NOVEL WEB CHAPTER 56: THE PRIZE
Sarah Avery Vasilias, Great House Scion, Reborn Lvl 1
Tutorial Realm
Sarah sighed and shook out her arms, careful not to upset her balance on her precarious perch. She carefully took her grip and hung from the crossbar connecting the street light to the lamp post, a full twelve meters above the pavement.
It’s not too different from the uneven bars, she thought, adjusting her grip slightly and grinning. I could do this for days!
The red eye on Gammon’s forehead flashed and she felt violently booted out of the driver’s seat of her own body. She was roughly shoved aside and something, no someone else took over.
What the fuck is this?! She thought, It’s in my head! Gammon is in my head!
She mentally retched, feeling like she had an army of tapeworms inside her head, wriggling around. She was hag-ridden. A welter of chaotic emotions battered at her: panic, terror, revulsion, embarrassment, confusion, and above it all…anger. Pure, unadulterated, white-hot anger.
Compelled!
You are under the Compulsion condition. You may not act of your own free will for the duration of the condition.
Duration: 00:45
She felt Gammon in her head moving her body. What were they doing?! She lifted her left pinky, eyes calm and staring down at the ground. She felt his mind within her own, pushing her consciousness out of the way. His presence was overwhelming in every way.
“The time starts now,” she felt Gammon say with her voice, using her throat and her tongue to utter the words. She tried to cough his presence out of her, but even her involuntary reflexes were denied to her.
Compulsion Resistance Attempt Failure
Your attempt to resist the Compulsion effect has failed. You are under the Compulsion condition. You may not act of your own free will for the duration of the condition.
Duration: 00:41
No! She felt the anger in her crystallize as her anima weapons crystallized seemingly out of nothing. Sarah pushed against the invasive presence in her mind with all her strength. It was like pushing against a boulder. It barely deigned to notice her momentary presence before it flicked her away. Sarah’s consciousness went spinning away, tumbling end over end into nothing. She screamed as she flew, though her physical body did none of that. Untethered to her real self, it lifted the ring finger of her left hand.
Sarah’s self tumbled away into nothingness for what seemed like an age. She never ran out of breath to scream here—wherever here was—and eventually, she just petered out, becoming seasick from the constant spinning. Where even am I? She demanded of the universe in general. Surprisingly, the universe answered her. You are trapped within your own mind; your entire universe right now is just you—me. It’s just me in here. Well, not just me. There is that other one.
Her perspective shifted and suddenly she was no longer crowded out of her head, but visualizing the invader as a nasty, crouching little gremlin. It was locked away in her head right now, but it was doing mischief and would hurt her if it could. All Sarah had to do was figure out how to get through that door.
It occurred to her then that the door was just something she imagined. But that felt wrong… Not something she imagined at all. It was the gremlin’s imagination that made the door. Odd. It shouldn’t be there. She tried to change it but felt the shape of it—the idea of the door—resisting. She…pushed against whatever was resisting her and felt it give a little. Just a tiny bit. She pushed again, not sure how she was pushing or what she was pushing against.
Compulsion Resistance Attempt Failure
Your attempt to resist the Compulsion effect has failed. You are under the Compulsion condition. You may not act of your own free will for the duration of the condition.
Duration: 00:22
The resistance against her increased, but she felt the give increase. She teased at it, eking out every advantage she could, making incremental progress over what felt like hours. She heard the voice—her voice, but being spoken with someone else’s will—start saying, “Twenty seconds left!” As she started lifting her middle finger to join the other two fingers she’d already raised. Sweat trickled down her back and her remaining fingers trembled with the strain.
She screamed inside her head, pouring all the anger and frustration, all the rage and humiliation she felt at this incredibly invasive act, into pushing into the door. And she felt the door in her head burst open at nearly the same time as the presence in her mind was about to make her lift the next finger. The gremlin looked surprised as she rushed back into her mind, and it had no chance at all against her once she was back in her head. With a howl and a poof of dust, the gremlin was gone.
Compulsion Resistance Attempt Success
Your attempt to resist the Compulsion effect has succeeded! You are no longer under the effects of Compulsion and may act of your own free will.
With a start, Sarah realized she was about to lose her grip on the streetlamp. She swung her legs up and caught the crossbeam just as she felt her fingers give out. She glared down at Gammon who was rubbing his head and getting up. The glowing red eye on his forehead was shattered and dim.
“What was that?” She demanded.
“Practice,” Gammon grumbled, massaging his temples. “Keep it up and you’ll be able to resist me without losing control.”
