Chapter Three: Animals

  “Huh,” I said. “So we can understand each other now.”

  Lartha picked up Shadow and stood, still stroking the cat.

  “Apparently. This despite my computer not recognizing your language at all. It’s supposed to have all modern languages in its database, too.”

  I couldn’t suppress a smirk, despite the circumstances. “I doubt that extends to languages from other universes.”

  She froze. “Other universes?”

  “You haven’t figured it out by now? Wherever we are, it’s not where we came from. You and I aren’t from the same universe. For starters, there are no elves or whatever you are in my world, just humans.”

  “…Please tell me this is your idea of a joke.”

  “Unfortunately not. Did you have others you were with? I was with my family, but we got separated when the Trial started.”

  “A few classmates. We weren’t friends or anything, but when I arrived in this jungle alone, lacking the safety of companions, I was quite perturbed. I… well, I assumed we had been abducted for a virtual reality experiment. How else to explain the Classes? But if you claim to be from a different universe…”

  She looked nervous.

  “I am barely avoiding losing myself to panic right now,” I informed her cheerily. “If I stop to think about things too hard I’m going to lose all ability to take care of myself. Best that we just go with the flow.”

  “…Oh.”

  “Yeah, I only look like I know what I’m doing. And Rusty and Shadow, the hawk and cat? I met them less than an hour ago. They’re both connected to me through my classes. Speaking of, what classes do you have?”

  “My primary is Technomage, and my secondary is Brawler. We thought it was virtual reality, so I figured a primary class involved in technology and a secondary class in fighting would be good for whatever sort of game whoever kidnapped us had planned.”

  “That explains how you took out that wolf by socking it in the jaw. Is it dead, by the way?”

  “Yeah. I finished it off while you were fighting.” She started petting Shadow again. “So what classes do you have?”

  “Sorcerer and Ranger. I leveled up from killing those wolves.”

  “Is that what you were doing when you were muttering to yourself?”

  “Yup. I was assigning my Class Points.”

  “Class Points?”

  “Have you looked at your status yet?” She shook her head. “Try saying ‘self-analysis.’”

  “Self-analysis. Huh. So you get Class Points for leveling up?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you level up by killing things?”

  “So far that’s what I’ve seen, though who knows whether there are other ways. I assume there are, since not all classes are combat classes.”

  “I suppose we should try to figure out what the goal of this Trial is. The voice said that we were being timed, didn’t it?”

  “And that if we finished quickly and with flair we would get a boon, whatever that means.”

  “This place seems fairly dangerous. Is that why you extended the offer for us to team up?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, you never answered my first question: who are you, Yuan?”

  “Regular college student. I’m not anybody, really. From a planet called Earth; the only planet inhabited by humans – the only inhabited planet that humans are aware of, for that matter. So, I’d just call the world Earth, too.”

  “I am also a student. From a planet called Taxan, the capital of the Interstellar Empire. …You’re really from a one-planet civilization?”

  “We haven’t even developed transportation to get people from one planet to another in the same star system, let alone interstellar travel.” I patted my sword’s hilt. “We’re well beyond weapons like these, though.”

  “Are ordinary civilians allowed to possess weapons in your country?”

  “Not everywhere on my planet, but in my country, yes.”

  “Wait… you have multiple countries on a single planet?”

  “There are something like two hundred countries.”

  Lartha blinked in disbelief.

  “How is that even possible? What kind of population does your world have?”

  “About eight billion, I think.”

  She stopped petting Shadow to turn and stare at me.

  “Eight billion? For a single planet? How big is your planet?”

  I gave a one-armed shrug.

  “How should I know? I’m no geologist.” I turned to Rusty. “You know, I’m still not that strong, you beautiful bird. You’re tiring me out resting on my forearm like that.”

  “Does that creature actually understand you?”

  “He seems to understand simple commands, but other than that, no. Shadow, on the other hand, does understand speech.”

  Shadow meowed pleadingly, and Lartha started petting again.

  “We should get going. We have no idea where we are or what we’re supposed to do, but I’m pretty sure sitting in one spot is not going to help us progress. Also, I want to find my family. My mother and brother don’t have combat classes at all. My father and sister should be okay, though.”

  “Then let’s get moving.”

  Lartha started walking, and I followed, flicking my arm so that Rusty would take to the air again.

