33

Decha

A vortex surrounded the red tesseract atop the altar, sending waves of distortion past Rian. Like ripples in water, the waves stretched the image of the ruins until they were unrecognizable. As it began to fade and everything returned to normal, the city was still there, but they were standing in a different spot than before.

Two players detected. You are now partying with Kat!

They were now inside Gorgheit rather than standing outside it. Behind them was a spire—one of the observatory towers he’d seen earlier from afar. Resembling the bronze walls, the spire was metallic and shining with rivulets like silicon in circuit boards. The entrance to it was blocked off by rubble and crumpled metal, and higher up there was a single window.

Someone looking down at them moved out of view.

Rian stared up with the familiar feeling of being watched, like that night in the forests. At first he thought it was Corvis, but he was floating beside Kat and looking contented as he took in the surroundings. After a moment, when the person in the window didn’t reappear, Rian looked out at the city again.

No roads were nearby, and the ground was bare as if the soil had been stripped away. The buildings further ahead were a strange mixture of clay and metal, arranged in a way that resembled barracks in a military base. The air was filled with the thumps of explosions, otherworldly screams of electricity and energy careening across vast distances; Rian couldn’t see them due to the walls of the city, but he could hear them coming from beyond it.

“Thank Ulm, it worked!”

Rian nearly flinched, turning only to see a boy wearing deep blue robes and a tall wizard hat. Stepping up to them, he held a staff that was nearly twice his height, and upon its end was a crystal resembling the nullshard from the center of Elmguard. But this one was smaller and bright blue, pulsing rapidly as if it was alive. When Rian tried to inspect it, he found that he couldn’t. Instead, the NPC’s stat page showed up, but even that was mostly blank. All the information aside from his name and class was missing.

Decha

Level ??? Summoner (NPC)

Alignment: Onsolia

Companionship Level: 0 (Indifferent)

Difficulty: ???

As Decha walked up to them, Kat winked at Rian.

“It worked,” Decha said, looking up at them with awe. He was hardly a teenager by the look of it, his robes a size too big. “You’re actually here! And just in time, too.”

“What?” Rian said, glancing between him and Kat.

“I’ve summoned you from the future, sacred fighters,” Decha said, tapping the end of his staff on the ground and puffing out his chest, “to assist Onsolia in the battle against Pyce.” He pointed his staff ahead. “Quickly, now—we must make it to the fault before the rift closes!”

He gestured for them to come along, and they started walking toward the barracks ahead.

“So you’re…Decha,” Kat said, scrolling through a list as they walked. “Ah. It’s tea!” She opened her inventory and took out a small turquoise box trimmed with gold.

When she handed it to Decha, he stopped and gaped. “You—” He opened the lid. Inside was a fine, dark powder. Ground tea leaves. “Oh, the great diffraction of Ulm! This day is truly blessed!” Decha, absolutely beaming, replaced the lid and stuffed the box into his robes.

“Onsolians love tea, apparently,” Kat said, trying not to smile.

Your party’s bond with Decha has strengthened!

Companionship Level Up! (Lv. 0→1)

“Decha” is now your Acquaintance!

All party bonuses: +6% EXP; +3 to all stats; stamina usage -5%.

“I have to say, you’re already my favorite of the sacred fighters I’ve summoned,” Decha said. He started walking again, and they followed. “There’s a very small window of time for us to work with. The rift I opened to summon you has begun to destabilize the flow of causality. More rifts have begun to open, and if we don’t pass through them, this timeline will disappear.”

“Whoa, whoa,” Rian said. “What the hell is—”

“Of course,” Decha went on, not paying him attention, “the next rift is allll the way on the other side of the city, right where the fault of Gorgheit is. You’d think that Arenji—blessed be Her rolls—would be merciful and put it somewhere inside of the city, but nooo.”

This was going by way too fast. “Doesn’t that mean we should just go around the city?” Rian said. “Wait a minute, did you just say RNG—”

“If you’re hoping to avoid combat,” Decha said, “I’m afraid that won’t work. There are Pyceian soldiers everywhere inside and outside the city. The fastest route is a straight line to the fault, which means we have to infiltrate the city.”

TEMPORAL RIFT (GORGHEIT) 1-1

Goal: Reach the next rift!

The Temporal Rift will close if Decha or a party member dies. Escort Decha to stage 3 to progress into deeper rifts!

Temporal Rift World 1 time limit: 60 minutes remaining.

Stage 1-1 time limit: 10 minutes remaining.

Rian nearly stopped walking as the game text popped up.

Oh no. It was an escort mission. He couldn’t think of a kind of quest he hated more. He was already having flashbacks. The only thing that could make it worse was if it were underwater.

On top of it, Decha was a Summoner. A mage. The most fragile of classes. And he was hardly a teenager by the look of it. Not someone with combat sensibilities. Rian could see this going south in hundreds of ways.

