Ch 22 - Still Unable to Fight an Overgrown Lizard, but hey Bloodline? (trial pt 3/3)

Jem knew that he hadn’t killed his grandma. But it was hard to be unaffected by something like that. It was also a little irritating given he knew nothing about how the trial really worked, other than that the trial responded to his actions and responses, at least theoretically. The gem had changed colour after his reaction after all.

Theoretically, the trial also was based on him somewhat. Maybe somewhere in the back of his head there was a fear that his grandmother would turn into some kind of slathering monster bent on his destruction? Jem shook the thought from his mind. At least this new section of the trial looked less traumatising.

Huh. That’s odd? I remember now? Maybe I’m getting better at forcing myself out of the mental thing.

For the first time since his arrival on Dari Jem found himself in front of a computer. Well excluding the screen, mouse and keyboard for his class modifier selection. But this was different, there was a desk and an office chair and everything. In fact, it was his desk and his office chair. Part of him wondered if the trial truly was focused on the computer itself but somehow the flashing sign at the top of his screen felt like a big hint.

12-Hour Free Trial! Find something you want to watch.

It looked as though he was on some kind of streaming site and that probably meant the first thing he had to do was find something to watch. He wasn’t exactly sure how it worked? But if the gem changing colour before meant anything then it might be possible for him to direct the sort of trial and potential rewards he would get by choosing the correct show.

Jem scrolled through the list looking for things that sounded like they could be interesting. He stayed away from anything that looked like a sitcom or drama, he didn’t really see himself needing an accounting bloodline or some kind of anti-bullying aura.

What Jem settled on was a fantasy story with lots of crazy magic and when he clicked on it he felt himself being sucked into the screen.

Jem was one of a few people at the back of a large army, right next to the command tent.

“I’m telling you, going through that pass is stupid. That dragon doesn’t like it when people encroach on its territory.” The high stern voice easily carried through the canvas.

“Stop letting your fear rule you. That overgrown lizard doesn’t stand a chance against us. There are tens of thousands of us, and we even have mages on our side. Besides, Lethwick can’t wait for us to take a two-week detour, they need our help now.” General Borial’s voice boomed, seeming to shake the tent, though it was probably just the wind.

“Fine but I’m not going with you. I’m going to take anyone who doesn’t want to throw their lives away on a suicide mission.”

What was General Ikther so worried about? They couldn’t be stopped by a measly dragon, she was normally so level-headed too. Jem shook his head and pushed their conversation aside. By the sounds of things he had something else to prepare for.

Jem focused inwards, going over his bound spell list.

Shearing Radiance

Guiding Hand

Phoenix Sparrow Swarm

Enhanced Mobility

Sun Beam

Telekinesis

He’d recently reached the fifth echelon, increasing his potential bound spells from five to six. Against their army, the overgrown lizard could count itself lucky to survive. Against 7 mages and 20,000 men what could it even hope to do?

By the time it was time to fight the dragon that number had reduced to 16000 men and 5 mages, the cowards having gone with General Ikther. The dragon was soaring down from the eastern peak and Jem made one final check of his internal conduits, as expected they were flawless.

He cast guiding hand over the centre of the army, where most of the bowmen were concentrated. 1000 or so of them would find greater accuracy when they fired their shots, among other things. He could likely cast the spell two more times before the slot well ran out of power, but it would be better to wait until the effect waned.

Jem also cast enhanced mobility, as a persistent cast it would slowly pull energy from the slot well over time. It would last hours, and there should be no risk of it running out during the battle.

The bowmen fired a volley of arrows towards the creature. Unfazed it flapped its leathery wings once and the arrows shot back the way they’d come. It was a less-than-stellar outcome. There wasn’t enough space for all of the soldiers to dodge but guiding hand directed them to better positions and the worst wounds were avoided. Less than 20 of the wounds were instantly fatal. Considering the circumstances, it was a miracle in its own right.

The dragon flew closer, still on the opposite side of the army but moving in Jem’s direction. He waited for it to get in range and then cast sun beam, aiming best he could at the creature’s eyes. Unfortunately with the creature’s erratic movements sun beam only grazed one eye for just a moment but it definitely got its attention.

The dragon shot a large crackling ball of green energy in Jem’s direction. Had it been just him he’d have simply dodged but instead he channelled another instance of sun beam. It didn’t dissipate the ball, as he’d hoped, but it did send it veering upwards far away from any of the soldiers..

The other mages were also engaging the dragon with spells, but its scales absorbed almost all of the energy, leaving them glowing white with heat. But to a dragon what difference did that make?

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

He grunted. He was starting to get a bad feeling about this.

– – – – –

It turned out that Jem was still unable to fight an overgrown lizard. After a while the dragon grew impatient, instead of trying to dissuade them, only responding to attacks, it switched tactics. It breathed fire down on the army, eliminating more than half of the soldiers in less than a minute. The remainder broke ranks and fled. The dragon allowed most of them to leave, but that was not true of the mages.

Just how strong is that thing? That’s no typical dragon. His well of energy for enhanced mobility was running low. It wasn’t a good sign. The dragon had already hunted down the rest of the mages and was coming for him.

By the time the well’s energy had run dry Jem had almost caught up with General Ikther’s group, but it was meaningless. He wouldn’t even get to eat his brother’s glazed ribs after saving him and the rest of Lethwick from the horde.

Jem didn’t see the attack. He was just sucked back out of the screen and found himself back at his desk.

