1.11

Harold awoke with a start, rising so rapidly that his head almost collided with Amber’s face.

She jumped back in surprise, then quickly moved back, working to rebandage his leg while he gained his bearings.

The gash on his leg had faded, or at least it no longer felt like an open wound. But an ever-present throbbing reminded him of what had transpired… How long ago was it?

“Hey, how long have I been out?”

“Three days, I think.” Amber was still intent on her rebandaging efforts. “Time is weird down here, but I’ve gone to sleep three times, so hopefully my internal clock is still consistent.”

He nodded. “One hell of a paralytic then, huh? Anything happen since I was knocked out?” He felt calm, the feeling that had overtaken him in their previous fight was there with him now.

“Not a huge amount. The Fang spiders are still fighting the Black Widows, if you’re wondering.” Amber looked up from her work as if a lightbulb had gone off. “Oh yeah! I managed to craft some spells. I just worked on some of the most basic ones that could be tuned to my fire affinity.”

Harold did a double take. “You did WHAT?” The throbbing was back in full force. Settling down, and in a calmer tone, he asked again, “I’m sorry, did you just say you made a spell?”

“Yup!” Amber replied, more cheerful than she had ever been since the two had been teleported down here. “Even got an achievement and a title for it, [The First Spellcrafter] and [Pyromancer].”

“You did this without any help, and with me knocked out in a small cave in the corner?” Harold processed the information as he asked again.

“I did… what about it?” Amber’s voice started to trail off, her original enthusiasm hampered by his continuous questions.

“No, I was just thinking about how I have the most AMAZING girlfriend ever!” Harold pulled her into a hug, wincing as his leg sent a pulse of pain through his body. He didn’t care though, she deserved it.

It took a minute and a half before the elation gradually began to die down, and for Hector and Amber to pull away from one another, ready to speak again.

He felt a slight tug on the side of his shirt, alarmed, he turned to see Rocky, sorry, Sir Rock Hard, as the Brood Mother would say, looking up at him.

“What’s up buddy?” Harold looked at the little rock as it stretched out its arms. A little bit confused, but also mostly onboard with what he thought the little rock was asking for, he also gave it a hug.

Rocky emitted a terrifying series of sounds as he received the hug, “GHWHEIF!!” And Harold could only hope that those were feelings of happiness and camaraderie, rather than pain or anguish.

“Anyway, what spells did you end up making?” Harold redirected his attention to Amber.

She giggled as Rocky ran up for another hug, but answered nonetheless. “I made four of them, hopefully enough to get us out of most situations. General utility would be [Spark]. I can use it to light fires or whatever. If we want to ward away monsters with torches and whatnot, this’ll probably do the trick.”

Amber paused for breath, then began again. “Next are the combat spells, I made [Fireball] and [Flame Lance].”

“Why two?” Harold backtracked, “I don’t want to sound mean, but wouldn’t they kinda be redundant?”

She smiled, and Harold instantly remembered the first time he had really felt into her. It had been back in freshman year of their Undergraduate schooling. They had the same Calculus teacher, a real hardass when it came to grading and teaching.

Naturally, they would study with one another, and whenever he didn’t understand a complex topic, maybe it was derivatives or something he equally didn’t want to remember, she would launch into a lengthy explanation.

God, if only she knew how good she looked when she was enraptured by something. He could stare at her explain Calculus for hours on end, excited to be teaching and answering questions. He had felt drawn to her in that first study session, and knew damn well that he wasn't letting her go.

All of that is to say, when Amber gave him that smile, he knew what was coming. “Okay okay, so you know how sometimes we fight swarms, and sometimes we fight single monsters?” He nodded. “Alright, so when we’re fighting swarms, we want… what’s it called in games? Oh! Splash damage. But when we’re fighting something tough, we want an attack that can pierce its armor.”

“Well, I found out after two days of burning my entire mana supply that if I make the fireballs bigger, spinning them as I generate power through my staff, they expand, that is to say, explode, on impact!” She looked insanely happy for someone who had just admitted to exhausting themselves nonstop since he had fallen unconscious, but hey, who was he to judge?

“So I’m guessing the [Flame Lance] isn’t about dispersing power?”

“Yup! It’s all about trying to get through to the vital parts of a monster. It’ll be especially useful because you use a blunt weapon, so it’ll be hard to crack open an enemy with too much armor. That is, if you can’t throttle and blunt force trauma them to death.” Her cheeks had turned slightly red as she explained. “And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! You won’t believe how many theories I still have to test!”

“I’ll help you test if you want, but what about the last one? The [Wall of Ember]?”

“Ooh, I made that one especially because of your recklessness last fight. It’s basically a stopgap for us to run. Or at least, that’s how I imagine I’ll probably be using it. It just summons a wall of flames to keep monsters away.”

