CHAPTER 361 – READY TO FIGHT
Tom stared at Clare, and she continued to smile at him. Almost daring him to complain. He couldn’t do it. He was the one who said she should be in charge.
Dutifully, he went into his system room and used her exact wording.
It was strange. There was no way for him to judge how complicated she was making the process. The strategies might be a comparison between whether it was better to purchase an axe or a sword or it could be a request to calculate the superiority of a multistage compound plan that was dozens of pages long versus it’s peer that contained even more superfluous detail He guessed it didn’t matter. Clare was asking the questions like this for a reason and nothing he had seen of her since she took the role suggested her actions would be anything other than carefully weighed and considered.
After she had used all five of the questions, he left and spent the day focusing on designing golems capable of casting tier six crowd control abilities.
The materials that Thor had purchased to help him were varied. They were all artefacts that contained a castable spell, but that was where the similarities ended. One was a circular band with a razor-sharp edge that was around the size of a kitchen table, a diameter of about two metres. The band itself was only five centimetres wide and, despite how unwieldy it looked physically it did not bend or flex and it only weighed about twenty kilograms. Tom could kind of imagine it as something the giant could use as a deadly throwing frisbee. Another spell was confined in a more traditional fancy jewellery setting. Then there was what he guessed was some sort of broken helmet intended for an elephant like creature and what was possibly shoes for a taloned foot along with a whole series of other similar random objects. There were eight items in total and he needed a golem framework that could handle each of the different shapes and magical purposes.
Keikain worked the entire day beside him. He used his magic to turn Tom’s miniature models into the wire filled life-sized statues that Tom then had to animate.
Bao bought him lunch and dinner… then once more later than he should have, he went to sleep.
The next day, he repeated the process.
Days passed without his nightly dreams discovering anything significant about their opponents.
As far as he was concerned, that was good news. He was confident they had a good understanding of what they were facing.
Tom paused his work.
It was early afternoon, and they were less than two days away from the current zone collapsing.
Keikain was still faithfully working away beside him, but looked despondent.
“What’s up?” Tom asked curiously. “You’ve been grunting angrily for two hours.”
The earth mage frowned, his lips twisting down. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s clearly not. Spit it out. What’s bothering you?”
The other man hesitated. “It’s really not a big deal, and it’s personal.”
“If you didn’t want to talk about it, you wouldn’t have spent the last hour grumbling under your breath like you have. Tell me already.”
He still hesitated.
Tom sighed. “My mana has bottomed out. That’s five minutes before I can do anything useful. You might as well take the opportunity. I’m happy to listen.”
Silence greeted the request.
“Keikain I’m not going to ask again. If you want to bloody talk about it, then speak.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Of course it is.”
“No, it’s just me being a whiny entitled brat. You don’t have to concern yourself with it.”
“Just spit it out! Start with one word and go from there.”
Keikain’s eyes blazed. “Fine! Clare won’t buy me the potion. She was supposed to have my back and she’s refusing.”
Tom stared blankly at him. Why would Clare do that? Her and Keikain were linked for the foreseeable future. Strengthening him was like strengthening herself.
“Yeah, that look is exactly my opinion on the matter, too.”
“Did she give you a reason?”
“Yep, a bullshit one. She doesn’t think me having stronger earth manipulation is sufficient to justify the expense.”
“You were planning on turbocharging your earth manipulation abilities, weren’t you?”
Keikain nodded, annoyed. “A single evolution potion and I would have been materially stronger. Three or four times more powerful on my calculations, and she didn’t think I was deserving enough. ‘It won’t help in the coming fight, so the answer’s no.’ ‘Keikain stop nagging. I won’t change my mind.’”
“She’s got a point. Your earth abilities will be useless against the dragon.”
“It’s not just about…” Keikain cut himself off and forced a smile to his face. “True, they wouldn’t help against her, but we’re exiting into the underground once we’re through this battle. My skill set there would be vital. I’ll be able to manipulate underground structural rock like normal stone. Not even your domain can do that.”
“We don’t know that.” Tom pointed out. “My domain may have that capability.”
“But if you were going to bet, which way do you go.” Keikain studied his face. Then the earth mage smirked. “Yep, like I suspected you wouldn’t even bet on yourself there. Anyway, that wasn’t why Clare refused me. It was because of the bloodline. My time’s running out, my next feed has to be within a week of leaving here. Clare’s worried we won’t find any suitable targets in that time range and I’ll die and the investment will be wasted.”
“I didn’t realise you were that close.”
He snorted. “You should have. It is, after all what the chosen said way back then.”
“Maybe you can capture one of the insects? And sacrifice it. That’ll buy you some time.”
