Chapter 29: Become Another You

Page hopped between the trees, snickering oh-so-deviously at her success at eluding Lens. The poor quartermaster was still waiting for her brownies—brownies which will never come! Muwahaha! What an evil girl…

At the moment, she was trailing the expedition along a well-used footpath towards the temple row. Just ahead, the sounds of fighting spread across the forest, gunfire from airguns popping like firecrackers set off in the hollows of trees.

[+1 Excitement]

She was here! She felt a bit bad about breaking her promise to Kalender about just staying behind, but it’s just so boring! Lens wasn’t bad conversation at all, but the energy in her just couldn’t be contained!

A moan caught her ear, and she turned to see a zombie shambling towards her. This is my chance! All the lessons that Jyn beat into her, sometimes literally, were swirling around the tip of her staff. She raised it high, almost poking a branch, and she slammed it down.

Something cracked. She felt it at the tip of the staff. The zombie’s head bounced on the impact, and it collapsed like a fluttering leaf.

[+3 Excitement]

She dismissed the notification. Getting XP, sweet XP, with her own hands! Scanning through documents behind a desk just didn’t compare!

Another zombie showed itself, and she thanked it for the free XP. Another appeared, and another, showering her in what could only be a blessing!—but there wasn’t any such Blessing that turned one into undead bait. There was, however, such a thing as a lack of tactical awareness, such in situations where one was surrounded on all sides.

A panicked excitement took hold of her. She had 10 meters of breathing room left around her. If she were only surrounded by a loose circle of zombies, it would have been fine, but the forest blocked most sightlines. She may well have been surrounded by a small horde rather than a thin picket line.

The first zombie came within thunking range, and then the second, then the third. She knocked them all down, but her small stamina was showing. When the fourth, the fifth, and the sixth came, her arms burned, her stance slackened, and she was left reduced to a flailing mannequin.

The seventh zombie grabbed her shoulders, the cold of its fingers bleeding through cloth. She shrunk in panic—not panicked excitement, but simply just panic.

From a branch, the elite scout sniper took aim and shot, silently thanking Page for getting out of the way. A tracer of blood erupted behind the zombie’s head, and it tipped over with a thud. Down below, the poor Librarian spun her head like a top, looking for the zombie that was about to eat her. Realizing that it was dead, her head spun the other way, looking for her would-be savior.

The sniper continued firing. Once she’d dispatched the closer threats, she Whistled to a pair of Clerics down below.

Wherever Page looked, seemingly-invisible arrows struck down the undead. She could see the dark blood turn into streaks and fine mists at differing angles, making it impossible to find out where her ally was shooting from.

Her mind was too far removed to notice the Cleric who swooped in and scooped her up off her feet, unceremoniously tossing Page over her shoulder. “Wait! My—” Her hand reached out to where she thought she’d dropped her staff, but trailing them was another Cleric, clutching it in one hand.

D-did I just get rescued from a dire situation! [+3 Excitement]

As they ran through the woods, both Clerics shot at the undead in their way, professing deadly accuracy. Page recognized their handguns—and the fact that she was gonna be in trouble.

The Clerics deposited Page at Kalender’s and Jyn’s feet. She watched as the Clerics’ retreating backs as they disappeared into the woods, only snapping fro when she’d heard Jyn’s deep, deep sigh.

“You need punishment,” Jyn said.

“I get what she did was bad, but she’s here and in one piece, right?” Kalender said. “Besides, she’s not—”

“Recklessness in dangerous places will cost lives, and potentially not just her own,” Jyn replied. When Kalender looked at her face, there was a smidgen of fear like salt, anger to simmer, and concern frothing out as broth all at once. The ongoing gunfire in the background didn’t help Page’s case.

He decided not to oppose it. “What do you have in mind?” he asked, keeping his tone flat to let it be known that he didn’t like handing down punishments at all.

“I don’t know yet,” Jyn replied. She looked to Page. “Look forward to something different once we return.”

Tak briefly glared at Page like she was any other troublemaker, turning away to pay more apt attention to the undead. The Librarian scooped up her staff and trudged along behind Kalender, avoiding Jyn’s occasional glances that made sure she didn’t do anything stupid again.

The expedition had split into two fighting groups and one scout line to secure its advance into the forest. Jyn, Page, Kalender, and Tak were together with three of the four elites, while the other Clerics formed up in a separate group, maintaining a supporting distance of no more than ten meters between their groups’ closest edges. A bubble of scouts surrounded them at all times, the best ones moving far in advance to chart the positions of the undead.

“Isn’t our firepower too biased?” Kalender asked, awkwardly surrounded by the most powerful and experienced members.

“The all-important scouts besides, mixing and matching members is too much of an ask given short notice,” Jyn replied. “You are also much too important to be left to chance to protect.”

Kalender nodded. He watched as two zombies simply fell apart as Jyn sheathed her sword. [+2 Excitement]

Compared to everyone else, Kalender had very little to do besides wrangling Page by the arm, which made both parties happy, but not happier, as circumstances ill-permitted. Still, it was sort of boring.

