Book 2, Chapter 1

  Overall Chapter 66 – Mountain Teeth

  The Stoneback Tusker grumbled, and the earth under it trembled. I stared at it in bewilderment.

  It looked like a boar someone had carved out of boulder and bad temper. Four thick legs, a slab of a head, and a ridge of jagged stone running down its spine made up its body.

  It didn't just grumble for long. It charged, with steps sending small stones skittering down the slope and its eyes burning a dull orange.

  I stepped into it and swung my axe.

  Enhanced metal met stone with a sharp crack. Instantly shards sprayed as the thing's head split. Its momentum carried the body into my chest and shoved me back a step, boots grinding against gravel.

  The carcass slumped, and the orange light went out.

  [You've slain a Stoneback Tusker – Level 31.]

  [You've gained experience points!]

  "Ha! That one was looking at you funny," Ragna yelled somewhere to my right. "Did you owe it coin?"

  Another of the beasts lunged for her. She met it with her new club.

  The weapon was shorter than her old one, but thicker. The dark metal head took the full charge, and the rock-beast's skull simply collapsed. The impact sent a dull shock through the ground and rolled dust in a ring around her.

  She laughed and stomped forward as more of them poured down the slope above us.

  We were halfway up the first range north of the teleport circle. Here, jagged peaks rose on all sides while a narrow path snaked between them. The air tasted thin and dry and every shout bounced between the stone walls and came back twice as loud.

  Two more of the stone-boars slipped around their fallen kin and came straight for my legs.

  Time to try out Aura.

  I hadn't used it in battle before except for using the full Mantle. I stepped aside and let the Mantle of Valteria take effect, but only around my arms. Raw power crawled under my skin, and my axe edge lit with a thin line of red.

  The first beast tried to gore my thigh.

  I hooked its horn with the haft and wrenched. Aura spiked at the crack.

  Its head twisted to the side as if it wasn't made of stone but butter, leaving its neck open. A short, ugly chop took it between the skull and shoulder.

  Aura made things easier, it seems. It made the edge of my weapon sharper, allowing me to cut easier, while also weakening the enemy, both in bone and skin.

  There had to be more effects to it, but I was figuring it out. For now, it seemed to be just another energy attack that I could kind of freely move around.

  The second one skidded on the rocks and tried to correct. Three more were right behind it, all interrupted in a skiddle.

  I met the first one halfway and drove the axe straight down between its eyes. My axe came out it's end, crashing into the three others.

  Stone cracked, exploding outward in a shower. Something in my shoulders complained.

  Ragna tore through the rest with big, happy swings. Each hit shook the mountain.

  The last beast turned away from her and tried to flee up-slope. She leaped, landed on its back, and rode it three steps before bringing the club down. The impact buried the head halfway into its ribs and folded the whole thing like someone had slapped a toy into a wall.

  Silence dropped over the pass except for the faint trickle of pebbles.

  Ragna stepped off the carcass and shook dust from her hair.

  "Good warm-up," she said. "I like these mountains." She planted the club on her shoulder and looked around. "But where are the bandits?"

  She was disappointed that we weren't being attacked by bandits.

  "I have no idea," I said.

  We'd been warned at the Erebian node to watch out for the Red Ridge. Pay the toll or pay in blood. Typical mountain bandit talk, but I did make a note to be careful.

  And yet, so far we'd only met monsters shaped like someone had taken a landslide and given it legs.

  Ragna toe-poked one of the bodies. "Maybe the bandits are shy," she said. "Heard we were coming and ran away."

  "Maybe they watched you kill a dragon," I joked, watching her laugh. "I would run too."

  "You're so smart, that must be it." She brushed a streak of powdered stone off her arm and finally looked properly at me. "What is in that head of yours anyway? You fought like you were thinking of something else. More than usual."

  "I always think of something else," I said, though she wasn't wrong. My body had moved on habit and Skill since the first beast rushed us. My mind had been somewhere else entirely.

