Chapter 18

The night had a surprising bite to it, a precursor to winter? It was nothing a beanie and a second jumper could not address, but in the context of what he was doing it felt almost prophetic. Tasked with saving the world and braving the icy winter.

Then he chuckled to himself. Not in Melbourne. There would be no blanket of snow unless he was on the top of the mountain for like the one week of the year when the snow fell.

The temperature, however, was cool, so he enabled his ice aura and the air suddenly felt toasty.

The four of them exited: him, Jules, Omala and Joanne. That the oracle had desired two healers created a deeper chill than even the icy winter wind.

Then he laughed internally. He had already earned the badge of the survivor, he and near death were almost buddies.

They didn’t run into any Alpha creatures as they hiked to the spot they would launch their scouting mission from.

“They certainly keep the area around them clear of threats,” Jules whispered softly into the communication device.

“Or your stomping is scaring them away.” He stuck his tongue out at her.

Joanne giggled at that before giving off a furtive glance at her surroundings.

The hill when they reached it was manned. One archer, a spy, and a ranger. Jules was immediately directed into the shell of the house that used to have pride of place on top of the hill. She would stay out of sight while the others monitored his progress. Given he was metaphorically poking the bees’ nest they would know when he ran.

“We need to wait five minutes,” Adrian admitted.

“What? Jules asked.

“Hot chocolate?” Adrian offered, pulling six cups from his bag of holding and handing them out.

Jules accepted hers with a suspicious look. “You wanted to have one last hot chocolate?”

“It’s the weather for it,” Adrian pointed out with a smile. “But no. I spent a lot of money buying an expensive upgrade and it’s about to finish. I don’t want any system stuff notifications or light to interrupt me when it finishes.” He nodded towards the octopods. It would be bad if their attempt to infiltrate was ruined by Adrian stumbling at the wrong time or worse, a system reward like when he got the meditation technique giving his position away.

“Nice chocolate.” Joanne toasted him. They sat chatting and the churning in Adrian’s stomach got stronger and stronger as the final bit of the feather was absorbed. Then it vanished, and he felt a rush of heat throughout him.

There were notifications.

Wind Flying

All wind spells used for flying are seventy-five percent stronger.

That by itself was probably worth the investment, but there was a second one.

Air knowledge

The time to learn air spells off monsters is reduced by thirty times.

The feather was definitely worth it. Adrian remembered all the cores and the days of observation that it had taken to learn Flame Sprout, a spell that was the cornerstone of his arsenal for so long. For a similar air spell, it might take only a couple of hours.

Finally, he flicked through the screens to check whether any attributes had upgraded.

Mana Pool --- now 5.72 (2.18 air mana) --- Plus 1.0 to air mana core --- Population - 1.19 (+.01)

Ten standard attribute points worth of mana. It was a huge total. Adrian was very happy with it. “It’s done.”

“And?” Jules challenged immediately.

“You know ten standard points to mana pool, improved flight. Can almost look at an animal using air mana and learn its magic.” He winked. “Nothing much really.”

“What!” Joanne gasped. “That’s obscene.”

“You get used to it,” Jules said. “How much did it cost, again?”

“A million energy.”

He could see the others processing that information.

“Pay to win,” Omala said quietly.

Adrian laughed. “That’s your takeaway?”

The healer shrugged. “When I have my first million, I’m not going to use it to buy a one-bedroom flat in central Melbourne, anymore.”

They all laughed.

Adrian stood, being careful to make sure he wasn’t visible from the octopod territory. “Well Ladies, Gentlemen.” He nodded to his team and then the sentries. “I need to do some exploring.”

Adrian snuck away from them in his Ambusher’s Set, but when he was two hundred metres from the line that demarcated the octopod-controlled area, he switched to the thick bulky camouflage suit. His pace immediately felt slow and strained. He did not close his eyes for this bit, using them to pick out the best way forward. Just a hundred metres beyond, everything was transformed.

The Alpha event had teleported a slab of land from somewhere else, an upthrust of mountainous rock. Adrian knew this wasn’t unusual, but it was still eye opening. The inserted alien terrain was roughly circular and was literally kilometres across. There was no doubt about its nature, everything had changed. A chunk of another world had burst like a boil out of the earth’s skin. There were sharp upthrusts of rock and then equally deep crevices that descended hundreds of metres in precarious drops.

The rock was a mix of an unknown crystal, dark basalt and even some pure seams of metal. He was not a geologist, but none of the metals were tarnished. There was a thin seam of something he was sure was gold and thick veins of silver but overall the metals he perceived to be precious were relatively rare. Whatever the space represented, the whole thing was unnatural. He was sure the bulk of what he saw was iron, but it was not rusted. The little chemistry knowledge he possessed shouted that the other world must have lacked oxygen or… Adrian did not want to think of the or… maybe there was an innocent magic process or what his mind was jumping to which was some sort guiding intelligence capable of terraforming the mountain in front of him.

