Arthur was in the middle of the mob of people, though James only called it a mob because of their high volume since they weren’t really too out of control. Hunched over a workstation and occasionally calling out names, everyone responded immediately and without protest to Arthur’s authoritative tone. All of this in the chaos of a flurry of called out questions, complaints, and general annoyed conversations. Arthur handled the crowd with no issue and in no time he had a map of a restructured clearing. Calling out groups of squadrons, he quickly set them to executing the building of the log houses. James, Jean Paul, and Louis hung back, observing from right outside the infirmary.
And James just didn’t know what to think. Even disregarding the issue of where he was putting the women (they wouldn’t even fill a single one of those bunkers from what she could see), she didn’t know where Arthur was going to put her.
She’d never been able to sleep with other people around her. Even as a baby, she would only really settle down when she was by herself. When her parents had tried to make her share her room with her brother for a couple of years, she had started doing her work at night and sleeping while he was at daycare or school. Maybe it would be possible to sleep with Christian’s Calming Aura around, but that would require sleeping in the same room as Christian, violating that same cardinal rule of adult men and women not sharing rooms if their relationship were platonic. Besides, she doubted Christian would stop sleeping in the infirmary, he had already practically moved in. If anyone was ready for this transition, it was him.
Beyond that, this new development of their doors disappearing put a wrench in any of her plans to run away. Before she had felt close to the decision, but just observing this horde of people seemed to clinch it for her. She had no obligation to this merry band of soldiers.
And as she analyzed the ‘dangers’ more and more, it was clear that her two bodyguards were more guards than anything else. Nobody needed to be protected inside the Tutorial Area, even with stats such as hers. She wasn’t a prisoner, and she refused to be treated as one. How she was refusing, she wasn’t exactly sure yet. But she was sure she’d figure it out.
At least her Skills would be useful for such an attempt. As one could guess, Running made running easier. Her steps were surer, and each leap let her go slightly further than would be expected. This effect was scaled with agility and strength. As her Skill level went higher, she expected the skill’s stamina regen cost would be reduced. Exercise was even more exciting: it increased the chance that she would be able to gain physical stats while exercising. She had gained it two days ago, and one of her strength points increases happened shortly thereafter. It had probably been close to increasing anyways, but she appreciated it nonetheless.
“Should we train? I don’t think we’ll be much help to the construction effort.” She knew nobody was in the infirmary, there hadn’t been any attacks for the past four days. If anyone were in there, it was because they had managed to injure themselves. Something which would definitely garner a smile but couldn’t be too bad, especially with the System, so discharge would be imminent.
Eyeing the trees, Louis nodded, and Jean Paul led them to their secluded training location. Once they had claimed it Arthur had made sure nobody would be there in the first half of the day. Going through their stretches, with James still proving more flexible than her two guards despite their improvements.
“Let’s run outside the walls today!” She suggested after their usual stretching session. She should try and scout the forest, figure out where she would go once she was able to escape. It would also let her set a new precedent of running outside the walls. She’d probably even be able to convince Louis and Jean Paul to continue to do so since the clearing would now be permanently full with everyone moving in. She saw that Jean Paul was about to shake his head, so she pointed out “The construction teams are going to be outside the walls, it’ll be perfectly safe!”
“Fine but be on the lookout for an alert.” That’s what they called her goblin related panic attacks. It sounded a lot more sterile, nicer, like a light tap on her shoulders. Ridiculous. To be fair, she was slowly getting better at it, something she’d need if she’d ever be able to run away.
Leading them out past the entrance and ‘exit’ area, which was just a break in the wall since they didn’t have proper supplies for a gate. It also made a great place for any strong melee fighters to make a stand and slaughter any goblins that made it past the rain of spears. Jogging into the thicket, the run went as usual for the first ten minutes.
Of course, that’s when it didn’t. They weren’t close to any building teams at that point, something James was inordinately thankful for. Because her spidey senses were going off. No, that’s copy righted, she should probably come up with a new name for it. Anything would be better than calling it an ‘alert.’ Admittedly, she’d probably end up using alert to describe it anyway.
The discomfort grew over the next two minutes, discomfort being the most innocent term James could find for the oncoming headache and panic attack. She let the side-effects get lost in her running body, concentrating hard on everything that wasn’t her. The rustling leaves, one foot in front of the other, hands pumping forward and backwards beside her. How long could she last before she had to tell Jean Paul and Louis?
Because she wanted out, desperately. But she didn’t want her guards to die if that was her own fate from this fool-hearted plan. She had to make sure that they would get out of it alive and hopefully even alert the clearing. There was a slight issue with her plan though, and she knew it all too well.
