They watched the first lucky, or potentially unlucky, four put on the gear and begin their flying lessons. The rest of them had been ordered to stay in the corner of the gym - so that was what they did, and clustered together in a disorganised mess. Kang acted gregariously, just like he had been doing since the incident. He had a broad smile on his face and was interacting with everyone around.
He pointed at a girl, who, despite looking terrified, in Tom’s opinion, was spinning around and doing the occasional flips as she tried to stay alive on her flying artefact. She might have been screaming the entire time, but her control was remarkable.
“She’s so good.” Kang declared. “Like brilliant good.”
“Yeah,” the boy he was talking to agreed.
“Do you think she’s a reincarnator?” Kang whispered.
Next to him Briana squealed in frustration and kicked the larger boy in the back of the leg.
“What’s that for?” Kang asked, pretending to sound confused.
“You can’t say that?”
“Say what?”
Briana stared at him, horrified. “You know. You aren’t allowed to ask if someone thinks she’s a reincarnator.”
“Why?”
“Don’t talk. Don’t ask. Don’t question.” She repeated firmly. “They’re the rules. They’re not to be broken.”
“But you did all those things.” Kang said innocently.
Her face went red, and, before Tom could fully react, she rushed off. He monitored his internal anger carefully. It had increased, but, after assessing it, he decided it was not quite enough to force him to flee. He couldn’t afford to go into a rage, but his outburst yesterday helped. Both the likelihood and the potential power of the rage seemed to increase depending on how much time has passed since it had been triggered previously. That was an insight that he had to exploit. Tom wondered what he could do in that space. If he told Corrine and Kang, they could coordinate to triggering him deliberately .
Especially Kang. It was a solution that he would look into implementing. With those two actively helping, he might be able to fully mitigate the impact of the curse.
Silence had descended in the wake of both Briana’s accusation and her subsequent storming off to the bathroom. Kang was now the centre of attention. The large boy shrugged, then smirked. “I don’t know what her problem is. Maybe she’s the reincarnator.”
Tom said nothing, but he leapt at the opportunity to be the next into the flying harness, if only to distract himself. He ramped up the amount of lightning coursing through his body before taking off. Then it was a fun struggle to manage his flight while his limbs were twitching erratically.
All too soon, he crashed into the wall.
Emergency healing from the instructor fixed up his nose before it had a chance to bleed more than a few drops. However, he reactivated the artefact and kept going. When their time ran out and he landed, Kang was laughing with all the other children.
“Tom’s clearly not a reincarnator - did you see that crash? So clumsy.”
“I was not clumsy,” he yelled by reflex. “The harness was defective.”
“You were the worst. I guess flying, like dodging, is not your thing.”
Everyone laughed at him, and Kang looked very pleased with himself. The words, while malicious on the surface level, were not so. Briana was back, and she was the one who the comment was directed at. Seeding doubt about his competency in her mind was just smart.
He could see the anger and vulnerability warring in her eyes. “It was one crash.”
“Two.” Kang corrected.
“One proper crash,” he pretended to pout. “One slip-up.”
He could have got going and really got into a rant, but he couldn’t be bothered. This was as good a moment as any other to retreat into the system room. The physical training was done, and he didn’t need to be here for the words. Plus, Briana was starting to look properly upset, and there was no way he was risking another episode - especially not in front of so many witnesses.
Another week passed with the same routine and two more losses in his sanctioned duels. His wire frame had grown to be about twice the size of the standard ritual one he was making in April’s trials, but, according to Throm, it was only half-done. He had been working on it for almost four weeks, and after he completed it, he guessed it would be another two months before he had memorised it well enough to create the disks.
Only then would he be able to start gaining coins to buy stuff from the GOD’s shop to make himself stronger, because the traditional method of winning duels seemed to be beyond him. Not that waiting four months was necessarily bad. He had almost two Earth-years guaranteed in the bucket, and, once he mastered the disk, earning eight plus coins per week would be a better income than even that of those who operated under a partial GOD’s shield. He wasn’t going to earn as much as those couple of people who fought without a GOD’s shield, but it was still a lot.
Or, at least, he hoped so.
There was a flicker of movement to his left, and he spun around.
He smiled, unbidden.
Corrine sat down next to him, and she appeared exhausted.
“You’re back.”
“Not for long. We have twenty minutes to eat and rest, so I decided to check in here. I’m fucking wrecked.”
“How’s the survival training?”
“More brutal than I’ve expected it to be, but that’s a good thing. It will definitely save the lives of anyone who takes up the adventuring lifestyle.” She frowned. “The instructor is very thorough. He’s pushing all of us to our limits.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t retreat here more often. You’d know all that stuff, wouldn’t you?”
Corrine shook her head. “No, you can tell by the resources that they’re putting into this course that it’s important. It’s definitely part of an effort to get us skills, and I need as many of them that I can get for free. Every bit helps.”
