra white on it dived into the floor. “They still prefer to be in the rock, but your point is a good one. We’ll kite them back. If we’re in the tunnel system, their instinct will be to dive into the walls and we can exploit that.”
She produced her bow and then fired a single arrow.
Then together they ran back the way they came. It felt like the entire room was following them, over a hundred of them coming to kill the eleven of them. They staged a running battle and the new type went in and out of the walls as readily as the previous ones. Tom and Keikain decapitated them as they ran. Whenever a head poked out of the wall, their magic solidified that area of stone and the entire head would pop off.
It was cheesing of the highest order.
Eliminating the hundred plus monsters took less than two minutes. When you countered an enemy so completely, it was easy to slaughter vast quantities of them quickly.
With their control of the massive cave established, Thor went to work.
Thump, Crack, Thud.
Everlyn was grinning. “Easier than the light elementals.”
“The trolls won’t be as simple.” Keikain warned. “And nor would the mushrooms if it was our job to deal with them.”
“Which we hopefully won’t have to fight.” Everlyn agreed brightly. “Vidja thinks that Bao’s magic will hard counter them.”
“I can’t believe she specialised in decay and growth.” Harry said.
“And mainly the decay aspect, too,” Keikain agreed. “It sounds like such a passive niche power.”
“What sort of mind see’s all those options and thinks decay,” the ritualist agreed. “It’s absolutely baffling.
“Stop being mean,” Clare demanded. “Her starting terrain was a jungle, with the main threat being carnivorous plants. If I was in her shoes, I would have done the same.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Everlyn said. “Hopefully, she’ll be able to defeat them and we’ll leave it at that. We don’t have a counter for the mushrooms. Best if they deal with them and not us.”
Thor finished breaking the altar, and they ran to the next target and repeated the process and then the one after.
Once more, they reached the transition tunnel. The spongy stone next to them was giving way to ordinary brown rock.
They stopped running and Everlyn indicated he should take point.
Tom moved to the front and with his mana regenerated he cast harnessed meteorite. The stones whizzed around him. There was no chance he would be able to use them offensively, but they were still a very effective defensive ability especially against certain classes of spells which the trolls could definitely possess.
“Let’s go slowly until we know what we’re facing.” Everlyn cautioned. Her bow was out and everyone Tom could tell at a glance was ready for anything.
Grimly, he walked down the corridor. The shadows had been able to blink, the burrowers had come through the walls and the mushrooms Vidja had confirmed shot projectiles. They didn’t know what the trolls had, but given the other monsters their collective wisdom suggested that they would either have a slower version of blink or a skill that would let them charge.
“There’s one just up ahead.” Everlyn reported over the party chat.
Tom didn’t break stride. He stalked forward, but he was ready to spring to the side at the slightest bit of unexpected movement.
When he turned the corner, he caught sight of it. The monster was the size of a goat, but despite the four legs it kind of had a kind of humanoid appearance with its legs emerging from the base of the torso and going straight down like in a human. The anatomy felt like it shouldn’t have worked, but he knew it would. Those legs connecting so close together in a square felt awkward.
It spotted him. An ugly, miss shaped head with a large lump emerging from only one side and a squashed in nose and mouth with a couple of irregular positioned teeth poking out.
The creature was ugly, but he wasn’t sure if that was genetics at play or this thing had recently been badly injured and failed to heal correctly afterwards.
There was a blur as it shot forward.
Time slowed.
What? Tom thought, concerned. He had expected a charge but not one that would trigger his dodge skill this early.
His alarms screamed warnings.
There was no time to plan or strategize. He teleported to the side and an immense force clipped him. He was spun violently and immediately twisted to land on his feet. Spear ready he faced toward the monster that had sprinted past him.
There was no need to do anything. Clare had blocked it with her shield and then the others had piled on, destroying the monster that must have had relatively low vitality in moments.
She smiled at him. “Maybe I should take point with these guys. My tanking build is… how can I describe it… um… It’s a little more traditional and I dare say slightly more effective than your methods.”
“Good idea.” Tom agreed. There was no way he wanted to spend the next day trying to dodge them, especially since that would leave the people behind him exposed. It would be better by far if Clare did that. “No, not good. That’s a great suggestion.”