Chapter 44

Daniel examined with interest what the other human group had done to block the corridor. In the context of Simone’s and Rob’s stories, it made sense and was exactly like what Priscilla had shared through her version. A hastily constructed barrier created from anything they could get their hands on. Furniture, microwaves and even shower fittings had all been tossed together. Then conjured stone had been used to fill the gaps.

He examined it closer. He knew the stone was not natural, but its magical origin was not apparent in its appearance.

It looked normal.

“I wonder if it’s real?” He asked Priscilla absently, wondering if it was as solid as it looked or whether it was foam based.

He kicked it and recoiled as his toes stung.

“Yep, definitely rock.”

There had been absolutely no give in the substance.

Next, he put his hand on a chair leg sticking out and thrust his consciousness through it. There was only stone touching the rest of the chair. He tried a couple of other pieces of wood for the same result. He had been hoping that beyond the first layer of stone that the wood would be exposed to the air and give him immediate visibility of the other side of the obstruction.

It was not to be. There was no continuous bridge of timber for him to piggy bank on.

Daniel assessed the plug further. His hope to follow strips of wood through the blockage had been a dead end, but the testing had not been wasted. He now knew the magical stone was over a metre thick and with from what he could tell had no gaps.

He next grew a piece of his vine and threw it down on the ground. Tiny thread like tendrils spread out from it, looking for smaller cracks. They multiplied and wormed through small spots in the wall but were foiled almost immediately by the solid rock. If anything, the magic stone was more solid than the natural versions and none of his threads got deeper than a hand span.

He knew he could force the issue, expand those tendrils, and start cracking the rock. Magical origins or not plants were uniquely placed to tear up fortifications, but it wasn’t worth the mana, not when the walls were so permeable and if push came to shove, he could smash holes in the floor to push downward.

He heard footsteps behind him.

“Bad?” Tamara asked him.

“It’s solid.” He admitted.

Tamara moved up next to him and rested her head on his shoulder while looking at the material filling the stairwell.

“It’s a few metres thick.” He told her and the others who had followed.

“So we’re not going through it, then?” Alex challenged from above him.

“Nope. Easier to go through the floor than dig through this.”

“Is that’s what we’re doing?” Alex asked him.

“We’ll work it out.” Daniel answered tiredly. There was something about not doing much, which was the most exhausting thing out there. “Let’s see if Simone will volunteer to be our ambassador. Drop her down to the room with the zombies in it on level eleven. If they’re hostile to humans, she’ll still be fine. If they’re part of her group from earlier, then we go down and talk to them ourselves.”

“Through the window again?” Alex clarified.

“Yep.” With a start Daniel realised they had made the decision. He walked up to floor twelve and straight over to be above the room he had sensed the zombies in earlier.

Animal sense.

The zombies and humans were gone from floor eleven, ten, nine and eight and there were moths in the two rooms below him now. “Something’s wrong,” Daniel said in annoyance. The simple plan to drop two floors no longer applied. “I’ll need both ramps to be brought down. We’re going to have to skip multiple levels.” That was the logistics bit, but there was also the question regarding where the zombies and humans had gone. Hopefully, it was not a case of mutually assured destruction.

“Go get them from level fifteen.” Luke ordered someone quietly.

“What?” Daniel asked in surprise. “Fifteen?”

Luke grinned triumphally. “I ordered them to be brought down at the start, to prepare for whether we needed them. Why do you look so glum?”

“They’ve gone.”

“Who?”

“All of them. The humans and the intelligent ferals, and they opened the rooms below us to moths.”

“Are you sure they were there when you first checked.”

Daniel glared at him.

Luke raised his hands defensively. “I had to ask.”

“Yes, Luke, I can tell the difference between a zombie and a moth.”

“Feral,” Luke corrected him. “Dave might find it funny. I find it funny when Ivey’s around at least, but otherwise.”

“We should call Dave the yeti.” Daniel quipped to set off balance.

