Chapter Seventeen - No time for losers

I could feel the target less than a hundred steps away to our right, further inland. The bridge continued on arches for as far as I could see, which, to be fair, wasn’t that far. But it clearly was a rail bridge, and you don’t exactly need to be a rocket scientist to know that railways don’t handle steep gradients well. Or at all. The area looked quite grown over from where we were, so I wondered if the kids from that school used it to play in. On second thought, that would be a given.

We moved on slowly, trying to find a good way through the underbrush and keeping an eye out for our target. When my sense of distance said we were only 30 steps away, something in the air changed. I stopped and asked in a low voice, “Can you feel that?”

“Yes, but what is it?” Sam answered.

“It’s not magic,” Livia said. “But it feels like a magic bubble of some kind.”

“Look-a a round,” Alessandra chimed in. “See how dere are no sightlines to anywhere?”

I did so, and as she said, I couldn’t get any line of sight to any place further away than a couple of yards. There always was something in the way. It looked natural, but it was way too perfect and convenient to be so. “That’s good. Whatever it is, it keeps the troll and us out of sight of normals,” I stated. That must be the system’s doing, but I couldn’t say that out loud with Alessandra around.

“Do you smell that?” Samantha asked. “Fire?” We all sniffed. There, indeed was a woody burning smell in the air. It wasn’t strong, but there clearly was some kind of fire near.

We crept on, now even slower. I tried to remember what I knew about being stealthy, but aside from “don’t step on sticks”, I came up empty. But it didn’t seem to be needed, as we reached the small clearing without being detected. There, next to a crude campfire, sat the troll.

He was quite different from what I had imagined. About three metres tall, lanky and with orange skin, the texture of sandstone. I was sure he would look like a pile of stones in the right environment if he lay down. Now, he was sitting at the fire, eating some kind of meat off a bone. The bone looked big, even in his hands, but I forced myself not to think about that.

“Livia, put him to sleep,” I ordered, making sure to make it an order and how spending her magical energy to follow it would nominally be bad for her. Call me an airhead, but sometimes I do remember things like achievement rewards. She shifted into her succubus form beside me, and I felt something magical going on. I followed her example and dropped my glamour after getting out of my shoes.

I had noticed that my transformation had some flexibility, even if I couldn’t control it. My feet would not transform all the way, and my claws there would not come out if I had them in shoes. It was nice that I could do it without destroying whatever I was wearing, but now I wanted that extra firepower.

Livia’s sleep ability (or was it a spell? I couldn’t remember) was slow-acting. Over the course of the next minute, the troll’s movements got slower until he put down his food and leaned his head on his knees. “Done,” Livia whispered. She sounded exhausted, and her succubus form wavered. She dropped it a moment later, and now I could see that she was drenched in sweat.

I nodded and stood up then I slowly and carefully walked towards the troll. Samantha joined me without needing to be beckoned, her sword in hand. How deep was that sleep? The troll could wake up any moment and jump us.

But he didn’t. We reached it and then positioned ourselves. I put myself to his left side as far to his front as I could without stepping into the fire. Samantha took his right side, staying further back. I pointed at the troll’s exposed neck, and Samantha nodded. She raised her sword high, then brought it down with force.

She was off by a couple of inches, her sword cutting deep around the troll’s shoulder plates instead of decapitating him. Not that I had really expected that, the level difference had to account for something.

The troll woke up, but it did so slowly. I didn’t give him any time to orient himself but instead hit him with my claws, aiming for the face. I felt them cut the rough skin, but unlike the goblins earlier, the troll was way more sturdy and didn’t explode in gore. Yet I had reached bone, and by some lucky accident, my pointer claw cut right through one of his eyeballs. I felt it pop, and then white goop spilled over his face.

He roared in pain and anger, rising up and taking a swing at me with his fist. I tried to duck, but he clipped my head, ripping my scalp and painfully wrenching my head around when his fist snagged on my right horn. But the horn held steady, and its tip was sharp, cutting the troll’s hand.

