Chapter 20: Chapter 20. Not as stupid as I look.

I thought I was getting used to magic. Like real, make a fireball, and use it like rocket-propelled grenade magic. Heck, after the big lizard illusions faded, and Pellegrine’s instant vanishing act, I thought I had a pretty good handle on it.

But I just watched a Dwarf Triple herself. Three dwarves, each doubled in size until they were even more massive than Rik the giant, of a solid, stone-like gray that completely explained her oversize shield, because they locked their shields like a miniature shield wall.

Yeah, I was sort of hoping that they’d find a way to stop the giant horned rat-thing, that one of my traps might delay or stop it, and that I’d miraculously spring out of my hide swinging my newly enchanted blade and save the day by slitting its throat or something.

Uh uh. The thing impacted Cassie’s locked shields like a subway train hitting the end of a tunnel. Its entire body seemed to fold into the shields as all three of her slammed their shields forward, telescoping it as it launched backward a good five feet.

And then the damned thing got up, Cassie’s two duplicates sinking into the ground as she returned to her usual size, staggering a little and looking a bit sick.

I dropped into my zone for a second, asking, Is that normal for Antowyn Online abilities?

It appears so. It appears that she has very strong earth affinities, but not sorcery. Earth affinity would have allowed her to use her connection to the earth very powerfully for quite some time without draining herself, which is almost the definition of earth, but it appears that it drained almost all of her energy in a single burst, for a single defensive ability that was overwhelming, creating two momentary golem structures which are far beyond her abilities for a cumulatively minor effect of a single overwhelming defense. It was very inefficient.

Why would it do that? I thought, watching as, in slow-motion, the giant rat shook its head and started trying to push towards Cassie, teeth bared.

From the best I can tell, her earth affinity as a dwarf would make her, with a little training, incredibly physically powerful both defensively and offensively for long periods without draining much from her. As best we can see, it looks like her powers were rendered inefficient to bring her in line with the abilities of others with minimal training who have had some experience in physical conflict.

But Why?

Because it is fair, I suppose. Dwarves live a very long time. Even without any fighting experience, simply through training, a Dwarf could become a force to be reckoned with. This somehow does not match whatever paradigm Antowyn Online is using to determine its balance. This implies that no matter how much potential someone has, without accomplishing AO’s goals, if they are stripped of their bands they will become nearly powerless and incompetent, with little understanding of how to use their own talents without its intercession.

That was… I don’t know, I had never really considered the moral implications of a world where talent, other than the talent to manipulate people, really offered much in the way of power. On Earth, if you could use people, your boundaries were limitless, but an artist? A weightlifter? The only power they had was whatever pennies the wealthy manipulators tossed at them for showing off or petted them for being spokesmen for the right sort of politics.

I was really going to have to wonder what that meant. I had read Atlas Shrugged and didn’t buy into the Illuminati-style concepts Rand espoused, but then, I had never been in a world where individual talents could truly shine before.

With the AO worm in control here, it doesn’t appear you are in a world like that now, either.

Ouch. Good point. I wasn’t sure how much I could help in the fight, and both Cassie and Mae were strangers to me, but I was still willing to risk myself to protect them. Which meant now was the time to act. I watched as the Rat started to plow past my hiding place, carefully planning out my actions and its relative speed.

It was dangerous, but I dropped the zone and took a moment to yank the cap off one of the bottles, and spread the resulting goop on my blade. Two seconds. Lower the blade so I struck the edge of the stone hatch with the hilt of the knife. Push out with all my strength. Three seconds, and I am flying through the air.

Straighten my tail out behind me so that I didn’t shift too far forward as I struck. Land with the majority of my weight on my blade, which I was gripping two-handed. Hold on as tightly as possible, elbows slightly bent, tail behind me, pushing as much energy into the poison as I could while being distracted.

