Book 2, Chapter 10

“Armageddon,” she quipped back before smiling. “Oh, you mean right here right now. We are just making sure that everyone who needs to be locked up for the night has made it back to prison safely. New protocols,” she waved the clipboard and list around to emphasize it. “From now on, all potential Lucu targets need to tell us where they are going and for how long. We will keep track of everyone. That way we can send out search parties before dark to retrieve them if something delays them.”

“How many people are getting this VIP treatment?”

The woman looked down at her clipboard. “We have forty staying here, which are the true VIPs and a further hundred at the Plaza. Most people are double, triple, quadruple banking over there.”

“I'm happy to share my room I just need a place to sleep”

The woman laughed. She was the skinny, efficient type. Very cute, though not his type.

“Sally would kill me if I tried that.”

Well, that explained the enthusiastic greeting. He was recognised. “Thank you for helping out.”

She actually blushed. “I am just helping where I can.” You could almost feel the unspoken: I am not risking my life like you and others, and you guys are the true heroes deserving of praise.

She was level two, which of itself meant she had seen some combat but was obviously not part of a dedicated hunting parties. Everyone who had dedicated themselves to leveling up for the last three weeks ranged from level five to twelve, depending on the experience boost they had received. There were still numerous level zeros out there. Maybe as much as half of the surviving population.

Susie, Kozzie and Jules were sitting surrounded by empty plates. A server saw him heading towards the table and with effortless efficiency stepping in beside him.

“Tonight we are serving Bird soup or bruschetta as an appetizer followed by a real half chicken or fake rib-eye steak, both with mixed vegetables”

“Fake?”

“Tastes like cow but is not.”

“Do I want to ask?”

“No,” the server said grinning, “It is nothing too outlandish and is superb though.”

“Bird soup and steak,” he decided quickly, figuring that tonight was probably the last chance to have Bird and let's face it, eating something that you killed after it tried to kill you was sort of satisfying.

Susie looked like she was about to burst; she was so excited. “I killed a giant crab with a magic trap,” she clapped her hands enthusiastically.

“She electrocuted it up” Kozzie confirmed grinning. “It was a bit of an overkill, the Crab was only worth 1 XP each.”

Jules hit him hard on his arm. “Hey!”

Susie glowered.

“So how was your hunting?”

“The crab was the highlight,” Kozzie admitted “unfortunately we only had four hours, so there  was no time to go very far and most local areas have been hunted out.”

“I fought a woyeck just out of the central area,”

“A woyeck?”

“Nasty animal, dangerous.” Thinking about the creature more, the fact it had gone unnoticed by the large hunting parties made sense. With its enhanced senses, it would avoid a large raid group pretty easily. Probably thought that with being alone that he was an easy target.

Rupa sitting nearby turned to look at him.

“Do you think there are lots of things like that just out of the central town waiting for individuals wandering by to ambush?”

Kozzie was now nodding vigorously. His contribution was stupid. The boy had no regional knowledge to draw on and should not be implying inside knowledge in a life and death discussion. Part of Adrian wanted to yell at him. However, by dumb luck he was right. Just like on earth, lots of the Alpha animals had instincts that would make them avoid threats and wait patiently for something smaller. Most were even advanced enough to wait for a pack member to be isolated before taking them out. At heart, most predators both before and now all did the basic calculation. What is the chance of me getting hurt and how hungry am I? That answer would guide whether they attacked or waited for another opportunity.

“There are probably lots more,” Adrian admitted, “I think to flush them out you will need to do searches of houses. Room by room, check the roof space, sort of thing. Then secure the house afterwards.” Securing the house was not just a matter of locking doors on the way out, instead it would involve actively patching all the broken areas. Boarding windows, replacing sections of roofing.

Rupa deflated. Searching empty houses mitigated the strength of their teamwork. Who knows what was lurking inside and then it cornered how viciously it would fight. Then to make the equation worse, the engagements would be one versus one to start with and possibly end in the same way. It would be unsafe for everyone.

“I will raise it up the line to Sally”

Adrian nodded, and they delivered the soup to him. A clear yellow broth with chunks of Bird. Tasted like heartier and fattier chicken soup.

While he focused on sipping the soup Identification flashed around the room. Level 12 Mage, Level 11 Cleric, Level 13 Frost Mage, Level 9 Geomancer. He was going to have to make time to sit down with all these people and observe them using their power, hoping to understand the flavours of magic. What Jules had described with the path pushing her to do stuff was having an effect. There was an itch that made him want to leave his dinner and throw himself straight into it.

