by Tao Wong
“Rankings?” I say, my eyes growing wide. “It’s not dangerous, is it?”
“No, oyaji!” Mikito rolls her eyes. “It’s nowhere near as dangerous as challenging a Weaponmaster. Or a dragon. Or taking on monsters thirty levels higher. Or—”
“I get it, I get it!” I hold my hands up in surrender. “Sorry. You show them what we humans can do, eh?”
“Of course.” Mikito grows grim. “It’s really good training. But the variety is a bit much sometimes…”
“Just… yeah.” I shake my head, deciding not to add any more words of caution. The woman can kick my ass in a one-on-one fight if I don’t go all out, and she’s just getting better. Once she gets her Master Class, I have a feeling I’ll be entirely outclassed in close combat. “Let’s say every third day? For the dungeon?”
“Good enough for me,” Mikito says.
In a moment, I’ve got the new schedule set up. There are obviously times when I can’t do a full day with Mikito, and other times when I’m busy with my speeches. And of course I still want to spend time in the Questors’ building. I wince slightly, staring at my suddenly-filled schedule, but push aside the hesitation. Really, leveling is important.
It takes only a single message before the rooms are booked and the Adventuring groups informed.
“Dinner?” Mikito asks, cocking her head toward me.
“No. I have a fight to get to.”
“Already?”
I shrug. Coincidence and weird timing made it all work. That, and a little chicanery by Ali. But in truth, the Spirit knows me well enough. After my last disgraceful showing against an Advanced team, I’m looking for payback.
“Let’s keep this simple for the first fight,” I call to the group when they finally make their way in. To reinforce my point, I finalize the command, and every single obstacle, impediment, and terrain feature fades back into the floor and walls, showing off the bare room.
The Devil’s Flute arrays themselves before me, finishing up their pre-battle buffs.
“Works for us. Let’s get this over with,” their leader, a Hakarta, says.
I scan the group, Ali translating their Classes to the closest human equivalent. The lead Hakarta’s their Warrior Tank, geared toward eating damage. Next to him is a male Hakarta who’s a Soldier with an oversized sniper rifle. A tall, thin, grey, elongated creature with a bulbous nose is a Summoner, while the Pooskeen next to him is a Spellblade. And their last member’s a damn Healer, though weirdly, strings run from his fingers to all his people. Even weirder, the Healer looks like a damn puppet.
“When you’re ready.”
“Ready.”
Ali’s sitting out this fight for the most part, staying invisible and high above us all. I send a mental command to the room’s system, and a big notification appears for all of us. The countdown starts from three seconds out. I watch as all of them tense, their eyes flicking over the room as their leader gives commands. I can’t hear them, and the Hakarta’s smart enough to drop his helmet so I can’t read his lips either.
But I can read their body language, the way they move. I can see what they’re looking for and what they plan. And so, the moment the countdown hits zero, I have a plan. Rather than spend time on the defense, I take the fight straight to them via a Beacon of the Angels.
I’m surprised when the Skill fizzles, canceled out as the Spellblade jumps up and cuts at the forming circle of power. I notice his Mana drop like a rock, but even as he falls, he’s sucking down a new Mana potion. My lips pull apart in a snarl.
And while I’m distracted, the group is spreading out to make my attacks less effective. The Soldier snipes at me as he runs, his first bullet taking nearly half of my Shield’s defense. The Warrior Tank is moving forward to meet me directly. The Healer’s doing nothing right now, while the Summoner is staying behind the Tank and calling forth monsters.
“Ugh!” I say, when the Summoner’s giant centipedes boil up out of the floor. At a glance, it’s clear the Summoner has gone for the “quantity over quality” side of the pet equation. Which means…
“Ice Storm,” I say softly, mostly because I can, as I release the spell.
The spell flies from my hand, but before it can reach the Summoner, it curves and falls into the Warrior’s cupped hands. There, it swirls around and pulses as it tries to expand, contained by the Warrior. Even so, I can see the Warrior’s health and Mana drain.
“Fine. Have two. No. Three,” I snarl, flipping my hand forward as I chain-cast the spell.
