Descend- Coming Together

by David Burke

  “I will do whatever you decide, Jay,” was all that Meikiyo added.

  “Thinking about this logically, the only reason that we were able to avoid it was because we managed to get here so fast. It is still busy killing all the other beetles out there somewhere. By the time the other teams, especially the slower teams, make it here they won’t be so lucky,” Huong said.

  “That was kinda what I was thinking. Look, maybe you all should go back and lead the rest of our cluster through the portal. I can’t abandon the other humans. You read the notification before. There are 997 humans here and only 28 of them are in our group.”

  As one all four of the girls started to shout at him telepathically. Finally, Meikiyo’s voice cut through the rest, “We have told you that we are in this together. We may love you, but that doesn’t mean that you make all our decisions for us.”

  “You are right. Forgive me. Sometimes my concern for your safety makes me speak before I think. I want you with me because I feel like we are an amazing team, but I also want you to be safe. I have to go hunt this creature down but each of you will have to make your own decisions.”

  Amelia snapped, “Like I’m losing my husband just hours after we got married.”

  “I already said I was doing whatever you were doing,” Meikiyo added.

  Jessie and Huong both said that they were in. They all stopped to drink from their canteens and eat a little food. Jessie estimated that the closest team wouldn’t be here for another few minutes and the next two after that should take at least ten minutes.

  Then the five of them headed off in the direction of the screeching beetles. It appeared to be coming from the direction that would put them on an intercept with the team that had two guys on it. Five minutes of winding their way through shattered beetle carapaces and severed body parts led them to their target.

  Jay’s Life Sense told him that it was big and his precognition gave him a generalized warning of danger. Yet the warning wasn’t very strong and so Jay wondered if they didn’t still out-level this thing. And then it became visible.

  It was just another beetle in the same way that a lion is just another cat. The thing must have been 50 feet long and even with all its legs on the ground it was still at least 15 feet tall and wide. Its barbed mandibles were leaking a viscous green fluid while its movements seemed to have cleared the surrounding fog.

  At that moment, a streak of lightning hit the creature and battle cries were heard as five people came running up from their spoke to engage the monster. If the lightning had any effect, Jay couldn’t tell.

  The two guys in the group were in front. One carried a spear and the other a long sword. Jay could tell that they were both Asian and looked like brothers. Jay thought they likely were related and hoped that wasn’t his American self thinking that all Asians looked alike.

  He worried that they would be cut down by the giant beetle that was turning towards them. Then the one with the spear threw it. A small tornado seemed to appear at the tail of the spear and caused it to spin as fast as a drill. When it contacted the beetle’s carapace it actually managed to bore in half of the spear’s length. It was a wound, but far from a fatal one.

  The two of them weren’t done though as the one who had just thrown the spear dropped to a knee, held out his hands and caught the foot of his brother as he leapt into the air. Then pushed up and propelled him just like the spear but without the spinning.

  The brother in the air shouted out, “Sanyang Hokeu.” Even though Jay knew the words were spoken in Korean, he somehow understood them to mean “hunting hawk”. A moment later he understood why.

  A translucent form of a giant bird appeared around the flying man as he landed a series of aerial kicks against the side of the beetle. Each of his kicks was mirrored by an attack from the giant bird. Cracks appeared in the carapace and it was knocked over and flung backwards thirty feet.

  Jay began to think that perhaps he had overestimated the danger of this creature. The rest of the racing team reached the two brothers and another lightning bolt matched by blasts of red and blue energies from the other two all slammed into the giant beetle. Jay called out to congratulate them when the beetle flopped back over.

  One of its barbed mandibles flashed out with shocking speed and cut the lightning girl in half. She didn’t even have time to cry out as she died. Her two companions dropped to their knees next to her ruined body while the brothers attacked again. This time with more mundane attacks. A burst of air or a swing of the sword. Perhaps they had shot their wad on the big attack.

  Jay didn’t wait to find out but instead conjured a dozen foot-long PSI blades and sent them spinning into the creature. The effect was disappointing to say the least. While some blades punctured its hide, all they did was get it to turn its attention towards him.

  Jay wasn’t willing to risk any of his girls being killed as the other had been. He yelled out, “Jessie and Huong, protect those girls. Amelia and Meikiyo, shadow fire from a distance. Leave it to me to engage.”

  He didn’t wait to see if they followed orders but maximized strength, speed, and hardness while conjuring an extra-long sword. This one would have worked for Sephiroth but because it was a weightless PSI blade, he could still move it with ease.

  Jay rushed forward in a blur and sliced his blade all the way through one of the mandibles. Then danced out of the way as the creature’s bulk moved through the space he had just been in. It lunged at him again but he leapt over it, landing on it and driving his blade down into its back.