It was, Tom knew, both a lie and a truth. This might indeed earn her a handful of tier-one and -two skills. In terms of experience cost, that benefit was nothing. Once they were established, such a paltry amount was going to mean only a day or two worth of effort, at best. However, Tom knew there was a lot more than the direct benefits granted by the skills at play. It was about upgrading the title that was granted for learning skills before you had access to experience. That was what drove both Corrine and most of the orphanage’s setup. They obviously hadn’t talked about the mathematics due to title restrictions, but Tom could well see those extra ten points boosting her over a threshold and doubling the bonus she would otherwise get. He suspected she was aiming for two free attribute points per level.The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“And it’s not just about the skills,” she continued. “I also need the technical knowledge, because I’m not as powerful as I was in the tutorial. Then, in Existentia, when I was this weak, I was part of a two hundred strong raid force. Once I have my system, I’m optimising my levelling. That means I’m mostly going to be on my own, so I need this. The instructions have been good.” She laughed. “We’ve been practicing acting like mice. Basically, I’m receiving advanced training in how to survive in a higher-ranked area than you’re currently in. That’s a mindset I’ll need for the first year or two, because even if an area is ranked fourteen to twenty there’s a chance of a stronger enemy moving through.”
“That’s always a risk.” Tom agreed.
“I thought so too. But, apparently, it’s only a risk if there’s a higher level zone adjacent to where you’re levelling. It’s the monsters wandering in from elsewhere that are the problem. Eventually, the risk of an enemy appearing from an adjacent area and vastly outranking you disappears. I think, when all the nearby areas are lower-ranked than yourself, then you’re safe. Once you’re powerful, that happens more and more frequently.”
“Oh, I guess that makes sense. I didn’t consider that. So, did your week of exhaustion get you a skill?”
She laughed. “I think I’m not even close. We’ll be doing one of these every four or five weeks from now on. By the time I get the system, that’ll add up to six months of dedicated fieldwork, so I’m sure I’ll get them eventually. But enough about me. What about you? How have you been going?”
Tom sighed. “I’ve lived in here a lot. So, there’s been no more blow-ups; and, once you’re back, we can do that thing we spoke about to reduce the chances in the future.”
“How did you describe it again? Secretly bait you into blowing a gasket?”
“Yes, exactly. I’m sure both you and Kang will enjoy it.”
“I think you should check if you can trigger it in a duel. It’s just about getting mad, right? If they’ve killed someone previously, then isn’t that like they’ve doomed an entire civilisation? The idea of what those bastards have done makes me furious.”
“I’ll do that. Not sure if it’ll work, but I‘ll test to see if it’s possible.”
They trailed off into silence.
“Well, has there been any fun gossip?”
“Kang managed to get our entire cohort told off.”
“Made Dimitri come down on you while being all fire and brimstone, did he?”
Tom nodded. “Yep. The entire group had been running a guessing game of who is the reincarnator all week. Briana was being asked multiple times a day whether she was one, and not by Kang and me. If I didn’t hate it I would have been impressed. I don’t understand how Kang’s engineered it, but she became prime suspect one. The man’s an evil genius. But obviously Briana didn’t like it, and I believe she reacted by telling a volunteer.”
“Ouch. So, Dim yelled at you for an hour?”
“Only a half, but, yeah, he was pretty intense. Beyond that, things have mostly gone well, but Briana’s been crying herself to sleep most nights.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah, my thoughts exactly.”
“Do you feel like it’s working? Do you think that, if they mind-read her today, you’d be safe?”
Tom shrugged. “I’ve been investing fate both into stopping her from being used by them and into the more direct influence you recommended.”
“You mean, promoting or drawing her eyes to events that will help her believe you and Kang aren’t reincarnators?”
“Yep, that one. I think it’s working too. She fell asleep in reading two days ago.”
“Fuck.” Corrine said under her breath. “That must have shaken her.”
“Yeah, Kang got a lot of mileage out of that. ‘Told you that you sleep in class. Told you, told you.’ That guy’s a fuck head. He went on and on like an obnoxious parrot.”
“I’m not going to dispute that, but Tom… do you think it’s working?”
He snorted angrily. “Yeah. I think so. I shouldn’t be so pissed about it, but I can’t help it.”
“What’s working?” Baptiste asked, using multiple vines to pull himself up onto the seat.
“A little domestic problem Tom has.” Corrine answered for him.
Baptiste’s vines all sagged onto the surface of the pot bit of him with some drooping further, so they rested limply against the seat. The expressed feelings were sadness and common situations.
Tom and Corrine both looked at each other in surprise. That was not the emotional response they were expecting.
Tom scratched his chin. “Um… why the emotion?”
“We have one of those, too. I have a domestic problem, the same as you.”
“I don’t think it’s the same,” Tom told the pot plant.
“No, it is. We had to flee to a bigger town.”
