Unexpected Healer Book 2 -- Chapter 19

Chapter 19

As much as Thaden wanted to get up from where he had just sat down to confront the Vice-Leader of the Forgestone Adventurer Coalition, his entire body – not to mention his mind and emotional state – was exhausted, and not even his righteous anger could get him to his feet.  So he had to settle for glaring and practically growling at the stone-faced Charee who simply stared at him.  When it didn’t appear as though she was going to answer his question, he opened his mouth to demand she speak, but she finally spoke curtly, cutting him off.

“This is your developmental world, Contender.”

That was it; he expected her to expand upon that statement with some sort of explanation, but she simply stood there watching him.

“What?  What on Earth does that mean?”

Veronia shook her head.  “I cannot expound upon my statement, other than to convey my congratulations on completing the SPECIAL Quest associated with the Magma Worms that attacked Forgestone.  Your Training should have explained—”

“I didn’t go through the stupid Training!” he shouted.  “Why do you think I’m so strong compared to the other Contenders, hmm?  Because I was here three months before anyone else!”

The Vice-Leader froze for a moment before she shook her head again.  “No, that is not possible.  Every Contender arrived together—”

“Well, it happened, no matter what you may think!  Something got messed up in the transfer here and I ended up the way I am now, all because the Assimilation System made a mis—”

“Do not finish that statement,” Veronia growled, anger suffusing her face as she took a step toward him threateningly.  Thaden didn’t even flinch; he really didn’t care what kind of threat she made toward him; she couldn’t hurt him with his Fields active since they now covered up to Level 100 sources – of which she qualified.

 “Look, I really don’t care about the System or how much you seem to worship it as some infallible deity, but that is definitely not what I see.  For instance, this entire deal with the Contenders and this whole developmental world – it makes no sense, whatsoever!  Don’t even get me started on the Ranking thing and the Contenders being able to kill each other after Level 21, because such a thing can only lead to conscienceless killers and murderers getting to the top at the expense of what could be talented and powerful people – if they weren’t assassinated by those with absolutely no morals.

“And I thought that was the worst thing I’d see here, but then I saw the Guards here – and you, by the way – allowing these damn Worms to rampage through the city, likely killing just as many or more of your own people… and you did nothing to stop it!  I could somewhat understand it if you let the Earthen Contenders die because we aren’t your people, but all the Charee citizens here, too?  What kind of callous insanity has infected you all?”

As he spoke, he could see the woman becoming more and more furious as she clenched her hands and bared her teeth at him, even eliciting a growl deep in her throat.  He didn’t care, though, because it was cathartic venting his frustrations at the whole situation as the guilt ate away at him inside his mind.

“And then there was the lack of warning to me about the Magma Dungeon, as that would’ve been spectacular to have before I ever visited there.  A simple, ‘You might want to wait on this very specific dungeon for a little bit,” would’ve been more than enough to turn my attention elsewhere.  But no, there was not even a hint for me to be cautious in what I did there, and I find it hard to believe that you wouldn’t know about how dangerous it was considering your Level—”

Unable to take his accusations any longer, Veronia blew up.  “YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT WAS SACRIFICED, ALL FOR A BUNCH OF ARROGANT CONTENDERS!  SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!” she screamed, before an impossible barrage of magical spells erupted from her hands toward him.  His eyes widened as the area all around him seemed to warp and tear, before being filled with a cold that seeped into his bones like the cold vacuum of space.  Been there, done that with my Necklace; mine was colder.

Three Magma Worm corpses were lifted from where they were lying with some sort of telekinetic power, before being flung straight at him – only for them to bounce off harmlessly when they impacted his Major Repulsion Field.  Enormous bolts of lightning sprang from the Vice-Leader’s fingertips as she attempted to shock and burn him to death, but they were also ineffective as they were absorbed by his Major Absorption Field. 

Dense air shaped like curved blades were aimed for his neck – which did absolutely nothing to him.  Gravity seemed to increase in the vicinity as he felt a subtle pressure upon him and the stone corpse of the Worm he was sitting on cracked under his butt as if he suddenly weighed five tons; he had to shift a bit to be more comfortable, but it was more of an inconvenience than anything.  And finally, a throbbing orb of pure darkness like a void drifted toward him lazily, sucking in random dirt and stone dust that disappeared into its depths, before starting to attract larger and larger stones around the area.

Is that some sort of black hole-type attack?  I have to admit, that’s pretty cool.

