Nate grabbed him after about half an hour. The guy was significantly more bruised and supported some more open wounds—clasping him on the shoulder and helping him back up. “I knew you could do it, you crazy bastard.”
“I appreciate it, but we’re not done,” Colt began, rubbing his temples. His head split and his soul had a mighty ache, but he’d be fine. Better than fine. “Just a couple of things left to do. Let’s get back to the others.”
Most of the dungeon was mapped out. He suspected the door would end up being something much like this. Only now, open. It meant they’d have to try a bunch of different doors. Given the timeline, though, all they had to do was find the needle in a haystack.
Nate gave a grunt of acknowledgment, and the two of them beat it out of the boss room. Walking past the kobold corpses gave Colt a brief insight into how far he’d come. Right now, the pile of bodies there… Felt right. These monsters had tried to kill him and his friends, and he had turned it right back around on them. They’d earned this fate.
He’d just been the hand to deliver the justice.
They went on in silence through the deep, spanning network of dirt tunnels the Kobolds had called home until they finally reached the surface.
It was a somber trip back to the kitchen, with Nate doing the majority of the playing lookout. Given how tired Colt felt after expending just about everything he had, it was a welcome reprieve. With a quick knock using the code, Jimmy let them in.
It just took a minute for Jimmy to move the crap load of furniture piled against the door. Once they got in, Colt took a careful look at Sarah. Despite being stabbed, Sarah looked a lot better. Fully recovered.
Jimmy sat down and applied his healing powers to Colt; the white light felt like a soothing balm. Almost like Aloe Vera on sunburned skin just… All over his body. The ache in his muscles eased, the wounds that hadn’t already closed up on the trip back scabbed over and then healed. While Jimmy did his work, Nate told the story of what happened, at least the bits that happened after Sarah got stabbed and rushed back to the kitchen.
Healing was incredibly powerful.
Which just meant that either Jimmy had to tag along for a while, or more preferably, Colt found some skill or magic to work healing on himself.
Of course, he went to Nate next—and then…
“Holy shit, we did it! You did it, man!” Jimmy slammed a hand on his back with a cheer, a little tear coming out of his eye, “I really thought we were going to die in here.”
“We’re not out yet, but nice job, guys,” Sarah said, rubbing at her back, right where the knife went in.
“Bill isn’t getting away with it,” Colt promised.
“I don’t expect him to. If I see him, I’m paying him back. I’d expect anyone else to do the same, right? That… Murderer.”
Nate grunted and nodded, and Jimmy looked on quietly, not willing to say much, not that he needed to. One look at his face said everything. He wanted out and couldn’t care less about what Bill did other than staying away. It was…. Well, it was Jimmy. He was afraid to go into the dungeon, so it made sense.
After everyone was healed up and felt confident in the barricade, things began to relax. There were cheers. Nate went and cooked a meal with the best food they had, putting aside the remainder of their rations. There was a general understanding.
Together, they’d conquered the dungeon. Any kobolds left would be trivial. Bill was somewhere, sure, but the last fight had gotten Nate to level 20—plenty enough for him and Sarah to be fine if they encountered him. A couple of days, and he would get desperate and weak anyway. Without food out there, he wouldn’t last long.
Colt would search for him tomorrow, trying to finish the job and pay him back for what he did to Cindy. And, to a lesser extent, Donny.
They agreed with the plan. There wasn’t any police to call, nowhere to file a murder away. No. The reality was that if nobody made Bill pay, he got away with it. And having him out there loose while they prowled around for the exit made them too nervous.
This was, in a way, the best option. Colt’s simmering rage at seeing him backstab Sarah was all the fuel he needed to carry through with what needed to be done.
After talking over the plan, the spirit was enthused. Good food, good company. As the night wore on, Jimmy brought out his weed to share. Colt chose not to take any, wanting to keep his mind clear and focused in case Bill decided to try anything that night. Sarah and Nate were more than eager to share, puffing and passing the little pen around. In the absence of alcohol, it made sense. There was a lot to celebrate. With Colt’s investigation, he told them they would definitely be able to find the door out before their food ran low.
Freedom was within spitting distance.
As the night wound down, his coworkers hit the hay after making a second batch of food, this time geared more toward deserts.
Which left Colt alone, staring at the door and assigning out the points he’d accumulated from his levels. Six of them. All of them went right into his Soul.
The truth was, as he replayed today's fights in his mind, only a few things had let him survive and win. First was that Skill Phantom Step; it’d allowed him to maneuver and surprise his enemies, but it was only really effective because of the Dexterity he’d gained. Superhuman reflexes and speed did a lot. But they didn’t do everything. They wouldn’t have gotten him past the defenses of the big Kobold.
But there was an issue with that. Force.
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The Edict was his force. His way of pushing through defenses and doing damage.
Colt closed his eyes and let his mind slip away. His focus centered on his breath, the way his chest rose and fell. Once he was centered, he replayed the fighting in his head.
In his mind, he was there again. Moving through the kobolds, his body twisting and phasing in and out. A constant source of movement and speed as he flowed through the crowd to get to the King.
It was like an athlete studying a tape of their game, trying to find any mistakes to put them on that next level. Meditation could be used for that if he let it, replaying every use of Cut; were some unnecessary? Having only one left when he met the boss, had been too close.
