Chapter 35

Charlotte stood and wiped her tears away. “Thanks,” she said finally. “So he died a hero?”

“That, as you know is just a label, dear.” Kiyoko then looked at Adrian. “As for you, Mr. World Saver, the system can’t grant you what you desire. It can’t do anything about RT073345 .” She paused. “That’s your interface’s official name. And you still have your journey in front of you.” She stopped her eyes going white and then moving like they were in REM sleep. “I have accepted a quest to get you to Melbourne safely. It is the best it could do.” Jules, Adrian noticed, was hugging a sobbing Charlotte.

Adrian focused on Kiyoko. She was an oracle and while it was too early to know where her level was going to be after the battle he was sure it would end up above level forty. Having her would more than replace the benefit of the interface working to help him. There was no way he could say no to that sort of gift. In fact, he should probably thank the system for being so helpful.

“Thank you,” he said formally to Kiyoko. “Does this mean that you’re going to go all the way to Melbourne with me?”

“Not what I said! But I’ll get you to Melbourne. You can be sure of that.” She nodded like it was all decided and they marched into the city. Jules and Charlotte were ahead of him, arm in arm. That poor girl had lost most of her family in Culcairn and now her boyfriend was dead, a man who had died because he was being a hero. Adrian knew how much that sort of label would comfort him. Dead was dead.

“This is going to be a long night,” he said to Kiyoko, who was walking next to him. Then she froze.

“More than you realise boy,” she said so softly he barely heard. Kiyoko stopped, so Adrian froze too, looking around as he did so. Ahead of them, he could see the wall the town had put up. A wall that was unsurprisingly unmanned. There were no threats within his immediate sensing domain, but his eyes went further and there was nothing moving in sight.

“Not that.” Kiyoko’s hands were clutching him with surprising strength.

What?

Ahead of him, Charlotte stiffened. “Mike?”

Surprise shot through him.

“You’re alive?” he heard her say.

Kiyoko disengaged her hands and his eyes were only on Charlotte’s. Her back was straight once more, she was no longer hunched over in despair.

“Of course, we’ll come.” A pause. “You can update my map… Adrian and Jules are there… You can update their maps. Great. We’re coming.”

“I might leave this one to you,” Kiyoko told him, patting him on the shoulders. “Seems like a young person’s thing.”

He grabbed her as she went to step away, wanting to understand how Mike could have survived. “How? You said?”

“There was a contingency for those who stayed, but without contact, I assumed they had all died. Apparently, I was wrong.”

She pulled free and walked away determinedly, acting like she was on a mission to complete a different bit of oracle business. He watched her leave and decided that she probably wasn’t acting. An oracle of her level must have plenty of business.

“Adrian,” Charlotte yelled, spinning to face him. His interface was flashing, and he flicked to look. There was a dot on his map. “Can you?”

“Do you want me to go ahead?”

“Please.”

Adrian turned and ran in the indicated direction, triggering his battle wraith form and launching into using his steps to eat up the distance. His target was almost ten kilometres away, beyond where the zxeatra italraca had set up their portal. The trip should not be that.

Chaining steps, Adrian figured he would cross that distance in under fifteen minutes. On even ground, just running without cheating, his agility would probably let him do it twenty minutes flat. The ability to teleport would more than halve that time maybe even quarter it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t flat and while steps allowed him to ignore the terrain, the broken landscape still slowed him down.

Flying?

Flying did not care about the broken earth’s surface, and it was fast. Adrian looked up at the sky. While land animals had fled, flying ones had been attracted to the explosion. They probably associated that sort of disturbance with carrion and dead animals to pick on. There was lots of stuff up there, including a wyvern circling high in the air that he really didn’t want to draw the attention of.

No flying then.

The landscape sped by and he started seeing spots where the debris had landed from the explosion. Briefly, he launched off a twisted lump of metallic ore the size of a car and probably weighed fifty times that. The people of Wangaratta would not be short of metal in the future.

There were no monsters, and he saw signs they had ran from the explosion. Claw marks showing an animal heavier than a horse that had been galloping, loping or whatever the right term was away from the epicentre. There was even a hole in the ground a little larger than a swimming pool that his Ambusher’s knowledge tagged as evidence of a massive ambush monster who had decided it was better to go elsewhere. Something from the retocaica family. Similar to the sand elemental, but more tangible.

Regional knowledge wasn’t very helpful, and the badge when he asked just returned a million results, telling him that there were no simple answers to be had.

The mountain, the series of dips, then ridges that had gone inexorably upwards had exploded. It’s central mass was gone, replaced by a crater. Crystal seams shattered, ore veins exposed and debris spread over kilometres. Adrian, before he even reached where the alien rock of the previous mountain had begun was picking his way through rock fragments that had him twenty metres above where the ground used to be. Adrian was sure he saw a gold vein large enough to set off another gold rush. Alpha event or not, that was if gold had kept its intrinsic value. Adrian had never bothered checking.