Another hiss and crack as the sound barrier is broken, and my Soul Shield shatters under the Sniper’s second shot. Slow. Powerful attacks but slow. Too slow. I throw another spell then have to retract my hand from getting cut off as the Spellblade literally appears in front of me, cutting ineffectually at my spell.
“Forgot about you.” I grin. Fine. He wants to dance with the sword? We’ll dance with the sword.
I conjure my own and we clash blades, all while I keep forming a spell in my free hand. That limits my fighting ability significantly, especially since I’m used to switching hands. Fighting single-handed is annoying, but lucky for me, the Spellblade isn’t used to a bunch of extra swords joining the fight. That I occasionally throw and discard my weapon is messing with his rhythm, forcing him to constantly guess about what to do next.
“Stop that spell!” Tank screams when I lob it underhanded toward him.
It flies, only to be blocked by a giant swarm of centipedes that cover the area in front of the Warrior. The resulting explosion catches both the Spellblade and me, though the freeze effects seem to be negated by resistances from both of us. The centipedes, on the other hand, are turned into frozen statues, thin little frozen legs shattering and sending the creepy-crawlies crashing down.
Lobbing the spell makes me stop for a fraction of a second—long enough for the damn Sniper to take his next shot. The bullet burrows into my body, pain erupting as the bullet digs into my side. I ignore it and the way my body works to push out the bullet. Instead, I conjure another sword and lash out at the Spellblade.
Two swords in hand and a few more spinning around us, our blades clatter and howl, sparks flying as the Spellblade does his best to protect himself. As I’m getting the upper hand in the fight, the damn Warrior shows up, throwing a fist of ice at my head. Within seconds, I’m pushed back by the combined might of the two. I backpedal and swing, trying to keep the fast-approaching centipede swarm away from us. And each time I seem to be getting the upper hand, the Sniper fires again.
“He’s not that tough. I thought he was a Master Class?” the Healer says, wiggling his hand and replacing the damage I’ve done to the Tank. I’m cutting the Tank’s hands each time he punches or blocks, but the Healer fixes the damage within seconds, those strings glowing with concealed power.
“Hey, boy-o, if you’re going for an attrition battle, you should know that the Healer’s Mana has barely dipped.”
I grunt, spinning away from the Spellblade’s cut in an attempt to get around the Tank. The Tank falls back while the Spellblade ducks low and shuffles over to me. It’s not the first time they’ve done something unnecessary, and I’m sure I know why. Those strings are how the Healer sends his Mana to them, keeping his Mana cost down. But it limits their movements somewhat. Since they’ve given me a bit of a break, I hop backward a couple of times and cut the next incoming bullet apart, watching my sword chip as the bullet shatters. I layer another Soul Shield over my body before grinning at the group.
“Okay. Let’s start playing for real,” I say. “Time to come and play.”
As I cast a spell with one hand, the Warrior sets his feet to get ready to deal with the new problem. The Spellblade is moving forward with the centipede horde, wary of engaging me by himself. In the meantime, more centipedes crawl out of the hole in the floor and spread across the room in a wave as they attempt to cut off my line of retreat. The ones that weren’t caught in the initial ice storm are converging around
the back of the room, forming an encirclement.
One hand works the new spell, the second goes for something simpler. I toss out grenades. One goes directly toward the Spellblade, who bats the explosive aside. Annoying, but it doesn’t matter. The smoke grenades spill colored smoke. With a snap of my hand, I throw my spell into the sky, watching as the spell container gets dragged over to the Warrior.
Too late though. I targeted it to go off about three feet above my head, so all the Warrior does is drag the entire thing over to him to center over the room. Exactly as I planned. Polar Zone kicks in, lowering the temperature drastically and slowing everyone down.
More grenades come out, lobbed to skip across chitin toward the Summoner. They don’t get far before they’re swallowed by the centipedes. Sometimes literally. Too bad it won’t matter.