Deciding not to waste his MP regen, he used up 10 MP every 10 minutes to make explosive arrows from the surrounding dirt. The elite archer with them appreciated it, but she had to get him to stop once her quiver had more explosive arrows than it did normal ones.

He was bored again. A’ight, explosive bullets, next. He repeated the same process, this time using up 2 MP for each explosive bullet, meant to be fired from a handgun. They were easy to shatter—releasing the compressed air-fire bullet impatiently buzzing around inside—when their nose was hit, but were nigh-indestructible for any impacts from the rear, sort of like a Rupert’s drop. Theoretically, even when fired from a gunpowder weapon, they should still work.

Compared to a normal 1 MP explosive bullet fired from the palm, these were about half as powerful at twice the cost, or four times the expense on a buck-per-punch basis. Still, it just meant that every two minutes, he was accumulating more and more explosive bullets that could be fired at a smaller cost of 0.25 MP.

Now that he had explosive bullets … he’d managed to create a hand cannon. Testing it out on a zombie literally blew its head off, eliciting a [+1 Excitement]. His breakfast was in danger for a few seconds, but Jyn’s Leadership assuaged the anti-digestive crisis.

After systematically making their way through the forest, they arrived at an archway before the temple row, as if some sort of spiritual entrance. However, someone was blocking it.

“Hail!” a knight in black-rusted armor called. He stood there, with this longsword planted into the ground before his feet.

“It’s a high-leveled undead,” Tak remarked. “A death knight.”

“I am offended,” the knight replied. “I am a black knight. There is a key difference.”

“And what would that be?” Jyn decided to entertain it.

“I still have my honor!” The black knight pulled out his sword and held it in front of his person. “Come hither and defeat me in one-on-one combat!” From the depths of his helmet, he glared and finally declared, “{None shall pass}.”

A volley of gunfire from the surrounding Clerics peppered him, but a magical barrier deflected or crushed all their bullets. It was clear within a second that nothing was getting past that barrier. All at once, they stopped firing.

“Hah! Cowards!” the black knight taunted. “Only a fellow Knight can fight me!”

Everyone looked to Jyn.

“He is Level 19,” Tak remarked.

“And I am intrigued,” Jyn replied. She walked until she was 20 paces before the black knight. “I am Knight Jyn.”

“And I am Sir Blacknight.” He spun his sword in flowing figure eights around him. “Fight me.”

Jyn bent low, hand on a dagger and ready to sprint. Compared to Sir Blacknight, she might as well have been wearing soggy paper armor. A single impact from a high-inertia weapon as Blacknight’s longsword might not immediately kill her, but it would break something. Meanwhile, the arming sword she had wouldn’t be able to get through Blacknight’s armor. Perhaps it could, if she put a lot of MP into the velocity-enhancing spell she’d learned from Kalender, and put that into a thrust, but that would destroy her sword in the end, along with her personal sense of finances.

Page would probably buy her another one, but she still had some pride left.

“A curious position,” Blacknight remarked of Jyn’s sprinting stance. “Come!”

“{Make this faster}.”

She began her sprint, which turned into a strideful leap.

If Blacknight had any eyes left under that helmet, they’d have gone wide. Chopping down at Jyn would be too slow. He lunged forwards, pointing his sword into her trajectory.

Before she could impale herself into the sword, her already low stance went even lower, and she was skidding across the ground. Only her inertia was keeping her propelled.

She’d gone under his blade. He had little to do other than to try to cut down and catch up to her.

She pushed herself up with all the strength she could muster, bringing her up to his waist. She wrapped himself around him, and her inertia brought the both of them low. Sir Blacknight fell on his back, finding himself letting go of his sword in favor of just punching Jyn. He was wearing steel gauntlets, after all, and she was not.

Before he could, however, Jyn had grabbed his helmet.

“{Crack this}.”

30 MP later, his helmet shattered like glass. Everyone could see his hideous face, now, which was nothing but dusty bone.

Next thing he knew, there was a dagger driven into his neck, breaking the last vestiges of connection between mind and body.

He admired Jyn’s ferocity. If only he were the real deal, he would have let her pass, and it would have meant something.

“The lich is in temple grounds,” he finally said. There was nothing more to be said. He’d been created to pretend to be alive, and finally, to die.

Jyn stood up. The barrier had evidently disappeared, as the scout team moved ahead. “He said there’s a lich,” she relayed. Tension ran higher, but it was twenty-three of them and one of it.

Tak moved beside Blacknight’s body, sprinkling water over him. Her next words were muddled to the Unalive’s failing ears, and the next he saw was darkness—and a voice.

—Shall you be your own?

—Shall you rejoin your source?

He wasn’t the real thing—but he could be.

“I want to be a Knight like her.”

***

The Temple to Minimine was nothing more than a small shrine compared to the Temple of Maximine beside it. Still, Tak and the Clerics chose to serve the ferryman, not the ticket master.

Each temple was formed by rock spires coming out of the ground at angles, resting on each other. Walking below them felt like walking under an arch of swords.

