We did our best in the following days to go at least 10 miles a day, but it seemed like an impossible task. The farther into the forest we went the more monsters we ran into. The Flesh Mongrels had become few and far between leaving us to deal with real monsters. We were assaulted from the air and the ground. Different kinds of reptiles, birds, and insects who had all been changed raged against us for being in their territory. We accumulated several wounds, and I got a lot of practice playing the Song of Healing. When we couldn’t go anymore, we’d camp and cultivate.
There was always someone on guard, and sleep was more of a commodity than we’d like. Two weeks into our journey we cleared out a cave and bunked down in there exhausted.
“How are we ever going to get there at this pace?” Josh rumbled too tired to use his skill to change his voice.
“I know right? It’s like we keep getting stronger but so do the monsters! Every day it feels like they jump up five levels!” Tina complained. I knew exactly how she felt. I’d jumped up to level 23 in the two-week period, but it felt like the monsters were never ending and each of them was either only a level below me or five levels above me. Sighing, I checked my stat screen to see my increases.
Nathan Schute: Bardic Archer
LEVEL 23
STRENGTH: 15
CONSTITUTION:12
AGILITY:15
DEXTERITY:68
INTELLIGENCE:15
WISDOM:16
CHARISMA:57
PERCEPTION:11
0 Free Stat Points
I’d been making some good progress and had even gained another skill in my archery. It was called Concussive Arrow. When I hit a target with it any other enemies within five meters of the arrow are hit with a sound blast that causes dizziness and occasionally makes a monster stop vomiting. It was an interesting skill, and I was happy with it, but I couldn’t help but wish that I made more essence through archery. My essence gain was always more if I played during battle, but if I just sniped something from farther away, I essentially got nothing.
It was always better for us when we ran into a high leveled single monster. The twins had finally unlocked some performance skills so when we ran into something like that, we’d buff her or nerf the monster and she would tear it apart. But more often than not we were attacked by larger numbers and had to use our weapons skills more often.
We were getting better little by little though. One day we decided to come up with formations we could quickly get into deciding which buffs were best for different situations allowing the others to continue fighting. We still only remembered to do it maybe a quarter of the time though and if we were really outnumbered any thoughts of strategy went out the window. It was frustratingly slow, but we were improving in remembering to use our formations more often. I let out a breath before addressing the group.
“So, what do you guys want to do? Keep heading to Seattle or just live our lives in this cave? As long as Josh doesn’t get any bigger it seems to have enough space.” I received a glare from Josh who was still sensitive about his size.
“I don’t know the cave is looking pretty cushy right now.” Tina joked, but I could tell that she was at least partially serious.
“We’re just tired right now, maybe we can spend a couple of days here to rest? You can go get us some food!” Tony added. I rolled my eyes thinking about the fact that just a few weeks ago they were making me promise I wouldn’t go out by myself again but ever since a few days ago they were totally fine with it. A few days ago, I made a big jump in skill through my cultivation.
I’d been messing with my core again to see if I could make it do anything like the string, I’d used to start being able to use sound essence and I discovered that I could remove the essence from my core and push it out as long as I kept some of it attached to my core. The essence flew out of me covering a small area around me. When it was activated my hearing improved tenfold, and within the area, it seemed like I had a form of sonar. I could close my eyes and still not bump into anything because the essence would bounce off of it warning me.
I assumed this was what the system meant as an aura. It wasn’t super useful because it only covered about a meter around me, but it was still cool. Meanwhile, the others had started making jokes about me being Daredevil, so they didn’t need to worry about me anymore.
“So how long are we staying here?” I asked the group and the conversation devolved into an argument about how much of a break we really needed. We eventually landed on three days then Josh and I went out to gather firewood while the others set up camp. As we walked together in silence just outside of the cave picking up sticks, I looked up at my friend. He was much more subdued these days and I’d started to get worried about him.
“Hey man how are you doing?” I asked receiving the "man shrug" which was essentially supposed to say “I’m fine, but not really, but I don’t want to bother anyone about it.” I pushed a little farther and he leaned against a tree root.
“Honestly man, things kind of suck.” He paused and then looked down at me. “I’m down with getting stronger, my mom and you are awesome and seem to be adjusting to this stuff really well. The rest of the band is doing ok following your lead. But I hate all of this. I hate the fighting, I hate the monsters, I hate having to live in the forest.” He was breaking down into crying now and his voice was getting louder. “I hate looking like this, and I hate that my dad is dead!” He punctuated the last part by turning and slamming his hand into the tree root.
