NOVEL WEB CHAPTER 50: TEAM SUNBURN
Sarah Avery Vasilias, Great House Scion, Reborn Lvl 1
Skyland
“So I’m going to help,” Kimi-Lim said and Sarah looked back at the elf in surprise.
“I apologize for my initial suspicious reaction,” they said. “It’s easy to get caught in the same logical fallacies that the Empire uses to excuse their atrocities when you’re faced with the unknown or unexpected and you certainly count as both,” Kimi-Lim explained. “The Eternal Empire views Rebirth and advancement as the means to an end and only that. Power for power’s sake,” they shook their head and stared off into the middle distance for a while with a disgusted look on their face before they turned back to Sarah, “Rebirth isn’t just power on its own, it’s power with a purpose. At least, that’s what I’ve always been taught.”
Kimi-Lim drew in the air with their left hand—the one that wasn’t holding their thin staff—and light flowed from their hand to pool around both their feet. “I can’t let you just go off into the jungle and get yourself killed. Besides, I know where the Prize is and I’ve already scouted out the Valley of Entresis. I’d been exploring the island before making my way into the temple at the center of the valley where that Guardian is.”
Before Sarah could say anything else, the light lifted them both into the air and they floated slowly off the edge of the cliff and then, just as slowly, started to descend.
Finally shaken out of her shock at the sudden reversal and impossible glowing light elevator, Sarah said, “Uh wow, thanks! Again. You’ve probably just saved my life. Also again.”
Kimi-Lim giggled, the laugh coming naturally once more. “You should’ve seen your face when I said I wouldn’t help! Just remember this when I need your help with the Guardian, Entresis.”
“Ha. Ha,” Sarah deadpanned. “But seriously, thanks. Once I get the grafts from that Prize, I’ll be able to actually help in the fight against Entresis.”
Kimi-Lim said, “Survive getting your Prize first, then we’ll see about the Guardian. It’ll be enough of a challenge to get to it, never mind fighting it.”
“What is the Prize?” Sarah asked, realizing she still had no idea what she was seeking.
Kimi-Lim snorted with laughter and said, “It’s a bit of theater jewelry set with ethershards. I think it’s a tiara? But the nature of the Prize isn’t the concern. It’s the location.”
Sarah looked skeptical, but she shrugged and asked, “Are there booby traps? Deadly environmental hazards? More jungle giants?”
“No. It’s not that—or rather it’s not just that, because all of those things will be factors we have to deal with. It’s the thing that has decided to guard the tiara.” They shuddered with an elaborately dramatic look of disgust on their face.
“What kind of monster is it?” Sarah asked, feeling a bit skeptical at Kimi-Lim’s over-the-top reaction.
Just as they reached the jungle floor from the cliff, Kimi-Lim responded, “Manticore.” A flock of tiny reptilian flyers took to the skies and Sarah could almost swear she heard an ominous trumpet playing in the background.
“What? Is that it? Am I supposed to know what a manticore is?” Sarah thought she remembered Griffin using manticores in his D&D game but those didn’t seem worthy of the drama in Kimi-Lim’s pronouncement.
Kimi-Lim shrugged, “I suppose not? I mean, they’re kind of famous? I just thought it sounded…appropriate. They’re Boss monsters.”
Sarah glanced around nervously at the jungle by the cliff face. The trees crowded close and anything could be hiding in the tangled forest. Kimi-Lim straightened their robes a final time and set off into the jungle, calling back over their shoulder, “Let’s go.”
Minutes blended into hours of hiking through the unending hot and humid jungle. Sarah’s face and back were drenched in sweat, and she was sore from her exertions of the day stacked on top of the hike. At least the bugs weren’t bothering them. One of Kimi-Lim’s grafts extended a soothing and bolstering warmth to all their allies.
The warmth wasn’t all that welcome, but it did come with a bonus of also frying anything small and harmful that attacked them. Every once in a while, Sarah would see a little ember spark up near her as another of the flying bugs went in for the kill and got roasted by Kimi-Lim’s graft.
Sarah had time to think as they traveled. I’ve been here for years, learning to fight and learning how to use magic. She’d eventually start calling them grafts, but to her, it would always be magic. Now I’m traipsing through a jungle with an elf so that we can sneak past a Manticore to get my Prize. Is this what Gammon was training me for? Is this what I’ll be doing for…what, the next couple of years? A decade? As far as she was concerned, she could never see a jungle again and still have her fill of them.
The jungle had remained consistently thick and terrible to traverse. There were no paths and no easy way through all the tangled and often thorny plants. Sarah used Never Unarmed to form a crystalline blue machete and started hacking a path through the undergrowth.