The two humans exchanged another look. There was a translation issue, but…
“Why did you have to flee?” Corrine asked, carefully
“Um… It’s related to you guys.”
“Humans?” Tom blurted out, not quite understanding what the pot plant person was talking about. Nothing it had conveyed since it had joined them made a lick of sense. Even with the body language interpretation ability installed in the common areas to avoid these kinds of misunderstandings, there was a translation issue happening. Baptiste was saying things with absolute confidence, but they were incoherent. “What do you mean humans made you flee?”
What was being suggested confused Tom. The distances involved in Existentia were ridiculous. In solar system terms, in terms of distance the average species lived on Jupiter relative to Earth and you could only reach them by walking over a bridge. Such a journey would take thirty thousand years, and that was the average. Some would be even further away. Practically everyone he had spoken to in the Divine’s Champion’s trial might as well have lived in a different universe.
“I didn’t say it was humans,” Baptiste objected.
Tom shook his head, trying to follow the conversation.
“I said related to you. It’s the insects that are responsible.”
“Wait,” Tom interrupted, having finally worked out what it was saying. “You’re actually local?” It was mindboggling, from what he understood. At any one point in time, there were ten thousand DEUS diminishing civilisations out of ten million total species and humanity was close to less than two hundred of them. The chance of any one person being in the local cluster was only fifty thousand to one. But then again, Baptiste and him being here probably wasn’t fully random. DEUS could, and would, put her finger on probabilities to get what she wanted.
“Yes, I just found out about it.” The native continued oblivious to Tom’s thoughts. “In our culture, kids aren’t supposed to be exposed to knowledge of life beyond the village. But the Divine Champions’ Trial changes everything. I know there is more out there. Therefore, the usual traditions don’t apply to me. So, I demanded they tell me why we had to leave our village.”
“And?” Tom asked.
“They talked about the insects and the competition. I worked it out, and I mention you guys, and then they shared everything. A colony of insects had secretly started up nearby. We had to migrate to a more defensive location until they are eliminated.” Baptiste sounded sad. “I won’t go back to my home for six months. That’s a long time away from my sunning spot. But I did find out where you guys are. You see, the city had a map that they showed me.”
The instant he said that the table changed to show what was presumably an identical replica of the map Baptiste had seen.
“I didn’t expect the system to allow that,” Baptiste said in delight. “I thought it restricted this sort of overt communication.”
“The rules are fuzzy,” Corrine told him. “If the system thinks you could create the map independently, or that the information you are showing is irrelevant beyond being a prompt, it will facilitate the display to make interactions easier. Consider it as a quality-of-life thing rather than a cheat.”
Baptiste’s leaves became more straight, to show satisfaction. “That’s great.”
Tom mostly ignored them as he studied what was shown to him.
It was the local nation cluster that he recognised from the reference material in the isolation rooms. The seven competition races were in the wildlands effectively located on one of the eight cardinal directions, with their territories circling the nation cluster. Starting from human territory, it went like this: chosen, inventors, dragons, insects, giants, wador, and then an empty space back to humans.
The distances, Tom knew, were huge.
“We’re here,” Baptiste pointed. A tiny dot appeared on the map, one a thousand times smaller than the area that humans nominally controlled.
Tom was not surprised.
Baptiste’s people were diminished, and that was reflected in the amount of land they owned. Not that there were any great empires in the local cluster, at least from an area under control perspective. All the native countries were in the centre, and it was like Europe. There were lots of high-density countries surrounded by the wildlands that competitor species had been scattered within, leaving them, relatively speaking, unpopulated.
“Do you think we could do something?” Tom asked.
“That’s a long way away.” Corrine shook her head slowly. “Best case scenario, that’s three years of travel for a high ranked team to get there.” She hesitated and tapped her fingers on the map. “Having said that, we’ve had teams go that far.”
“Then we should help them,” Tom said. “Saving a diminishing race has to be good for ranking points.”
He could tell from her expression that she was thinking the same thing. “We’ve both got meetings with Dim next week. In mine, I’ll have a discussion with him about investing in an uplift mission. You’re on the money, Tom. It’s the right call to help with a diminishing species. It’s probably the easiest source of ranking points we’ve still got left available, and it also feeds into our strengths. There are those unnerved who can be gang-pressed into providing long-term support. Plus, unlike natives, we can use skill and spell-stones strategically, as no one needs to consume them to grow stronger; I also suspect that a lot of the ones that will help Batiste’s people would be ones we wouldn’t be able to use, anyway.”
Baptiste looked excited. “Are you serious? You’re saying you can help us?”
Corrine sighed and shook her head. “I’m not promising anything, and it’s a long way. I don’t have any power to make it happen. All I can do is to argue your case to the decision makers.” Then she pointed a finger at Tom. “And if that fails, I’ll get Tom to swing his weight around, and that’ll get a result.”
“Can’t you swing someone else? No offense, but he doesn’t look like he weighs much.”
Corrine broke down into fits of giggles.