“We’ve considered that.” Keikain did not look confident that it was an option. “The battlefield is going to be so chaotic that I doubt we’ll have that luxury, but knowing Clare she’s got about sixteen plans to create the opportunity.”
“The crowd control golems,” Tom guessed. “That’s what they’re for.”
“Maybe.”
“You don’t look convinced.”
Keikain shrugged. “I haven’t seen all her plans. But this talk is pointless. The faster we get things done the sooner we’ll be able to leave.”
“I can’t believe she said no. Upgrading your earth abilities will greatly increase your chance of trapping an insect.”
“An argument that I definitely used. Unfortunately, Clare’s always been very much of the view that humanity comes first and a promise that it might be useful for A, B and C was not enough to convince her to take the risk. She promises once we get a sacrifice and the risk of me going mad has passed, she’ll insist we spend all available credit to buy a potion.”
“That’s rough.”
The earth mage huffed and got back to work. Tom’s mana had restored itself, so he joined the other man.
The idea of crafting generally repulsed him, but now they had an enforced wait, and the generation of golems was a critical part of survival, Tom had to admit that it was kind of relaxing. The three quarters finished golem hummed under his hands as he continued to push power into the spell form. Another twenty minutes before he could tie this off, and then there was only one more golem to make.
Tom was impressed with himself. The combination of quantity and quality was remarkable and only achievable because of the huge number of levels he had in Stone Golem and what he had to admit was an almost impressive mana pool. Anyone capable of understanding the process would be staggered by his outrageous success. Of course, none of his friends would notice. Harry was the only one that could even appreciate the effort and he wouldn’t care.
Ding!
Tom stopped himself from jumping and gritted his teeth. He recognised the noise.
Ding!
He stared at the almost finished golem and then down at the ground. Equations swam through his head. They didn’t even come close to balancing. The giant was not part of a patient species.
Ding!
With a curse, he abandoned the animation mid spell.
The panel on the wall was flashing, and he checked it as he sprinted toward the door.
Everyone is summoned for a group strategy meeting.
The words were exactly what he had been expecting. Keikain fell into step beside him. There was a map underneath the message, but it wasn’t relevant, so he ignored that. Sure enough, out in the corridor there were flashing lights to lead them. Clare and others joined him and soon they were all running in a single group.
When they eventually reached the giant’s room. They were not at all surprised to see that everyone had been gathered, including the chosen and the inventor.
“Today we reconfirm our plans.” The giant rumbled. “Then in a day and a half’s time we execute it. The moment this meeting finishes, if you’re not assigned to crafting, then you are to participate in stabilising the global quest. My island has been moving towards the central location for a couple of days and will reach position by the time you leave here. Any questions or complaints?”
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No one was dumb enough to say anything.
“Good, this is what we’re doing…”
Tom half listened as every step of the plan was detailed. It was basically the same one the humans had put together months ago. A combination of missiles from the slingshots and his golems would keep the dragon distracted by effectively exploding fireworks a few metres from its eyes and nostrils.
They wouldn’t be able to hurt it, but that was not what they were after. Their job was to buy a distraction for the giant. The humans and wador would then kill the insects while the giant made its lethal throw.
There were a few tweaks from what they had agreed on back then. The first wave would consist primarily of his golems. The inventor and chosen would not be coming with them into the zone. They were restricted from entering for an hour after the giant went through.
It was overkill if the dragon did not die in the first two minutes they would lose. But Tom wasn’t about to stick his neck out and argue about that.
The other annoying change the giant made was that Tom, Phil and the wador leader would come out of the at the same portal as it did. The giant claimed it was to make sure none of the insects distracted it, but Tom wasn’t convinced about its motives. He could almost feel the target that decision had placed on his back, but it was not one he could avoid.
With the amount of collective fate, the oracle questions and the planning that had gone into this he was confident that whatever happened the best result possible for humanity would occur. He was compromised. If he and Phil had to die to let everyone else escape, then it wasn’t a bad outcome.
He had made sure that Clare and the others had all the information they needed to complete his plans and getting an amped up additional trait for humanity was more important than any individual, not that Tom wanted to die. He would fight for his survival and with his teleporter from Harry and Lightning Dodge giving him extra lives he was confident he would escape even if the giant targeted him.
Overall, it was a simple plan and it would almost certainly be destroyed at first contact, but practically the only consideration was getting Rahmat and the giant close enough for the spear to be launched. They would have to run three and a half kilometres without being noticed. Neither seemed concerned about the prospect.
Everything else could fail, but providing they survived until the spear hit the dragon, thencollectively,y they would emerge triumphant.
“Everyone back to work,” the giant ordered. “Crafters keep doing your thing. It may not seem much, but even if it gives us a fraction of percent better chance, we’ll take that.”
