There were maybe two or three dozen people moving along the road from Veleth’s Rest in a pack, but that wasn’t what Cuby had warned me about. Front and center of the group I could see Haroshi: a plain-faced, light-skinned, brown-haired human in a derunium mail hauberk. But beside him was a human woman: black-haired, east asian in appearance, and wearing a set of plate. Something about the way the others were giving these two space at the front of the column, and the warning Cuby had given, made me tag her:
Nerien – Level 9 – Chosen
My heart sank. I tagged a few of the rest of them—mostly level 9s, including Haroshi himself, but also few 8s and 10s. I lowered the spyglass and looked at Cuby, sure that my face was just as despondent as hers had been moments earlier.
We had worked so hard. We outplayed him, out-leveled him, beaten him twice.
And it didn’t matter.
“How is this even possible?” I asked. “I—he had to climb those mountains. He had to, to—when the hell did he sleep?”
“I don’t know,” Cuby said. “Maybe he didn’t?”
I let out an exasperated growl. “He’s been here for almost a day and a half, now—30 sleepless hours might be possible for some humans who are… I don’t know, trained for it. But do the taxin el train for that sort of thing?”
“No,” Cuby said, shaking her head. “Sleep is very important to them. Maybe he’s used an ability, or something….”
“Damn it,” I said, rubbing my face with a hand in agitation. “Damn it all. I can’t afford to lose, Cuby—I have to get to that dungeon. Maybe we can come in after they clear it and I’ll still find what I’m looking for… but somehow I doubt it.”
“We’ll be okay,” Cuby said, smiling suddenly. “We’ll just have to come up with a plan.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sure. Except he has an army in addition to more chosen power than we have—they’re going to blow through this place with ease.”
A flash of annoyance came across Cuby’s face. “So we’ll stop them.”
Somehow this made me even more frustrated, and I turned to look at Haroshi’s people in the distance, seething. What had I done wrong? “Aren’t chosen supposed to be rarer than this?” I asked pointlessly. Then a thought occurred to me. “Could it be an illusion, maybe? Their own False Identity spell, inspired by me?”
“Why would it be?” Cuby asked.
And I had no answer. Haroshi didn’t need a deterrent like that with so many people on his heels. I hunkered down and leaned my head against the walls of the crevice, letting out a huge sigh.
“Think of it this way,” said Cuby. “Now there’s two—”
“Can you not?” I snapped, silencing her. This was too important—it was all potentially way, way too important. And she was right, but….
“I’m sorry,” I said a moment later. “I’m just… I’m stressed. I felt like the worst of it was over, Cuby. And then that boss pushed us into a cave, and now this.”
“It’s all right,” she said. Then she added: “But only if you help me come up with a plan.”
I nodded. “All right,” I said. “All right.”
“Let’s use Make Camp,” said Cuby. “We’re not as high as I’d like to be, but I don’t think we should go outside now, not in daylight where there’s that many sets of eyes to spot us moving about.”
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I nodded. That had been the plan in the first place, and so we moved back to the room where we’d fought the ooze and set up our tiny tents, making the area immediately around them—which was most of the room—a place where our clocks would count up.
“I’m trying to do the math,” I said as my hands went through the bizarre, automatic motions that generated a physical tent out of nothing. “Figure out exactly what he might have done, and how long he has until he needs to rest again.”
“What do you mean?”
“His camp cooldown finishes in two hours or so, right? That’s guaranteed, because we wiped his camp back in the valley—Ereth’s Cradle, or whatever it was called.”
“Yeah,” said Cuby.
“And either his adventuring clock had run out by that point, or it had almost run out. Point is, he had to take a rest in a Safe Zone.” I finished setting up my tent and wrapped a Hardlight Tether around a stalactite as an impromptu chandelier. “So he has to cross the mountains and get to Veleth’s Rest as soon as possible, and once there he gains enough hours, or near enough hours, to match the cooldown on his Set Camp—exactly what we did in Aranar. And then he comes straight here.”
I shook my head. It didn’t make sense. “Except he had to travel with no experience, then earn no experience while he was in Veleth’s Rest—apparently recruiting. And he had to lead his whole group there before he could even—”
I stopped as a realization struck me. A cold anger began to rise in my stomach. “He killed them.”
“Almost certainly,” Cuby said, nodding.
“He’d be low on clock time after we attacked his camp,” I said. “But they were right next to the mountain. If he was careful about how they crossed, he could isolate them into small groups, send some ahead… and then just pick them off. That’s how he’s level 9—it’s not because he farmed on the way here, it’s something he got right after our attack.”
“You chosen are just so strong,” said Cuby. “And you know how strong Haroshi was, even compared to you. He could have done it pretty easily if he could have split them up—or even cut a rope or something while they were climbing.”
“So he liquidates his own people,” I said, my voice harsh, hateful. “Then his clock runs out. He travels to Veleth’s Rest, which hasn’t heard about his attack on Oromar’s Bastion yet because the only road connecting them runs around this mountain.” I shrugged, unsure of what happened next. “And then he sleeps for a few hours, tops, and joins Nerien’s attack force.”
“But if it’s her group, I don’t see why she hasn’t killed him,” said Cuby. “He would have needed to recruit himself.”
“And even if he did sleep, it’s still not enough to be up and well,” I said. “So either he’s running on empty, unfocused and ready to pass out, or somehow he doesn’t even need to sleep.”
“The good thing, though, is that he’s definitely going to be making camp soon,” said Cuby.
“Unless they want to get this dungeon down as soon as possible.”
But Cuby shook her head. “Why? They can kill any other group who attempts it. They’ve got two chosen.”
And we’ve got one chosen and one high-level normie, I thought. “Okay,” I said, nodding. “Let’s assume they’re looking for a place to camp—maybe we can keep sight of them. There’s two vantage points we can see from at either end of this cave. If you’re right, they’ll probably scope out the mountain until it’s time to settle down, then pick a spot on the slopes. The only thing is—I have no idea what we can do once that happens. There’s something like 30 of them.”
“We’ve got plenty of things we can do,” said Cuby. “If they’re dumb enough to cluster their tents together, we can try to destroy their camp, somehow. If they spread them out, I think they can share areas and still charge their clocks. Plus, you might be able to call down the spirefiends like you did in the valley.”
“We might,” I said. “And the patriarchs have an area of effect—they can make good work of the camps. But Haroshi’s seen that trick before—they can intercept the spirefiends before they get there. And remember: last time we did this he was prepared for it and I got pulled out of the air on our second pass. And I can only guess that their anti-air capabilities have gotten better since last we saw them—even if I can set the illusion very high in the air, they might still have a way of finding and dispelling it.”
“It could still be worth a try,” Cuby said.
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re right.” Then I nodded to myself. “But we’ve got a lot of other options, I’m sure. I have plenty of spells, both known and in my inventory. And I can craft a few. There’s got to be something we can think of that’s not so obvious.”
“All right,” said Cuby. Then she stood. “I’m going to go watch them some more, see what they’re doing. You coming?”
I nodded, already opening my inventory to look at my cards. There had to be something, some way we could overcome the disadvantage.
Something….