I have no idea how Dan finished the Speed Trial and rated SS. He looked as if he’d die from asphyxiation less than a minute in. His vitals and mentals were wild the whole time.
Once it ended, he immediately collapsed to the ground and puked everywhere. He even put his face down right in the puke. It took him forever to recover. He laid there for at least a half hour, shaking like a wussy.
Once he got up, he took a rag and a bottle of water out of his backpack, took a few sips, cleaned himself off, and threw the rag aside. Then he collected the Trial rewards and increased his Speed to C-grade.
Since Dan was in such bad shape, I offered a prayer up to Moloch. I didn’t have much of a sacrificial offering at the time. Still, nothing ventured and all that.
I begged Moloch to convince Dan to head straight for the Combat Trial, but my plea went unheeded.
My team walked back to their camp near the Agility Trial to eat dinner. Dan took a different route back and ate by himself.
Bonnie went up to him while he was eating alone in his usual spot. I think Becky and Nick thought the little girl would cheer him up. He was always nice to that little bitch and replied to her when he needed to, but it was obvious he wanted to be left alone.
I don’t think he could be cheered up. Having the ghost of his daughter there along with Bonnie seemed to bother him, so I loved it.
Everyone figured the day was over since Dan wasn’t doing another Trial. It was getting late, and he clearly needed to rest and recover, but he called Nick over and asked if it was decided which two would take on the Agility Trial. He wanted the others to start training.
“If you saying me and Ace have to do the Speed Trial, and Carlos is on the Strength Trial, that still leaves everything else,” said Nick to Dan. “Ain’t one person committed to nothing else so far. Besides Chet. He got it in his head he’s a ninja or something and wants to do them all himself. That don’t seem too smart though.”
“I’ll talk to him,” replied Dan.
“I reckon Luke should do the Strength Trial. Man, have you seen that boy smile? That grill ain’t easy to look at. He sure got farm strength though. He’s a lot stronger than he looks.”
Nick smiled before saying, “Not to be mean, but I think he has the other kind of strength too, on top of the farm strength. I don’t think he’s all there in the head, if you know what I’m saying.”
“Come on,” said Dan, disappointedly. “He’s one of us. City folk look down on and poke fun at us enough without us doing it to our own.”
Nick lowered his eyes and said, “I ain’t meant nothing by it. You’re right. I shouldn’t’ve said that.” After looking up again, he asked, “Can we double up? On Trials? Can I take two or more?”
“You could, but it’ll be better if everyone picks one. With eight of y’all, it works out perfect with two parties of four.”
Nick clicked his tongue and said, “Damn. I was hoping we could keep the ladies and Austin from all this shit. That boy’s only 13.”
“I reckon it’s important everyone gets involved and trains hard. I reckon it’ll get a lot rougher soon. Coddling will just get them dead. Ain’t fair to them.”
Nick laughed. “Reckon so, do you? I hope you tell me what’s going on with you and why you know so much about all this dumb shit soon.”
“I’ll tell you what I can when I can. Mind sending Chet over?”
“Guess not but you know how I feel about being your messenger. There ain’t no good reason for you not moving over there with us.”
Once Chet arrived, he said, “What’s up, Dan? We going to start my personal training now?”
“How’s your reaction time?”
“Top notch. I could probably be a streamer if I wanted. I blow through games such as God of War and Tekken 7.”
“Let me see your jab. Punch my hand.” Chet threw a punch. Very poorly, may I add.
Dan said, “Good. When I hold a hand off to this side like this, give it a hook. Let me see a hook. Good. When I hold my palm down like this, give it an uppercut. Yup, just like that.”
Dan held his hands in various ways and had Chet punch them as Dan increased the speed and tempo.
“Not bad,” said Dan. “You have pretty good reaction time. What’s your opinion on Austin?”
Chet sighed. “He’s okay. He’s kind of annoying and because he’s bigger than I am he thinks he can tell me what to do. I’m three years older than he is.”
“I mean his reaction time,” said Dan.
