SOM - Chapter 40 - Reunions

Standing in the middle of the storm, with the torrential rain swirling around him, Nate stood wearing a white toga, and a green feathered felt hat. He looked like a cross between a frat boy, and robin hood. In front of Nate, imposing herself between him and the starfish was a feminine form covered in a layer of jagged rocks. He couldn’t see her within, but common sense told Luke that it was Surya. 

Luke couldn’t help himself.

[Level 7 Human - A mortal focused on Intelligence and Empathy. Core Domains: Storm, Sea, Scholar, Mage, Merchant.]

[Level 7 Human - A mortal focused on Endurance and Strength. Core Domains: Earth, Sea, Spear, Bulwark, Tank.]

Not bad, Luke thought, comparing his brother to the rest of his flatmates. Though Luke hadn’t scanned everyone, he was fairly sure the others had been closer to Ted’s level than Nate. 

For a moment Luke just watched his brother fighting, not wanting to steal his kill. Then, Luke realised how stupid it would be if he made it this far, only for a giant starfish to kill the one person he cared about most. 

With a roar, Luke waded into the fray. Over the thunder and rain, neither combatant heard Luke coming, until he leapt forwards, straight at the starfish. 

[Level 10 Star Storm - An aetherling that is commonly mistaken for a falling star. Core Domains: Storm, Sea, Cosmic.]

Up close and personal, it looked a lot more alien. It had five long limbs it used to move around, and sharp spines and large suckers the size of Luke’s palm covered its skin. Despite the description, Luke didn’t feel and [Gravity] aether coming off the creature. 

As he smashed into it with Fenn, electrified blue blood splattered everywhere as he ripped through spongy flesh. Not dissimilar to the [Shambling Rots] that Luke was used to fighting, the wound healed rapidly before his eyes. 

He would have to rip and tear, until it was done.

After crushing an arm and gouging out a sizable chunk of cyan flesh with Fenn’s claw, Luke lifted his hammer high, ready to beat it to death. Fenn pulsed in excitement, but was left unsatisfied when the starfish retreated.

Twisting its boneless body to face upwards, the creature expelled air from its suckers and whooshed up into the air above.  

A single giant white eye opened at the centre of the starfish’s body, looking directly at Luke.

Prepared for an epic battle, Luke got ready to jump into the air after the aetherling. 

He was fated to be forever disappointed; it flew away.

“This is our rift, who are you, and what have you done with my friends?” Nate said, with his bow pointed straight at Luke’s visor. 

For a moment, Luke had an urge to joke around, play a prank. It was a release valve from all the stress and worry Luke had felt over the last two weeks.

The bowstring pulled back further and Luke realised his brief hesitation had dragged on long enough to give worry.

“Nate, it’s me,” Luke said, and reached up to take off his helmet. 

Nate’s initial reaction was confusion, as it took him a second to place the voice. When he did, he dropped the bow and ran forwards. This made Surya tense up, and her [Earth] armour thicken, but when Nate threw his skinny arms around Luke she relaxed. 

It was nice.

“Luke? What are you wearing? You look like a Blood Angel,” Nate said.

“I don’t know what that is.” 

“It’s a type of space marine… never mind. That’s really you?” 

“Yes Nate, it’s me.”

“I thought you were dead! You couldn’t pick up the phone?”

“Actually no, where I was didn’t exactly have any signal. You mean you did?”

“Well yea, the network only went down on the second day. I called you at least fifty times.” 

Luke found that interesting; he had imagined all technology would immediately stop working, but that seemed to not be the case. He hadn’t really stopped to ask. 

“On the topic of weird outfits, what's with the cosplay outfit? Shouldn’t you have actual armour,” Luke said with a frown. While it had been initially amusing, he was concerned that Nate was fighting monsters with no protection.

“Hmm? Oh, when we split up party roles I went for the mage/controller route. This stuff is the best value gear I could find that boosted my [Storm] domain while also enhancing my [Empathy] and mental attributes.”

“Nate, you’re walking into battle wearing a toga. This shit isn’t a game.” Luke said. 

“I never said it was,” Nate said, in a quiet voice that was hard to hear over the storm. “But specialising in different roles lets us punch up more than we could otherwise. My attunement with the [Storm] goes up faster like this, and my [Bolt] attack is a lot more effective.”

