Fate Points - Ch 79 (Patreon)

A blink pushed away the tears and through stinging eyes he assessed the cave. Tom’s eyes went high initially to confirm that there were no bats threatening him. Then they lowered to the bat he had struck with a stone to stop its close-range sonic attack. It had been splattered like a dropped egg, the energies of its sound attacking being released internally. It reminded him of what he had seen in the tunnels just more gruesome as the shredding attack had emerged from within as opposed to without.

His head was ringing and despite the annoyance he heard a crunching sound, and his eyes flicked to the golem. It was rolling at a running pace right over a centipede before making a tight turn to target another bug.

Enemies.

He was clearly suffering a concussion of some type, but he pushed through the sluggish thoughts to concentrate on the surroundings.

He double checked the air.

Nothing.

Then his eyes scrutinised his surrounding including behind him. That movement made the world swap. That’s right, Tom reminded himself he was concussed. He could work through that it wasn’t like it was the first time he had his magic suppressed and suffered head injuries. He assessed the rest of the surroundings. The grounded bats still lived even if they weren’t focused on him as a threat.

Cautiously, with a rock in a hand, Tom jogged deeper. Various muscles ached and he could feel the skivvy clinging to him where it briefly stuck to the rapidly forming scabs.

Concussion, he reminded himself continually and attempted to keep his movements smooth even while glancing around continuously to ensure that there were no hidden threats. He focused on the nearest living bat.

He hoped the elemental would not be foolish enough to approach it. One of those sonic blasts at point blank range would prove problematic to its structural integrity, and Tom did not want to rebuild the golem from scratch. Not that he could if any of the more specialised components were damaged.

Thirty metres, then twenty. The bat hadn’t noticed him.

Fifteen.

He threw. The world swayed.

The missile struck it low and its body was tossed like a giant had kicked it. It flipped over and was sent tumbling over five meters because of the force. Its lower half was mashed, but it was still breathing.

A bad throw, but…

He stood as it scrambled in weakening alarm. Tom watched it as it briefly attempted to orientate on what had attacked it. Its chest puffed uselessly as it sought to suck in air for a sonic blast, but found its body not functioning as well as it could be.

While the world settled back to normal for Tom, the life ran from it and it slumped over dead.

Next. Tom told himself and jogged toward the next one every step made his vision sway more than it should have. If only he had Regeneration or Touch Heal. Even the simple movements were nauseating.

This one was half facing him.

He stopped thirty metres away.

The rock smashed into the stone floor a foot from its head and then ricochet up.

Tome flinched. The life left the suddenly headless enemy.

One more, but his throwing was disgraceful. He needed to buy a Skill to help it, and also to make the best use of the Throw Rock spell after all these stages had proven that it would be a powerful addition to his magic. Awkward to use and overly niche in its application, but that was often the way of skills beyond the standard power curve and that’s what Tom liked to employ.

He moved toward the final bat. It was the one his throw had clipped at the start of battle and unlike the other two this one was more than aware of him and it watched him like the dangerous predator it was. Tom stopped almost forty metres from it and the residual stinging from his chest reminded him of why it was a good idea to treat these cautiously.

Its mouth puffed up and he tensed. Confident that he was far enough away to be safe but after the last attack he couldn’t help but be worried.

Vroom.

The spell washed over him, but it was little more than a powerful storm. There was nothing in it at this range capable of cutting his skin or clothes.

The sonic attacked stopped, and it slumped. The effort taking a lot out of it.

Tom lifted his arm over his head and threw a larger one of his rocks more carefully than usual. The world swayed as his magic transformed the weak toss that would barely have crossed twenty metres into something much more lethal.

Vroom!

The wind hit him. The stone flew like a professional baseballer pitcher had launched it. Too heavy and too fast for the wind to impact. It dipped as it went through the air. He had deliberately thrown it low, expecting it to bounce multiple time before it reached the bat. It did as predicted. One bounce, twice, the second just in front of the bat. It was sent tumbling away.

The wind stopped.

The damage was less spectacular than what the rocks had done to previous bats, but it was the equivalent of a sledgehammer hitting an animal evolved to have light bones and vitality that was no higher than his own. Plus, it was already injured.

A pool of blood spread and there was a slight ding to signify its death. Tom strode forward and freed up the golem kept rolling to finish the centipedes. Tom checked that there were none near him and continued.

He studied the flecks of red on his arm and tsked in disappointment at allowing himself to be hit by that first close-range sonic boom. He needed to be careful that the attack even as brief as it was had done more damage than he was comfortable. It would have been better to lose an extra ten minutes. Given that a terrible injury only took a week to heal even without magic aid these scratches would vanish in no time. If he had taken that touch healing evolution, then it would already be healed. Not that he regretted that decision. In the first ferret attack, he had solved multiple lives with Touch Heal, which made the choice worthwhile.

The golem stopped twenty metres from the natural exit of the cave. All the centipedes had been killed. Tom walked across and stood next to it. He was not in a hurry after all he was not going any further till after his mana was full once more.

Tom patted the sphere thoughtfully. “We’re going to have to be even more careful from now on.”

It bobbed up and down in agreement.

There were two tunnels to choose.

“Normal spitters or lava.” He guessed not that it mattered which version. The threat had been in the mobile creatures, not the static one. “We should check anyway. You stay here.”

The sphere next to him rolled in front of him to stop him from going ahead.

“You disagree?”

It bobbed up and down and Tom put a hand on it. The left was spitters the right the lava version. Of course, it already knew.

