Author's Note: Cranked this one out today. It's 5000 words so they're getting progressively longer, though I don't know how long it'll be until I get back to my 10000 word chapters. Enjoy the read guys! The pace of the story will probably pick up soon!

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“Experience is the teacher of all things.”

- Julius Caesar

At some point in the night, Akito and I had woken Milik and Izzy up to switch watch with us so that we could sleep and we’d all woken up maybe half an hour ago. It was a slow morning. We had Akito use his elemental control over water for washing our faces and brushing our teeth, but weren’t quite sure what to do about showering yet so we all skipped out on that this morning.

Aside from that, we’d eaten some more food from Milik’s and my inventory using utensils that Kualin crafted from the rock. He hadn’t gotten it right on the first couple of tries, but they were usable at about his tenth try. It was when we were getting ready to head out to the Plains of Death that Kualin suggested I jump off the mountain and slide down on my air platforms. Crazy bastard.

“So what you’re telling me to do is kill myself, right? And here I was thinking you were a pretty cool guy.” I sighed at Kualin who was holding his hand over his heart in mock dismay.

“Come on, dude. What’s the worst that could happen?” His reply only caused me to stare at him in silence before I gestured to the very long fall from the precipice of the cave we stood on to the ground.

“Besides falling at least...two thousand feet to my mushy death?” I said after gauging the distance with the Infinity Complex’s map function. “You got me all the way fucked up dude.”

“Suit yourself, bro. I’m just trying to help you out—”

“By killing me? Ha yeah, dude, super helpful.” He laughed at my words but I waved him off. “On a serious note though, I’ll work on it when we make it back to the Plains of Death later. I need to work on making consecutive air platforms since it’s just an air manipulation skill rather than a real skill recognized by the Infinity Complex.”

It’s not as if the skill was a very difficult one to use. I just hadn’t gotten to that level of being able to think about other things and use the air platforms in tandem yet. I definitely was not scared to stand two thousand feet above the ground with just my air platform between me and certain death. Nope. Not at all.

Sighing again, I looked at all my friends who, although a little sleepy, looked ready to go. “We all ready to go?” I asked my friends. Receiving yesses from all around, I pointed out of the cave and said, “Alright, Kualin. Where’s that earth slide to the ground you promised me?”

Not one to be undone, Kualin stepped up and began waving his hands around in the air as if he were molding a ball of clay, “Coming right up, boss! Though, I might need air platforms to work on…”

I face palmed and said in resignation, “Dammit, Kualin. Let’s just go.” Our friends laughed at our antics as we began our trek back down the mountain. Making sure to remember every trail we walked, which was not difficult at all for my current intelligence stat, I led my friends back into the Plains of Death.

It was about half an hour before we found ourselves back on ground level and the barren plains stretched out endlessly in front of us. Though, from reviewing the world of Letheron while my friends slept, I knew it stretched on for a long while before a large sea took over the terrain. The fact that it did stretch a very long distance made me wonder what the hell had happened here for the whole place to be called the Plains of Death, but hopefully this place would only plague me until our fight was over.

“Yo, so do you think that the freaky beast men monsters are edible?” I looked at Kualin who’d directed his question to Pixie who was, unsurprisingly, laughing at Kualin’s ridiculousness.

“Well, I’m not entirely sure, but if they taste bad then we shouldn’t even eat them, right?” Pixie’s response caused my jaw to drop, but Kualin just laughed at her words.

“Very well said! Aye, Milik! This one is worthy of the Lin Que!” Milik descended into a fit of laughter and I couldn’t help but laugh as well.

Pixie looked over at me with her innocent blue eyes and asked, “Alex, what’s the Lin Que?”

“I’m not even entirely sure I want to know Pixie. You’ll have to ask Kualin. I think that Akito, Milik, me, and now you are all new inductees to this ‘Lin Que’.” When I said that, Izzy threw up her hands in frustration.

“And why exactly have I not been invited into this ‘Lin Que’.” Her blue eyes glared daggers at me and I had to remind myself not to show I was scared of her. She may be short, but damn this woman was scary.

Hurriedly crossing my arms in front of me I said, “Wait, Izzy! I’m not the one that gets to decide! Kualin is the one talking about it all the time.” I let out a sigh of relief when she turned her glare towards Kualin whose smile dropped from his face as he gulped.

“Now wait just a second Iz—”

“Wait for what? Tell me why I’m not in the Lin Que, but they are!” We’d all come to a stop as Izzy placed her hands on her hips and stared Kualin down despite being a full foot below him in height.