Kimi-Lim’s method of breaking trail was to raise their staff above their head and then blast out a laser beam from the tip of their thin silverstaff. They guided the beam with precise mental control, burning away large chunks of underbrush in the way.
The laser only lasted a few seconds, but Kimi-Lim was very proficient in getting the most out of their graft’s limited duration. Each 3-4 second laser blast could clear away up to a hundred meters of tangled plants in a five-meter-wide swath but took ten minutes to come off cooldown and cost a lot of tensa.
“Man, this hike sucks,” Sarah complained, trudging behind Kimi-Lim and wiping sweat from her brow with an equally sweaty arm, her Training Tunic immediately wicking it away and staying dry as ever. “At least there haven’t been any monsters.”
Kimi-Lim laughed and stopped. Sarah nearly ran into them, concentrating on placing her feet one foot in front of the other and not tripping over any of the concealed roots that wound and twisted everywhere. “The reason we haven’t been running into any monsters is because of the spirit guardians that have been guiding our way! It’s one of my—” They huffed a sigh in annoyance, “We’re outside of the Empire in this Tutorial Realm, so using the System is less problematic, even if I’d rather not… But we really can’t go on like this. Here.”
They used their Laser graft to burn away a small section of jungle floor to sit down on. Kimi-Lim pulled a picnic blanket from a pouch at their waist and spread it over the debris on the jungle floor so that they wouldn’t get poked. They sat down on the blanket and patted the seat next to them invitingly.
Grateful for the opportunity to take a break, Sarah collapsed to the jungle floor, feeling her sore everything throb painfully. Kimi-Lim stared off into the middle distance for a moment, clearly focused on something Sarah couldn’t see when two text boxes suddenly appeared in front of her, the first one read:
Party Invitation
You have received an invitation from Kimi-Lim Uilui, Stone Light Mage level 8 to join their party, “Team Sunburn”. Loot-sharing has been set to private.
Accept / Decline
She raised an eyebrow at Kimi-Lim, “You’re calling the party ‘Team Sunburn’?”
“I’ve been workshopping a bunch of really just excellent party names!” Kimi-Lim said in a rush, “Team Sunburn is just the latest. There’s also been the Solar Slayers, Seven Deadly Suns, Rays Hell, Heart and Sol, The Sunderers—no one really got the ‘Sun’ theme on that last one, too bad—there’s more if you want to hear them!”
Sarah did her best to answer diplomatically, “Ah, no that’s okay. Those are all… great. Really. Great. So just accept the party thing and then what’s this next one?”
Kimi-Lim nodded and continued, “I need to be able to see what you can do and you need to be able to understand what my grafts do if we’re going to be able to work together at all. You’ve already trusted me this far, so sharing your Reborn Status information shouldn’t be too big a deal.”
Sarah looked at the next System message and read through it, beginning to wonder if she should’ve snagged a notebook from Gammon to write all this stuff down.
Personal Reborn Status Share Request
You have received a Personal Reborn Status share request from Kimi-Lim Uilui, Stone Light Mage level 8. Detail level: Basic. This has been set to a reciprocal share lasting for party lifetime.
Accept / Decline
Sarah shrugged and mentally accepted the party invitation, then the Personal Status request. Immediately, she saw another purple-outlined text box appear in front of her. This one was Kimi-Lim’s… well, it looked like a System profile just like hers. She saw that it had the same level of detail as hers did, but where she could examine every aspect of her profile, she only got some basic information from Kimi-Lim’s.
Kimi-Lim Uilui
Race
Elf
Rank
Stone Level 8
Class
Light Mage
Racial Gifts
System Access, Mystic Affinity, Heat Adapted, Natural Spellcasting, Camouflage, Spirit Sight
Attributes
Dominion
8 / 30 [Dark]
Speed
22 / 30 [Sun]
Precision
15 / 30 [Focus]
Growth
12/ 30 [Mystic]
Arcana
28 / 30 [Rainbow]
Gear
Sunrise Robes, Leaping Boots, Battery Bandolier, Spellweaver Mk 1, Elven Longrifle, Silverstaff, BOTI Bag, Spell Components kit, Systablo
Grafts
Sun Dog [Dominion - Sun], Solar Step [Dominion - Dance], Night Needles [Speed - Dark], Laser [Precision - Focus], Spirit Friends [Growth - Mystic], Spectrum Spray [Arcana - Rainbow], Love of the Light [Growth - Mystic ], Solar Embrace [Speed - Sun]
“Oh wow,” Sarah said, “you’re already Stone rank? What’s it like to have one of your Attributes at almost thirty? How’d you get your Class? These grafts look incredible!”
“My Class is just a stepping stone,” Kimi-Lim replied. “Light mage will evolve at Ivory rank, assuming I can fulfill my Quests. I’m hoping for a Dungeon Mage of some kind. I want to be an Integration Architect.”
