Chapter 52 – Lair Curiosity (Patreon)

AG. This chapter is 4.5k words but there is no chapter tomorrow. I haven't started and I only have seven hours of free time between now and monday morning. My daughter has a state horse event on the weekened so Friday 3:30 pm to Sunday 6pm I'll be looking after her.

Tom frowned at the incredibly complicated twirls of wire in front of him. All that he could think was how was he supposed to duplicate this in miniature.

April beamed at him. “Yes, it’s a lot more complex than the rituals you’re used to. But there’s a good explanation for that,” she said hurriedly, responding to the growing annoyance on Tom’s face. “When a ritualist creates their rituals most of the work is actually being done behind the scenes by how they infuse the magic. For this bracelet, all the functions have to be captured by physical representation. That includes the link to the wearer, the casting of the specific danger sense spell and the parameters for it to run under. That’s why it’s so intricate.”

“Then what’s the point of the precognition skills?”

“That powers everything. Without it, the artefact will be a fifth as powerful. Listen, I know this is hard to follow.” She flicked her fingers and the spell form of Heal Muscle appeared above the bracelet, glowing in the air. “You recognise this? right?”

“Of course.”

“It’s a simplified three-dimensional representation, but you know that it’s actually a four-dimensional construct courtesy of the.” She nodded at the folder. “And the experience you have of actually casting it.” She clicked her fingers again and then suddenly almost a hundred of the wireframes appeared. “That is basically what the entire spell looks like when you strive to capture all four dimensions. For a ritualist,” she clicked her fingers and the hundred wire frames collapsed first into a single three-dimensional model and then again into a two-dimensional one. “That’s what they draw. The other two dimensions are captured in how they infuse the magic. You definitely don’t have the skill to do that, so you need to carve out everything. Instead of this,” she nodded at the two-dimensional diagram. “You actually need to create this.” Once more, a hundred wire frames were displayed.

Tom shook his head. “No, it doesn’t make sense. Crafters don’t do this. They enchant closer to how ritualists do it”

“That’s correct, if they had to physically engrave everything they’d never get anything done. Instead, they have a wide variety of specialised skills and spells to effectively duplicate what ritualist do. Listen crafting properly is easy to do if you can buy the supporting spells and skills straight from the experience shop. But it’s almost impossible to craft like that if you have to develop your supporting skills yourself. This only works if you carve out the long form design.”

“So you’re telling me I need to memorise this and imprint it on wood.” Tom scratched his head. “Any advice on how to do that.”

“Practice and repetition make perfect.”

“I meant on a technical level.”

She smiled. “When you’re tense like this, you’re way too easy to tease.”

“If it’s too easy, don’t do it.”

“There’s no fun in that. But to answer your question I’ve seen it done lots of ways. Best practice is to use a mana sensitive wood, create the ritual framework out of that and then grow a harder magical resistant wood to cover it up perfectly. But while the skill you got is awesome that level of control is probably beyond you. Instead, I’ll get you to take an existing bracelet and magically change lines of wood to create the physical representation. It won’t produce a super high-quality product, but it’ll satisfy the GOD’s shop.”

Tom stared despairingly at what he had to create. He couldn’t imagine carving this even if he was efficient. Each bracelet would take a few hours to process if this is what he had to do. “There has to be a shortcut, surely.”

“Not really. The physical representation can be created by voids. I’ve seen people do it and then push a heated resin through all the holes to fill the null spaces. That method is about twice as fast, but you’ll need to learn a new skill to duplicate it, which will cost you three months. And the final product is not as good. Once you’re practiced with the technique, you’ll be able to produce bracelets of sufficient quality to sell it to the GOD’s shop, of course, but that’s another month or two lost while you get up to speed. It’s just not worth it.”

With a dismayed look, he stared down at the complex patterns the metal made. “This will be painful.” He muttered. In a way, he almost wished the training for this was as brutal as that of the other two skills. While bits of it had been painful, that to be honest was more interesting than sitting on a chair doing this shit.

“I’m sure you didn’t think for a moment that crafting was going to be easy, did you?”

