Chapter Seven: Reunion

“So, Rabbit, where are we going?”

“I’m not sure. I just know it’s a large structure of some kind, and that it shouldn’t take more than two and a half hours or so, barring delays, to get there.” I shifted my pack uncomfortably. It wasn’t heavy per se, but it was rough and unwieldy. Lartha’s craftmanship left a lot to be desired. “I figure that a giant structure in the middle of the jungle is likely to be a main part of the Trial. It also serves as a landmark, since I’m trying to find the rest of my family.”

Svenia clapped me on the shoulder so hard I nearly stumbled.

“Should the gods favor us, we will find your parents and brother,” she reassured me. “Just as I will find my tribesmen.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Just gotta keep positive.”

“That’s the spirit!”

“He seems to be getting along well with the savage,” I heard Lartha mutter from behind me.

“Don’t be rude,” my sister admonished her.

“What? She is.”

“You’re the one that eats people,” Renee pointed out.

Svenia raised an eyebrow – the only eyebrow she had.

“Your elven companion eats people?” she asked me.

“It’s not cannibalism if they’re not the same species,” Lartha said matter-of-factly, replying to her directly.

“That is technically true, but that doesn’t make it any less messed up,” I said.

“There is a tribe where I come from which believes that they can steal the might of their foes by consuming them,” Svenia said. “Is it like that?”

“No, it’s just… some species taste good, and them being intelligent doesn’t change that. We don’t murder people in order to eat them, so I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“Maybe it is you who is the savage,” Svenia said with a laugh.

“I come from a civilization more advanced than either of yours,” Lartha said indignantly.

“Technologically, maybe. But just because your technology is more advanced doesn’t mean your societal and cultural practices are.”

“Hmph.”

“Master, I don’t understand.”

“What do you not understand, Shadow?”

“I don’t know.”

Oh, right. If it corresponded to anything like the game, Shadow’s current intelligence was something like that of a slow-witted child. I should probably invest in increasing her intelligence in the future to bring her up to something where I could hold actual conversations with her.

I glanced up at Rusty, who was flying relatively low above us. Maybe I could boost his intelligence, too. I couldn’t really use him to scout effectively if I couldn’t really communicate complex concepts to him. The problem was that it was getting pretty expensive to upgrade, and it felt kind of wasteful to spend my class points on something other than myself. I needed a way to level up quickly; the only reason that my sister and I were close to Svenia’s level was because of two completed sub-trials. So either we needed to hunt, or we needed to find more sub-trials.

“You can converse with your cat? How fascinating!”

“It’s one of my class abilities. I can also see through my hawk’s eyes, but I’m blinded through my own when I do.”

“How useful!”

We fell silent as we got closer, and when we reached within a thousand feet, we stopped and I sent Rusty forward to scout. I leaned against a tree and connected my mind to his senses.

The tree line abruptly ended not far beyond where we could see, the jungle opening into a massive clearing occupied by the structure: a ziggurat made of green-gray stone. I estimated its height to be around a hundred and fifty feet or so, though it was hard to make precise judgements, especially when viewing through a hawk’s eyes. It was also quite broad, the base being between two and three times the height. The ziggurat appeared old and weathered, but there were no plants growing over it – in fact, there was no greenery at all beyond the moat that surrounded it.

There were two other things in the clearing that caught my attention. The first was the great beast that appeared to be guarding the entrance of the ziggurat. It lounged on the far side of the moat, watching to make sure that none tried to cross the water. It was a little difficult to describe, mainly because it was such a mishmash of different animals: the body of a lion with hard-looking scales covering most of it, a tail that ended in a snake’s head, eight spider legs jutting out of its sides (turned up instead of down), and a head that seemed almost humanoid and made me think “ogre” with massive tusks and fangs. Oh, and it was absolutely gigantic – it made the Greater Dire Boar look small; my guess was that it was roughly the size of an eighteen-wheeler: maybe sixty feet long, fourteen feet or so tall, and a little over ten feet wide.

The second was the presence of other people. Along the edge of the trees were three different groups, one of them in the open and the other two just inside the trees. To my delight, the one in the open, which was the one in the center, had both my brother and my father. There were also two others with them, a lizardman (uh-oh) and some sort of bird-person. The other two groups were similarly sized; one had three humans and the other had a human, an “elf” like Lartha, and three people with animal ears and tails.

