There were only a few things left to do. I milked the first for all it’s worth. I’d probably end up paying for it with the second. “Are you really sure you’re ready?”
“I know you are stalling. Stop it.”
“Okay, okay, be ready alright?”
“I’ve been ready for the last 5 minutes, just do it.” He wasn’t exaggerating much.
“Fine, fine, here goes.” Launch.
A spray of blood. The sword was about a quarter ways through. Kim, my victim and Korean level 100 endurance mage, clutched his leg and screamed obscenities while my control skill pulled out the sword, the expletives gained even more color when I touched him.
“So… next one?”
“Just… Argh… Just a little time stop.”
“What?”
“Ugh… Give me a minute.”
His long black hair turned even stringier from all the sweating. The mending accented his suffering, as if getting shot laterally in the thigh wasn’t enough. Then we’d do it again. It was going to be worse the second time. Well, his minute was up.
“Ready?”
“Wait, it still-”
Eh, bored now. Launch.
“…FUCK.”
It went clean through. Afterwards I mended this injury as well, it had long since been determined mending was in fact a great healing spell. Kim had to sit down for a bit because one of his legs was messed up but he’d be fine in a couple of days. Probably. Dude missed his calling. He’d have made a great mob boss or super villain. He sat there menacingly, expression screaming ‘my turn soon’.
A translucent wall of white appeared next to him. “It’s up. Go ahead you little shit, see if it does anything.”
Magic sword bounced off with the sharp sound of metal on metal. Physical sword went clean through.
“Again.”
Magic sword wedged itself less than halfway in and the physical one almost passed through.
“Hurry up. Magic, 100 energy.”
The duo-deca-launched magic sword got stuck with only the point in the barrier. He switched polarity, or whatever it was he could do to tune his defenses.
“Physical now.”
Clean through.
It pissed him off. “Damn it. The arithmetic adds up but it also doesn’t… The scaling is not mentioned yet it is clearly in effect.” That was another piece of widespread information – System descriptions were bullshit, just as I always suspected.
Breathless looked up from his note taking. “It’s consistent with previous findings, the skills are far more complex than they appear to be. We suspect there are conversion factors from stat to stat with most abilities drawing on multiple… It’s a conundrum to solve it all, especially with the unknown fac-”
“Yeah, yeah, save it for the library. Let’s get this over with.”
This guy had to be a stalker and definitely practiced his creepy-face. He even spoke in a sinister tone, “Gladly.”
I flinched when he raised his hand, actually had no idea what to expect. Never saw an endurance mage use his ability offensively. They manipulated an aura of sorts, which included concentrating it into geometric shapes and a bunch of other shit. As usual, creativity and execution were the primary determinants of true capability. Then I got smacked by a panel of light.
“What the hell man?! Why did you go for my face? For fucks sake. Like walking into a door.” My nose bled but I was mostly fine. Pretty sure that was the physical one, which meant-
“I was saving this one for your leg.”
“Wha- CHRIST.” I limped to my own recovery chair because Kim punctured my thigh with a thin, white cylinder of energy.
Next were the deflection tests. Magic sword actually parried magic. He sliced a freshly forged physical sword in half. A post-processed physical sword nearly dislocated my shoulder when the attack wrenched it out of my hand, but it somehow deflected Kim’s tube of endurance mage bullshit. He smiled again when I yelped from mending myself.
“Are we done now?”
“Not having fun anymore, Gabriel?”
“Oh, I’ll show you a good time.”
Three swords floated, aimed at him. He spawned three hexagons poised to intercept. I wasn’t actually going to shoot him. But if I were then I’d switch out the order of the swords at the last second, or maybe bunch them up… One of his brows furrowed and two more copies joined and aligned behind each existing barrier, along with three floating circles similar to the one which preceded the cylinder of stabbing. My only choice was probably to forego shooting altogether in favor of punching him in the face. Pure mages were crap at throwing hands. It was either that, or complicate the equation with two more swords. Fucking mage chess, I picked the wrong class.
But Breathless was having none of it. “Enough, we’re here to experiment and not fight. You both agreed to this. And the experiment is over. We know all we need to. Now get dressed, both of you.”
We kept giving each other the evil eye despite the end of exploratory hostilities.
Breathless continued. “Should I summarize the results for you?”
“No thanks, I have the gist of it. Mages get real swords, fighters get magic swords, Kim can’t take a joke and so forth.”
“Oh, you like jokes? I have one for you. Knock, knock.”
It was a bad idea but I played along. “Who’s there?”
“Door.”
Oh no. I lunged to the side while pain lanced up my leg and barely avoided another square to the head. Breathless’ curiosity was his greatest vice so he asked, “Door who?”
Kim happily answered, “The door with a view to an idiot on the floor.” Then he laughed. It wasn’t even a good joke.