“Er, well um…Ah! That’s right. Izzy you were pretty badass yesterday with that fireball. You’re definitely Lin Que material, girl. I mean damn, that was hot!” Izzy stared at Kualin for a moment before arching her eyebrow and with a huff, turned on her heel and began walking further into the Plains of Death.

I walked past Kualin and whispered, “Dodged a bullet there didn’t ya, slick?”

“Bastard,” he muttered to me. I laughed as I walked past him with Clara next to me.

“Alright, guys so how do you want to do this? Just wait around here until the lightning comes down or go deeper in?” Milik, who’d been behind everyone talking to Kyra came up and asked everyone ahead of him.

Izzy, noticing we’d all stopped a full ten yards behind her to discuss our plan of action, turned back and began walking back towards the group. It was at that moment that a tendril shot out of the ground and quickly wrapped itself around her entire left leg. Izzy’s scream of fear and surprise caused everyone’s attention to turn towards her.

It took me no time at all to see the tentacle wrapped around Izzy’s leg and in a blur of movement, I stopped inches from her and sent an Air Blade right into the thickest part of the tentacle lying around Izzy’s foot. My skill cut right through the tentacle and in a flash of movement, I scooped Izzy up into my arms and moved back to where my friends were standing.

It all happened so fast that I was sure all but Milik could only see the golden flash of my Air Blade. As the ground beneath us begun to rumble, I set Izzy on the ground.

“Izzy, are you okay?” She looked up at me with fear in her eyes and I’m sure her heart was pounding just as crazily as mine. I’d almost lost a friend in no time at all. She didn’t respond and I looked down at the area her leg had been wrapped up and flinched at the sight of angry red blisters on the surface of her skin.

“Clara!” I called out to the olive-skinned girl only a couple feet away and her cyan eyes met mine before hurrying to my side.

“Yes, Alex?” She looked at me in worry as the ground below us began to shake and rumble even more.

“Hey, Kualin! Do something about the ground! Try reinforcing it or something!”

“Already on it, man!” Kualin already had both hands pointed below him and a bead of sweat fell down his face as he concentrated hard on obstructing the path of whatever was beneath us.

“Alex?” Clara rested her hand on my shoulder, causing me to turn my attention back to her.

“Clara, try to heal Izzy, please.”

“I don’t have any skills—”

“Can you please try?” I pleaded with my eyes and Clara nodded in determination. “Thanks, Clara.” Izzy’s petite, trembling form looked so fragile as she dazedly stared off into the distance with tears welling up in her eyes. I couldn’t take the time to worry about Izzy though and regretfully turned away from her and over to Kualin.

“Kualin, what’s the situation?”

Kualin’s hands were trembling now and even more sweat was pouring off his body. “It’s getting further away to break free…and it’s very hard to control the Earth from so far away…”

“Alright…let it go then.” Kualin immediately dropped his hands and, breathing a little harshly, wiped his forehead from the sweat that had collected there. “Clara, can you also recover Kualin’s mana a little?” Not waiting for a response, I let an Air Blade hover into existence above my hand and waited.

Moments after preparing my skill, a crumbling sound came from further out into the plains followed by a loud crash as the ground burst and created a large hole from the force of the monster attempting to come to the surface. Hundreds of black tentacles burst out of the hole in the ground and began waving wildly in the air.

“Kualin, move Izzy and Clara back! Pixie, grab Kyra and get some distance!” As they scrambled to follow my orders, I threw my Air Blade at the mass of tentacles. It cut smoothly through the monster’s extremities leaving the writhing tentacles to flop on the ground around the hole and green blood began to squirt from every opened tentacle on the monster. A cry of utter rage and clicking noises erupted from the hole as a clawed hand the size of a lamppost shot

itself out of the hole and hung in the air before shortly rushing down to crush me, Akito, and Milik.

Milik was the first to blur out of the way as it came crashing down. Knowing Akito centered his build on strength, I raced to his side and tackled him and myself out of the way of the monster’s claw right as it crashed down a couple feet behind us.

“Air Blade!” I cried out, aiming for the monster’s long arm. In less than a second, its hand fell from the rest of its limb and a geyser of blood blew out of its new wound. The monster shrieked in pain and, while it cried out, Akito and I climbed back up to our feet to get distance between us and its severed limb that was spraying a fountain of green blood.