  It was a lot harder to walk through the jungle without Animal Stealth active, but since I couldn’t cast it on my compatriot, there wasn’t a lot of point to it. As long as we steered clear of colonies of giant bugs and skirted around any snakes we saw, I figured we would be all right, and for the first fifteen minutes or so I seemed to have been correct.

  Then a spider with a body as big as Shadow’s dropped out of the canopy and landed on my head.

  I screamed.

  Lartha reacted almost instantly, turning and punching it off, dropping Shadow in the process. The hairs on its legs scratched my face as it went, but didn’t draw blood. It landed on the tips of its legs (spiders don’t really have ‘feet’) on the ground, then jumped toward me.

  Shadow sprang at it at the same time, trying to claw its face off.

  It bit back.

  Pain. Fear.

  “Shadow!”

  I drew my sword and stabbed down, piercing into its abdomen. It shrieked – a sound I didn’t expect to hear from a bug – and twitched.

  Ding!

  [You have killed one small jungle spider with assistance. You have killed one small jungle spider without sustaining damage. You have earned Experience.]

  “Shadow! Are you okay?”

  “Meow.”

  Shadow was definitely not okay. Her front left leg had been bitten by the spider, and the wound was already oozing.

  “What do I do? What do I do?”

  “Calm down. Don’t you have a med patch?”

  I glared at the elf girl.

  “Med patches don’t exist where I’m from.”

  “Oh. Well, then I guess you can use one of mine?” She ran her finger along the circuitry on her suit, then peeled off a piece of the part covering his torso which had changed color to red. It was a square two inches to a side. “Just place it over the injury. It disinfects and accelerates healing. I guess you should probably wash out the wound first, though. You don’t have any water, do you?”

  I didn’t. My mother was the one carrying our water bottles. Actually, the need for food and water might be an issue if this Trial lasted for more than a couple hours.

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  “That should be our first priority,” I decided. “We need to find water, then food. We have no idea how long this trial will last.”

  “Any ideas on that? I’m not a wilderness survival expert.”

  “Neither am I, though my secondary class is supposed to be. Maybe if I can get another level up I’ll have the chance to acquire a skill or something?”

  “Too bad you can’t scout with your bird.”

  “I could try… but he doesn’t really understand more complex concepts, being a regular animal. Maybe if I chose to upgrade him…”

  I pondered. As I had noted before, I really had no idea how much things diverged from the source material. Could I increase an animal’s intelligence, or at least become able to communicate complex concepts? What about seeing through their eyes?

  Lartha seemed to be considering my words. “Well then, maybe we should stop avoiding the wildlife and start killing it. That way we could level up, and you could test your idea.”

  “…I’m a bit hesitant to do that,” I confessed. “I’m not exactly a hardened warrior, and killing wild animals when I could just let them live doesn’t really sit right with me.”

  “It’s either that or let the wound fester without water.”

  I felt a pleading though my bond with Shadow. I sighed.

  “All right. Let’s do this. Carry her for me?”

  Lartha sighed, but took the cat from my arms. After retrieving, cleaning, and putting away my sword, I led the way forward, keeping an eye out for anything that looked like it might provide me with decent experience, like giant snakes. I killed a couple with Magic Missile, not wanting to risk wasting my arrows by missing, blasting the slithery reptiles from the trees. Each time I received a notification of experience being earned. However, my mana was now listed as “Low” on my self-analysis, so I decided that any further slaying would have to be done with weapons.

  Every once in a while, Rusty would swing around to check on us before flying up away again. I hoped that nothing in the canopy would try to eat him.

  “Skree!” he called out.

  …I hate irony.

  Rusty plummeted toward the ground, swooping level to it at the last moment, knocking the thing that had tried to grab him aside to bounce on the dirt. It was some sort of almost-humanoid spider roughly three feet tall, several inches taller than my bird. I drew my sword and charged.

  The thing was fast. It dodged to the side easily, then lunged forward, fangs extended. The fangs and mandibles were rebuffed by the invisible plates of force armor around my stomach, and its top four legs scratched at my sides, tearing through cloth (but thankfully not skin) with the tiny iron-like hairs. I slashed again, and it jumped back out of range before springing forward once more, this time trying to bite my arm. The plates once again protected me. I shook it off, and it skittered around, trying to circle behind me. I whirled around, swinging my sword in a wide arc, but it remained just out of reach.

  “Skree!”