Tom returned to his workshop. There were two more golems to complete and plenty of time in the day.
That night, he dreamt of the dragon once more. She was furious at the delay but was happy with the counter having reduced to one day.
The nightmare was going to end soon. Her mindscape through the entire dream was chaotic, with her thoughts jumping from issue to issue and practically speaking she was half mad. Tom monitored her flickering ideas and kept an open mind, but there was no shift in the equations they faced.
Nothing had changed.
She was going to be ready when they came through the portal. There would be insect guards that they would still need to fight.
When he awoke, he was pleasantly surprised to find himself alone. He had been expecting to be woken up, but apparently Bao’s cooking was working and had forced back the exhaustion despite the nightly directed dream.
There was a familiar chime, and he stepped curiously into his system room and the moment he saw the writing he realised what had happened. The final part of the global quest had been completed overnight, with the four great factions being unified.
Congratulations on proving your right to enter the final layer.
Your contribution to the group effort is 1.1%
Experience awarded 1,200,000
He stared at the numbers and then shrugged. They were good enough. With over thirty of them in the zone, an average contribution would have been three percent. He had contributed far less than the others because of all the crafting he had been doing for the last week, and the giant and Phil had been here weeks before they had arrived and had probably taken the bulk of the contribution between them.
As for the other humans, while he had been stuck inside channelling his magic, they had mostly been out killing and gaining experience. If he got over a million, then the others who had fought for twice as long would hopefully be assigned twice as much.
Tom smiled to himself. It was time to get stronger once more
The question was what should he spend his windfall on?
He couldn’t help but think about his problematic third class.
Had there been sufficient luck to justify buying a level?
Possibly there had been…
They were alive.
That was a bonus.
They had got this far and had created a solid plan that should be more than enough to defeat the dragon. A lot could have gone wrong over the last week, but it hadn’t.
The million-dollar question was how much of that good fortune was due to the miscellaneous fate they had all been dumping and how much was from chance?
Only the latter supported him getting a better result from his class.
He considered the position they were in. That there had been no human deaths was a plus. A lack of investigative vigour from the giant was crucial because, as much as desperately tried to convince himself otherwise in the safety of his own head he was sure Clare was not treating the giant as a valued ally. If it had interrogated him, it was likely multiple humans would have ended up dead. Then there was the wador who they had deliberately screwed, and somehow they had been cowed enough not to react by striking out indiscriminately. There were a lot of opportunities for things to have gone wrong.
Strings that could have been pulled on to unravel everything had not been played with. That was luck and there had not been any directing of fate to protect against those specific outcomes.
Theoretically, that sufficed to bend the class results in his favour, or at least it felt that way.
“Buy a level of Breadth of Serendipity,” he ordered.
Text appeared on the wall.
Congratulations, you have received five to all attributes.
He exhaled sharply, and he was surprised to find he had been holding his breath in anticipation of the result. It was better than feared, a lot better than that. Somehow, he had received the third best of the possible outcomes.
His guess had been right, which was a massive relief. If it had of been wrong, he would have shelved getting levels in the class unless his good fortune was undeniable. If the last few days had been deemed a neutral outcome, the class would have been impossible to level in a reasonable time frame. That it had worked as he had hoped meant there would be opportunities to grow it.
“Buy four levels of Elemental Summoner and put the rest into Lightning Tank, leaving a reserve of at least a hundred thousand experience.”
His new status sheet appeared in front of him.
Classes Level – One Hundred and Twenty-Eight.
Lightning Tank: 61 (+6) - Expert
Elemental Summoner: 65 (+4) – Expert
Breadth of Serendipity: 2 (+2)– Legendary
Attributes
Strength: 358 (+18 Class, +6 Title: Strength Spring, +6 Title: Tripled Class, +5 Breadth of Serendipity)—Rank 44 (+5)
Vitality: 378 (+18 Class, +12 Title: Vitality fount, +5 Breadth of Serendipity)—Rank 46 (+4)
Agility: 358 (+24 Trait: Fates Agility, +6 Title: Tripled Class +5 Breadth of Serendipity)—Rank 44 (+5)
Magic: 410 (+22 Class, -2 Trait: Fates Agility, +5 Breadth of Serendipity) —Rank 50 (+3)
Fate: 492 (+22 Trait: Fates Agility, +12 Title: Competition Shaker (I), +5 Breadth of Serendipity )
Tom nodded appreciatively at those numbers.
The most significant change was the total level. He could now officially take a fourth class. Not that he had any plans to do so. To his mind it was wasteful to do so before he had years of dedicated focus on a single ability. He wanted an outcome like Toni’s and not Clare’s
The next most exciting bit of information on the status sheet was that he had advanced four ranks. With a smile, he returned to the real world. He had completed the last two golems before he had fallen asleep, and he was ready for the fight. He met with Clare, and she had moved up to rank thirty eight. That was only plus two on her previous rank, which was far less than what he had been hoping to see. “Your rank?” he asked hesitantly.