Four seconds. I feel my tail tapping the backside of the rodent, but that is not important, I am not focusing on a tail strike right now. Get the knife into the creature. I felt a slight pop as the tip of the blade struck, and my arms bent, forcing the tip of the blade down at a slight angle backward, and I could feel a strange wrench as my aim was rewarded. The blade cut through the thick hide, and then the tip ripped between the 12^th and 13^th vertebrae, separating them, tearing the cartilage, and spraying both blood and spinal fluid against my belly as I let go of the weapon.

I had taken one of these apart, I knew approximately how it was put together, and I did what I always did in a fight, slowed things down and turned it into a dance, using the exact amount of force needed, which was, in this case, everything I had. I let go of the knife because now the wound, and its upper back, as well as the blood pumping out, were mixed with something that would probably kill me.

The creature screamed and tried to spin around, which didn’t work very well because its powerful hind legs and tail were not working quite right, but the force, now that I had let go of the knife, was more than enough for me to fly.

This time going into the zone was natural and easy, The ceiling was slowly growing closer, with Shiana pulling another arrow from her quiver. She was so beautiful… too beautiful like a sex doll come to life or the very definition of the uncanny valley. I still enjoyed her slow motions as she nocked the back end of the surprisingly modern-looking arrow with what looked like exaggerated care while I drifted along beneath her.

I would hit the wall hard. With as much force as if the Rat slammed me directly into it unless I did something. Was the ceiling even closer? I reached out, incredibly slowly, and carefully caressed the roof with them.

The zone popped and my arm was screaming at me as my claw dragged along the stone, cutting deep furrows. The pain was unbelievable like my arm was getting almost torn off, matched in a moment by my other arm as I desperately grappled with the ceiling.

After a moment I realized that I was clinging to the roof, only about a foot above my hiding place. My left arm was wrecked, and my right was shivering in pain, but I was clinging with my head only about a foot away from the rock wall. The damned thing had thrown me like a bucking bronco, up so high that I could dig my claws into the stone of the roof itself.

I turned my head slightly, ignoring the pain screaming at me, and burying it deeply, the same place I always buried pain when I had to just keep working. The Rat was crippled, dragging its hind legs and slowly striking at… 3 Riks? Mae was standing behind Rik and Cassie, and Cassie was bashing the head of the thing every time it came too close to her, but it was slowing, its eyes fluttering as it tried to viciously hit the creature that kept smacking it with a giant sword, taking nasty chunks out of its shoulders and muzzle, one side of which was ripped open so far I could see the side of its jawbone and giant teeth past the torn-off flesh of its cheek.

Rik himself was… kind of slow. The giant sword swung slowly, but there were three of him, and the Rat-thing itself was far too slow to dodge or snap back at all three, and each strike did terrible damage. It finally managed to get a sideways bite on one of the Riks, and that one vanished like a popped soap bubble, and then there were two.

After a moment it stopped moving, and the two giant swords lifted, smashing down on its mangled head. I drifted back into my zone to watch the energy as it died.

It was interesting. There was almost a flash from the creature as its heart stopped, and then a flowing cloud of sparkles started flying around. The bracelets seemed to gather the sparkles, funneling them down and absorbing them, except that Mae’s just went into the energy loop that was hooked into Rik, and then directly into her, bypassing her bracelet entirely.

The sparkles were also around me, and I tried to reach out, to capture as many as I could… and it worked! It was like there was a sort of vortex around me, that I could not see, and a lot of the little sparkles that were seeping towards the stone walls started swirling around me and got absorbed directly into my skin.

“Whew,” I said, wow. The heady feeling of power flowing through me, like I was a gigantic funnel, was enough of one that I forgot about my claws and fell onto the rat’s twitching side with a thump. “Oh Shit. What a rush.” I said, and then the pain broke out of my control and smacked me between the eyes.

---

We have a problem.

I wasn’t exactly awake. I felt like I was floating in that weird space between my zone and reality. I couldn’t really tell what was going on, but it felt like a subdued version of my dream where we had spoken before. I was having a bit of trouble thinking, and I could actually see my pain flaring like sparkles through the area.

Please don’t tell me I am dying.

