He focused on one thing, and one thing only: making each and every one of his shots count. He’d tried to kill the massive beast and failed, so he didn’t try to do that now. Instead of aiming for its head, he aimed for its weak point: its small, poorly evolved legs.
Bullets bit into the flesh around its right leg joint, and the catfish stumbled. Thorn shot at the backwards knee joint again and again, and on the fifth hit, the leg failed and the beast fell on its side.
Thorn switched to the other leg, and by the end of his mag, had disabled the front two legs. The catfish was only ten meters away, but its advance had slowed to a crawl. Thorn rolled onto his good knee and tried to stand. His calf was wobbly, but he made it.
The catfish made a strange gulping sound, its wide mouth opening and closing. It was still pushing its way forward with its back legs, rage in its eyes and quivering whiskers.
Thorn scooped up the eels that the crow had killed under his arm, and staggered in the general direction of the observation platform.
He almost went towards the stairs, and then remembered that he had left the friendly neighborhood spider alone at the bottom of the stairs. When he reached the bottom of the rope, he threw the eels up onto the platform and hauled himself up, hand over hand. His arms were burning and he almost didn’t make it to the top. He heaved himself over the edge and collapsed on the rock platform.
He would have lain there for much longer, catching his breath and enjoying not being bait for a catfish, except the crow pecked him on the head.
With a weary sigh, he struggled to his feet and made it through the door and up to the base, closing all of the doors behind him. He left the bloody eels in the wrecked common room, near the kitchen. He could process them for cores later.
He set his rifle down on one side of the door and threw himself into one of the chairs at the table. He pulled the medical kit from his bag and started patching up his leg. The wound wasn’t that bad, a few punctures into the muscle. It would get stiff and limit his mobility for a bit, but would heal up just fine as long as it didn’t get infected. The biggest problem he’d had with the wound was the electric shock that the… eel beast? land eel? He wasn’t sure what to call it, but the electrical attack had made all of the muscles on his leg cramp up.
Lief was looking at him with a hard and stony expression.
Thorn finished bandaging his leg and sat up. “What?” he said.
Lief sighed. “Nothing. You did fine, considering the circumstances, I suppose. I just wish I was out there too. It’s hard just watching.”
That made a lot of sense.
“It’s also bad that we haven’t even taken out a lot of the more dangerous beasts trapped in here with us, and you’re already wounded. Should’ve been more cautious.”
“Coulda, woulda, shoulda.” Thorn shrugged. His mother had liked to say that to him when he was making excuses.
“Say that when you lose an arm and leg next time,” Lief said, pointing at his stumps. “It’s not gonna work this way. We’re going to need to think of something different.”
Thorn tried to ignore the pain in his calf that was telling him he almost hadn’t gotten away from that whiskered monstrosity, but it was hard to.
“I’m going to go clean up the eels, he said, and got up and walked stiffly back down to the common area.
The crow was there, sitting in the middle of the eels, eyes closed. Of the eight or so eels, five had holes pecked in their heads.
“Oh no,” Thorn said. “What have you done?”
“Hrrrrk,” the crow said, opening its eye and pointing its beak at the small pile of cores on the counter. Four, to be precise.
“Eight eels, five with holes pecked in them. Four cores left,” Thorn said, doing the math. “Looks like you already took your share of the loot then.”
“Hrrk,” was the only reply he got. The crow closed its eyes and ruffled its feathers once. Thorn pocketed the four cores and went back upstairs.
“That was quick,” Lief commented. His eyes had been closed, focusing on the inputs from his scout drone.
“The crow had already done the work,” Thorn said, setting the four cores on the table. “It took its share, and left four for us.”
“That beast is way too smart,” Lief mused. “I’m glad it’s on our side, but I have to wonder at its awakening, and how it is evolving.”
Lief reached over and grabbed one of the cores in his hand, and wisps of phosphorescence slipped out of his fingers as he absorbed the quints.
“We can’t forget it’s a beast, and not a pet,” Lief said.
“Agreed,” Thorn replied, taking one of the cores and absorbing it himself. He left the last one on the table.
It was another tiny core, like all the others they had found in this cavern. He supposed that it likely had to do with the fact that these beasts were just awakening, and that the older a beast was, the larger their core.
After absorbing the quints, he gave his status a quick check. He had more than enough quints to level up, and after checking in with Lief, decided to do so.
His past two level-ups had felt like fire and ice burning through his muscles and veins, and he still felt that as well this time, but to a lesser degree. The pain wasn’t any less intense, but it was focused in his temples and in his head. It felt like a volcano erupting inside of his brain.
He passed out. When he came to, the pain was gone except for some lingering stiffness in his jaw. His eyes felt strange too. Tired, perhaps, or overly sensitive to light.
“Must have been a bad one,” Lief said, from across the table. “You were out for a few minutes.”
“Yeah, it was pretty bad,” Thorn said, rubbing his face with both hands. Why did other people say that they felt pleasure, joy, and escalating strength as their Systems leveled them up? Each one of his had been more brutal than the last.
His body felt stronger, his mind a bit looser, and he could feel the presence of a new skill in his mind. He checked the messages from his System to see what he’d gained.
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He could tell he had the new skill Assess, and instinctively knew what it did, but it was a much more slippery skill to describe. It wasn’t an active skill, or perhaps it was better to say it was always activated and running in the background.
The best way he could describe it was that he felt far more aware of the environment around him than he had been previously, although that was also a difficult comparison to make; he couldn’t just turn the skill on and off and compare.
Before, he wouldn’t have noticed the slight air flow going up and out towards hidden ducts in the ceiling, or been able to count Lief’s heartbeats from the veins minutely throbbing on his neck, or that both he and Lief needed a shower… badly. If he had focused on any particular sense, he could probably have noticed these details, but with this new skill, it was basically effortless.