  He saw three of the fireballs sink into it and then felt a blast of heat that seared his hands come up from the cut he was making in its back. The fire clearly caused deadly wounds but for the moment it was still very much alive.

  Then the part of the carapace he was standing on gave way, likely through a combination of the cuts he was making and the heat of the explosions inside its body. Jay fell entirely inside the innards of the beast. The smell was overwhelming. This must be what roasted cockroach smells like.

  Jay didn’t know if the girls had seen him fall inside and so expected to be roasted himself any moment. He had to think quickly. So he conjured a different type of construct. All around him he formed a suit of spiked armor, almost as though he was at the center of a giant morning-star.

  With a supreme effort of will he pushed hard, using his force bolts in an explosive form to expand his PSI construct. The effect being that spikes burst through the body in every direction from the inside out. It was ripped in half just as simply as the girl it has struck.

  Jay was grateful as the construct contracted and reformed around him as armor. For in that instant another ball of shadow fire exploded right next to him. He instinctively strengthened the construct as much as he could and when he was still breathing a moment later was glad to learn that his PSI constructs could resist the girls’ combo attack.

  He was a little seared but actually didn’t mind that. The armor had saved him from most of the heat and what had gotten through had cleaned off much of the bug guts that had been all over him. Even now his regeneration was working to fix him up and a few seconds from Huong would make him good as new.

  The thrill of a hard-fought battle surged through him. It hadn’t been a long fight but then most anime were probably wrong about that. Life and death battles were most often going to be short as both sides put their all into it.

  Something about the win, the thrill he felt made him look at the rest of his teammates. He felt pride in them, but also an unabandoned lust. To the victor went the spoils after all.

  After confirming that the girl who had been cut in half couldn’t be saved, Huong healed Jay up. The two teams made their introductions. The leader of the other team was a Korean guy named Hwa-rang, so that would make him the leader of the 3rd cluster. His brother was named Hyu-yung.

  Just as quickly, Jay said their goodbyes and his team raced back to find the rest of their cluster. All around them the fog was clearing up.
>
  Chapter 31- Settling into Level 3

  Victory had been great on so many levels. The feeling of teamwork with the others was top on the list. Right behind it was the knowledge that they had demonstrated who the strongest were. Jay had always gone after accomplishments in his games, but was never much for PvP. At this moment he could see the appeal.

  It was even more significant now because that strength meant that he was better able to protect the ones that mattered to him. The prizes that they won were also a great incentive for the race and drove home the value of what they had accomplished. Probably the last accomplishment was the sense of having striven against monsters and crushed them. The rush of adrenaline was certainly addictive.

  Now they had a portal to walk through that led to another floor of the dungeon. This one looked like an ancient city long abandoned and mostly reclaimed by vegetation. It was certainly more like what he would have expected a dungeon to look like even if it wasn’t a dimly lit gloomy place. It wasn’t an open jungle or barren desert.

  Really nothing to do for it but to step through. “Okay, I’m going first. Then I want you to come through in pairs after that. Samantha, can you organize that? Make sure that the pairs come through as thirty-second intervals so we aren’t overwhelmed in the event we get attacked.”

  “No problem, Jay,” she answered.

  “And, Miguel, do you mind being the rear guard? I don’t think there are any more hostiles here but wanna play it safe.”

  “Sure thing, boss,” Miguel said with a smile. Jay really hoped he could count on the guy but too much was riding on him now. If he stepped out of line, Jay would end him.

  As soon as Jay stepped through, he could feel something was off. The air was heavy around him. That wasn’t all, though. If he didn’t miss his guess the gravity was significantly heavier here.

  It was a bit hard for him to say exactly. Even without boosting his strength, he was 35 times stronger than he would have been on Earth. His muscular 6’10” frame would have been a beast on Earth.

  Now with the stat boosts he had gotten in the past few weeks it was next level. He constantly had to be careful to always be gentle with the surrounding girls. He didn’t want to accidentally crush a pelvis while being intimate.

  He began to scout the area with Life Sense while also boosting his precognition and speed. Good to know if there was a threat. Better to be able to respond to said threat.

  The results he was getting back from Life Sense were strange. There was life all over the place. By this point he had learned how to separate vegetation from animal life. What he was feeling now was very clearly spread out far too broadly to be animal life, but it didn’t feel like plant life. Honestly, it didn’t feel like animal life either, though.

  “Meikiyo, do you get any heat readings from out there? I am sensing something like animal life all around the ground, ruins, trees, everywhere but I can’t see anything,” Jay asked.

  The petite Japanese girl he liked so much stared off and focused for a moment before saying, “Actually I don’t see any heat signatures, not even from small creatures like rats.”

  Jay had been so distracted by what he was sensing that he hadn’t looked for similar creatures. As soon as he did he was shocked. He couldn’t even find any insects. No discrete animal life forms at all. That couldn’t be natural.