Cursing slightly, he changed directions and slowed down for a moment to let him speak easier. “Guys, plan to skirt the hole. It wasn’t passable.”

The centre of the mountain looked like an alien art installation. The crater was about two hundred metres below the natural ground level, but it was filled with pillars. Some of them were no thicker than a metre but soared a hundred and fifty metres straight up. Navigating it would be time-consuming.

Adrian forged ahead and soon he was on the other side of the incursion point, running past the artificial hill material and back to where he could see ordinary Australian bush through the gaps in the large boulders he was racing along the top of.

He was getting close and his foot landed on a patch of grass for the first time in over five minutes. Out this far, there were just scattered rocks and crystals.

Without disturbing a leaf of a tree, he stopped in the shade of a trunk. Ahead of him was the spot that Mike had marked and a pack of ground wolves encircling the trunk. For some unknown reason, they had not chosen to run when the sky started falling on them. Mike was right at the top of the tree while the wolves were leaping energetically. He knew from experience that they could not climb trees and physically they were the same as mud wolves.

Ground Wolves

An Alpha predator species that can use their magic to get the earth to grab their prey’s legs.

After waiting for a moment to catch his breath, courtesy of sprinting for ten minutes, he pulled out the bow and then shook his head. Yeah, he could stand in the shadow of the trees and pepper them with arrows. Then retreat upwards if they countered. But it was unnecessary. He put it back away and gripped his spear instead.

Theatrically cracking his neck before he burst into action.

Four shadow steps carried him, and then they surrounded him. There were eight of them and at least two females with cubs.

Just scare them.

He was amongst them, the flat end of the spear smashing into snouts, teeth and joints. They yelped and snarled in equal measure and he spun between their attacks, his Magic Focus letting him spot their attempts to use the earth to seize his legs. Adrian embraced his fighting techniques, and he was fast and skilled enough that Shadow Evasion only triggered once.

They would lunge at him, and he would greet them with a sharp smack and they would stumble away in pain. With a roar, he shoulder-charged the pack Alpha. It was knocked off its feet and Adrian with his immaculate spear control pinned it. The toe of his spear on the wolf’s throat, he leant his weight on the spear.

The Alpha thrashed as it was pushed into the ground. The soft dirt tried to grab him but he just stepped to the side continuously avoiding the attempt.

With his sense domain, he watched as a female got behind his back and launched herself at him. Mouth wide, it intended to seize his neck.

The spear pulsed, and the wolf went flying over him as the air lifted her up just enough to make her sail over the top.

He leant harder on the spear, compressing the Alpha wolf’s throat.

It whimpered and the other wolves slunk away.

Adrian looked down at his one-time nemesis, well at least a similar species. Its ears were pinned backwards, its tail under its legs like a pet dog would do when threatened by something stronger than it.

With a huff, he stepped back, releasing the wolf from the intense pressure. It struggled to its feet, coughing. The other wolves snarled at him and then the Alpha barred its teeth at its own pack. They cowered back, the fake strength robbed from them. The Alpha looked at him and seemed to nod and then dashed away with the pack falling in around it.

“Why didn’t you kill them?”

‎ “Thanks for saving me, Adrian. Great job,” Adrian yelled back at Mike, and he was pleased to see a flush of red go across the other man’s cheeks.

“Yes, thanks.”

“And for saving the world,” he suggested cheekily.

Mike’s eyes tightened. “Thank you, World Saver.”

Adrian laughed unable to stop himself.

“Screw you too,” Mike said, smiling a little. “Can you help me down?”

Adrian queried his spear, knowing that it could cushion the fall, but checking, anyway. Affirmation came back.

“Sure, jump and I will catch you.”

“I…”

“You know I can do it.” He waved the spear.

Mike nodded and went to jump, but failed to launch. Grabbing the tree trunk at the last moment. “It’s harder than it looks.”

“Try again. Maybe count.”

“Three,” Mike said, removing his hands from the trunk. “Two.”

Wind gust.

“Screw you,” Mike screamed as the air picked up and threw him like a rock in a catapult. He windmilled as he fell and landed with barely a thump twenty metres away. “What the hell was that?”

“Figured I would speed the process up.”

“A bit of warning next time.”

“What?” Adrian shrugged. “You’re down, you’re safe and as far as I can tell uninjured.”

“I just don’t like being thrown—”

“Whatever,” Adrian interrupted. “Are there others we need to save?”

Mike cut off the rant Adrian had seen coming. “You’re right. We’ve got work to do. Four so far, but we can only tell when the shell breaks.”

Even as the man spoke, Adrian saw his map updating.

‎