The scout team arrived at the end of the Temple to Minimine. There, Luceria sat on the resurrection table, a flat, elevated slab of stone. Surrounding the table were a rainbow of seven crystal pillars, one for each color. The sun reflected off one of them, illuminating, in red, the ashes of a lich before her feet.

She got down from the table. “I am Luceria, Resurrected Hero of Rem,” she greeted with a bow.

The scout team recognized the name. They all had Appraise, typical of scouts, so there was no issue with this.

One of their number reported back to the main group. Soon, all twenty Clerics, Minimine’s Priestess, a Knight, and a gawking Champion were in the same place.

“The goddess will arrive here in short notice,” Luceria reported. She walked up directly to Kalender. “She will merge somewhere close to here. Please be prepared to receive her.”

“Got it,” Kalender replied. “It’s not like I’m doing a surgery, though?”

***

Meanwhile, ten kilometers west of the temple.

“I can smell him! Where is he!” She threw two heroes off of her leg, turning them into stains on the trees. “Other-me! Where is he!”

The heroes had one job: to weaken or distract Insanity enough for Pebble to merge with her.

All Pebble had to do was touch Insanity for even a femtosecond and will herself to be merged. The issue stemmed from if Insanity rejected the merge. They both had equal power in this regard, and so, somehow, it must be made that Pebble had more want to merge than Insanity had wishes to reject it—the most straightforward solution being to simply knock Insanity unconscious.

Which, itself, was nigh impossible.

Pebble had little involvement in actually making things happen. After all, the role of a goddess was to throw more heroes at the problem until it sorted itself out.

Strangely, throwing a hundred heroes at this specific one wasn’t doing much.

“No! Not again!” “Come here! Be my playmate!”

Instead, they were being mercilessly slaughtered, resurrected, and slaughtered again. Pebble essentially had infinite MP, so this much was okay. She felt no emotion about watching heroes live several lifetimes in the span of a minute, though she did consider it mightily indicative of their poor tactical situation.

It already became impossible to use force to resolve this. Pebble had one last option.

“Hey. Hey. You can see Kalender if you merge with me.”

“No way? I’ll kill you if you’re lying!”

Even if they were a kilometer apart, they could hear each other. They were the same person, after all—which stood to reason that, somewhere deep inside, Minimine was a very stabby goddess.

“It’s true. I know where he is.”

“Tell me!”

“No way. Merge first.”

Insanity cursed. She really wanted to stab Kalender—out of unconditional love—but if she merged with Pebble, they’ll probably end up not stabbing him. On the other hand, they wouldn’t get to meet him in the first place if they don’t merge.

Ah! I know! She grabbed the closest hero. “You! Tell me where Kalender is!”

“Wh-huh? Who the heck is—” The hero screamed as Insanity stabbed him multiple times and threw him away.

Very few people actually knew about the plan. All that heroes knew was battle, and battle they shall.

Blasted! Who else knows where Kalender is?!

She eyed Pebble from over a kilometer away.

Aha! I’m a genius! The most dangerous and irrational combatant on the battlefield shot forwards, reaching for Pebble, swatting away the heroes who thought to delay her even just for a millisecond.

Insanity stabbed at Pebble, but the divine kitchen knife broke when it hit a rainbow barrier.

“Where is Kalender?!” She pulled out a different knife and stabbed down again, to little effect.

“Merge first,” Pebble said. This angered Insanity even more. She accelerated her stabbing speed, but all that did was accelerate her knife replacement rate.

Stupid. Frustrating. Despite having the highest attack power in the battlefield, she couldn’t get through Pebble’s defense.

You see, Pebble didn’t like pain, so she put all the MP she could spare into defense. She only had to put up a shield around herself and manage the River of Souls. Meanwhile, Insanity had to distribute MP between attack and defense. Currently, Pebble’s defense was evenly matched with Insanity’s attack.

So, in her frustration, Insanity dumped all of her MP and MP regen into her next attack, creating a catastrophic and continuously-damaging attack that Pebble could not hope to defend against. It wouldn’t kill her—she would just divert all of her MP into defense just the same—but it would disrupt the flow of the River of Souls.

Every death, every last gasp of air breathed in that very moment, would not receive any semblance of choice as Sir Blacknight had. There would be no next life, nor even peace in an eternal void. Every such death would lose their echo—and lose their meaning.

Insanity’s knife came down. Two holy swords, charged with all the MP that a hundred heroes could donate, hit it from the same side to divert it away, and several dragon shields, stacked on top of each other, cocooned Pebble to protect her against the subsequent directed explosion of the overcharged swords, aimed at the knife and Insanity’s wrist. Finally, a thrown rock thunked Insanity on the noggin.

A thrown rock shouldn’t have damaged her in any meaningful way. However, in that moment, all of her MP and MP regen was committed to that attack, leaving nothing to her defense. In that moment, she felt what it was like to be a mortal with a concussion coming on. She felt what it was like to bleed.

A finger stuck out of the shield wall.

Poke.

Insanity no more. Pebble no more. There was only Minimine—in blood-stained rags and a concussion coming on.