Gotta have goals I guess, Sarah thought. Aloud, she said, “What does an Integration Architect do?”
Kimi-Lim grinned, their eyes glancing up from Sarah’s profile for a moment before they went back to it as they said, “They use their magic to guide a Dungeon to produce whatever is needed.” When Sarah didn’t look impressed, Kimi-Lim continued, “That means that an experienced Integration Architect can fulfill an entire Dungeon work order on their own, without the need for costly and risky operations with Reborn teams that go Dungeon delving.”
“That does sound pretty fuckin’ rad,” Sarah said and meant it. “Gammon hasn’t spent much time on Dungeons with me. He just said that dangerous monsters live in them or maybe they’re born there…He wasn’t too clear on that. He said there are Dungeon Cores which are kind of like the magical heart of the Dungeon. Is that what you…integrate with?”
Kimi-Lim snorted, “You really need to get a better teacher, Sarah. If this Gammon has neglected to mention Dungeons. They’re the lifeblood of the Empire and I’ve always contended that it’s how they’ve come to dominate this part of the world. The economic impact of Dungeons alone should have been worth mentioning.”
This is more complicated than I assumed, Sarah thought. And here I thought there’d just be a bunch of adventurers who go out and kill monsters and collect treasure.
“What can I say, I got the quality of education I paid for,” Sarah said, smiling. “Which was for free.”
Kimi-Lim smiled absently as they read through Sarah’s much shorter Reborn Status sheet. “I’m impressed. Your racial gifts are… incredibly useful. Not only do you get the Enhanced System Access with your Great House Seal, but you also get improved self-healing and instant magical weapons! Those first two gifts are going to be incredibly useful if you plan on going into the Empire. It’s more situationally useful outside of it.”
Sarah shrugged, “I didn’t exactly have a choice. I got what I got.”
Kimi-Lim nodded, “That’s how it works for everyone. Humans are pretty unique though. Their racial gifts can be anything.” They shot Sarah a look of envy. “For elves, orcs, ginpaari, and everyone else, there’s only a limited spectrum of racial gifts you’ll unlock when you’re Reborn. Humans also get to evolve their racial gifts in addition to their Classes, assuming they meet hidden requirements, so it’s almost unfair—except humans are mostly in the minority outside of a few human-only or mostly human noble houses in the Empire.”
“That’s a lot to take in,” Sarah said. Kimi-Lim shrugged, still examining Sarah’s profile There wasn’t much there, so Sarah had no real idea what the elf found so interesting in it.
They narrowed their eyes as they read through the minimal description of Sarah’s single graft. “Now this is interesting. I mean the graft is a useful combat graft with some incredible utility—The Edge That Cuts Anything is a fairly common graft from Sword and Blade ethershards, but not so much from Dimension etherhards though. But I’m just wondering at what kind of Class platform you’re building. If you’re following Bennet’s method, you’re going to need to settle on a theme. Of course, if you’re more of a Pwaree Analytics student, you’re looking to get as disparate a set as possible, so you can maximize your later utility. After all, Dimension ethershards are stupidly rare and any Classes built on primary Dimension Attributes are going to be either really rare themselves or incredibly specialized. We’re talking three and even four-star Classes. Maybe even a Unique. Imperial Reborn are all about Common Classes: they like to specialize with Class evolutions in Sapphire or Jade ranks. But just looking at what you have here, I think you’re going to have a more interesting path.”
Sarah stood stunned by the flood of words, not really sure how to respond. She turned instead to Kimi-Lim’s profile, examining their Night Needles graft since it sounded cool. She figured the only thing she could’ve added to Kimi-Lim’s monologue would’ve been head nods in the appropriate places anyway.
Night Needles [Speed - Dark]
Next Rank: 1 Rare ethershard of Darkness, 1 Uncommon ethershard of the Swarm, 1 Common ethershard of Needles
Cost: 100 sparks
Cooldown: None
Description: Launch a needle made of infused shadow at a target within sight. Deals minor Dark-aspected piercing damage. Detonate a Needle by expending the cost again; alternately, you may choose to absorb all Night Needles that have not been detonated. Night Needles absorbed in this way absorb all shadows within 5 meters of the Needle and grant an instance of Shadow Control.
Shadow Control: Expend an instance of Shadow Control to grant you control of shadows within 5 meters of you for up to 10 minutes.
“This seems like a pretty complicated attack graft,” Sarah said, reading it over. “It has kind of shitty damage potential, but it seems to be more about that Shadow Control thing.”
“Good observation! My class has some damage-dealing potential, but Light Mages are all about area control and buffs for the party. I already have some pretty sweet combos that are getting set up based on the presence or absence of shadows, so this graft is mostly useful to rid a room of shadows.