I didn’t know how to respond, and I just sat back and watched him as he punched the tree and cried. When he’d calmed down a little, I walked up and did my best to wrap my arms around him in a hug and he just picked me up and squeezed me. I just let him and after a while, he put me back down.
“One day it’s gonna be better again you know that right?” I asked him.
“Do you promise?” He responded. His question took me aback. “Could I make a promise like that?” I wondered. But then again how could I not? How could I not do everything I could to make things better when my best friend was hurting?
“Yeah man, I promise. One day things will be better.” I pulled out my guitar and started plucking the intro to “Wake Me Up When September Ends by Green Day.” He gave a small chuckle before joining in with the lyrics. The others must have heard us because Tina and Tony joined in with their instruments the best they could. Susan leaned against the entrance to the cave with her hands over her mouth. It was clear that she’d been crying too, as I looked around, I saw the others with tears in their eyes.
“We’d been luckier than most people,” I’d been telling myself since the day the leaderboards and the system store were announced. But there was another part of that notification that I’d been doing my best not to think about. At this moment though I couldn’t stop myself. We’d stopped and were going to stay stopped for a few days. There wasn’t something brand new I had to explore right now. There wasn’t something I could throw myself at right now. There was only the number 45. We were part of the last 45% of humanity which means that billions had died. I finally let myself feel it again, for the first time since I’d beaten that Flesh Monger to death it came flooding into me.
I didn’t pound the dirt or scream at the sky, but I felt the tears stream down my face as we finished the song. For the second time today, someone hugged me. I felt each of my friends join in and there we stood tired, angry, and sad. After a few minutes, I wiped my eyes and steadied myself. I’d made a promise and I couldn’t just stand around crying if I wanted to keep it. We finished collecting the firewood and setting up camp.
The following morning, I walked outside the cave and stretched yawning. We’d really messed up last night letting the guard shifts lapse. We’d already been exhausted and then add the crying on top of it, and we just passed out. I’d have to make sure that we did better about that from now on. We’d noticed that Susan, who had the highest constitution needed less sleep than us, but even she crashed last night. I bent my legs and sprinted at the closest tree, I ran up the trunk as far as I could before kicking off of it, I reached up and grabbed the closest branch I could reach.
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Standing on the branch I let my aura spread out as far as it would go and began running and jumping between tree branches. My body movement had improved so much that I felt like a ninja from an anime jumping from tree to tree. I made sure to stick close to camp so that my improved hearing could pick up any trouble and I could rush back. My goal for this morning was to hunt for breakfast. I kept an eye out among the branches and surely enough, a few minutes later I saw what I was looking for.
Nestled high up in the branches was a nest I hid behind a branch and watched as the mother bird preened herself. I focused on it and the status popped up. “Level 12 Teribird.” I knew I could take it, but I didn’t feel like depriving her eggs of a mother today. Today I was the aggressor. I activated the utility portion of amplify and plucked a string making the mother bird think that the sound came from close by. I continued to do this until she was far enough away then I sprinted in and grabbed one of the large eggs.
Booking it as fast as I could, I made it back to camp as the others were walking out. They looked at me annoyed and I knew I’d been caught. The only thing I could do was hold up the egg. Offering them food seemed to do the trick and Susan rummaged through her pack for the cooking materials. We started up the fire again and before we knew it, we were enjoying Teribird omelets. After the emotional day we’d just had it was nice to just sit around the fire eating eggs with friends.
Two more days passed in the blink of an eye, and we were back to traveling. Our combat abilities continued to improve a little at a time. The beasts and monsters continued to attack us, but it was clear the small break had a huge effect on our morale. It felt less like a trudge and more like an adventure. Even Josh seemed to be doing better. I continued to work on my aura, but it seemed that no matter how much essence I added to my core the aura only got marginally bigger.
I’d hit another roadblock in my cultivation, and no matter how many times I talked out loud to Apollo asking for clues he wouldn’t answer. I knew that he’d reach out again eventually once I’d paid him enough essence, but it was still frustrating just waiting for him to rip me out of the universe again for a chat. The only silver lining to all of this was that I was still maintaining my 2nd place position on the cultivation leaderboard. The others had made their way onto the board too, the only one that had made it into the top ten was Susan though as she had managed to unlock her aura as well.
Unfortunately, hers barely covered the skin on her hands. It did have an excellent effect though. She had gone with a concept of change as her second essence type and while my aura seemed to be sensory hers was much more physical. When she placed her hand on something she could make it hotter or colder. It wouldn’t burn or freeze anything, but it was enough to light a fire under everyone else. Susan and I could exchange what we knew up to a point but then others we couldn’t.
