Chapter 42

Earth
Hillside Lake Dungeon, Ontario
August 18, 2019
08:48 EDT

[Nicely done,] I sent when we were safe from discovery.

“Thanks! I wasn’t happy about doing that to his wolf, but I needed to make it one on one. He was surprisingly tough.”

[I saw that you were pretty happy with your roll. You got a Tier S Skill Gem, right?]

She instantly had a sheepish little smile on her face as she nodded. “I maybe, sorta kinda cheated. I had Precognition up so I knew how it would land as soon as I let it go. I saw a six so I waited until the timing was right and tossed it. I still don’t know what it is, but he did say that it would benefit me and it is soulbound to me so I can’t give it to anyone else.”

“Eh, I don’t consider that cheating,” Ben said. “He didn’t say that you couldn’t use any of your skills while you rolled, right? What number did you get, anyways?”

“278S” she answered.

Ben took his phone out of his storage and then searched the number. He had a shocked look on his face as he looked back up to her. “Seriously?!”

She put a hand up to her hand to stifle her laughter before responding. “I wish! Nah, it was 010S”

“Ah, Ambush,” he said after a moment. “It camouflages you temporarily, giving you a massive speed boost that decreases over time. It’s quite similar to Omnislash in that way, but you don’t automatically attack enemies around you and it lasts longer. Since you have Stealth, you also get an extra bonus. If you use Stealth before Ambush it will increase the effect by fifty percent. Not a bad skill.”

[What about the weapons? Butterfly swords, right?] I asked.

“Yup!” she replied as they appeared in her hands. She flipped the two of them around until she was holding them by the blades and held them out to me.

It was my first time holding a pair of butterfly swords, so I was surprised by the weight, and the fact that the cutting edge started halfway up the blade rather than running the entire length. When I asked her about it, she explained that they are made that way to allow the wielder to effectively block enemy attacks without damaging the cutting edge.

Looking over the two swords, I could see that they were both identical. Everything from the blade to the leather wrapped around the handle to the handguard and quillon looked as if one of them was made and then duplicated. It made sense when I finally looked at the stats.

Twinblade of the Attacker
Epic

12 Weapon Damage

+12 Strength

+12 Agility

+6 Endurance

Set: (2/2) Successful attacks with either weapon grant the wielder a charge of Attacker. Once 25 stacks of Attacker have been accumulated, your next attack will deal [Melee Damage*10] bonus damage.

Soulbound to Anja Hansson

Twinblade of the Defender
Epic

12 Weapon Damage

+12 Constitution

+12 Stamina

+6 Endurance

Set: (2/2) Successful blocks with either weapon grant the wielder a charge of Defender. Once 25 stacks of Defender have been accumulated, you will be granted a shield that absorbs the next [Max Health*3] damage taken. Lasts 30 seconds.

Soulbound to Anja Hansson

[Very nice!] I said as I handed them next to her. [Were all the items epic?]

She shook her head. “There were rare items there too, but I was told I could pick any one item. There were a few others that caught my eye, but I was allowed to take both of these because they are part of a set.”

[What about you?] I asked, turning to Ben.

A ring appeared in his palm as he walked over to me, holding it out. I picked it up and examined it briefly before looking over the stats. It was a thin flat band that was silvery-white in color and had a number of different colored gems embedded in its surface.

Mageband
Epic

+20 Intellect

+10 Constitution

+10 Endurance

This ring acts as a vessel, storing a spell within it for later use. After use, another spell will need to be stored inside the ring before it can be activated again.

Soulbound to Benjamin Collins

I handed it back to him. [Damn, that’s pretty good as well. I imagine you’ll be using it to store a use of Meteor Shower or Summon Fire Elemental?]

“Exactly,” he nodded. “Perhaps a use of one of my skeletal summons, but the two you listed are probably the ones I’ll use the most. For now, at least.”

[Mind giving us a demonstration?]

“Sure!”

He concentrated for a moment before spinning in place, his hand whipping out as he did. Suddenly a Fireball appeared out of nowhere and hurtled towards the wall he was pointing at. It collided with the wall and was extinguished, doing no damage whatsoever.

“That was just a Fireball, but you can see what it can do,” he explained. “It doesn’t save any time; I still need to cast the spell, I’m just storing it inside of the ring until later. Still, it would allow me to cast Meteor Shower to start a fight and then instantly cast Summon Fire Elemental if we need it, or vice versa.”

“Very nice!” Anja said. “What about the Skill Gem you got?”