You aren’t dying. Between the damage you took, and your power exhaustion, you are unconscious. This should only last a few minutes with your regeneration, but we have a serious problem. Well, two actually.

Okay, the most serious problem is first.

You absorbed a good chunk of the energy that the Dungeon was supposed to receive for the destruction of a mini-boss. Usually, dungeon delvers are treated sort of like foreign objects in a bloodstream. Monsters act like white blood cells, although this is not a good example, because delvers are supposed to remove the creatures to keep it healthy.

But because you interrupted its natural energy flows, It’s more like it suddenly got an itch, enough to capture a small part of its attention, and we don’t know if or how it’s going to scratch.

You also gained too much energy too quickly. We need to engage another evolution, but we cannot afford the downtime such an evolution will cost if we stick to your original parameters. If the Dungeon scratches, it might be an overwhelming response. Would you like to alter your parameters?

Yes, I still don’t want to get more monstrous but show me evolutions that can resolve quickly, even if they will make me a bigger target.

You may still choose Lesser Golem, Blend, separation, or weapon sense. Those will involve minor evolutions, but the maturation options will keep you under for over half a day as your body adjusts. Energy aspects will resolve very quickly, with energy for your next evolution, but as you said, it puts a target on our back. In addition, you could choose simple matter creation, innate alchemy, and a special ability unlocked by, ironically enough, your knot-tying skill, called runic knotting.

What are innate alchemy and runic knotting?

Innate Alchemy allows you to decompose, or melt, ingredients and blend them together to create potions, based directly on their aspects. It is potentially quite a powerful ability but would put an enormous target on your back since it can potentially unlock affinities in others, something even Antowyn Online users would kill to access.

Runic Knotting allows you to inscribe runes based on a line of energy. Currently, it is not terribly useful, since you would have to discover the various types of knots for creating a vocabulary, but with study and experimentation, it could allow you to directly control your transference into objects rather than simply enhancing their existing aspects and affinities.

Oh, total no on innate alchemy. I love cooking, but spending the rest of my life holed up in a laboratory trying to create the perfect combination to fix bald spots or restore erections in older men sounds like some sort of hell.

Not to mention that you could also do something similar with transference, you would simply require learning a skill in refining ingredients rather than using their aspects directly.

You are reading story The Chronicles of Alandia, A Kobold’s Tale. at novel35.com

Right. Is there a way to learn Runic knotting organically?

No, it is unique to your abilities and combination of affinities. Such Unique combinations were exactly why the game was created in the first place, to help less advanced species unlock their potentials that would otherwise be inaccessible.

Okay, yes, maybe Runic knotting will put more of a target on my back, but gaining the enchanting ability did that anyway, right?

Yes.

Then Runic Knotting it is. Maybe they will not be able to handle it. Was that it?

No, that was all part of the first problem.

Okay, then what was the second problem?

You said “Oh Shit, What a Rush.” in English.

Oh shit.

Exactly.

***

I woke up, blinking my eyes blearily, and realized I felt a lot better. Drained as if I had just run a marathon, done full body Pyramid burnout sets, and then got beaten up while I was drunk and nursing a hangover.

My shoulder, though, no longer felt like I had yanked it out of its socket, spun it around backward, and then pushed it back in the wrong way. A little drain and full body pain could be dealt with, but a critical pull would keep me out until it was dealt with, and according to my pain levels, it had been dealt with.

I was lying on someone’s blanket, near the wall, and as far away as possible from the gigantic mangled corpse. Cassie was leaning over me, and I realized that her hands were on my now-bare chest. With barely any effort I could adjust my sight to see the energy flowing through her, and I realized with sudden, startling clarity that energy ran in lines, like connecting tributaries, and had an ebb and flow rather than pools that you pulled from. Adjusting the energy in my claws, and pushing it into my knife, was much more akin to redirecting cords of liquid than simple pushing. If I had set up a circuit in the knife instead of just dumping the liquid into it, I would have improved it immeasurably.