“What spells do you know now?” he asked Susie.

“Two healing and an animal fear spell.” He really wanted to see the healing magic. The itch grew, encouraging him to slice open an arm to force a demonstration. Only the desire to avoid the pain stayed his hand.

“Does someone need to be hurt for you to cast?”

Susie shook her head. “If I cast it on something that does not need healing, the spell works from my end. Of course it does nothing and the Mana just drains away.”

“Can you show me them?” he asked, holding out a hand for her to channel the magic through.

Magic focus flared in his eyes. Susie’s hand reached out towards him. Watching intently.  Susie’s fingers touched his, and the magic swept from Susie's toes all the way through her body before exiting the hand. It felt like the magic was interacting with Susie, absorbing knowledge about the human anatomy as it went flooding through her. Then for a moment it concentrated itself into her fingertips before flowing into Adrian. His aura resisted it and stopped it from flowing through him, instead it swept over his skin looking for damage. Little tendrils continually probed deeper as it went. Unable to find any wounds, the energy after travelling over all of his skills drained into the ground, having found nothing positive to expend itself against.

The magic that had spread over his body was alien to the types that he had personally mastered. A slightly different feel and curiously had utilised only a single flavour to make it work in contrast to all of his own spells that also contained a controlling force flavour, that was the same whether he used Air, Fire, Dark or Earth. Susie had used a single component of magic, a pure flavour. At some point he would need to analyse the use of his own healing spell to see if it was the same.

“Fascinating,” he whispered. Susie smiled in amusement.

The weight of the dagger on his hip pressed on him. It was so tempting to hurt himself, to see the magic act differently when it hit a wound. He was almost drooling at the thought.

“And your distance spell.”

Susie leant back in her seat to give space. This spell took significantly longer to form. The energy danced inside her for longer before bubbling out into her hand. The white magic that he associated with his own Fireball was covering the green tinged healing magic. Like with his own spells, the white magic traced a line between Susie’s hands and his shoulder. Then the green tinged ball shot across to hit him in the shoulder. Then the magic duplicated the lay of hands spell. Dancing along his skin, looking for something to heal before soaking into the ground.

“Did it help?” she asked

Nodding to answer her while thinking furiously. Healing magic was definitely a new flavour. It felt very different from both the fire and ice, which had felt related. Then to send the magic over a distance, she had to use the white power that his magic also used to control fire. The white power was a guiding magic that was used in all the different types to direct magic over a distance.

“It was great.”

“So why did you want me to cast the magic?”

“Umm,” then he smiled, realising that it was for multiple reasons. “I want to understand how it all works, the magic types that are out there and whether I can leverage that knowledge to create my own spells and abilities. Like combining earth and fire to create magma or something. Plus, I need to do it as part of my intelligence pathways.” he finished the last bit more quietly

Jules burst into laughter. “Do you have that thing crawling in your stomach pushing you too do stupid things?”

“Nothing like yours,” he lied, still fighting the urge to use his dagger

Kozzie was shaking his head and obviously remembered exactly what Jules' pathway was like. “So are you going to ask everyone in here to be a guinea pig,” Kozzie asked, his eyes challenging Adrian while waving over the assembled mass of magic users.

There was no way that he would have admitted it now, but that was exactly what he wanted to do. Grab everyone here and sit them down till they showed everything they could do. Gather the data in order to build a working model of what the different magic types were.

“Well,”

“Maybe tomorrow,” then turning his attention to Susie. “The animal one.”

Susie waved her hand and what happened was different. There were three different flavours bubbling from her hand; white-guiding force, green-healing and a colourless fuzzy flavour. The magic formed almost instantaneously on her fingers and shot out at him before breaking all over him. The colourless fuzzy flavour was completely new.

“Again.” Was his voice snappy? It was hard to moderate because of the impatience in him. Needing to know now. No time to waste. Just how Jules had described her crawling thingy.

“It has a cool down,” Susie told him “Eight, Seven, Six” she continued all the way down to two, at which point another particle shot out of her. It was the same as previously. There was nothing new to learn, though he tried to imprint the new colourless fuzzy flavour into his mind. The spell was animal fear. Maybe the fuzzy flavour was mind magic. He knew the bow used it so it could be what he had just seen. He needed more information. More tests. Wondering if Susie would go out with him to find an Alpha monster to test her spell on.