“Too grey for that,” Luke responded instantly. “But as I was saying, while Dave is fine with you using that description now that Simone and Rob are around and who knows how many people downstairs you might want to be a bit more diplomatic.”

“Yay. An apocalypse isn’t an apocalypse if we’re not focusing on being political correct.”

“Daniel, it’s not like,” Luke said with exasperation.

“Stop teasing him, Dan,” Tamara said, laughing. “Can’t you tell he’s being serious?”

“Political correctness gone mad.”

“Can you imagine,” Luke lowered his voice. “Experiencing what Simone’s gone through and then being called zombies.”

Tamara elbowed Daniel hard in the guts and glared at Luke. “Stop feeding him. Dan will try not to say the Z word.”

Daniel was tempted to keep the argument going, but as fun as winding Luke up it wasn’t worth it if Tamara got upset at the same time. It also didn’t’ help that agreed with what Luke was talking about. Even though it was covered by his clothes, his own small patch of fur made him feel like a mutant. How Simone coped with her frankly horrible appearance was a mystery to him. Having an outsider calling you a zombie would not help matters. Plus, it was a bad descriptor, as only the nonhairy ones could be described as a zombie. “I’ll watch my tongue.”

“Thank you.”

A short time later, the non-combatants acting as porters bustled in with two ramps. “Cindy?”

Jayden was one worker and the other man saw him and Tamara and physically recoiled. That situation was not fully resolved, and it was another unpleasant duty he couldn’t continue to put off. Hopefully Ivey would recover he needed her to absorb some of the workload.

“She’ll be here shortly,” Luke told him.

“You’re a clever man.”

“Nope, that was Alex.”

Daniel put everyone out of his mind and set about joining the ramps they had available. They needed to skip two levels, which ordinary meant three ramps required to be setup with each dropping a level. He only had two available and didn’t want to go through the rigmarole of creating extras. He should be able to expand these two to cover the extra distance. Deployment might slow, but they were not breaching a floor with enemies on it. Instead, they were going to an empty one.

While he waited for Cindy, he expanded the main support vines. Currently, they stretched one floor, and they had to do three at a minimum. Power flooded out of him and the vine grew. “Um, and Trudy as well?”

“She’s on her way.” Luke answered with a laugh.

Daniel tuned them all out again as he continued lengthening the support vines.

A hand touched his shoulder.

“What are you doing?” Cindy asked abruptly.

“The next two floors are filled with moths. We need to skip them.”

Cindy looked thoughtful and studied what he was doing. “Interesting approach.”

“Bad?”

She shook her head. “Theoretically, that’ll work, but the support lines will have to be secured across multiple rooms.”

“I sort of figured. Do you have any suggestions on design?”

“A corkscrew better.” She told him. “Also, as Dad explained it we don’t need to make a ramp that people can run along. We can go slower, so you should build something like that spiral staircase you installed upstairs.”

“That simple?”

“Yeah, and if you do it that way we can test it in sections easily.”

With a sigh, he got to work and was impressed with his progress. His power was getting easier to use and with Trudy’s help and Jordan’s plant base growing the ramp while not trivial took significantly less mana than what it had taken even yesterday.

At Cindy’s direction, he made a series of cascading adjustments. Tightening one side, loosening the other and then lengthening the joining ropes between each strut. Once that was completed, the straight lines of the previous design had changed, converting the structural into a spiral. “Done,” Daniel declared, standing up and stretching his back. “Do you need me to secure it?”

Cindy shook her head. “We can tie them to a banister.” Then he watched as she bullied a group of fighters to shift the bulky mass to the stairwell where they were planning on testing.

Daniel paced around the room and ate the cores that were offered to him.

There was no discussion about loot allocation. If Daniel or Dave were going to benefit from a core it was given to them. They had to get stronger, and everyone accepted that fact.

The fourteen he had been handed comprised speed, strength and one telekinesis. So many at once were almost too much, but the super had beaten out any illusions that he was strong enough. The faster he progressed the better.

