Chapter 17: Blood Price

  Marcus slowly chewed on an apple piece. As he finished chewing, Janette handed him another. Once again they were in the medical ward but after just one day, he had already fully recovered. “I thought you would be mad at me.” he carefully tested the waters.

  “I was and I am, but before I rip your head off I want to hear your reasoning for such a stupid stunt.” She said cutting down another apple. “Knowing you, you had a plan and did not just YOLO into him.” She gave him a look that made him feel a bit proud.

  “He would have killed all of us. I realized this when he avoided the spear attack and easily cut Russo. He was that much stronger than us. If I had to guess I would say he was at least level 30.” Marcus looked to Janette and she nodded with a grim expression. “I felt the same.”

  “Sooo, I tried to come up with a strategy to defeat him and the only thing I had seen that looked remotely like a weakness was, that he took a bit too much pleasure in causing pain and degrading his opponents.” Marcus said and Janette thought for a moment. “And then you thought if you let him cut you down he would stand around long enough for me to blast his head off.” Janette said with a sarcastic tone but Marcus just nodded. “What if had been busy with something else? What if I had missed? What if he had killed you on the spot? Do you know how many things could have gone wrong?” Her voice was soft, which scared Marcus more than her being loud and angry.

  “I trusted my vitality and armor to keep me alive. And I trusted you.” Marcus said in his feeble defense. Her eyes looked watery but she did not say anything for a minute. Finally she said, “This is going to happen again. You getting hurt badly over and over.”. This was not a question but a statement she put in the room. Marcus nodded, he could not dodge or had crazy tricks, he only could take the hits and hope to outlast them until he could strike the enemy down.

  Talking about it. “Have you spent your crests already? How many level did you gain?” Marcus tried to steer the conversations away from the depressive topics. “Three more willpower crests are part of me now.” She said wrapping her arms around her body as if she was hugging herself. “And you?”

  Marcus looked a bit sheepish. “5 levels. I have not spent them yet.” Smack. Janette punched his shoulder, it did no damage. “You freaking front liners always gobble up all the EXP.”

  EXP from kills is not rewarded to the last hit but shared between anybody in the area, who was an enemy of the dead target. The closer you are the more you gain. Ranged classes find this unfair but melee classes call it compensation for the increased danger they are in. This fact is also the foundation of power leveling low level characters, typically supports. Find a big monster, beat it down, tie it up, let the supporter kill it while the rest stands far away. Works nearly every time. Only sometimes the monster gets loose and eats the noob.

  “Shall I spent them?” Marcus asked with a smile. “Sure” Janette leaned back watching him activating all five crests for vitality. “By now, you should have the vitality of mid to high level front liner. I don’t think handguns or knifes can actually kill you anymore. My rifle surely can.” She added the last part while squinting her eyes. They laughed and then she became serious again, “Am I supposed to spent only on willpower from now on?”

  Marcus got up and stretched his empowered body. “I would say 3 willpower, 1 dexterity and 1 of what ever else you feel you need.” She gave him a thumbs up and then it looked like she thought of saying something else but didn’t. “Spit it out.” Marcus said to his friend.

  “Do you understand how helpful this is to me?” She started and Marcus put on a faint smile. Then Janette straightened herself. “Could you do the same for the rest of the team?”

  Marcus had left the medical ward and was deep in thought. He nearly ran a woman over and arrived at his room more on muscle memory than anything else. Could he do it, of course. Should he do it? Yes, most likely. But... is he going to. This was always his secret, his superpower. The thing that made him special. If he shared it with many people would he then not lose this special something?

  Marcus felt selfish and bad but a part of him did not want to share his knowledge. Janette was a different case, she was… she was… The word that came to his mind was embarrassing to admit. Family.

  At noon a large ceremony was held. A row of caskets stood on green grass and the survivors and personal stood to attention. Brahms stepped up, he looked battered. Marcus had heard that the fight against the warlord had nearly killed him. The enemy had been a high level Weapon Master with a fully formed Soul Weapon. He had lost an arm to the ork but they had flown in a Stitch to put it back on. Expensive but well worth for a high level Berserker.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Brahms held a speech about the cost of success and the loss of comrades and caring on their spirit. 32 Caskets and one of them held the remains of Thomas. Pierre had barely survived and was still in the medical ward, healing his wounds. Monika’s unit had also suffered loses but her name was not on the list, Marcus had checked twice.

  The ceremony left him with a strange feeling and he planed to have a big lunch to make himself feel better. Instead he ended up in front of a door in the medical ward. He knocked and stepped in, a bit absent minded, without waiting for a reply.

  Inside was Pierre, still in bed but far from dead, and also Elise. A moment ago their hands had been touching and Marcus decided to pretend he had not seen a thing. Marcus did not know how to start and Elise got up “I will leave you two alone.”

