With Tobias acting as a decoy and leading the lurking thieves in practically the opposite direction she was traveling, Samantha had effectively gained a 10-hour lead and She was going to make the most of it.
Traversing the 300 miles to reach cache C in less than a week was no easy feat–even with her superhuman attributes. The 300 miles in question were ‘as the bird flies’, and did not account for terrain. Additionally, while having 34 Agility meant she could theoretically sprint at ridiculous speeds of over 100 miles per hour, things like air resistance and traction made such feats unlikely or impractical. [Swift] could mitigate some of that, but wouldn’t change the fact that she’d be completely exhausted by the pace after a couple of minutes and would be forced to rest. Realistically, she could maintain a running speed of about 50 miles per hour if the terrain was easy, but this would drop to as low as 10-15 miles per hour if her surroundings were heavily wooded or otherwise difficult to navigate.
If she assumed that the earlier pick up opportunity was only five or six days away then she guessed she’d need to average 8-10 hours of uninterrupted daily travel to make it to the stash in time. Even though she’d need to avoid gathering attention while she moved, take special care to make hidden camps along the way, and periodically check if she was being followed, it should be doable. Silas was also able to help shoulder the burden for most of these concerns.
With his evolution to Soaring Lunar Wolpertinger, Silas was more specialized for flying and scouting than ever before. His altered physique and enhanced aptitude for Endurance allowed him to fly longer without getting fatigued, and with 19 Endurance he could use [Translucence] for about an hour and a half at a time. His new passive ability [Silent Flight] was true to its name and hid all tell-tale sounds of his movements even if he flew closer to the ground, and apparently his [Prey’s Awareness] had also gotten a subtle upgrade that allowed him to see things better from further away. All these things meant that he was able to warn her of potential issues long before she could see them from the ground, and she would have ample time to address them.
The first day of travel was uneventful, and Samantha’s sole focus was putting as many miles behind her as she could. She’d left the warehouse by way of a nearby forest instead of taking the roads, and had hiked for a solid 14 hours with minimal breaks. She was more tired than she’d expected and uncertain of exactly how much distance she’d covered, but she was confident she’d at least surpassed her daily goal.
She set down her heavy pack with a groan of relief and unsuccessfully tried to rub the soreness out of her shoulders. She’d get camp ready, activate Tobias’s construct to guard over her and Silas while they got some rest, then head out again once she woke up.
“Come on down, Silas.” she sent to her companion, “You’ve done a great job and it’s time to relax.”
She could feel Silas’s immense relief at the opportunity for a break, but he was too tired to respond directly.
He had ‘rested’ on her pack every hour and a half while he waited for the cooldown of [Translucence] to elapse, but still had to hold on to the bouncing tower of covered crates with his claws while she hiked. It was hardly relaxing for him, but being able to fly freely kept him in high spirits even as his energy waned.
A slight displacement of wind on her cheek and a quiet thud on the dirt beside her informed her of Silas’s eventual arrival. She’d been too distracted by her other tasks to keep track of his qi signature, so she was slightly startled by the sound and flinched.
“It’s just me.” Silas yawned, dragging himself over to her and laying down on her bedroll.
Samantha placed a bowl of chopped fruits, vegetables, and herbs beside him and continued cooking her own dinner. Too lazy to sit up, Silas comically reached a paw up and stabbed a talon into a piece of sliced fruit, then brought it to his mouth to eat. He repeated this process until the entire bowl was emptied, then waited patiently for some of the meat she was cooking. Once she filled the bowl with cubed steak, he quickly devoured that as well.
“Flying sure is hard work, huh?” she teased, but received no reply. It appeared he’d already fallen asleep.
Putting out the small cooking fire and cleaning everything up, she opted to do one final check around the area to make sure the small amount of smoke and scent hadn’t drawn attention. She’d refilled Tobias’s qi reserve during her hike, so she summoned him to watch over her body while she used [Spectral Projection].
As soon as his form manifested he turned to her with some excitement, “So? Did the plan work?”
She smiled, “It sure did! I’m pretty sure they have no clue where I am right now. Did you learn anything that could help?”