Yet the short moment of disorientation from having my head whipped around cost me, as I didn’t notice the troll’s other fist. It hit me in the stomach with force, lifting me up into the air. On my way down again, my feet landed in the fire, the glowing coals burning my soles like…um…glowing coals. I stumbled back to catch my balance and get out of the fire.

The troll now stood upright, towering over me. He jumped at me and would have landed on me with his entire body had not a whispy white ball of magic hit him mid-air and pushed him off course. It wasn’t much, and I still was in range of his fists as he came down, so I dropped back, kicking one foot up to build momentum away from those. My belly hurt like a car had driven over it, and I was sure I had soiled myself when he hit me earlier. Better than popping like a balloon, but still…

Halfway down to the ground, with the troll still dropping—time seems to flow slowly when fighting for your life—I noticed something. The leg I had thrown up was fully pulled back, and over the claws, I saw the reason I called the toll “he”. It was a perfect line, and I put all my strength into a groin kick. Hey, that’s a level 5 skill; it ought to do some damage.

And damage it did. I felt the tissue under my sole pop on contact, blood and other fluids squirting out at all sides, but I still had a foot of travel in my foot. Um, I meant my leg wasn’t yet fully extended by about 30 centimetres. And not just that, the troll still hadn’t landed. Those forces now combined, and I felt bones shatter under my kick while my claws ripped his belly open. Let’s strike “troll pelvis” from the list of possible loot.

My foot coming out the other side, the troll landed right next to me, face first. I was somewhat entangled, the way I had pushed one leg between his two, so I tried to scoot out from there when Samantha landed on the troll’s back, swordpoint first, feet second. The sword glowed an angry pink (how can pink look angry?) and went deep into his back. Samantha growled and twisted it. I could hear something crack inside the troll; then it lay still.

“Is it dead?” I wanted to ask, but bile and blood rose from inside me, turning it into a gurgle. Then I lost consciousness.

🙚⚜🙘

“Those pain levels look a bit low.”—“That’s the adrenaline. They’re within expected margins.”—“You sure?”

🙚⚜🙘

I woke up floating on a cloud. A pretty face, my face, was in front of me, so I lifted my face to my other face and kissed it. That’s what you do with a pretty face, don’t you? The kiss was nice; it tasted of roses and blood, but it ended way too soon as that other my face pulled away.

Then, my mind cleared, and pain brought me back to reality. “Ouch,” I said. “Who spiked my drink? That was nice.”

“Healing trance,” Alessandra said from where she was laying hands on my lower belly. I could feel magic extending from her fingers and digging deep into me. “Lay still; ay am still knitting your intestines back together. It is quite a puzzle, so many pieces!”

“If you find my appendix…there’s no need to put that one back,” I joked. I was feeling the pain more clearly by the second, and that wasn’t a good feeling.

She turned her head and looked at me. “Ah. Dat’s what is missing. Must have been one of the parts you shat out together wit your instinct of self-preservation.” Her face wavered and turned into a forced smile. “Got you!”

“But joke aside,” Livia said from beside me, “that was way closer than I like. Had that thing landed on you there, it’d squashed you like a bug.”

“But it didn’t, and it was worth it.” I could feel the group level; it wasn’t five anymore, but eleven. It had more than doubled from a single enemy. And that was before skill gains, which I was sure we all had. I quickly checked mine.

Glamour and telekinesis had both reached level 2 earlier, as had my blade control skills for my claws and my horn attack. My base fighting skill had reached level 4, groin kick level 5. Even my “pain hold” skill had gained plenty of XP; it was now closer to the next than the previous level. Although, that must be an old gain from playing with Livia. I also saw some new XP in killing, but not enough for a level-up. Those should be from the goblins, too; I hadn’t really killed the troll.