“Wait really?”

“Yea, we absorb aether through our skin right? I’m surprised you can shape it at all, wearing that big lump of metal.”

Luke recalled that the aeldrin his armour was made of was supposed to be uniquely conductive of aether, being the main reason that the Lundheim had been targeted by the Eternal legion. Luke was fortunate enough to have enough aeldrin ingots to use them for weightlifting. 

“It's made of a special metal, maybe I can find someone to make you a set too,” Luke said.

“Probably wouldn’t work, not going full caster like I am. Perception shapes reality; casting works best without armour, therefore the best way to cast is without armour,” Nate spoke with the cadence of someone reciting a lesson, presumably one from the tutorial. “You’re lucky I found this toga, I was going to go naked.”

“He’s not joking,” Surya spoke up for the first time.

That would be a sight to behold, Luke thought, casting a glance at Surya, then again at Nate. 

Though Nate and his fiance had been together for only a couple of years, they had moved in together a month after meeting. While Luke and Chrissy had been struggling to make things work, Nate and Surya had been a picture perfect couple. 

“Are you not freezing?” Luke said. 

“No, I’m fine, my [Storm] helps me deal with the wind and rain.” Nate said, only for Surya to laugh from behind him. She had shed the stone skin and was back to her normal size.

“Oh really? What was all that complaining earlier about your balls freezing off? Or was that your idea of pillow talk, mera pyara?” Surya said with a teasing smile.

Nate’s blush was as predictable as it was amusing and gave Luke a quick chuckle. The easy banter put him in mind of the last time he and Nate went out for a meal. He recalled Surya getting just a little too tipsy, exposing Luke to a new side to the typically reserved woman he hadn’t seen the other times they had met.

A nearby thunder clap brought him back to the present. 

“We should get back,” Luke said.

“What, why?” Nate said, looking around himself searching for hidden dangers.

Once Luke had given the pair a brief explanation of the current situation, the second wave and his plans to meet Frank at the London Eye, Nate pressed him for more details through chattering teeth. 

Despite his words, the scrawny wannabe [Storm] mage was clearly on the verge of hypothermia. His skin was wet from the rain, and as pale as the undead. Not wanting her fiance to catch a cold in the torrential rain she ushered the brothers into a crack in the cliff-side, and took out some warm clothes from her soul space. Luke noted that the cave had a giant fish net hanging from the ceiling above.

The pair had apparently been trying to lure and trap the starfish inside the cave so that Nate could study its [Storm] aura. Luke felt a little sheepish when he realised he had ruined their plan, but neither Nate nor Surya admonished him. 

Once they were out Luke gave him an abridged version of his time in the dungeon, holding nothing back.

“Wow,” Nate said.

Wow indeed,” Surya echoed.

“So if you don’t win this mysterious competition for the [Apex] you’ll either die, or be crippled?” Nate asked.

Luke sighed; it was something he had tried to avoid thinking about. “Basically, yes,” he said.

There was a pause as Nate scrunched up his face, and Surya put a hand on her fiance’s shoulder, before looking at Luke. “I mean no offence, and I hope you know that I already see you as a part of our family, but why would you think you could win this competition?”

“Of course he can, don’t say that,” Nate said in a rare moment of disagreement with his partner.

There was a moment where Surya shifted from side to side. She clearly wanted to say something, but was too polite to do so.

“Say what’s on your mind Suri, I promise I won’t get offended,” Luke said.

“Luke, you are a kind soul, a good man, and Nate looks up to like a father… but you dropped out of school, can’t hold a job, and the only thing you’ve been able to commit to in the last decade is throwing weights around in the gym.”

Ouch, tell me how you really feel Suri, Luke thought. She wasn’t wrong on any count, and he had asked her to be honest, but hadn’t expected her to be so brutal. 

Seeing Luke wince, and Nate looking at her aghast, Surya spoke quickly to clarify her position. “I don’t say this to be cruel, but perhaps if you remove the concept now the damage will be less than after the competition,” she added. Left unspoken was her obvious assumption that Luke had no chance of actually winning.

“What rank do you have in [Apex] now?” Asked Nate, concern and defensiveness warring on his face as he looked between Surya and Luke.

“It’s still copper,” Luke said.