However, only seconds after losing its hand, seven more long limbs burst from the ground, making the hole larger than it was and I turned my head back while running to get a good look at whatever it was doing. Moments later, a monster the size of a house clawed itself up out of the ground. The monster was arachnid-like in nature with a brown hairy body covered in orange stripes here and there. In the center of its body were two large eyes flanked on both sides by three smaller eyes and two very large mandibles underneath those. It looked exactly like a normal spider from back home. Well, if spiders were the size of a small building with razor sharp claws and gross-looking tentacles writhing around their entire bodies.

“Holy fuck!” Those were Milik’s first words as he blurred into form right next to me as we ran at Akito’s speed to draw the monster away from our friends.

“Holy fuck, indeed,” I replied before jumping into a spin and sending an air blade at the eight-legged freak that was chasing after us a mere twenty yards away. Unfortunately, the spider easily dodged the small air blade and got right back to chasing the three of us.

“Any plans?” Akito looked directly at me and I nodded back to him.

“Milik? Can you use your Decimator and burrow it through the monster?” I turned to him expecting a yes, but was shocked when he shook his head.

“Not while moving. It takes a lot of concentration and—hey!” Akito had scooped Milik over his shoulder so that his arms and head were facing the giant spider chasing after us. I stifled a laugh and looked at Milik pointedly, but all he did was roll his eyes and begin to mold the ball of destruction into existence. In a couple seconds, I could see the difference between when he’d used it on the first floor and now was astronomical as this time his Decimator took the size of a basketball that he had to hover above his and Akito’s heads.

After checking its stability, Milik swiftly sent the ball flying towards the head of the monster and its danger senses must’ve gone haywire because it threw itself to the side, causing Milik’s decimator to clip away two of its hind legs on its right side. The spider screamed once more in pain and shakily brought itself onto its remaining…six legs? But I’d cut one off hadn’t I? Feeling something was off, I launched a huge Air Blade at the overgrown monster before it could completely stand up and, thankfully, it was too off balance to react and ended up nearly split in half by my attack. The monster tottered for a second before collapsing as blood squirt between the split that ran the length of more than half of its body. In seconds it was no longer moving.

“Whoo! Good shit, Alex! Let’s goooooo!” Milik shouted around in joy and high-fived me for the quick co-op move.

He’d been celebrating for all of two seconds and I was about to suggest we go back to our friends until the monster’s entire body began twitching. Taking a closer look, I saw that veins were beginning to shoot across the halves of its body, reattaching themselves and I narrowed my eyes in disgust.

“Milik…” I said cautiously, slowly backing away from the creature. Noting the tone of my voice, he turned around to see the monster’s regeneration pick up speed right before our eyes. Unknown to us, a gigantic slab of earth popped into existence high above the monster. All of our attention was drawn to the freakish arachnid’s healing ability, so we didn’t notice when the huge floating rock allowed gravity to take over and started falling towards the regenerating monster. In seconds, the huge rock collided with the spider and buried it underneath in one of the greatest impacts I’d ever seen. Unfortunately, the earth-shaking noise was accompanied by the nastiest squishy noise I’d ever heard and green blood splattered in all directions from under the rock.

“Oh, what the fuck!?” I shouted out in disgust as I quickly erected an air platform in front of us to block the flying blood.

Ding!

The Infinity Complex’s golden screen popped into existence with the words ‘You have leveled up two Times’ on it and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Right as I dispelled my air platform, Kualin’s unmistakable voice came from behind the crushed spider. “Aw hell yeah! Squashed that bitch like a bug!” Squinting my eyes a little, I could see Kualin behind the creature start to celebrate by dancing freestyle and I face palmed.

“Really, dude!? How do you even have enough mana for that!?” I shouted across the crushed spider monster between us, but he just kept dancing much to Akito and Milik’s amusement. Sighing, I jogged around the spider towards Kualin and could barely make out the girls a distance away from us with Pixie standing defensively in front of them.

“Come on.” I took off at a light jog for the girls who were about a hundred yards away and the other guys followed close behind me. We arrived in less than a minute and I was instantly met with a pouting Pixie in puppy dog eye mode.

“Aleeeex! I wanted to fight when I got strong remember?” I raised my eyebrow at her in reply and a blush began to creep up her cheeks.

Laughing at her reaction, I looked deeper into her blue eyes and saw determination veiled behind her embarrassment. This caused me to sigh and I could only say, “Well, we did leave you to protect everyone else didn’t we?” She turned back to the other girls as if she’d just noticed they were there and I couldn’t help but rub her blue hair in amusement.

“Izzy, are you alright?” Izzy had been standing silently with her eyes on the ground and her hands curled into fists, but when she heard me say her name, her eyes flicked up to meet mine.

“Of course I’m fine! I was just a little surprised is all…” She blushed and looked back at the ground.

