Chapter 4: Going Down.

The three Rippers died without issue.

My movements were stiff and mechanical. My body turning and lunging like some puppet. Dancing every time someone else pulled y strings.

It made me angry.

Resentful

Afraid.

Yes, that was it.

Out of all my emotions, it was the fear that won out time and time again.

Fear of the dark and of the things hiding within it.

Fear of my captors and their superhuman prowess.

Fear of the future Coach Homer had predicted.

Uncle Uter had said the town didn't have that many people.

How were we supposed to stop an incoming apocalypse?

Even if the town doubled or tripled in size, it wouldn't mean much on a global scale.

Not to mention the fact that information would leak eventually.

How would these guys react if government spooks showed up to take them to secret labs?

Did they have an in with the Canadian government?

Some kind of mole or political backer?

The more questions I asked the dizzier I became.

That dizziness led to mistakes.

A wrong step here, a near miss there.

Nothing major so far, but still more than enough to put me on edge.

"Hey Cecil. You might want to slow down and catch your breath." Drew told me. In a tone that carried the slightest hint of worry.

"Yeah man. You don't look so good." Marco agreed.

'I'd like to see how you two would look if you were suddenly kidnapped and held against your will.' I thought bitterly.

Thankfully, I still had enough common sense to keep my words polite.

"Thank you. How long am I allowed to rest?"

"Uh, until you're ready to keep going?" Drew answered. "Coach, we don't have a deadline, right?"

"No. Today we dive as deep as we can and then we do some coordinated exercises once we're there. The aim is to familiarize Cecil with the ins and outs of your cores and your skills. As well as to get him used to the dungeon's first few floors. Like you said, its not a sprint. Its a marathon."

He was nodding solemnly at his own words. Almost as if they contained some great wisdom.

"He can rest for five minutes. Then we keep going."

"Five minutes?" I said, despite myself. "We've been marching for hours!"

Marco laughed.

"Man, we've only been down here for half an hour. It seems like more because you've been killing Rippers non-stop." Ramji explained.

"Yeah, this is nothing. You should see the pace we normally go at. This whole part takes two to three minutes tops. We usually don't even stop running to fight the Rippers. Up here they're weak enough that we poke them and move on."

I looked around for confirmation. Hoping against hope that it was some sick joke.

No one was laughing.

"Five minutes." Coach Homer repeated. "Use the time to explain your cores and what to expect from them. You don't have to explain your skills if you don't want to, since the tournament is so close."

"Right on coach." Marco sat down on one of the steps, bidding me closer.

I winced, feeling a powerful soreness in my limbs, but sat down anyway.

"My core is [Giant]. Its a fourth stage core that lets me use skills from four other basic cores. [Strength], [Constitution], [Sturdy] and [Grow]. You can expect me to take big hits and hit back harder. You probably got the whole growing into a giant thing from the core's name. I can do that, but I can also make other things grow. Here, watch."

He picked up a pebble and balanced it on his fingers. Then he whipped his hand back and threw it down the descending stairs. The small pebble grew into a boulder after he'd thrown it.

Landing with a resounding BOOOM!

"It'll get smaller again in a few minutes."

"Marco, that'll be two day's detention for property damage."

Marco looked back at the coach, opened his mouth and closed it again.

"Yeah, I kind of had it coming. Sorry coach."

"Right." Ramji said, sitting to my left. "My power is that I'm super charismatic. Everybody trusts everything I say and everybody thinks I'm super handsome."

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Three days detention for lying to your teammate."

"What! Eh! I'm not lying!"

"Two more days for lying to me."

"Eh! That's not fair!"

Drew was on her knees. Cackling maniacally in the corner and doing her best not to fall.

"You so had that coming."

"No I didn't!"

Coach Homer gave him a pointed look.

"Okay, so maybe I simplified things a little. Big deal. Its more or less true."

"Exact name of the core and exact description found on the library's records. Now."

"Jeez! Fine. I get it."

He turned to face me.

"My core is [Dominion]. And it does do what I said, Sort of. Kind of. Against certain monsters and people. Some of the time. Its a 4th stage core. I can use skills from the [Fear], [Charm], [Tame] and [Boost] cores. Think of me as a buffing specialist, with a little bit of monster wrangling sprinkled in. The monsters have to be weaker than me though. Or it has to be only one at a time. Or they have to be close to dying anyway. Or seriously messed up."

"Drew, your turn."

"Right on coach. My core is [Festivity]. First of all, no. I didn't name it. The people who name these things like their fancy words. I would have gone for something simpler, like [Party]. Which is more or less what it does anyway. Its a 5th stage core. I can use skills from the [Wine], [Honey], [Frenzy], [Boost] and [Dexterity] cores. To put it bluntly, I can make monsters drunk. Like, seriously bad brain damage drunk. They also fight each other instead of me and don't really feel pain when they do that. Oh, and the effects last a long time. Like, I can run away and let them finish each other off most of the time. I can also use it to buff people, but they don't usually like the aftereffects."

"And there you have it." Coach Homer finished. "They'll show you what they can do in a few minutes. After we run into a proper pack of Rippers."

I gulped.

Following after them in sullen silence.

We kept going down.

Moving down the stairs with a steady tempo.

Marco and Drew would occasionally jump in front. Throwing their bodies down a dozen steps at a time.