“No, I didn’t,” he admitted. A plain bracelet of tier one wood appeared on the table. He picked it up and then slowly he got to work, duplicating the metal pattern in front of him. He could get lost in the process on occasions, but crafting just like he had always suspected wasn’t fun and was almost always frustrating.

He left dispirited despite his Living Wood Growth skill gain.

As each trial day approached, he found himself dreading it. The fighting remained fun, but the training to create danger sense bracelets was just annoying.

Another month passed as he focused on magic and physical games outside the trial and skills within it.

His exploration into the bat lair also became routine. He would sneak out of bed, duck into the supply room, grab a couple of antidotes and a healing potion, his trusty daggers, and then leave. Twice the bell rang while he was in the supply room and as Dimitri had cautioned, he hid in one of the alcoves. It went smoothly.

Then, having gathered all the materials he needed he would go down the gently sloping tunnel until he got to the lair. Then he would get ready to enter. For the same reason that he had stopped collecting the armour, he stripped off his standard top because of its high defensive values. Ultimately, he was here to develop his precognition skills and donning armour worked against that aim. He had to be at risk to force faster progression. April had made it clear that if he wanted into the divine trial he had to push hard at everything.

Then shoeless, topless, wearing just his pants and carrying two daggers he entered the lair proper.

As the pungent odour assaulted his nose, Tom relaxed. The exploration of the lair was familiar. With Dampen Senses dialled up to the seventy percent level, he walked confidently into the lair.

Without his top, it was uncomfortably cold, and it felt nothing like the first few times he had come down here. He tried to make himself walk randomly to little avail. He suspected that subconsciously he must have memorised the tunnel layout because he rarely ran into walls and the occasional natural step was handled easily.

As he walked, he concentrated on how he felt. Every now and again, because you never knew when a bat was lurking, he would do a random movement. A quick sidestep or an elaborate slash with one or both daggers.

He was over two minutes in and he hadn’t been attacked yet. The bats were usually more responsive, and he was starting to wonder if maybe another group was already in the lair and killing bats ahead of him.  

Randomly, he swung an arm, and the knife slammed into something soft and he winced as its teeth sunk into his knuckle.

Despite that, Tom smiled.

He could imagine the bat squawking in pain as it attempted to comprehend what had happened. How its oblivious prey had lashed out at exactly the wrong time when it was committed to an attack run. He wondered if it understood anything other than the fact that it was dying. He flicked his wrist, and it went flying off the blade. If his hearing wasn’t suppressed, Tom would have heard it thump into a wall or maybe to the ground if the toss was down a tunnel.

It didn’t matter; the knife had gone through the centre of its mass. It was dead.

It had unfortunately tagged him and he was bleeding, but thanks to his useful sideways evolution being a trickle it was only a couple of droplets spread across the wounds. He wasn’t sure it was helpful, but he spent a point of fate with an image of it helping him speed up his natural blood clotting. Then he focused on manipulating that sideways evolution to make it do more and actively seal up the small puncture wounds.

There was no mana involved in the process, but he had vague hopes of this leading him to develop a trait like Resilient Body or help him get Regeneration. He knew both of them were possible, but wasn’t sure of how to force their development beyond spell evolutions. Something that would have to wait until after he had Touch Heal at least.

He kept walking and there were very few bats that he killed before they landed a blow. Most were still getting in at least ten strikes before he got lucky and killed them. That might have been the start of a skill or just the natural result of him learning how to fight the bats. Tom suspected it was the latter. After all, he had been fighting them long enough to gain an intuitive understanding of their movement patterns. It was easy to learn that if they were attacking his shoulder with each swoop, then if he spun, they would do a hard turn rather than flying higher. Therefore, if he lashed out at chest height, he was likely to score a hit. The accumulation of all those little tricks and growing experience sped up how quickly he eliminated them.

A wall ran into him.

It targeted his knee, and he staggered backwards and fell clutching it.

“Idiot! go slower,” he cursed at himself, knowing that he wasn’t going to listen. The collision was bad because he hadn’t run into anything for twenty minutes, which meant that he had started stretching out more. Less frequent but higher intensity injuries were the natural result of his success.

It didn’t matter. Worrying about stuff like that wasn’t helping him train. He got up and hobbled forward.