“Which one first?”

The sphere immediately shifted to the left. Of course, that was the answer. He wondered how much his thinking was being slowed by the concussion. The decision the elemental had helped him make should have been ones he could do himself.

“Go,” he ordered.

It rumbled away, and Tom followed slowly behind him. After the first twist, he came across a spitter which looked like a giant fist and punched straight through it.

He hesitated and stood patiently rather than progressing. He could feel how far away the golem was and its initial fast progress had slowed to a halt. Quietly, he counted under his breath. “Twenty cat and dog.” He finished just as it moved once more. Tom walked forward, and the room opened up into a slightly larger space. The ceiling was four metres above him and it was about as long as basketball was caught and half as wide.

Spitters had been on the roof, and they had all been smashed. That explained the delay the golem would have to have gone up the wall and along the roof to reach them.

Tom realised the golem was getting further away, so he jogged forward. There were no more slow sections. More tight turns and splattered enemies greeted him. It was not even having to slow down for him. Then the relentless progress of his minion stopped, and it was reversing back toward him. The golem rolled up to him.

Images were sent through to him. It was another of the giant caverns, but this one was fifty percent as large as the previous one and was filled with an incremental increase in bats.

Same plan? Tom thought.

A flood of images came back to him. Same but more was the answer. A similar hideaway, but instead of dead ends, they would connect it up further down the tunnel. Smaller entry and exit to allow conjured stone to fill the gaps easier. It would give them better flexibility to respond to different circumstances. For example, if the bats patrolled the area disappeared, then they would be able to flank them but going out for the longer exit.

Tom was over taking risks, so it was easy enough to set up. He agreed and created the hideaway, working in tandem with the golem to carve out the soft stone. Including a tunnel that exited back into the larger cave that he got hurt in..

This time when he went to kill the bats and gather them to attack he was cautious. If he provoked them, they would come and kill each other with their sonic attacks, so it wasn’t as important to achieve the maximum number of deaths with each round of throwing. Three rounds, he reminded himself as he stood in the cavern’s entranceway. Three rounds, three stones per round, and no need to aim. He lifted his arm and launched, and again and again, not bothering with anything more sophisticated beyond trying to push them at around roof height.

Then he sprinted to the tunnel, three turns, then he ducked into the safe space. He turned to manually trigger the door, but it was already too late. The elemental had done it. The lump of stone that weighed over half a tonne rumbled shut with an echoing clang.

Then he reset the traps and repeated another four times till all the bat’s were dead. Personally, he had killed maybe twenty of them his throws, turning out to not be accurate. The rest, over forty, had succumbed to friendly fire and the ratio for the centipedes was even worse.

“I don’t think I’m getting a perfect run.” Tom complained as he picked his way through the tunnel toward the second large cave.

He gave up the challenge of keeping his feet clean.

The centipede corpse squished under his foot. He would need to wash the boots after this.

“Providing we survive right. That’ll have to be good enough.”

Sympathy came back from the elemental. Tom launched the rock, and the bat exploded. He held the golem back from exploring for a moment to let him triple check that no bats were left.

None.

With a light tap on its back, the golem rumbled away. It zig zagged across the large space, crushing the large centipedes who had survived. Once it had reached the three-quarter mark Tom set off, he wanted to make sure that there were no hidden bats, as he was sure they would have responded to the golem’s reign of death.

The golem joined him at the final tunnel just as Tom began to examine the geography of the tunnel. Artificial and from what he could tell the entire tunnel had been stitched in from elsewhere..

Without entering the tunnel or exposing himself, he peered down it using the earth’s sense ability. As forecast, there were lava spitters.

Despite everything, Tom could not think of an easy way to counter them. Their range was too long and individually they were too small for him to pick off with his Throw Rock skill. And it was not like they could burrow around them. Except for those sections of porous rock, the native stone was all hard and difficult to work magically. It would be more efficient to use rock walls to get close enough to them like he had done.

“Do you think you could roll through and provoke the bats in the next room and get them to deal with the spitters on our behalf?”

Extreme reluctance greeted the suggestion. Then a pause and more precise communication than he was used to was sent to him. The two tunnels so far were similar lengths and if there were as many larva shooters as the other monsters the golem was not convinced it would survive the attempt.

“I guess we tortoise.”

Confusion met his statement. Tom chuckled.

“Human fable.”

The confusion got stronger.

“Don’t worry about it. We’re going to have to do this slowly and carefully.”

They used stone walls to get the golem close enough with the only problem being time and dealing with the temperature of the entire tunnel rising to the mid-thirties. They would wall them off and then kill them from behind safety. It didn’t do anything to the ambient temperature.

Every single spitter was killed and Tom was not surprised that when he got to the end, he faced an even larger cavern with a safe zone on the end.

“Boring.” he whispered as they went back to prepare their safe room. Time ticked by, but Tom ignored the itch.

Two hours later, he reached the safe zone.

Congratulations on reaching the tenth safe zone.

Knowledge was dumped into his head. They were instructions to trigger a spell as opposed to the expertise that had come with the Stone golem spell.

Tier four spell Harnessed Meteorite learnt

Inside, he jumped up and down in happiness. With this second tier four spell, he had exceeded the Very Good rating, and it was really only a question of whether he would reach Outstanding or Exceptional. Not that it mattered when he left the challenge. He was going to have at least five earth spells with a tier 0 spell level equivalent of over 128, plus better titles than what he started with.

It was all success.

At the back of his mind, Tom could feel the new knowledge of the spell forming.