Adam grunted. “You know… this… sword… is the wrong… tool… for the job.” Each swing of the sword into the tree was punctuated by a grunt and thunk. He already had a sizable portion of the trunk cut away. He hoped it would only take another ten minutes of exhausting work to finish chopping the thick tree down.
“Another one coming,” Liz said. While not as strong as Adam, she was in charge of defending him while he worked. She readied his club, preparing as the spider jumped from tree to tree. It was four feet wide, including the legs, and the stuff nightmares had nightmares about. The worst part was the near total silence it traveled in. Only the jagged, claw-like tips of their legs made sound as they punctured tree bark.
Adam grunted back, redoubling his efforts. They needed the trees felled to increase the space they could fight in. It also provided valuable materials for building structures and walls. Unless two or more showed up at once, he would keep chopping while she bashed the monsters.
His latest strike made the entire tree shiver all the way to the crown of its canopy. He paused to wipe his brow. “Where is the not-so-good doctor?”
The spider collapsed, still completely silent, as the doctor appeared ten feet from Liz.
“Here,” he blew a strand of sweat-soaked hair out of his face. “This one slipped past me. Took down another six back there,” he said with a jerk of his head to loosely indicate deeper in the forest.
“Keeping track of the loot?”
“Yes, moooooom,” Carl said with a roll of his eyes.
Adam started chopping again. “You would think… a doctor in his thirties… would act like an adult.” Wood chips flew with each swing.
Carl sighed. “I’m busy killing big arachnids. I feel like being a little flippant.” He disappeared like a shadow before anyone could retort.
“I hate it when he does that,” Liz said. “It’s freaky. I don’t even know if he’s invisible, moving too fast to see, or straight-up teleporting.”
Adam grunted, engrossed in his work again. Kyra kept an eye out, but more importantly, an ear. She had already figured out Carl’s trick of near-invisibility. She didn’t reveal it so that she could catch him red-handed when he did something evil.
When the tree finally fell, Adam gave a shout, then pushed it toward the center of the clearing. He didn’t want it to fall into a cluster and suspend, only to come down at some unsuspecting time later. It crashed to the ground, sending up clods of dirt and a surprising amount of dust.
“You want to take over, Liz? Kyra?”
Adam held the sword out, but neither woman accepted.
“I’m good,” Liz said with a brilliant smile. She hefted the club and swung it at a creature that skittered out of a bush just then. It sailed off into the depths of the forest.
“Hey Liz,” Kyra said from where she watched.
“Yeah?”
“How are you not burning? You’re in direct sunlight.”
Liz’s smile grew even broader. “I don’t know, but I love it. Twenty years of avoiding sunlight… now I get to feel it without any worries.” She closed her eyes and spread her arms, looking up to the brilliant blue sky.
“Don’t get too relaxed.” Adam grunted and swung at an angle, cleaving a branch clean off the trunk.
“Never, boss.”
So it went for the next hour. Liz enjoyed the sunlight and punted critters when they got too close. If a large monster wandered in, she and Adam would deal with it together. Kyra remained ready, but abstained from combat as best she could. Eventually, something broke the relative peace.
“Help!”
“Did you hear that?” Liz turned in place, trying to figure out just where the shout had come from.
“Heeelp!”
She spun again, looking at a group of trees twenty yards away. Kyra looked the opposite way.
“Heeeeeelp!”
Adam pointed with the sword at a stand not far from where Carl had gone. “Over there.”
“Help!”
Confused, he turned ninety degrees, but the women did the same. They were all looking in different directions.
“What the hell?”
A woman burst into the clearing, bloodied and wearing torn rags that barely maintained her modesty. “Please, help me!”
Liz and Kyra raced to catch the woman as she stumbled to her knees, panting hard. Adam circled around, sword at the ready.
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“What are you running from?”
The woman gasped air in. She took great, heaving breaths.
“How long were you running for?”
“Baby spiders,” the woman gasped out.
“We’ve dealt with plenty of spiders already,” Liz said comfortingly. Her expression faltered when she heard rumbling from deep in the forest. “Baby spiders should be even easier.”
“Not like these.”
“Liz, I think I need my club.”
Liz stood and walked to Adam, eyes on the trees. Some were swaying more than the breeze justified. She swapped his club for her sword.
“See anything?” A brief flash of shadows caught her eye. “Carl?”
He appeared in the treeline to their right, bloody and clutching his arm.
“Fucking run!”
Adam looked at their companion, then back at the woman who was having trouble staying upright. He watched as Kyra grudgingly cast a heal on Carl.
“We’re not moving from here.”
A spider smashed through a smaller tree and tumbled into the clearing. Despite being on the ground, Adam gauged its size to be similar to that of a small horse. The legs were long, hairy and chitinous, and wriggled madly as it fought to right itself. It chittered horribly, like a frustrated cat turned into an insect and given the lungs of a dinosaur. It was loud enough to rattle their bones.
“What the…”
Another spider crashed into the clearing. A third followed a moment later. Only the third landed upright, but it took just seconds for the first to right itself. The second was unmoving, and it was easy to see why: a branch had lodged where its face should have been. The spiders had been moving quickly.
