Chapter 72
Echoes of the Hunt
Low grunts echoed against the walls of the small cabin while beads of sweat pooled into a small pond. Asher finally came to a halt, resting down from a handstand, gasping for breath and pouring a bit of water over his face as well as drinking a mouthful. He'd gotten into a decent rhythm by now, exercising daily--at least once, often twice--and the results were quite visible already. It wasn't just in his physique--though he did become quite a bit leaner than even at his most 'decked out' back in his late twenties and early thirties.
But more than that, his Strength skyrocketed to 1.6, shooting past the other two ‘primary’ stats. And he felt it--he could easily lift two barrels of mead with one arm each without much effort, and could probably punch a hole in the wall if he didn’t mind breaking something in the process.
He didn’t let the perceived increase in strength straddle him to the flying ego, however--it could all just be a mask or even just a marginal increase of strength that barely would register in this world as ‘progress’. More than strength itself, he wanted to increase his stamina, but there wasn’t a lot of room to do any cardio, and even he wasn’t thick-skinned enough to run around the plaza in circles.
Furthermore, he didn’t even know whether the increased stamina would transfer over to the Stages or whether it would be reserved for the ‘real world’. Regardless, even if there weren’t any particular benefits, it at the very least helped him clear his mind and run himself in a ‘limbo’ for a little while.
He hadn’t gone to the plaza in approximately two days, having taken them ‘off’ to rest and reset, but today was the day. Taking a quick ‘shower’ and drying off, he closed his eyes and vanished, appearing at the plaza. Unlike most other times, it wasn’t thriving with life; in fact, it was rather barren, with only an occasional shadow whizzing past in a hurry.
He didn’t sit around for too long; rather than heading over to the tavern and waiting for the serendipity to strike and for Sarah to appear, he elected to go to the smithy and have a chat with El. It was quite odd, there being quite literally nobody there, standing in line. Then again, even the Adventure Center wasn’t nearly as backed up, with only three or four people waiting in line.
As soon as he’d entered, the doors behind him closed and, without even being prompted so, he headed to the rear where El was already pouring the two of them the scalding liquid whose name he’d already forgotten. Neither said a word as he sat in his usual seat and took a sip, letting the burn rip through him like an electric current.
“So, how’s the Hunt going?” she asked, breaking the silence.
“A bit dull,” Asher replied. “But it’s only the start.”
“You already scored a point,” she said. “Can’t be that dull.”
“Oh? You can tell?”
“Need I re-establish my authority here a little bit?” she smirked ever so slightly.
“Right. I forget,” he said. “Maybe treat me a bit more like garbage and I’ll keep in mind the fact that you’re also, at least to me, godlike.”
“So, what kind of a story do you want to hear today?”
"Hm," Asher deliberated for a moment. Truthfully, he didn't particularly care--it wasn't as though he would learn anything usable from these stories, and he only used them as building blocks within which he could frame small particulars of the world. They were mere nuggets within a mine and were hardly indicative of anything past the fact that there was a mine, to begin with. "I don't know. Do you guys have any extinction myths?"
“Extinction myths?”
“Yeah. You know? God or Gods gave the world everything, the world got greedy, and the world got punished. By, you know, being beaten into extinction.”
“... no, nothing quite like that,” she said after a momentary silence. “The Northmen, however, believe in Va-dana.”
“...”
“It roughly means ‘The Last Day’,” she continued after taking a sip. “But it is not rooted in the belief of extinction or anything like that. Supposedly, their lineage began from the Mountain Spirits. But, at some point in the past, and for reasons unknown, those Spirits disappeared. They believe that, when they finally manage to sire a worthy heir, the Spirit will be reborn within them, thus ending our age and beginning the Age of Spirits. That heir’s last day will become The Last Day--the Spirit will be unleashed and reave the world of life.”
“... cute,” Asher mumbled, taking a sip. My last Stage. I fought ‘em. The Northmen or whatever you call them.”
“...”