I stopped paying attention for a couple minutes since one of the two techs I was being sent arrived. Named Bob, one of those silly Nisrochites. I have no idea how one of them became a tech, but Bob’s one of the good ones.
He hadn’t used his Sortilege on his own team. I was back in business!
The area Bob was given was extremely remote. A part of Mongolia and Russia with three mortals in total capable of self-cultivating. Only one of those three went to the difficulty Bob was assigned. That participant died within the day with Bob still having 100% of his Veil left.
After that, Bob was sent to assist another team. A big team for a super high population area’s Normal difficulty. They pushed him aside and ignored him. He hadn’t spent any Veil before being reassigned to me.
We wanted to wait until everyone was sleeping to use his Sortilege, so we went back to observing all the shitheads on my team.
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Dan asked Chet, “You know a lot of exercises? Like pushups, all that?”
“Of course. I know of them even if I have little experience in their execution,” replied Chet.
“For your training, I want you to constantly be doing something. Condition your body. Do an exercise you know until muscle failure. Then work another muscle group until muscle failure. After we done with group exercise, do at least five as I said before you rack out tonight. And you go on a run every morning. A long one. No excuses.”
“But,” stuttered out Chet, “aren’t you going to teach me how to be OP and a killing machine?”
“We’re working up to that. I need to go get the parties settled and get all y’all training now. I ain’t looking forward to it neither. We all got to do what we don’t want.”
It looked like Chet became excited. With a smile on his face, he said, “I can help. Is the Agility Trial always the same?”
“Yeah,” replied Dan.
“In that case, I have its pattern memorized.”
Dan’s brows furrowed and he looked from his daughter to Chet. “How’s it go then?”
Chet rattled it off perfectly.
Dan said, “Guess you do got it memorized.”
“I know how each Trial went. That won’t be much help for many of them. I figured out the pattern of the Reaction Trial, so that should help.”
Dan looked surprised. “There ain’t no pattern for that Trial. It’s all random.”
“It isn’t. Its algorithmic set for all nine parts is the same. And simple.”
Dan just looked at Chet for a long moment before he said, “I’ll take your word for it. I ain’t going to force the ladies, you, or Austin to do something you ain’t wanting to, but what you think of this – Leena and Becky on the Agility Trial, Carlos and Luke on strength, Nick and Ace on speed, and you and Austin on reaction?”
“I would switch the events of Nick and Ace with Leena and Becky. Scratch that, I’d much rather watch Leena and Becky train for the Agility Trial. I must be the one to train them as well. And I must demand to be in Leena’s party. Nonnegotiable.”
Dan nodded and looked relieved.
The parties were picked. One had Leena, Luke, Nick, and Chet. The other party was Becky, Carlos, Ace, and Austin. Not everyone was happy with the parties or Trial they were assigned so there was arguing and heightened tempers, but a frustrating lack of murder.
Once the parties were formed through the Profile Reader, everyone on my team besides Dan lost Lone Wolf.
The whole group was bitching and moaning about having to exercise after their hard day of watching Dan do stuff. As sins go, my team truly excelled at sloth.
Then it was time for training. Even though Dan had everyone stand a good distance away from him, his anxiety was solidly in the orange. With smart use of images, I could get it to spike into the red.
Dan went through the gist of forming a core and meditating. He then stated everyone was to start exercising every morning and evening and training all day until they were ready for their assigned Trial.
If someone was injured, he wanted them to do exercises that wouldn’t aggravate their injury, but if they could suck it up, he thought they should, as it was a necessary skill to learn.
Once everyone finished exercising, though I hesitate to call it that since most of my team hardly exerted themselves, a guard schedule was made.
Dan set two roving guards for two-hour duty. He’d be the only one on guard by himself. He volunteered for the second shift, generally considered one of the worst.
Then everyone went to bed. Dan didn’t go to sleep. He had the second guard shift so must’ve decided to stay awake while stretching or meditating. He did the same during his guard shift. I used that time to catch Bob up to speed, field his questions, and get to know him some.