Tobias nodded happily, “I couldn’t get a good look at them because I didn’t want to tip them off that I’d spotted them, but I could tell they had some sort of art or enchantment which helped them hide. The few glimpses I did catch reminded me of your and Silas’s stealth ability. They weren’t quite invisible, but hidden enough to be easily overlooked. In addition, the road was much too quiet to not hear my pursuit. Even if they were following me from a fair distance I should’ve been able to hear something, yet I didn’t. If you hadn’t told me I was going to be followed beforehand, I would’ve been blissfully unaware.”
“Those are some expensive enchantments.” She commented thoughtfully, “They must be well-financed.”
“That’s what I was thinking.” Tobias agreed, “It’s certainly not common gear for the average highwayman.”
Maybe they killed the first courier because they didn’t have these enchantments yet and had been spotted? Then, the second courier got to live because the stolen shipment funded their stealth equipment. To try for a third time though and risk the wrath of both the guild and the army…? Is this delivery really so valuable, or is there another motivation?
“It’s something to think about, but perhaps after I’ve rested and have a clearer mind. Would you keep watch and wake me up when your qi reserves start to get low?”
Tobias stood and bowed his head respectfully, “Of course. Rest easy.”
Samantha laid down on the bedroll while Tobias took up a guard position nearby, then activated [Spectral Projection].
She’d planned to quickly circle the vicinity and go straight to sleep, but what she saw not more than 10 feet away from her changed everything. A thin, erudite looking man was in a seated position floating in mid-air. His attention was focused on a blank space in front of him, which he appeared to be writing on with an invisible pen.
Unaware of her attention on him, he mumbled quietly to himself as he wrote, “--adjust your course 13 degrees east and continue for…” The words trailed off as his eyes darted up and he caught sight of her.
They stared at each other for one long, uncomfortable moment. Neither spoke or moved. Eventually, he broke the silence.
“Oh. How unfortunate.”
In a blink he had snapped forward and grabbed ahold of her. Instinctively she tried to pull away, but she was shocked when she was unable to escape his grasp. She tried to kick and punch the enemy projection next, but her blows harmlessly bounced off him. She even tried to cancel [Spectral Projection] and return to her body by force, but despite feeling the familiar ‘tug’ on the gossamer thin thread that connected her projection to her body, she remained where she was. Then, an ominous message appeared.
You cannot return to your body while your spirit is anchored!
What?
The man laughed, “First time meeting another projectionist?”
Samantha’s mind kicked into overdrive as the panic began to set in. She had no idea what to do and was completely out of her depth. Thinking of all the arts that she could possibly use in spectral form she tried to come up with an escape plan. She didn’t see how [Inspect] or [Flawless Healing Touch] would help her in this situation, so she started with [Telekinesis] because she knew for a fact that it worked while projecting. Empowering her fist with 10 qi, she tried hitting him and pushing against him once more. When that was ineffective, she invested another 20 qi to see if it was genuinely not helping, or if she just wasn’t exerting enough force with it to make a difference.
He just laughed harder, “This is… sad. You almost have me feeling bad for you.”
Discarding [Telekinesis] as a viable option, she tried to put a 20 point [Geas] on him to ‘Release your grip’ in the hopes that he would decline it and she could engage him in a battle of wills. She wasn’t even certain that this would work since she’d never tried to activate [Geas] while projecting before, but she was willing to try anything at her disposal.
A new qi thread stretched out from her physical body and latched onto his spiritual form as the command settled into place, but his reaction wasn’t what she’d hoped for. He gave her a skeptical look, “Nice try, but I’m not falling for that. Also, you’ll be dead long before I’m forced to deal with the geas automatically declining.”
Her sense of urgency kicked up a notch at that. Was he going to try and kill her somehow in this form? She hadn’t known that was even possible, and she was worried if her rebirth core could deal with a projection ‘death’–whatever that involved. However, maybe this wasn’t the case. His mumbled words earlier continued circulating through her mind. Was he somehow reporting their current location to his peers? If so, how long did they have until they arrived? Perhaps he only intended to hold her captive until reinforcements could execute her prone form. She needed to warn the others.
“Silas!” she cried out mentally.