“And the flashy name?” Harold questioned, “could it be that you’re levelling without me?” He gave her a small smile that told her he was joking.

“Absolutely not! You know how dangerous those tunnels are when we’re all together, much less when it’s just me and Rocky! The name is just me trying to get creative.” She slapped his arm. “And don’t think I’m not mad at you for doubling back there.” Amber buried her face in his chest. Out of it, she muttered something that he barely picked up on. “I was worried, dumbass.”

Harold smiled, but his expression immediately darkened. Pulling away from Amber, he recalled every little detail from his time in agony “We have to talk.”

Amber sobered up immediately, nodding, “about what?”

“I think something’s here, influencing our minds.”

She looked confused. “What do you mean? I feel completely fine though, what brought this on?”

“Isn’t it strange how we’re constantly looking to fight? Our reactions in the cavern where we first woke up proved that our minds are not what they used to be. If you had saw the giant spiders, your arachnophobia would’ve made you too scared to fight, right?”

Amber nodded slowly, and Harold grabbed one of her hands, gently massaging the fingers individually to help her remain calm. “But we just immediately picked up whatever we could find, even when a weird system came up and told us to choose a class.” Harold knew he was rambling, but he had to get this out, lest something influence his mind, fading these ideas into the back of his memory.

“The pain seems to have dimmed the mental influence a bit, which I think is why I can say this at all, but I don’t know whether our natural minds will be overridden when our next fight comes.”

Amber gently pulled her hand away, thinking. “So if we are being mind controlled, or just influenced, how do we fight it?”

Harold sighed, rubbing his hands together. “Ironically, I think the best thing we can do is to keep fighting.”

Amber looked like she wanted to interject, but he raised his palm and continued. “Hear me out right? So we can’t get help from anyone else, the only other ‘people’ down here are monsters. So the solution either has to come from us, or we have to get out of here. In either case, we either need more skills from levelling, or we need to kill the Black Widow brood mother, so that we’re allowed to leave.”

Amber sighed, bringing both hands up to her face, her palms covering her mouth as she brought her index fingers to lightly pinch the bridge of her nose. “Ok, then the new plan is… well, it’s the old plan, right? We level up and hope it’s not the system that’s trying to kill us?” She got up, “so let’s go level.”

“Hold on,” Harold cautioned, “I’m still not one hundred percent, and we need some information.”

Amber put her hands on her hips, “I want to try out my spells, and where would we get information anyway?”

He smiled. “The only being willing to talk to us down here.”

#####

“WHY HAVE YOU APPEARED IN MY CHAMBER, NOBILIS?” The Fang Brood Mother looked less than happy to see them. Though, Harold supposed, it would be hard for an enormous spider queen to look inviting to humans anyway.

Clearly, Rocky did not share the same sentiments, and bounded up to the Fang Queen, apparently happy to see her.

“Status!”

Harold’s head whipped around at the discordant voice. It was unnerving, and sounded like someone had fused two voices into one.

Even the Fang Queen took a shaky step backwards. “YOU HAVE GAINED YOUR VOICE THEN, NOBILIS?” She looked… happy? Harold would be confused, but he could be totally off.

“IT IS GOOD TO KNOW THAT YOU FIGHT ALONGSIDE US.” No, that was joy. Definitely joy.

“Good? What is good?” Rocky tilted his head slightly to the left, seemingly in confusion.

“DO YOU… DO YOU NOT KNOW WHAT I SPEAK OF?” The spider mother’s enthusiasm seemed to be diminishing by the second.

“I… Not understand some words. They appear in mind, but I not know the meaning.”

Amber snapped her fingers. “Ah! I get it. I’m guessing that some kind of ability or skill gave Rocky a way to talk with us without actually learning a language, so he can convey his intent.”

“THAT DOES NOT EXPLAIN WHY HE CANNOT UNDERSTAND OUR INTENT HOWEVER.” Annoyance took the place of ignorance in the Brood Mother’s voice.

“I’m getting there, I’m getting there.” Amber cleared her throat. “So he can convey his ideas and emotions to us, but that doesn’t mean that’s how it works vice versa, right? Like there’s no way he’d know what the sky was if he was born down here, so no amount of system-facilitated translation would ever help us convey the idea. He just wouldn’t understand.”

Harold shook his head, directing his attention to the Brood Mother. “Okay okay, we can worry about teaching Rocky later, what we came here for was to ask you about the system. What do you know about skills, levels and such? Do system powers go away once we’re out of these caves?”

“I KNOW ENOUGH. ASK YOUR QUESTIONS. SO LONG AS IT AIDS MY BROOD, YOU WILL HAVE MY WISDOM.”

