Chapter 31: Grinding
When they got to the carved stone ramp that led down around the pit in a spiral, Victor had a sudden surge of vertigo. The ramp was about as wide as a one-lane road back on Earth, but there was no railing, and it had a fairly steep slope. What was worse, he could see out across the pit to see the ramp winding down around the ledge, growing smaller and fainter the further he looked. Hanging in the air, at the center of the “well” about a hundred, or a thousand for all Victor could tell, feet down, mist clouded the air, reflecting the bright yellow lights from above.
Some of the gathered delvers snickered when they saw Victor stumble and hold out his hands for balance when he walked up. He looked around, scowling, but the assembled characters weren’t intimidated by his glare. All sorts were there, lounging or standing idly, tapping their batons in their fists. He saw a huge, bulky Ardeni that made even Ponda seem small. He saw a pair of Ghelli women, their wings glittering—not as large or as brilliant as Lam’s wings, but they looked a lot more functional than Edeya’s. A cluster of four Vodkin brought his mind back to Ponda, yet again, as they laughed at some joke, their big, furry bellies jiggling with the motion. Then there were the usual red-skinned Shadeni and normal-sized Ardeni—some were kitted out in armor and looking ready for action, and some looked more like Victor or Edeya, their gear cheap and patchy and their eyes hungry.
“When was the last wave?” Heng asked, glaring around. As far as Vodkin go, Heng wasn’t a very big guy, but he had a look that gave people second thoughts about being rude. A tall Shadeni woman that was all legs and long arms walked up and clasped his hand.
“Heng!” she said, “been too long!”
“Aye, Captain’s kept us busy. Anyway, when was the last wave?”
“Not gonna introduce me to your friends?” she asked, ignoring his question again. She turned to Victor and Edeya and said, “I’m Shar. Heng used to be my lover.” Heng groaned and slapped a hand to his furry head. Victor snorted out a laugh before he could catch himself, but Edeya stepped forward and held out her hand.
“I’m Edeya! So nice to meet you! This tall guy is Victor.” Edeya clapped a hand on Victor’s shoulder, and he smiled at Shar.
“Good to meet you.”
“Come on, Shar, how long since the last wave?” Heng tried for the third time.
“Oh, you’re no fun, Heng! It’s been about fifteen minutes; we’d just thrown the bodies over when you all walked up.”
“What was it?”
“Stone imps—only about twenty of them.”
“Think we’re going to head down a bit. This crowd’s a little much.” Heng started walking toward the ramp, and Victor looked at Edeya before following. Her eyes were wide, and he caught her licking her lips nervously as she began to follow after Heng.
“Heng, don’t do that! Some of us don’t want to go deeper; you know what happened to Trennet!” Shar called after Heng.
“Who’s Trennet?” Victor asked Shar.
“A friend of ours that went to the second platform. Never heard from him again. Heng’s stubborn, though, and he won’t want to share with this many. Ahh, well, guess we can loaf about until he gets bored.” Victor looked at the other delvers and saw that a handful were standing up and starting to follow after Heng. Still, the vast majority were grumbling and looking toward the door, apparently unwilling to go deeper for action but not wanting to hang around waiting for Heng and his group to come back up.
“So people that don’t want to go deeper will just sit here and twiddle their thumbs?” he asked.
“Hah, funny guy, aren’t you? ‘Twiddle our thumbs?’ I like it!” She reached forward and gave Victor’s shoulder a squeeze. “You are a big one, aren’t you?”
“Um, yeah. I better go catch up to Heng.” Victor awkwardly pulled away and hurried after the smaller group of delvers moving down the ramp. He could hear Shar’s laughter following after him, and his ears started to burn. Why was he running away? What was wrong with a friendly woman? He shook his head, cursing his awkwardness.
“She a little too forward for you?” Edeya asked, and Victor realized she’d been watching the exchange.
“Aw, c’mon. I know when to steer clear of drama, and she seemed like more than I could handle,” Victor shrugged.
“Mmhmm.” Edeya was walking backward, talking to him, and she looked like she would steer herself right off the curving ramp.