Her bonded practically leapt up from his sleeping position, his fur puffed outward and his lips drawn back in a snarl. There was no trace of exhaustion in his eyes as he snapped his head from side to side, looking for the danger that her desperate tone implied. Tobias also jolted to attention seeing Silas’s reaction, and he started scanning the forest for whatever had awoken the spirit beast. As he did, he rushed over to her body and vigorously shook it, trying to bring her back to consciousness to face whatever unseen threat was nearby. However, her physical form remained comatose no matter what he tried.
While she could communicate with Silas with thoughts alone, she didn’t share that capability with Tobias even though they now shared a binding thread. She needed to somehow get him verbal instructions. Then, she remembered that the second rank of [Spectral Projection] just so happened to have something that might work. For the very first time, she invested qi into the bond ability with the intent to manifest a weak physical form for herself.
As the qi infused her projection, she took a half-step across the threshold between the spiritual and physical. She felt the stranger’s grip weaken on her as she became something more, but before she could capitalize on the change he followed suit. His physical form, however, gripped her even more tightly than his spiritual one had. Unlike her ghostly-appearance, he almost looked fully human–though there was still a sort of ethereal fuzziness to his outline.
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Unquestioningly and instantaneously, Tobias and Silas launched attacks at the now-exposed enemy. With a jerk sideways he dodged, bringing her along with him. Instead of stopping, he started pulling her further and further away from the camp. She struggled against his ironclad grip, but knew that he greatly outmatched her. Before he could drag her too far away, she screamed her intended warning.
“Run! They’re coming!”
The man moved her with such speed that she didn’t even know if Tobias had heard her. She hoped that the visual had been enough to let Tobias know they needed to move camp, at least.
“Silas, I can’t return to my body. You need to get Tobias to take me and the shipment as far as he can in a random direction. I didn’t see any other projections spying on us, so I’m hoping you can remain hidden until I can escape and help you both.”
“Don’t worry! I’ll save you.” he answered with determination, and she could feel through their binding thread that he was flying after the both of them at his top speed. Even so, they were outpacing him by a large margin.
“No, we’re too fast in this form. You'll be wasting your time.” she said, “Please, guide Tobias somewhere safe and hide! I don’t know how many are coming or when they’ll arrive.”
His frustration was almost palpable, but eventually he acquiesced, “Fine. You can rely on me. I’ll be waiting for you, so don’t take too long.”
She could feel his qi signature start to get much further away and turned her attention back to the issue at hand. The projectionist had switched directions and hoisted her upwards until both of them stood atop a layer of thick, misty clouds. When she had left the warehouse it had been just before sunrise. Now, with sunset hours past, the full moon shone down through the watery wisps and created waves of shadow and silver as far as the eye could see. The sight would have been beautiful were she not so afraid.
She tried turning back to a purely spiritual state in hopes that the man would lose his grip on her again, but he mimicked her to negate any advantage she temporarily gained. When she manifested a physical form once more it was the same. He didn’t give her enough time to capitalize on the opening.
She glared at him, wracking her brain for something she hadn’t tried yet. Most of her combat arts worked by augmenting her muscles or her body, so she didn’t think they would work while projecting. But, it didn’t hurt to try, and maybe by some miracle her manifested body could do something that her spectral one couldn’t.
She tried [Flurry] first but the art refused to coalesce within her. It was the same with [Swift], [Indomitable Body], and [High Speed Strike] as well. [Cloud Step] did work, but didn’t help her to escape. If she moved with it, it just pulled him with her, and he was strong enough to make even small amounts of progress strenuous and slow. It did anchor her in place though–which she realized with some annoyance she could’ve used earlier when he was dragging her away from camp.
The man smirked and shook his head mockingly as she struggled, “I admire your determination, but it’s obvious you lack both knowledge and experience. Projection isn’t like physical training–you’re not going to be able to brute force your way through this. Why not relax and enjoy what time you have left instead? I’m not such terrible company to have, you know.”
She completely ignored him and tried the last art at her disposal, internally expecting yet another failure. She coated her fist with a layer of energy using [Piercing Strike] and punched him square in the face. When he had initially been holding onto her, he’d been grabbing her upper arms such that it was difficult to move them. As he gained confidence in her lack of ability to harm him, he changed his priority to preventing her escape and not necessarily restricting her movement. This resulted in her qi-reinforced fist smashing straight through his head without him even bothering to dodge.