We wrapped up a little before Dan’s shift ended. He fell asleep minutes after his head hit the ground. Since there were two roving guards and little chance both would fall asleep, we didn’t wait. Bob used his Sortilege.
When Sortilege spawns a monster, it always spawns them near the center of that area. In the case of the tutorial area, this means the Core Trial.
And Dan always slept directly between the group and the Core Trial. Any beast that spawned would go right for him.
But a beast didn’t spawn. What spawned was an apparition. A vortex, also known as a funnel ghost. A large one too, probably high to peak Foundation equivalent. They look like a swirling funnel or a spiral of light and cause cold damage, but they’re not all that great a killing since it takes them so long to drain a soul or freeze someone to death.
Getting this vortex as a Sortilege had two real benefits. First, it was somewhat aware and could take simple directions from us. Second, since no one on my team had a Class or access to an offensive invocation, it would be impossible to kill. Truly impossible. Physical attacks couldn’t harm it. And it would remain for a full day/night cycle before it naturally despawned.
After discussing with Bob, we both agreed there was little chance this thing could kill Dan. This type of apparition doesn’t move fast, and only a huge idiot would stand still long enough to let it kill them.
Luckily, we did have a huge idiot to send it after – little Bonnie the stupid bitch.
I’m not sure how familiar you are with mortal children but they’re very dumb and grossly incompetent. They only excel at being annoying, loud, whining, crying, and creating various types of horrid odors.
And best of all, these children are extremely easy to kill. You barely even have to try. Most of them spend a good deal of time trying to kill themselves. While awake, they must constantly be monitored by an adult to prevent their accidental death.
How are there eight billion mortals on Earth when their young are so stupid? It remains one of life’s great mysteries.
It may seem a waste, using the vortex to kill the toddler, but we hoped it would really push Dan closer to the edge considering his trauma profile, as well as cause anger and distress among the group. Plus, Bonnie was constantly crying and whining, and I was sick of it.
We also assumed it’d take Becky out of play. Mortal mothers are truly ridiculous when it comes to a spawn of theirs dying. You’ve never seen a creature get so disconcerted from one little death. Their reaction to one of their brood dying is completely disproportionate to the little of value lost.
The best-case scenario would be the apparition killing the toddler before anyone noticed, making the ensuing havoc all the more harrowing and chaotic. Me and Bob were feeling good about it, as the guards were talking together and facing the wrong direction to spot the vortex.
I told you that for a Nisrochite, Bob was one of the good ones, right? Since the whole abandoned floor I was forced to move my terminal to was freezing and my tentacles were little frozen nubs, Bob said I could warm them inside of him. It was done in a purely platonic and exploratory manner.
Well, I did agree to bring Bob to climax, so I guess it wasn’t purely platonic on his end if you want to be super technical about it.
Anyway, with my tentacles nice and warm, we excitedly watched the apparition make its way to the child. The guards never spotted it. The vortex started to drain and freeze the child as we giddily watched on. But after only five or so seconds that little punk-ass bitch woke up. She immediately activated full Karen-mode and began screaming her head off.
Becky woke up and yanked the toddler away from the vortex. Instead of being sane, Becky decided to join in on the hysterics and started screaming like a psycho too. Like mother like daughter was really proving true in this case.
To make things worse, Becky ran towards Dan. As soon as the hysterics started, Dan was up and running towards the group anyway, so Becky didn’t have a long run.
Bob and I laughed as Dan ineffectively swiped his knife through the vortex. It did nothing, of course. Well, I guess it caused the ghost to focus on him. It reached its arm or some part of itself out and started freezing Dan’s knife arm, and Dan just stood there like a real dummy and let it. For a while.
Bob asked, “What is this idiot doing?”
I said, “It looks like this fat prick is doing our job for us!” We laughed uproariously as we watched on.
It truly looked like Dan was just letting the vortex freeze him to death and steal his soul. Ice was forming on his arm and everything.
We continued laughing as Dan allowed himself to be murdered very, very, very slowly.