A normal person would have destroyed their kneecaps.

Those two hardly seemed to feel it.

They laughed at my reaction and did it again.

Flinging themselves twenty steps instead of the previous dozen.

Then they followed that up by doing forty.

"Its a game we play sometimes. Helps to keep you occupied when you're going down." Ramji explained.

"Don't the monsters keep you occupied?"

"Nah. Up here the mana's too thin for anything dangerous to live. The few Rippers that you do see are all small and stunted. They can't grow properly and they can't move as well as ones you find on the first floor. You'll know what I mean when we reach it."

It took us another ten minutes to reach the bottom of the stairs.

There, we found another set of double doors, though these ones were wide open. Behind them was a forest of stone trees.

Blackened trunks reached upwards. Growing out of shiny obsidian roots.

The ceiling was filled with shining crystals. White and yellow gemstones that lit up the massive chamber so that it had the illumination of a field at twilight.

"Rippers up ahead. Two dozen. Ghouls too. Four of them coming from the side." Marco observed.

Coach Homer nodded.

"Drew. Ramji. Use your skills. Disable the whole crowd and let Cecil pick them off. Marco, don't interfere. I'll step in if it looks dangerous."

"Sure thing Coach."

I gripped the spear. Tightening my fingers around the shaft.

My hands were so sweaty that the smooth steel pole was growing moist.

The realization only served to make me more paranoid.

'What if I drop the spear? What if gets stuck in one of the Rippers? Can the armor take a hit from them?'

I sure didn't think so.

It looked like a lamb's wool and felt like it too.

Not the most comforting thought with wolves as big as cars running around.

Sure, it was better than nothing, but I'd much prefer a couple of thick metal plates between me and whatever was out there.

No sooner had the notion surfaced within me, that the situation changed.

A deep, sonorous howl cut through the empty air. Followed quickly by another and another and another.

They penetrated me like arrows. Shaking my very bones as they passed.

Literally.

The sound was supernatural in nature. It had to be.

I felt colder. Heavier. Clumsier.

Even the mere act of breathing became a chore.

My brain having to tell my lungs to work as they should and my lungs then acting on a slight delay.

The woods darkened as well, and it took a few seconds for me to realize that it was because my eyes were closing against my will.

I bit my lip.

Hard enough to draw blood and forced my eyes wide open.

Staring into the unflinching shadows like a madman.

'I will not die today.' I told myself. 'I refuse to die this day. I'm going to live. I'm going to go back to my uncle and my aunt and my cousin. I'm going to see them again.'

The beasts came closer.

Stepping into the light.

Their outlines shimmering slightly, just as the crystalline roots had.

One moved to the right, while another moved to our left. Moving to flank me whilst three more stepped up behind them.

Drew chuckled.

"Nice going Cecil! I dropped my spear the first time around."

"That's cause you're a scaredy cat." Ramji butt in. "Not like me. I was the best from the beginning."

"Shut up man. No you weren't."

"I so was. Ask anybody around here. I was..."

The Ripper on the right leapt. The Ripper on the left did as well.

I jumped backwards on instinct.

Bringing up my spear to catch the first in the throat.

I went down alongside it. Tumbling into the soil beneath.

The impact rattled my bones and squeezed all the air out of my lungs.

Making it so that it came out in a surprised gasp.

My vision was blurry and my hearing couldn't quite pick up what was happening around me.

I tried to push it away, struggling against the weight.

It was so heavy that breathing had become a chore. I pushed and pushed, only to feel the black fur pressing down harder.

'Too heavy! Holy cow what is thing made of!?'

I became more panicked with every passing second. All too aware that there were many more predators lurking nearby.

Images of claws and fangs engraved themselves in my brain and I could have sworn that they came within a hair's breath while I lay there helplessly.

But nothing actually touched me.

Instead, I heard thudding noises. A lot of them in quick succession.

"Hey coach, he looks like he's struggling. Should we help him up?"

"No. He needs to do this by himself. Keep the Rippers and the ghouls busy, but don't kill any of them."

"Roger that coach." Drew answered, in a voice much too chipper for this kind of setting.

The next time I heard the coach, he was leaning down. His muscular frame just out of sight.

"You've done very well Cecil. No one here could guess that this was your first time. Don't be discouraged."

Easy for him to say!

He could probably punt this thing into the moon if he wanted to!

"I know this is a lot. And I know it doesn't seem fair. However, you can do this if you try. Take a deep breath and hold it for a few seconds. Then push as you're releasing the breath."

I did as he instructed.

Pushing once more with all the strength I had left in me.

The warm body moved an inch. Making me believe that it might just be possible for me to throw it off of me.

Then it came right back down as my arms gave way.

A pained grunt was all the noise I could make as my chest began to flatten against the monstrosity.

"Hey coach? I think his leg is bleeding."

Coach Homer cursed, kicking aside the Ripper with an ease that left me too stunned for words.

I glanced down at myself. At my leg.

That's when I realized two very important facts.

The first was that I couldn't feel anything below my waist. The second, was that my bones were sticking out through my skin.

I started hyperventilating. Wheezing rapidly as that chill the howls had left in me became more pronounced.

"Drew, knock him out."

I looked up in terror. Dreading what those words might mean for my continued survival.

I opened my mouth.

But the words would not come out.

The world grew darker still and my eyes closed.