We did everything we could to give each other hints but aside from sharing the concepts that made up our cores, we couldn’t say anything about how we manipulated the essence. It was like the system was purposefully trying to make it as hard as possible to spread information about cultivation. It made me wonder how powerful cultivation could make someone.
We were making pretty decent time now and climbing all of the leaderboards steadily. One day we’d stopped to take a break when we received a notification.
“Area quest received! An area boss has made its den close by. Find the den and kill the Umber Bear. Reward variable.” The others all looked to me for a decision about this and after thinking about it for a second, I made up my mind.
“We’ll scout it out, if it looks too dangerous, we won’t engage. But this is too good of an opportunity to not at least check it out.” The others agreed with me, and we started our search. I turned on my aura for the hearing benefits and this time I kept it on. We decided to keep the search area within a hundred meters so it was likely I might hear something; I was right. An hour into our search I heard a roar coming from the south. Telling the others, we redirected our search in that direction. It didn’t take long until we came upon a tree with most of the dirt dug up underneath it. I could hear a snuffling sound coming from the space underneath the tree but couldn’t see the monster yet. I climbed down the tree I’d been standing on as silently as I could and then crept forward slowly. When I was close to the edge of the hole I laid down and crawled to peer over the edge.
The Umber Bear stood in the center of the hole ripping into the carcass of something that I couldn’t see. The bear could have been the size of a blue whale, with black fur and white eyes. I continued to watch it as it savaged its meal and I finally saw its status.
“Level 50 Umber Bear (Area Boss)” My eyes widened with fear, and I started crawling back slowly. There was no way we could fight something like that. As I stood to try and climb the tree again, I felt a chill go up my spine. My enhanced hearing noticed it before I did. The snuffling sound from earlier had stopped. I turned around and sure enough two white eyes peeked over the edge of the hole and stared directly at me. I felt a heartbeat pass then two, then I turned back to my friends still waiting in the trees for me.
“RUN!” I screamed; the beast was on me in the next moment towering over me the size of a small skyscraper, its mighty paw raised to strike me down. I completely stopped controlling my speed at that moment and dove between its legs. Turning I attempted to run away from it but for something so big its speed was just as impressive. It was on me again it dove, opening its jaws to snap shut on me. My aura felt it before I saw it and my body reacted by throwing me in the air, I did a back flip landing on the back of the beast’s head.
I pulled out my bow and attempted to place an arrow into the back of its skull, but it was no use the arrow just bounced off. The bear started to stand again, and I had to hold on for my life to the fur on its head as it rose. Once it reached the peak of its rise what I saw made my stomach lurch. My friends were all just standing there with their weapons out, but not moving.
“I SAID FUCKING RUN WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” I bellowed. That’s when they moved Tony threw out a chakram using its string to propel him forward until he landed on top of the bear’s head, he threw both weapons and the strings wrapped around the bear’s maw. It didn’t stop the animal from opening or closing its mouth, but Tony was riding the bear like a professional bull rider anyway. I could hear Josh singing while Tina laid down a complicated baseline.
She was using the performance skill that she’d gotten called “Here comes the Boom.” It was the longest name for a skill I’d heard of yet, but the effects raised a target's strength, speed, and constitution by 50% for 1 minute. She could only use it once so she didn’t have a chance to use it yet but as she thumped out the baseline to “Stayin' Alive by Bee Gees” and Josh coming in the lyrics I felt power flow through me. The next moment Susan jumped off a branch from above and she said something that I only picked up due to my enhanced hearing.
“Hold on!” I clutched onto the fur even tighter as Susan brought her fists up for an overhead slam. When she brought her fists down on the bear’s sensitive nose its head and body followed crashing to the ground and I was thrown. Twisting my body in midair, my feet slammed into the trunk of a nearby tree. I continued to use my enhanced speed in tandem with my sonar allowing me to make minute adjustments at the last second. Pulling an arrow from my quiver, I kicked off of the tree aiming my entire body at the beast’s eye.
I activated the concussive shot and released my arrow even with my strength being increased though it barely punctured the massive bear’s eye. My body was still following the arrow though and as I reached it, I flipped my body forward and drove the sole of my foot into the back of the arrow driving it all the way in. The beast roared in pain and anger lifting itself up and swiping at anything it could reach. Tony released his strings from the bear and landed on the ground close by.
The bear grabbed the tree that Tina and Josh were standing on in its jowls and crushed it. In an instant, the tree exploded in half and began falling to the ground. Tony ran over to me and handed me one of his chakrams.
“Pull really hard when I give you the signal!” He then ran and I watched the small metallic string stretch out to its maximum length. The bear took a step back and I heard Tony shout. “NOW!” I pulled with everything I had. The beast stumbled against our trip line falling to the ground and Tony pulled his weapon back making it fly out of my hands without hurting me. We changed to our instruments, adding our buffing skills to the others for Susan who was now running full force at the monster’s ankle.
