23.

Santi sat with Tank as they watched Grimvr absolutely demolish the peak non-Acolyte team. Cameron, Chloe, Bianca, and Rayleigh were being tossed around by the dwarf like they were small children in an embarrassing show of utter ineffectiveness.

No one was using skills and everyone had crude armor that the dwarf had shaped for them to give them some protection. The four on one should have been an easy victory, but Grimvr’s actual skill was showing itself.

In a battle of stats and System skills, the dwarf would have died under a blaze of attacks. The four fighters had enough combat skills to cover their lack of technical skill that Santi felt confident in them overcoming a single or even two similarly leveled opponents. Without them, it was an ass-whooping.

Grimvr sidestepped an oversize downward chop from Chloe, hitting her lightly on the knee with his recently made maul. Her knee crumpled and she bit back a cry of pain as he followed it up with an elbow to the neck as she fell.

Rayleigh came on fast, not letting her friend’s fall slow the flurry of blows that caged Grimv in. The taller girl had reach and she used it to her full advantage. Grimvr charged in, taking a blow on his shield and speared her with the blunt top of his own maul.

Rayleigh bent in half and dry heaved, defenseless as Grimvr hooked her heel and tipped her to the ground. She landed in a clatter of training armor and sucking wind as she tried to regain her stolen breath.

Bianca and Cameron lasted a little longer. Without the System skills Cameron had built his fighting style around, he was crippled. Grimvr had made him a long rectangular shield to use, but he was horrible with it.

Santi winced as Cameron didn’t properly brace or try to divert the force of the strike he just intercepted. The thin sheet metal bent and Cam was sent staggering back, leaving Bianca open.

His sister’s reckless attack style worked when she had a dedicated [Defender] to protect her. Without Cam it was easy for Grimvr to simply dodge and close the distance, repeating the same move that had stopped Rayleigh.

The entire spar had taken less than two minutes and both Tank and Santi were wincing as their friends and family picked themselves off the ground and shook off the beating they’d just taken.

“Think Daniel would have tipped it to them?” Tank asked, sipping a bottle of water while eyeing all four of them for injuries.

“No. Daniel would have been even worse. He lacks the technical fighting skills and relies completely on his System granted abilities. Grimvr would have wrecked him.”

“Dwarf can fight, that’s for sure. Can you beat him?”

“Probably not. I can kill him, but I can’t beat him. I’m a mage, not a frontline fighter. I’m good enough to defend myself, but I can’t fight a dedicated trained fighter like him.”

“And there’s more like him in the rift?” There was an edge of uncertainty and fear in Tank’s voice. He had just watched one emaciated and exhausted dwarf batter four of their best fighters around. Santi could only imagine that he was thinking of a group of them could do.

“Just a handful and only one of them should be evolved. With skills I could handle the entire group. It is a concern though. Just means more training and practice.” Santi slapped Tank’s arm and got up to walk over to the group laying about.

“So, are you going to listen to me now when I say you need to train more?” Santi said as he leaned over his sister. She couldn’t formulate a response as she was still trying to suck in a breath. She flipped him off, which Santi took as a sign of affirmation.

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“Thank you Grimvr. I know how tired you are and weak. I needed them to see the difference in System skill and combat skills from someone of equal level.”

“I needed the exercise. It’s good to get the blood flowing and your healer has helped me much. The food is delicious here too! Much better than what we had on the colony,” Grimvr said as he set down his training equipment and accepted a bottle of water from Tank.

“Colony? Would you be willing to tell us about that? Is that where the cyclops captured you?” Tank asked.

“It’s a small moon we found. Decent deposits of ore and it was within our ability to live there. No crazy monsters or beasts and only a dungeon or two. The clan sent us out to blood us, give us experience living outside of the protection of the elders.” Grimvr took another swig of water and took a regular granola bar and a jar of peanut butter that was sitting nearby and started to slather the granola with peanut butter.

“We were only there for a few weeks when the rift showed up. Latched on just a few miles from us. We didn’t even know they were there before we got raided. Took forty of us and retreated back to their rift and then shuffled off again.”

“Rifts can leave?” Tank asked. Santi had known it was a possibility, but had never heard of it actually happening. Every rift he had encountered has sat on their planet like a tick, growing so fat with blood until they popped or evolved.

“If there’s a significantly powerful enough monster in it that has enough intelligence, then yes. Most are just dumb monsters, but these cyclops have something in the center by their rift heart. We think it was a spell something else designed and they just figured out how to activate it.”

“How long have you been their captive?” Cam asked from the ground. He was staring up at the sky with his fingers threaded behind his head. He seemed to care the least about the loss.

“Time is different in a rift. It moves strangely. Faster or slower. But, it’s been years.”

“Fuck. That’s rough.” Understatement of the year from Cameron.

“The wider universe is cruel. It is a shame that your planet is experiencing an integration.”

“What is the integration?” Chloe asked.

“The System is old. Lots of histories have been pieced together. Fallen worlds and societies have been found and their records all have mentions of the System. There are scholars who search for its origins, but for most, it’s simply a part of our life.”

“Ok, but what does it do?”

“Expands. Brings more worlds and realms into its web. More people and creatures. It generates monsters, or at least facilitates their generation. The highest tiers of people can interact with it. Or at least that’s the rumors, none of our clan know for sure.”

“Everyone just goes along with it? Not knowing what’s driving and controlling the universe?” Bianca sounded affronted by the thought. Chloe and Rayleigh nodded in agreement while Cameron continued to stare at the sky.

“Most just live their lives. Find their profession and just live their life. After a time and enough generations those who were integrated are adapted.” Grimvr waggled his newly shaped beard in a way that Santi recognized as the dwarven equivalent of a shrug.

“SANTI!” Yesi yelled from the front of the house. It wasn’t the cry of alarm or pain, but that of an irritating sibling.

“WHAT?!” He screamed back.

Yesi came marching out of the house with her arms filled with papers and pencils. Bags were forming under her eyes but she had a wide smile as she came up to them, spilling a pile of notebooks on Cam’s prone form.

“Daniel’s evolution went well last night, thanks for asking. Oh, and where have you been?!? I have Mom and Dad asking constantly and then there’s all the other people, who I don’t know who they are, all of them at the house asking to speak to you! You said you had a plan to deal with the rift, but you haven’t done anything since then!” Yesi was upset, her words a veritable flood and Santi felt a brief pang of guilt.

There had been so many people coming to him and asking him how he was going to fix their problem he had decided to relocate to the girls house across the street. Getting Grimvr out of everyone’s eyesight and towards a group of crafters had been quite handy.

The metal shaping dwarf had been buried under requests for armors, shields, and a half thousand other things. Grimvr had done it all without complaint, smiling and nodding and talking to everyone while he constantly snacked on any food put in front of him.

“I’m assuming all of that paper is your drawn up plans I asked for last night?”

“Yes! Thanks for the help too.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I was being sarcastic, you ass. Do you want to sit down and go over this or do you trust me?”

“I trust you, but we’re still going over this.”