She watched with mild horror as the center mass of his face was displaced out of the back of his head and dissipated into the air behind him. His body flinched but didn’t let go of her, and then her arm was promptly forced backwards through the hole she’d made as his face was reformed. He scrunched his nose slightly as if he had an itch on his face, and he gave her a look of irritation mixed with disappointment.
He sighed, “Look, I don’t really want to fight you. That’s not my job. Can you just–”
Samantha punched a hole in his face again with another [Piercing Strike] before trying to sever his arms with more qi-coated blows. She’d almost managed to break off his right arm, but he recovered much faster than she could attack. In the next instant she was confronted with the highly disturbing sight of his fingers sinking into the flesh of her left wrist before tearing off her hand. She watched stunned as he seemed to absorb her hand into his body, which repaired some of the damage she’d just done to him.
On instinct, she pulled a small amount of qi from the thread connecting her to her body and her hand started to reform on its own. Before that was finished, he reached out again and ripped off a piece of her shoulder to absorb. All the while, he continued to hold onto her with an unrelenting grip.
Finally given a means to possibly escape, Samantha went all-out on trying to obliterate the man’s projection. She prioritized trying to get rid of the arm holding her, but whenever one got too damaged he’d simply switch his grip to the other. She tried punching him full of holes, grabbing pieces of him and absorbing them as he was doing, switching back and forth between spiritual and physical forms, and even occasionally trying to [Cloud Step] away when she’d thought she’d weakened him, but the man was stubbornly unphased.
Something felt… off.
He seemed to be using the minimal amount of effort to deflect her blows, and only occasionally attacked her to absorb some of her energy when that didn’t work. He also always seemed to come away with larger chunks of her than she did of him. This form of combat–as unsettling as it was–left both parties seemingly uninjured. Having pieces torn from her only caused mental distress, not pain. Even so, she knew that she was losing. Badly.
She checked her qi pool and was surprised to find that she’d already used more than half of it. She didn’t know what would happen if she ran out of qi and the art was unable to pull her spirit back into her body… but she didn’t want to find out. Changing her approach, she started mirroring his way of fighting. She only struck when he left an opening, and by focusing [Piercing Strike] on her fingers instead of her fist she was able to steal larger pieces of him than before. When she was able to absorb more energy from him than she needed to spend to repair her form, she discovered that it replenished her qi pool slightly.
She prioritized deflecting his blows, and as her panic settled she noticed that qi was slowly draining out of her where he gripped her arm. By layering that area with energy from [Piercing Strike] she could completely stop the drain, or if she envisioned him as an oddly shaped spirit-pearl, she could drain from him in turn. However, the practice of absorbing qi from him directly was mentally taxing and she wasn’t skilled enough to do this and fight effectively at the same time as he did.
His easy confidence faltered as she adapted to this new, unfamiliar fighting style and he started to treat her more seriously. His strikes came more frequently and with more intensity as their battle of attrition dragged on. As her qi pool dipped lower and lower, he attacked with a feverish pace that bordered on desperation. She could only conclude that he, too, was running out of qi. The only question now was who would bottom out first.
As her qi pool reached single digits and a victorious smile stretched across the man’s face the answer made itself clear. With a final swipe, he carved out the space where her heart would have been and her qi reserves hit 0.
Rather than take the time to absorb the energy, he latched onto her tightly with both hands once more. She felt the thin thread leading back to her body grow taut as the bond ability sought to pull her spirit back into its rightful place.
You cannot return to your body while your spirit is anchored!
The thread groaned and shook with effort as it did its best to reunite her disparate parts. She could sense it would break at any moment.
“Silas, I’m sorry.”
“What do y-”
The line snapped and Silas’s voice was abruptly silenced. She could no longer sense her body at all, nor the binding threads that tied her to Silas and Tobias. For the first time in a long time, she was well and truly alone.
“Phew… that was really close. You almost got me!” the stranger said with a nervous laugh. “You put up a good fight in the end. Sorry it had to end this way. Better luck next life, eh?”
