“It doesn’t just ‘knock things over,’ it’s more than that. The water will let you see what it does,” Jordan said. “At the very least, there’s nothing to knock over out there, and you’ll know for sure if you can use it or not.”
Danielle turned toward the river, activated Hostility Sense, then turned back toward Jordan. Nothing. She scanned the rest of the work site. Still nothing – not even from Melanie. That was interesting, and encouraging. She turned back towards the river, and caught sight of a tiny return up in a tree, and looking closer, caught a glimpse of a squirrel peering down at the fires. OK, that proved the Skill was active (and that squirrels didn’t like fire, apparently). Jordan was apparently on the level, though.
“All right,” she said. “Then we’ll go find some big leaves to make wrappers for your fish and my less-clean bones.”
She called over to the others that she was going to take down the fish trap and then gather some large leaves to wrap things in, and headed for the river. Jordan followed, and for some reason Marc and the other SHAD Party girls drifted nearer as well. Maybe they were still nervous about Jordan? She couldn’t blame them if they were. She took off her boots and socks and waded out to the fish trap. It had a fish in it, but she didn’t want any more raw fish, since it was time to be packing up for the trek back to the rooms. She just pulled up the sticks, gathering them into a bundle. The fish flitted towards the bank, perhaps hoping for some cover.
Once she had all the sticks bundled under her arm, she spoke up just loud enough for her ‘audience’ on shore to hear, and said “All right, I’m going to try out that Skill that came with all the weird messages. Spectate at your own risk.”
Mark and Jordan promptly stepped back a pace or three. Sadie turned to look at them. “I’m pretty sure we’re out of range,” she said.
“Of the Skill, probably,” Marc said. “But I’m not so sure about the water.”
“Oh, good point,” Akari said, and grabbed Danielle’s boots before backing up a pace herself.
“Um, I’m not sure what you two think is going to happen here,” Danielle said. “I guess we’ll all find out on three though – one, two, three.”
To their mutual surprise, Danielle and the fish discovered that the fish had not reached safety. A wall of mana burst out and away from Danielle in all directions, displacing the water before it, so that she was very briefly standing in a sort of pit in the river, with massive waves of water all around. The next moment, the Skill ended and the water crashed down and filled in the void, but the fish had already been washed up onto the riverbank by the initial wave and flopped there, high and dry, until a soggy and annoyed Sadie flipped it back into the river with one foot. Everyone who had stayed right at the edge of the riverbank was drenched to the waist.
“You told me so,” Sadie said with a sigh, apparently to Akari even though she was looking at Danielle.
Danielle was boggled all over again. “Was that what you were expecting me to see?” She asked Jordan.
“Pretty much,” he said. “It’s powerful. Surprisingly powerful, even for – you know. Not being level 1,” he finished lamely.
“Too bad it pushes away your friends along with your foes,” Marc said. “It was great for the situation where you were more-or-less alone and just needed the enemy to get off, but you can’t use it with a group like you were with your privacy Skill.”
“Right – I’ll need to keep that in mind,” Danielle said. “Maybe put some more effort into trying to make the System give me 360-degree awareness with Detect Mana Source, so I can track my allies’ locations that way.”
“Is that possible?” Marc asked.
“How should I know?” Danielle asked with a laugh. “I didn’t think it would be possible to activate that Skill again before the end of the month, and it apparently is! I have four impossible things in my System messages today. I’m pretty sure that’s not going to become a habit or anything, but it’s maybe not the right day to ask me about what’s possible.”
Marc chuckled. “That is a very good point,” he said. “I was wondering if it was normally possible, though.”
“The answer is still ‘I don’t know,’ but that just means it’s something to try if I have free moments to work on it,” Danielle said with a shrug. “Anyway. Thanks for keeping my boots dry, Akari. Let me get them on, and we’ll go find some ‘wrapping paper’ for all this meat and fish and stuff.”
Danielle, Marc, Jordan, and Akari found enough leaves between them to package up the messiest of the meat and bones. Danielle showed Lauren the time, and she got everyone packing up for the hike home. Danielle, Sadie, Akari, Lauren, and Dana turned out to have the heaviest loads, because they were the only ones carrying something besides meat. The meat itself, cooked down and shared out among 23 people, wasn’t that heavy on a per-person basis; they had no way of measuring it, and it was certainly several pounds, but less than Danielle had been imagining. After seeing it weighed out with the improvised scale Heather and Angela had made to get all the shares even, though, Danielle had a new appreciation for how large groups made big piles into small piles real fast.