But as he replayed the fight, he saw nothing wrong with his offense. Other than getting stronger with the Edict, there was little else to add.
Colt circled back on the Edict, but it was like trying to climb a wall with no hand-holds. The difference now, after gaining a Lesser understanding, was night and day; he got what it was to cut. His Soul understood it, but as he tried to climb that wall to hit the next level, he slipped and fell. It was like he couldn’t see what it was or feel what the next true way to advance was.
Other than to use it. To practice it. To observe it.
He sighed and circled back around, returning to the center of his breath, the cycle of his meditation.
At least two hours had passed in silence, and the meditation had gone nowhere.
He replayed the fight again, this time with the understanding that his cuts were close to being the most efficient they could be. Power-wise, it would rise with time.
No, the issue was that his body didn’t move right. Awkward pauses and gaps in the fight’s flow had been the biggest loss and caused him the most issues. He needed to react without thought, for his body to move and flow to react with the tides of the battle. If it were a sea, he needed to swim in the movement and chaos of limbs and lead it wherever it needed to be.
Colt felt something there, tugging at his soul.
He fished at the memory, prodding it under the scope of his soul.
And there was something there, an understanding of the battle. A force at play he was aware of yet couldn’t name. It felt… ancient.
Colt shivered, his Soul lurching as his mind scoured the scene again, trying to break down everything that had happened—trying to see how it all connected, how the battle flowed.
Flowed.
That was the crux of it all, wasn’t it? They were like water; the movement of it all was a rushing river coursing through the battle. Every movement had a reaction. In order to cut, he had to move his arm and slash. It all boiled down to movement. Moving. All of it stemmed from the same fundamental concept. Without movement, there would be no life. Without movement, there would be no fighting. Without movement, there would never be a cut.
It was there in that understanding, a deep, ancient thing—an Edict that underlined everything he could picture, something with far more weight than Cut. Colt understood then. Not all of these Edicts were equal. Not all of them had the same sphere of influence.
He felt it. His soul brushed up against the ancient beast and tried to withdraw, to forget it existed; it wanted to turn a blind eye instead of wrestling with it.
No.
Colt forced himself to confront it and reached out a hand to the Edict.
It snapped back; he felt a dreadful tearing in his chest as his soul withered and screamed; the Edict smashed into him with the weight of itself—accepting him and forcing its might into someone dumb enough to try to welcome it through the door. In a way, it was like trying to shove an elephant into a tiny home. His poor soul had just started to build itself up and was in no way the right size to tackle something of this magnitude.
Colt’s head hit the side of the floor as his heart slammed into his chest, losing his balance.
He’d touched the Edict, and it knew him back.
It wrapped around him, encompassing him. Pressing its understanding into his head. All of life was movement; to be still was to be dead. It was life, it was energy, and it was power—and now—now—
Colt screamed, hands going to his eyes.
But it was too late.
He and the Edict had bonded together.
The pain grappled at his chest—dimly, Colt was aware of Jimmy coming up and trying to heal him, but it didn’t help. He felt shattered inside, torn to shreds, the grasp on his physical body falling to land purchase with the aftershocks of what his soul just grappled with.
Where was he? Who was he?
A thousand little lies circled, webs to get caught in. About who he was. What he was doing was the endless alley. Ways to grasp onto a self-constructed identity, but they were flimsy little webs. Not anything that could last, and definitely not a place to anchor his soul back down.
He felt it around him, the void. A place for this destroyed soul to go. The danger with Edicts is that one could stumble onto something to be. You had to be careful about what laws you made part of you—here in the void, it was easier to understand that concept. That all concepts had a weight to them.
If there was nothing firm to tender him down…
But wasn’t there?
He’d seen a man try to murder a coworker. A guy who, if he didn’t step in, would walk away with what he’d done. He couldn’t lie and say she was a friend; despite all the fighting, he still didn’t think of any of them as friends.
But that sense of needing to pay the dirtbag back. For how he’d treated him, for what he’d done—that was a force that was powerful enough to center on.
Colt grasped it. Not a wispy fake thread of lies—no, this was a chain.
He wouldn’t let people like that get away with whatever they wanted. Not anymore. He’d watched awful people get away with what they wanted his whole life. His mother. His brother—no.
Colt was going to end it.
Justice had to be earned, and he would take this Edict and use it.
Inch by inch, he grasped the chain back to his body. Pulling himself along it, it came with pain. It’d be easier to let go and drift to the void. To let the heavy burden of this ancient edict escape back into the nether where it came. He wouldn’t be the first one to drift away with it. And it wouldn’t be the last.
No.
The pain was temporary.
Colt kept dragging, getting closer. The sounds of Jimmy talking to him—Nate and Sarah talking in the background came into focus.
With a burst, Colt yanked one last time and yelled.
His eyes flashed open, and a notification flooded his vision.
———
*Meditate* (Basic) has gained a level!
*Meditate* (Basic) has gained a level!
*Meditate* (Basic) has gained a level!
Edict Gained: Movement (Minor)
You’ve achieved a minor understanding of this ancient principle to reality. This is… Well, quite frankly, shocking. You should be dead! This is a weighty law that is a major component, in fact, with quite a few realms of influence. You’ve reached an understanding of this principle and can now interact with it. Not all Edicts are equal, and this one is one hell of an Edict.
———