Samantha stared at him, unsure of how to respond. She hadn’t received a notification yet that she’d died, but she felt deep in her metaphorical bones that something was very, very wrong.
“You look a bit lost.” he commented, “Honestly, I’m not sure why I haven’t let you dissipate yet. Maybe I feel bad because you’re so new…”
“Let me… dissipate?”
“Your soul thread snapped. You’re disembodied.” he said simply, as if that answered her question, “Long story short, the only reason you haven’t returned to the wheel of reincarnation yet is because I’m still acting as your anchor. Once I let go, that’s it.”
Samantha suddenly wanted nothing more than for him to keep holding onto her, rather than release her. She gripped onto his arm with both hands as if her life depended on it–because apparently it did.
“Now, now.” he chided, “There’s no point in fighting anymore. You have no qi to draw on to fuel your arts, and since you’re disconnected from your cultivation base you can’t pull directly from me like before.”
“You’re lying.” the words came out unbidden. Defiant. Things couldn’t end just like that.
She tried to absorb his energy from where she held onto him, but true to his word, nothing happened.
“All things considered, this is probably one of the most peaceful deaths you could’ve had. Painless, and I’ve let you linger instead of immediately casting you into the wheel. Did you have any last words you’d like me to pass on for you? Requests?”
She couldn’t tell if he was making fun of her or not, but she didn’t care either way. She wasn’t planning on just taking his word for it and giving up.
She tried to activate [Piercing Strike] and was rewarded with intense pain in her feet–as if she were standing in fire. She looked down and saw her feet disappearing, but energy coated her fingers as she’d intended. The man hadn’t noticed what she’d done and was still droning on about reincarnation and last rites, so she reached out and took the largest piece of him that she’d managed thus far. She hungrily absorbed the essence and was glad to see her feet reform and the hole in her chest fully close.
“Agh!” he yelped.
Samantha tumbled through the air end over end as the man had forcefully pushed her off of him. She’d been holding on as tightly as she could, but he had overpowered her. A scream of despair ripped itself out of her throat as she prepared for the inevitable… but nothing happened. Righting herself, she faced off against him again. This time, he was the one who looked genuinely afraid.
“You… you’ve forgone the wheel? Why? For vengeance?” he questioned, his voice trembling, “To willingly become a starved one… unfathomable.”
She noticed the man’s soul thread become taught as his spirit was pulled back towards his body. Reacting faster than she thought possible, she pounced on him like a ravenous beast. His eyes widened with terror as she caught hold of his ankle and arrested his progress by activating [Cloud Step]. She cried out in pain as the burning sensation ate away at her spiritual body, the art consuming her to fuel itself second by second.
Her mind emptied itself of all thoughts other than self-preservation.
She clawed her way up his body like someone drowning, scrabbling for purchase. There was no time to think. No time to consider alternatives. She coated her teeth with piercing energy and bit down on whatever she could reach. Whatever she could consume.
His screams of fear hardly registered as the pieces of him that she ate first replenished, then strengthened her spiritual body. He tried to kick and strike out at her to free himself, but she didn’t care about the pain or injury that was being inflicted on her. All that mattered was that she continued to feed. She was so, so hungry.
It wasn’t until she had consumed the very last piece of him that she returned to her senses. Her spiritual form was ragged, tattered, and torn. She’d taken much more damage than she’d realized… but she was still alive. Well, alive-ish. She was also still unbearably hungry, though the sensation was no longer all-consuming as it had been.
She looked around, uncertain about her current location. The man had dragged her to somewhere unfamiliar, and the darkness of night didn’t help to give her any clues about where she was. She reached for her bonds once more, but still was unable to sense them in the slightest. On impulse she tried to pull up her profile to at least check that Silas and Tobias still showed on the page, but she couldn’t even do that much. The system, for once, did not heed her request.
Though she knew she should be incredibly distressed by this turn of events, she felt strangely… indifferent. The apathy’s impenetrable calm should have been alarming in and of itself, and she knew that something wasn’t right, but no matter how deep she reached for some hint of emotion there was only hunger.
She needed to find her body and figure out what was really going on before she completely lost herself. But first, she needed to find something to eat.