She hauled back and with all her strength punched the beast in the joint. We heard a sickening crunch, and the beast bellowed another painful roar and for a moment I thought we might be able to do this after all. Then my skin prickled, my sonar had picked up something, but I couldn’t see anything. I did hear a rumbling growl come from the beast for but a moment before it let out a bellow, unlike anything I’d ever heard or felt. It was like a physical force that hit all of us in a moment.
The trees around us were destroyed and we were blown away. Darkness overtook me as I passed out. When I came to, I felt a pain in my leg and when I went to look at it, I wished I hadn’t. A thick branch stuck out of my upper thigh. Looking to my left a hundred feet away I saw Josh’s huge form unconscious and covered in blood. Fear took over my mind as I looked around for some way to survive, some way to save my friends.
Susan was barely standing limping away from the hobbled bear. I could hear her sobs and noticed she was clutching her hand close to her body. I couldn’t even see either of the twins. The Umber Bear dragged itself forward on three legs and raised its massive paw. Susan stumbled and fell and as the paw started to come down a visceral scream of rage and pain ripped itself out of my body. My aura reacted and some kind of pulse thrummed into the ground propelling me towards the animal.
I continued to scream, and the animal stopped its attack to hold its head. It opened its mouth and whimpered in pain. I didn’t even feel the pain in my leg as I ran full blast up the side of its body and into the open maw. Pulling out my push daggers I attacked anything and everything inside my range. The fleshy innards of the animal were not nearly as tough as its outer hide. I punched and ripped my daggers through anywhere I could I continued to scream the entire time and didn’t even notice when the kill notification popped up in my field of vision.
I didn’t stop my constant attack until I punched all the way through coming out the side of the beast, I was covered in the blood of the Umber Bear which was a dark brown color instead of red. I was breathing hard when suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. I jerked in surprise and tried to attack whatever it was that had touched me, but then another couple sets of arms wrapped themselves around mine stopping my attack. I had blood in my eyes and ears, but my aura still allowed me to hear some voices.
I was wrestled to the ground, and I felt something tighten on my leg making me scream again but the pain grounded me slightly. Still thrashing against the people holding me down I began calling out for my friends. Then a fist slammed into my face, and everything went dark again.
When my eyes next opened, I saw the roof of a tent flapping slightly in the wind. I looked to my left and right seeing nothing but empty cots, that’s when I realized I was also lying cot with my hands and feet bound. “Where am I?” I began to panic and fight against my bindings when a soft hand touched my bare chest.
“Hey hey it’s like totally going to be ok I promise! I’m like super good at this healing stuff!” The voice belonging to the hand spoke. I looked at the woman’s face and it was a girl probably close to me in age. Wearing a floral print dress and a leather headband. I tried to speak but found myself coughing instead. The woman stood up and brought over a water bottle. She opened it for me and tilted it up to my lips. “There we go that’s way better, right?” I nodded before asking the first thing that came to my mind.
“Where are my friends?” I asked and she smiled at me.
“They’re good! You guys were like totes messed up when we found you but like I said I’m really good at this healing stuff. Some of the really bad stuff has still scarred though so sorry about that.” I stared at her blankly and she just continued to smile but turned her face, so she wasn’t looking directly at me. She told me she’d be right back and walked away. I activated my aura which seemed to be back to normal. So that I could listen in. Having to sort through the sounds until I found her voice was a little difficult but doable.
“He’s almost as pretty as you Santi, had to walk away before he asked me to remove his bindings, this group's combined charisma is crazy.” The voice of the girl said.
“I’ll talk to him, my charisma, and wisdom should be above his, so he won’t be able to convince me to do anything I don’t want to.” There was a pause before the girl spoke again.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t just let Damien do his thing? The others seemed nice enough, but that guy's state was terrifying. He’d have killed anything that got too close to him, he even tried to kill one of his friends before we stopped him.” Her words made my stomach sink. I didn’t remember much after I’d gone into the bear’s mouth but with the state, I was in I didn’t doubt she was speaking the truth.
“It’ll be fine. They’re bards I know how to speak their language plus we out-level them by a lot. If it comes to it, we can handle them.” The second voice spoke just before the tent flap opened and a guy walked in. He had copper skin and a lithe build. He walked with a grace and purpose I hadn’t seen before, and his handsome face made my heart beat a little faster. He walked straight up to me sat down on the edge of my cot and smiled.
“Hello, I’m Santiago Fuentes. Who are you?”