  Within a few minutes everyone had made it through the doorway to this floor. No sooner had the last person made it through than the doorway closed and a timer appeared on it: 17:47:16. A moment after that and a series of five cabins appeared a few hundred feet away on the only truly open area of land that didn’t have any signs of ancient ruins.

  So that was how long they had before the newcomers would arrive in their cluster. At least they knew where they were going to be staying tonight and those cabins were each more than four times the size of the old beach bungalows. Well then down to business.

  “Everyone listen up. Something is not right here. There are no animals or life forms that we can detect. If anyone senses something different, please let me know. There aren’t even any bugs,” Jay said as everyone came around him.

  “Yeah, no bugs. Tired of getting bitten up in the jungle,” Alexis cheered. She was another of the girls that Jay didn’t know very well, but he knew he needed to.

  So he thought, “Note to self, Alexis is not an outdoorsy girl.”

  A couple of the other girls joined in with weak clapping but most seemed to realize that no matter how much they hated bugs, this was more of a foreboding sign than a happy circumstance. “As much as I hate bugs too, this isn’t a good thing. I can sense life all around us but can’t seem to find anything. So we have to assume that whatever I am sensing is so hungry that it has killed everything living here down to the last mosquito.”

  “Right, and anything that could do that is probably smacking its lips at the smorgasbord that just walked through the door when we came,” Charlotte added.

  Jay looked at her and made another note to self, “Charlotte really likes to take charge. Make sure to keep that energy directed so we don’t have another Jasmine.”

  “There are five luxury cabins over there that we get for free for the next two days. It is already starting to get late. The sun will be down in a couple hours. I am asking everyone to stay inside of the cabins tonight. They should be large enough for all of us. The race team should each be assigned one of them. Since Amelia and I both have one but this is our honeymoon of sorts, Miguel, your team can have Amelia’s cabin for the two days unless she has a problem with that.”

  “Not like I was gonna need it tonight since I’ve got dibs on you all to myself,” Amelia responded.

  “I don’t want to complain, but there is a bigger problem than no bugs,” Samantha said.

  “You mean the gravity?” Jay asked.

  “Yeah, I can barely move. My entire body feels like it is weighted down,” she replied and many of the other girls echoed her.

  “I can tell that the gravity is heavy but I’m already starting to adjust to it. Then again, my Durability is 36. As far as I can tell that makes me about 35 times stronger than I normally would be. Add to that the extra muscle I’ve gained since getting here and this isn’t bothering me at all.” As Jay spoke he saw a longing come over many of the girls’ faces. He needed to be sensitive to the fact that many of them had been suffering for weeks now from an incurable horniness that was chemically induced.

  “Maybe the right question to ask though is, what is your durability, Samantha?”

  “Um, four, but if that makes me three times stronger than I was before, I definitely can say that the gravity here is heavier than three times Earth’s.”

  Many of the other girls called out that their Durability was only three, which of course meant that they had only started with one and gained two more when they crossed the first threshold. “Hmm, okay well maybe it will be easier inside the cabins. I would suggest that we all split up into groups for the cabins. Huong, Meikiyo, and Jessie, would you please all work with Charlotte and Samantha to make sure that everyone is assigned a cabin for the night. And thank you for sharing.”

  Jay and Amelia moved a short distance away from everyone else. They could of course have a private conversation with telepathy but it still felt more private if they weren’t in the middle of 26 other people.

  She smiled at him. “So ready to go make it up to me for pushing me over so roughly?”

  “You mean for keeping you from killing Jasmine before we voted and possibly being seen as a murderer?” Jay asked back.

  “Potato, potato, I just wanna have you all to myself tonight.”

  “I meant what I pledged today, Amelia. In many ways, I owe all of this to you. You helped put me on the right path. We still have a long way to go, but I feel like we are starting to come together and maybe, just maybe we can beat this test thing and find a way back home.”

  Amelia didn’t sound nearly as confident as she responded, “Maybe, but I
don’t really care. Would you give up all of this for your old crappy life on Earth?” As she spoke she wreathed her hand in shadows to demonstrate her power. “Or all this?” she asked while she waved her hands down, highlighting her figure.

  Jay didn’t really even have to think about that. “Earth isn’t my home. My home is with you, now. Wherever that may be. Whether this is some odd purgatory or an alien experiment. You are my home and I love you.”

  Amelia crossed the few inches between them and pressed herself up against him. He felt her breasts squish between them and couldn’t help an immediate physical response. “You know I love you too, but more importantly, I trust you.”

  Knowing even the parts that he did about her past, Jay knew that was a significant statement for her to make. It pained him but he needed to say something in response. It probably wasn’t the most romantic thing, but her trust in him demanded no less. “I appreciate your trust in me which is why I have to say, as much as I love you, you know I love the others on the team too, right?”