Chapter 132

There was no way to keep Zea from gaining XP along with Luke, not as long as they were using [Ghost Script] to make the bombs. If she made them the old-fashioned way, there was enough separation between her as the enchanter and him as the wielder of the bomb to assign all of the XP to him, but those took hours and money to make. [Ghost Script] let her inscribe the runes on any old chunk of wood or a rock, as long as she didn’t need them to last for more than a few minutes.

She wasn’t thrilled about putting on even more levels. Luke had a fix for himself, or so he said, and that was great. But it meant that she was tethered to him for the rest of her life, which thankfully he at least grasped why that was unappealing of her. She felt like she’d already sacrificed an enormous amount for him, and while she didn’t exactly regret that, it had been done under the assumption that he’d be able to reset her status later on.

It wasn’t like they’d given up on that plan or anything, but after using [Bloodline Purification Ritual] on him twice now, he had access to a whole bunch of tools, enough that he should be able to finish this whole God Machine job without any additional help from her. At this point, she was along for the ride to collect her payment, and because she liked spending time with him.

He was fun, and driven. She was comfortable around him, and while she wouldn’t say she loved him, there were some definite feelings there. It wasn’t like Luke had no bad qualities either, mainly how impulsive he was. He did not like to think things through, but he’d been bitten in the ass too many times now and was slowly growing out of that habit.

He could be thoughtless, but he did care. All she had to do was point out what was likely to happen if he did what he was thinking, and how it would affect her or others, and he generally made good choices.

Zea had met many worse people in her life. Traveling with Luke could be stressful, but more so because of the constant fighting than because of anything he did. She knew she’d slowed him down tremendously too, but he never mentioned it or gave the appearance that he resented her. He could have gotten what he wanted and ditched her quite easily.

So, she’d make this sacrifice for him. They were about three hundred feet away from their target and she was busy tracing the enchantment onto a chunk of deadwood he’d scavenged up and sliced down to size for her. [Ghost Script] was quickly becoming her new favorite skill, despite the high price. It was so much easier to just trace the runes with her finger than it was to physically carve them into the material.

The best part was that she could go fast, because if she made a mistake, all she had to do was wipe the rune clean and start over. It cost nothing since [Ghost Script] didn’t damage the wood at all, and she didn’t have to redo all the runes on a new base object. She thought that with a little practice, and maybe another rank in the skill—though maybe not, considering how expensive rank 1 had been—she could turn it into a viable combat skill.

“This is going to blow up fifteen seconds after I finish the last rune,” she told Luke. “Be ready to throw it as soon as I hand it to do.”

The bombs she made were much easier to do without the twine serving as a fuse anyway. Those were just a repeating chain of timer runes that burned away at a rate of five runes a second, which meant to add any reasonable length of time, she needed a few feet of twine. It also wasn’t easy to put the runes on something that small and flexible.

Another rank of [Runeforging] would probably unlock knowledge of better timer runes, but she worked with what she had. Besides, the whole goal was to start back over at level 1 and pick the skills she wanted instead of all the enchanting-adjacent skills that had been forced on her. She didn’t even have the tools to make use of half of those skills anyway.

“Here you go,” she said as she finished drawing the final rune and tossed the chunk of wood to Luke. He snatched it out of the air, took off through the trees to a spot he’d already scouted out as giving him a clear shot, and tossed it at the anthill. Mentally, she counted down the seconds until the makeshift bomb exploded.

Right as she reached zero, an echoing boom shook the trees and her mind was overwhelmed with notifications dings. All of it boiled down to two lines.

[You have assisted in slaying 22,490 creatures between levels 1-3. 26,367 XP awarded.]

[Congratulations! You have reached level 34. 34 AP awarded for use.]

She grimaced at the boost to her total XP. At least it had only been 4 levels this time. That was still over 100 AP to spend, and she was starting to feel like some retired vet. People just didn’t raise their XP this high on purpose, and definitely not in their early twenties. She’d probably cut her remaining lifespan down to under forty. Luke had better deliver on reverting the changes.

Luke came hurtling back out from between the trees at unbelievable speed, straight towards her. Her eyes widened and she tried to jump out of the way, but she was far too slow. He hit her without so much as slowing down, and she found herself caught up in a princess carry in his arms as he kept running. “Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit,” he said, over and over as he dodged between trees.

“What the fuck are you doing!” she just about shrieked. She could barely hear herself over the wind.

“Inquisitor heard the explosion. He’s right behind us!”