However, he still needed to master the skills. That small thought ate away at him and he knew his practising had made a difference before. As he paced, his mind probed the various speed pathways. He touched them one by one and tried to tease out the complex mass of data that filled that area of the core.

The information struck him like a breaking storm. A deluge of knowledge that quickly overwhelmed his fragile mind. There was too much for him to assimilate, but the process granted him bits of knowledge. Sort of like the afterimages after he had been flashed with light. The initial shape of the light had been too bright to comprehend, but the form remained burnt into his retinas as floating blotches of colour long after the light was gone. The finesse was striped away, the detailed obscured, but he could kind of see the original shape.

Every speed core had added a layer to the nub, the offshoot, which was his speed section, expanding it steadily. As he pushed his mind into his internal self, he could perceive these layers. When he used speed, he drew from all of them, which was a disaster. Some layers directly opposed others creating a mass of inefficiency. For science, he could probe them individually.

That’s what he did. He partially stimulated each layer one after the other and was swamped with information about the abilities. By comparing the after images, he could show that they were clearly not the same. There were similarities of course, but also differences. He had already been both intuitively and logically aware of the fact that each version was its own method. Now via experimentation he had proof beyond what Innate Scan had told him. At a macro-level, it was why there were different pathways to gain extra speed even though the outcome was the same. What he had got from Priscilla and Finigan was the most notable of that. Those had come from his animal communion ability, which had streamlined the abilities and ensured that they were tailored to him personally.

The various ferals cores were less helpful.

They were a jumbled mess and even through all the feral cores used the same method of enhancing the body they were subtly different. The general ability used his muscles to speed things up along with what he guessed was a type of independently moving puppet wires throughout him. Yet despite the architecture being the same how it was delivered was quite varied. When he compared one set of instructions to the others, he found obvious errors between the various feral speed methods. Bits of the framework that operated in dynamically opposite directions. There were other areas where he could see that taking the best bits of particular areas would improve efficiency.

There was so much to do. It was almost like those cultivation books. If he had months to go into meditation, he could walk away with a speed skill that was both faster and took less out of him than his current method.

If he had time the amount of progress, he could achieve would be incredible. He could make the speedsters look slow.

The Innate Scan that Ivey helped him with had reported that he had mastered such a small cross section of his abilities and that made sense now. It wasn’t about power or even efficiency it was about combining the separate threads of application into a single one. While months or even years of seclusion would get the best result, he could already see that practicing while applying this high level of internal skill awareness would drive rapid improvement. One hundred percent might take decades, but eighty percent… that would happen faster, probably only months. A fifty percent boost? That wouldn’t require any reprogramming, it would just need him to learn which bits of the processing to use over others. Instead of using all the layers at once he could select only five of the ones which suited him.

That would cause an enormous improvement, and it would only take a day to master the change. Not that he would get that sort of opportunity if history was an indication.

Cindy burst into the room with a big smile on her face.

“What?”

She beamed. “The first section passed. We’ll be done in five minutes.”

“That’s great. Well done, Cindy.”

“Not me.” She waved her hands to cancel the praise. “It was…”

“Team work.” Trudy said dryly.

“Exactly.”

Trudy rolled her eyes. “Does this mean I’m no longer needed down here?”

Cindy looked a bit flustered at the question.

“Sounds like.” Daniel said gently. “If I need to do an enormous project, we’ll get you. But for now, you’re good.”

“Thank God. My breasts.” Then Trudy laughed at Daniel’s expression. “I’m breast feeding…” she stopped talking as he looked even more uncomfortable. “Don’t worry. One day you’ll have your own family and understand.”

Chuckling to herself she hurried away and Daniel was once more left to his own design. While pacing, Daniel set about to test the different processing abilities. Teasing out the coding from a single feral and running it separately for micro seconds. Mentally against each one he made notes around efficiency. His mind spinning with plans to merge the processing units and improve them each time till he had a coherent whole or shorter term to see if he could run half of a one and a half another to get the best of both.

