Hudson quickly pushed his wheelbarrow into the cave, making room for his friends behind him. He stopped his breathing technique, and thankfully the sledgehammer in his right hand began to dim slowly. It had charged up too much.
He had wanted to charge the sledgehammer while in the hangar as an implicit threat, but now that he was on the other side of the portal where George couldn’t see him, he didn’t dare drop the sledge, or set it down, for fear that it would release its energy and collapse the cave all around him.
While doing so would accomplish his primary objective of keeping George and his minions out of the rift mine, it would also leave them dead: a very undesirable outcome.
“Quickly! Grab the spears,” he said. “We want to keep the cheaters out of the rift. We can use the blunt ends to knock anyone else back through the portal as soon as they appear. I don’t want to use the sledgehammer on anyone other than George.”
The greatest danger was if George acted decisively, calling his bluff, and sent his minions directly in after them. They would have an immediate fight on their hands.
Hudson’s idea – he couldn’t quite call it a plan – was fairly simple: control access to the resources needed to run the trial, and ultimately they could control the trial itself. He was currently banking on the fact that the portal itself was only wide enough to drive a narrow wheelbarrow through, forming a choke point.
Control the choke point, control access to the maseki.
Cor was the last one through the portal; he dumped the contents of his wheelbarrow off to the side, but had not picked a spear up before the first member of George’s group charged through, heedless of the threat a fully charged sledgehammer blow from Hudson represented. They had indeed called his bluff, and called it right away by sending in Kenji Abe, the member of George’s team they had tangled with on the obstacle course challenge.
Vince was the quickest to react, swinging the butt-end of a spear sideways. He narrowly missed Cor’s back, but connected solidly with a surprised Kenji’s face. Blood spurted from his nose as he stumbled back through the portal.
Hudson looked at the dimming head of the sledgehammer and made a decision.
“That was fast… I wish we had more time, but I’m going to risk it. Back up! I’m going to use the hammer,” Hudson said. After the others backed up to the entrance of the cave, Hudson swung the shining head of the sledgehammer gently against the cave wall next to the portal.
He knew what he was doing was incredibly risky, but he did it anyway. He could bring down the cave around them, or worse yet, damage the portal itself and strand them on this world forever.
The wall cracked with a loud bang, and sharp bits of stone scattered across the enclosed space, causing small cuts and scrapes for all of them. The cave wall was crushed into loose stone within a 5ft circumference, but the cave – and portal – did not collapse.
Two seconds later, Kenji was back again, surging through the gate at speed. The team was out of position, and Kenji made it several steps into the cave, looking around him in confusion. He glanced at Hudson off to the side before turning to defend himself from spear thrusts from Cor, Vince, and Clara.
He knocked the blunt end of Cor’s spear away from his face, but Vince and Clara’s attacks both connected. Vince struck him in the stomach, but Clara had ignored Hudson’s suggestion and had actually stabbed him with the sharp end of her spear.
The point sunk into Kenji’s shoulder, and he pushed forward with a roar, ignoring the wound.
“Use the blunt ends!” Hudson screamed in frustration. The point was to knock them back, not poke them full of holes. Pushing them back through the portal worked better if their weapons would actually push, instead of pierce.
An entire wheelbarrow suddenly smashed into Kenji and knocked him back through the portal. Cor had picked it up and threw it at Kenji with a massive grunt. The front of the wheelbarrow landed halfway into the portal, halfway out. After a short delay – only half a second – a matte black wave phased over the wheelbarrow and disappeared, taking the wheelbarrow with it.
The sound of harsh breathing filled the dim cave. They all stared at the inky black portal, waiting for the next participant to come crashing through.
“They’re not done yet. They’re just regrouping,” Cor said. “The next push will be harder to repel. And how is this not against the rules?”
“It is. But the rules don’t really matter out here, outside of Ix’s direct control. We may not even be punished at all, but if we are, it will be worth it if we succeed.”
“Succeed at what?” Cor asked, puzzled.
“What I need to get working on right away. Cover me and prevent them from coming through the portal while I work.”
“Let them come in! We will fight them and win,” Clara boasted.
Hudson threw his sledgehammer to the side. He stuck his right hand inside his tunic, and fished out a critical tool: the silverine claw.
Without hesitation, he thrust the silverine claw into his right palm, nestling the sharp, chitinous appendage up against his open meridian. He started his breathing technique, keeping it at low to medium intensity. The silverine claw began to shine brilliantly in the small cave.
He started smashing the silverine claw into the cave wall, carving a path in the cave wall towards the rear of the portal. He ignored the jarring pain in his hand and the blood spattering on the stone in front of him. As he worked, he recalled the exact location and features of the metallic cube he had seen while waiting for the portal to open the last time he had been in this world.
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The urgency of the situation and Hudson’s disregard for his pain allowed him to make much faster progress than when he had dug a tunnel to free himself from the rubble. He was past the edge of the portal itself, very careful not to touch the inky blackness, when the next assault from the cheater group came.
A pickaxe, tips glowing with silvery light, hurtled out of the portal and struck the far wall of the cave, near the exit. A large boulder sheared off of the wall, collapsing to the floor with a crash. Fortunately no one was injured in the attack; Cor and Vince were standing off to the right side of the portal, and Clara to the left.
Kenji and another one of the cheaters – a woman with a spear – appeared out of the portal immediately after. Clara immediately engaged Kenji, who was wielding a wide, curved sword.
