SOM - Chapter 38 - Making Friends

Having a real moment of letting himself feel his emotions was truly cathartic. It was a deviation from Luke’s tried and true method of hitting things until the feelings went away. Not something he wanted to do regularly, but probably healthier in the long term. 

Luke knew he had been leaning on his [Murderhobo] domain as a bit of an emotional crutch. 

“Nate? Is everything alright mate?” A deep male voice called from the corridor outside Nate’s apartment. 

In an instant, Luke got control of himself. His moment of vulnerability was over, and he could have another one when all the aliens were dead. 

Though he had burnt up most of his armour’s aether reserves tanking the prismatic light beam, the heat vision only took a trickle of [Fire] to activate. 

Since consuming Rurik’s soul, the heat vision provided by the visor had improved. Before, it hadn’t been very good at seeing through walls and objects. It worked, but only provided rough outlines of particularly cold objects, like the undead, or hot ones like Rurik’s furnace. 

The new version could make out finer details. Luke could clearly see that on the other side of the front door three people stood waiting. The closest figure had the build of a relatively large man, and two distinctly female forms stood behind him. From their stances it was clear that all three were holding weapons of some kind.

Luke spent enough time watching that the trio started to tense up, so he decided to announce himself. “Who are you?” Luke asked.

There was a pause as the man looked to his companions. “I’m Ted, heard a smash, came to check it out, you?” he replied. 

“I’m Luke, you’re a friend of Nates?”

In the corridor, Luke saw the trio relax a little, but they were still clearly skittish. 

There was a pause.

“Yea, I live down the corridor. When shit went down we grouped together. Lot of crazy shit happening, so I’m sure you can see how someone breaking into our building makes us nervous.”

Luke’s eyebrows drew together for a moment, before he realised what Ted was accusing him of. He could be kind of dense sometimes. “Nate’s my brother,” he said. 

Just like that the tension dissipated. There was a moment of silence as Ted looked to the woman beside him, but even with his upgraded heat vision Luke couldn’t read the expression on her face. 

“Luke are you… alright?” a female voice asked hesitantly. 

The trio had probably heard his brief breakdown. Luke looked at the bed he had thrown through the wall. This wasn’t the best first impression. He grimaced at the idea of three strangers listening in on his most vulnerable moment.

Opening up was something Luke had trouble doing; it was the main wedge that had pushed him and Chrissy apart. 

“Yea, I’m ok, just a little out of sorts,” Luke said. He tried to inject some confidence into his voice, but wasn't sure he had succeeded.

Jumping straight to the obvious conclusion, the woman was quick to reassure him. “Nate’s fine, he’s at the tide pools.”

“Tide pools?” 

“Our local rift.”

“Oh.”

“We can take you there.”

“Sarah…” the man interjected quietly, but with his enhanced hearing Luke heard him clearly.

“What? He’s Nate’s brother, he’s not going to spread it around,” the woman said. 

“It will run out of aether,” Ted whispered.

For his part, Luke was torn between wanting to break down the door and demanding the trio take him to Nate, and not wanting to spook the group.

“Listen, I’m not interested in your dungeon, but I need to see my brother,” he said in a tone that brooked no arguments. Luke stood up and walked to the door. 

When he opened it he didn’t expect the reaction he received.

“What the fuck!” Ted said as he took a step back. 

The man was large by normal standards, which made Luke acutely aware of how big he was these days. His physical growth had levelled off to some extent, but hadn’t stopped completely. 

Ted’s eyes widened as he took in Luke’s appearance, and his eyebrows rose into his bald forehead. His fingers tightened around a giant fish knife. Luke noted with wry amusement the tattoos on Ted’s knuckles spelling out the word ‘CALM’.

Ironic, he thought.

Though Ted looked like a bit of a tough guy, his aura didn’t feel particularly potent. Luke reached out to touch it.

[Level 4 human - A mortal. Core domains: Life] 

That seemed low, until Luke remembered that only three days had passed on the outside. it had only taken a few [Plague Rats] for him to reach that level. 

“I don’t want any trouble, let’s just talk about this,” Ted said.

It took Luke a moment to remember that he was wearing glowing power armour that was covered in blood, both of which were likely to put normal people on edge.

“Relax, I’m not going to hurt you,” Luke said as he sent his helmet into his storage space.

“You [Identified] me!”

“Oh, sorry, just a reflex,” Luke said, shuffling his feet a little.

“Didn’t you listen to the tutorial?” Sarah asked, emerging from behind Ted. “Scanning someone is a universal way of picking a fight.”

“Err, no, I’ve not had a chance to use the tutorial yet,” Luke said, making a mental note to do so at some point. 

It had been days since Luke last thought about the tutorial, having become accustomed to relying on Rurik instead. That was no longer an option.

Luke swallowed. 

Even if using his soul sense was taboo, Like didn’t think he had caused any offence. No, if anything the trio looked like they were just relieved that he didn’t intend to start anything. 