Having barely scratched the surface of his plan Cindy and porters came in wrestling the massive spiral staircase they had produced. Even compressed like it was, it was the size of a round bale on his farm. A compact, almost square cylinder with a similar volume to a small car.

Under Cindy’s direction, they popped the window inwards. Secured the major supports, and then tipped the massive construct outwards. He watched it unfold. It was glorious. It went from being about as tall as him to stretching down three stories.

Animal sense flared out.

The mass of people he had sensed earlier had not returned. They had either descended further or… he didn’t want to think about the bad. He hoped it was the former, but every time he reviewed the brief glimpse he had gotten earlier the intermingle of feral and human became more pronounced. Just because they were intermingled didn’t mean they were fighting. Simone was proof of that. The community might be in control.

Daniel knew he could descend to the plug in the stairwell and from there confirm exactly what had happened, but he didn’t want to waste mana and he sort of dreaded the answer. If they were all dead… He pulled his mind away from the unpleasant thought.

All that mattered was their immediate objective. “Breach area is clear.” He reported to Luke and Alex.

“One at a time.” Luke yelled. “We’re only taking teams one, three, four, and Daniel. No non-combatants.”

With Cindy and Luke directing, they quickly hurried down. The juggernaut tank went first and then the rest of his team three. Daniel monitored the stress on the supports. It handled the heavy man’s weight without difficulty.

“We can increase to two.”

Orders were given and this time another tank and archer went down. Once more, the vine staircase was perfectly stable.

“It’ll easily handle three.”

“No.” Luke said shooting Daniel an amused look. “It’s not worth the risk.”

“It’s safe.” Daniel insisted.

“Cindy?” Luke asked.

The young woman shook her head. “I’m not comfortable.”

“Fine.” Daniel grumped.

Cindy laughed at his expression. “It can probably take ten at once, but why risk it?”

Animal sense flared out.

The information flooded in. The moths above him. He knew about them. They were old news. His primary focus was downstairs.

Floor eight was not empty as he had thought. Over the other side, close to the access stair that had been blocked was a room with five humans in it. They did not feel strong but Daniel did not trust the accuracy of Animal Sense especially on humans with their interfaces.

Then all of his focus was drawn into the mass of jumbled images he was getting from floor seven. Ferals and humans interacting together. Daniel opened his eyes. “They’re fighting a monster on floor seven. I think it’s the carnivorous plant. Thirty of them are still alive in the combat with a smaller group on this floor who are presumably the non-combatants.”

“We need to make contact,” Alex said abruptly. “I’ll go.”

“There’s probably friendly ferals.”

Alex waved the reminder away. “I know. I had a long chat with Simone.”

While Alex headed down the stairs. Luke got the rest of us to move to the stairwell.

“Now we wait.” Luke said quietly. “Fighters in position.”

Defensive lines were immediately established. The floor was supposed to be safe, but then yesterday his magic hadn’t picked up the super when it clearly should have.

“It’s me with company.” Alex’s voice came from around the corner.

“Acknowledged,” Luke said curtly.

A moment later, Alex emerged with two elderly gentlemen in tow.

The one who still wore glasses examined them critically and then turned to his companion. “He’s legit. They’re all strong too. Go tell Rosica to call off the assault.”

The other man grumbled and reluctantly spun around.

“I’ll tell Berend,” Alex offered.

The man with glasses grabbed him. “Use the code word upside down pineapple cake.”

“What the?” Alex asked.

“Cheryl will know the message is legitimate, and that’s my favourite cake.”

Alex nodded and jogged back the way he had come.

The two men turned to face them and approached close enough that the tanks who used spears could have taken a single step forward and stabbed them. They were completed indifferent to the power amassed against them.