And then, there was a single unused skill point sitting next to the list of available skills. Now, that was really nice; I could use some of them really well. But should I go for stuff I wanted to do or for something that matched what I had done? The former group has stealth, telepathy, flight, and such; the latter would mean claw fighting, speed or strength.

I had an idea, but it relied on getting some extra information. Gamma-10, if I could bother you? How does claw fighting interact with fighting? I’ve been using fighting with my claws so far, so…

🖹

You’ve got a private message from SOL-GB-Liverpool-39-Gamma-10: “Specialty skill levels add to the base skill when appropriate. To balance the power increase, they also hug all XP of the combined use.” Reply? (1) Yes. (2) No.

Adding levels was strong. It effectively gave you double the level for double the XP instead of having to pay the progressive cost of higher levels. I understood that easily. Not being able to gain more levels for the base skill would reduce that advantage quickly…if all your skill use included the speciality skill. For me, it meant that the nearly 400 XP I needed to raise fighting by one level would instead raise claw fighting by two levels and change. That would quickly level off, leaving me with a long-term level advantage of about 3 levels.

But only if I never fought with my fists, my horns, my magic or a weapon. Those would still give me fighting levels, Wouldn’t they?

🖹

You’ve got a private message from SOL-GB-Liverpool-39-Gamma-10: “You are right. Magic attacks will always gain you XP in Fighting, but only small amounts. Fist, horn, elbow, knee and weapon attacks each have their own speciality skills you don’t yet have access to.” Reply? (1) Yes. (2) No.

That sealed the deal for me. If my fighting style had been more one-trick-pony like, like Samantha with her sword, I would have waited to build up fighting more, but as it stood, I could gain more from getting it early. It didn’t come with initial levels; that experience had already been awarded to other skills.

🙚⚜🙘

Slowly, the pain in my gut subsided, and Alessandra moved on to my head. That only took a couple of moments, “fixing skin is easy,” she said. When she let me go, she was drenched in sweat and breathing hard, just like Livia after putting the troll to sleep. Magic wasn’t some trivial, “by the way” thing in this setting, I concluded.

I looked around. The troll still lay where it had fallen, and the rest of his campsite looked undisturbed. “Has anyone checked if there’s anything to be looted?” I asked while pushing myself up to stand. I also felt the exhaustion deep inside me. Not just from the fight, but I guessed my fast healing needed energy, too. And I was using it even still. Alessandra had patched up the major injuries, but there was plenty more.

Samantha nodded. “I have. Nothing of value, but…”

“What?”

“See for yourself.” She extended her hand to guide me to the fire. Livia and Alessandra stayed back. There was a pile of cloth next to the fire, the troll’s last meal on top. Samantha beckoned me to crouch down; then, she lifted a corner to let me look under it. As I had feared, what I saw there was a human head. At least it wasn’t a kid.

She lifted the cloth a bit more, and I could see more body parts, ripped clothing and a pair of sharp daggers. “You think this was the fourth player?” I asked softly.

“I think so. Those daggers register as system items. Still, an hour of loot protection left, so they must have belonged to a player.”

“Do you know her?” The face didn’t ring a bell with me, but then most people I knew in Liverpool I had met at parties or were those Livia used to hang out with before she recovered from her addiction.

“No, but…” She held up a bloody phone. The screen turned on and showed a selfie of its former owner. It showed her lying on a bed, framed to her head and shoulders, with the focus on the left shoulder where Livia’s head lay. She seemed to be asleep and looked younger, maybe 16 or 17.

“Shit. I hate to be right here.”

“Me, too. Should we show her?” Samantha asked.

“Yes. We must. And I think she can take it as long as it’s not me.”

“She’s a bit fixated on you, I noticed.”

“Concerningly so, yes. I love her, too, but she has anchored her whole existence on me. I just hope I can live up to the idea of me she has now that I’m here for more than a month each year.”

“You need to tell me your story one day.”

“Will do.”