Since she’d never been able to remain fully aware during her alerts, she didn’t know how long it would take from her alert to the attack. The pressure continued to build, slowly mounting, and pounding in her head. At least any sweat from it was disguised by her sweat from the run. She could feel her arms wanting to tremble and her insides begin to heave, but she just clenched her fists tighter, narrowing her eyes in concentration. All the while, she tried to steer them closer to the forest, closer to the headache.
Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore and she cried out, stopping the run. Louis and Jean Paul, who were both running ahead of her, presumably to suss out any goblins, turned to look back at her in concern.
“Alert,” she tried to remain standing, clutching at her stomach. It didn’t help that the transition from running to stopping made it so her body hurt even worse. And that crumbling over like that made her airways even more constricted. Jean Paul cursed loudly, they were at least a three-minute run back to the clearing, and that was if it was just him at full sprint. If he could last that long running like that. And Louis wasn’t built for it, he had gotten a Class which had only made him bulkier. James certainly wouldn’t make it in that time frame either.
“Louis, find some shelter where you can hide. I’ll go alert the clearing,” Coming to a quick decision, he ordered them and started running away quickly. Louis had apparently concluded a similar assessment of their situation. He looked around for something he could use to at least hide James, who was still doubled over and almost vomiting from the pain.
“Next time, we run with spears,” wordlessly, James nodded at him. He was right, for all her saying bodyguards weren’t necessary, running without spears was irresponsible.
Hopefully there just wouldn’t be a next time. Wait, no, that sounded ominous. Hopefully, she would escape so there wouldn’t be a next time. Growling in frustration, Louis picked her up and carried her princess style trying to find safety. How he defined that she wasn’t sure because he wasn’t the only predator in the woods. And the goblins were much more suited to this environment than he was anyway.
A minute later, both could see leaves begin to fall in the distance and Louis was forced to set her down. Quickly finding a large branch to swing around, he stood over her in defense. Twenty seconds. Ten. Five. They were upon them.
And Louis was magnificent. He was punching, kicking, slamming them together, and swinging them away. If James had been in a position where she could watch her fears that action movies were realistic would have been realized. That was what the System did.
But James was just trying to remain conscious and bite back any screams of pain lest the goblins latched onto that in order to find them. She did let out a couple of yelps when she was lucid enough to register anything coming at them from her vantage point huddled up on the ground.
The big difference between action movies and System life, though? At least at Louis’s current level? Louis he couldn’t keep it up forever. He was taking more and more damage. More and more red blood coated the forest floor, mixing with the purple tinge that had previously dominated the surrounding forest floor.
Given, most goblins just ignored the two of them, just streaming past them, homed in on the clearing. Even Louis wouldn’t have been able to deal with the whole horde for even a second. And as time passed, he was getting more and more tired, and more and more goblins were piling on.
Weirdly enough, most ignored James, at least until she kicked them in a lucid moment, and they realized she was there. It was like she was almost invisible to them. Soon enough there were enough that couldn’t reach Louis because of the amount already on him and were therefore piled on her. At that point they were also tugging at her hair and scratching her as they tried to pound her and cut at her skin with their claws. She screamed, the sound startling some of the goblins, but ultimately attracting more to the pair.
Simultaneously, Louis was becoming a stronger and stronger headache. They might have only really been in the thick of it for ninety seconds or so, but James could feel as he leveled his Class. He was becoming more and more menacing even as his own strength flagged. She wasn’t having the same experience, and soon the blue dot that she had become so accustomed to turned purple. Then red. She had to do something. Otherwise, it wouldn’t just be red. It would go out.
So, as she kicked and screamed and thrashed she tried to manipulate her headache in the same way she did the sign from that doomed first tutorial. It only made it hurt worse, though, but she couldn’t stop now. Either she would die with a strong headache or live with one. Making it worse wouldn’t change anything. James simply refused to give up. Finally, in one last desperate attempt, she flung everything she had at her headache and the dam broke.
—-
Well, the action is finally ramping up, I know I was waiting for it! (I literally had this in the author's note since the day I first uploaded this chapter!)
And now, the moment you've all been waiting for (even more than the action, though I know it's hard to beat), shoutouts! Thank you to Mikael, Corscientia, ShadeByTheSea, Reece, Pltergeist, Blacktide, Giantorange, Davvy chappie, joshjosh100, Josef, Alexey, fosfor, merr49, Jonah of the Whale, S. Nutter, cm123, DB, Kevin, Zivlanir, brett, thkiw, Franananachi, and Daniel!