Not for the first time, Zea considered sinking some more points into perception, but it was already to the point where she’d had to develop some new habits just to filter out all the background noise. The fact that anybody could sneak up on her at all, even with system-backed skills to help, was something she had a hard time accepting, and Luke had 20 more points in the stat than she did. His world had to be a nightmare of hearing every single thing around him for miles. She didn’t see how it hadn’t driven him crazy.

He twisted his torso, skipped a step, and ducked so low that she was afraid he was going to step on her hair. A knife went flying by over his head. Though it had missed him, he let out a grunt anyway, and a moment later Zea saw a second knife had pierced the armor on his shoulder. He gave that arm a shake, and the dagger dislodged to fall to the ground.

“Did it hit you?” she asked.

“No, got stuck in the metal. Armor was good for something after all.”

They’d left their bags behind, though that was all replaceable. She’d kept the money in a separate pouch hung on her neck, thankfully, so they weren’t completely shafted if they couldn’t circle back and recover their stuff, but she wasn’t happy about losing her enchanting gear. Now that she thought about it…

“I have four binding straps on me,” she told Luke. “Here, set me down and see if you can get him with these.”

She felt a tug against her hand as she held them up, only to see they’d disappeared. A moment later, she was tottering forward, trying to keep herself from sprawling face-first into the dirt. Her hand slapped against a nearby tree trunk and she stumbled forward two steps before she caught her balance. Luke was nowhere to be seen, but she heard the sound of metal striking metal coming from a hundred feet back.

Watching him fight that inquisitor made her head hurt. They both moved so fast that it was impossible to keep up with their movements. She’d made that concussion enchantment last time fully knowing it would affect both of them, but that if she targeted it properly, it wouldn’t hit Luke nearly as hard. She might be able to do something like that again, but she expected the inquisitor would be far more wary of her this time.

Zea wasn’t about to sit around and do nothing though. She cast about and quickly found a branch on the ground, then started tracing runes across its surface.

* * *

Lath could scarcely believe the stupidity of the two apostates. To use an anthill as a way to quickly gain XP was beyond foolhardy, both because they did not have the hands of a god to shield them from the sickness of the mind that came with higher levels, and because ants would chase after their pheromone-tagged targets for weeks.

He could admit some cleverness in their chosen method of execution. They’d most likely sidestepped the pheromone problem just by refusing to get close enough to pick any up to begin with, but still, they were extremely reckless. Then again, he supposed if he’d known he was so thoroughly outclassed by a hunter who might catch up to him at any moment, he would be considering some reckless strategies to gain a few levels too.

Their ploy wouldn’t save them. He’d taken the apostate’s measure and, clever tricks aside, the boy was too young and inexperienced. He let his stats and his skills fight for him, with no true measure of personal ability. Lath had no doubt the apostate had gathered hundreds of AP to spend, but in the end, it was far from enough. Lath had all the real experience between the two of them, and that would be what determined the winner of their fight.

They met on the game trail that wound its way through the trees, and that section of the forest became their battlefield. The apostate used the trees to his advantage, constantly seeking cover behind them to limit his risk of being exposed to any of the poisons Lath employed on his throwing knives. It was like playing a high-speed game of tag, where they danced around obstacles to avoid each other while simultaneously moving closer to try to sneak in an attack.

Something brown flashed through the air, and Lath smacked it away with his sword. He’d already dismissed it from his mind a moment later, until his sword suddenly felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. He blinked and looked down at it to see the brown thing, a strip of some kind of leather, had wrapped itself around the blade four times and was now glowing with runes of some kind.

A second strip of leather struck Lath’s arm while he was distracted. Like a living thing, it snaked around his bicep and activated its magic. He was dragged off balance while he adjusted to the feeling of extra weight and the fact that the two pieces of leather seemed to be trying to pull toward each other. Lath recovered instantly, but not quick enough to avoid the apostate coming around the far side of the tree to blindside him with a hammer blow from that mace.

Lath threw himself back and rolled with the attack. His sword got left behind, now too heavy to use effectively. On the bright side, putting some distance between himself and the weapon broke the attraction between the two enchanted pieces of leather.

That was a neat trick, something he wouldn’t mind adding to his own arsenal. As a capture tool, it had a lot of advantages over more mundane methods. Lath resolved to find somebody to duplicate the effect for his own use. Of more immediate concern was the enchanter supporting the apostate. She would be the softer target by far. Lath needed to break away from this fight and kill the dwifkin first.

Then he’d come back for the boy, and he would fulfill his twin purposes of executing divine will and avenging his apprentice.