Chapter 19

Predicting behavior is easy when you have enough practice and practical examples. Start by assuming the worst, and raise your expectations slightly until you have something more realistic. 

Selfishness is generally what you want to focus on. 

What does a person stand to gain by doing x? How far are they willing to push their luck before self-preservation kicks in? 

I’d been muting Headdress’s sense of self-preservation with anger and irritation towards the clip-eared bruiser for the last few hours. Now it was time to dial that white noise way back. 

Clip-ear was closing in on the dead pack master, his sparse leather armor rippling across canine muscle. Conveniently, he looked angry enough to kill someone. 

I made sure Headdress noticed, with images tied to anxiety. If Clip-ear, clearly the strongest of the group, made a play for dominance and won, he would lose his position. Probably be humiliated. And the big gnoll sure seemed to be moving with purpose. 

Headdress scurried across the stone floor of the hollowed out castle to catch up. He’s closing too quickly. I extended my arm, using my fingers as guidelines, targeting <Probability Spiral> at his feet. Headdress gnoll tripped at the foot of the stairs, and caught himself with a pained grunt. 

I watched as Clip-ear entered the tower. If I was estimating correctly, he’d reach the tower a full-thirty seconds before Headdress did. Plenty of time to kill a drunken commander—though I hoped they were either too stupid or too distracted to notice the kill wasn’t fresh. 

An eruption of angry barking echoed from the tower. Big-red—previously staring into the fire alongside the smaller runts—stood up quickly, his back straight and hackles raised. 

This was critical. Big-red was the only one I hadn’t factored for. The others had exploitable flaws and a natural chafing against the hierarchy. Big-red—for a fantasy creature living in a dungeon—gave me little to work with. He sparred with relative restraint, didn’t take his irritation at Headdress out on the runts, and took frequent naps. 

Probably less frequent when I wasn’t here—I’d had to repeatedly distract him with images of his bedroll tagged with drowsiness, as he was the only one who consistently tried to check on the leader. 

Loyal, simple, and content. In other words, remarkably well-adjusted. People like that were a problem in this context. They tended to be irritatingly good at defusing things. 

My mouth turned downward just thinking about it. 

Vanity, maybe?

The Tribal Gnolls were something of a ratty crew. Hair shaved short to avoid mange, yellow teeth, poorly maintained armor. Big-red was the exception. His armor was in poor repair, likely an issue of resources, but the long strands of his vivid red fur had a noticeable sheen. More reminiscent of a fox than hyena. In an environment like this, without access to modern conveniences like conditioner, it had to be a huge pain to keep in that condition. 

It would be a shame if something happened to it.

I focused on the fire. 

I’d learned from both the AC Unit and the flowers that <Probability Spiral> could be focused to achieve a specific result. It seldom happened the way I planned or expected, or it took repeated attempts. I had a few theories why it failed on the Escalade. Either due to User interference, or because I was too panicked to hold anything more specific in my mind than “Car go away.” 

The ramshackle cone formation of wood in the campfire shifted towards Big-red, then collapsed. The runts shrieked as flames roared upward, and Big-red’s plush, highly flammable tail caught fire. 

The best result I was hoping for was a temporary distraction, maybe convincing Big-red one of the runts had it in for him and sparking a spat.

I watched in awe as, instead of rolling on the floor to put himself out, Big-red yowled bloody murder and took off sprinting across the clearing, his body casting long shadows illuminated from the involuntary torch. 

Ok. Perhaps not vain. Just… stupid.

If I’d known they were that afraid of fire, my plan would have been thoroughly different.

One of the runts stirred from his temporary paralysis and in a clear demonstration of either poor problem-solving or ruthless pragmatism, filled a bucket from the boiling cauldron and began to chase Big-red around the clearing, yipping at the larger gnoll, who was too occupied running away from his own tail to look back. 

A bright flash of light brought my mind back to the main event. On the second level of the surrounding wall, Headdress and Clip-ear were engaged in a very different sort of chase. Headdress was taking big, bounding steps back, pausing every so often to level his staff at Clip-ear. The sound of the staff was an ear-splitting shriek, not unlike a rail-cannon. A lance of blinding light shot out and shattered a section of wall, sending fragments of stone scattering across the upper level. 

