“Don’t tell me you believe him,” the man in the small glowing window said, his voice thick with incredulity.
“Who do you take me for?” General Henderson snorted.
“Seems like everyone who’s sent through starts believing in magic or whatever,” the other man replied.
“You do realize I’m currently talking to you through a glowing window, hovering in mid air, that was created by Doctor Earlham waving his fingers about for a minute or so, right?” Henderson asked, raising an eyebrow at the other man, “there is something weird about this world, call it magic or vitus or whatever you want, but there’s a world of difference between small hard to explain phenomena and ripping out and replacing an entire region of land.”
“Great, so we can ignore this whole keystone thing?”
“No, unfortunately,” Henderson sighed, “true or not the locals seem to believe it. Even if it’s just a story the ruling families have come up with to prevent the commoners from rising up, we still have to take it into account.”
“Then what do you suggest?”
“To put it simply, we kill both potential heirs,” the General replied, “then we step in and make up something about how we used knowledge from our world to alter the keystone, assigning someone new as the king.”
“Keeping the myth intact while putting ourselves in charge,” the other man said, nodding, “I can sell that plan to the committee. Much better than the plan that Count suggested. Do we need to change the schedule?”
General Henderson paused to think, the biggest issue they had right now was the limit to how many people they could transport to this world per day. It didn’t help that only one in five people were capable of making the transit, the rest burning up. They could predict who would survive the trip with something approaching 95% accuracy so they were stacking up people to be sent over faster than the Earlham condensers could provide energy to send people over. So far everyone being sent was military, and most of the recent one have been specialists in ancient weapons. Assassinating someone was far harder without long range rifles, as the attempt on the champion Flameblade. Add in that some people had special abilities that weren’t well understood, and they were forced to choose their targets carefully.
“If you have any infiltration specialists queued up, we could use their help to take out the girl,” Henderson said finally, “apparently she’s taken refuge in some kind of holy city, I haven’t sent anyone out that way yet but it’s supposed to be well guarded.”
“I’ll see if there’s anyone I can bump up,” the man in the window nodded, “next contact is in three days?”
Henderson simply nodded as the window went dark before dispersing like a cloud of smoke.
\*\*\*\*
Reiner’s sword came down on what appeared to be a pearl the size of a basketball, this, apparently, was the seed from which the fleshy root had sprouted. No one seemed to know much about it, just that if left unattended it would sprout once more. It had taken nearly half an hour to locate and dig it out of the disturbing root, at which point the survivors of the raid quickly fled outside as the tunnel warren began to rumble menacingly. Now the ascenders, including the sole kobold, gathered around as Reiner broke the thing.
As his sword struck cracks spread across the slightly off-white surface, a blue-white gas hissing out as if it had been trapped within. A moment later, before Reiner’s could prepare for another blow there was a loud crack as the shattered into dozens of pieces. It seemed that the seed had been made of a number of different layers, each of which shattered individually leaving slightly curved shards of whitish substance. Most of them immediately began to hiss, seeming to transform into the same blue-white gas that had escaped earlier. But a number of the shards didn’t dissolve, remaining intact. Most notably, a perfect sphere of white about the size of a golf ball that seemed to have been at the center of the seed.
“The core survived,” Masood remarked, glancing at the kobold ascender, “how do you want to do this?”
“Seems logical to me that the core go to the one to accomplish the most,” the small kobold said in the weirdly deep voice, “the shards we can distribute evenly, between our groups.”
“Looks like there’s an odd number of shards as well, you can have the remainder since we’re getting the core,” Masood replied.
“This is acceptable,” the small furry creature nodded, Masood leaning forward to grab the spherical core and tossed it to Nathen before sorting through the other shards.
“What-,” Nathen barely managed to catch the white sphere, finding it strangely warm in his hand, “what do I do with this?”
“You’ve never seen a core before?” Reiner asked, Nathen shaking his head in reply, “with how strong you are I was certain you’d used several.”