“Watch where you’re going, chica!” Victor snapped, wincing at the image of her tumbling into the bottomless well. She turned and scooted further from the ledge.
“Glad to know you care,” she laughed. “I’m not an idiot, though; I wasn’t going to walk off!”
“Ugh, this fucking well is giving me the creeps. No one has ever been to the bottom?”
“Yeah, from what I hear. If anyone’s seen the bottom, they never made it back out again.”
“What about Lam? She ever try?” Victor couldn’t imagine Captain Lam struggling to kill anything that might be down there.
“No idea! I’ve been in her unit as long as you have!”
“Right.” They’d caught up with Heng and the other five delvers who’d followed him, but they were still walking along the ramp. Victor couldn’t see any sort of platform yet. “How far is the first platform?”
“Few more turns,” Heng said, spitting a gob of black saliva out toward the well.
“What you chewing, man?” Victor asked. Heng dug around in his belt and produced a square, brass tin. He held it out to Victor.
“Yiil weed. Want some?” Victor took the tin and lifted off the top, taking a sniff of the black, moist powder within. It smelled bitter and pungent, but it made Victor’s mouth salivate, so he took a pinch of it and stuffed it into his lip like he’d seen ballplayers do with chew. It burned a little, but it was kind of spicy with a sweet aftertaste, and it gave him a little buzz almost immediately.
“Disgusting,” Edeya said, and Victor laughed, trying to pass her the tin. She huffed and increased her pace, walking quickly past Heng. Victor spat some brown-black saliva toward the edge and then passed Heng his tin.
“Thanks,” he said. Heng nodded and tucked it into his belt. They’d made a couple of steep rotations of the well, and the air was cooler, and the light from the enormous globes up above was less bright.
“What’s the deepest you’ve been, Heng?”
“When I was newer here, I followed some real heavy hitters down to the third platform. We held that position for a long time, and I got a lot of Energy by just throwing a few shots here and there. Haven’t been past the first platform since, though.”
“Incoming!” A stout, black-haired, hooved Cadwalli guy shouted, pointing to the far side of the well with his baton. Coming up around the steep, spiraling ramp was a throng of large, lumbering creatures that looked like a cross between a two-legged bear and a beetle.
“What the fuck?” Victor exclaimed, tightening his grip on his baton.
“Oh, this ain’t lucky,” Heng said softly, then he yelled, “Form up a line—backs to the wall, they’ll throw you off. Don’t try to run! They’re twice as fast as you!”
“What the fuck are they?” Victor asked, finally voicing his question coherently.
“Deep hulks,” Heng grunted, following his own advice and putting his back to the wall. Edeya squeezed in next to him as the others jostled for a spot. The hulks were in view on the ramp now, coming up around the bend; there had to be ten or more, and they were huge, maybe seven or eight feet tall, with broad, heaving bodies and long arms that dragged on the floor as they lurched along.
“If you get thrown over, try to slide down the wall! You’ll land on the ramp below,” a big, bald-headed Ardeni yelled. Victor looked down at Edeya; her entire, thin little frame was about the size of one of those things’ legs.
“You got this, chica. Come on, get ready! Get fucking pumped!” Victor yelled, digging deep to make his voice loud and hoarse and slapping his baton into his hand. The hulks heaved closer, their grunting, coughing breaths audible now, and the red gleam of their beady eyes apparent. Victor struggled to categorize them; they had hairy legs and arms, but their chests were gray-spotted brown carapaces. Their long arms ended in three digits, each sporting a black claw wedged like a carpenter’s chisel.
When they were just a few paces away, Victor shouted, “Come on! Kill these fuckers!” and activated his Inspiring Presence. Shouts of enthusiasm echoed his words to his left and right, and suddenly everything seemed possible. Sure they were big, but they were slow, and look how predictably they swung those hooked claws. Victor stepped under a swipe and brought his baton down in an overhead smash, directly into the face of one of the hulks. His baton, far heavier than it felt, thanks to its enchantments, cracked something vital in the hulk’s face, and it fell away, scrabbling at its head and roaring in pain.