“This sucks,” Thorn sighed. “I got a new skill, but it’s like a passive monitoring skill. I notice details a lot better than before. So when the awakened beasts come and eat me, I’ll be able to count how many teeth are biting me at the same time.”
“Yeah, not what we need at the moment,” Lief laughed. “How much do you need for the next level up?”
Thorn checked. “Almost five thousand.”
Lief whistled. “The costs go up fast. That’s for what… level four?”
“Yeah,” Thorn said. “I almost have enough, but not quite. How about you?”
It was a bit of a sensitive topic. Lief had been much higher leveled before, but had lost several levels when he had first been caught in the dead zone.
“The good news is that it does look like I can get those levels back; the contract with the AG is cut off,” Lief said. “I’d been locked out of leveling my System at all when I left the AG a few years ago. I guess that’s part of the effect from being ‘offline.’ The bad news is… it’s a couple hundred thousand. And I know what that level would get me: it would just re-expand my drone abilities.
“Right now it doesn’t matter if I can only pilot one drone since I only have one.”
Thorn nodded.
“But you, on the other hand… you and your System are the best shot we have to increase our relative power level right now.”
Thorn drummed his fingers on the table, eyeing the last core on the table. He had a thought.
Well, that was disappointing… and a bit ominous.
“Gimme a sec, I’m trying to see what I can learn from my System,” Thorn said to Lief.
Thorn was getting an idea of where this was going, and he didn’t like it. In the context of the cult that gave him this System, it sounded like he was intended to be some kind of missionary or evangelist for the cult. Whether that was amongst the willing or the less-than-willing, he wasn’t sure… but he had a good idea.
Thorn sighed. He’d been getting his hopes up too much; his System had actually been a bit helpful since he’d unlocked it. And like with any shiny new toy, he’d been very optimistic.
He wasn’t quite willing to give up, though.
Thorn read that last part twice, then once more. The dissemination and management of Systems? He had no idea what that entailed. Powerful, possibly… except not against the stupid beasts stuck in the dead zone with them.
The fourth level skill might be helpful, but it wasn’t going to be a quint-coated bullet to solve their biggest problem.
Thorn turned back to Lief.
“My System’s not telling me very much, other than to get good at my Skills. My next level up might give another skill that could be helpful, maybe, but after that… it doesn’t seem like I’m going to get any good fighting skills.”
“Okay. It might have been too much to hope for, that your System would have the answer.” Lief sighed. There had been a lot of sighs around the table. “By the way, my drone is out on one of the edges, and it almost got caught. The zone just contracted again. Significantly.”
Thorn resisted the urge to sigh. His leg was burning and itching from the wound, and he pulled on that feeling of irritation. He’d rather be pissed at his situation than feel hopeless.
“We can’t fight the big ones head on. We don’t have big enough bullets, or enough bullets for that matter,” Thorn said. “I’m just bait out there, dangling in front of that catfish.”
“Huh,” Lief said. “That’s a good point. I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“What way?”
“If you can’t fight head-on, then you gotta fight dirty.”
“Fighting dirty, huh?” Thorn said. “I like the sound of that.”
“Like you said, we got bait, whether it’s you or me or pills,” Lief continued. “We just need to come up with better traps.”
…
They spent the next few hours discussing all the different ways they could trap the beasts, from the basic to the complicated to the fantastical. Their initial enthusiasm waned after they couldn’t agree on the best path forward, and they decided to catch a quick nap and see if rest would help them plan better. Thorn set up the pumpkin around the control room and took the first watch. The only thing that happened during his time as lookout was the crow wandering back up the stairs to take a spot on the table and grab a nap itself.
When Lief relieved him, he tried to sleep but couldn’t. He knew he should rest, but thoughts kept buzzing through his head. Ways to use the resources they had, to kill more beasts, or attempt an escape through the dead zone. They were running out of time, and it was impossible to rest under that feeling of impending doom.
He decided to Meditate, hoping that would clear his thoughts and let him sleep.
He descended into the half-aware state of being that the skill induced, feeling the flows of the quintessence field as bits of it folded into himself. His new passive skill Assess also seemed to have an effect within his Meditation: the ebbs and flows were more precise, the edges of the waves crisper and more real. The depth of his perception was also much greater; before, he could only sense the few meters around him, and now, he could was aware of the entire control room, and perhaps even further.
For a while, the portion of his mind that was aware studied the free-flowing quintessence around him. Individual threads formed lines, or circles; he wasn’t sure precisely of the geometry. Then deeper edges and waves where the threads intersected each other, cutting off bits of new threads, that he could intuitively pull into his body, if they were close enough.
Besides the flowing waves of the quintessence field, he could sense deep pools of quintessence. Maybe rocks was a better descriptor. Direction was a difficult concept in his current state, but there were four other sources.
He assumed the solid rock of power, almost glaring if he focused his perception on it, was Lief. The crow’s presence was much more muted and hidden, submerged into the depths of the field. There was still a lot of bound quintessence there, Thorn could tell, but it was bound in a more subtle fashion than Lief’s. The third present was Thorn himself.
The fourth was a small, distinct presence at the edge of his range. He hadn’t noticed it initially, but as he stretched his perception, he sensed it. It was somewhat muted, similar to the crow’s presence, attempting to flow beneath and around the field surrounding it. He was wondering what it was when several more presences joined it. They all moved forward swiftly.
The rock of Lief’s power shifted slightly, and Thorn was shaken out of his meditation at the same time he saw a beautiful, incredibly complex and interlocking pattern of quintessence threads snap into view around them.
“We’re under attack!” Lief cried as he shook Thorn’s arm.