The first turned toward Adam and he got to see it full-on for the first time. He wished he hadn’t. While the body was that of a Volkswagon-sized wolf spider, instead of a spider face with eight eyes, it had the head of a baby. Two massively oversized multifaceted eyes stared blankly, reflecting the light in discomforting ways. They looked brown, then green, then purple, sometimes one after another, and at other times all at once. The baby opened its mouth, revealing a terrifying set of chalicera with long fangs dripping venom.
“Kyra,” Adam shouted. “Why do I know that the weird arm things for spider mouths are called chalicera?”
“Why the fuck would I know! Focus on killing the abomination first!”
Adam charged the spider, then was caught off guard as it jumped twenty feet toward him. He stopped and swung using his foot as a pivot. The club connected with the baby face of the spider as it put legs out to capture him, halting all progress between the two combatants. Gore splattered as the spider’s head caved in, but the little remaining momentum brought the giant body down on Adam.
Liz engaged with the third spider, showing a level of skill with her sword the others hadn’t expected as she clashed with the eight-legged monstrosity. She stepped up her speed and ferocity when she saw Adam go down, fearful of what had happened. The fight went from a surprising stalemate to a one-sided slaughter as she abandoned any attempt at defense. The sharp tipped limbs slashed her arms a dozen times by the time she stabbed the spider through its grotesque face. It fell limp and she rushed over to where Adam was buried.
“Adam!”
She didn’t hear anything. Her concern ratcheted up to panic and she shoved at the body. Carl appeared next to her, and Kyra took her other side. Together, they shoved the awkward, heavy corpse away. Adam lay with his eyes closed; chest still. Liz dropped to her knees and held her ear above his mouth, listening and feeling for breath.
“He’s not breathing!”
She moved to his side and started a quick, steady rhythm, whisper-singing Bee Gees’ Staying Alive as she performed CPR. Kyra leaned down and breathed into his mouth, then watched as Liz pumped on his chest.
“Guys, I don’t think…” Carl started. Adam coughed into Kyra’s face. She wiped the sputum away and smiled down at him.
“Thank the gods.”
“I really didn’t think,” Carl started. He shut his mouth so hard it clicked when the point of Liz’s sword touched his throat. She wasn’t even looking at him.
“I vote him out.”
“I second it,” Kyra said, also without looking.”
“Overruled,” Adam wheezed out. Kyra lunged down and wrapped him in a fierce hug.
“Why?” Liz stood and turned toward Carl, who, to his credit, had not moved.
“We need to work together.” He turned his head and coughed again, then gently pushed Kyra away. “Ow.”
“I’m sorry!” Kyra moved around and put his head in her lap, then put a gentle hand on his chest. She drained every last point of mana to cast a heal. He glowed for a moment, tension on his face, then relaxed.
“Oh, so much better. Thank you, Kyra.”
“Back to the issue at hand,” Liz said.
“Or at swordpoint, as is the case,” Carl said. He still hadn’t moved.
Adam grunted, tried to sit up, then lay back on Kyra’s lap. “This is more comfortable anyway.”
Liz snuck a quick look, but returned her attention to Carl in the blink of an eye.
“We need every capable person now.”
Liz shook her head. “He tried to let you die. What kind of doctor is he?”
“A shitty one,” Adam said with a wheezing laugh. “I wouldn’t trust him as an Olympic committee examiner, let alone with a vulnerable patient. But he’s not a doctor anymore. Are you, Carl.”
The small man shook his head.
“Are you?”
“No.”
“You already have a job, don’t you?” Adam said it like a question, but they could all hear the statement. Carl nodded.
“Job? Isn’t being a doctor a job?” Kyra looked down at Adam.
Adam shook his head. He looked into the distance, then flicked with his left hand a system prompt opened for all of them.
Tutorial #7:
Jobs. Jobs are generally granted at level five, based on actions and patterns presented by members of the System. There are rare cases where a job may be granted before level five by extraordinary actions, unusual circumstances, or through early apprenticeship.
Both women looked at Carl expectantly. He waited, but they were patient.
“Fine. I’m an assassin.”
“I knew it,” Adam said. He leaned up enough to look at Carl. “How did you get it?”
“I… I started with it.”
“I knew it!” Kyra jolted to get up, then remembered Adam on her lap. She settled down, then pointed imperiously at the little man. “You killed the others who started with you!”
He shook his head. “No! I swear on my oath as a doctor I did not kill them.”
Adam shook his head in return. “Not good enough. Swear an oath to me.”
“What?”
“I said: swear an oath to me.”
“I… I can’t.”
“Then you are as good as dead.”
Liz pushed the sword in hard enough to break the skin on Carl’s throat. He dry swallowed, causing another large bead of blood to well up and run down the blade.
“Okay.”
“Out loud,” Adam said. It was far more stern than he had been at any point. It was authoritative. His tone brooked no argument. None was given.
“I swear on my soul I did not kill those who started with me.”
All five people present felt the air shake with the power of the binding. Adam watched for a long moment before nodding.
“I need one more oath.”
“I can’t!”
“You swear it, or you leave.”
Liz withdrew the sword. She had felt the power in the oath. It shook her to her core. That had touched on something she didn’t even know she had: a soul. An actual, tangible soul. Something that could be felt, could be acted on. It wrecked her world view. She fell to her knees, nearly catatonic.
Adam hardly noticed. He was staring daggers at Carl. The smaller man stared back, dark sunken eyes filled with anger and regret.