Sarah grimaced, massaging her hands before she righted herself and slid down the pole of the street lamp. It was a lesson she wouldn’t soon forget; the feeling of being controlled like that, a passenger in her own body. At least now she knew what the Willful racial gift was for.
Sarah Avery Vasilias, Great House Scion, Reborn Lvl 1
Skyland
The pain in Sarah’s arm was beyond anything she’d ever experienced. It was everything right now. It demanded all of her attention and all it wanted to do was make her scream and curl into a ball and cry. Tears flooded down her cheeks, but she did not scream, and she did not curl into a ball. She pulled the pain into her: there was no way she could ignore it. But for now, with the pain bottled within her, held inside with her will…for now, she could act.
She stood slowly, not daring to look at the stump of her left arm. As she got to her feet, she swayed a little from vertigo. Her mind was mostly clear, and she re-examined her surroundings. There was a rain of quills all around her, and there, just a few meters away and still pinned to the pedestal, was her arm. Sarah had to resist a wild urge to go and get her arm from the pedestal.
She heard a strange, leathery rustling sound from somewhere off to her back left and she spun around, eyes going wide as she realized her mistake. The Manticore was even more disgusting and terrifying in person than even Kimi-Lim’s lurid description had made it out to be.
It resembled a mangy hunting cat with prominent ribs showing through matted, patchy dirty blonde fur. The monster had four powerful limbs, each ending in feet with six toes armed with claws that were so long they could never be fully retracted. The paws looked big enough to cover Sarah’s entire face and leave room.
The monster was enormous: even hunched over, looming like it was, it towered over her. Its huge head was covered in long, greasy hair teased out to look like a lion's mane, but the most disturbing feature about the monster by far was its face. It had the face of a human, but terrifyingly wrong.
Its eyes were too big and too far apart; they were bloodshot and had pupils like a cat’s. Its mouth was so wide its grin could literally go from ear to ear and the teeth its thin, cracked lips barely concealed were metallic and thin like a mouthful of needles. The face was vaguely human in basic configuration but that only served to emphasize its alienness: there was nothing human in the anguished, animal hunger of its expression. She examined the monster using the System, as Gammon had taught her to always do:
Manticore
Enhanced System Monster Entry
Description
The manticore is a Class 1 Boss monster most often found in deserts and barrens. They prefer to hunt from ambush, using their poisonous quills to weaken or kill prey before they swoop down and tear them apart.
Rarity
Rare
Class/Level
1/B4 (Class 1 level 6 Boss)
Type
Arcane Beast
Size
Large (5 meters)
Defenses
Thick hide; Agile Defense; Flying
Attacks
Rake – Physical damage. Slashing. Applies an instance of Bleed on hit.
Bite – Physical damage. Piercing. On a successful Bite attack, applies Restrained.
Quill Attack – Physical Damage. Ranged. Applies Restrained and Poisoned with Manticore Poison on hit. On Critical Hit, chance for Dismemberment.
The window minimized to her side, but she paid particular attention to the Quill Attack since it could hit her from range. If only I could make a damn gun! She thought desperately.
This thing was a fucking nightmare. It could rake with its claws and make you bleed out, its bite restrained you, and it could shoot quills from its tail that would poison, restrain, and if you were really unlucky, dismember you! She shuddered unconsciously and the manticore’s eyes widened a little at the overt display of distress from its prey. Its muscles bunched along its shoulders and back and Sarah dismissed the monster entry, not wanting to be distracted.
Sarah prepared to leap to the side, but the manticore was watching her with the intensity of a cat watching an insect it had caught. If she tried to get past it, she was pretty sure it’d catch her no problem. A rustle in the thorn bushes alerted her to the manticore’s long tail with the huge quills still in plentiful supply on the end of the tail. Sarah had no idea what to do.
The manticore seemed to be growing tired of its observation game. Its huge tail was flicking in the underbrush, flattening brambles with each swish in obvious irritation. It crouched down, preparing to pound on her when it suddenly reared back, hissing and spitting. Sarah stared. Its face had been riddled with around fifty acupuncture-sized needles made of pure darkness.
The manticore snarled and swiped at its face with one paw, but the needles were tenacious, even if they only seemed to irritate the monster rather than injure it. Sarah didn’t waste the opportunity the manticore’s momentary distraction was granting her: she dashed to the side, trying to put some distance between her and it.
Sarah caught sight of Kimi-Lim as the elf made their way down from the edge of the valley while Sarah was still picking her way toward the Prize, refilling their tensa pool as fast as they could. The Light Mage was sprinting through the valley, unconcerned about the brambles or about keeping under cover. As Kimi-Lim ran, they thrust their hand out and more black needles shot at the manticore, sinking deep into its hide but again not doing much real damage.
