Chapter 11 - 10 — Gate Failure [I]
POV: Jace
The floor came up under my boots before I was ready for it.
The stone was uneven and slick, so my balance pitched forward and I had to catch myself with one hand to keep from walking straight into the back of Bria’s shield.
I turned around immediately to count the others.
Idris came through, then Nia, then Tomas, and behind all of them the Green Gate hung at the end of the tunnel like a pool of moving light stood on its end, which meant the way out was still where we left it.
We were standing in a mine.
Rotten timber braced the walls at intervals, and rusted rails ran away from us into a dark that our lights did not reach, while pale-green crystals pushed up through the cracks in the damp stone.
Water dripped somewhere further in, steady and unhurried, and the air came in thick with wet earth and old iron and something underneath both of them that had been dead for a while.
"Does every dungeon smell like something died in here?"
"We’re surrounded by monsters," Idris said. "Something probably did."
"That does not make me feel better."
None of them knew how to stand yet.
Bria had her shield pulled in tight against her chest where it protected her and nobody else, while Idris held his sword up so long that his shoulder had already started creeping toward his ear.
Tomas had drawn his bow at nothing at all, and Nia kept turning her head back toward the Gate.
I knew the shape of a formation because I had grown up watching Players walk them, though I had never once been inside a dungeon myself, and I had certainly never had four frightened people looking at me to arrange them.
So I only fixed the two things that were going to get somebody hurt.
"Tomas, drop your draw until you have something to shoot at."
"I’m ready, though."
"You’re going to be shaking in four minutes. Bria, give Idris room on your right, because he can’t swing where you’re standing."
Bria moved half a step without arguing, and Idris let his sword come down to a rest position, and that was as much order as I was going to get out of anyone.
While they settled, I opened my Status.
[STATUS]
Name: Jace Nolan Age: 18 Level: 1 EXP: 0/100 Player Rank: SSS
Health: 200/200 Mana: 150/150
Strength: 18 Endurance: 20 Agility: 17 Perception: 16 Willpower: 32
Unassigned Attribute Points: 0
The Health line answered a question I had never thought to ask before today, since twenty Endurance had given me exactly two hundred Health, which put it at ten Health for every point.
Mana sat outside the five attributes entirely, and that made sense, because what a Player starts with there depends on their awakening and the rank of what they woke up with rather than on how much they can lift.
The EXP counter was the useful part. One hundred to reach Level 2, with nothing on the board yet, and no way to guess what a kill was worth until I had actually killed something.
Then I heard claws scrape on timber above us.
I put a gauntlet up. "Stop."
"What? What did you h—"
A body dropped off the support platform and landed between us and the dark.
It came up to about the height of a child, though nothing else about it was childlike, since its limbs were too long and bent wrong at the joints, and its grey-green skin lay tight enough over its ribs to count them.
Pointed ears stuck out from the sides of its skull, and its eyes were yellow under a heavy shelf of brow, and its mouth ran too wide across its face and held far too many small stained teeth.
Black nails curled around the grip of a chipped knife.
[Goblin — Level 2]
[HP: 70/70.]
A second one came out of the left tunnel at a run with a short spear held low, and a third dragged itself out from beneath an overturned mining cart behind Tomas.
The spear reached us first.
It went straight at Bria’s stomach and she got the point on her shield, but her feet were too close together, so the impact walked her backward into Idris and killed the swing he had already started.
The knife Goblin landed next to Nia and cut across her middle.
She jerked back fast enough that it only opened her jacket, and then she stopped moving entirely and stared down at the torn fabric.
Tomas spun on the one behind him and loosed without setting his feet, and his arrow went over its shoulder and buried itself in a support beam.
I got to the knife Goblin before it could correct.
My left gauntlet knocked its wrist out wide, and I put my right fist into the side of its jaw.
[Goblin — Level 2]
[HP: 70/70 → 48/70.]
Its head snapped sideways and its jaw hung crooked afterwards, and then it came straight back at me and tried to push the knife up under my ribs.
I caught its forearm between both gauntlets.
For half a second I had assumed something that size would simply stop, and it did not, because the knife kept creeping toward me even with both my hands on its arm and my weight behind them.
I pulled Aten’s description open while I held it.
[Aten — SSS]
[Type: Active Ability.]
[The authority of the solar disk.]
[The user may manifest and control white-gold solar energy.]
[Base Mana Consumption: 2 Mana for every minute Aten remains active.]
[The first minute is charged immediately upon activation.]
[Additional Mana consumption increases according to output, heat, density, range, and compression.]
[Safe output is limited by the user’s physical tolerance and current control.]
So switching it on cost two immediately, whether I held it for the full minute or dropped it after four seconds, and every further minute cost two more.
A thin coating would sit near that base, while anything I actually compressed or threw was going to charge me on top.
I put it into my right gauntlet only.
[Ability Activated: Aten.]
[Mana: 150/150 → 148/150.]
White-gold spread across the reinforced plating, and the inner lining went hot enough to hurt without the metal giving, since the conductive material was built to carry exactly this and nothing about my hand was.
I twisted the knife away from my body and drove the burning gauntlet into its chest.
[Additional Mana consumed: 4.]
[Mana: 148/150 → 144/150.]
[Goblin — Level 2]
[HP: 48/70 → 0/70.]
[You have slain a Level 2 Goblin.]
[Experience acquired: 10.]
[EXP: 0/100 → 10/100.]
The fight did not wait for me to read it.
Bria had spread her back foot, so when the spear came in again she took it without going anywhere and trapped the head flat against her shield face.
Idris stopped trying to repeat his big swing, stepped in beside her, and cut low behind the Goblin’s knee.
It dropped onto one leg, and I kicked the spear shaft out of its hands before it could get the weapon up again, and Idris put his sword through its chest.
[Goblin — Level 2]
[HP: 70/70 → 0/70.]
[Party kill confirmed.]
[Contribution threshold met.]
[Experience acquired: 10.]
[EXP: 10/100 → 20/100.]
I had killed the first one with my own hands and been paid ten, and Idris had finished the second one while I only kicked a spear away, and I had still been paid ten.
Both of them Level 2, both worth the same, so it looked like five times the level, and it looked like the reward was not being split between everyone who helped.
That last part mattered more than the number. If experience were divided by the killing blow, no Tank would ever hold a line and no Healer would ever stay back, because everybody would be racing each other for the last hit.
I would need more fights before I called it a rule, though.
Behind us the third Goblin ran at Tomas while he was still pulling another arrow.
He backed off instead of trying to shoot it at arm’s length, which was the right call, and Nia came out of her freeze long enough to kick the overturned cart into its path so that it stumbled over the track.
That bought Tomas his distance, and his second arrow went in under its collarbone and turned it sideways without putting it down.
Bria left the wounded one to Idris, crossed the gap, and smashed the rim of her shield into its temple.
[Goblin — Level 2]
[HP: 70/70 → 0/70.]
[Party kill confirmed.]
[Contribution threshold met.]
[Experience acquired: 10.]
[EXP: 20/100 → 30/100.]
Three Goblins, thirty EXP, and not one of those seventy-HP bodies had paid differently from the others.