He felt a moment of deep confusion, then realised that he’d completely failed to identify that he was in a trial. Choosing something unfamiliar was probably the mistake, there was no sense of familiarity to trigger his awareness that something wasn’t quite right. So instead he remained in the thought process of the character. In that instance it was especially unfortunate. He really hoped arrogance wasn’t contagious.

As expected he wasn’t rewarded with a bloodline gem after that. He would be lying if he said he didn’t feel at least a little cheated. If he had been able to defeat the dragon, he was sure he would have been granted a very strong option. Or even if he’d left with General Ikther’s group he might have had the chance to fight another, more manageable, magical creature.

He sat there for five minutes, deep in thought, before he realised that the trial hadn’t ended or moved him on to the next section. The flashing sign at the top of the screen had changed, instead of listing 12 hours it now listed 5. Jem took that to mean he still had time for another selection, and fingers crossed this time he’d make a better choice.

He settled on a sci-fi film, this time obtaining a milky-white gem. It came from a creature that could turn into mist and it was more luck than skill that allowed Jem to kill it. After a lot of running back and forth he’d finally managed to seal it in an air-lock, at which point he slowly depressurised the chamber. The mist didn’t separate and the creature was unwilling to retake its solid form. He just waited it out and eventually it had to shift.

Why it didn’t want to retake solid form quickly became clear, the fluid in its body started to boil. It seemed that the creature had a preference for what kind of gas it became.

When he absorbed the gem there was only 10 minutes remaining so he just relaxed and found comfort in the familiarity of his situation.

– – – – – –

The following two trials were also busts, but for different reasons. His fifth trial was just unfair and had him fighting against an overqualified opponent, instead of fighting with swords they were in some kind of televised debate and Jem was sad to say he knew very little about the topic they were supposed to be arguing about. It was going fine until he recognised he was in a trial and he supplanted the knowledgable version of himself, after that it went quickly downhill and because the trial clearly couldn’t be normal, upon losing the debate, he was forced to walk the plank with his hands tied behind his back and a blindfold on.

He was already bad at swimming.

The sixth trial was bad because despite completing it he was quite sure he didn’t want whatever the reward would be. The goal was to meditate and focus on his breathing for an hour uninterrupted within the 24-hour time limit. He was no stranger to meditation and completed it on his third attempt. In the first attempt, he got distracted after just five minutes. But it was hardly his fault his body told him he really needed a piss.

It turned out the sensation was a lie and in his second attempt, Jem just tuned out all of the distractions. His experience from before he came to Dari and his experiences from when he’d first arrived prepared him for it and even when the pain started he was able to concentrate on his breath. The problem with his second attempt was that he’d forgotten about his accelerated thinking speed and he stopped after just 15 minutes. He’d simply sighed and gone back into it this time focusing for what felt like four hours instead of one. But he’d done it.

Though there was no way he’d take a bloodline based on being able to focus. More out of principle than anything else. The gem he got this time was grey and slowly oscillated between light and dark as though it was breathing.

– – – – – –

The sixth trial marked the end of the bloodline trial itself, but Jem knew that he still had to choose what to come away with. He looked inside himself and felt around for the gems he knew to be there.

Jem wasn’t quite sure how he could feel the colour of each gem, but that wasn’t the only information he instinctively knew. All of them were identical in shape, after entering his body they had changed. From their rough-hewn form each became a segment that fit together with the rest to form a sphere. He knew that whichever he fed a little of his Kol into would subsume the others making the sphere one homogenous whole.

The first segment was clear but suffused with a golden glow. It had come from the invigilator and it granted him a vague impression of tentacles and eye beams. A bit weird?

The second segment was an ever-shifting green and it had come from Granny Baker. Thankfully it wasn’t some kind of vomit orb, but would instead grant some kind of shapeshifting ability.

The third was milky white and from the mist creature, and the impression he got was evershifting mists.

And finally, the breathing meditation segment just gave an impression of breathing. It wasn’t very clear. Breathtaking.

With the options laid out before him, Jem didn’t hesitate. He pushed Kol into the shifting green gem and a series of green waves surged around the rest of the sphere. Where they went they slowly converted the other sections. The other gems tried to rally together to fight back, but the Kol flowing in from somewhere outside, presumably the ritual itself, gave the green gem the strength to supplant the others.

The sphere glowed and the places where the gems connected flashed green, fusing together into a single, unblemished whole.

Suspended in the centre of the sphere Jem could see himself. Scrutinising it further, it was a murky impression but definitely a copy of him in the real world. He was cross legged and slumped over, with something in his hand. Presumably the stylus, though that wasn’t actually present in the orb. Nothing other than his body was visible in the orb. His naked body.

More Kol flooded in and the picture became clearer and clearer. At the same time his understanding of the bloodline improved. My bloodline. Jem felt a little giddy at the thought. He had an almost perfect understanding and awareness of his body. Though it was a little weird because he didn’t have any of the sensations associated with it. His body was still very much asleep, though it was slowly coming round.

What the orb did also made more sense, it was his bloodline core. Over time he might be able to evolve and improve his bloodline, but for now, its operation was fairly clear. He could imprint a design for his body, then push a mixture of experience and extra calories into his bloodline core. And once it reached a threshold he could push through the changes making his body rapidly change to that new form.

It was both much better than he’d hoped for and much less convenient than he’d have wanted. It seemed as though it needed specific input, he couldn’t just handwave the designs, if he didn’t precisely lay out the distribution of things like blood vessels and bones he’d be screwed, but from the looks of things he’d also be able to modify his body in any way he wanted as long as he knew how he wanted it to change.

As his body started to wake up there was one thought coursing through him with great intensity. I won’t have to be so short any more.