F’Merc Nanoswarm Mana Grenades (Tier II)
The F’Merc Nanoswarm Grenades are guaranteed to disrupt the collection of Mana in a battlefield, reducing Mana Regeneration rates for those caught in the swarm. Recommended by the I’um military and the Torra Special Forces, these are the No.1 Most Popular Mana Grenade as voted by the public on Boom, Boom, Boom! Magazine.
Effect: Reduces Mana Regeneration rates and spell formation in affected area by 37% (higher effects in enclosed areas)
Radius: 10m x 10m
What happens next is not what I expected. The centipedes who slammed their bodies on the grenades twitch and scream, their bodies dissolving as the nanoswarm take effect. Literal holes open in their bodies, blood, guts, and chitin dissolving at a rate that’s visible to the naked eye.
“What the hell?” I backpedal and throw a series of Blade Strikes to keep the Spellblade on his toes.
“Summoned creatures are made of Mana. Kind of like me. The nanoswarm are literally eating them to power their replication.”
“Stop him!” the Summoner barks, twisting his hands and forming another pair of summoning circles to flank me. These look a hell of a lot bigger.
Another shot, this one punching into my Soul Shield. I drop a nanoswarm grenade by my feet, along with a smoke grenade, then engage the Spellblade in close combat once more. As the centipedes back off, giving me space, I grin. Isolate and win. The Summoner’s out of play for a few precious seconds while the Sniper will have trouble seeing me. As for the Tank…
He slams into me, punching through my Soul Shield with a Charge and snapping back my head. I impact the wall hard, bending steel and cracking my helmet as I slump down the now-dented partition. Spitting blood from a cut lip, I draw and toss my knives at the Tank, letting the blades sink into his body. Of course, he gets healed within moments, but that’s not the point.
As smoke engulfs the area, I let the pair close in on me before I trigger Blink Step. By that point, the first multi-headed chimera pokes its head out of the damn summoning circle. Luckily, dealing with Summoner is easy. I appear behind the Summoner, Ali having flown down and positioned himself close by to allow me to Blink Step in directly.
The first attack slices apart the Healer’s thread. The second takes off a leg, and the third cuts across his upper body. The Summoner staggers backward then disappears in a flash, the room’s System safeguards porting him out once he hits thirty percent of his total health. A sudden weight increase in my side tells me that my knives are back.
“Go.” Ali speeds off, headed for the second pre-designated target.
A baseball bat of force catches me on my right knee, forcing me to fall sideways as the Sniper continues firing through the damn smoke. I snarl, throwing on another Soul Shield and eyeing my health meter. Still good at just over two-thirds. As the Tank and Spellblade charge me, I raise my hands and trigger a Beacon from Angels. Already the summons are disappearing, forced out of our reality by their Summoner as per the rules of our engagement.
White fire blooms, and this time the Spellblade doesn’t notice till it’s too late. The Warrior sees it though, raising his hand to soak up the damage, forcing the beam to concentrate over him. His health yo-yos as the Healer desperately attempts to keep up his health. That’s made all the harder as the Warrior is taking the combined force of my Beacon. Sure, it does 750 damage normally, but that’s over a wide area. Concentrated…
I ignore the Warrior for now and turn to the Spellblade, who has managed to close to under five feet from me. He’s fast, but my knives flash out behind my Blade Strikes, crossing the distance in a blink. The flashier, more powerful Skill hides the dark blades until they injure the Spellblade in the torso and arm. The third knife misses entirely, but that’s fine. Already the Spellblade is reaching for a health potion, knowing he won’t get help.
“Your turn.” I grin as the Spellblade throws himself backward.
My body winks and disappears as I trigger Blink Step. High above him, I reappear to stare down at my target. Once more, I summon my swords, cutting at the form below me as I land.
The Sniper spins, blocking one of my blows with his rifle. The second catches him on the arm, tearing through armor and into muscle and skin. The Sniper snarls and disappears, reappearing at one of his set waypoints. I spot him on my minimap, but he’s out of my actual line-of-sight.
“Next one,” I command Ali, who sends a raspberry sound over our mental link.
The Spirit is already on his way, flitting forward in his invisible form.