“Thank you,”

Steak was delivered. It did not look like any beef he had ever eaten. The brown meat aligned to his memory, but this steak had more marbled fat than any piece of Wagyu beef he had ever consumed. The fat had a slight orange tinge which put him a little off ease. Cutting into the meat it had red blood. Good start. A small test taste. The meat was perfect and just melted in the mouth, despite the orange edge it tasted like good beef.

“A hamptercore,” Kozzie told him, “It is an alpha monster that is like a giant hamster. Great eating once you can ignore the orange fat. More than a few of the local farmers are trying to work out where they can be domesticated. Regional knowledge suggests yet but no one has been successful.”

Another forkful of hamptercore went into his mouth. “Farming these things would certainly guarantee tasty food. I am sure Melbourne's already domesticated them,” he mumbled the last bit as he had taken another bite.

The immediate table laughed with him, but Rupa who was still listening in on the conversation rolled her eyes before pointedly turning away.

“I need to decide my upgrade path” he told them before explaining the gritty details. While talking, he tried to keep his opinion from the hopefully impassioned description of the pros and cons of the four main options.

“Another healer would be good,” Susie said immediately

“Shadow Fighters,” Kozzie chimed in.

“Buffs,” Jules disagreed “Imagine how powerful I'll be if you can double my strength in addition to the barbarian bonus.”

“So no one likes Silence.”

“There are only three of us, Kozzzie pointed out logically “it's not like we can have two favourites.”

“I need to make a choice”

“Another healer is overkill,” Kozzie said. “I don't care what you want to do, I don’t care if healing was your dream, it won't help our group. Jules can heal herself and you have already got a simple spell to help Susie if she gets overwhelmed.”

“Agreed,” Jules said

“So fighters, buffs or Silence”

“We can't see in the dark,” Susie said, pointing at herself, then Jules. “Any fighting we are going to do will happen during daylight hours..”

“I know,” Adrian agreed sadly, having known this is where the conversation was bound to end up. “It was just that shadows fighters sound so cool.” No one disputed that statement. “So silence or buffs? One of the least exciting.”

“Is that why you were delaying the choice?”

“I wanted to consult.” It sounded lame even to himself

“So, silent sounds situational,” Kozzie said carefully “but when there is an opportunity to use it, it will be way over powered”

“Nothing we have fought to date relies on sound,” Susie pointed out

“Apart from humans.”

“You have fought humans?” Kozzie asked teasingly

“No,” Jules responded with a little squeal, “but they're the only ones I've seen needing sound to cast magic. The monsters seemed to just cast it instinctively.”

“Buffs,”

“Buffs,”

“Yep,” Kozzie agreed, patting him on the shoulder “almost as good as 5% extra knife damage and 5% improve stealth.”

They relaxed into conversation, enjoying each other's company. While Adrian and Susie stayed seated in the same spot, everyone else rotated around. There were lots of intermingling, as Susie had now fought a couple of full days with the central raid groups. Not to mention Adrian’s own experiences pre-Bird. Nearly everyone was drinking, but he chose not to. When everyone else retired to go to sleep, he would upgrade his pathway and hit the books. There was too much to do. The drive to get more powerful had not abated

As people drifted by he got demonstrations of various abilities. Nothing earth shattering but it all added to a catalogue of knowledge that would let him understand the framework of magic. In the lulls he planned his evening. Definitely study the artwork of a couple more species and then flip through the meditation techniques book as that had been playing on his mind. Most of the fantasy novels he had read usually contained meditation techniques that would increase one's magic and occasionally even grant new skills. It was just like the interface or Sam to cheat and give him something with utility beyond the immediate hurdle, given the potential he was excited to get the chance to read, so that was a book that he looked forward to consuming. Then of course there was absorbing the Bird core. It saddened him to be losing the opportunity for healing magic, but everyone was right it was best to do the right thing by the team. Becoming good at everything would mean that eventually would pass him by as they became experts, and he was just a jack of all trades and a master of none.  .

“Time,” Kozzie slurred. Standing up abruptly. Jules stood immediately next to him.

“Me too,” Susie declared. A threshold had been reached, and everyone followed the young couple’s example. He was excited that the impromptu party was breaking up. It was never great being the only sober one.