Her thrust was blocked to the side and down, and Kenji took a step forward, trying to get inside Clara’s guard. She jumped back quickly and thrust again, forcing Kenji to slash at the darting spear and lose the ground he had gained.
Clara skillfully jumped forwards and backwards, darting in and out of his range and keeping him on the defensive. Kenji was at a severe disadvantage, and it took all his efforts to keep from being gutted on the end of Clara’s spearpoint or forced back through the portal.
Cor and Vince were tag-teaming the woman with the spear – Hudson wasn’t sure of her name, but he thought it might be Eunbi. It was one of the three that had scored well on the dexterity challenge. It was clear she had enormous talent and skill with the spear, as she was able to push Cor and Vince backwards while also keeping Clara from fully overwhelming Kenji.
Cor went down with a grunt and a spear thrust to the leg. Vince screamed as he took a blow in the side. He threw the spear at Eunbi in desperation. She skillfully blocked the poor throw, parrying the spear to the ground and stepping on the quivering shaft to trap it.
Things were sliding completely out of control. Hudson backed out of the tunnel he was digging, and attacked Eunbi from the side. Her head snapped over to Hudson as she assessed the new threat.
After a split second of staying half in and and half out of the portal, an inky blackness spread up Vince’s lost spear; when it disappeared out from under her foot, Eunbi stumbled, suddenly off balance.
Hudson surged forward at that same moment with a simple side kick, connecting with her squarely. Eunbi blocked with the shaft of her spear, but shot backwards through the portal like a gunshot. Rather than face both Hudson and Clara, the wounded Kenji wisely retreated back through the portal to regroup.
Not wasting any time, Hudson turned and ran over to the flat boulder that the pickaxe had sheared off the side of the cave. Both Cor and Vince were conscious and breathing, and while he wanted to check that they were ok, he knew that he had a limited amount of time before even more of George’s group, or possibly even George himself came through the portal.
He quickly dragged the boulder over to the portal, and carefully levered it into position such that it was inches in front of the portal.
“Clara – make sure they don’t knock this boulder down, but also make sure that the boulder doesn’t fall into the portal either,” Hudson instructed.
“Worst…plan…ever,” Vince said through gritted teeth, his hand pressed hard against his side. The wound was bleeding out between his fingers, and he was having difficulty standing up.
“Yeah, that could have gone better,” Hudson admitted. “We need to get you back in the trial area.”
“I’ll go too,” Cor said, wrapping a makeshift bandage around the wound in his leg. He cinched it tight and sighed deeply. “What I wouldn’t give for my service weapon… or even a pistol. Something… Without a cultivation technique, I just can’t compete against these monsters.
“It’s not even been a day since I last got patched up. C’mon, Vince, I’ll ask if we can share a medical bunk. And maybe we can get a cute doctor instead of the creepy robot arms and crawly IV tubes.
Vince’s teeth were chattering as Hudson helped him stand up and walk over to the portal. “I didn’t run this time,” he said quietly, to himself.
“You got the crap beat out of you,” Cor said as he limped over to the portal. “Save your crowing for the creepy robot that’s gonna patch you up, Rooster.”
“I’m not a rooster,” he said weakly. Both of them reached out and touched the inky blackness of the portal, and in a brief split second, were pulled through. If an object or person was caught halfway through the portal, the director was pulling them back through to the other side rather than let them stay halfway in the portal in an in-between state.
Clara stood behind the boulder, braced against it for any attacks coming through from the other side. Hudson hurried back to digging his tunnel behind the portal.
“You are the leader, and I am not questioning your judgment,” Clara said. “But what are you doing?”
She was absolutely questioning his judgment.
“There is a metal box behind the portal,” Hudson began. “I’m digging my way to that box – carefully, of course, I don’t want to damage it. I’m almost there, you just need to keep them out for a little bit longer.”
“And then what?” Clara asked. There was a bang and a minor shock as something hard – or someone – struck the boulder.
“Then we can control the portal, I hope. That way we can control who comes in and out.”
“Preventing the other S.E.C.T. participants from gathering trial merits will certainly make them weaker,” Clara nodded approvingly.
“It’s not just that though. I still don’t understand why we have to go out to rift worlds and mine maseki with pickaxes and sledgehammers and fight silverines and each other… but it literally says in the information available about the trial that if the inventory level of maseki falls below a certain level that the trial will end in failure.
“Wait – you want to fail?” Clara asked.
“I don’t want to fail. I want the trial to fail – eventually. There is a difference. I want us to get stronger, all of the other participants to get stronger – by gaining trial merits and exchanging them for techniques or even better yet, maseki itself – and draining the resources of the trial.
“Then, when we’re all ready to leave, we simply run the maseki out, like it’s a timer.”
There was another loud thud, this time much louder. The boulder cracked ominously in the center. A final hit landed, cracking the boulder in two and launching Clara backwards.
Hudson was so close. He could see an inky tendril of blackness extending out from the metallic cube sunken into the cave wall before expanding out into the width of the portal; he could see his blows shake the box slightly, and the reverberations expanded to the surface of the portal as well. He only had inches of rock left before he could grab the metal box.
Clara scrambled to her feet, grabbing a spear off of the floor.
Two new members of the cheater group climbed over the pieces of the boulder into the cave. Clara jumped forward, attacking the one on the left. Her attack was brushed smoothly to the side and trapped under her opponent’s armpit. The man chopped the shaft of the spear quickly with an open hand, breaking it in half with his brute strength.
“Wait!” the other member called out, her voice sharp and commanding. “Do not attack us. We want to talk.”