Coming out of the barracks ahead were soldiers in suits of armor with beige ceramic plating like the Runeknight in the Elmguard forests. They were carrying huge, pod-shaped rifles of the same material, with luminescent blue lines running along them. As the soldiers seemed to spot Rian and the others approaching, one of them gestured for the others to halt, and they took aggressive stances, aiming their weapons.

Rian, swearing inwardly, glanced at Kat. She was holding a dagger in one hand and, with the other, pulling out the dirk she’d used against him. She slowed her pace and lowered her stance as Decha continued walking ahead.

This was it. If Kat was getting serious, then—

In the corner of his vision, half the city turned solid white. A shock wave rippled through the ground and then slapped his body with a wall of noise like lightning striking mere feet away. He winced against gravel ricocheting off him, felt all the moisture in the air evaporate against his skin as a tremendous surge of heat rolled past him.

The camp in front of them was a rising ball of fire the size of a skyscraper fading rapidly into smoke. Ignited debris, shards of wood and glowing hot metal, careened and tumbled through the air in blazing arcs as they rained down.

Decha, standing in front of Rian and Kat, held onto his hat as the winds settled. He was aiming his staff at where the camp had been a second ago, now replaced with an inferno amid the blackened, scorched ground and jagged steel lying in ruins.

“Uh—” Rian mumbled. “Holy shit?”

“Phew!” Decha said, glancing aside at them. “That was a close one! They almost caught us off-guard. Make sure to stay close to me, for now.”

Rian slowly turned to look at Kat, who was watching with the same slack-jawed expression he’d been wearing. “You knew that was going to happen, didn’t you,” he said.

“I swear—” She shook her head, but she clearly couldn’t hold back her laughter. “The NPCs are always different at the start. I had no idea.”

And this was supposed to be an escort mission. Well, Rian thought, glancing at Decha, who was already advancing forward. I guess it’s technically still an escort mission. For him.

As he caught up to Decha, he asked, “So…aren’t you supposed to be a Summoner? I thought they, you know, summoned creatures instead of, uh.” He glanced at the smoldering remains of nearly an entire block of the city. “Nukes.”

“Creatures? Oh, no.” Decha stopped to pull the glowing gem off the end of his staff. “I summon energy. Much more efficient. Doesn’t require having to hammer out the details of a contract with a sentient being.”

Rian glanced up at Corvis, who shrugged and said, “It’s true. Decha always was a rather straightforward mage.”

Decha tucked the gem into his robes, then pulled out a different gem and brought it to the end of the staff. It locked itself into place as if by magnetic force.

“What I’m actually doing,” he said, “is harnessing the power of Pyce against themselves. When they fire enough of their weapons, I can steal the energy and move it somewhere else—usually right on top of them.” He laughed with delight. “They don’t even know it’s happening!”

More soldiers were beginning to charge down the roads toward them, probably to investigate the enormous explosion.

Decha raised his staff to the sky. Another shock wave, originating from the gem, rippled through the air. For a moment, all sound diminished—of the distant fighting and explosions—and then returned.

Rian was half-expecting a box to pop up with the name of a spell that had just been cast. “What was that?”

“When I opened the rift that brought you here,” Decha explained, “I also summoned a bit of the temporal energy from your time. Using that, I can apply some of the quantification system from your timeline to here.”

“He’s equalizing the mob levels to us,” Kat said plainly.

Decha nodded, then gestured toward the approaching soldiers—almost an entire squadron of them. Their levels were finally visible, each of them at 21. Right in between Rian’s and Kat’s levels.

When Rian attempted to inspect the soldiers’ stats, nothing came up, not even their HP values. Instead, health bars appeared above their heads.

“Normally you’d be no match for these guys,” Decha said. “But with the temporal energy from your time and the spell I just cast, everything should be at your level now. Hopefully you’ll survive longer than the other ones!”

Other ones? Rian thought. That didn’t sound encouraging.

“Just a fair warning, though,” Decha continued. “The further we go from the rift you came in from, the less of an effect it’ll have. And my summoning skill’s going to need quite a bit of time to recharge, so it’s all up to you now.”

That figured. By summoning skill Rian assumed he meant that gigantic nuke he’d dropped just a minute ago. And that probably meant Decha was defenseless in the meantime.

The armored soldiers lined up at a distance and aimed. One of them stood out and raised their arm, preparing to give the signal to fire.

Beside Rian, Kat opened her inventory and out leaped Visha who started bristling.

Rian lowered his stance and leaned forward, getting ready to dash. Watching the soldiers aim, the Runeknight encounter in Elmguard flashed through his mind. But when he looked aside, Kat didn’t seem worried.

The lead soldier swung his arm down, and a dozen clicks resounded as each soldier fired upon them.