I was taken aback by her attitude, but smiled widely at her even though she wasn’t looking. “Good to hear it, Izzy. And I see that Clara healed your leg.” Izzy’s left leg which had been covered in several blisters minutes ago now showed smooth white skin. I looked at Clara appreciatively. “Knew you could do it, Clara.” I quickly flashed her a thumbs up and though she looked a little exhausted, she gave me a small smile in return.

“Hey, do you think they all go underground?” Kyra was standing to the side of the group and had her fingers pushed up against her braids to massage her head as she stared at the ground apprehensively.

“Hmmmm, that’s actually a really good question,” I replied to her query as my mind began to work on the challenging question.

If the lightning that brought the monsters had been going off all day and night even before we made it to Letheron, then where would all those monsters go? The plains were bare and there weren’t any very loud monster noises around that would suggest some sort of monster haven. Although that spider monster did come from below ground, it could have just been because some spiders habitually live in holes and prey on organisms that walk above their homes.

“What if this world is at war with the monsters and they go to attack the cities we saw on our maps last night?” Milik’s words made sense to me what with all the books I used to read back home, but it was hard to be definitive about this without knowing anything historical about Letheron.

“If that were true, then we would also have to accept the fact that these monsters are being organized by a higher power, right?” I looked up to the sky that was covered in clouds and flashing veins of red light. “…In any case, whatever this world is going through…it isn’t our problem. We only have to defeat the alien groups and ascend the tower.”

“But if they’re all moving towards the cities then how are we supposed to fight them to gain experience? Won’t they be grouped up?” Pixie’s question caught me unawares and after thinking about it for a moment, I came to realize that I had no clue what we should do.

“I think I can do something about that.” We were all surprised when Kyra spoke up, but we all waited patiently for her to start explaining herself. “I haven’t really used it at all yet…” She paused with an uncomfortable look on her face before carrying on. “…But I can kind of scout with my mind. But it’s an out of body experience until I can get better at it I think.”

My mouth dropped open in wonder at Kyra’s mind element skill and Milik was literally drooling next to me. “What else can you do?” He feverishly asked her and the rest of us curiously waited for her answer, but Kyra looked away shamefully.

“It’s not a very good skill…I don’t think any of you would like it…” As an afterthought she began waving her hands wildly in front of herself as if to ward us off. “But don’t get me wrong. I’d already had the skill when we awakened so it’s not like I wanted it!”

Clara came up to Kyra and calmly placed her hand on her shoulder. Kyra visibly relaxed at the gesture and Clara spoke to her soothingly. “Its fine, Kyra. What is your other ability?”

Kyra looked around at us hesitantly, but then schooled her features. “It’s called Mind Link and it allows me to link all of us up for telepathic communication.” My jaw dropped open even further if that were possible and I stared in amazement at Kyra.

“That’s so cool! We need to use that in our next fight! Can you read other people’s thoughts too? That would be crazy awesome!” Milik’s excitement was starting to feed into me, but I stifled it and I could see Kyra was getting uncomfortable from the bombardment of questions, so I decided to save her from Milik’s onslaught.

“So what you’re saying is you use your scouting ability so that you can maybe find some monsters that we can fight, but we’ll have to protect your body while you’re gone, right?” Kyra nodded at everything I’d said and I smiled at her.

“Well, let’s do it then!” I pumped my fist into the air as Kyra looked at the rest of us gratefully.

“Thank you all for not thinking its too weird…”

“On the contrary, Kyra, those are some pretty amazing abilities. Do you think you can use your mind link with us while you go off and scout for the monsters?” She looked at me quizzically so I said, “Just in case something happens here and we need you to stop using your skill to come back here.”

“Oh, well, I can try. Um, Milik, can you hold my body?” She looked embarrassed at having to ask and it didn’t help that Kualin let out a wolf whistle at her words.

“Damn, Milik I feel like you’ll be getting all the pretty ones.” Milik flipped Kualin off and proceeded to scoop Kyra off her feet.

“Ready whenever you are.”

Looking flustered, she nodded at him and said, “Spirit Scout.” Kyra’s body instantly went limp and seconds later Milik began to look around confusedly.

“What is it, Milik?” I asked him in confusion.

“Kyra is talking to me through my mind, which, in case you’re wondering, is super fucking cool. But anyways, she says she’ll just link up with me for now and I’ll relay any messages she has for us.” I nodded at his words and sat down on the ground to wait until Kyra found some monsters for us to fight.