Although Gonzo had mostly led the group on the way out, for some reason he turned the point position over to Marc on the way home. It did take longer than the trip out, but they made it before full dark, if only just barely. They split up and headed for their own buildings and rooms, waving goodnight and reminding each other to pack their camping gear and get to bed soon, because they were leaving early again the next morning. Danielle wasn’t sure when Lauren had convinced everyone else on the hunt to come to the Access Point and plan to camp, but apparently she had been very persuasive.
The last thing Danielle said to Jordan before he went off to his room was, “Please don’t spread this around. About the Skill and the status message I mentioned and everything.”
“Why not?” he asked. “If the System declared me a saint, I’d tell everyone.”
“Oh yeah? Are you a Systemist?” Danielle asked him.
“Ha ha, no. I’m a realist, thank you very much,” Jordan said, rolling his eyes.
Danielle raised an eyebrow. “Then what does it even mean for the System to declare someone a saint? Is it even a big deal?”
Jordan shifted his weight uncomfortably. “Look, I – I don’t know what to think about that, OK?”
“OK, fair enough. I’m asking you to keep it under wraps, though, because I think the Systemists might draw conclusions about it that I’m not prepared to believe or deal with,” Danielle said. “Do you understand?”
“Kind of. They’d probably think it was great, though,” he said.
Danielle sighed. “They might, but they’d probably also think it means something it doesn’t actually mean. Just don’t tell anyone else, please.”
She’d have pressed him further, but one of the other boys from building seven called, “Jordan, you coming, or are you waiting to go alone?”
“I’m definitely not going alone,” he said. “See you tomorrow.” With that, he jogged off, and considering the Wolf problem in and around building seven, she could hardly blame him.
She was a little uncomfortable with the way the conversation had ended without Jordan actually agreeing, out loud, not to tell anyone. Still, they were in for a short night and a long walk tomorrow, so she figured she could bring it up again then. He didn’t exactly have much time to tell people in between.
Of course, Danielle figured she’d better tell a few people before morning, so when the Party got around to room 6024, she asked Cassy to come in for a few minutes.
Once everyone had put down their bags, and the meat was in the cold box, Danielle said “All right, so there was some stuff I didn’t want to talk about out there with people outside the Party all around, but I think I should tell the full story now. Is everyone ok with sitting in the kitchen for a few minutes while I explain?”
“You had me at sitting,” Akari said, and pulled out a stool for herself. The other girls gathered at the counter. Cassy had more or less permanently moved her stool into their kitchen, so nobody had to stand.
“OK,” Danielle said, taking a deep breath to calm a sudden rush of nervousness. “This is the situation. This morning, when we noticed Melanie in the hunting party, you probably remember I said I heard a voice. It told me, ‘Go as you promised; I will protect you all. No one will die on this hunting trip.’ ”
“Right, and Akari and I went aside and prayed while you were talking to Melanie, and we think that was the voice of God,” Cassy said. “We got a message too, although we didn’t hear an actual voice like that – but we’re sure it was from God, and not just our imaginations, because it was the exact same message for both of us.”
“The message was, ‘Go and don’t be afraid; one of you will see my hand at work this very day,’ ” Akari said. “We both thought that meant God was going to do a miracle, but we didn’t have any idea what.”
“That – wow. Yeah. OK. So, I didn’t know that until now, but obviously I got us an understanding with Melanie and we went; and I kind of figured that was already God at work because when has Melanie ever been reasonable about us?” Danielle said. “It turns out, she wasn’t the problem in the first place. Vince the Wolf had convinced our new friend Jordan that he was going to die of starvation if he didn’t kill someone with enough mana to level him up, specifically me, and somehow got him to follow us or something. We should probably ask for details tomorrow. Vince followed too, but apparently Jordan didn’t know that.