“Was that really how they are?” he looked at her and she met his gaze. “Or is that how you see them? Unrelentingly approaching horrors that cannot be reasoned with and can only be exterminated?”
“...”
“Right,” he chuckled, looking away. “Not a myth. My bad. Do you know what my favorite thing in the world was?”
“What?” she queried with a faint trace of interest in her voice.
“Waking up a couple of hours before dawn, shoving in headphones, and going for a jog. Not an ordinary, round-the-block business, no. When the life got to be too much, too demanding, too... loud, I'd run. Run. Just... run. Sometimes for a couple of miles. Sometimes I'd leave the fuckin' city and have to call a cab or an uber. I ran until my body was so drained and exhausted my mind couldn't think about anything else besides just shutting down. At some point in my life, however, I realized... I haven't run in months. When I was younger, I'd do it once, twice a week even. But, as the years passed, I ran less and less.
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“I’d moved on from being... well, normal, really. And even when I’d tried to run by force, it just wasn’t the same.”
“...”
"I've rediscovered it here, though," he smiled rather lithely, turning back toward her. She had never stopped looking at him, her lips faintly parted. "I don't run, though. The cabin's not big enough for that just yet. But, I burn my body until I can't think. And it feels beautiful. It's sort of like suddenly hearing your favorite song from middle school that you hadn't heard in decades. Without even wanting to, you're pulled back through time in reverse. Once again watching Jennie Smitherson nod slowly when I asked her to dance. Right. Well, that was my depressing monologue. What about you?"
“... what about me?” she winced strangely, seemingly recovering from some trance.
“What’s your favorite moment?”
“...” she paused. Though silence fell between them often, it was never quite like... this. Thick, oily, slimy, depressingly uncomfortable. “This,” she said rather strangely, taking a sip of the liquid.
“...”
“Your monologue doesn’t seem so depressing now, does it?”
“Nah, not really.” Asher already suspected something ever since she’d told him that her brother died fighting for ‘human rights’--that she wasn’t here of her own will.
“You should go,” she said, slowly getting up as she drained the cup.
“... yeah,” Asher said, setting down the cup. He’d only taken a few sips--there was no ‘acclimating’ to this thing. It burned as much today as it did the first time he tried it. “Hey,” he called out just before leaving. “This is a close second for me. If you wanna vent, just know that I’ll be your wall.”
Asher left the smithy, stretching and yawning lazily. It wasn’t as though he knew precisely what was happening with her--but it didn’t matter. They were the sort of issues that were well beyond his scope of understanding. She was perhaps suffering for her family’s name, paying the dues for her brother’s sins, or she was perhaps entirely banished from the family for one reason or another. Or, perhaps yet, this was her choice--and only because it was still the best option she had for herself.
Regardless of which it was, it had nothing to do with him. As such, he headed over to the tavern, in want of a drink. Slowly, bit by bit, his Souls were shooting up--he got 50,000 from winning the duel and an extra 25,000 from clearing the Stage. The Stage’s rewards, for its difficulty, were quite stingy--besides the Souls, he only got 10 Divine Gems and four jugs of fresh water.
As soon as he entered the Tavern, his eye spied the shadow in the corner--Sarah was sitting and drinking, her eyes glaring deathly daggers at him. He smiled faintly at her before turning toward the bar where the familiar face eyed him up and down, occasionally glancing toward Sarah.
“... ballsy,” she said.
“A jug of ale.” he grabbed the jug and went toward the corner, sitting opposite of her.
She remained silent and so did he, simply sipping ale to wash down the liquid fire that he’d drank before. It was halfway through his jug that she finally broke the silence.
“Did Tan suffer?” she asked.
“... my respect for you just shot up a bit,” Asher said. “And, no. He didn’t.”
“Looks like I underestimated you,” she said.
“Eh, don’t feel bad. Most people do.”