  A moment of silence followed the next. “How is your body.” Marcus started, standing there like a strange piece of furniture somebody had forgotten. “Better. You look like nothing ever happened.” Pierre replied. “I heal fast.” Marcus said.

  More silence.

  “You defeated that Blood Knight.” Pierre took a turn to keep this going. “Janette blew his head off. The only thing I did was getting stabbed, badly.” Marcus said with a serious tone and Pierre laughed. Somehow the mood lightened. “You got stabbed but did not die. That bastard played around with me and cut me down once he was done.” after a moment he added “It was nearly as bad as getting my ass handed to me by a low level Fighter.” He smirked. Marcus looked uneasy but this was one of the things he wanted to talk about.

  “Listen, I was out of line with my attack. Elise was right I could have seriously hurt you. I was so angry at the moment…” Marcus was getting some thing off his chest, but Pierre waved it away. “It was my own fault. If I had not been so embarrassed this would not have happened.” Marcus looked bedazzled “Embarrassed?”.

  Pierre sat up “I thought you were a phony with a big body and a fancy armor. A nobody who tried to look big. I wanted to teach you a lesson but it went all wrong. I worked you over but you did not fall, I started to hit your face and you did not fall either.” Pierre looked unhappy and rubbed his knuckles. “As an Accelerator time moves different when I’m in the zone. I could see that you were not going down and I hit and hit.. desperately trying to make you fall and admit defeat. If you had not lost consciousness I would have beaten my fists bloody on your stupid face.” Hearing the events from Pierre’s point of view was eye opening to Marcus.

  “Second time around I followed the advice from Elena and tried to disable your legs only to nearly break my own. It felt like hitting a steel beam and I just stood there like an idiot. I don’t even remember you hitting me.” Pierre’s revelation seemed to improve his mood. He must have felt bad about the whole thing too, Marcus thought.

  “How the heck are you so tanky and still have so much power?” Pierre asked straight up. “Wait, don’t tell me.” he looked a bit frustrated. “What ever it is, I learned a lot, like with the Blood Knight fight.” He quickly added.

  “I only concentrated on my speed and my lack of power caused me two defeats and nearly killed me.”

  They continued to talk about the Blood Knight and strategies they could have used if Pierre had been still up. They came to the decision that Blood Knights are OP and should be banned. Besides that, they agreed to have another match some day. Marcus left the ward feeling a lot better about himself. He and Pierre were far from friends but things had changed for sure.

  The base quickly emptied out as the other teams packed up and machines and equipment was shipped off to other places. As quickly as it had started it also ended. With no good reason to have more troops in the area, the Thunder Squad stayed behind in a far too large base. Marcus did not dislike it. Just a day later the team gathered up in the SO EMPTY common room for an important task. Loot distribution.

  Most of the loot was easy to decide and everybody agreed Russo should get the stuff from the big ork. Sadly, as it turned out, the axe was nothing special only the power of the ork made it impressive. The female ork (who nearly killed Pavel) and the pesky bow ork, both had some nice stuff (according to the official price catalog, image recognition is such nice technology), Pavel and Janette got the bonus. Lars had taken down some burly ork by himself while the rest had been busy. The two handed blade with red crystals was nearly worth as much as the spear Russo now used.

  Lastly the Blood Knight came up. His armor was at least one step better than the light armor anybody in the team had and after some debating it was decided Lars would get it with compensation to Janette. The two deadly blades were given to Marcus who disagreed “You took the shot, it is your kill.” Janette rolled her eyes. “They are icky. They had stuck inside you, who would want that.” In the end Marcus had to give into the pressure of the group.

  Russo disbanded the meeting and everybody started to walk away. “There is one more thing.” Marcus said and he felt more nervous than in battle. The team looked at him with surprise and curiosity. Marcus took out a few paper pages (I know, so retro) and started to distribute them to the team except Janette. “This is just something I made. It is nothing special just some things I thought about...maybe it can help.”

  Then Marcus sat there while the team silently looked over the documents. For each, attribute distribution and thoughts on ability development and ideas for potential new abilities. The silence was so heavy even the turning of pages sounded loud. Nobody talked, or laughed or told Marcus that this was stupid or useless. All things he had feared could happen.

  “I need to push up my vitality a lot.” Lars said into the blue. “Apparently I scale with vitality and not with intelligence as I thought.”.

  “That are some good points here. I have never thought about throwing a net with “Skewer”. I wonder what would happen.” Russo nodded and turned over his page. “I need to get me some intelligence, 50/50 with dexterity. Good thing we haven’t spent our crests yet.” Pavel said without looking up. “You have not?” Marcus asked surprised.

  The rest looked up and Lars said “Well, Janette had indicated we might want to wait for a while. She did not say why but we thought she must have a good reason.”. Janette looked totally innocent.

  More time went by and apparently nobody was questioning the information. “Do you not want to know...how…” Marcus asked softly. People were spending crests and ignoring him.

  Janette shook her head and smiled. They trusted Marcus.