[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 100: A Time for Rest

“I think it’d be best to wait until morning,” Sam said. “Just… in case. The Skyshard is largely undefended, and we have no idea what sort of things might be lurking out there where we can’t see. Our defenses—such as they are—are already spread pretty thin.”

“I should secure us shelter.” Raiko turned her attention to one of the hills peeking out between the bamboo. “It’s taken time for the energy I expend for Sculpting to recover.”

“That would be nice.” Sam looked up into the moonlit night. The [Sourcestone] gave off a blue-green hue all its own, almost like a lighthouse at sea. The rest of the Skyshard was bathed in velvety darkness, but he could make out his [Sourcestone] easily. “The tents and sleeping bags are still up there.”

Matt raised a hand. “I don’t mean to disparage our potential new rooms or anything, but speaking as a recently unlivened person, I feel it would be a little racist to make us sleep in burial mounds. Just sayin’.”

Kai turned very, very slowly to look at Matt.

Sam stifled a chortle.

Raiko gave Matt an exasperated look. “Do you have another suggestion?”

“I was a manager, Raiko,” Matt said. “It was not our way to offer suggestions to problems. We weren’t that smart.”

“No,” Sam agreed. “You told other people who made a fraction of your pay to do it and then blamed them when it didn’t work.”

Matt held his hands up in surrender. “Hate the system, not the player… but yes. I’m just pointing out that maybe living in a damp, worm and bug filled hole in the ground isn’t super.”

Raiko pinched the bridge of her nose in irritation.

“What if it was like a hobbot hole?” Kai asked. “Not wet, but warm and dry.”

Matt looked offended. “Did you just call it a ‘hobbot hole’? What kind of—” he took command of himself and breathed in deeply, “—it’s Hobbit. Bit, not bot. And… I suppose I wouldn’t mind that. But how on earth are you going to make wood planks, heater stoves, and all the other things like vapor barriers to prevent the wet getting in?”

“I swear to Wisdom’s rump, you’re just getting a hole. That’s it. A long, deep hole. No ceiling. Nothing.”

“Sounds like a grave. And, might I add, super racist.” He gently indicated himself, saw a few pink feathers still clinging to his robe, and brushed them off.

That did nothing to assuage Raiko’s brewing indignation.

“Settle down,” Sam said. “You want a tent, Matt? Go climb the rope and get it. I’ll be sleeping up there, anyway.” He turned to Raiko. “No offense, but it doesn’t feel right to sleep away from the [Sourcestone].”

She appeared concerned. “Be careful.”

Sam knew going up to his Skyshard wouldn’t be the safest spot to bed down for the night, but he needed to be up there to protect the [Sourcestone] and the [Archflame].

“I would be glad to stay down here,” Kai pointed out. “And I will be happy to provide what assistance I can. My Nature mana may not be as strong as either of yours, but it has its uses. If we are to shape the wild land, perhaps I can be of greater use.”

Raiko nodded, plunging into the bamboo forest without another word.

Sam rose to his feet, made a gesture at Komachi, then said his goodbyes. He was tired and wanted nothing more than to rest and recover the rest of his HP and MP before figuring out what the hell he should be doing.

They had time before they arrived at the Academy, and Sam wanted to make the most of it.

Komachi meowed at him, stomped on CC’s lid with her back paw like she was starting a motorcycle, and together the duo ambled off after Sam carried on dozens of corgi paws.

There was something else that Sam had never truly been prepared for. Night was dark without any light pollution from nearby streets or cities.

Even with the glow of the large moon and the [Sourcestone] up above, it was oppressively dark. Thank goodness for his Dark Vision. It painted the absolute darkness in shades of gray, but it was better than a velvet dark wall of nothingness.

Komachi had taken quickly to CC and she used him much like you would a steed. He was, in effect, her means of conveyance now that she had a harder time fitting in his armor.

Perhaps that was for the best.

She talked quietly with the mimic, though if the mimic understood, Sam couldn’t tell.

Presumably his cat could, because she gave adequate pauses to listen to a reply, then responded to something Sam couldn’t quite pick up.

With a mouth that served double-duty as a lid, Sam imagined whatever sounds the mimic made would be quite loud. But he was more than capable of making soft and gentle sounds that even Sam with 48 Awareness couldn’t pick up.

Climbing the rope was surprisingly easy. Sam had expected to carry both Komachi and CC, but the chest went first. It needed a little help to tip itself onto its handle-side, but after that, it scaled the rope with alacrity.

Through some complicated use of its paws, it seemed to have no issue gripping the [Makeshift Rope]. Though that reminded Sam that he really need to find a better way of connecting his Skyshard to Raiko’s.

The [Sourcestone] did seem a little lonely up there.

His Skyshard was already bound in some way so that they moved together without there being any issue, but it would be nice to have a land bridge of some sort.

Even a set of stairs would be nicer than climbing a rope up and down just to get to what he was increasingly thinking of as the “main island”.

Joining the pair on his Skyshard, Sam’s quiet was broken by a familiar voice pulling itself up and over the lip of the Skyshard. “You know,” Matt panted, “it sucks having low physical stats.”

“You want me to carry you?” Sam asked with a snort.

“Not unless you’re offering. And, I can see from your face, that you are not. Still, I’m a little curious why you aren’t camping down there with the rest of them.”

Sam sat down near the Archflame’s merry blaze. He tossed a few of the last logs on, which went up in a rush of heat and light. The inner Archflame danced as the fire expanded.

Curious, and with hilarious ease, Sam rubbed two sticks together so fast that they ignited. They didn’t even smolder. A bright flame licked up each stick as if he had soaked them in lighter fluid and struck a match.

Huh.