“They can make me stronger?”
“They can accelerate the growth of your abilities,” the armored man nodded, “just focus on the ability you want to upgrade and squeeze.”
“That’s it?” Nathen asked, looking between the man and the golf ball sized pearl.
“Yup,” was his only reply. Before Nathen could reply Masood stood and began handing out the shards.
“Since Nathen got the core, he’ll pass on any shards,” Masood explained, handing everyone else one. Behind him the Kobold Ascender was busy sorting his half of the shards as he turned to return to the only two other survivors of his party, one of which was seriously injured.
“Nathen’s never used a Core before,” Reiner said as he was handed one of the larger shards.
“Really?” Masood asked, looking up, “once we get moving I’ll tell you what I know.”
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There was a short goodbye to the kobold party, despite their oddities they had fought alongside one another so everyone seemed to agree they were due at least that courtesy. Shortly after they were walking back the way they’d come, a thin pillar of smoke in the distance their guide.
“Alright, cores,” Masood said as they walked.
“Are the Kobolds going to be ok?” Nathen interrupted before Masood could get started, “one of them seemed pretty injured.”
“They’ll be fine, even locals here heal at, like, double the rate you’d expect,” Masood dismissed, “Ascenders are even faster, you’ll probably be fully healed, if not recovered, by the time we return.
“Now, cores,” Masood paused, looking to see if Nathen had any more interruptions, continuing when he didn’t, “cores are, effectively, compressed Vituss. They form naturally within monster roots and, supposedly, stronger monsters. And before you ask, no I don’t know why they form. They also slowly gather layers around them, which the other shards came from. Larger roots and stronger monster cores will have more layers. And, if big enough, can grow into a monster root if left alone for too long, so standard practice is to break them at the first opportunity. Normally this shatters the core as well, but sometimes, like today, it remains intact.
“Now, shards have all kinds of uses, you can work them into items to strengthen them, they can improve farm yields if ground up and spread, help injuries heal and many other things. But the most common use is improve abilities, an average shard like this one can advance a skill one stage, making it slightly stronger. Cores are essentially the same, but far stronger,” Masood explained, “they can be used for all the same things but, trust me, use it to improve an ability. Unlike shards, which only mildly strengthen the ability, cores can alter the skill to make it more powerful, like removing a restriction or adding a new effect. It’s hard to tell exactly what it will change, but the change will be for the better.”
“And I just squeeze it to use it?” Nathen asked after a moment.
“Yup, like this,” Masood said, holding a shard to his chest and squeezing it until it shattered. The pieces quickly turned into blue-white smoke like the others, but instead of dispersing the smoke seemed to flow into Masood’s chest.
“Ahh, card infusion level five,” he sighed as the last of the smoke entered him, “you had RPGs in your last world right?”
Nathen simply nodded, looking at the golf ball sized pearl in his hand, thinking through his abilities. His first instinct was to use it on basic sword style, as a passive bonus he’d get the most out of it, but as soon as he had that thought he felt the spirit of the sword disagree with him, loudly. Sword style was up to level eight now, meaning it was likely getting close to advancing on its own, Nathen thought, instantly feeling the blade agree with him.
Thinking back to the battle against the mole the sword seemed to think that Focused Strikes was in need of changing, and, again, the blade seemed intent on pushing him that way. Right now Focused Strikes would increase his speed and strength with each strike he landed, but that bonus would be lost if he was struck. He could see the spirit’s logic, even if it couldn’t explain itself. Focused Strikes was useful against enemies he was already able to outmatch in melee combat, but against enemies stronger than him it was useless. Even against equal enemies, unless he got a good string of uninterrupted hits it wasn’t of much benefit.
Nodding to himself, Nathen pulled the pearl in close to his chest and squeezed. After a moment the pearl shattered into a cloud of blue-white mist that surged toward him. The feeling as it entered him was unlike anything he’d felt before, it was at once pleasurable and uncomfortable, he could feel strength flowing through his body and the pain of his wounds even seemed to fade. But at the same time it was like there was a burden upon his mind, something weighing down his thoughts, causing him to stumble as it caught him off guard.