“Yeah!” Victor howled and laid into the hulk that was pressing toward Edeya. She was gamely holding out her baton, ready to try to deflect the hulk’s swipes, but Victor had its flank and, fully inspired, used Channel Spirit to drive rage-attuned Energy into his arms and his baton and laid into the hulk with a combination of three deadly, red-tinged blows. His bludgeon shattered carapace and bone with each hit, and the hulk stumbled back into Heng’s devastating overhead smash, which opened a two-inch split in the creature’s skull. It fell like a four hundred pound sack of dog food.
Victor whirled around, high on victory, only to see that five hulks had wholly overwhelmed the three delvers that had been to his left and, chisel-claws dripping with gore, swarmed toward him. “Stay back from me!” Victor took a moment to shout at Edeya, then he activated Berserk and dove into the pack of monsters. Somewhere in the tiniest part of the back of his mind, Victor worried that he was biting off a lot more than he could chew, but he was still inspired, still high from the exhilaration of combat, and he couldn’t spare any room for doubt. He squashed down that little voice and roared as his vision darkened with blood-red rage, and his body cried out for violence.
One of the hulks immediately smashed a massive claw into his left shoulder, sending him flying five feet through the air to crash into the wall of the well. Victor maniacally laughed as he stood up, the flesh where the claw had gouged knitting together. He’d smashed his forehead into the wall, but the contusion was mending before he could even register the pain. Victor didn’t wait to take stock of his body’s state, launching himself at the nearest hulk, sliding under its hacking swipe and coming up on its flank. He drummed his baton into it with mad abandon, trying to crack every hard surface he could see, sending flakes of chitin flying and causing the bulky brute to stumble into the hulk next to it.
He was vaguely aware that other things were happening around him—he saw sparks and heard concussions. Wails of pain and roars echoed off the walls of the well, but Victor had eyes only for the hulk in front of him. His rage had fully supplanted his inspiration, and his moves became reckless but horribly violent. When a hulk fell before him, he didn’t stop pounding it until another hulk charged him and bore him to the ground, both of them sprawling away from the wall and near the edge of the well.
Victor had absolutely no concern for his precarious position; his mind had one thought—kill the thing that had interrupted his smashing. The hulk had tackled him, its long arms around his waist and its bullet-like head pressing into his stomach. The monster was heavy, but Victor didn’t care; if this fucking thing wanted to wrestle, he was game! He jammed his right forearm under the hulk’s scrabbling left limb, pushing his hand through to grasp the thing’s smooth, hard head, then he leveraged himself up to wrap his legs around the monster’s torso. He bent and twisted with all his might, fighting with rage-fueled strength against the bulky creature’s natural muscles.
They rolled and tumbled, and Victor roared in triumph as he finally got the creature’s back and hooked his arm around its throat, pulling with an arched back. The monster flailed its long arms in panic, and Victor’s mad laughter accompanied its frenzied thrashing, and then Victor was weightless, and he and his wrestling partner were falling through the air, skipping against the stony face of the well. They fell for three or four heartbeats, and then they smashed into the hard stone of the ramp, much further down in the well.
Luck was with Victor; in their tumbling descent, he’d wound up on top before the crash, and the hulk broke his fall. Still, the concussion of the sudden stop sent him sprawling away from the monster, and he blacked out for a moment. When the veil of darkness lifted from his vision, and he saw the hulk grunting and limply flailing with one working limb, he stood up, annoyed to find that his enraged self had let go of his baton when he’d decided to get into a wrestling match.
He stalked over to the thrashing hulk and delivered several brutal stomps to its round, half-chitin, half-flesh skull. He stomped until the chitin was broken, and fluid began to ooze from the monster’s orifices. When it stopped twitching, Victor looked around, out of breath and sore all over. He couldn’t see anything moving nearby, but he could hear sounds of struggle up above when he listened carefully.
Victor turned to the upward slope of the ramp and started running. It took him a minute or two of hard climbing to round the curve of the well and start up the slope to the original scene of the battle. He saw slumped, twitching forms, both hulk, and delver, on the ground, and he saw one hulk, still standing and swinging its hooked claws at Heng's big, furry form. Heng looked exhausted, laboriously swinging his baton to block the hulk's clumsy swipes. The monster was clearly injured, as well, with dark spots of oozing fluid all over its carapace and head.