Rusty circled around, and on the far side of the ziggurat there were two more groups – one was made up of three lizardmen and my mother, while the other was… well, it didn’t matter what they were, because they were dead. My mother looked scared and miserable, and her hands were tied, so I was betting she was a captive who had formerly been part of the dead group. The thought made my blood boil.

After making a few passes, Rusty returned to us, and I informed the others of the situation.

“Everyone’s alive!” my sister cheered, embracing me happily. I hugged her back.

“Then let us go meet your family!” Svenia said with a grin, walking in the direction that I had specified.

“Am I the only one worried about the fact that people are apparently camping out rather than fighting the monster?” Lartha said.

Nobody answered her.

We exited the jungle and my father’s angel noticed us immediately.

“Jonathan, your other children are here,” he said in his melodious voice.

My family and their two companions turned. Dad’s face split into a wide smile as Renee and I rushed forward, followed by our animals. They even joined in on our group hug.

“Yuan, Renee! I’m so glad you’re okay!”

“I was so worried about you guys,” my brother added.

“How did you survive, Todd?” I asked, half-joking.

“By lucking out early on. I was rescued by Kekir.” He gestured to the bird-person after we separated. “He invited me to join him and said he’d protect me. He’s a really good archer and a wind mage.”

“And this is Hessin,” my father said, gesturing to the lizardman. “Unlike your brother and Kekir, we can’t understand each other. Todd said Kekir invited him to party link, but I haven’t figured out how to do that.”

“It might be something only the leader of the party can do. When I touched the statue, I was designated the leader of the family. Kekir, are you a Leader also?”

“Yes,” the birdman said in a soft voice. “I was the one who approached the strange statue first. Unfortunately, I have not been able to reunite with my companions. I came across the corpse of one of them, may his soul wing freely in the Great Sky.” He dipped his head. “I greet you, Yuan of the Rivers.”

I dipped my head in return. “I greet you as well, Kekir. Thank you for taking care of my brother.”

“The teachings of the Roost are clear: we must aid those in need. I have done nothing to warrant thanks.”

I turned to Hessin and offered for him to party link. He accepted.

“It is nice to finally be able to speak and be understood,” he hissed. “Jonathan and his strange spirit are strong warriors, else I would not have joined him.”

“My hawk scouted this area for us. There is a group of three of your kind on the other side of the ziggurat, holding my mother captive,” I said without preamble. My father’s eyes widened and my brother gasped. “I don’t know if they’re your friends or not, but I’d like you to try convincing them to release her to us.”

He let out a hissing laugh. “Why would I do that? If they are not my kin, they would no more listen to me than to you. If they are my kin, I should join them and fight you in battle. We do not release slaves out of pity.”

My father had his sword out in a blink, pointing it at the lizardman. “My wife is held against her will and you expect me to accept you have any right to keep her?! If you don’t agree to help free her, I’ll kill you right now, slaver!”

“I understand why he’s angry, but isn’t he overreacting?” Lartha muttered to herself.

“Jonathan, your woman must be weak, to have been captured. The strong take. It is the way of the world,” Hessin said lazily. “If you want her back, take her back with your own strength.”

“One of your kind tried to kill us with a surprise attack from the trees,” I said. “We killed him.”

“Such is the fate of the weak,” the lizardman said carelessly.

“Indeed,” I replied, raising my hand as I started to weave a new lattice. “Fire Beam.”

A beam of scorching hot flames nearly two inches in diameter shot out of my palm when the spell snapped into place after a second and a half of casting. It struck him in the chest, scorching his scales black before breaking through and spreading its heat underneath his skin, the flames bursting out from between scales all over his body. After nearly two seconds of sustained fire, the beam cut out, and his smoking corpse fell to the ground.

Ding!

[You have cast the second circle spell “Fire Beam” for the first time. This spell creates a sustained beam of fire shooting out from your palm. This beam can be moved. This spell is upgradeable.]

[You have killed one level 5 Champion Contestant without assistance. You have killed one level 5 Champion Contestant without sustaining any damage. For this achievement, your Experience Earned has been doubled.]

[You have betrayed and killed a party-linked Champion Contestant. For this, you have received one Flair Tally Point.]

Everyone stared at me in shock.

“Nobody talks about my mom like that,” I said, shaking slightly. I’d just deliberately killed a person, and not in self-defense. The system even called it out as a betrayal and rewarded me for it. “Anyone who thinks its okay to take slaves is evil, and nobody takes my mother as a slave.”

