Equalize

by Ryan DeBruyn

Once they were topside, it was easy to notice the sun setting. Rocky’s smiling face quickly fell, and the group was forced to set up camp.

  Another day down. I’m coming…

  Sela

  Selaphelia Ardensai was running through the woods, her new connection to Gaia allowing her to feel the edge of Gaia’s continued pain and trauma. The old world that Selaphelia had come from was long since forgotten. Now she ghosted through the underbrush following a man who seemed so different than anyone who could have existed in the old world she once knew.

  Rockland believed his family may still be alive, and Selaphelia didn’t have the heart to tell him the odds of even one of them being alive were abysmal. She had a minor connection currently with the Atlantean Net, but it didn’t allow her much. The Territory she was attached to would need to level up more before it gave her access to everything she was used to daily in her previous life on Gaia.

  However, it gave her enough to know that nearly sixty-five percent of sapient life had been eliminated within the first few days and that the number continued to climb, forcing her heart into her throat. Rockland had mentioned in passing that the world bordered on nine billion sapient souls, all of them humans, which meant that nearly six billion were dead already.

  Those numbers were astronomical, and her heart butterflied in her chest as she loped after Azoth.

  When Sela lived, the Atlantean Net could track every sapient born, every creature, and she knew that with every individual of every race, her world had contained under a billion souls. She couldn’t even imagine the cities, food, and infrastructure needed to house humans in such large numbers.

  Sela tried to picture the trauma Gaia had woken to if all these humans acted as Rockland had said and missed a step as her muscles contracted in anger and disappointment. Somewhere along the way, sapient races had forgotten who birthed and supported them.

  So Sela stayed in her animal shape, trying to avoid many things, not only that saddening news to Rockland, her new lord, but also she didn’t want to know more about the state of this current world.

  Where had the other sapients gone?

  She didn’t want to tell Rockland that while he had faced some creatures, they were all newborns. They were all weak. The fights he was so proud of were just the beginning. So she moved like a ghost attempting to avoid his notice, trying to avoid a conversation that would happen no matter which road they traveled.

  Rockland was surprisingly strong for a man thrown into this new world. He had been lucky to have been gifted such strength, height, fluidity, and grace. Unlike a large portion of society, he had managed to survive the first few days of this new world and now had some momentum.

  Usually, a child would be trained up to at least a Journeyman class before they could leave their city of birth. They would then be given a place with the local military and hunt the monsters of the area until they had reached the point of class specialization.

  Only then would they be allowed to leave on their own.

  Sela growled in memory; she hadn’t been lying when she had been so angry with Rockland at the first meeting. She had assumed that he was going to be slain for the Territory right in front of her eyes, that an assassin was going to step out from the shadows behind him and send Rockland to his ancestral rest.

  Now Sela was starting to see the picture of what was going on, to glimpse its edges and see its pattern.

  Rockland was quite possibly the highest leveled individual in the area, maybe the only one alive for that matter. If all the humans were thrown into this world at level one with no protection, no knowledge of the systems, and no inherited classes or weapons, this would account for the survival rates.

  Sela thought of the dungeon who had only absorbed a single monster before Rockland had given it more. He had fed the dungeon and made a deal with it. Not only had he gotten a Bag of Holding the likes of which even Sela hadn’t known existed, but he had rung from it two concessions even greater than that item.

  First, he had convinced the dungeon to move, to recollect all its essence and shift northeast to the site of the recent explosion. Somehow, he figured out that the dungeon was absorbing and using the Ether in the area, somewhat adding control over its flow and stopping the area from raging out of control.

  Then he had convinced it to move back at a later date and be the site of training for his future settlement, to create levels with increasing difficulty. This was something Sela had never heard of before. Most dungeons threw everything at you the moment you arrived, trying to kill you before you could reach the room with its core.

  Sela blinked rapidly; she had personally destroyed thousands of dungeons, always believing they were evil, that they were stealing Essence from Gaia. Yet, with her new class connection, she felt something abhorrently wrong with her previous way of thinking.

  Shaking her feline head to try to clear it, Sela failed. She was beginning to question the lessons she had learned from birth, causing her to doubt her ability to guide her new lord in this alien world. Everything she thought she knew may not be valid anymore, and so Sela hid in her animal form, speaking only with Azoth who was growing more intelligent every minute, acquiring understanding, emotions, and dreams.

  When she had first heard his deep voice, she had been shocked. Here was another anomaly she couldn’t understand. Monsters couldn’t speak; they couldn’t understand and grow. You trained a pet to do exactly what you wanted, and that was the way of it.

  Yet, here was a creature who asked questions, learned from each previous moment, and loved Rockland with fierce devotion.

  Sela would have said that Rockland was lucky, but it wasn’t so much luck as an opportunity. He was thrown into a young world and now had the chance to carve out a piece for himself. Sela shook her head, knowing that she was now guiding a man who could be setting the pillars of an entire race, and yet, he was so naïve.