Still, he did nothing but watch it approach, and by the time it arrived near him it was sucking up stones fragments as large as he was.  He felt a little bit of pull on the hairs all over his body skin as it neared, but it wasn’t forceful or painful; instead, it felt like a gentle breeze blowing over his body in the same direction.  When the void orb eventually touched the edge of his Field, it popped like a soap bubble, disappearing as if it had never even existed.

And all through her magical tantrum, he simply sat largely unmoving as he watched her exhaust herself.  Panting and slightly bent over, but now with a fearfully manic look on her face, she spat out, “Impossible!  How are you not dead?”

He just shrugged, not wanting or caring to explain about his inexhaustible Mana pool.  As she straightened up from where she was bent over, another growl erupted from her mouth as she raised her hands, as if to try again to kill him, but she suddenly froze in place as her face paled more than he’d ever seen on a Charee.  The tell-tale sign of someone reading something that only they could see was in her eyes as she had a slight faraway look in them, before her face transformed to one of terror.

“NO!  I did everything I was sup—”

Veronia never got a chance to finish what she was about to say before her head seemed to detonate from the inside, followed by a chain reaction that blew up the rest of her body, flinging flesh and bone at high speed everywhere, with a not-insignificant portion of it bouncing off of Thaden’s Fields.

As the last of the woman’s body rained down around him, Thaden sat there in shock as he stared at where the Level 100 Vice-Leader of the Forgestone Adventurer Coalition had been just seconds before.  His mind short-circuited as he tried to comprehend what had just happened, the death of the powerful Charee somehow affecting him more than all the others. 

He sat there staring vacantly at the blood-stained and gore-filled space in front of him for at least fifteen minutes before his brain started working again.  His capacity for horror-filled images of death and the guilt associated with it had hit its limit, so his mind fell back on what he did best: analyzing the situation from an objective position.  Applying his high Mentality, he quickly broke down all the data he’d observed without coloring it with his opinions or emotions, so that he could attempt to understand the reason why everything had happened the way it had.

First, there was the Anchor dungeon below Forgestone, a very difficult area for just about anyone other than Thaden because of his invulnerability to attacks.  He pictured a “normal” party of Contenders fighting their way through the magma-filled caves and the Boss at the end, and he had a difficult time imagining how any of them would be able to complete the entire dungeon without being at least at the upper edge of the recommended Level of 50.  Granted, he hadn’t personally seen the abilities and spells of many Contenders working together in a party, especially at higher Levels with evolved Classes, but he thought the Colossus alone would be extremely difficult without great teamwork and specialized equipment to combat the heat.  It could be done, of course, but it wouldn’t be easy.

Which meant that it was designed to be completed by a high-Level party of Contenders, which also likely meant that the average Level of other Contenders was fairly similar.  He’d already considered this before when he was panicking after the Worms arrived, but thinking logically about the entire scenario, he could somewhat see the idea behind the attack.

It wasn’t supposed to be punishment; it was supposed to be a reward. 

The notifications just before the attack said as much, as it congratulated the Region for being the first to activate one of the Anchoring dungeons, and it even gave every Contender in the Region an Achievement that increased their PICK rewards for a limited time.  He could only assume that, in previous developmental worlds with other races across the… galaxy?  Universe?  Dimension?  Regardless, other races may have slowed down their development after racing toward the top of the Rankings, secure in the belief that they would be the winners when all this stuff was done.  Or alternatively, if a Region was lagging far behind with no hope of catching the top Contenders from other Regions, something like this could spur them on to reach new heights and shoot to the top of the Rankings.  Which would snowball as the others felt the need to catch up, thereby initiating their own next stage of development. 

He didn’t have to like it for it to make sense, because it was what it was.

When he looked at why no one told him about this Anchoring dungeon, he could only assume that doing so was as forbidden as mentioning that the Assimilation System was infallible.  It would be giving the Contenders in their Region an unfair advantage over the others, and only by working hard to discover it on their own would they be able to take advantage of the rewards that came with it.  Plus, it was probably supposed to happen naturally as the Contenders got stronger on their own, and focusing on activating an Anchoring dungeon could skew their entire development.

Of course, that all got screwed up when Thaden walked into the picture.

Pushing aside the guilt was easy enough at this point because he was still analyzing what had happened with the Magma Worm attack.  He’d already considered that it was supposed to be somewhat of an impromptu training exercise that would bring all the Contenders together to fight as a larger entity with the Raid Parties, but what he didn’t figure on was the fact that if they didn’t learn how to fight with other Contenders, something that would definitely be important once they fought the Adversary after leaving Tarth, then they would fail to save themselves or the citizens of Forgestone.