“Well said!” Svenia cried, slapping me on the shoulder. “Now all you need to do is single-handedly free your mother!”

“You are quite brutal, Yuan of the Rivers, but your fury is understandable.”

“…Why single-handedly?” my brother asked.

“To prove his might as a warrior, of course!” she said as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“If I do that, I might not have enough mana left to help fight the monster,” I pointed out.

“Hm. Fair point. All right, Rabbit, I will help you rescue your mother! Let us be off!”

“Who are these people, Yuan?” my father asked, a befuddled look on his face.

“Oh, right, I forgot to introduce you. This is Svenia, Warrior of the Blackmarrow Tribe. This is Aguin, a mercenary mage. And this is Lartha, a student from a sci-fi interstellar empire. Everyone, this is my father, Jonathan, and my brother, Todd.”

“Well met, Rabbit’s family!” Svenia said with a grin.

“…Well met?” my father ventured.

“Let’s go rescue Mom,” my sister urged.

And so we set out to circle around the ziggurat. Fortunately, the group of humans we passed by, hidden in the jungle, didn’t do anything to us. We encountered the lizardmen earlier than expected, as they had decided to circle the structure as well. Neither we nor they slowed the approach as we continued toward each other until we were about a hundred feet away from one another, at which point my mother called out to us.

“Jonathan! Todd! Renee! Yuan!”

“Mom!”

“Tina!”

One of the lizardmen, who was wielding a spear, said something in his hissing language to my mother. She responded in kind. He hissed back.

“You will release my wife,” Dad yelled, “or I will kill you!”

I’d rarely seen him so angry. It was to be expected; my blood was boiling too. How dare they?

Another of the trio, an archer, nocked an arrow to his bow and loosed it in one smooth motion, aiming at my father. Though the arrow flew hard and fast, it cracked off Dad’s shield harmlessly. With a wordless cry, my father charged.

I joined him, and Svenia rushed on ahead on my other side. Kekir leaped into the air, drawing an arrow on his bow with his taloned feet.

The lizardmen never stood a chance. An arrow struck the archer before he could fire again, and then my father was on him with his sword, slicing through scale and flesh. Svenia knocked the greataxe out of the third lizardman’s hands with a single swing, then cut him in two with a backswing. And I kept running until my spell completed, then halted and trained my fire beam on the spearman.

I leveled up to level eleven, getting more upgrade options, for killing a level six Champion Contestant. I even got a free unlisted feature that upgraded status screens.

It was a tearful reunion.

We regrouped back on the same side as the entrance. Sheena removed the lizardman’s corpse (and all the animals ate), while the rest of us ate leftovers from the boar and caught up. Apparently my mother had met up with a group of others fairly early on, after she had killed a few forest spiders with firebombs that she had mixed together. She had had the foresight to make small versions by altering the volume of ingredients so that she could easily put the resultant fire out rather than burning the jungle down. For her first Merchant feature, she had chosen the capability to speak any language – essentially the same as Renee’s second circle spell, but permanent. This had helped her team up with those she met as well as helped her convince the lizardmen to spare her life.

My brother had yet to gain any experience at all, and my father was level five.

I examined their status screens, as well as my own after I picked my advancements.

Yuan Rivers (Sorcerer/Ranger Level 11)

Sorcerer Class Points: 5

Energy: High

Condition: Healthy

Ranger Class Points: 7

Mana: 17/21

Sorcerer Features: Spirit Animal (Avoidance, Empathic Bond, Speak with Sorcerer), Dual Spell

Ranger Features: Animal Companion (Lesser Avoidance, Master Bond, Sensory Link, Intelligence (1)), Swift Shot, Focused Shot, Foe Bane, Terrain Mastery

Miscellaneous Features: Might & Magic

Sorcerer Spells: 0th (Magic Sight, Lux, Minor Telekinesis, Cleanse), 1st (Force Armor, Magic Missile (x2, 50%), Lightning Grasp, Burning Blast), 2nd (Fire Beam (75%, x2 time))

Ranger Spells: 1st (Animal Stealth)

Proficiencies: Sword (2), Bow (2), Spells

Renee Rivers (Druid/Bard Level 10)

Druid Class Points: 8

Energy: Full

Condition: Healthy

Bard Class Points: 4

Mana: 22/22

Druid Features: Animal Companion (Avoidance, Master Bond, Intelligence (2)), Nature Guru, Animal Aspect