The man readjusted his glasses, which as far as Daniel knew as superfluous now. He was pretty sure the natural healing was supposed to have been able to fix those sorts of problems. “You, Daniel?” the man asked and pointed straight at Luke.

Luke shook his head respectively. “That’s not me. Daniel is this young man here.”

Glasses scrutinised him. “Younger than I expected.”

“Looks a bit like a meathead.” the other one grumbled.

With an exaggerated sigh. Daniel strode forward. “Hi, I’m Daniel.” he held out his hand.

“William,” non-glasses said and shook the offered hand with overbearing strength.

Daniel matched it till William grimaced slightly.

“You shouldn’t keep doing that.” Glasses said annoyed. “These attributes points, you put into strength mean you’re cheating. Pre this alien shit, it was fine… Now you’re going to crush someone’s hand by accident. And knowing your luck they’ll be a mage and next thing you know you’ll be turned into an icy popsicle.” The man chuckled, amused by that thought.

“You can tell a lot about a man by their handshake. This guy is all brawn.”

Glasses shook his head in disgust. “You’re full of rot, Will.” Then, with a deep breath, he made hopeful eye contact with Daniel. “I’m Seb.”

This time, the handshake was far more reasonable.

It ended, and they stood in awkward silence.

“Told ya, Brawn,” William said, breaking the quiet.

“I was being polite,” Daniel told him. “But since you want to talk, can you tell me what happened to you guys?”

William grunted.

“Yes,” Seb said, elbowing William. “From Alex it sounds like you know most of it already.”

“Cliff notes?”

“Cliff notes,” William mocked.

“It means a quick summary.”

“I know what it means.”

“Stop pretending to be a grumpy old man,” Seb said. “William’s a nice guy but he bet he could make you guys all hate him.”

“That’s cheating,” William sulked.

Seb smiled and patted the older man on the back. “You’ll find when you’re as old as us and magic appears in the world you end up being a bit more blasé than everyone else. Now Daniel you said you want cliff notes. First day was hairy. We started expanding. Did well both ways initially, but outside of floor ten we saved about twenty people. It was going great. The poor people who were feral tagged set up a scheme. We would unleash them on a floor, and they’d clean it up in about an hour. Basically, get the enemy one vs. many and then kill them. We thought we could clear the entire building in a day.”

Seb stopped talking.

“Then they ran into the big one.” William whispered.

Glasses startled in reaction to William helping him out. “Exactly.” Nervously, Seb dusted off his chest. “After we found out about that we blocked the stairs, established the work around to get up via holes in the ceiling and set up an ambush the big one. We weren’t stupid. We knew we had to take care of us. Despite the ambush, it killed fifteen of us and after that we fled.”

“The failed attempt to kill the big one was an immense blow,” William said quietly. “Beginning of the end.”

“No one asked you.” Seb elbowed the other man. “It was a pertinent lesson. We got arrogant and got spanked. We did however hurt the creature and rather that it was following us to extract its revenge directly it sent its weaker minions against us. They harassed all the way to our exit point on floor eleven. We didn’t want them following, so we released the moths. Despite our efforts, we were pretty sure one of them saw our exit point.”

“Certain,” William said.

“Shut up,” Seb snapped. “I’m the one telling the story. The moths appeared to work, but a day later we heard the ferals fighting the moths on floor eleven. WE knew about you, but Rosica reminded us of what the big one had done. There was no guarantee you would be successful and we should take the opportunity to run. We had a vote and Rosica won.”

“And that’s what they’re doing?” Daniel asked. “Fighting the plant so you can run?”.

“Yes.”

“Nope,” William said. “This is the second attempt. They’re not getting through.”

“Loral’s got the fire ability. We can burn it away.”

William snorted. “Tickling it will be more effective.”

“You need to be less negative.

There was the rhythmic thumping of feet coming up the stairs. “This better be worth it.” They all heard a woman bellow.

“Well, that’ll be Rosica now.” Seb told them.

“Sounds pissed,” William said unnecessarily.