“You know I can probably knock you out before you realize what’s happening, right? Better watch your back, barrier boy.”
“Hah! Not until you heal. A fighter with a leg injury is effectively crippled, whereas I can always fight.” Recovering wouldn’t take as long as he thought, I downed a vial.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“First of all, I’m a mage too. Second, yeah, that’s why we’re sending you to the games. Your odds of survival have been judged to be oh-so-high, right?” I knew it was a sore spot for him.
“I am quite certain the choice fell on you because of how expendable you are.” Yep, definitely a professional creep. “Speaking of, shouldn’t the daily intelligence update have ended a few minutes ago?” Oh shit. “Ahahahaha. Oh the look on your face. Well, let me allay your worries…” What? No way she wasn’t headed over. I felt his aura crap collide against my own perception field thingy. “She’ll be here in about 5 seconds.”
The fucker lied too, she rounded the corner immediately. We’d been outside the main building because neither of us wanted to clean blood off the floor. A certain turn of phrase came to mind, about women scorned. It wasn’t entirely appropriate since technically the problem was that I hadn’t scorned something. Earlier in the day, there’d been a general meeting for all level 100’s. Mel presented a simple question: Who wants to go into the Ascension games and try out strategies to see if we can bump up the survival rate? Alone.
Sounded like a mighty stupid idea to me, except for the usual complications of being bored out of my mind and not having killed anything worthwhile for far too long. I’d been riding out the high of my battles for a bit, but it couldn’t last forever and the jitters returned. Leadership likely planned to volunteer one of us but my hand went up along with a few others, including Kim. Now, Jen knew.
She roared, “FIRST YOU JUMP OFF THE FUCKING CLIFF, NOW YOU JUST VOLUNTEER FOR THE GOD DAMN DEATH GAMES. IF YOU WANT TO DIE SO BADLY THEN GET READY BECAUSE IT’S COMING.” Tendrils of energy snaked on her skin as she charged. They wrapped themselves around until her arm was covered fist to shoulder. I tried to feint one way and then dodge the other but, seated as I was, it hadn’t gone well and her hook sent me sprawling instead. The acrid smell of burnt beard and mustache followed my plummet to earth. But at least she calmed down a little.
“Goddamnit that’s the second time I get hit in the face within 5 minutes.”
“Good. You deserve it.” She actually nodded towards Kim, the obvious suspect, who bowed slightly. “But sorry, I thought you’d dodge it like always.” She was still getting used to her newly devised ability application and we sparred frequently - it kept things lively. Like so many others, she was on to something. While technically a speed mage, she fought like a power fighter.
Wrapping her magic around as an exoskeleton was nothing new however, binders loved the trick, but her increased physical endurance made it viable to augment her insides as well. She wasn’t the first to come up with the variation either, but progressed the most in applying it. Her success prompted me to call bullshit on System balance, evidenced by the fact she landed a hit on me even though I had ten times her physical speed.
Breathless and Kim scurried away while we hashed things out like a proper couple, her standing and me in the dirt.
“You should have waited to consult with me. Mel wanted you to volunteer.”
“The fuck? So she does think I’m expendable.”
“That’s not it, you have the best odds, especially with your new toy.”
“So what’s the problem then?”
“The problem is you made your decision without knowing everything. Come on, you know better than this. She didn’t consider it much either, we should’ve done a tournament or something, see who’s best and send them.”
“Fair point, it was kind of a heat of the moment thing. I’m itching and the strategy is cowardice personified, worst case I’ll dump a chunk of our treasury in someone’s face. That tends to work out.”
She moved closer, after I stood up, and wrapped her arms around my neck. “Tell me, can you really stay in control?” The heart of the matter.
“I think so, things are different now. I still feel the urge to let go, but not like at the river.”
“Could you?”
A hard question. “In theory? Yes, of course. In practice? No, not really. I don’t want to be that person. It’s a bad habit anyway, would just get me killed.”
“I believe you, but promise me you’ll come back alive, yeah? I know you can’t, not really, but do it anyway?”
“Of course, don’t sweat it. I don’t plan on losing.”
“Thanks Gabe, it means a lot to me.”
“You mean a lot to me.”
“Fucking kiss-ass.”
We ended up going for lunch and coffee while she shared the latest and greatest.
Freeport was going to send only three people, morale was low there after a chain of zero survivors. One of their Ascendants disappeared so with luck they were down to five. Jen speculated they delved into the Groups layer and learned the same lesson we had – it was a death sentence.
Factory gossip was so out of control that a rename to the rumor mill became ever more appropriate. It reached the small village threshold and everyone knew everything about each other. A bit of magical speed was all the rage nowadays among the craftspeople. The sub-process took over the mental focus component of modern day industry and freed up brainpower for idle chatter.
