Chapter 5

Gas

*Remmi*

Our feet pound beneath us, but for every three steps we take forward, the endless assault of the Silver-ranked adventurers pushes us back one. There's only about a dozen of them, but no matter how many times Ayre and I put them down, they just get right back up and jump back into battle!

The one upside is that the obstacle course works against them. It creates choke points and hazards that were meant to impede our progress, probably to see how we do under attack when we can't run. Instead, they throttle how many can reach us at any one time, and how fast they can do so.

The truly dangerous sections aren't the obstacle course's hazards, then, but the open spaces between them. Each time we reach such an area, we can be sure we'll be well and truly swarmed. This has forced us into a counter-intuitive pattern where we rush through the course's safe zones as quickly as possible, while taking our time in what the designer no doubt considered the areas to avoid.

I duck under a rotating wooden pole that bodies a woman trying to jump me from behind, then come up and bury two bolts into the neck of a guy wearing heavy armor everywhere else.

"Remmi," Ayre calls, "I need more arrows!"

At least arrows and bolts are things we have a plentiful supply of, for the time being, courtesy of my storage space. I jump out of the way of a massive hammer that splinters the wooden platform into shrapnel even as I will one of the quivers of arrows to the surface of my bag.

Ayre, too, is jumping away from a pincer attack, and we meet in mid-air. It's a maneuver we've practiced repeatedly for hectic combat as the elf reaches up and snags the quiver from my bag. The archer turns end over end and is already drawing one back to put a spiral shot arrow through the hammer bro while I empty two more bolts into the pincer attacker that didn't get hit by the bar's opposite arm.

As we bolt for the next open space, I see Ayre take out an amber vial, popping the cork out with his thumb before knocking it back. It's sweetened apple cider, made from Essence crops. In fact, the taste of the added sugar is rather sickeningly sweet, but the effect is similar to an Essence Candy Apple's full recovery. The immediate recovery is far less intense, but it provides regeneration of both health and magical energy over time.

Unless I've missed him taking one, he should have two vials left. I have three, as well, but so far, I've avoided dipping into mine. It's a sobering reminder that, even if we had all of the bolts and arrows in the world, we're still on a timer. Trying to keep up this pace, sooner or later, we're just going to run out of gas.

I plug another couple adventurers trying to block our path, and the slide fails to catch the next bolt. I've been reloading on the last bolt to avoid having to take the time to re-cock it in the middle of combat, leaving one in the chamber, as it were. Even without my sixth sense for the state of my weapon, I know the magazine isn't empty.

That just leaves one other explanation. "I've got a jam!"

I go to pull the magazine out of the crossbow, but it won't release. "Agh, the bolt must be stuck in there crooked!"

"Remmi," Ayre shouts for my attention, "ahead of you!"

I swear when I raise my head and see that stupid spearman coming for me again! I must have taken him out half a dozen times already! Of course, sooner or later, he'd catch me at a time like this!

I was so distracted with the jam that the point of his spear is already shooting toward me. On reflex, I activate Empower and spin to the side. Then, without really thinking about it, I jump and swing my leg out, kicking him across the face!

I've never done a kick like that. I've never even seen one like it outside of the movies. It's probably incredibly sloppy, but my empowered body's strength sends him back over the edge again.

"Hey, Yellow!" Dina is already shooting toward me, as if summoned by the melee. She's a kicker, herself, as Ayre and I were unfortunate to discover when she took out a whole wooden support beam earlier. "If you're doing hand-to-hand now, let's have some fun!"

"Not with you!" I toss the Noodle Spitter to my offhand and finally draw my pistol. It's loaded with paralysis rounds, so I don't hesitate to immediately level it at the receptionist and fire.

She instantly loses control over her own body as every muscle in it seizes in both directions at once. Her own momentum rolls her rear over tea kettle for a couple loops before she comes to a stop.

I go to move on, but pause when I hear her relax. It's a deep sigh as all of her muscles stop fighting each other. I can only stare as she climbs back to her feet. Previously, I could count on the paralysis effect lasting as long as an hour, but this was barely seconds!

"Oof," she's complaining as she stretches her limbs out, "so those are what you used on Kaido, huh? No wonder he's still mad about it, Yellow, those really--"

Dina is interrupted as I shoot her again. By the time I reach her, it's already fading.

"Hey, cut that--"

One more time, my gun goes off, and I grab her by the blouse even as she's starting to fall backwards. "Sorry about this," I apologize quickly as I grab one flailing arm. With those two anchor points and my still-going Empower, I hurl her over the edge, too.

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A couple more are already climbing up over the edges, but even the brief period of paralysis is enough to cause them to fall back off and retain my breathing room. I run ahead to the next obstacle room and catch up with Ayre before releasing Empower again.

"This is too much," the elf complains as soon as I'm in earshot. "There's no way even three guild healers can be keeping up this kind of pace!"

"I don't think they are," I confide, sneaking a glimpse between some planks to the ground below.

Sure enough, one of the healers isn't even active anymore, down on their knees and gasping for breath. The other two are looking ragged. But ...

"It's Yorin."

The Sacred Priestess doesn't even look strained. The way she's running her hands through the air in front of her, I can almost even picture a screen of health bars for all dozen Silvers as her fingers dance across them. Of course, I can't actually tell if that's what she's doing, but it sure looks like it.

"It's worse than just the recovery," Ayre is saying. "I'm certain they're all stronger than when we started, too!" The elf looks back the way we came in a mixture of reverent fear. "Is this the power of a Sacred Priest ...?"

"If it is," I reply, "then we need it to stop." I sidestep to an actual window in the obstacle room with my shoulder pressed to the wall, not yet turning to expose myself. Silvers are already following us in, too. "Ayre, cover me!"