Sarah gave Luke a nervous smile and did a round of proper introductions. As it happened, all three of them worked at the local hospital. Ted was a nurse, Sarah a physiotherapist, and the more subdued Ana worked in the pharmacy. 

The three of them, Nate and his fiance, and another guy called Mykhailo were all that remained of the twelve people that once lived in their block of flats. Apparently that was a good survival rate, compared to some of the other groups they had encountered.

“Wait, what do you mean culled?” Luke asked in response to something Sarah said.

A scowl appeared on her freckled face, though not one directed at Luke. “The [System] cull. At the moment of awakening Gaia ran a thousand simulations, and killed anyone with less than a ten percent chance of survival to empower [System] seeds to function in the rest of humanity. From what we can gather that’s about one in every four people, though it was much higher at the hospital.”

Luke was shocked. Though he didn’t have much of an emotional reaction to the news, it took him aback that the world spirit was capable of slaughter on such a massive scale. One in four people was almost two billion humans. Gone in an instant. 

The casualties had only worsened once rifts and dungeons started appearing everywhere, and aetherlings poured out. A rift was a temporary aetheric space, typically created by a dream that resonated within the Veil. 

Going to sleep could be a death sentence without sufficient precautions. 

The only reason that Luke hadn’t encountered this himself was that dungeons were resistant to rifts opening inside them, though this was second hand information. It was trivia that had filtered through from the gang monopolising their nearest actual dungeon. The ‘Tide Pools’ that Sarah mentioned were a rift rather than a full blown dungeon.

At one point Ana became suspicious of Luke’s ignorance, but Luke blew off her questions by telling the technically true story of being trapped on a train in the London Underground. 

With the apparent competition over dungeons, he felt it was better to keep Lundheim a secret; if it hadn’t collapsed completely then it was an invaluable resource. Instead he made vague statements about killing lots of undead and buying his armour with the credits. The best lies have the most truth in them after all.

After a few minutes of chatting, Luke had a pretty good grasp on an abridged version of events. He was also getting restless.

“Alright, let’s go,” he said, after putting his foot down about going to the tide pools.

“In a few hours, it’s not a dangerous rift, but the tide is in right now,” Sarah said. For the most part she did the talking, and seemed to be the pseudo-leader of the group. He was tempted to use his aura sense, or [Identify] her, but had some restraint. 

“I can swim,” Luke said. 

“It's the eels that are the problem, look I understand you want to see Nate, but-”

“No you don’t understand!” Luke interrupted. “The second wave is coming in a few hours and I need to make sure he is ok.”

“We’ve told you he’s fine,” Sarah said, her frustration evident in the set of her jaw.

“How do you know when the second wave is coming?” Ted asked.

“Take me to him!” Luke said.

Without really meaning to, Luke subconsciously flared his [Singularity] aura. Its effect was less immediately obvious out in the real world, but with a bit of aether running through it, the ability pressed down hard enough to make the trio stumble.

A bit of fear re-entered Sarah’s green eyes as she looked at Luke. Despite this, she didn’t back down. “Ok, I don’t understand, whatever, but those eels are all at least level ten, and I’m not going to be the one who tells Nate that his brother did actually survive, but died because he was impatient.”

Luke felt like a schoolboy being scolded. His conscious mind reasserted itself and he cut the flow of aether to his ability. 

No-one said anything for a few seconds.

Then, Luke bowed his head in apology, and tried a smile. “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for, I’m just a bit raw at the moment. The last few weeks have been rough, not that it hasn’t been bad for you guys either.”

Sarah glanced briefly at Ana and Ted before returning to meet Luke’s gaze. “It has been, for all of us, that’s why we need to stick together. The tide will go down soon, we can take you when it does.”

“Show me these eels please. If I don’t think I can safely handle them I will wait, but I’m fairly confident I can deal with them. I’m level fifteen myself, and I’ve killed hundreds of aetherlings over level ten already.” Luke said in an attempt to calmly explain his position.

He expected some kind of argument, but what he got instead were wide eyes and dropped jaws. 

When it didn’t seem like any of the group were going to speak he broke the silence. “We don’t have hours. I have it on good authority that the second wave is imminent, and I want to make sure we’re somewhere defensible when it does.” Luke said.

He was only talking about Nate and himself, but realised that he had included the group in his statement when they all slowly started nodding along. Ted even gave him a nervous smile. 

Perfect, he thought

Mentally Luke sighed. He didn’t really want to deal with people, but he already had a few hundred aetherlings he had promised to save; what was a few humans on top of that. 

“It’s in the basement,” Ana said.

Luke exhaled. A few weeks ago he wouldn’t have been so stubborn, and he wondered if he was being influenced by his path. Being unbreakable and unstoppable was great on a battlefield, but was unlikely to help his already questionable social skills. 

At his hip he felt [Fenn] pulse with boredom, and a lust for violence. 

He was fairly sure that as the hammer gobbled up more of his hard earned coins it was getting smarter and better at communicating. 

I’ll feed you in a minute, have you ever tried sushi?