  Rusty flew at the creature, and it jumped away from the swoop, putting it back in range of my sword. I capitalized on the opening, slashing from right to left, my sword cutting through its carapace and leaving a long gash on its… torso? It turned its attention back to me and jumped, aiming for my face.

  In one moment of blinding terror, I stabbed up and forward with my sword while shielding my face with my other arm, squeezing my eyes shut. A sudden weight pulled my weapon down as the blade impaled something.

  Ding!

  [You have defeated one spider goblin without assistance. You have defeated one spider goblin without sustaining damage. For this accomplishment, Experience Earned has been doubled.]

  [Congratulations: you have leveled up.]

  I opened my eyes. “Phew,” I said in relief.

  “I’d clap, but my arms are full,” Lartha said in a flat voice.

  “Hush, you. That was scary.” It was freaking terrifying. That thing was way scarier than the wolves. “Anyway, I finally leveled up. Let’s see…”

Yuan Rivers (Sorcerer/Ranger Level 3)

Sorcerer Class Points: 5

Energy: Moderate

Condition: Healthy

Ranger Class Points: 3

Mana: Low

Sorcerer Advancement Options

Enhance Spirit Animal, New 0th Circle Spell, New 1st Circle Spell, Upgrade Magic Missile

Ranger Advancement Options

Enhance Animal Companion, New 1st Circle Spell, New Weapon Art, Increase Weapon Competency

Miscellaneous Advancement Options

None

  “Enhance Animal Companion.”

  As expected, this opened up a new list. It was… bigger than I was expecting, but not too big.

Animal Companion Enhancements

Increase Robustness

Increase Combat Prowess

Increase Defenses

Extra Training

Extra Talent

Increase Physical Prowess

Increase Intelligence

*Avoidance

*Sensory Link

  “Sensory Link.”

  [Your Animal Companion has gained the feature “Sensory Link.” By closing your eyes and concentrating, you can see and hear what your Animal Companion does. Be careful, as you become blind and deaf to the world around you when you do so. The range of this link is five miles.]

  My Ranger CP went down by two, disabling any further upgrading of that class.

  “Perfect. Rusty, Scout.”

  “Skree!” he said in agreement, flying high and away.

  “Watch me while he scouts,” I said. “I won’t be aware of my surroundings while I look through his eyes.”

  I shut my eyes.

  It was stunning: such sharp vision, seeing things so far below with such detail. I felt like I was watching a first-person movie filmed from the air, but so much better. I could hear the whistle of the wind, the sounds of the jungle, moving all around me as Rusty traveled. I could get addicted to this.

  While I watched, I pulled up my upgrade options for Sorcerer. Part of me wanted a new spell, or an upgrade to Magic Missile, but I was curious what sort of differences there were between my Animal Companion options and my Spirit Animal upgrades. I couldn’t hear my own words as I spoke them.

Spirit Animal Enhancements

Increase Intelligence

Increase Defenses

Increase Robustness

*Speak with Like Animals

*Spellbond

*Resistance to Magic

*Speak with Sorcerer

*Sensory Link

*Spirit Connection

  Some of those I was pretty sure what they did. Spellbond and Spirit Connection? No idea. I was a sucker, so I chose Speak with Sorcerer, depleting my Sorcerer CP by three and disabling further upgrades.

  [Your Spirit Animal has gained the feature “Speak with Sorcerer.” You and your Spirit Animal may now converse with one another, as though sharing a common language. This speech is unintelligible to all others.]

  Wasn’t I supposed to be deaf to my surroundings right now? Maybe the system voice didn’t count.

  I watched and waited.

  Water!

  There was a waterfall coming out of a hill and crashing into a pool that became a stream. I grinned, then opened my eyes. I could remember enough of the turns to know the general direction of our destination.

  “I’ll carry Shadow if you want to be our fighter,” I said. “I know where we’re going now.”

  She handed the cat and med patch to me.

  “Hey there, Shadow,” I said softly, my voice surprising me by coming out as meows. “I upgraded you. You can talk to me now.”

  “Are you… making animal noises?” Lartha said incredulously.

  “…Sorta? I upgraded Shadow while I was at it, and now the two of us can speak to each other in a manner that can’t be understood by anyone else. Right Shadow?” I said as we started walking.

  “You understand me?” my cat meowed at me.

  “I do.”

  “It hurts.”

  “I know. As soon as we get to the water, which should take twenty to thirty minutes, I’ll wash off your wound and put this med patch on it. That should heal you fairly quickly.”