“Ah. I got a Tier C Skill Gem, but it should come in handy,” he replied as he spun around again.

Holding his staff in the middle, he pointed the head away from him. A second later, a jet of sustained fire was projected forward, spreading out as it traveled. It wasn’t unlike my fire breath.

“Flamethrower,” he said after he was done demonstrating the spell. “It’s a channeled ability, not having a cast time or a cooldown, but it drains quite a bit of mana.”

“Sweet, we could’ve used that on the pillar room. Should be pretty handy in narrow corridors like this one, too,” Mason said, looking around.

[Speaking of which, should we see what’s on the other side of that door?] I asked.

Earth
Spectre Base, Canadian Rockies
August 18, 2019
05:48 PDT (8:48 EDT)

“Not bad, indeed,” Alexandra said while taking a sip of her coffee.

Today was one of those rare days where there wasn’t much to do. The dragons had everything well in hand loading their eggs into shipping containers and then moving them into the warehouse in Toronto. They also had an army there defending them until they could be loaded onto Abi and taken to their new home.

Huge warehouse-like spaces around the world were very busy with technicians coming and going as they installed row upon row of simulators. The simulators that would get their new recruits up to speed, to familiarize them with the systems and machinery they would be operating long before the fleet actually got to Earth.

That’s not to say that the simulators would do all the work. Even as advanced as the Pygmaeans are, a simulator is a poor substitute for the real thing. When those six hundred ships arrive on Earth, then the real training would begin. They had four months at minimum to teach what most navy personnel learned in two years.

Tich was confident he could do it, however. He had been developing a training regimen for decades in preparation. The result would be that each recruit would spend twenty-two hours per day training. Fourteen hours separated by two one hour breaks would be dedicated to the important stuff; physical exercise, martial arts training, and practical experience actually doing their job aboard a ship. The remaining hours would be spent in a simulator while they slept, going through scenarios that couldn’t easily be replicated without real ship-to-ship combat.

The goal was to start the training as soon as they got back from the trip to Pygmaean space. That would give them just over a month to start getting into proper shape before the ships arrived. Until then, there was nothing to do but wait. Gabriel had his people out secretly recruiting the adventurers who would end up manning the ships, but that didn’t require his constant attention.

The result of this rare day where there wasn’t much to do was that Alexandra, Gabriel, Thomas, Tich, Selalea, Yuki and Omar were all relaxing in a breakroom while they watched Jonathan and his friends deal with the latest boss. Or Ben and Anja, rather.

Alexandra looked around the room and noticed the smiling asian-looking woman sitting on an adjacent couch. “What are you smiling about?” she asked.

“She’s going to be damn good,” Yuki replied without looking over. “She’s already playing with her opponents and Precognition hasn’t even reached rank thirty yet.”

“What do you think about the weapons?” Gabriel asked.

“We have entirely different styles, but they should be very good when she is fighting humanoid opponents and can use them to their fullest. I am surprised that items with such good effects are available at their level, though boss fights like that do typically have higher quality equipment than regular boss fights.”

“I never understood that. You would figure that a boss that requires an entire team to kill would drop better equipment than one that doesn’t.”

“Eh, it’s pretty random. Sometimes there isn’t anything special, but occasionally there is a gem that can be found. I’d say that she found a gem, especially because she got two items, rather than the one. Ben’s ring isn’t half bad, either. I imagine he’ll be using that one for a long, long time.”

Gabriel laughed. “You can say that again. I would’ve killed for a ring like that when I was his age. There were a few close calls because my spells took so damn long to cast in the middle of a fight. That’s not even taking into account the potential military applications. He could teleport in, cast a big spell and then teleport out again before anyone even knew he was there.”

“If they don’t have someone with Precognition, that is,” Yuki said. “If he tried that there would be a jammer active before he could get back out again.”

“They’d need a lot more than one soldier with Precognition. Even you can’t cover an entire battlefield.”

“True. It’s still a risky endeavour either way.”

“She’s had formal training, hasn’t she?” Omar asked.

“Both of them have,” Alexandra answered. “Their father was an army brat growing up so he spent a lot of time in Asia following his father around to wherever he was stationed. He was fascinated by martial arts so his parents enrolled him in classes wherever they went. I think he’s a black belt in five or six different arts and has some knowledge of others. He started teaching them when they were six. Sonja is actually the better of the two, though she prefers the bow.”

“Better?”

Alexandra nodded. “They competed for a few years and did very well. They met a few times during tournaments and Sonja won more often than not.”