Victor pumped his legs harder, using Sovereign Will to improve his strength and Channel Spirit to flood the pathways in his legs and torso with rage-attuned Energy. Then he smashed into the side of the hulk like a linebacker catching a quarterback by surprise. Something in the monster’s torso cracked, and it flew several yards through the air to land on its stiff back and slide over the edge into the well. In the silence that followed the end of combat, Victor heard the monster smash into the stone below with a resounding crack that echoed off the sides of the well.
“Thanks,” Heng said, panting and resting his hands on his knees. Victor didn’t hear him, though; his heartbeat was in his ears as he surveyed the battlefield. His eyes slipped over the forms of dead hulks, over the writhing and still bodies of the delvers he didn’t know, looking for Edeya. Finally, he saw her slight frame half-buried by the bulk of a fallen hulk, and he hurried over to her.
Adrenaline and panic fueled his muscles, and he didn’t need any spells to help him grab the hulk and yank it off of her. He was leaning to feel if her heart was beating when a surge of Energy poleaxed him and knocked him to his knees.
***Congratulations! You’ve achieved level 17 Spirit Champion. You have gained 7 will, 7 vitality, and have 7 attribute points to allocate.***
When he regained control of himself, he was relieved to see that Edeya was flushed from her own influx of Energy, and her eyes were blinking rapidly as she came back to herself. “Damn! You had me worried, missy!”
“Oh, Ancestors! Imagine waking up to this sight!” she giggled, and Victor stood up, tsking.
“That’s the thanks I get? I shoulda left you buried under that thing!” He snorted but held his hand down for her. “Can you move?”
“I think so,” she said, wincing and reaching to take his hand. Victor pulled her to her feet, her small hand warm in his.
“I’m glad you didn’t die,” he said.
“Same; I saw you fall off the edge.”
“Yeah, but I had a big squishy cushion.”
“Hey, you two, help me get these others up; we need to cut our trip short. Bad luck running into hulks first off,” Heng said gruffly, trying to help the big Ardeni to his feet. The man’s left leg was twisted in the wrong direction, and he groaned in misery.
“What about the dead guys?” Victor asked, looking at a couple of mangled delver corpses. He stepped past them to the stout Cadwalli; he was leaning against the wall, nursing a stump where his left hand used to be.
“Leave ‘em; we gotta get out before another wave comes,” Heng replied.
“You good? Can you walk?” Victor reached down to pull the guy up under his arms.
“Ugh, yeah, but I’m screwed for delver duty; they’ll put me in the mining crews now that I’m missing my main hand.”
“Sorry, bro.” Victor patted his hairy shoulders. Edeya was helping the only other survivor, another Vodkin who’d been clubbed unconscious by one of the rampaging hulks. He was dazed but able to walk, and the little group started struggling up the ramp. Before he started after them, Victor looked around for his baton. He saw it over by the edge of the drop where he’d been wrestling with the hulk.
When he scooped it up, he looked around the fallen corpses again and had a brief macabre thought of checking the dead delvers for anything valuable. He wrestled with the idea for a moment but ended up leaving. He had to admit that part of his reluctance was that he worried about what the others would think if they saw him doing it. He was also strangely reluctant to touch their corpses. “Pretty weird considering all the corpses I’ve made,” he muttered.
Despite his resolve, he did look very closely at the one body between him and the others while he walked by. The smaller Ardeni male had died due to having his skull caved in. He wore thin leather armor and had a plain, standard-issue baton lying next to his corpse. Victor didn’t see anything of note on the body, so he felt better about his decision as he hurried to catch up to the others.
Victor, for all his bumps and bruises, was feeling pretty good. Whenever he got a big influx of Energy like that, he seemed to heal up quite a lot more than some of the other delvers. He was tempted to ask about it, but then he decided such a question might raise more questions from them about him, so he asked Gorz instead, “Gorz, why do I heal more than some of these guys from the Energy I absorb after a fight?”
“Victor! I tried to talk to you while you were fighting, but I don’t think you heard me!”