Slowly both feelings faded, the others having stopped walking to watch him, and as it did a window popped up in his vision.
\-\-\-\-
*ABILITY:* Focused Strikes *HAS EVOLVED INTO* Focused Momentum
\-\-\-\-
\-\-\-\-
*NEW ABILITY:* Focused Momentum
The longer a fight goes on, the harder you seem to fight
-Gain Momentum each time you clash with an opponent
-Momentum increases your speed, strength and durability
-Momentum fades rapidly out of combat
-???
\-\-\-\-
Nathen sighed as he saw the updated ability, the weakness of losing the bonus when struck was gone, now it simply faded once the fighting was over which was much easier to work with. It also increased his durability as well as speed and strength. Beyond that it was similar, the only thing that confused him was the row of question marks at the end.
“Question marks?” Masood asked when Nathen brought it up, “your abilities are part of you, you should know everything about them. I’ve never heard of an ability hiding its effects from its user.”
Nathen looked down in thought once more, following the others as they started walking once more. Perhaps the oddity was due to the spirit of the sword? Had it somehow added something to the ability? Directing his questioning thoughts as the blade only caused it to radiate a smug sense of satisfaction. While not proof Nathen figured that the sword was somehow responsible. The spirit hadn’t led him wrong yet, so he figured he’d find out what it meant in time.
\*\*\*\*
Gregory came to with a start, finding himself looking at the ceiling of a church. Looking around he was surrounded by other men, also laying down on makeshift beds, all injured in some form or another. While he felt sore, Gregory couldn’t feel any obvious injuries as he pushed himself up.
“Gregory!” Lex’s voice shouted, the woman quickly following, coming to a stop along side him and checking him for injuries, “you’re up!”
“What happened?” Gregory asked, rubbing his eyes, “last thing I remember is the Mutts throwing themselves on the last fire wall, we were trying to retreat and then…”
“We got away,” she assured him, “most of the knights did too. Lost a few more on the way back to the city, mutts drawn to us and some horses collapsed, but we made it back.”
“So we failed,” Gregory said after a moment.
“We bought time,” Lex corrected him, “not as much as we intended, but most of the mutts are surging north towards that crevasse.”
“They’ll come back south just as quickly.”
“We also killed a number of them, scouts estimate we took out a quarter of the horde. Combined with the day or two we bought the garrison commander is much more optimistic about the battle,” Lex continued, “While some of the knights that made it back will be out for a week or two, most should be on their feet for the battle, if not fully healed.”
“What about the pack lord?” Gregory asked after a moment.
“There are several priests looking through the archives right now, don’t know if they’ll find anything but it’s only been a few hours.”
“Anything else?” Gregory sighed, laying back down on the cot.
“Kyle is back,” Lex said, Gregory snapping back upright before she could continue, “easy, easy! He’s offered to help!”
“Doesn’t he want you dead?”
“Apparently the ability pushing him to do so is gone… or something,” Lex shrugged, “I’ve been avoiding him personally, but apparently he’s offered to lead a team to hunt the pack lord.”
Gregory simply let out a growl, once more leaning back. His feelings about Kyle were complex to say the least. On one hand the man had helped him, taught him, and seemed nice enough. On the other, he’d tried to kill Lex. They hadn’t spoken since that night, Gregory having left the man injured in the middle of nowhere. He didn’t think Eric would die or anything, but for the hunter to come back? He hadn’t expected that either.
Part of him wanted to reject Kyle's help outright, just for what he did. But the man was an Ascender, and a powerful one at that. Especially when it came to fighting at range he was likely unmatched. If anyone could take out the pack lord it would be him. That didn’t mean Gregory liked it, but he had to accept the man could help. So with a sigh he relaxed once more, as long as he didn’t come after Lex everything would be fine.