Chapter 55: I Don’t Know What That Is
The team stopped in a small square plaza in the strange dark city. John had doubts that this second ring would be anything like the first—that they be able to hear the sphere before it came, if the odd material around them was anything to base his guesses on.
Aliyah had the same assumption, together with Sen, they ventured into nearby buildings in the plaza, searching the rooms for any additional clues.
“I think the buildings are a reflection of the trial ahead,” Aliyah proposed.
“I agree,” John said, “The first circle had streets and buildings of stone, and what orbited was a stone boulder.”
“But what’s this black material supposed to clue us in on?” Eufemia asked, “Stone, I get, but what is this? It’s like its eating up all the light in the area.”
Their deliberation was interrupted by a familiar voice.
“Hey! It’s a pleasant surprise to see a familiar face!”
A group of two walked from between the dark alleyways. It was Vallis, and another person the team did not recognize. He was a large, wall-like youth, with the height of a professional basketball player but the width of a body builder. He had short cropped black hair, like hair growing out after the military, and dark brown eyes.
“Vallis, and who may you be?”
“Hugh Gao.”
“Hugh Gao is not a man of many words,” Vallis said cheerily.
“Why are you separated from your team?” Sen asked.
“Turns out, whether or not you are teleported as a team depended on how quickly you followed after one another,” Vallis said, “Some of us took a little too long to say our piece, and the group got separated.”
“Kiris went after you, didn’t she?” Eufemia said.
“Completely right! So I’m the only one separated from my team. Thanks to that, I’ve made friends with Hugh here. I have full confidence the rest of my crew can handle themselves.”
“Is that why you’re circling the city?”
“I thought I’d take a stab at finding them. No luck, so far. I found you all, so maybe this will get me somewhere. Why are you all waiting here for?”
“Sen has reservations about the next circle,” Aliyah explained, “I agree with him.”
“I see,” Vallis realized, “You are all seeking information of the trials within the city. Seems an awful waste of time. If the first circle is anything to go by, you’ll only run into the sphere if you are unlucky.”
“That will start to change as each circle becomes smaller,” Sen said, “Evaluating the trial now may prove beneficial in the future.”
Vallis shrugged. She didn’t agree, but she also felt more comfortable moving as a group. The dark stone had started to make even her uncomfortable, and Sen’s acquaintances knew he had oddly accurate instincts.
“Hey…” Eufemia said slowly, “Do any of you feel like it’s getting darker? We haven’t moved forwards.” She pointed towards the center, “And the ‘sun’ hasn’t gotten dimmer.”
John, who was standing on the main road that led down to the second circle with a pair of binoculars, felt his feet slip, dragged forward by a massive gravitational force.
He started to slide down the street towards the second circle. It was like his whole world had tilted; gravity shifted on a whim.
“It’s a black hole!” John yelled.
“What?!” Eufemia said, who had been pressed flat into a building.
“IT’S A BLACK HOLE!”
“I DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT IS!”
He slipped down the road further still. John whipped out his hands, managing to latch onto the base of a streetlamp. His improved physical strength from Beorn holding out against the ever-increasing pull. He looked behind him.
Or was it beneath him? The second circle, the locus of gravity, now felt like it was down, and John was hanging on to dear life to prevent himself from falling.
He didn’t even see the sphere yet, but he knew what it would look like.
There was no sound, everything had been drained away. The world shone in dark shades of black and grey, suddenly reduced to a black and white film. The surroundings was so quiet his ears hurt, begging for sound to take its rightful place.
His other team members had been luckier. They were all pressed against walls in the plaza, saved by the buildings that resisted the pull of the slowly approaching sphere.
John felt his hands slowly start to slip. His stomach plummeted. The one saving grace was he, like all outworlders, did not sweat.
How long could he resist the extreme gravitational force? His figure seemed to stretch, elongating, and he saw the ominous pure black sphere peek from behind a building, like a calamitous eclipse rising over the horizon.
John was screaming with exertion, but he heard no sound, sucked away the moment he opened his mouth.
His joints and bones elongated and cracked, muscles straining and ripping. John prayed though he no longer held a god within his heart.
His fingers broke, and their tendons snapped.
“JOHN!” Eufemia screamed out, although she only heard it in her own head.
Suddenly chains whipped out from the ground to wrap around John whose fingers could hold on no longer. They were made of the same material as the ground, black stone, which had resisted the effects of gravity thus far.