Each step sent a jolt of agony through him. But the injury was to a bone, and he couldn’t fix it. Short of using his healing potion there was nothing to be done until he got out of here.

Mentally, he turned around to trace his way back toward the exit.

Every step hurt, but he kept going. Occasionally waving his knives when he seemed to be alone and continuously when he knew one bat was nearby. All of his mastered spells were getting a workout, including Body Restore, that was the result of the merge of Blood Replenishment and Muscle Restore. While in practise he was only using the Blood Replenishment component of the more advanced spell, it was a more efficient version. He could hardly wait until he got Touch Heal and the efficiency would improve back to the level that he was used to.  

Another bat attacked. It landed multiple bites on him before he sliced its wing off and then finished it where it was crawling on the ground. The accumulation of injuries, however, pushed him over the edge. His mana ran dry. Annoyed, he took an antidote potion and then kept going.

There was nothing specific, but Tom froze suddenly worried. Something was very wrong. His skin was crawling, the hair on the back of his neck rising.

He focused, and everything screamed doom at him. It was like he was an acorn on a blacksmith’s forge with the hammer descending, or the bicycle sandwiched in a collision between two semi-trailers or more scarily him being caught between the hands of GODs and being torn apart.

It was bad.

Terrible.

Inevitable.

His limbs locked there were no signals to encourage him to move just that unstoppable dread. Instinctively, he disconnected Dampen Senses, but he knew it was too little and that it was too late.

It was here.

A force slammed into his back far heavier than any bat attack he had experienced before.

He tumbled forward, battle instincts taking over. Dropping Dampen Senses was not the trump card he had hoped. Somehow the cave he was in was pitch block. There was none of the slight glowing moss that he was used to seeing. Sound from his tumble echoed back. It informed him that he was in a massive pitch black underground cathedral. This was not somewhere he had been before.

His brain chugged on and linked the clues, particularly the force the creature had struck him with. None of the possibilities were good. Without any further hesitation, mana flowed into the necklace resting against his throat.

It activated. An emergency flare was sent out that would bring help, but Tom knew that it would take time for Dimitri to get here. Time that he didn’t have. Adrenaline flooded into him, and he recognised the metaphorical precipice he stood next to. The risk of imminent death. Tom knew he hadn’t given himself a choice, but he hated the risks that he was taking.

It was still out there.

He rolled desperately to the side.

There was a whoosh of wind from a nearby wingbeat. The downdraft was strong enough to ruffle the hair on his head. Just like he thought it was big. He tried to follow where it was going.  

There was a ding, but Tom didn’t care about that he had other issues to deal with. The clarity of his senses let him partially track the creature. He could kind of feel where it was, nothing definitive. It was just his brain linking sound, vibrations and the swirling of the wind to track where it was.

The lair had developed a boss monster. He was no longer fighting the small bats whose only real danger was their venom. This beast was significantly more powerful.

Tom knew his lore. He understood what was happening.

His subconscious screamed a warning, and he fell again and kissed the stone floor. He sensed it fly over his head and then he sprang back to his feet. It would adapt and dodging by throwing himself to the ground would not work for long.

What was he facing? He asked himself. The base bat was a swarm creature and that knowledge let him estimate the strength and likely makeup of this opponent. It would be a different species, but still venomous to keep the theme, he realised in dismay. That meant he wouldn’t be able to rely on the targeted antidote.

There was a clattering of noise to his right. Instinctively, he glanced toward it and then realised it was just some stone falling. He tensed as honed instincts screamed at him.  For a moment, he had been distracted and hadn’t been tracking the primary threat, and the beast had seized that opportunity to dive at him. It was almost on top of him. He flinched sideways to avoid the bulk of the strike, but one of its talons dug across his shoulder blade. There was searing pain, and he felt the slight tug as a claw caught on bone before the bone gave way.

It was too powerful. That cut was not a mortal one, but it was significant enough that back on earth he would have been worried about it healing cleanly even with modern medicine. Worse was the implications of the encounter to the overall battle. That had been a glancing blow, and yet it had done that much damage.

