Chapter 24

They were right near the gate, but while the text had said the front gate, his map had pinged a different spot that took them well outside of town to a staging area that was half a kilometre away.

When they got there, twenty-three people had already gathered and Adrian’s identification went wild. The average level was above fifty and the amount of power available was incredible.

“If we had this at Albury?” he whispered to Jules.

She nodded, making the same assessment as him. If the system had triggered the same protocol, then the town could have taken out Adhava without a problem. But Adrian knew it only concerned itself with larger issues. Its rules were based on statistical probabilities, and it needed the native species to deal with people like Adhava by themselves. The system did not play favourites.

“I wonder if that is built into the system. If the race can’t beat some mind controllers, would the response be to hand out levels like candy to the resistance? You know eventually?”

“Maybe,” Adrian acknowledged, from what little he had pieced together about the system something like that was more than possible. “Even if that would happen someday, how many people would have died in the meantime.”

“Oh yeah. We had to stop her, but I was thinking out loud.”

“Ok,” Mike said his voice booming, so they all heard him perfectly. “You all know why we are here. You are our hard hitters. Your job is to meet their elites and neutralise them. Now I realise you have all studied the images that Adrian got for us, but I have bad news. We don’t think they are relevant anymore. We have reports from the front that the whole organisational structure has changed. Zxeatra italraca are now actively managing attack squads of octopods. That will make fighting them far harder. They will ambush us, drag their injured back and basically make our life difficult. We also believe that the number of elite creatures has grown. Our objective is a class zero. The strongest thing imaginable. It is a global threat working to get through to our planet to destroy us. It rules its own planet and it will send its minions in to stop us.”

Everyone started talking excitedly.

“There is more that wasn’t available in the data package. Kiyoko, our oracle was able to extract this. The class 0 we are trying to stop has destroyed three newly transitioned worlds already. The system can’t beat it once it gets through the portal, and that portal will open in less than a week.”

“How about getting extra reinforcements from Melbourne and Sydney?” someone called out.

“I’m sure that is a plan, but the system’s minions that are streaming through the forecast models suggest that if we fail, then mobilising the whole of the eastern seaboard will only give them a two or three percent extra chance of stopping the invasion. This is on us.”

“Has Melbourne been activated?”

“No,” Mike answered. “Kiyoko thinks that the wider mobilisation will occur if we haven’t won by six. If that happens, we have probably already lost and if a wider mobilisation is required then our quest rewards will disappear.”

“What?” someone shouted.

“Ridiculous.”

“Cheats.”

Mike raised his hands. “Not my choice. Just facts.”

“What are we waiting for?” Galan yelled.

“To get the strongest force possible. Thirty minutes ago, eighty percent of people were still unconscious, even now almost ten percent are unavailable. The elites,” Mike waved his hand to cover them, “took less time than some of the lower levelled people. But it’s time. We can brief you on the way. There are fifteen traders up ahead. Get a care packet as you go through,” Mike ordered before turning and sprinting away, presumably to attend another briefing.

“Interesting,” Jules observed.

“I feel sick,” Adrian admitted.

“Why?”

“This! It’s all too much. The resources.”

“Yeah, it’s no drill. This is actually world ending. Can you believe we need to fight something that has already killed three transitioning worlds?” Jules patted him on the back. “It’s impossible to comprehend how many billions of sapient lives it’s responsible for killing.”

“It would definitely be a shame to have gone this far to have a titan end it all just as I am about to reach Melbourne.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She punched him lightly on the arm and winked. “We’re ages from Melbourne. Hundreds of kilometres, at least. That’s like a whole pair of shoes.”

He laughed despite himself and they jogged off together after their team.

“Joanne,” Jules called out, dropping into a slow jog next to their healer. “You look like you are struggling.”

“This feels like gym class,” she huffed.

“How much agility do you have?”

“Thirteen,” Joanne answered.

“You know you can train?” Jules reminded her.

“You know I was a prisoner of a crazy witch and locked underground?”

“Yeah.”

“If you were always hungry and had no energy training was hard.” Joanne fell silent to concentrate on her breathing. With thirteen agility, she probably needed to pace herself. Since his agility was now thirty-two, he could do whatever he wanted while keeping up with her.

His attention turned to the two men jogging next to her, a Level 53 Threat Paladin and Level 49 Earth Adapt. The mage looked even more red-faced than Joanne but the paladin was jogging easily.

He nudged Jules and nodded at the runners.

Jules smiled and accelerated around him to push neatly between them. “Hi guys, I’m the lightning berserker.”

The earth adapt almost fell over when he jerked away, but Jules casually grabbed an elbow and supported him. The paladin did not recoil, but Adrian noticed a hand drift to his dagger.

“Jules,” she said bright and friendly, like she had not deliberately tried to get a reaction. “I’m in your group.”

The earth adapt was back to focusing on running as he clearly lacked the energy to do anything else.

“Oh,” the threat paladin said. “I’m Murphy, and the puffing kid is Paul.”

“That is The Billionaire,” she said offhandedly, waving in his direction.

Step. Wind gust.

“Adrian,” he said quietly introducing himself properly to Murphy.

Jules squealed happily as she landed catlike, not at all perturbed that he had shoved her away. “Fun!”

The earth adapt did not even notice, but Murphy observed the entire exchange with a measure of disbelief.

“I see your reputations were not too far off.”

“We have a reputation?”

The old man nodded to indicate just Adrian. “Moral, strong, but a little crazy,” Murphy confirmed. He looked at Jules and then bit his tongue. Internally, Adrian smiled.

Jules accelerated briefly and easily caught up to him. She looked fine and had grinned when he sent her flying, so he was probably safe from her retribution.

“Adrian?” Jules said.

“What?”

“I think you cut me.” She held up a hand. There might have been a small graze on it with a tiny fleck of blood. It flickered and spat at him, stinging his cheek. “Luckily for you, not much.”

“What have you done?” He was not feeling anything yet, but he feared the worse. She had some sort of blood magic, after all.

“Just running a test.” She laughed and jogged over to run next to Joanne.

“Why?”

“I figured it could help your poison pathway,” she yelled at him.

“Jules!” he yelled back. Okay, he hadn’t been safe after all.

The traders were in front of him.

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