“What percentage?”

“Twelve.”

“What is its profile?” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Its description and breakdown.”

“Oh, it says: There can only be one, and gives five to every attribute.”

“That's the blurb. Can you just share your sheet with me for a minute?” Nate asked.

It took Nate a minute to guide Luke through the process of sharing his sheet. He felt like an idiot where the system was concerned, and was more than a little frustrated that he had been cut off from the tutorial.

Luke tried to count his blessings; the dungeon had afforded Luke with unique experiences and catapulted him to the forefront of humanity, for better or worse, as proved by the blue boxes Nate was searching through.

Luke Evans: Level 15 Human

Class:

Indomitable Dreadnought (Initiate): +3 Endurance, +3 Strength, +3 Will per level, +3 Free points. Gravity as an additional domain.

Class Abilities:

Gravity: Epicentre - Magnifies your gravitational field.

Gravity: Null - Nullifies gravitational fields.

Gravity: Singularity - Increases the mass of everything in your aura.

Domain Abilities:

Bulwark: Brace - Magnifies your mass and creates an inertial field around you that stores momentum.

Warhammer: Kinetic strike - Amplifies momentum of, and transfers stored momentum to objects. 

Attributes 

Will: 40

Empathy: 21

Wisdom: 15

Intellect:  16

Agility: 19

Strength: 47

Endurance: 45

Recovery: 30

Free Points: 3

Concepts:

Core Concepts:

Apex (Copper, 12%): +5 all attributes. +25% experience gained.

Warhammer (Platinum): +7 Strength, augments hammers.

Bulwark (Platinum): +7 Endurance, augments shields and armour.

Gravity (Bronze  74%): +2 Empathy.

Secondary Concepts:

Murderhobo (Platinum): +5 Will, +5 Strength, -1 Empathy. +50% loot.

Fire (Silver 22%): +3 Empathy, can manifest an ability.

“Your attributes are crazy but all over the place. Have you just been assigning your free points randomly?” Nate asked, shaking his head.

“No!” Luke said defensively, but Nate didn’t probe further.

“I wondered why I felt so weak when you appeared, that [Singularity] isn’t great for working in a team, though it’s not so bad once you get used to it,” Surya commented with a thoughtful expression as she peered at Luke’s boxes. 

“Alright, so [Apex] is a bit of a weird one. It’s a meta-domain that can apply to any faction of psions significant enough to qualify. The strength of it is proportional to the group it represents, so in this case the stronger humanity is as a whole the more it will do. The only way to cultivate it is to be the unchallenged peak of the faction you represent. Not a very helpful breakdown to be honest, from a quick look,” Luke said.

Within Luke’s system menus, Nate had opened a bunch of blue boxes Luke had never seen before. The expanded view of [Apex] was long and rambling, and something Luke would read later. 

“It changes nothing. I took the upgrade because I was willing to risk it to escape the dungeon in time. So let's get out of here and find somewhere safe,” Luke said.

“Where is safe?” Surya asked.

“I was thinking of hiding in the underground, I might ask the viran to dig us an underground bunker, place my flag there and make a base,” Luke said. Truthfully, he hadn’t thought that far ahead. 

“Why not plant the flag here? It sounds like it would stabilise the rift and give us a permanent place to hide, farm, and build up our strength.” Nate asked. 

“Well… maybe it would work. The water’s not great for my [Fire] domain though, and I think the flag might have to be used in the real world, not an aetheric space.”

“The [Tide Pools] are a good resource, and connecting it to the Veil might improve it,” Luke said, before giving a little shrug. “It’s your flag, but think about it.” 

“I will. Now let’s go get Frank,” Luke said.

“We’ve still got a few hours, right? Even by the most pessimistic time frame of what Gaia told you.” 

“Why wait?” 

“I want to see your [Apex] concept and rare class at work. We scouted out the [Storm] crystal cave ahead, but it’s already occupied. Fancy partying up?”

“Sure,” Luke said with a smile. “Occupied by what?” 

“Do you see that big rock over there?” Surya asked, pointing. 

Luke squinted, looking where she pointed, trying to see past the rock to what lay within. “Yea, why?” he said.

“It’s not a rock,” Nate said.

For a moment Luke was confused, then he realised what they meant.

That’s a big ass crab.