A shiver went through me. “Kill the Caster,” was a saying for a reason, and If that was what more direct system magic looked like, between Wife-beater guy and Headdress, it held doubly true here. Clip-ear seemed to agree. He was bleeding profusely from his side as he rushed Headdress, his short-sword held high. 

Headdress took a series of leaps up the sidewall and made a graceless landing on the lower floor, shrieking in the direction of the still-confused grunts. They stood quickly, their faces masks of anticipation as they tag-teamed Clip-ear with their short swords, rotating around him, one at his front, the other at his back. 

An image flashed in my mind of Big-red. The gnoll had finally succumbed to basic fire safety and was rolling around fervently on the ground. “Now?” Audrey’s message felt more like a question. 

”No,” I sent back quickly. She was anything but a normal plant, but she was still plantlike. I assumed fire was still a serious hazard for her. 

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The runt with the boiling bucket of water was a significant distance away, but closing fast. 

I sent Audrey a quick mental picture of him and the instruction to move when I did. Then I dropped from the second floor with a grunt and ran. I could feel the difference the Agility made. There was a brief stint in my middle teens when I’d picked up jogging for a few months, but I’d never felt the air tear by me the way it was now. I looped around, giving the bound and blindfolded man still tied up by the campfire a wide berth.

I glanced at him as I passed. It was an obvious trap. I was the first to set-foot in here, according to the leaderboard. So, any other humans were either system created or another creature mimicking a human. 

And in the split-second before I turned my head away, I saw the ink. A terribly penned rendition of Ozzy Osbourne stared out at me from his neck, misaligned eyes watching as I passed. 

It was a terrible tattoo. 

And it was the specificity of the tattoo in the context of an all-too-generic set-up that gave me pause. 

One of two possibilities. This is an extremely convoluted trap, or that’s a real fucking person. Don’t have time to think about it. Need to focus. 

With the fight between the runts, Clip-ear, and Headdress still raging in the upper-end of the courtyard, I made the last few strides to the two remaining outliers. 

The grunt with the bucket up-ended it on Big-red. There was a sizzling noise that wasn’t just the sound of quenching fire. The big gnoll yowled and took a swipe at the grunt. 

Taking a step back confused, the grunt shifted enough to see me. 

”Now” I signaled Audrey. 

Twin vines struck out from the shadows, wrapping around the grunt’s legs and whipping him off his feet. Supine, Big-red pushed up on his elbows in alarm. If the damage to his lower body wasn’t sufficient, he’d be standing soon. 

I knew what to do as if I’d done it a thousand times before. 

I leapt and brought my legs forward, knees colliding with his back, the momentum of the blow driving the air from his lungs in a grunting whoosh followed by a crack as I grabbed his shoulders and rode him down into the stone. <Blade of Woe> gave me a clear target in the form of his oblong, glowing heart. I stabbed down into it and twisted the blade.

After a shudder, Big-red went still. Audrey was enthusiastically digging into the grunt, who was protesting a bit too loudly. I dragged myself up and held my hand-crossbow to his head, ending his suffering.

The violet light in the corner of my vision pinged several times, coinciding with an angry roar. 

Fuck. Someone won the fight I started, and I had a feeling it wasn’t the caster. 

I pressed myself up against the wall behind a pillar, peeking between the gaps. Clip-ear was covered in blood. One of his eyes was nothing but a ruined crater. Something tapped my shoulder and I jumped. 

The leafy form of my summon was up above me, hanging on the stone railing of the second floor. A thorned vine extended down to me as a rope. 

No choice. 

If I stayed here Clip-ear would find me. But this was going to suck. 

I raised my right arm and braced. Thorns tore through my palm as Audrey lifted me up to the banister. I left a smear of blood behind as I crawled over. 

When I turned back to the central area, I found that the worst possible scenario had come to pass. Whoever, or whatever the prisoner was, had gotten free of his bonds and was fiddling with his blindfold. 

Not good. I couldn’t let myself be seen. If he was a User, I was screwed if I interfered. If it was some sort of trap, it would reveal itself shortly. But if he was a civilian the system had thrown in here to fuck with me? 

Did you learn nothing from Daphne? 

Clip-ear headed straight for the prisoner, gladius held in a blood-drenched hand. He roared. 

I made a decision. 

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