“Jordan thought he saw his one chance for survival when I was semi-alone, getting ready to drive the last deer towards everyone else. He grabbed me from behind and put a knife to my neck, which is why I shouted ‘knife’ instead of poking the deer. At first, I guess people just thought I was yelling nonsense at the deer? Anyway, Jordan didn’t want to be there, he was shaking like a leaf, so I tried to talk him down. Unfortunately, he was in panic mode, convinced that he had to kill me because it was him or me, so he just kept talking himself into it. Then when Marc, Sadie, and Akari came running up, he panicked even harder, and that’s when I called out for God to protect me,” Danielle continued.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
“I want to just read you my system messages, starting from when the deer died while I was trying to talk Jordan into letting me go, because what happened when I shouted for help went so fast I couldn’t really process it at the time. Here goes:
- ? Mana burst detected; 40 mana has been added to your class (Basic Sneak). Remaining cost to level, 23 mana.
- ? Career Skill: Hostility Sense (T1) added at level 1.
- ? You have been touched by a power outside the system. Detecting changes.
- ? Verbose reporting on.
- ? Trait Mana Funnel applied: A channel has been made to deliver mana to your mana pool from the outside. This trait is permanent. Your mana absorption may increase by unknown amount.
- ? 400 mana has been deposited in your mana pool. Warning! Capacity exceeded, please use mana immediately to avoid damage.
- ? Skill applied. 225 mana spent.
- ? Skill: Shield Burst (T3) added at level 1.
- ? You have leveled up Skill: Shield Burst. 150 mana spent. Shield Burst is now level 2.
- ? Activating Skill: Shield Burst. 6 mana spent.
- ? Organization affiliation: Servants of the Creator applied.
- ? Organization status (Servants of the Creator) has been changed from “Silent Faithful” to “Wakeful Saint.”
- ? Verbose reporting off.
- ? You have been granted a system boon by a power higher than the system. Please put in a good word for us with them!
“Please notice that Shield Burst was not a mana-burst skill; it isn’t even listed as a Career Skill. The System messages made it look like I took a Skill and leveled it, except it’s Tier 3, so that’s impossible; also, I got 400 mana from this Mana Funnel Trait out of nowhere – and again, Mana Funnel doesn’t come from a Career or from the mana burst, it just comes. The System doesn’t even know all the details; it just tells me it’s there, and then bam, 400 mana in a 60 point mana pool, which is impossible; the mana is used to buy a Tier 3 Skill, which is impossible; the Skill is leveled up immediately which – I guess that’s not impossible except for the part where it used 150 mana out of a 60 mana pool; and then the Skill activates, which I’ve never seen a message for before. Then I get an organizational status for an organization I’ve never heard of, but which could be a description of the Church, capital C, the faithful followers from all denominations; and the status is Wakeful Saint. And I end with more mana than I started with. Jordan got blown back and his knife and hatchet got blown forward, and Marc and Vince both got knocked down too.”
“I figured that had to be a miracle; literally God answering my cry for help by interacting with my System. I thought to myself, ‘Why go through my System instead of acting directly? He could have just struck this guy dead on the spot. He could have given him a change of heart. He could have done anything at all, he’s God! So why this?’ I don’t have a full answer to that, but I decided if he didn’t kill Jordan, it was because he wanted Jordan alive, so I didn’t kill Jordan either. I told him he could run for the Rooms if he wanted, but he could also stay and learn how to fish for food and mana if he was willing, and he stayed and fished. So, um. That’s the whole story.”
“That is not the whole story!” Sadie exclaimed. “You left out the glowing and the exploding and – and the glowing!”
“I wasn’t aware of any glowing?” Danielle half stated, half asked.
“When you yelled for God to help you, it was like a bolt of light came out of the sky, and you started glowing with this amazing, um, almost like an aura?” Akari explained. “It was mana-purple with a gold starburst in the center, and your hair was flowing up like it can in water. Jordan looked like he was going to pee his pants, and then you seemed to explode; like you said, Jordan went one way and his blades went the other way, but also all the trees bent away from you and Marc was lifted off his feet and thrown back a whole foot before he landed and fell back on his rear. Dead leaves and sticks and dirt and stuff flew all over, but all away from you.”
“It was like the water. There was a sphere around you that exploded out and away and everything it passed tried to move away with it,” Sadie added. “It made wind, just like in the river it made waves. There was wind when you were in the river too, because it goes in all directions. I was kind of surprised you didn’t blow the sticks from the fish trap right out of your hands, but maybe stuff you’re holding on to is exempt or something.”
Heather looked at Sadie. “Did you see the, um, aura that Akari was talking about?” she asked.