My hand rises and power forms as I recast Polar Zone, layering the freeze spell further. The Warrior is gone, overwhelmed by the damage he tried to stop. The Healer is busy trying to patch up his friends, but his Mana is nearly tapped out. Without passive regeneration, we’re all getting low. But I still have more than enough in the tank to finish this.
“You’re brutal,” the Summoner complains, rubbing his reattached leg. A semi-clear bandage filled with a blue liquid surrounds the cut, bubbling and hissing as it works to reattach the limb. It’s an interesting piece of technology, and I make mental note to pick up one. Probably faster and less painful than regenerating the damn limb by myself.
“It’s the way I learned to fight,” I say.
“Why bother with the Polar Zone?” the Healer says as he sips on elderberry mana wine. Unlike the normal Mana potions, this one is slow-acting, but it has the advantage of being useable even when you’ve hit your potion limit.
“Distraction. I also wasn’t sure if it would break your strings,” I say.
“Har. Not that easy to cut my Strings of Fate,” the Healer says proudly, waggling threaded fingers at me. “They even reform if I put in enough Mana.”
“Good to know,” I say. “Got the recording?”
“Yup.”
“All right, gents. I’ll see you next time,” I say, nodding to the group.
There are a few entreaties for me to stay and chat more, but I’ve done enough of the post-fight briefing. Now it’s time for them to figure out how to beat me. And me, them.
I have to admit, Draco might be right. The fact that they’ve got Skills that counter mine, that they work together so smoothly, it throws me off. I do need to spend some time getting used to other ways of fighting, of winning with methods that don’t involve hitting really hard. And I also need to remember that I actually have more toys. Like my hoverboots.
Time. I just need time.
Chapter 10
Soon enough, my life ends up being one scheduled event after another. Sparsely attended speeches to potential recruits are followed by turns in the guild for training interspersed with time off in the Questors’ library and time in the dungeon. I start ignoring my friends, taking the time in transit to read and catch up on my real goal. Luckily, Harry gets bored with following me around to speeches and disappears to do his own thing. As for Mikito, neither of us were ever the most talkative, so a pleasant silence earmarks our interactions.
Days turn to weeks as we grind on. Sparring. Dungeon. Speeches. Reading. Again and again, round and round. It’s a strangely peaceful life, a break in an otherwise hectic life that I sometimes find s
trange to believe is mine. Occasionally I walk around a corner and find myself conjuring my sword as I spot a particularly monstrous pedestrian, or I jump and roll, reflexively calling a Soul Shield, when someone screeches too loud. The peace that everyone seems to expect grates on me at times, forcing me to find refuge in my books and the violence of the dungeon.
As I stare at the passage before me one fine evening as we trudge back from the dungeon, I can’t help but frown. It’s an ongoing discussion about Skills, one that I decided to follow in my research.
“Skill evolutions continue to be a complex area of research. Numerous trials have been attempted, but thus far, no statistically solid research trial has been completed. While Grunter & Ross (document 1.82.5719.11) are the hallmark case in such trials, the data set is filled with significant sample bias. In addition, as many know, this data can only be held true for Basic Classes. Thus far, no trial has been successfully completed for Advanced or higher Classes. Researchers have cited the difficulties in gaining agreement from samples to use their Class Skill points in what can be considered a frivolous manner.
It is only via such institutions like the Erethran Army and others that we, the researchers, have been able to achieve a relatively consistent statistically relevant dataset. However, there are obvious concerns in drawing conclusions from such specific data sets, including sample bias and cultural and institutional influences on the System.
Still, it can be concluded that Skill evolutions occur when a significant number of Level-provided Skill Points have been dedicated to a single Class Skill. The number of Skill Points required seems to vary slightly from eight to ten points, depending on the rate and expenditure of such points.
It is believed, in this researcher’s view, that the number of points and the requirement that they be Level-provided not be an artifact of the System but instead a requirement of the individual. It is believed that the individual’s dedication to the Skill, the development of it and the acceptance of the Skill as an intrinsic part of their identity, triggers the Skill evolution. It is why Skill purchases from the Shop do not trigger the same evolution—as the purchases are, by virtue of their providence, an external bounty.