Difficulties
“Goddammit!”
I ducked to avoid the screeching bird-like creature that dove and attempted to claw my head off my shoulders.
“Language!” Khalil yelled as he batted one of the birds away with his shield.
“Fuck you! I’m a vampire, God already hates me,” I shot back as I whirled my serpent-tongue spear above my head, cutting two of the birds down.
The twins, Jiyun and Daehyun, stood back-to-back, holding their swords high and protecting each other. Seeing that they and Khalil were fine, I turned my attention to the shrinking form of the screaming Aurora in the distance as she was being carried away by one of the damn birds.
“I’m going after her,” I yelled, hoping that the others heard me and would keep themselves safe. I could move faster on my own.
I dashed forward then focused all my attention on the form in the distance. With a flex of my will, I triggered my skill—[Overburn Skill—Track]. The sense of direction blossomed inside of my chest, pointing at Aurora.
I wasn’t happy that I had to burn the skill, I didn’t have many utility skills on my shelf, but I didn’t have the time to swap my skills right now, nor did I want to use my [Quick Swap Slot] in case that I needed it later. For all the power that my Mask gave me, I had quite a few limitations. Only being able to hold three of my blood gained skills active at a time, well, six with my [Swap Profile].
I dropped my serpent-tongue spear on the ground, it was too heavy and cumbersome for me to carry and run at the same time.
“Saia!” I yelled at the small—or rather no longer that small dragon—who was battling the birds in the air. “Keep them off me,” without looking to see if she could respond I ran to the cliff’s side then jumped and grabbed a ledge.
My nails, like claws, bit into the stone and allowed me a better grip. While it was daylight out, whatever was casting the light in this place wasn’t a real sun, which meant that I didn’t lose any of the advantages my vampire nature gave me. Though, at this point I didn’t even know how much the sun would weaken me in the first place.
My vampire nature had progressed into the realm of an Elder Vampire. Something that shouldn’t have been possible, except apparently it was, and almost no one else knew how vampires actually aged. I was turned by a second-generation vampire, my sire was the firstborn son of the originator of my vampire bloodline. And apparently, the closer a vampire was to the original, the faster they grew—who knew.
That made me only one removed from an original, and that accelerated my growth significantly. I was still unsure what to think about my sire’s revelations, but I was glad of it.
With my first profile being active, I had [Lesser Strength] which boosted my already significant physical strength. I tore up the cliff at a speed that few things would be able to match.
I knew that I had to be quick, the bird had taken Aurora somewhere up ahead, probably to a nest, and I didn’t want to think what could be waiting up there.
The birds were the size of ponies, looking like reptilian, or perhaps more dinosaur-like creatures, only covered in thick feathers.
I glanced back, to the clearing where the others were still fighting, and saw that a dozen birds were still there, fighting. I hoped that most of them had gone on the attack, and that I wasn’t about to jump into a nest filled with twice that number.
I reached the top of a cliff, and pulled myself up, pulling out one of my daggers with my left and my revolver with my right. I scanned the nest, locating Aurora immediately. She was struggling with the big bird. Broken spikes made out of stone pierced through the twig nest beneath her to spear through two baby birds. The mother bird was obviously pissed off as it tried to peck Aurora to death while avoiding her swinging her knife at it.
More baby birds were hobbling toward her, trying to eat her. I reacted, my gun rose and I lined up a shot, then fired. A single bullet pierced the big bird’s head and blew its brains out, I holstered it, not wanting to waste any more ammo, and then jumped forward. I cut through the baby birds the size of dogs with sharp beaks while Aurora moved back and slumped against a rock, breathing heavily and holding her knife in a trembling hand.
Once I was done with my bloody work, I stepped up to her, looking her wounds over. She was covered in cuts and claw marks on her forearms. Her long padded jacket had protected most of her body from the attacks, leaving only her shins and lower arms unprotected, but it had been pierced on her shoulders where the big bird had caught her when it picked her up.
“You okay?” I asked as I pulled my backpack from my back and pulled out my water flask.
Aurora blinked at me, obviously in shock. “I—I’m fine. Just peachy.”
I didn’t believe her. Aurora was the weakest of their group, though only because her Mask didn’t lend itself well to the environments we found ourselves more often. Her Mask allowed her to sense and shape stone, and it had some limited ability to shake the earth. It wasn’t something that she could use when picked up by a bird. She was lucky that the nest had been built on top of a rocky cliff.
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I grabbed her arm and started pouring water over her forearm, cleaning her wound. The scent of blood made the thirst ache inside of me, but I had more than enough control over it by now and I easily pushed it aside.
“I’m fine Marianna,” Aurora complained as I fussed over her. She was a human, and therefore she was fragile.
“We need to get you to Khalil, he can purify your wounds and make sure they don’t get infected.”
“Mari,” she said again, making me raise my head and meet her eyes.
I didn’t let up, I kept working as I held her gaze. “Why didn’t you use your knife before?”
She winced at that, but then she pouted and looked back at me defiantly. “I’m not a vampire Marianna, I can’t survive a drop from those heights.”