“Yes. It was awesome, and terrifying. It wasn’t there very long, but for however many seconds that was, I thought – I don’t even know what. I thought Danielle was gonna burn up or ascend into heaven or start shooting light out of her eyes and fingertips like that one movie or – something,” Sadie said. “You have no idea, Heather. It was – it was indescribable. It was so intense I could actually feel it, and I don’t normally feel mana like Danielle and Cassy do!”
“So the message Danielle heard in the morning was true,” Akari said, “Because nobody died – not Danielle, not her attacker, nobody. The message Cassy and I got was true also, because God did a miracle and I got to see it happen.”
“But I didn’t, so the part where only one of us would see it was true, too,” Cassy said regretfully. “When I get to level 2, I’m going to take that Read System Skill, just so I can see that org status message with my own eyes! Not that I don’t believe you, I promise; just because it’s so amazing and I want to see, too.”
Heather looked to Sadie again. “What do you think?” she asked.
Sadie shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I think, um. I think the System says there’s a higher power, and the higher power says Danielle is a Wakeful Saint in his org.”
“Seriously?” Heather said.
“I – yeah, seriously. I seriously think I need to rethink a bunch of stuff, because either there’s an actual god out there, or – well, I don’t even know what the other possibility is. I watched something happen that should be impossible, according to everything I thought I knew. It happened, so it’s possible, and if I want to call myself rational I have to adjust my beliefs to accommodate the new evidence, right?” Sadie sounded oddly frightened, Danielle though; or maybe it wasn’t so odd, considering she was talking about changing her whole understanding of what was and was not real.
She almost said something else, but felt a subtle sense as if someone was shaking their head at her; it wasn’t the right time. Cassy also opened her mouth as if to say something, and then stopped. Akari reached out and squeezed Sadie’s shoulder. “It’s a huge deal,” she said. “I’m glad you’re being rational about it, though, and not just trying to invent reasons to ignore it. When you’re ready to talk about it, we’ll be glad to talk, OK?”
“OK. Thanks. Um, not right now, thanks,” Sadie said awkwardly.
“I can’t believe this,” Heather said.
“Even I can barely believe what happened today,” Danielle said, “but I’ve still got the Trait and the tier 3 Skill and a point more mana than I should have if I’d never spent any at all today – and you all know I spent mana today!”
“If nothing else, we saw you use the new Skill in the river,” Cassy said.
“We also saw her use Bubble of Silence a bunch of times,” Sadie reminded everyone. “So, um, if she really has an impossible amount of mana, she can prove it. You should be pretty close to being able to make another bag, right Danielle? If you were at a normal level for how much mana you spent yesterday and today, you wouldn’t even be close.”
“I would need two – no, three more tomatoes,” Danielle said. “Two for the enhancement cost itself and one to activate.”
“Show us your tomato canteen,” Sadie said. “If it’s full, and you can really do the bag with only three, then that’s proof even Cassy and Heather can watch happen.”
Danielle wordlessly got the purple tomato bottle out of her bag and put it on the counter, unopened. “You guys count these while I get the ring turned into a clip,” she said. She got out a ring while they counted, and clipped open the band. Then she got out the mallet and her torn T-shirt and came around the counter to get one of the extra leather satchels and brought them back to the counter.
“Do you want to check the stone, Heather?” Danielle offered. “Just so nobody can say I tricked you somehow, later?”
Heather took the split-open ring uncertainly and touched the stone. “Unenhanced,” she said.
“All right. Let me get it on the bag,” Danielle said, and put the ring through the two button-hole slits on the end of the bag while everyone watched, so the stone was inside. She wrapped her shirt around it and pounded the clip flat, then offered it to Heather to examine again.
“Still unenhanced,” Heather reported. “Obviously. I’ve seen you do this before.”
“I know, I’m just giving you the chance to be extra thorough about it all,” Danielle said. “OK, give me three tomatoes.” She ate them, then took the bag in her hands. “Skill activation in one, two, three.” Her mana dropped to zero, and the stone glowed briefly. She handed the bag to Heather again.
Heather touched the stone again, and declared, “Volume enhancement, 15%. I don’t – what’s your mana now?”
“Zero,” Danielle said. “I, uh, I would actually like to eat the rest of these now, if that’s OK with everyone else? I know I’ll have 6 or 7 again by morning, and I know God’s protecting me and all, but I’ll feel better having more than one use of my new Skill if the Wolf Pack guys decide to stalk us on our trip again.”