“Huh. It’s too bad they aren’t Scyftan. I bet they would take to Ikwar Kun like a duck to water.”

Alexandra nodded once again.

Named after the man who created it, Ikwar Kun is a form of martial arts that was created for the Spectres, and a rather unique one at that. It is impossible for most races to learn, as they need to have at least some telekinetic ability to use it. Scyftans don’t have telekinesis naturally, though there is at least one animal that they can scan to be able to use it.

It works by wearing metal bands around the body to increase the power of strikes and kicks, as well as move faster in general. The strength and speed varies depending on how strong a person’s telekinesis is, and those who are particularly powerful can perform stunning acrobatic feats and even levitate or fly for short periods of time.

“Ikwar Kun? Why does that sound familiar?” Thomas asked.

“He was a commander in the navy for a time,” Omar answered. “He was also the one to develop a special form of martial arts for the Spectres by request of Derech Kidravia.”

“Really? I’ve never heard of it.”

“You wouldn’t have, it was need to know,” Alexandra replied. “We didn’t want any potential enemies to know how we fought.”

“I see. I don’t suppose I can get a demonstration?”

“It’s not exactly something that is easy to demonstrate, in fact it would look like any other martial art. The difference is that we use telekinesis to augment our strength and speed, moving faster and hitting harder than our opponents. It does allow us to do stuff like this, though,” Gabriel said as he got up, throwing two objects to the floor and stepping onto them.

He took a few steps, rising with each one as if he was walking up an invisible staircase. He stopped when he was about a meter off the floor and turned to Thomas.

“Fascinating. I never would have thought to use telekinesis in such a way.”

“Most people don’t, they just use it to move objects around. You can’t normally move your body using telekinesis, but that’s what these are for,” Gabriel said, lifting up his foot and showing off the stirrup-like object that was fixed to his foot.

“Why can’t humans and other races learn Ikwar Kun? Telekinesis is a Tier S skill. Surely it would allow them to do what you do.”

“There is a very simple reason for that, that being the fact that the Telekinesis skill can only lift a certain amount of weight, and requires mana to operate. It would require someone weighing no more than one hundred pounds to do what we do. You know of Suprelar?

Thomas thought for a moment. “I heard Derech mention the word once or twice but I don’t know what it refers to.”

“They’re highly intelligent animals that are naturally gifted when it comes to both telepathy and telekinesis. The biggest and oldest among them can rip trees right out of the ground when they get angry, but the most common use is picking fruit from the canopy high overhead. Scanning one of those animals is what allowed me to do this.”

“How are people not flocking to the planet they are on?”

“Because few people have actually been there. It’s well outside of Scyftan space, and any other civilization’s space for that matter. It was actually one of the planets that Jonathan proposed to your people,” Alexandra said, looking over to Selalea.

“Oh? Which one?” she asked.

“Bryke-8”

“Ah. We would have picked that planet if not for Mezotis 3 and 4.”

“Huh. Jonathan was under the impression that Gnara-3 was the runner up.”

“It would have been, if not for the massive birds that live on the planet as well. We would have had to constantly keep tabs on our young to make sure that one of them doesn’t swoop down and grab one of them.”

Earth
Hillside Lake Dungeon, Ontario
August 18, 2019
09:42 EDT

The twenty-first floor wasn’t nearly as exciting as we thought it would be. In fact, it seemed like we would be going back to the hallway-room formula that seemed to be very common. There were a few surprises along the way in traps and hobgoblin assassins, but they barely slowed us down. When we got to the first room, all that was waiting for us were a large group of hobgoblins and goblins, their numbers not much bigger than what we had faced in the pillar room.

We had made quick work of them, and were surprised to find four Skill Gems and a rare ring from that one group alone, as well as a hundred or so Mana Crystal Shards. Gathering them up, we made our way down the adjoining hallway and soon came across another near-identical room. There were a few more hobgoblins in the group, but it wasn’t any harder to deal with them.

We cleared that room, and three more, before finally arriving at the floor boss room. Inside, there were three large groups of hobgoblins waiting for us. Behind them were a group of hobgoblins sitting around a fire, three warriors, one archer, two druids, and one shaman. There were also two axe-wielding hobgoblins, but it was impossible to tell if they were axe throwers or berserkers without engaging them.

When we were ready, we started walking forward and were surprised when all three groups of hobgoblins charged at us, rather than each coming in waves. We adapted quickly, Ben activating his new ring to immediately summon his fire elemental while I turned and completely roasted one group of hobgoblins.