  Rockland truly believed that everything was going to work out for the best. Somehow, his mind had compartmentalized the last few days into a comparison with some sort of electronic game he had played. Sometimes, she could literally hear him muttering about “rolling twenties” or “powning those snitches”, and she was forced to grind her fangs because she had concluded that the shock of the truth might break him.

  Sela prayed to her ancestors again, pleading with them to keep this man's family safe, to allow him to live in naivety a little bit longer, and to break him slowly so he could do what needed to be done. Sela ran and prayed, stalking through the forest.

  Her eyes were only seeing the track marks of destruction that “humans” had made on Gaia, her god, the nurturer of all and without anyone’s notice, her tears fell on the dry ground as she swept by.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The day after the group’s encounter with LFD. They had spent another full day traveling and hunting. Now that they had a massive storage space, they hadn’t had to load up Azoth and Rocky. This made travel faster, but it also greatly increased the amount of fighting the group could undertake.

  Throughout the day, they had fought wildlife, primarily to level up and get stronger. The secondary goal was initially to stock up on food, and because the whole team was now fighting, they got a hell of a lot more than was needed. Rocky’s new bag of holding acted similarly to his Territory Storage and worked somewhat out of time, keeping food from spoiling and items much safer than in a backpack.

  It was safe to say that they wouldn’t be going hungry anytime soon, even with Rocky and Azoth’s huge appetites.

  The group had terrorized the local solo wildlife, at times even going out of there way slightly to attack an individual creature. Between Sela and Azoth, they were never troubled in the tracking department, and with good tactics, they only had one scare. Somehow, they had unknowingly entered an area with a large fire ant nest.

  The ensuing battle had been absolutely chaotic and was only a victory because Sela was nearly impossible to pin down. Between her abilities to strike and turn
incorporeal, she was like a sickle slicing through wheat. Wherever she was on the battlefield, ants fell in swarms.

  The real eye-opening part of the battle for Rocky had been that each ant was a relatively low level, the highest one being a level nine. It was the sheer volume of the creatures and their ability to come out of the ground that made the fight that much more difficult.

  For his part, he tried to maintain a perimeter around himself with his sword, and because the ants were relatively slow, he was partially successful. The problem came from the ones who chose to come at him from below. Multiple times, Rocky had been forced to dodge and set up a new safe area, receiving slowly stacking damage in the process.

  This was often done with Sela’s or Azoth’s help, and his health had dropped to as low as thirty-five points. The mounting fatigue and pain the injuries brought had been overwhelming. It was everything Rocky could do to maintain Blood Heal on the group and keep fighting.

  The group probably still would have been overwhelmed if Azoth hadn’t accidentally left the area of the nest. A soldier fire ant had careened into the Chimera and knocked him sailing through the air. When he had regained his feet, Rocky had realized that the insects wouldn’t attack him where he had fallen.

  The Chimera, of course, charged back into battle, but Rocky yelled out instructions to Sela. Together, they managed to extricate the growling Chimera from the fray. Unfortunately, they were forced to leave all their loot behind.

  Thinking he was clever, Rocky had attempted to send Sela in to collect the loot, but unfortunately, as soon as she had crossed that boundary again, the ants had formed up and protected their fallen with fierce abandon. Even with her semi-incorporeality, Sela was unable to get in close enough to loot a single fallen insect.

  Rocky’s greed menagerie was still hissing at him about that particular point. He had even dreamt about it last night. His greed pig was threatening to turn carnivorous and eat him soon if he ever left loot behind again.

  When Rocky sleepily woke the next morning after the day of travel and fighting, he checked back over his notifications and character sheet from the previous day, reviewing for the second time the increases that had summed themselves up over the course of the day.

  The summed notifications made his sleepy and foggy eyes fly open and easily explained the group’s exhaustion.

  For killing 72 Mammalian Creatures: Level 10-22: You and your group have been awarded 213, 420 Etherience.

  Your personal Etherience gain amounts to 71,140 Etherience.

  Congratulations! You have reached level 13! You have been awarded 1 stat point and 1 skill point.

  49,601 Etherience remaining until level 14.

  For killing 31 Reptilian Creatures: Level 16-19: You and your group have been awarded 152,312 Etherience.

  Your personal Etherience gain amounts to 50,771 Etherience.

  Congratulations! You have reached level 14! You have been awarded 1 stat point and 1 skill point.

  154,029 Etherience remaining until level 15.

  For killing 492 Insectoid Creatures: Level 6-9: You and your group have been awarded 398,432 Etherience.

  Your personal Etherience gain amounts to 132,811 Etherience.

  21,218 Etherience remaining until level 15.

  Rocky marveled at the sheer quantity of death the group had dealt out yesterday, shaking his head in bemusement. Reading each notification as they had come in had utterly failed to contain the gravitas that the summed notifications had. Rocky had also placed the stat point the other day as soon as he received them. If the close call of the previous day was any warning, it was probably a good idea for him to place his skill points in preparation for the upcoming day and eventual level.