  “Okay.” She paused. “What’s a minute?”

  “A… unit of time?” I counted out fifteen seconds. “Four times as long as that.”

  “Thirty? That’s a long time.”

  “…Did you just start existing when you became my spirit animal?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I guess that explains why it would seem so long to you. It’s a large chunk of how long you’ve been alive.” I snuggled my face in her fur. “I’ll take care of you, don’t worry.”

  “That is very strange to listen to.”

  “Stranger than just not being able to understand each other before we teamed up?”

  “Yes,” she said with certainty.

  As it turned out, Lartha was actually equipped with a weapon, which I discovered the next time we passed near a constrictor snake hanging from the trees. She pointed her fist toward it from a distance, flipped her hand upside-down, uncurled her fingers, and did everyone’s favorite famous web-slinging hero’s finger move. I couldn’t see clearly exactly what happened to her bracelet, but something that looked like a small cylinder attached to a line of blue light shot out and stuck to the snake. She squeezed her middle and ring fingers twice quickly, and electricity shot through the line to the cylinder, shocking the snake like a taser. It fell out of the tree with a thump, and she released her fingers, causing the cylinder to fly back into her bracelet.

  After that, she charged over to the fallen animal, and with a single sign-language “yes” of her hand, a blue blade maybe seven inches long that looked like it was some sort of sci-fi “hard light” construction extended forward over her hand from the top part of her bracelet. She stomped on the snake’s head, then stabbed it in the neck.

  “Ooh, I leveled up! Nice! Four points to Technomage and two to Brawler.”

  “…Why do you have an energy dagger?”

  “Hm? It’s a self-defense weapon.”

  “I thought you had implied that your country didn’t let ordinary civilians carry weapons.”

  Her eyes widened like she’d been caught out on something.

  “…You’re not just an ordinary civilian student, are you?” I concluded.

  She sighed. “If we really are in a different world, I suppose it doesn’t matter. As the daughter of an Imperial Parliament Member, I’m allowed to carry weapons for self-defense.”

  “Oh? So your father or mother is some sort of big shot?”

  “My mother, yes. The position of Parliament Member is hereditary, so… I guess you could say I’m something like nobility? That’s a concept that still exists on some of the planets; I don’t know if you have nobles on your world or not.”

  “Not in most countries, but it’s only been a couple hundred years since most places have moved on from that.”

  “That’s… really not that long, assuming your years are anything like Imperial Standard.”

  “Three hundred and sixty five point two five days, where a day is twenty four hours, where an hour is sixty minutes, where a minute is sixty seconds… where a second is…” I counted out a second.

  “Hey, Bracelet. Convert that to Imperial Standard.”

  “One Earth year is roughly zero point nine Imperial Standard years, assuming the boy’s measurement of one second is accurate,” a mechanical voice said.

  “So two hundred years would be about a hundred and eighty Imperial Standard years,” Lartha mused. “That’s really not much time at all.”

  “How long do your people live?” I couldn’t help myself from asking.

  “About five hundred years – Imperial Standard – give or take a tenth of that.”

  “That’s… way longer than humans live in my world.”

  “Oh? How long does your kind live?”

  “In the better developed countries, about eighty years – Earth years, obviously – give or take a decade or two. Barring health problems, most people live at least seventy years, and living past ninety isn’t exactly rare. Most people die in their seventies or eighties, I think.”

  “Wow. You’re really short-lived. How old are you, then?”

  “I’m twenty years old. You?”

  “I’m ninety-four. Your people age really fast, huh?”

  “Uh… Compared to you elves, maybe. Compared to most other mammals on our planet? Not really. We’re actually pretty slow to reach adulthood compared to most things.”

  “…Why do you keep calling me an elf?”

  “It’s the name of a fictional species of person that is extremely long-lived and has pointy ears.”

  “Ah.”

  Using her electric punch, her energy blade, and her taser cylinder, she killed a couple more snakes, a couple spiders, and one of those green leopards. Apparently her bodysuit also worked as armor, because it protected her from getting mauled by the leopard, though she did end up with scratches on her hands and face. She was very unimpressed that I didn’t drop Shadow to help her, but I pointed out that she hadn’t helped me with the spider goblin either, and she leveled up after that fight anyway.

  Not long after that, we finally reached the water, where Rusty was waiting for us.