As I feared, the journey down was tedious and time-consuming. Mostly because of the cooldown period between activations of my sword’s abilities. I was forced to idle around, waiting between invocations.
I’d hoped that the many consecutive uses of the abilities would’ve leveled them up, but no such luck. Apparently, the System didn’t consider hacking ice a useful experience. I couldn’t really blame it. I gained more in three minutes training with Philip than I gained in the three hours I’d been hacking away.
Even using the sword one-handed to favor my injured left shoulder, I still managed a decent pace, once I got the hang of things.
At least I had company, and Richard wasn’t the type to stay silent for very long. In any other situation, I would probably have grown tired of that pretty fast, but it came as a welcome distraction from the monotony of stair construction.
“And so, there’s this town east of London by the name of Hethel. Beautiful countryside. Went there with the family not one year ago. Emma just loved the change of pace. You’d think the mucky pup would lose some steam after running around all day, but nope! Kept badgering us to return to the fields so she could have her fun. Very rural out there. Nothing at all like London. You’d be forgiven for thinking there isn’t much to see, other than farmland, but would you happen to believe it’s the hometown of a very famous British Sports Car company? Ah, my apologies. I should probably explain what a car is, first…”
I couldn’t help but smile as Richard animatedly talked Aerion up. Aerion, for her part, listened with such rapt attention, you’d think she was listening to Dominion himself. The difference being she asked Richard questions one after another, whereas I doubted she’d be nearly as talkative in the presence of a deity.
As for me, I had mixed feelings about the fun facts about my old world. On one hand, it was nice, being reminded of Earth. Of modern Earth, in particular. From everything Richard had said, I put him around the seventies or eighties. Before computers changed our lives, but recent enough that I could relate to the pop culture of his time. It felt good on some primal level to have someone else in this world who got it.
On the other… I couldn’t help but think about what Richard had said about going back. Who was right? Passion? Or Order? Could we really return? Did we have to go back? Or would we have a choice?
One of them was lying. That much was clear. The question was—who? And more importantly, why?
Every one of those scenarios painted a wildly different circumstance. I’d personally made peace with the fact that I’d never return. That this was my new world, and that I’d better come to embrace it. Which I had… For the most part.
What about Richard, though? It was painfully obvious just how much his family mattered to him. More than his own life, if I had to guess. If Passion was indeed pulling the wool over his eyes… I didn’t even want to begin to imagine the meltdown he’d have when he learned the truth.
On the other hand, if Passion was right, and all Champions had to return… Where would that put me?
Stripped of my powers and my stats. A normie again. With no life, no jobs, and friends so distant they might as well be acquaintances. Would I even remember my time here? Would it be better if I didn’t?
As I hacked away at the ice cubes, half listening to Richard prattle on about the miracle of the internal combustion engine, I realized that the very idea of going back actually terrified me, and the fact that it did honestly came as a surprise. I’d barely been in this world a month, and I’d nearly died more times in that month than I would have in an entire lifetime back on Earth.
There was just one difference. I had a purpose here. I could be somebody in this world. That counted for a lot.
Of course, the best possible outcome was if we got to choose, but I was willing to bet that wasn’t in the cards. If it was, at least some Champions of prior cycles would’ve opted to settle here. If they did, it would’ve been recorded in the history books, and people would know about it.
It had never happened. Not even once.
Fuck.
Just thinking about it made my skin crawl. But seeing how I couldn’t do a damned thing to learn more about it, at least not until I met Cosmo again, I did what I usually do in these situations, and shoved the topic to a dark corner of my brain to focus on the task at hand.
I had stairs to dig, an ice field to cross…. And gear to Initialize.
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Initialize [Basecrest City Guard Boots]? 99% chance to successfully Initialize [Uncommon] armor. Essence Cost: 17. Current Utilization: 235/290
I confirmed.
Basecrest City Guard Boots [Uncommon]
Now we’re talking. Based Basecrest Boots. Does it get any better than this?
Essence Cost: 17
Condition: 150/150
Stats:
Passion: 17
Dominion: 9
Abilities: None
Well, that was a bit underwhelming. No ability, and two useless stats. Not that Dominion was useless, just that I had so much headroom right now that any more in that stat wouldn’t benefit me for a long while. Passion was… Well, let’s just say that at this stage in my Champion career, it wasn’t a priority.