There was no point worrying about it. He knew too little about metals in the new reality to understand how this could be occurring. Probably… Adrian had seen lots of rusted corrugated iron sheets, so rusting still worked as it had previously, but maybe that rust was all from pre-event and since the event it had stopped.

There were no monsters either. Both native fauna and the imported Alpha stuff found the environment too weird, or more likely the octopods had hunted everything nearby to extinction. He paused at the first plant from the literally alien landscape.

UooTalica

This is a slow-moving animal that is actively farmed in low sunlight worlds as a store of protein.

The damn animal looked like a plant but apparently was an animal. It was however completely harmless.

As he moved, the number of uooTalica increased. It was like he was entering a dense forest or, given its description, he was going probably trespassing through something’s garden.

Adrian shrugged off another chill.

The atmosphere was so alien that his brain was running away with him.

A mana octopod slid by just at the edge of his domain. It woke up memories, ones that screamed at him to leap into action. To take out his spear and destroy it. Adrian clamped down on the emotion. There were more important things to do.

Adrian kept walking, letting his scouting senses guide where to step. There was a three-chasm coming ahead of him. His domain could not even sense the bottom and he wanted to look, but he kept his discipline.

There was a mana octopod up ahead, so he waited. The moment it moved out of sight Adrian took off. With care, he placed each foot on firm parts of the rock and accelerated. It was more stuttering movement than a smooth run, but it was good enough.

He leapt and realised instantly that he had miscalculated.

The damn suit’s weight was more than he expected.

Shit.

There was no way he was going to make the top. His legs dipped below the ground line and then his chest slammed hard into the lip of the cliff. His breath blasted out of him, but the thick armour actually spread the force pretty well. He thrust his spear into the ground to support him. It found a gap in the rock and stuck fast.

Falling would be a waste of time, and using magic would give his position away.

Struggling with the suit, he clambered up like a seal and was able to grab an outcrop of copper. His knees stung, but now that he had a handhold he could reduce his thumping heart. He would not fall.

Adrian held himself perfectly still. Barely breathing, very conscious of how much noise the clumsy landing had created.

Too much.

For this area, it had been an alien noise as well. Eyes tightly shut and pressed against the copper, Adrian pushed his passive senses to full power. Mana octopods came to investigate. Dozens of them. They swarmed around him clearly searching for the source of the noise. His heart pounded, encouraging him to launch himself upward and unleash devastating hell on the gathered vermin. Instead, he focused on his breathing. Refusing to release even a spark of power to relieve the pain in his arms.

Awkwardly hanging there.

Minutes passed. One got close enough so that one of its walking tentacles rested on his arm. The suckers on them attached to his armour and pulled off with a popping sound that resembled their noise against rock. The similarity was enough to curtail its continued probing. This near, they were noisy when they moved. There were thirty of them within his domain.

A good fight if he was forced, but not dangerous. Yet he knew he could do nothing, as he wasn’t there to kill. At least not yet.

It shuffled away and his arm involuntarily started trembling. Luckily, it was far enough that no vibrations reached them.

How had he stuffed up the jump that badly?

Another minute and the pack, because that is what it was, continued on their patrol.

Biting off a groan, Adrian pulled himself up and then just lay prone on the ground to give his body time to recover. A lone octopod drifted into his domain range and once more, he could not afford to move. Out in the open like this, any movement would be noticed.

The creature seemed to search for something.

Once it was gone, he got soundlessly to his feet and started the agonising process of sneaking through the wandering beasts. They were everywhere, but providing none within his domain were actively looking in his direction. Adrian kept moving. While he ensured that, he kept his eyes shut every step of the way.

The frequent dense patches of UooTalic helped, and he stopped avoiding the plant-like creatures and instead began seeking them out. Then, once near them, he would push aggressively through the centre of the clumps. The clumps muffled his domain, but it was only a problem when he was deep within the foliage, and then it didn’t matter. As much as it reduced his scouting abilities, it hid him perfectly.

The thick suit complicated his process. Sometimes he could squeeze between trunks, other times he would need to climb before crawling through gaps ten metres above the ground. One hand over the other as he crabbed along.

Finally, he reached the line that had been drawn. Just within the edge of an uooTalica grove, he placed the teleporter plate down. He had only penetrated six hundred metres into the restricted area. He wasn’t even in unknown territory as others had got deeper than this and survived.