"... I've never done this before," she said while he remained silent, though already having a faint idea of what she 'never did before'. "But... how about we bury the hatchet? You're clearly no ordinary beginner. But, at the end of the day, you are a beginner. No matter how strong you are, there’s limits to how much you can do all by yourself. Especially if you have a relentless shadow haunting you.”
“...”
"Come work for me and I'll guarantee you a smooth life, which is far more than most people here ever get." Asher re-examined her a bit inside his mind; his initial impression was that she'd never be willing to suffer a defeat, even the type that was more akin to a stalemate than an actual defeat. And yet, she took a step back--not without throwing in a couple of jabs, naturally--but it was more than he expected her to do. However, it was pointless; even if she got on her knees and begged, nothing would have changed. Asher learned a painful lesson a long, long time ago--once people show you who they are... believe them.
“You’re beautiful, clever, and clearly have some kind of antisocial personality disorder, the severity of which I’m woefully unqualified to guess,” Asher said. “You probably have a horde of men dancing under your thumb. Most of which will be like that poor fella, whose last words were something like ‘tell her I put up a fight’. So, it begs the question--why swallow your pride and ask me to join hands? What has changed since then to now?”
“Are you entirely incapable of simply answering what you were asked? Is it in your blood to start shitting unnecessary crap as soon as you open your mouth?”
"I won't join you," he said. "I mean, you already knew that. This means it was just a set-up for the follow-up: we can cooperate. But, 'cause you first suggested the whole subordination, you imagine it'd hold sway in whatever parameters we draw up. Alright," he added, taking a sip of ale. "Maybe you're not as clever as I thought you were." she gnashed her teeth audibly, causing Asher to choke on a stray bout of laughter for a moment. "I've never liked games," he added. "I'm a businessman, not an unwilling participant in a whirlwind romance."
“Offer me all the points you get during the Hunt,” she said. “In a trade, I mean.”
“Eh? You can fuckin’ do that?!” Asher exclaimed somewhat in shock. “Well, shit. There ain’t no way I’m winning.”
“Humph, of course not,” Sarah rolled her eyes while Asher glanced back at the bar and the girl behind it. She was facing inward, her back turned toward him, but it was clearly shaking. Well, I got what I deserved, he chuckled and shrugged his shoulders. “It’s a competition between basically four major groups. Points are fed upward to the leader, and every member of the group tries to gather as many ‘cause if a group wins, the rewards trickle down.”
“Right.”
"As far as I know," Sarah said. "This is one of the thinnest newbie generations we've ever seen. Besides you, there are only like twenty survivors. There won't be another batch for at least another two months. As we're all mostly familiar with the long-term members, and since we have quite a few ways to defend, the newbies will become part of the equation that actually matters."
“So, since I’m a newbie, they’ll try and hunt me down like you did. And ‘cause of that, you want me to kill ‘em and give you points?”
“Yes.”
“Wow. No wonder you swallowed your pride. Bitch.”
“...” her entire body winced violently, but she endured. Asher, on the other hand, drew his lips out into a wide smile.
“Damn. This will be fun. Tell you what.”
“... what?”
“I’ll give you points, all of them. In fact, I’ll actively hunt for them. However," he added. "With a single stipulation: I will trade them all in bulk a few days before the end of this thing. In turn, I don't need Souls, items, or whatever else you can trade with me. No, I only want one thing." she took a deep breath and waited. "I get to insult you with whatever vile garbage I can think of for one hour daily, and you can't so much as look at me sharply. If you endure until the end, you can have the points. For each time you fail, though, you will owe me, I dunno, 50,000 Souls. That seems fair."
"..." she was a fuming volcano--had been halfway through his proposition--and yet, musingly, she endured without blowing her top off.
This thing is much bigger of a deal than I thought, Asher concluded silently. I need to find out precisely what the victor gets. It's not just some shallow garbage like trophies or souls. From the sounds of it... it might be some kind of privilege that an entire group can use. Maybe a compound where they all live? Now... how the hell do I wring that out of someone who I will rip to shreds daily?