With these boots, I was now at 252/290, or at 87% utilization. That was a comfortable spot, but I was left a little dejected with the result… So I decided to see how much my gauntlets would cost.
Initialize [Basecrest City Guard Gauntlets]? 99% chance to successfully Initialize [Uncommon] armor. Essence Cost: 17. Current Utilization: 252/290
The same. Fuck it, enchanting these would put me at 269. 21 points to Initialize something in an emergency. I was comfortable with that.
Basecrest City Guard Gauntlets [Uncommon]
A nice looking pair of sleeves. Useful, too!
Essence Cost: 17
Condition: 100/100
Stats:
Order: 26
Abilities:
— Snap [Foundation - 0]: You might not be able to snap and reset the world, but you can defy space and time! Snap your fingers, and your hands will move faster. You’ll look more badass, and your stress will reduce on account of said badassery. For a small time—no permanent world-altering changes here!
I wanted to scream out at the world. 26 points to Order? What about Vigor? Or Grace or Cunning? All of which I sorely needed. I glanced at my stat screen and gnashed my teeth.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Sum Current: 202 Sum Maximum: 341
— Vigor: 48 (Max: 49)
— Order: 12 (Max: 50)
— Wisdom: 27 (Max: 50)
— Passion: 20 (Max: 59)
— Grace: 27 (Max: 27)
— Cunning: 23 (Max: 23)
— Dominion: 45 (Max: 83)
My stats weren’t anything to scoff at, but I was currently on the path of my worst nightmare—the path of the all-rounder. Sure, it was possible to get really good at everything, if you managed to live long enough. But would I? In this world full of danger?
I needed only to look at Aerion’s specs to know that I was falling behind. Her earned total was only at 124, barely 60% of my total. Her Vigor sat at 33, with her ceiling now at 40 after she spent 7 points on it after her rank up. The remaining 3, she’d put into Dominion, bringing it to a max of 59, and was currently at 38.
And now, she had 120 points of Dominion to add to that, bringing her strength up to a staggering 158. That was absurd. I couldn’t even remotely match her in any of my skills.
No, something had to change, and soon. I chose this Blessing for its ability to craft curated, purpose-built sets of weapons and armor to excel at one thing. The idea being if I needed to be great at something else, I could just swap my gear, thus reconfiguring my stats in an instant. That was something Aerion couldn’t ever do.
I could only hope my next Rank-up brought me something useful. For now, I’d have to make do.
My eyes skimmed over the description, expecting to find another useless ability.
They stopped when they read over the ability. I had to reread it to be sure.
Acceleration? Now that I could get behind. It was a little weird that I had to snap to activate it, though, and more than a little inconvenient. Maybe I could snap with one hand while swinging with the other?
I tested it out, snapping my fingers. Sure enough, my hands received a small burst of acceleration after. It wasn’t much, probably not even enough to be visible, but then nothing was at F - 0. Unlike prior abilities I’d seen that made weapons swing faster, this was much more useful. It applied to bare gauntlets, swords, and anything else I decided to hold.
For my next ice block, I tried activating the ability mentally, fully expecting it to be a lost cause.
To my surprise, it actually worked. Which meant that description was pure horseshit.
I rolled my eyes. Typical Cosmo. Well, at the very least, this was one ability I’d never have trouble leveling.
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The rest of the few hundred feet took me about another eight hours of digging. I discovered early on that by only partially cutting the blocks, I could cut two stairs at once, and use the downtime to use my strength to break off the chunks I’d partially cut.
The stairs were rougher-looking, but aided by [Snap], I nearly doubled my pace. The ability leveled to F - 3 as well.
At last, we stood on the flat section of the U - shaped canyon. The ice underfoot had some texture to it, so while it was still ice, it was at least not the slippery sort of stuff you'd fall and break your wrist on.
With our lower vantage, the passage on the other side was no longer visible, but navigating would be easy—we just had to head for the other cliff face. Luckily, we wouldn’t have to scale that wall back up… Which would’ve been an absolute nightmare.
Richard’s storytelling petered out at some point, and we traveled in silence. Each lost in our own thoughts.