What was a surefire way to force them to do something like that?  Let them fly without a safety net, of course.

Which explained why none of the City Guards or individuals like the Vice-Leader came to help.  Based on what Veronia said before she exploded, about doing what she was supposed to do, Thaden assumed that they knew the attack was going to happen and were instructed – likely by the Assimilation System – to not interfere.  “This is your development world, Contender,” she’d said, but he didn’t understand what she meant at the time; now he thought he did, and it horrified him.

She had to stand by and watch as her people were slaughtered along with the Contenders who either chose to stay and fight the Magma Worms or who were too slow to escape – and she couldn’t lift a finger to help.  I can only assume that if she, or anyone with the ability to actually help, such as the City Guards, would’ve been punished for interfering.  It was the Contender’s chance to learn how to work together and overcome the threat to the city; it was our developmental opportunity, and if they had stepped in to help, it would’ve lessened the impact of the opportunity.

It was total BS, at least from his perspective, considering that they had to know that the Contenders had no chance of winning at this point in time, but it was probably a hard rule that they couldn’t bend even a little depending on the circumstances.  It also made Veronia’s manic attack on him – after his ignorant accusations seemed to make light of the sacrifices she must’ve endured by watching her city and people crumble around her – feel almost justified, and the guilt immediately tried to come back as he realized that he had essentially killed her, too.

Why?  Because in addition to having rules in place designed to ensure that any developmental opportunities weren’t interfered with, he could only assume that they were forbidden from deliberately killing or trying to kill Contenders.  He also figured there were exceptions, such as Contenders blatantly violating the rules repeatedly, such as attacking other Contenders over Level 21 while in a town or city after being warned not to, but Thaden hadn’t technically violated any rules, unless free speech was banned, which he didn’t think was the case.  Therefore, when she intentionally attempted to kill him, even wondering aloud why he wasn’t dead, that was apparently enough for the deadly consequences to kick in.

Groaning at the presumed discovery of all these revelations regarding this world and the roles of the people within it, he held his head in his hands as he went a step further.  If Tarth was a developmental world and everything was a developmental opportunity to teach Contenders what they would need to fight the Adversary, then the “PvP” aspect of everything after Level 21 made a sick sort of sense.

Oh, yeah, the Assimilation System knows what it’s doing, alright.  It’s twistedly insane, but I can only assume that it works in the long run.

He originally thought that by allowing the Contenders to kill each other after Level 21 would only result in selfish murderers and psychopaths getting ahead of the competition by taking out the rest, and he was somewhat correct.  At first, this is exactly what would happen as probably thousands of Contenders were killed as the initial bloodbath of slaughter as Contenders emerged into the low 20s in Level, but it would quickly taper off as grudges and people looking to take down easy rivals took place.  After that, though, he could see the deaths tapering off as everyone got it out of their system – other than with those aforementioned murderers and psychopaths.  But what did any civilized people do when such an unstable person or people started killing others?  They either created some sort of system of laws and a police force to stop it, or they took matters into their own hands to solve the problem.

The latter solution would likely be the case.  What could a psychotic murderer do when he or she was hunted down by a large mob of Contenders – and then couldn’t kill any of the hunters because they were a single Level lower then them.  The problem would eventually correct itself, or at worst only a few bad apples would get through.  Everyone else, however, would learn, just like every society on Earth had, that working together was preferable to annihilating the competition, and that their time would be much better spent developing themselves by killing monsters than it would be by killing a rival.  Besides, if someone spent most of their time killing other people just to get to the top by having the highest Level, how do you think those they essentially walked all over would react to seeing them on top?

It would just make them the next target. 

The whole system of killing would end up costing the lives of tens of thousands of Contenders during their time on Tarth, but was that worth the end result?  He could only assume that allowing unstable psychopaths through to fight the Adversary had commonly happened in the past and it didn’t turn out well.  Thaden could only hope that the Assimilation System considered killing thousands of Contenders during their developmental phase preferable to letting loose insane killers on the wider universe when they had the power to cause devastating harm. 

It was midday before he finally stopped thinking about everything, as his thoughts kept circling around and around in his head to the point where he just wanted it all to end.  Eventually, he put it all aside and shut down his analysis of everything because it was entirely too depressing.  To distract himself, he closed his eyes for a few seconds before opening them again to check his notifications.

Needless to say, what he saw in them was more than enough of a distraction to last a lifetime.