I narrowed my eyes but didn’t respond—she got me there. I’ve forgotten what it was like being human. If she had knifed the bird while in the air, she would’ve splattered against the ground.
I sighed. “You need to be more careful; you’ve gotten too used being able sense everything coming.”
One of Aurora’s new skills let her sense vibrations more clearly through earth and stone. It had been an invaluable skill for their group, but, as they had just learned, it didn’t do shit to detect monsters flying through the air.
“Why didn’t you detect them?” She asked, it wasn’t an accusation, Aurora wasn’t the kind of a person to do that, she was just genuinely curious.
I grimaced. “They were upwind, so I didn’t smell them, and the howling of the gale around the mountain masked their approach.”
That was my mistake, I too had gotten used to always being able to tell that danger was near. Between Aurora’s skills and my innate senses, we had never run into something without knowing that it was there.
A rustle behind us made me whirl around, my hand going for my weapons, but I relaxed once I saw that it was just Saia.
“Is everyone else alright?” I asked.
“Feedback: All the foes are dead, there are no critical injuries.”
I took a deep breath, then looked back at Aurora. “Let me get some blood, then we’ll make our way back down.”
Aurora at least gave me the courtesy of trying not to look disgusted. I turned and started gathering the dead birds, maybe some of them would give me good skills.
----------------------------------------
We made camp at the base of the mountain, with the bird nest taken care of, there wasn’t anything else around that could threaten us.
Khalil knelt next to Aurora, who sat next to their fire, and used his skills to treat her wounds. He had his [Lesser Blessing of Purification] to ensure that there would be no infection, then he used his newest skill [Lesser Cure Wound]. It wasn’t a skill he had gained from his Mask, but rather his Ornament, which was Medic. He had picked it up back home as Constantinople was constantly in need of people to care for the wounded.
Having a city filled with rifts would probably do that.
The skill could barely heal scratches, but it did help somewhat. They were lucky that he had gotten that skill a few days ago, while helping care for Daehyun’s wounds from their previous battle.
I tried not to look at the rest of her group, as I felt a bit guilty. They had been fighting and surviving this place for sixteen days, and all of them carried injuries and evidence of their struggles. I on the other hand was the picture of perfect health, any injury I suffered was healed in seconds.
“That was something,” Jiyun said as she walked over and sat down next to me.
“It was,” I nodded. “We made a mistake, got too comfortable.”
Jiyun inclined her head. “We won’t make the same mistake again.”
I managed to push back my retort. The only reason why Aurora wasn’t dead was because I was a vampire, and was able to follow the bird that had carried her away fast enough to save her.
I glanced up at the sky, looking at the glowing ranking list that was displayed above. Earth—or Terra as the Grand Spell was calling them—was losing. It wasn’t by much, a million points, which on the scale of what they were doing was only a dozen or so trials. But, there was a lot fewer terrans still in the challenge. The one hundred had been reduced to just over forty, while the Suul—the other race, from the second world—still had around sixty of them still alive.
My sire and I had made a big dent in the Suul challenger numbers by killing over twenty of them, but it didn’t seem to phase them. The individual rankings had also changed in the last few days. The points my Sire and I got from killing the Suul had pushed us to the top, as we had been granted all the points that they had previously. But the others had caught up, dropping us to the fourth and sixth place, respectively. The individual list also told the story of two different philosophies. Terran challengers were clearly pursuing individual power, as most of us held the top twenty list. The Suul had their points distributed amongst all of their people, and if past was anything to go by they worked in larger groups.
Once again, I was annoyed at the fact that people just couldn’t see beyond their own personal gain.
“Thinking about leaving us behind?” Jiyun asked, her tone joking. I turned and looked at her, seeing that there was some truth in her question too.
“No, of course not.”
“You could’ve done a lot better without us slowing you down,” she looked back at the others. Her brother Daehyun, Khalil, and Aurora were on the other side of the fire, just far enough that they couldn’t hear her whispered tone.
“I would never do that,” I told her. Yes, she was right, they were slowing me down. But there was safety in numbers, strength too. We’ve encountered several situations that would’ve been difficult for me alone, and while the others weren’t vampires, their Masks did give them powerful skills. They weren’t weak, not at all.
“We are only going to keep falling behind,” Jiyun said her head turned to the sky to look at the lists.
“I could try and scout more, I don’t need sleep, and with Saia I can cover twice as much ground. We could try and focus on the trials, they give more points and better rewards.”
Jiyun grimaced. “Yeah, but they also pit us against other people.”
That was one of the issues with trials, there was a very real chance that any trial would put us in a position to fight against other people, Suul or Terran.
“Ultimately,” I started. “They all made their choices, just as we made ours. We are here to gain power, to become stronger in order to help our people back home. I’ve… I think that today was a wake up call. Aurora could’ve died, the rest of you could’ve died. We need to make a jump ahead, none of you have reached the second Investment, and I think that you need to before this challenge comes to an end.”
Jiyun met her eyes, her expression turning determined as she stood. “You’re right. Let’s talk with the others, we need to change up our tactics.”
I took a deep breath, then followed her to the others.