Also, Mae’s loops, where Rik’s hooks rested, were bands of her own flowing energy that were simply separated by her forgeries… they were nothing like the bands. Her counterfeits were not even counterfeits, they were props! The channels his bands created were simple instruction loops, and with little effort, I should be able to create something similar, with little energy knots that responded to my will, to pass information, rather than his. My body, my energy, I snickered. I wouldn’t even need the fake bands to hold the loops away from my skin… the hooks were designed to catch onto receptive power loops, not create their own.

“Hello, Cassie. I am not sure what you did, but thank you.” I told her.

She smiled at me. “You are welcome. Most Dwarves have talents that are not tied to their classes, mine is Minor Restoration. I can only use it once per day, like my Bastion Barricade, but Mae told me I should use it unless we wanted to carry your body around the rest of the day. Kobolds heal slightly faster under rest, but you don’t have a lot of health, and even with your regenerate energy burnout is nasty and would probably have kept you down until you fully recovered.”

I nodded, “As attractive as you are, you can stop playing with my chest.”

She suddenly straightened up, “Sorry. I was… umm… anyway, it takes bare skin contact, or in your case scales.” She was weirdly pink. Had I actually embarrassed a girl who had sent a half-ton rat flying by herself? As a little lizard? Weird.

I nodded, “Thank you. I feel much better.”

Cassie nodded and quickly got to her feet, and I realized that the blanket had probably come from her backpack, which was open at her feet. “It is alright. We owe you. All of us got a rank, and if you hadn’t come flying and cut that thing’s spine plus, whatever it was on your knife, that mini-boss would have been a much longer fight, and maybe even killed one of us.”

She smiled a little, “Your danger rating went up, so it looked like you advanced too, although it usually adds a little more size. You come across as green to us now instead of gray. I guess you must have been fighting for a while.”

I shrugged a little and rolled off her blanket. Fortunately, it did not look like my clothing had gotten too banged up, and I stretched as she quickly rolled up the blanket and then folded the top of the pack over it, tying it down. “Rik wants to talk to you,” she said, “He says your attitude to him is still neutral.”

I shrugged. It was probably saying neutral because his band couldn’t connect to me. “How do animals look?”

She shrugged, “Generally they are neutral unless you charm them with animal friendship or get in a fight with them or something, at least from what I understand. Mae has more social gifts so she would know better. But you are not an animal.”

I nodded, “Yes, but it reads me like an animal, except I am a person, It will probably always be neutral for me, even if I like someone. People are even capable of hurting the ones they love.”

Cassie sighed and nodded, “You are kind of a blank spot.”

I shrugged and went to meet Rik, who was sitting and Talking to Shiana. He looked over and then said “You get first loot. We talked it over. You have earned it.”

I looked at him in confusion. He was speaking in English.

I said in Undercommon, “I am sorry. What did you say?”

“Look. I get it. You are playing a role, and probably work for Antowyn Online, but you turned blue when you went unconscious, and I know full well you said ‘Shit’ in English. The rest was mangled, but it sounded like you were trying to say something, not undercommon.”

I didn’t look down and check, I was sure he was right, but I was still trying to play it off. “If it’s thank you, you are welcome.”

Cassie strode behind me, and said to Rik, “I don’t think he understands.”

“He used the word in my language for poop. I heard it clearly.”

“What was the word?” She asked.

“Shit,” he repeated.

Cassie used the word in undercommon for ‘strip’ which sounded a lot like ‘shayt’

I nodded, “I have a special ability that allows me to find extra treasure on a corpse if I clean it first. Carolinus said you have a loot ability that does it with little effort, but I do not think it will work unless I dig and strip the corpse the hard way first.”

I sighed, and said in Common, “I also speak common, too.”

Rik looked at me angrily, “What the hell? Why did you make us think this whole time that we had to translate through Cassie?”

I shrugged, “You didn’t ask.”

He growled, “So why tell us now?”

I smiled an open-mouth kobold smile. “Because I went unconscious after we killed the rat. And I woke up alive.”