Adam tried what he could, banging his fists on the wall of ice that had suddenly spawned in front of him, from the floor all the way to the ceiling, what was going on? None of them had ice powers obviously.
The ice was far too compact and heavy for his psychokinesis to do anything, he tried to throw different weaves of force at the wall to no avail. The sounds he could hear in the room confused him as he listened to further crunches of ice while the whirring of the viewers continued.
Adam knew what he had to try next, it would be the first time he put his temperature control spell to use in combat. It had been nothing to him so far besides a replacement for mittens. While trying to heat up the entire wall of ice would be futile and almost instantly drain his magic pool, he knew he would be able to heat up a small chunk near eye level to at least see what was going on in the room, to see what had caused this.
Focusing on a small segment of ice he focused in his mind, imagining a dial to control the temperature and feeling a flow of energy from his brain towards the dial. The visualisations he used to cast his spells seemed to come naturally to him, he wasn’t sure if it come built in with the ability and hiker menu or if it was just his own brains way of interpreting the use of the ability.
The ice began to melt away into a puddle, a small peephole forming in the formidable wall of ice that had been summoned. Looking out into the middle of the room where the large viewer was he saw a girl, the very same girl who had begged him to let him out of the cell earlier when they first broke in.
He watched as she slowly stepped towards the Viewer, which started to swing one of its arms at her just as it had done with the three of them before. She gestured with her hand and a long jagged spike of ice shot up out of the ground, piercing through the purple energy arm and pinning it up against the ceiling. She stopped pacing forward, leaning back slightly as she continued gesturing, smashing ice through all of the viewers’ limbs before watching as a cluster of spikes burst out of the centre spherical body, causing it to collapse from the inside and for the viewer to fall to the ground, the ice staying in place as the vivid purple limbs began to dissipate.
Looking around the room further, Adam saw that the places where Matilda and Brian had been standing also had ice walls blocking them off, just like what had happened with Adam. This girl is a hiker, the first thought Adam had was why did she need to beg to get out of the cell with great power like that? The second was, why hadn’t their menu alerted them about her, was she so high level she could hide it the same way Hammy had? Or was it just not relevant according to the menu or something? He saw the five balls of the smaller viewer spawns laying still near the various ice walls, all faded out like the larger one.
Adam flicked his wrist, trying to focus on the girl he was watching through the peephole to see if the hiker menu would give him anything at all, he wondered if it might just work if he thought about it, kind of like how he had figured out how to get the menu to show him stats.
Target: Naomi Winster
Level: 7
Class: Sorceress
Well in this case he could get it to show, but Hammy did mention hiding it as a possibility as well, how far behind were all of them in their hiker menu navigation skills? He wondered.
The walls of ice rapidly began to collapse and melt into the floor of the room, water puddling up as Adam and his two teammates were freed from their icy cells.
They walked a few steps forward, staring at each other, glancing at Naomi every so often in an awkward and tense moment.
“Thanks for that.” Brian said, breaking the silence.
“No problem by me, not like it was hard.” Naomi responded in an expressionless, monotone voice.
“It did seem easy, how come we didn’t get experience for those things? Is it because they weren’t even living somehow?”
“They were plenty alive Brian.” Adam raised his voice slightly. Wondering why that was his conclusion to the whole situation and wondering why Brian was concerned about their experience points of all things.
“I killed them, I got all of the experience, since we aren’t in a hiker group together, we won’t share it.” Naomi stated plainly.
“Right.” Brian responded awkwardly. He looked at Adam, with an expression that was asking for help with the situation.
Adam wanted to know more. “How did you end up here? When did you get brought to this planet by your hiker ship?”
“I wasn’t even brought to this planet directly, I was on a different world, my second one since I started. They took me and brought me here themselves. These church people, which is not really who they are obviously, they are just posing.” She had created a little pedestal of ice to sit on for herself to sit on as she explained what had happened.
She continued on “So, I think I’m stranded here now honestly. I’m not sure, my menu still works and is kind of updating for this world but my ship is on a different world and all. If you’re wondering about the whole being in prison part of it, well they were trying to use me with part of their experiments on this big tree and I stopped cooperating, so I ended up here.
The three of them listened intently, Adam was very curious now about what would end up happening with Naomi. He picked up on the exact way she worded that last sentence. “So you were helping them, but then stopped. What happened? We have a basic idea of what they are doing with the tree, something about draining its energy but what pushed you to the edge?”
“Well it’s not like I enjoyed being a prisoner, but yeah, I was cooperating for my own sake. But it was my hiker menu, it kept asking me to help and kept flashing up every time I was helping them look into the tree and experiment on it and some of the liquid they were extracting out of it. I couldn’t ignore it, I think you may have felt the same draw, to want to do what the menu asks you, I don’t love it intellectually, what if it asks me to do something I don’t want to do you know? But yeah, can’t help but trust it and follow it so far at least.” Naomi was telling them quite a lot of her story, Adam looked around the room and poked his head outside the main door out of the room, checking to see if anything else had been going on near them. He still heard nothing, which he found a little odd.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“Sorry you were taken prisoner, I mean, what’s the plan now? We are following our mission to save this tree, if yours is asking the same you may as well join us, awkward experience sharing doesn’t matter if we don’t even make it off of this planet.” Adam offered, they could use all the help they could get and she was obviously quite powerful with the way she handled those viewers.