“This is my last volley of Night Needles!” Kimi-Lim yelled.
Sarah didn’t need to be told twice. She turned and ran, going as fast as she possibly could while still staying upright. Kimi-Lim was now circling the manticore, keeping a good fifteen meters away. The manticore, ignoring Sarah for now, stalked Kimi-Lim, its human-like face screwed up in exaggerated greed and anger.
It would have looked comical on a person; on the manticore, the expression was bizarre and alien. It flapped its wings occasionally, though it didn’t take to the air. It kept lashing its tail back and forth, the long quills at the end rattling together loudly.
Sarah was out of energy. What little reserve she’d managed to bring up to stand up and run was now exhausted. She stumbled and fell, rolling into a tangle of brambles and juniper bush. Thorns scratched at her and stuck to her, but she ignored the tiny hurts of the little cuts and punctures—the much bigger pain in the stump where her arm used to be still had all of her attention. She lay there, panting and trying not to retch and cough from the heat and the pain. That’s when she heard Kimi-Lim’s scream.
The scream suddenly cut off and Sarah scrambled to get out of the thorns and juniper. She forced herself up again, her vision greying out a couple of times as she stood and swayed on her feet. She saw the manticore crouched over something about thirty meters away from her.
Its head dipped down and came back up, blood dripping from its wide mouth. The manticore turned its huge head and looked right at Sarah, smiling. It licked its lips, cleaning the blood off them, then dipped its head again and when it came back, it was holding Kimi-Lim in its jaws.
There was no way to tell if the elf was still alive. Kimi-Lim’s right leg had been impaled by one of the long quills from the manticore’s tail and it was bleeding freely. The manticore spread its wings and with a few great flaps, it took off, leaping into the air with Kimi-Lim.
It soared over the valley, swishing its tail lazily back and forth as it went. The monster appeared to have completely ignored Sarah. Maybe it thought the poison on its quills would take care of her while it waited.
Sarah stared after it for a long moment, weighing her options. She had no arm. That was going to be a real problem. And Kimi-Lim was probably dead—if she wasn’t dead already, she would be soon. The smart thing to do would be to grab the Prize and go. She’d find a place to hole up and heal as much as she could before she’d try to climb back down to Gammon and continue her training. Or retire; whatever. She’d live.
So why was she still watching where the manticore flew? Why was she still hesitating and gauging different approaches as it landed in a little stand of dead trees just half a kilometer away? She shook her head and ran back to the pedestal. She hadn’t made it that far when Kimi-Lim had distracted the monster, so she didn’t have far to go. She grabbed the Prize off the pedestal, trying to ignore her arm still pinned to it.
She couldn’t keep her eyes off her left arm, neatly severed and just hanging there like a horror movie prop, bloodless and fake-looking. She felt the cold, hard edges of the glowing Prize in her hand and she turned away, ripping her eyes away from her severed arm. As soon as the Prize was removed from the pedestal, it stopped glowing and Sarah looked down at it. Before it could become clear what the Prize was, a System message popped up in front of her face, obscuring her vision.
Quest Complete! CLAIM THE PRIZE
Details: Claim the Prize hidden on the floating Skyland of the Tutorial Realm.
Optional Objective 1 Status: Incomplete
Optional Objective 2 Status: Incomplete
Reward: 4 ethershards of Common to Epic quality!
Additional Rewards: None
The System message faded into transparency as soon as she read it. Sarah finally saw the Prize clearly for the first time and nearly dropped it. It looked just like a Christmas tree star topper. But each of the five points was a different color. Not only that, but each of the points, save one, was an ethershard. This was what had been worth risking everything for? She couldn’t believe it—the pain made it hard to think at all. She clung to her training: why else was she here, going through all this madness? She accessed the System, looking at each of the ethershards in the star.
They were wired together, but that didn’t prevent the System from identifying each one. There were ethershards of Lightning, Bow, Strength, and Cybernetics. The last spot on the star was just a clear crystal spike with the same delicate wirework holding it to the rest of them. Absorb them, that’s the plan. That’s always been the plan. You just have to do it faster now. She’d already practiced the anima configuration necessary to absorb etherhearts.
Remember, Gammon said I’d need to position ethershards directly over my heart or they’ll just drill through my flesh. It had been a particular point of his.
Some Reborn tried to absorb them through their hands. They did this exactly once if they ever recovered from the traumatic experience. She knew she was likely deep in shock and only staving off the effects through pure adrenaline and the furious tensa cycling she was maintaining but she probably wouldn’t last another five minutes at this rate.