Tom didn’t have a choice. He spent all of his remaining fate with the sole purpose of helping him to survive until Dimitri got here. As it spread out, the majority was burnt away, countering the existing fate that had been invisibly hanging around him.

Alarm bells rang inside him.

The monster had used offensive fate. No wonder it had gotten the drop on him. If he had attempted to ration his own fate, then what?

Shit, he thought. He did not want to think about that. He would have been killed in the next couple of passes. Monsters that could use that much offensive fate were far deadlier than their rank would otherwise suggest. But another thought occurred to him. If it had already sent that much fate against him, then it had to be specialised in that attribute.  Which… in a perverse kind of way, helped him rather than hindered him. If it had resources directed toward Fate, then it would have less in other attributes and the human blood line being fate focused had let him overwhelm the attack and effectively neutered its most powerful resource.

He had a chance.

Luck was going to be in his favour instead of its and it was a monster that relied on luck to make its kills.

He sensed it coming from his right and tried to throw himself backwards while thrusting the knives at it to drive it away. It was only partially successful and one of the claws punched through his wrists and he felt stinging pain.

Tom missed Healing Tranquillity. It was easy to forget how much he had taken the ability of it to freeze time to deal with these situations, for granted. In pain and without the time to do it properly, he cast Purge Foreign Substance and allowed the identification process to go to work.

He nearly stumbled in shock at the reported outcomes. A tier two venom, in a rank 3 lair it stretched the bounds of credibility. Almost subconsciously, skin and muscle walls grew out to stop the venom from spreading. This was not something that his skills would allow him to purge. Even containing it might have been impossible without the sideways evolution to improve the strength of the containment technique.

While half of his mind focused on isolating the venom, the rest concentrated on survival. Standing still was suicide, so he sprinted forward into the blackness, wishing he had brought a torch.

Instincts screamed at him, and he pulled out of the sprint and thrust his hands to brace against a wall he was certain was in front of him.

He thumped into the solid rock.

Too slow, he thought. He had braced too late.

His already hurt wrist cracked as it absorbed most of the momentum of the collision. Then his teeth slammed into the wall and he discovered that hypothesis was delusional. Shards of front four teeth along with blood filled his mouth. He felt the push of wind against his back as the monster zoomed by. His body wanted to collapse, his sore knee was in a worse state, but he had pushed himself. He spun to face the open cathedral and spat the mixture of saliva, blood, and teeth to the side.

It was coming again and with his left non-dominant hand he threw the dagger and then a moment later felt the whoosh of its wing beats as it was forced to abort the attack. He switched his other knife into the good hand; at least he was armed and could still fight.

The situation was hysterical to him. Whatever formal skill he had acquired was a good one because in the darkness he was not tracking the monster with any specific senses but he knew exactly where it was. But none of that mattered if he died.

The random thoughts didn’t distract him from what was important. His mind was busily assessing the threats. Almost his entire mana generation was being directed to the poisoned area of his wrist. If he relaxed for a moment, it would overwhelm him and the rapid paralysation it would cause would kill him outright or leave him as an easy victim for the monster. The only silver lining to all of this was that he could no longer feel the broken bones in his wrist. That small mercy was thanks to the miniscule amount of venom that had leaked out in the collision with the unyielding stone.

His mind catalogued the rest of the wounds, the damaged kneecap, the disabled arm, shattered teeth, a dislocated jaw, a heavily bleeding wound on his shoulder.

He threw himself to the side, and it aborted the swoop. He wondered if it was confused by how its supposably helpless prey was able to sense its approach and track it.

He swayed, felt lightheaded, and wanted nothing more than to lie down. Tom recognised the symptoms and directed mana into a desperate Body Restore to improve his blood pressure. The wound on his back was haemorrhaging far too much for comfort.

This was bullshit. He could feel the stirring of his anger underneath his battle trance. He had been so certain of his destiny. Yet… the bat would keep coming and there was no guarantee Dimitri would reach him in time. Worry gnawed at him. Existentia was not that black and white. There was no such thing as a prophesied champion. People could die at any moment. He had been killed in his first life when he had thought himself safe. Panic and anger warred within him.

How could one dagger and his non-existent agility hold this off. How long would it be until Dimitri got here? For him to survive, it had to be soon.