It was cleanup after that. The eight hobgoblins were shocked into silence until one of the warriors charged towards us, triggering the rest of them to follow suit. The warrior didn’t even get close. As he was running, he suddenly cried out in pain and then fell to the floor before separating into two pieces.

That was Anja’s newest ability, and an unnerving one to say the least. She had been standing behind me and I didn’t even see her move, but she rapidly closed the distance and cut the warrior down before appearing again. The rest of the hobgoblins saw the warrior fall and the blood coating her blade.

Arrows, spells and axes immediately started flying towards her so I had to Blink twice and interpose myself between her and the goblins while activating Mana Shield. I noticed that one of the incoming axes was glowing red, so I reached out and grabbed it before activating Unerring Throw and throwing it back at the one that threw it. He caught it ... in his chest. Just like that a quarter of the advancing hobgoblins were dead.

I took a deep breath and then exhaled, but nothing happened. That’s when I realized that I was still in my human form. Luckily everyone else was busy, so no one noticed. We had taken a quick break to grab a drink and snack on something when we arrived on the current floor. Since I couldn’t manipulate small packages or water bottles with my big clawed hands, I had switched to my human form and forgot to switch back.

Shrugging, I channeled mana into my swords instead. Blinking forward, I quickly dispatched the shaman. When I turned back around, I saw that everything was dealt with except for the two druids who stood back to back and had summoned dozens of vines.

Normally the vines are pretty easy to deal with, but that’s when they’re few in number. Mason and Anja were cutting away the vines as quickly as they could, but as soon as one was cut down, another would take its place. Even Sonja’s arrows weren’t able to get through to the druids, as one of the vines always moved in time to intercept them.

[Back off, guys. Ben, you wanna take care of them?]

[Sure, ] he replied.

Mason used Whirling Leap to get away while Anja disappeared into a cloud of smoke. Ben started walking directly towards the vines while holding his staff out in front of him. He activated Flamethrower when he was close enough, and kept advancing as the vines burned. The two druids tried to run away when they saw the incoming flames, but a quick flurry of arrows and a few attacks from Anja stopped that pretty quickly.

After picking up the shards left behind, we made our way to the stairs leading to the next floor.

“Jonathan didn’t think any of us noticed, but I did,” Ben said from behind me.

I didn’t react, but I knew my friends would get a laugh out of it. I probably wouldn’t live it down anytime soon, either.

“Notice what?” Mason asked.

“It seems that Jonathan forgot that he was in his human form. I saw him take a deep breath and then exhale. It was pretty amusing to see his face when nothing happened.”

“Like this?” Mason asked, turning around and breathing in a large amount of air and then releasing it, like a kid blowing out candles on their birthday.

“Exactly that,” Ben replied, laughing. The other three followed suit and there was a good thirty seconds or so of laughter before they recovered.

“Jonathan, your dragonkin form has the same abilities as your dragon form, right?” Anja asked.

“Besides being able to fly in one form and not the other, yeah. Why do you ask?” I answered, wondering what she was getting at.

“Up until now, you’ve always shifted back into your human form when there is a risk of someone seeing you in that form. Why not just activate your camouflage so they can’t see you?”

My eyes widened a bit at that. I had forgotten that that was even an option, despite having used it on a boss fight recently. It would certainly reduce the downtime by a little bit.

“How good is that camouflage, anyways?” Ben asked.

“Good enough that the dragons have been able to stay hidden for millennia. I can’t believe I didn’t think about doing that sooner. I really need to learn how to take bits from different species and combine them into a different form, similar to the one my mom helped me with,” I replied, referring to my hybrid form. Perhaps I can modify my human form to allow me to camouflage myself and use my breath weapons.

As soon as we got to the twenty second floor, I shifted into my dragonkin and camouflaged myself repeatedly to see how fast I could do it. It turned out that it didn’t take long at all, so Anja would keep an eye out for any teams coming up in front of us or behind us, so I could hide myself before they saw my form. It turned out that it wasn’t needed, but it was a good precaution to take if I wanted to use my different forms.

The next four hours or so were spent clearing the highest concentration of monsters yet. There were only five or six chambers per floor, but each of those contained at least a hundred goblins and hobgoblins, at minimum. The former ended up becoming nonexistent as we went deeper and deeper, and though it did increase the difficulty slightly, it wasn’t overly so. Oddly, we didn’t encounter any new types of goblins over the next four floors. The goblins we did fight were just a bit tougher than their earlier counterparts.