“Sorry, yeah, my mind was occupied.”
“You most likely have a higher Energy affinity than those others you speak of. Energy affinity has many secondary effects, the main ones being how much your body can use Energy to improve and heal. Someone with high affinity will gain levels faster than someone with low affinity, and, as you noted, a body with high affinity will apply that Energy toward repairing tissue more readily.”
“Thanks, Gorz.” Victor thought about that and realized he probably had a pretty huge advantage over people with lower affinity. He gained a level almost every time he fought, though he doubted that would continue forever. Right now, though, he knew he was as strong as just about anyone in Lam’s unit, and he’d only been in this world a month or so. Sure, he’d been fighting almost nonstop, but the fact remained—his upper limit had to be a lot higher than someone with a low Energy affinity. “Gorz, what’s the highest level person you’ve known of?”
“Reevus-dak was level forty-seven. He spoke of his master, alluding to him being of the sixth tier and the strongest mage on his continent.”
“Was that on this world?”
“No, Reevus came here through a portal.”
Victor was about to ask another question when he realized they were on the last stretch to the top of the ramp, and some of the loafing delvers were running down to help the wounded out. Shar was among them, and she stopped by Heng and scooped an arm under the Ardeni’s other arm to help him walk. “That was a quick trip, Heng!”
“Aye, hulks first off.”
“Ouch, bad luck. At least you survived.” Heng just grunted in reply, and Victor wondered at their strange relationship. She seemed to genuinely like him, but Heng was as reticent with her as he was with anyone. Maybe she liked it?
Once they’d gotten through the massive metal door and dropped off the survivors, Heng turned to Victor and Edeya and said, “I’m going to visit some old friends since we’ve finished early. Sorry, I’m not in the mood to head back into the well.”
“I’ve had enough for today,” Edeya said. “I think next time I’m going to stay up near the top; I’m not meant to be fighting things like hulks.”
“Smart,” Heng nodded and turned to walk away.
“Later, then,” Victor called after him. He looked at Edeya and shrugged, “What now?”
“You aren’t even tired, are you?”
“Nah, not really.”
“You should go fight at the top of the well for a while; the stronger you get, the safer the rest of us will be down in the deep delves.”
“You sure you don’t want to hang out? I’ll do most of the work, and if hulks come, you can run for the door.” Victor chuckled at the image.
“No, thanks, Victor. I don’t have your stamina or Energy affinity, I think. I’m feeling really weak, and my head hurts from when I got knocked out.”
“You okay to walk back?”
“Yeah, it’s nothing. I’ll stop for some food at the Settlement Stone.”
“Alright, then.” Victor held out his fist, and Edeya gently knocked his knuckles. “That’s the spirit. Chin up, chica; you fought like a boss!” That got a smile out of her, and she briefly waved as she turned to walk away. Victor turned back to the big metal door and walked back into the well.
As he walked over to the dozen or so other delvers waiting for action, he called up his attributes:
Strength:
38
Vitality:
69
Dexterity:
23
Agility:
23
Intelligence:
24
Will:
62
Points Available:
7
He hadn’t gained any new insights since his last level, so he decided to do the same thing as before, three into strength, two into dexterity, and two into agility.
“Back for more, handsome?” Shar strolled over from a trio of Ghelli she’d been talking to.
“Uh, yeah, figured I’d try to get some more fighting in. Grind out another level or two.”
“Ambitious! Not going down again, are you?”
“Nah, I’m cool hanging up here.”
“Cool? What a strange dialect you have. Might I ask about your heritage? Let me see, part Ghelli, part Shadeni?”
“Huh? No, I’m a human. I’m not from this world.”
“Ahh, that explains the lack of wings. Most part-Ghelli have at least some wings.”
“Yeah…”
“Incoming!” a short, very stout Cadwalli hollered from the top of the ramp. “More Herd-damned stone imps!” Victor’s face spread into a grin; he enjoyed cracking stone imps with his baton.
“Come on, Shar! I bet I can get more kills than you!” Victor charged toward the top of the ramp, his baton at the ready and his Inspiring Presence primed.
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