  Rockland Barkclay Level 14

  Health Pool: 150/150

  Ether Pool: 170/170

  Class: Apprentice-(Azrael) Revenant

  Level 1 Leader: Level 1 Strategist

  Class Skills: Revenant Blade, Blood Mend

  You have 0 stat points and 4 skill points to distribute.

  Stamina

  15 (+1)

  Strength

  *16* (+2 Strength of Arms)

  Agility

  25

  Dexterity

  23

  Intelligence

  17 (+1)

  Wisdom

  20

  Charisma

  22

  Luck

  7

  Weak Skills

  Combat Skill (Non-Class)

  Swordsmanship 6 (+2)

  Common Skills

  Endurance 11 (+2)

  Sneak 13 (+1)

  Analyze 10 (+1)

  Profession Skills

  Skinning 13 (+3)

  Butcher 13 (+3)

  As Rocky gained levels the previous day, he had immediately sunk one stat point into Stamina and another into Intelligence, trying to stay somewhat balanced. At current, there was really no telling what direction his fighting style would take, and he wanted to leave his options entirely open. The close call of the previous day dictated that he could greatly use higher Ether and Health.

  The four free skill points he promptly dumped into Soul Strike, wanting to be ready for when he reached level fifteen.

  It was five days after the night Ether had struck the world, and Rocky was starting to fear for the people who lived in cities. Early on, he had thought his family might be safer with access to police and possibly military, but with each converted building he faced, a growing pit was forming in his stomach.

  How did someone own a skyscraper? Without ownership, it would probably have changed into a golem, and how did you beat a converted skyscraper?

  With the thought of military and then the numerous converted cars and vehicles, Rocky shuddered. He had tried to plan the route to avoid Petawawa, a known military training area, mostly because it was farther north and away from Ottawa. However, now he could feel a wave of cool relief flood down his back at the thought they would avoid fighting any converted military equipment.

  Rocky had another shiver run back up his back as a cold sweat broke out over his arms and legs. It didn’t matter how strong he became. He didn’t want to stare down a tank muzzle.

  A few hours later, Rocky sincerely prayed the golems in the distance surrounding a few buildings represented Pembroke.

  Azoth had also been steadily growing each day and was now just smaller than Sela. He still couldn’t fly, but Rocky had seen him make some running hops with pounding wing beats. Azoth would seem to almost defy gravity before it reasserted itself and brought the Chimera back to earth. The fact that the pet was gaining size so quickly made Rocky smile and cross his fingers behind his back at his dreams.

  Sela, on the other hand, seemed to defy most of his senses. Rocky would be running and making little to no sound, thanks to his rising sneak ability, but would suddenly find Sela had been ghosting along right behind him the whole time. In fact, between fights, he had made it a game attempting to find Sela while they ran, and at the end of the previous night was awarded a new skill.

  Congratulations! You have gained a new skill, Perception.

  Current rank Weak-Perception Level 1

  As the group approached the distant collection of golems, Rocky’s face hardened as he noticed a large group of golems, perhaps ten in total, moving about on the outskirts of town. The entire group save for one seemed to have been made up of ships. The final one was made up of a dark black substance that seemed to shift and move.

  Using the tactics they had perfected over the past few days, the group snuck up on a single golem each. No longer needing a countdown, each member struck simultaneously, removing an opponent from the upcoming fray. Rocky was already beginning to move to the next one when a shadow fell over him.

  Teeth clicking together, Rocky ducked under a boat engine and executed a counter swing with a diagonal slash at the golem’s midsection. It cut deep, forcing the golem to overbalance as its weight changed distribution, and it fell ov
er.

  That’s the first time golems have been this organized.

  The dark black golem, which was made entirely of asphalt pavement and stood over thirty feet tall, tried to stomp Rocky into the gravel a moment later. The only warning was that of a new shadow passing over his crouching form. Feeling his adrenaline pump into overdrive, he rolled to avoid becoming a paste before creating a distance between himself and the golem.

  Even with the new level of organization, within moments, the original group of ten golems were down except for the massive leader.

  Journeyman-Asphalt-Basalt Golem

  Level 23

  Leader

  Molten

  Gelatinous

  In the time it had taken Azoth and Sela to kill the remaining golems, Rocky had attempted to kill the leader. Smiling, Rocky pulled his sword out of the oozing asphalt, having successfully executed a leaping attack to skewer the chest area that contained the golem’s core. As he turned around, the golem collapsed into a puddle, and he jumped away to avoid standing in the boiling liquid.

  A roar from Sela and two forms of charging predatory cats made Rocky’s eyes widen and then narrow as he felt something off. Thanks to all the combat of the previous few days, he flattened himself to the ground prone just in time and felt a whoosh of displaced air sail over him. Looking up, he saw the golem’s bubbling tar arm sailing away and rolled quickly to avoid a massive stomp.

  Sela and Azoth leaped at the creature, their claws and trailing paws splashed through the liquid asphalt. The blows successfully severed a limb each, but the feline forms landed yowling and avoiding the feet they had just attacked with. The golem dropped into a puddle and formed again in seconds. Luckily, Rocky had managed to avoid most of the liquid and only felt one of his arms burning severely.