“Oh,” Harold stumbled over his words, ‘didn’t expect it to be that easy.’ “Okay, first question, is there any way we can see and raise our base stats? Like if I have a 4 in strength, can I level up and put points in it?”

“NO. A NORMAL SENTIENT BEING'S SKILL AND ‘STATS’, AS YOU PUT IT, ARE MEASURED IN THE TIME THEY SPEND HONING THEIR CRAFT, WAR OR OTHERWISE.”

“Okay, second question then, what allows skills to be as effective as they are? Is there a mechanism that allows them to work like magic?”

“THAT… I WOULD NOT KNOW. THE SYSTEM ITSELF IS HARD TO GAUGE, AND I'VE HARDLY TRIED SPEAKING TO SENTIENT SPECIES BEFORE.”

So did that mean that the Brood Mother had gone through the ‘Tutorials’ more than once? “Wait, I’m unclear, what exactly is your classification in the system? I think we’re designated as ‘users’ and such, but what would the system call you?”

“I AM WHAT THE SYSTEM WOULD CALL A MONSTER, I HAVE BEEN HERE FOR GENERATIONS, AND WILL BE HERE FOR GENERATIONS MORE.”

So she did live through multiple tutorials. “Then the system allows monsters that successfully survive, keep their memories, right?”

“NO. IT DOES NOT. HOW AM I SPEAKING TO YOU RIGHT NOW?” The Fang Queen’s voice had the quality of an adult teaching a young child, a fair assumption, but it grated on Harold nonetheless.

He responded, confident at least in this answer. “With your mind.”

“CORRECT! AND IT IS WITH OUR NATURALLY ATTUNED MIND MAGIC THAT OUR BROOD HAS AN AFFINITY FOR.” The Fang Brood Mother paused, collecting her thoughts, or so Harold assumed, then began anew.

“THE SYSTEM RESETS OUR MINDS, BUT FAILS TO DO SO TO OUR BODIES, UNLESS WE ARE KILLED. I CAN LEAVE SMALL MEMORIES BEHIND THAT CONVEY MEANING TO MY FUTURE SELF.”

Amber came up with a question first this time. “Ohhh, so as long as you don’t die, you can keep recycling your memories into the next system reset.”

“INDEED.” The spider seemed pleased that at least one of our number had grasped the concept.

“So,” Harold interjected, “if you’ve never interacted like this with Users, why start now?”

“I HAVE TWO REASONS FOR SUFFERING THROUGH THESE QUESTIONS. THE FIRST, IS THE NATURE OF THE TUTORIAL.” She paused, counting something.

“IN EVERY RESET, THERE IS SOME DEGREE OF RANDOMIZATION. MY BROOD IS AS WEAK AS IT HAS EVER BEEN SINCE I DEVELOPED MY ABILITY TO CARRY OVER MEMORIES.”

The Brood Mother gestured around her with a spindly, hairy leg. “WHAT YOU SEE HERE IS… INSUFFICIENT TO BEAT BACK THE OTHER BROODS AND THE UNDERGROUND RACES WE HAVE COME INTO CONTACT WITH. THUS, I HAD TO PROCURE AID.”

“And the second…?” Harold trailed off, prompting the spider to continue.

“YOU HAVE A NOBILIS AMONG YOU. THEY ARE RARE, RARER THAN YOU KNOW, AND ESPECIALLY POWERFUL. OVER MY MYRIAD LIVES, I HAVE ONLY EVER ENCOUNTERED ONE. BELIEVE ME WHEN I SAY THEY ARE TERRIFYING FORCES OF NATURE.” The slight shiver in her tone told Harold all he needed to know, and his little rock friend seemed more and more intimidating by the second.

Amber was nodding however, “I think it makes a lot of sense.” When faced with a questioning look from Harold, she began explaining. “We don’t have a frame of reference, because we don’t see other people developing skills, it’s just us. But just logically, what kind of class can summon servants at levels one or two?”

“I LIKE THIS ONE.”

Harold ignored the insinuations of his own stupidity, and instead smiled back. “I like her too.”

“ARE YOU OUT OF QUESTIONS THEN?”

“Nope! Not by a long shot. We’ve kind of gotten sidetracked from what we came here to discuss, but how would you recommend we-”

A Fang spider frantically scuttled into the room, letting out a shrill ‘SCREEE’ that echoed around the cavern.

“GO NOW, AID MY BROOD. WE ARE UNDER ATTACK.”

A million questions still burned in Harold’s mind, but he nodded, leading Amber and Rocky out of the cavern, rushing to where the loudest shrieks of battle and death could be heard.

It’s time to level up.