He dangled there in the air, chains biting uncomfortably into his flesh, but relieved he hadn’t been sucked into death by gravitational anomaly. He didn’t recognize the ability, so it had to be of the newcomer, Hugh.
Gravity grew stronger still.
The chains were an ability, and abilities were temporary.
Hugh delayed, casting more chains as they were ripped away, but they were disappearing faster than his cooldowns allowed him to recast them, even with Eufemia’s assistance from Blessing of Readiness.
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When chains came no longer, threads of light briefly bound John in place. It was one of Aliyah’s abilities, Binding Light.
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Ability: [Binding Light]
Essence: Magic
Awakening Stone: Light
Spell (thread) / Conjuration
Incantation: “Bind with light.”
Cost: Moderate mana
Cooldown: 30 seconds
Effect (Iron): Bind a target with threads of light. Can only be used where in locations with light. Has greater effect under strong sources of light.
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For a brief moment, John hung in the air, suspended above the black hole like a marionette on strings. With the miniature black hole eating light itself, the threads snapped.
They reappeared, once more, this time Eufemia activating her copy of Aliyah’s spell. Eufemia specialized in offering more of the most effective ability, and right now, John needed exactly that. When the spell faded, Encio made his move.
Encio was the fastest member of the team, boasting both upfront speed and time manipulation powers. He was also the furthest through iron rank, as the only one with all of his abilities awakened, and had the highest Speed attribute of everyone present. At iron rank, it was still within the bounds of humanity, but he was already pushing beyond the speed of Usain Bolt because of his ability, Swift-Footed.
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Ability: [Swift-Footed]
Essence: Swift
Awakening Stone: None
Special Ability (movement)
Cost: None
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Increased speed. Low stamina and mana per second cost to run on walls and water. Momentum must be maintained on walls or water to prevent falling.
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Time seemed to slow for John, even when Encio hadn’t cast his time manipulation ability yet. There was nothing more John could do. He had no teleportation abilities, no restraint abilities, no gravity manipulation abilities. His eyes met with Encio, who had begun to dash towards him.
Next, Encio cast Frozen World.
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Racial Ability: [Frozen World]
Essence: Time
Special Ability
Cost: Low mana
Cooldown: 20 seconds
Effect (Iron): Temporarily stop time in a small location, creating a region of solid matter. This can solidify gases and liquids, allowing brief interaction with the location as if it were solid, or stop the velocity of physical objects. This cannot affect living beings, abilities, or objects in contact with living beings. Other rank effects can still be used while this effect is on cooldown.
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Encio usually used this ability to take a step on air. This time, he used it to catch John, creating a small platform at John’s feet that temporarily stopped John’s downwards descent. Since it was a region of stopped time, it ignored the effects of gravity, hanging in the air for a brief moment.
Next, he activate Eternal Moment, his time manipulation ability.
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Ability: [Eternal Moment]
Essence: Time
Special Ability
Cost: Extreme stamina-per-second and mana-per-second
Cooldown: 1 minute
Effect (Iron): Operate at a highly accelerated speed for one second of actual time, which is extended in subjective time.
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While in an accelerated time-stream, Encio was unable to directly affect others. He could not push John out the way, not immediately, since John’s time stream was normal. Any affect he imparted now only took effect once Encio’s timestream rejoined reality. That was much of the difficulty in using time as a weapon. Encio shot forward with maximum speed, leapt across the street with the black hole beneath him, then shoved John, imparting as much energy and momentum as he could to hopefully push John across the street and into an alleyway once his time-stream rejoined reality.
He activated Rewind, sending himself back to his original location and to safety. There was nothing more Encio could do. He could only hope that he had done enough.
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Ability: [Rewind]
Essence: Time
Awakening Stone: None
Active Ability (time, movement)
Cost: Very low mana-per-second, Moderate mana
Cooldown: 1 minute
Effect (Iron): Instantly move to a local location that has been previously traversed while this ability has been active. This ability ignores dimension and teleportation restrictions.
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John felt himself launch towards the side, shoved by something he did not detect, towards an alleyway.
John just barely made it in, in part aided by the passing black hole itself. The black hole started to pass beyond the next building, pulling John slightly in the same direction as he had been flung.