Clara dropped next to me on the floor and I couldn’t help but notice she looked pretty winded. “Clara, you alright?” She leaned into my shoulder in exhaustion and I momentarily froze up at the contact before slightly relaxing.

Clara seemed to not have noticed my reaction though as she looked about ready to pass out. “I think I’m just really low on mana. Healing Izzy’s leg wasn’t all that bad, but restoring Kualin’s mana really took it out of me. I think it comes from me, so I’ll have to be a bit more careful.” She gave me a light smile, but it didn’t lessen my worry for her.

“Can you take some of mine?” I asked her cautiously.

Her face scrunched up at my question and after a minute she relaxed and shrugged. “I don’t know actually, but don’t you need it to fight?” Checking my mana reserves, I saw that I was almost back to full despite using that oversized Air Blade.

“Nah, I’m good. Give it a try?” Clara’s eyes met mine and I got lost in them for a moment before she placed her hand on my shoulder and began to concentrate. In a couple seconds a blue glow emanated from the tips of her fingers and I could feel tendrils of mana invade my body from her hand. I tensed up at the feeling, but allowed her free reign.

In seconds, I felt the small mana strings begin sucking at the mana inside of me and I flinched at the pain of having the mana inside of me leave my body in an unnatural way. Clara noticed my flinch and stopped, but I grabbed her hand before she could remove it and looked her in the eye. “I’m fine. Keep going until you feel better.” She looked at me in confusion at first, but then the drain on my mana picked up again and I fought the pain to not worry Clara.

After a minute, the tendrils left my body and Clara looked more visibly comfortable and healthy. Letting out a weak smile, I gently removed her hand from my shoulder. “Feeling any better?”

Clara looked down at where her hand was still held in mine and quickly nodded before looking away. Laughing silently to myself, I let go of her hand and stood back up only to be met with the sight of Kualin and Izzy smirking at me.

“What?” I asked them and began to self-consciously pat myself down.

“Oh, it’s nothing. I’m just feeling a little clammy from using my mana earlier. Spare some for an unworthy pleb?” Kualin’s voice was dripping with sarcasm and scowling at him only ended with him and Izzy laughing at me.

“Oh, hush. She’s our healer so it’s best if she’s always at full.” I quickly made up a believable lie as to why I’d given Clara my mana and I thought I was all good until Izzy opened her mouth.

“But she’d have recovered it in a bit, right?” Izzy scoffed at my excuse and I knew I’d been had.

I felt myself heat up from embarrassment and I pointed a finger at the two of them. “Don’t y’all have anything better to do, like work on making new skills?”

Kualin then pointed to the distance where the large spider had been crushed under his huge rock and smiled arrogantly. “Nah, man. Fairly sure I’ve got that covered. Though short stuff here could—ooph!”

Izzy had punched Kualin squarely in his stomach causing him to drop to his knees in front of her. “Not so short anymore, huh?” She then turned on her heel to walk over towards Akito who’s eyes were dancing with mirth at seeing Izzy hit Kualin.

I stared after her for a second before I started laughing at Kualin who was standing back up, rubbing his stomach with pain in his eyes. “Goddamn that girl packs a punch. I swear I damn near lost one hundred health and an ab just now…” His words just caused me to laugh even harder.

“Maybe you want to start thinking about investing in some sort of armor then. You can’t always drop a huge ass rock on a monster and expect them to not dodge like that poor spider over there.” I jerked my thumb in the direction of where the spider had been crushed under the rock, about a hundred yards away, but was surprised to find that although the stone slab was still there on the ground, there were no more spider arms, guts or even its green blood in sight.

“The fuck…?” I took off in the direction of the rock and Kualin, noticing something was amiss, followed after me.

“Yo, where you guys—”

“Just stay there, Milik!” I slowed down to let Kualin catch up to me and we both jogged over to the large rock. I wasn’t completely sure, but the monster we’d killed about fifteen minutes ago was no longer laying there dead under the rock Kualin had crushed it with.

“What’s that?” Kualin was pointing towards a sparkling light on the ground next to the rock. I looked at him pointedly and he furiously shook his head. “Nope. No. Absolutely not. Now you got me fucked up. Alex, we don’t just touch random things out here in the wild, boy you—Alex!”

It was too late because I’d already bent over to touch the light since he wouldn’t do it. I was surprised when a familiar noise sounded and a gold screen popped into existence in front of me.

Ding!

My heart began thumping and I could feel the excitement in me take over as I read the message on the golden window of the Infinity Complex.

‘Gigantula has dropped loot. Would you like to recover it?’

Feeling a smile tug at my lips, I spoke two words. “Hell, yes.”