It was why I didn’t notice that something was off. Not until we were well into the middle of the field of ice.
But even when my spidey sense tingled, I couldn’t place what I felt. There were no monsters anywhere near us, and the huge expanse meant we could see for miles.
No, it wasn’t that… It was something else. Something more sinister.
And then it clicked. The only thing more terrifying than danger is the absence of it when it should clearly be there.
“Anyone else find it weird we haven’t encountered a single monster?” I said, breaking the oppressive silence that had settled on our party at some point.
“I was just thinking the same thing.”
“'Tis odd,” Aerion commented. “Perhaps other delvers have already defeated them?”
“I don’t know about that,” I said. “We might not be the first delvers in here, but I’d say we’re pretty darn close. And if that were true, wouldn’t we have seen the bodies?”
“Good point,” Aerion conceded.
“Well, I say we don’t look a gift horse in the mouth and carry right on,” Richard said. “I’ll not bemoan the fact that our foes seem to have slept in this day.”
“Right,” I replied, still not fully convinced. “Let’s just stay alert. I don’t want anything sneaking up on us, alright?”
“Right,” Aerion replied.
“Eyes and ears peeled,” Richard said.
I considered every possibility that whole time we walked across the ice. We were in a space where enemies couldn’t readily sneak up on us, but that also meant we were horribly exposed. Nowhere to hide, and nowhere to run, really. We had all the space, but none that would protect us from any monsters that sprung up… Sprung up?
My stomach dropped when I realized our one blind spot. “Keep an eye on the ground!” I shouted, half-panicking, though I couldn’t exactly say why.
“You see something?” Richard asked.
“No. Just… It’s the one place we have no visibility. If something pops up through the ice…”
“Relax, friend,” Richard said. “We’re on high alert. I say we get across this ice as quickly as we can. Then we’ll have nothing to worry about.”
“Yeah. Right,” I said, staring into the ice below our feet.
We continued in silence for another stretch with Aerion leading, Richard in the middle, with me bringing up the rear. It was right at about the halfway mark that someone spoke again.
“Say… I’ve been keeping an eye out since Greg mentioned it,” Aerion said. “And… Do any of you see anything in there?”
“In the ice?” I asked from behind.
“I see… Ice?” Richard said. “Deep and thick.”
“Maybe I’m just imagining it,” Aerion replied sheepishly, and kept walking.
I’d been paying attention to the ice ever since I realized it was a weakness, but I was mostly looking for anything moving under there. Anything that might hit us from below. Now that I looked closer…
There was something in there. Or somethings, rather. A whole lot of them.
“Er, Aerion? Are those shadows what you’re talking about?”
“Yes. They look like dark splotches in the ice, don’t they?”
“Yeah… I think I see them, too.”
“What do you think they are?” she asked.
“Can’t tell,” I said, straining to peer down into the depths beneath our feet. It helped that the ice glowed—it was the only reason we could see into it in the first place—but whatever was down there just looked like indistinct blobs.
“Well, so long as they’re not moving, I say we ignore them and get out of here as fast as we can,” Richard said. “This whole pole gives me the goose pimples.”
Aerion gave me a look, and I could almost hear her asking 'goose pimples?' I shook my head. Just Richard being Richard.
“I think you’re right,” I said, feeling an indistinct sense of fear come over me. I didn’t know what I was scared of, exactly. Only that this whole thing felt horribly wrong. “Let’s pick up the pace. I hope everyone’s up for a jog…”
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Every minute of that jog felt like an eternity. I imagined arms springing up from beneath the ice to catch our feet. I expected an undead army to appear, surrounding us with thousands upon thousands of enemies and pitting us in a battle to the death.
What actually happened, I could never have expected.
We made it. Without issue or drama. We’d arrived at the canyon wall on the other side.
There was just one problem. The passage—a narrow gorge that split the canyon wall like a very skinny V—was blocked.
“It’s a solid wall of ice,” Richard said, placing his hand upon it. “D’you reckon they—!?”
We all saw it at once. We all heard it at the same time.
Richard recoiled from the wall, nearly falling. “Good god…”
“By Dominion…” Aerion gasped.
“What the fuck…”
The wall of ice, almost ten feet thick, had a man buried inside.
A man who was still alive, and who was calling for help.