“I guess, what’s the point? I’m gonna be stuck on this planet either way, my progress on my hiker journey just entirely stunted cause some maniac demons took me away from my actual goal.” Naomi sighed. She was showing a little emotion now, more than before anyway.
“Well if your hiker menu is actually updating, that’s great news, maybe it will recognise the work you do here and well, we will see after that, maybe your ship will show up here, our friend Hammy said something like that, that your hiker ship could show up in the most awkward of places once you were done on a world. Or you can come with us if the ship lets you, I doubt it will though to be honest. Oh, wait.” Adam realised at the end of his offer there what that meant to Naomi.
“Yeah, I have my own team, I did. I hope they are still okay. Najwa and Pollup, we did so well on our first ever world, the second was slow but steady until these demons showed up and took me, I think those two got away at least. Alright, well for now we may as well sort this church out, you guys are insane for just sieging the damn place by the way.”
Matilda laughed “That was Adam’s idea by the way, usually the insane ones are his.”
“Do you guys even know what you are up against? Have you seen Fargo?” Naomi said more sombrely. “Yeah, I’ll come along, but there’s a great chance we end up dead if we run into the wrong people here. But dead still beats this hole of a place.”
Brian chimed in next “When you said demons, I knew exactly what you were talking about, I’ve been held prisoner here too, only for one night before I got out, but I saw Fargo and I saw, well yeah, I never called it that but his demon form. I know exactly what we are up against.”
Naomi questioned him back “Well that’s surprising, I didn’t think anyone who saw that would be coming back here of their own free will. You lot have some real confidence, you didn’t seem that strong against those viewers.”
Adam got defensive to that remark “They just matched up well against our particular classes and powers, that’s all, we haven’t usually struggled like that.”
She hummed in not so convincing assurance.
Brian was waiting at the door “Well, it’s still awfully quiet around here, should we go find Tob or, anyone for that matter? I’m starting to get a bit freaked out.”
Adam nodded “Yeah, it is awfully quiet for a sieged church. Let’s go have a look around, be alert.”
The four of them exited the prison room and made their way down a long hallway. The church wasn’t remarkable in the building itself but the decorations were exquisite, detailed tapestries ran down the entirely length of the walls of this hallway.
They couldn’t hear a peep through the large empty space of the hallways with tall ceilings in this part of the church. Adam thought preparation was the smartest thing they could do with their time while they found some kind of update to the situation, hopefully ally but they could run into enemy as well.
Adam flicked his menu out “Let’s just quickly catch up Naomi on what we are working with here. We need teamwork for any chance at getting through this place alive.
Adam Oliver: 700/8000 xp (Level 5 Psion)
This line displayed at the bottom of his menu, with a progress bar on his level. He went to the skills menu and showed Naomi his list of powers.
Psychokinesis: Moves objects or beings with psychic energy. Weight limitations based on power level and intellect.
Truth Compulsion: Pushes the minds barriers away, creating an opening where the subject of the spell will speak the truth, lowers inhibitions on refraining from speaking and makes it impossible to lie.
Temperature Control: Grants the ability to heat or cool matter with psychic energy. The draw on users magic pool will depend on total mass being controlled and the speed of temperature control.
“Interesting abilities there, they don’t sound really strong on their own but I guess you have made it work so far, or are the other two fighting for you. Don’t try to force me to say anything by the way, that ability is kind of gross.” Naomi made some good observations after reading through his abilities Adam thought.
“I make it work.” He responded confidently.
Brian showed his next.
Brian Ramos: 700/8000 xp (Level 5 Barbarian)
Primal Strike: Modified by Primality, increasing power and speed of the strike ability by 30%. Strikes with both weapons, slashing the target with great power and force.
Explosive Strike: A strike attack that creates a forceful explosion on impact.
“I notice it says your attack hits with both weapons but you only have one weapon Brian.” Matilda and
Finally, Matilda showed her menu.
Matilda Jones: 700/8000 xp (Level 5 Cleric)
Radiant Burst: Modified by Holy Trinity. Causing three copies of the spell to be made and splitting out from the casting location. Modified by Careful Control. Damaging holy abilities now instead heal when cast at allies. Caster creates a ball of holy magic that launches at high speeds towards the target, damaging or healing them.
Glowing Nova: Modified by Careful Control. Creates a halo of holy light that damages or heals anyone within a large radius.
The menu explained the other points Brian and Matilda had invested into the primal strike ability, Adam noticed, it kept an overall track of his build and updated based on their exact configuration of passives, stats and skills chosen.
After catching Naomi up with their skill sets they discussed some possible combo moves they could pull off together, Adam had requested to see her menu as well but she was all nervous about it, she brushed them off telling them that she can just create ice at will like they had seen and all her points had gone into improving that. They dropped it after she raised her voice slightly, it was some kind of sensitive spot for her Adam figured, if she was trying to hide something, he wasn’t going to push on it right here right now.
They passed a few doorways now through the hallway, they carefully opened those doors and checked inside the rooms, they were all pretty small and empty rooms. After checking the fifth one in a row Adam shrugged his shoulders “Not sure, all we can do is keep going.”
Finally, after a few more minutes of pacing they come across a door that was different to the others. This door was much taller and had ornate decorations all over it, well, it sure looked important Adam thought.
As Adam was about to pull on the door to open it, the door slammed open and all four of them were knocked down to the ground as a large beast ran through, breaking the door and running over the top of them. It ran on all fours, hair all over its body with a huge barrel chest. It stood up on its two legs and Adam realised it was actually humanoid. The beast roared.