“It’s thirty-eight. What of it?”
He licked his lips. “It’s lower than I expected.”
She looked him straight in the eye. “Not one of us is getting your five ranks. I don’t even know how you managed that.”
“My legendary class…”
“It doesn’t matter,” she interrupted. “Most of the fighters reached thirty-nine, Rahmat forty. Every level is now costing us the better part of a hundred k …” she shrugged. “Two or three ranks is the average and everyone in Existentia proper would be stunned by that level of growth. It would shock them to hear that we were earning a rank per week. Outside a trial, we’re never getting this sort of progression again.”
He frowned. “I was hoping for more.”
“Don’t be like that. An extra rank makes very little difference at this point. We’re prepared, we’ve done the hard work and all that’s left is to see how the dice rolls.” She produced a ring and handed it across to him. “I need to give this back to you. I’ve updated it with refreshed instructions. Do you remember how to use it?”
“Yes, I trigger it once I go through the portal, and not before.”
“Exactly. Now we’ve got about two hours before we’re due to start. If I were you, I would gather your golems and leave for the teleportation platform. I’ve updated each of the control crystals.”
“That must have taken you ages.”
She shrugged. “It had to be done… and Tom don’t check the instructions.”
“This cloak and dagger is not going to fool the giant. He can discover this too easily.”
She laughed at him. “Let him. The instructions are innocent. There’ll be no issues if the giant gets curious, but there’s wider patterns at play that might break down if you see them and start trying to double guess what I’m doing.”
“Some of us are going to be treated like sacrificial pawns, aren’t we?”
“Not you! And I’m not getting into it. Now you should go It’ll only take you half an hour to get there, but in case there are complications I would leave early if I were you.”
“Are you coming?”
She shook her head. “I’ve got a couple rings to hand out and some last-minute preparations to finish. I’ll see you there.”
Tom left and gathered all the neatly stacked golems. They responded to his desire and started up and collected behind him. It was impressive to witness over thirty of them following him. All but his shield golem from the previous zones were new. From a summoning perspective, that would receive an earth elemental as per Clare’s orders, and then four of the human mimicking options would get a lesser air version in order to give them a mimicry of flight.
He took the most direct route, which was straight through the middle of the fortress, and as he travelled, he admired the architecture and its impossible size. The whole place was truly a masterpiece. However, after twenty minutes of brisk walking and having no change to the scenery, the consistent feel of the stone work stopped soothing and started to irritate him.
Finally, he emerged from the fortress into the open air and the giant’s platform was docked against another.
It was small, with a single glowing blue portal with a large cobblestone square in front of it. The portal was not in the centre but was skewed to one side to make room for a larger, what he guessed should be called, a staging ground.
The giant turned to face him as he approached. “I will use my final question now.”
“Get the phrasing right,” Tom warned. “I only have one left, as the rest was used to prepare.”
“That was a sensible choice. Ask ‘will this plan allow me to deliver a death blow to the dragon and prevent it from materially hurting me?’”
He was surprised by the wording, and it must have shown on his face.
“Tom, I will not embarrass my ancestors by asking about whether I will survive the trial. If you scurrying rats take me down that is my fault. I’m sure you’ve schemed something, but it will fail.”
“We haven’t. I can’t promise the same of the wador.”
The giant laughed at that. “You say that with such conviction, but you are a large group and I know somewhat of how you think. Jenny was not an aberration. I’m sure one of you has planned betrayal. They wrongly believe that their insignificant scheme has a chance to defeat me and I’m confident if I interrogated everyone Ieveryone,e able to prove that. But as I said your species is irrelevant. Only the dragon is worthy of a specific question. Now ask!”
Tom hurried to do as ordered. If the giant wanted to waste a question through arrogance, Tom wasn’t going to try to stop him. “The answer was yes.” He said simply.
The giant smiled, and he knew it was body language mimicked just for him. “Think about it Tom. That answer means the dragon will die. It sits in ambush, confident of its superiority and we’ll be the death of it. That is satisfying, and your contribution to that is something you can be proud of when you depart for the afterlife. It is the sort of deed that forges the champions of myth.”
Tom didn’t bother correcting the giant. His question had a probability disclaimer. There was still a one in a thousand chance that they might fail, but the giant knew that from the hundreds of questions he had forced Tom to already answer. He had probed the limits of the oracle’s ability.
There was always a margin of error, but winning nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand sounded pretty good to him.
The wador arrived. Then all the humans trickled in. Almost silently, they lined up with everyone focused on the coming battle.