Cautiously, he assessed the magic present. He was worried about a teleport lock, but nothing existed. There was no point resting as physically he was right to go. Adrian had been going for over two hours for very little obvious gain. Only slightly over a kilometre travelled but the key thing was that he was still a ghost. He would move laterally for an hour, even if that did not get him as far as Kiyoko had ordered. After that hour had passed, he would start traversing to the core. Everything was taking longer than he expected and he wanted to have enough time to sneak all the way to the centre. If the terrain allowed it of course. Every metre gained meant that when he resorted to battle wraith form he had more chance of penetrating as deeply as his world and system needed.

Adrian was of two minds about what he would discover. Part of him, the bit that yearned to be a hero imagined the worse but the practical side of him told him that continent- or world-ending events did not occur often. All this effort was going to end up being pointless. Adrian could almost taste it. A bucket load of stress and risk, and when he got to the centre all he would find would be some useless class three monster, that might or might not be strong enough to make Wangaratta evacuate.

That would be for the best.

That it would, Adrian acknowledged to himself, but it would also be a letdown. For now, all he could do was focus on the plan. Travel the perimeter, placing down decoys and then when he had got far enough he would strike out for the centre. To reveal something unimaginably powerful or a disappointment. It was very wrong that he half hoped for the first.

Adrian repeated the techniques that he was perfecting to navigate the uooTalica. Push as fast as he could through the clumps, then sneak ever so slowly outside them. Five hundred metres later, with the fake trail laid, the one-hour time limit had passed, and he switched his trajectory to sneak inwards.

Nothing changed.

His progress went unnoticed but continued to be agonisingly slow.

Dips, hills, crystal pillars that octopods hid behind, a little grove of uooTalica to push through. It was glacial, with more time hiding than moving.

Another hour passed, and then a second. He only had three or four hours till dawn, but he was over two-thirds of the way to his destination. There was less than seven hundred metres to the centre.

His muscles should have been fatigued but Alpha physics meant that despite everything he had been through his body felt fresh and without aches. While physically he was fine, mentally it was exhausting. Just like the first time when chasing shintopurs, it was the level of vigilance that he had to maintain that was the problem. Boredom was an ever-present problem, and he felt himself moving quicker and taking extra risks. His speed increased and every time he crested a rise he kept expecting to see a giant wyrm revealed or something as terrifying, but instead there was a dip followed by another ridge. Above his head, he saw the snakes flash through the air low enough for him to impale with his spear. Flying would have been such a bad idea. He could hardly believe he had thought it would work.

More octopods were coming. Like it was routine he quickly climbed a crystal outcropping. This deep into their territories they did tactile scans besides visual, however, they did not search upwards, being content to touch everything on the ground.

Crack.

His pillar.

The noise echoed.

It was not an unusual sound, but Adrian held himself extra still.

He looked down. The dark grey crystal had a new line running up it. The octopods appeared over the rise, moving towards the pillar he was on top of.

Please.

Crack.

The crack spread like lightning expanding out, fork by fork, through the night sky. But they were lines of weakness through the pillar that supported his weight.

Adrian’s mind scrambled. If he dropped, now the mass approaching him would definitely find him. There was nowhere else for him to retreat to. If he held and it broke… No choice. He was at the mercy of the strange crystal.

The body-freezing aspects of Ambusher’s Fade were engaged and if they weren’t, he was sure that sweat would have dripped from his face.

Please hold.

The one bonus of these search parties was that they moved fast. The clump in front of him contained almost fifty of them and they swept downwards at the human equivalent of a fast jog. A wave of icky octopus tentacles.

Crack.

Adrian wasn’t sure he could do anything to stop the fracturing, as his weight was clearly too much for the delicate structure.

The octopod group charged down, and watching them he saw the way their tentacles smacked against rock walls, metal spikes, and crystal outcrops.

When they hit his pillar...

He was half tempted to give up and drop to fight. After all, there was no way the crystal was going to hold once the octopods started knocking into it. Then he stopped himself, if it broke he would fight, but there was no tactical advantage to initiating the clash sooner.

They were twenty metres away and getting closer. He spend the time considering what he would do when the crystal failed. A quick wind blade to create space and then shadow step through them. The opportunity for stealth would vanish, and it would be all about speed. Once discovered, everything switched to a race.

Crack.

He couldn’t see where the new flaw in the crystal was, and he hoped it wasn’t something going across the pillar, providing the cracks spread up and down the structural integrity might hold once they went across, then it was a matter of time.

The octopod patrol landed.

Then they were under him.

Thump.

Vibrations reached him from the blows against the base of the pillar.

Crack.

Thump.

More vibrations.

Crack, Crack, Crack.

A piece of crystal broke off and fell with a tinkling sound on the ground below him.

Adrian opened his eyes. The surface in front of him was filled with white flaws.

CRACK!

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