It was coming again and subtly he crouched slightly and then pretended to go one way before he threw himself in the other direction.

It fell for the feint… but how long until it guessed right?

It would continue to come until it got him. The fate he had invested, and this new skill would keep him alive for a while, but could he out last the monster? Frantically, he worked on purging the infected wound. When it got him next, he couldn’t afford to have two of them.

It was approaching him dead on this time. He didn’t feint but instead threw himself in the direction he first moved toward. It went the wrong way, buying him another ten seconds.

Tom wondered how much active fate he still had left in play. How long was it until his luck failed?

His sense of where the bat was had vanished.

His new skill had run out of juice and had stopped working. Annoyance flared through him, but getting angry at it was only a distraction. He concentrated harder, straining everything to stay alive a few moments longer. To create time for Dimitri to get here. He stilled his breathing and listened. He strained his eyes to see, but the blackness was absolute. It had a pattern, so in his head he counted down the seconds.

Now!

He threw himself to the side. No monster plunged into him. It was a success. If he had gotten the timing wrong, he would be dead.

Tom stood ready to repeat the action. He shut his eyes and focused on the hairs on his neck.

Now!

He flung himself horizontally and felt the brush of the creature’s wings on his arm.

Too close and a single blow would kill him. Only half the venom in the wrist wound had been driven out. He lacked the mana to heal the cut on his shoulder blade, and he knew he would be dead already without that sideways evolution, reducing the bleeding. His visual senses weren’t helpful, so eyes shut he stood there feeling for the enemy. A hair on his hand twitched, and he threw himself sideways. There was a stinging pain on his calf. It had been swooping low, and the claw slice had split his lower leg open. More blood loss, more problems. Then the entire leg below the knee failed to respond to his mental commands.

That was it. Two lame legs meant death. He pushed himself to his feet, but it was mainly arm strength that did it. Neither leg was working properly.

He collapsed.

Wind brushed his back as the monster went over him.

Get up, he told himself. But he knew this feeling and understood the state he was in. Mind over matter only worked so far. If you lost your legs, no amount of wishing would get you walking. His body wasn’t intact enough to move. He needed to get strength from somewhere. If he died here… No, he wouldn’t accept that outcome. He wouldn’t allow it. He had a duty to survive and save humanity.

Tom thought about his anger curse and his suspicion around what it did. Not only was it unfair, it would be an injustice if he died here.

He had sacrificed a lot to try and make a difference. It was unacceptable to die now!

After all, he had done! He couldn’t fail.

That was unfair. Wrong. He felt the rage rise, and he welcomed it. He wouldn’t accept a world where his legs couldn’t support him.

With a scream of rage, he propelled himself to his feet with a single arm. The pain wasn’t that bad, his muddled thoughts decided.

He threw the knife. “I’ll kill you,” he screamed at the darkness. “I’ll tear your head off.”

With a roar. He charged forward.

The leg failed him; he hit the ground but pushed himself to his feet. Where was it? He lunged to his left hoping to grab it and then screamed again in frustration as from its wind he felt it go through the spot he had just vacated.

It was lucky. If he had gotten his hands on it…

“I will kill you,” he yelled and leapt forward and crashed into something and there was a stinging feeling in his thigh. He didn’t care, and he tried to grip hold of the monster. Its torso was the size of a large dog. He slipped off and slammed into the ground. “You’re dead, next time.” He shrieked. He attempted to force himself to his feet, but his leg wasn’t responding. Blood filled his mouth, his back stung, he could no longer feel the leg with the broken kneecap. The only thought in his brain was that tt had hurt him and he would have revenge.

It was grounded and coming for him. He would let it get closer and then kill it with his bare hands, dig his fingers into its eye sockets and rip its skull right off.

Bright light engulfed the room.

There was a wet thud.

He squinted through the tears flowing from his eyes. The bat had been cut in half it was less than a metre from him. Healing slammed into him.

Good! It meant he could tear apart whoever had stolen his kill. He lunged at the figure behind the slain monster. Strength stronger than he could imagine pinned him to the ground.

“Why on earth are you in an enraged state? And what the hell, Tom! Where’s your goddamn armour!”