“I’ve started with most of the attack grafts I’m ever going to get and—unless I go completely off the Class Guide—I’m looking forward to becoming more of a support resource in a fight.” They shrugged uncomfortably, “I don’t like killing monsters much. I just love the fusion of science and art required to build an effective Class. It’s kind of a passion.”
Sarah laughed, “I have no idea what kind of Class I’m looking for.”
“Well, with a Great House backing you—”
Sarah shook her head and interrupted, “It’s probably best if you just count them out entirely. They don’t even know I exist and I have no way of telling them.”
“Yet,” Kimi-Lim pointed a meaningful finger at Sarah. “In the Empire, Great Houses are like entire governments in themselves! They wield a ton of power and they have pretty much unlimited resources.”
“It wouldn’t take much for them to realize I’m not a member of the family,” Sarah said sarcastically. “I doubt there’s much family resemblance.”
Kimi-Lim shook their head, “It doesn’t take genetics to be part of a Great House… It’s all in the etherheart. If you don’t have one with a Great House Seal on it, you aren’t a member of the Great Houses. And they don’t just give those etherhearts out. There must be quite the story behind how you got yours.”
“What I know of my own story is confusing, scary, and doesn’t make much sense. I feel like my life has been hijacked and what little control I had is just completely gone.” Sarah sighed, looking away from the golden-haired elf. “It’s why I’m here on this crazy Skyland. I need something to help me feel like I have some control over my own life again. And besides, I told my teacher, Gammon, that I’d get that key from Entresis. It’s even like a side Quest thing in the System.”
Kimi-Lim perked up at that, “You’ve taken on a side Quest? That’s a good sign, actually. These Tutorial Realms are less dangerous than the real world and the Quests on offer are usually quite rewarding. Though if you’re looking to face Entresis, that thing is…well it’s intense.”
“I don’t want to face it, not really.” Sarah ran a hand through her hair and grimaced. “Gammon said that I wouldn’t need to fight it to get the key he needs; frankly, I have no idea how that’s gonna work.”
“Entresis is no pushover,” Kimi-Lim said slowly, “It’s a Boss monster, but it’s from the Tutorial Realm. It’s bound here and so it has to follow certain rules; it outlines all these conditions when you meet them. I wasn’t interested in any kind of fight and the treasures in its Vault hold no value to me. It let me pass, but I got a good look at it before I did. That thing is a titan of offense and defense.”
“Great! Well, it’s a good thing that I don’t intend to fight it then. I don’t care about the treasure either.” Sarah shrugged, “I just want to get that key from it and then take it back to Gammon. Show him I fucking did it. Then maybe I’ll be able to actually figure out a point to all this training and finally find Griffin.”
Kimi-Lim reached out and touched Sarah’s knee. Sarah looked back over and the elf Light Mage’s face was open and sincere, “Sarah, the only way for anyone to get that kind of control here,” they gestured with one hand, enveloping everything with a wave, “is to climb the ladder. Advancement. From Stone Rank to Amethyst if we can survive that long. With that kind of power, you’d be able to take control, protect those you love, or burn your name into the archives of the System: remembered forever by the Reborn who come after you!”
Sarah caught a little quiver in Kimi-Lim’s voice when they said ‘Protect those you love’, but their face had closed off, and they stood up again. “Time to get going again?” Sarah asked.
Kimi-Lim nodded and they set out into the jungle again but Sarah couldn’t concentrate entirely on their surroundings. The elf mage’s words kept tumbling around in her head. It wasn’t so much that Kimi-Lim’s advice about advancement was unusual or troubling, but it painted a picture of a world that Sarah wasn’t sure she liked. In a world where everyone was constantly striving for advancement in a never-ending struggle to get better, where did that leave the normal people? Those who just wanted to live their lives and have kids and go to work?
What were they getting better at? Sarah considered that question at length too. In all her years here, Gammon had been teaching her how to fight and defend herself. She was learning complex movement techniques and how to wield her anima like a weapon. It did not paint a picture of a world at peace. If everyone was always fighting and killing, then those with the most power in this place were those who were the very best at fighting and killing. Earth had its issues, sure, but when people had the kind of personal power that these grafts seemed to give, Sarah had a hard time believing that it didn’t go to a few of their heads. What did that mean for her?
There were no easy answers for her except the one that Kimi-Lim had already given: in a world like this, you fight and advance. If you don’t, you get crushed underfoot. Sarah didn’t like that idea, but what could she do about it? It’d be better to get out of the Tutorial Realm first and see if her fears were justified. But she had a creeping suspicion that she wouldn’t like what she saw. “I am not going to be a victim here,” Sarah swore to herself. “I’m going to win this stupid Prize and then… well. First, the Prize.”