“Can I keep this?” Heather asked in an odd tone of voice.
“Sure,” Sadie said. “Akari and I can have the other two, and Danielle and Cassy can work out how fast to do their two between them. That way if they really feel like they gotta save up at maximum speed for the catalog thing, Danielle won’t feel like I’m pressuring her on it.”
“I’m fine with that,” Cassy said. “I can wait until after catalog day, Danielle, no problem.”
“That works for me too,” Akari said.
“All right, I’ll give you two yours before bed, then,” Danielle said. “Which I guess should be now, so we can get packed and get to sleep.”
“Actually, let’s do one more thing,” Akari said. “I think it’ll be quick.”
Danielle bit back the urge to tell her the day had already had enough surprises. “What are you thinking of?” she asked instead, and put a purple tomato in her mouth.
“I think we’re overdue to officially vote Cassy up to Trusted status,” Akari said. “We’re already acting like she’s trusted, and I think with everything that’s been happening this week, we really might have a few more people wanting to be welcome members, so we should update Cassy’s status before they have a chance to actually ask. Otherwise it will look like we only promoted her to keep her above them.”
“Oh. That makes sense, I guess,” Danielle said.
“That makes more sense than anything else all day,” Heather said. “Can I start the vote? I propose the council of the SHAD Party vote on whether to promote Welcome Member Cassy to the status of Trusted Member.”
The system message came up, quoting Heather’s proposal, and Danielle voted Yes. A moment later, Cassy cheered, “Yes! Thank you, girls!”
“No problem,” Sadie said. “We’re trusting you with a lot anyway, we might as well make it official. Just for the record, though, Danielle? If the Rangers buy any more tokens from you before the Un-Fair, I ask you to seriously consider setting aside the mana for a room; because I think the next people who want to join the party are going to be guys, and I feel weird about the idea of having guys in our bedroom all the time like we do with Cassy.”
“That – ” Danielle paused to think, still eating tomatoes. It was a lot of mana, but she was already planning to spend a thousand mana and save up another three hundred; if more Skill token sales came into play, it might actually be entirely doable. “That’s a reasonable request,” she finally continued. “I’m not absolutely promising to make the purchase, but I promise I’ll consider it depending on how much mana becomes available and how crazy everything else gets in the meantime.”
“You think it’s going to be Tom?” Heather asked.
“Tom and Jordan, yeah,” Akari said. “They both desperately need hunting parties, and they’re each desperately grateful to a certain member of the council.”
“Ah, and they’re both coming on the trip tomorrow, too,” Heather said, “so they might consider that an opportunity to bring it up.”
“Tom’s coming? When did you hear that?” Danielle asked.
Heather shrugged. “Sometime this afternoon, I forget when exactly. Apparently there are a lot more people interested in hiking to the Access Point than people who wanted to come out in the deep woods and do a mass archery thing. Angela said the CYC guys are all coming, and Tom heard from them and asked to come too. There are a couple more hunting parties that were going to do their pre-trip hunts by themselves, and I think that Zepher guy too. I wasn’t clear on if he’s part of one of the parties, or separate.”
Danielle felt slightly overwhelmed, and she hadn’t even seen the whole group yet. “Well, this is going to be interesting,” she said. “I was already wondering how hard it would be to get some privacy with the Access Point, and now I’m really wondering.”
“You’ll be fine,” Sadie said. “Everyone who wants to do the fast Career search will be putting in 5 mana tokens to get 25 mana for the search. You can just put in 5 that are 150 points instead of 5 each, and that’ll get you most of it.”
Danielle sighed. “I now have a solid plan B; thank you Sadie. In the meantime, let’s get ready for bed and get our bags packed and everything. Just remember, this stuff is all secret – I don’t want to know what the Systemists think about that last message, I’ve got enough trouble with the Wolves.”
“Akari and I can walk Cassy to her room,” Sadie said. “Do you want the first shower, Danielle?”
“No, I’ll still go last for the night-vision thing,” Danielle said. “Besides, I have a long journal entry to write.”
finally get Danielle to an Access Point! It'll be a nice rest before we get into all the ways this makes Danielle's life more complicated...
https://discord.gg/u5dtzpShv2