Bard Features: Magical Performance

Miscellaneous Features: Harvester, Robustness (1)

Druid Spells: 0th (Create Water, Detect Poison, Purify), 1st (Lesser Healing, Animal Speech, Sustaining Berries, Enchanted Claw), 2nd (Moderate Healing, Restore)

Bard Spells: 0th (Dancing Lights, Auditory Hallucination, Lullaby), 1st (Charm, Frighten, Understand Languages), 2nd (Omniglot)

Proficiencies: Spear, Instruments (2), Spells, Singing (2)

Todd Rivers (Wizard/Artificer Level 1)

Wizard Class Points: 0

Energy: Full

Condition: Healthy

Artificer Class Points: 0

Mana: 8/8

Wizard Features: Spirit Animal (Avoidance, Empathic Bond, Speak English)

Artificer Features: Magic Imbuement, Sculpt Mana

Miscellaneous Features: None

Wizard Spells: 0th (Magic Sight, Lux, Decipher Script), 1st (Force Disk, Silent Illusion)

Artificer Skills: Woodcraft, Metalcraft, Tailoring

Proficiencies: Spells

Tina Rivers (Alchemist/Merchant Level 2)

Druid Class Points: 1

Energy: Full

Condition: Healthy

Bard Class Points: 1

Mana: 4/4

Alchemist Features: Substance Identification, Mixing Intuition, Reagent Fabrication, Master Harvester

Merchant Features: Magnetic Charm, Silver Tongue

Miscellaneous Features: None

Alchemist Recipes: Healing Potion, Firebomb, Steel Transmutation, Mist Grenade

Merchant Skills: Bargaining, Gather Information, Appraisal

Proficiencies: None

Jonathan Rivers (Paladin/Summoner Level 5)

Paladin Class Points: 1

Energy: High

Condition: Healthy

Summoner Class Points: 2

Mana: 11/11

Paladin Features: Healing Hands, Smite Evil, Restoring Touch, Courageous Aura

Summoner Features: Summon Spirit, Summon Monster (Stronger (3))

Miscellaneous Features: None

Paladin Spells: 1st (Blessed Armaments, Radiant Defender)

Summoner Spells: 0th (Daze, Lux, Bolster), 1st (Draw Attack, Heal Spirit)

Proficiencies: Sword(3), Shield(3), spells

I also tried to examine Svenia’s status screen, but apparently you could only examine those who were in your party, not those party-linked. It was also too bad that my upgraded screens didn’t show how much experience we needed to level up.

“So, any idea what that monster’s capabilities are?” I asked Dad.

“We saw another group of two fight it. It killed and ate them. The snake tail moves independently, and I think it has venom. They weren’t able to penetrate its scales, and its teeth and claws ripped through them easily. I have no idea what the spider legs do; I didn’t see it use them. Do you think we’re supposed to kill it?”

“I’d bet on it, yes.”

“Todd thought the same thing.”

“Why do you suppose it’s not attacking us? It can clearly see us,” Renee said.

“We never saw it cross the water. Maybe it can’t?” Kekir suggested.

“If that’s the case, should we try attacking it from the other side of the moat with arrows and magic?” I asked.

“It’s worth a try,” Aguin agreed. “With your fire beam and magical stars that you told us of, my water and animation magic, the angel’s bow, and Kekir’s bow, four of us have enough range to attack across the water.”

“And if it does cross the water, then Rabbit’s father and I will be fight on the front!”

“I’m not sure what I can do against something that big, so I’ll guard Renee while see serves as the healer, and Renee’s beast can distract it,” Lartha said.

“I have a few full-powered firebombs and mist grenades, as well as healing potions,” Mom said. “I can serve as support.”

“That leaves me the only one unable to contribute,” Todd sighed.

“That means you’re the safest one,” I pointed out. “You can hang back and guard our supplies.” I took a deep breath. “Are we ready for this? That thing is terrifying, but we can’t back down. The Trial… well, I don’t want to find out what happens if we fail.”

“Let’s go,” Aguin said, his face determined.

As one, we walked toward the moat. The moat itself was about thirty feet across, and on the far side was an expanse of bare ground maybe four times that depth (roughly twice as long as the beast) before the base of the ziggurat. We had nearly reached the moat when a message echoed in our minds.

Ding!

[You have encountered the mandatory Sub-Trial: Guardian of the Pyramid.]

Here we go.