He was pressed against the wall, mind blank yet running at lightning speeds. His muscles and skin were torn, bit into by life-saving black chains. He was sure he had broken a few ribs or fractured his spine from the impact, and breathing was difficult, although he now realized he didn’t need to breath at all, so he stopped, since it was painful and pointless to do it if he didn’t need to thanks to his outworlder body. The others must have been suffering worse, lungs pushed and collapsing. Luckily, permanent brain damage from oxygen deprivation was something that iron rank prevented, since all damage was healable.
The gravitational anomaly faded, and the members slipped down from the walls they had been pressed against, gasping for air. John lifted himself with pain. Beorn manifested, and crouched down, letting John pull himself up with slow effort. He cast a Life Bolt on himself as Beorn walked towards the other team members with John on top.
“Fountain of life, manifest,” he choked out. An illusory fountain of water sprayed out lifeforce in the small plaza on every member of the group, gradually healing up worn and broken bodies.
“I’m starting to think Nara may have chosen the smart option for once,” Eufemia groaned, “How long before that thing comes back around?”
Aliyah looked down at the path, “Judging by its speed of movement, a few hours, around three.”
“We should keep track of it,” said Sen, “That will not cease to become a threat when we pass into the next circle. We need to walk behind of it continually in a circle, secure our location when it passes, or pass beyond the next circle by the time it moves around again.”
“Agreed,” Eufemia said drolly, exhaustedly wiping sweat and strands of hair from her brow, not caring much for her appearance in the moment.
“Good news amongst the bad,” John said, cracking a painful smile, “I don’t breathe anymore. No need to drown me.
“Shame,” said Eufemia, too tired to come up with something with a little more bite.
“What saved me there at the very end?”
“That would have to be Encio,” Sen said, “he’s the only one here with time manipulation abilities. None of us could have made it in time.”
“Thank you,” John said, “You both saved my life,” he said, nodding at Hugh too, “I wouldn’t have had time to use that token. Didn’t have a hand free,” he waved his hand, still bruised and bloody from burst capillaries and broken fingers.
The token would have worked upon destruction; as long as John had thrown it into the black hole to be destroyed before he was, he would have been fine, but he hadn’t realized that. Either way, the effort of all those present was essential to his continued participation in the exam.
Hugh nodded back.
“We part of the same team John,” Encio said. His back was against a wall, taking deeps breaths in a rare moment of exhaustion for the extremely well-trained iron ranker. “This is what it means.”
John nodded, “I get it now.”
Encio flashed a grin, “That’s all I ask for. It’s not too big of an ask, is it?”
“Risking your life to save another is a big ask for any normal person,” Eufemia grumbled.
Sen gave her a disapproving look.
“For any ‘normal’ person!” Eufemia said defensively, “We aren’t normal, are we.”
“That’s right,” Sen smiled proudly, “We aren’t normal.”
“Even though I’m the one who said it first, why do I not like it when you use that phrase?”
*****
“Well this has been a bore,” Nara said, still walking through the tall grass and the unchanging scenery, “I’ve forgotten that variety is a luxury.”
Thanatos barked.
“You’re right, there’s me, and there’s you. We can do something fun. How about we play one of those spoken word games, Shiritori? I’ll start, hmmm, Grass. It’s thematic.”
Thanatos barked.
“Shoot,” Nara realized, “I understand you because of my translation ability, but you aren’t actually speaking words. Shiritori doesn’t exactly work beyond the Latin alphabet. What now…”
Thanatos suggested an alternative, with a bark.
“Playing music? You’re right, how could I forget?” She spread her arms out wide, “Is this not the quintessential environment to cultivate my wandering bard aesthetic?”
She looked at Thanatos, ideas spinning in her head.
“Can you transform into a motorcycle by any chance?”
Thanatos rolled his eyes.
“Silly question, was it? Wandering bard is good, but I was thinking Kino from Kino’s Journey would be a cool look to pull. I guess there’s Shizu who’s got a talking Samoyed instead of a talking motorcycle, but you’re the wrong color.”
Thanatos huffed.
“No, of course, I agree, black looks much better than white. You know what they say in my world—Oh, you don’t? Anyway, they say ‘black is slimming’.”
Thanatos angrily pawed the grass.
“I’m not saying you are fat; I’m just saying that’s what we say about the color black. It makes everyone look good. You can’t even get fat, you’re an astral being inhabiting a vessel constructed through ritual magic. You don’t even need to eat!”
Thanatos barked at her.
“Please, I’d never deny you food; We’re of the same mind. I don’t need to eat either, remember?”
She strummed her lute.
“Good thing I bought that lute strap, otherwise walking and playing would be a lot harder.”