I whip off of the wall, gun already trained roughly on her location. I'm automatically adjusting the little bit needed to put her squarely in my sights ... and I freeze.

Yorin is already looking at me. Not just at the room we're in, but directly at me, right in the eyes, with that knowing smile on her lips.

The sounds of the Silvers clashing with Ayre snaps me out of it. I don't have time to be freaked out. I steady my aim again and, with a silent apology to Yorin, I fire.

The next instant, light flares three feet ahead of the priestess in a dome shape. Yellow light I take a moment too long to realize is my paralysis round sparks and lashes out against it, but Yorin doesn't even show strain. She just keeps focusing on her healing like no attack on her person is even occurring.

A moment later, the yellow light fades and I think I see the bullet drop to the ground, its entire momentum exhausted. The barrier, too, fades, but I'm pretty sure it's only invisible, not gone.

I swear again and wheel back to the fighting, firing paralysis rounds into the attackers instead. "Ayre, we're leaving!"

The elf breaks away immediately and I fire back at them every time one starts to relax until my clip runs dry.

I take out one of my vials of apple juice and squint as I down it. It really is way too sweet, but I can already feel my numbers starting to recover. This room has spikes and pit traps, but they're too obvious to catch us, so doing all of this on the run is no problem.

I switch the empty magazine for my jacketed overpressure rounds. "I need you to cover for me again when we get to the next open area," I relay to Ayre. "If this doesn't work, we're going to have to go loud and just run it."

"What went wrong the first time?"

"She had a barrier ready for me," I answer. "She was waiting for me to try something like that. It stopped the bullet cold."

Ayre is silent for a moment as we split apart to go around opposite sides of a ball and chain swinging from the ceiling. "Can you break through it?"

"If I thought it was a guarantee," I counter, "I wouldn't be warning you about the fallback."

Ayre swallows at the seriousness of my tone. It's obvious that I don't have high hopes. Honestly, I give breaking through and taking down Yorin 60/40 odds in our favor, but those aren't great, and I want my partner to understand that.

"How loud is loud?" he asks instead.

"I've got five magazines of explosive rounds."

Ayre pales, but the time for talking is over as we burst into the open again. The Silvers waste no time in their assault, eschewing defense with their faith in Yorin's healing, but the archer's Spiral Shot is there to greet them.

I immediately reactivate Empower and leap over the front line to land on the railing separating us from the inner area of the training grounds. Yorin is already looking at me again, but I refuse to let it shake me a second time.

"Yorin! Stop cheating!"

I add Spiral Shot to my mana load and open fire. Even with Empower boosting my Agility higher than my Intellect, it takes several casts of Ayre's spell to get me through an entire magazine. Part of that is the distance making the shot harder. The other is that I'm aiming for as tight a grouping as I can, to put as much strain on a single point of the barrier as possible.

Sure enough, it's still there, and it flares back into brilliance as the bullets collide with it. Each shot makes it glow brighter until it's blinding and my last few shots are best guesses.

I can't spare the time for a second magazine. Even as I'm reloading, I'm turning my attention to Ayre's attackers. The noise of the gunfire being pointed at them makes them freeze, and the bullets blow holes through their body armor.

"Ayre, run!" I order, and we break away again.

"You couldn't do it?" the elf asks as he comes up next to me.

I cast my gaze out over the railing before we disappear into the next room. Yorin is still healing, not a scratch on her. But when her gaze meets mine, she seems somehow ... disappointed.

Did she think I could get through that crazy barrier while being dogpiled by her Silver-rank hounds? Or is her disappointment in her belief to the contrary being confirmed?

"No," I answer Ayre as I turn ahead to focus on running. I make a mental note of where my explosive rounds are for when I next need to reload. "She's too strong."

* * *

*Yorin*

The guildmaster's arm crosses my vision. "Sacred Yorin, that's enough."

I allow my brow to wrinkle slightly, as if in confusion. "You wish me to stop healing?"

"Keep them from dying," he clarifies, "but stop revitalizing them to go back into the fight."

"Then those two shall quickly reach the end unchallenged," I point out.

"Look around you, Priestess," he demands as he motions to the other healers, who have all ceased casting to sit on the ground. "All three guild healers have exhausted themselves. As it is, even if those Bronzes didn't reach the end, I would have to grant their promotion to Silver for enduring your contribution alone. Or did you forget that this is merely a rank examination and not the Imperial trial grounds?"

I dip my head, as is appropriate. "My apologies for my overzealousness," I answer. "They were doing so well that I simply desired to keep up."

That statement is ... mostly true. I wanted to push Remmi and Ayre, to examine their limits, but keeping up with a dozen adventurers was never going to be an issue. They are only Silver-rank, after all.

There is no good way to put that into words, however. It would only serve to offend the prideful, since few of them will ever reach any higher. Silver is the pinnacle for the vast majority of adventurers, the point where they plateau and their growth stagnates.

Comfort in numbers makes them feel that this is acceptable, further decreasing their likelihood of breaking through. If only exceptional people reach beyond to Gold, and the legends alone reach Platinum, then the average need feel no shame.

Still, Kobi turns his gaze to the pair already facing decreased resistance. Even with his massive frame, he seems to have gotten so old, so quickly, in comparison to my memories of a younger man, of a boy.

"Yes," he agrees, "they have a great deal of potential. Of course, one is a Hero, that's to be expected, but the young elf keeps apace admirably." He grunts - a sound that more resembles a growl. "I am tempted to demand they both take the Gold exam right away."

That thought puts a smile on my face. "They would fail that one, I fear. They are not quite ready for that level, not yet. That is the problem with potential, after all. It must be grown into."