“See what I mean?” Matt said, pointing. “You don’t even need magic when you have that much Strength. What’re you pushing now, nearly 100, I imagine?”

“Total or base?” Sam asked, setting the kindling down into already roaring fire.

“Total.”

“164. It’s my highest stat right now.”

Matt laughed and dropped down next to the fire, warming his hands. “And here I thought, maybe, just maybe, I could catch up to you.”

“Still could.”

“Fair point,” Matt said, lifting a finger. “And I raise you another. A mere mortal—okay, undead—competing with a demigod is a fool’s errand.”

“Then how will you ever get better?” Komachi asked.

“The cat has a point,” Sam said.

Matt thought this through. “Weeeell, I suppose I see your point. Not bothering to compete is the same as not training, which you can’t expect to get better if you do nothing and blame the people stronger than you. Do I have that about right?”

Sam shrugged his large shoulders. “I don’t usually think like that, so I don’t know. If there’s a barrier in front of you, just knock it down or sidestep it. Complaining about it didn’t work on Earth. Why would it work here?”

Matt shook a finger at him. “Aha! That, my dear… compatriot, is where you are wrong! Complaining about things that didn’t work or you don’t like is exactly how you get rid of them in the world of business. Of course, it also helps if you have some method of torpedoing the profitability of said thing.”

“This isn’t Earth,” Sam felt inclined to point out. “And here, there is no police officer that is going to be called if somebody with two levels on you begins to beat you into a bloody pulp because they want the same ore vein as you.”

“So you’re suggesting we revert back to savages?”

“No, but if there are savages out there, we need to be prepared to deal with them. You can reason and lodge complaints all you want, but it doesn’t do much good with a blade at your throat.”

“I truly wish you didn’t make sense.”

“We can….” Sam paused. What was he going to say? Remake the world as we see fit? In our image? How fucking cliché.

Matt leaned forward; his interest clearly snared.

“We can make ourselves a home here. And we need the strength to make sure we can keep it. That’s all. You could, I suppose, give up and let me and Raiko do all the heavy lifting. Raiko seems like she’s used to it.”

“As are you, I’d wager.”

Sam shook his head. “Everybody needs to contribute, Matt. Even if it’s not to fighting, you’d need to find another vocation.”

“Hard to do without a Profession.”

“It’s not as if we’re going to kick anybody out in the next few days. We’re just getting started. This isn’t even a settlement or an outpost, it’s a campsite that flies through the sky with magic. Eventually though, food will run out, clean water thankfully won’t be an issue, but even if we can eat these Zuu, they’ll run out too.”

Matt laced his hands behind his head and leaned back against a larger boulder. “You’ve been thinking about our future, haven’t you?”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t be modest, Sam. You’re no good at it for one. And for another, you’re acting like a leader should. Far be it from me to provide advice, but it helps when people know somebody is thinking these things. It means they don’t have to worry about it because somebody else already is. It’s a weird quirk of the human mind.”

“Learned that in one of your manager retreats?”

“All on my own, thank you very much,” Matt answered, none too modest.

“And what if I don’t want to be a leader? What if I’d rather just fight and get my battle lust on?”

“Then you’d be wasting a natural talent. Don’t give me that look, Sam. People are inclined to follow you. They listen when you speak. Hell, even Kai looks up to you and that man is practically made from stone. Besides, there’s nothing you can do.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sam asked.

“It means whether you like it or not, people will be drawn to you. Oh, maybe it’ll be because of your strength, or your ability to kill things with such violent savagery that even vicious monsters would run away with their tails tucked beneath their legs. But regardless of the reason, people will follow you.”

“I could turn them away.” Sam knew it was a stupid thing to say, and Matt’s knowing expression only further annoyed him.

“You would do that, huh?” Matt grinned and looked up at the [Sourcestone]. “The same man that took two unconscious, near death people aboard his tiny Skyshard and watched over them? Dead weight that served no purpose? We weren’t friends, Sam. I’m aware I stretch the meaning of the word ‘companion’ even. And while I don’t know what went down between you and Kai, even I could tell you two didn’t get along.”

“I get it,” Sam said, waving him to silence.

But Matt wasn’t so easy to shut up. “I don’t think you do. That’s not normal. You need to understand that. If you want to push people away and live as some sort of Grand Master who attains heights of power never seen before, go ahead and be my guest. But don’t deny your nature. You couldn’t turn away two people who, let’s be real here, didn’t mean much to you. Nobody would have thought less of you if you left us behind.”

“It wasn’t right,” Sam said, surprised that the words came out.

Not that he wanted to be the sort of lonesome bastard Matt described. He didn’t want to be a hero, either. He just… wanted to live the best life he could. Why was that so hard to understand?

“And therein lies my proof. You are, despite your ability to rend all manner of creatures limb from limb, a hero. Maybe you don’t want to admit it, or maybe this is all part of your ‘hero’s journey’, and you need to deny it first by some weird rule of fate.” Matt spread his hands.

“Whatever the case,” Matt continued, “you can either accept it and lean into it, or deny it and be miserable. Nobody is ever happy denying who they are, Sam. Trust me on that.”

“Komachi already knows Sam is a hero!” his cat yowled with conviction. Surprisingly, even CC hopped in agreement.

Sam reached over and stroked her silky fur. “We’ll see. I’m going to turn in. I suggest you do too.”

“Not going to set a watch?” Matt asked.

Sam looked at the [Sourcestone] and then the Archflame. He could feel his connection to both was stronger than ever. “I’ll know if something is off.”

“All the same, I’ll stay up a bit. I’m undead, remember? Don’t need much sleep.”

Sam slipped into his tent, followed by Komachi and CC. It was a little cramped with the addition of the mimic, but Sam was so tired that he hardly cared that a creature known for eating everything was inches away from his sleeping face.