The nerds were nerdin’, although Jen couldn’t tell me much since her department was working out protocol for compartmentalization of information and other spy shit. We didn’t have anyone with a handy background in the CIA or whatever to fill us in on best practices. Still, the current project had a codename, ‘Here there be no dragons’. Nice.
She had to eventually get back to work so I reluctantly did the same. Barry’s brewing experiments yielded fruit and supplemented my arsenal with another new potion. After we downed our mandatory greeting drinks, he explained it to me.
“So, this is a good one. We had some wolfspider silk left over but the stuff was unusable ‘cuz its way too sticky.”
“Silk? Since when did we have silk? I thought they gave leather. Did someone scrape the stuff off the floor?”
“’s gathered from manual harvests. Had to refine it up. Jeb an’ I’d been drinkin’ and yappin’ about what to do with it. Magic glue or maybe duct tape, but he really wanted the thread.”
We had another set of drinks before he continued on.
“Then Ryan stops eavesdroppin’, leans over ‘n’ throws his arms ‘round us while completely hammered. Slurs every second word and says ‘Gentlemen, if that’s what’cha want, then dip it in alcohol. It’s a universal solvent.’ So we did just that.”
“Smart man.”
“Aye, I bet he didn’t struggle through school. Anyhow, it worked all right.”
“So what does this have to do with new potions?”
“Hold ya horses, I’m gettin’ to it. Jeb had his thread and I had a wasted drink. Figurin’ batch was already ruined and I was down a drinkin’ buddy, so why not? I ‘stilled it anyway and wouldn’t ya know, I ended up with a gob of sticky residue. Took some time to get the mix right.”
“Very nice. Tests were good then?”
“Took a second for Jeb to tear through after he’d been glazed with the stuff, even then it still bothered him. Thought this might be right up ya alley, seein’ as ya don’t like ‘em movin’.”
He passed me a pair of vials filled with viscous grey liquid. “No shit? Thanks B, these’ll come in handy.” I was genuinely touched. Even with a knack for aiming, it was better when I didn’t need to.
He poured a drink and raised a toast. “For the company.”
“For the company.”
The first offensive potion entered my repertoire. If it worked on Jeb then it should work on anyone. The affable redneck was all-in on physical power.
“Also, ya can throw booze over it to dissolve the stuff. Carry ‘em together with the liquor so if they get smashed ya won’t screw ya self.”
“Damn, good one.” We sat there a while longer, shooting the shit.
The sticky sticks brought my variety of consumables up to five and total count thereof to ten, including liquor. It was about the limit of what I was willing to deal with. Stat boosting potions were already a staple thanks to Elias’ inquisitive nature, despite how gross they were. The secret ingredient was the blood of a pure class mixed with alcohol and distilled, could do the same with hybrids but the effects were lackluster. The System liked its booze, it seemed. Perhaps we were kindred spirits after all.
I planned to bring three shots of physical endurance extract with me. Even if colloquial nomenclature designated them as healing potions, it was ultimately a bit of a stretch. They combined well with my mending cantrip. My other boosters were a PS and MP potion, one each. And now I had two goo bombs stashed in between three vials of grain alcohol.
It was a bit risky leaving them vulnerable even if Barry gave me a Jeb-made ‘carrier kit’ for them, so a belt with loops. Unlike the metal tubes for other potions, these worked by shattering and had to stay accessible mid-fight.
I also dedicated quite a bit of my free time towards enchanting. For one, I wanted more stuff to throw and was somewhat burned out on all my other stat-links for now. Even filing down metal could be fun if you were tired enough of the alternatives. I greatly looked forward to some fuckwit figuring out how to deal with a herd of angry metal cats on the fly, the little shits were vicious and obedient. They weren’t hard to kill but quantity solved the problem. There were other uses too, a simple metal brick made for an excellent roadblock - especially in a hallway. This one’s a little different though.
My crafting ingenuity was a source of pride but Vik had me beat in the same field. He gave us a scare when he stopped showing up for drinks, we marched on his room, determined to talk him out of becoming boring but apparently he was anything but. He’d gotten a little carried away with trap making, discovering hidden potential within the size differences before and after activation. He never actually finished anything because new inspirations caused him to leap from one idea to another. According to him, it was quite a pain to get the scale right along with a bunch of ridiculously tedious miniature work but he powered through nonetheless. Every ranged combatant in the firm salivated at the thought of seeding their surroundings with landmines of all kinds.
Overall, the current zeitgeist embodied change. And soon it was time for me to undergo the same. Ascension certainly made it sound like I was about to move up in the world. The lofty name of the games contrasted starkly with my chewed out strategy. It had its origin in online gaming terminology and I approved wholeheartedly.
It was called ‘ratting’.