  She squinted. "You only do that when you are bored or scared of death."

  I was about to say ‘I’m never scared of death’ but what came out was, "Or both.”

  She jabbed the club at my chest. "Spit it out."

  I sighed, and the air felt drier as it left.

  No point hiding it. If I couldn't show my own Valtherian partner something the System had dumped on my head, who could I show it to?

  I thought, Status, and the familiar sheet snapped up.

  Then behind it, like a second page layered over my vision, the Quest window bloomed again.

  °°°°°°

  Main Quest: Face the Perpetual System’s Arrival as a Divinity.

  Details: There exist countless universes, with billions of Gods, all under the one adjudication of the Perpetual System. This world, Vear'thia, was blessed with the seed of an isolated System to mature it properly.

  The Perpetual System is coming to connect soon, and Outer Gods fight to claim Vear'thia before that, hoping to turn the new world into one of their numbered province and profit from the connection. The current Local Gods aren’t strong enough to stop the outsiders.

  The System hopes for stronger allies. You are an anomaly the System could not erase. That makes you a New God candidate.

  Primary Objective: Achieve godhood before the Perpetual System fully connects. Face the Outer Gods and protect your universe.

  Reward: Instant promotion to [Local Primordial God].

  Failure Penalty: This reality becomes a numbered province. All native Systems and free anomalies are overwritten, you are deleted, the Outer Gods rule.]

  °°°°°°

  The words hung there, politely insane.

  I let the overlay fade and scrubbed a hand over my face.

  "World-class quest," I said.

  Ragna blinked. "What quest?"

  "You know how we can get quests from Mercenary and Adventurer Guilds, right? Kill goblins, save a cat, whatever. As well as System-given Ascension Quests."

  "Yeah…?”

  "This is different. Larger." I looked up at the empty sky. "It wants me to become a god."

  Her eyebrows rose.

  That sounded even more ridiculous out loud than it had in my head. But there wasn't a good way to explain that reality had bigger fish than kingdoms and kings, and those fish were coming to eat everything.

  "Why you?" she asked.

  Good question.

  The truth involved souls from other dimensions and System deletion attempts, but I couldn't tell her that. Not without explaining where I'd come from, and that conversation had too many sharp edges.

  "I don't know," I said. "Lucky, I guess."

  She stared at me for a long moment, reading my face the way she read an opponent's stance before a fight. I kept my expression steady.

  Finally, she grumbled.

  "Dumb System." She jabbed the club at my chest again. "But it does make sense. Who else if not a Valtherian to clean up its mess."

  "Very comforting," I said. "Glad you think it's natural."

  She held out her hand. "Let me see."

  "You can't," I said. "It's just in my head."

  Her mouth twisted. "That's stupid."

  I rubbed the back of my head. To be fair, since I could view Ascension Quests like nobody else, I could possibly share my Status page with others. But the quest mentioned the soul deletion thing, which wouldn't do.

  The first real crack of annoyance showed on her face. She crossed her arms.

  "So it picks you for some god fight and doesn't even tell me?" she asked. "I fought the same demons. I killed that dragon with you and made Isolde Queen. Where's my world quest?"

  I could see her building up to one of her stubborn moods. She wasn't very girly a lot of the times, but there you go. Sometimes she was so stubborn that she'd stand in the middle of a blizzard and shout at the sky until it apologized for being cold.

  "Maybe it hates red hair," I said.

  She glared.

  "Or maybe you'll get your own," I added. "I don't know how this thing thinks."

  She paced once between the bodies, boots crunching against broken rock, then planted herself in front of me again.

  "Hey," she said, looking up at the empty air like it had ears. "System. I'm here too. I fought dragons, I fought undead kings, I carried this idiot through half his fights. Give me a God Quest too!!"

  Nothing answered.

  A small pebble trickled down the slope as if to laugh at her. Wow.

  She jabbed a thumb at her chest and kept going. "I can bite fire. I'm not scared of gods, you know? Give me something to punch or I'll be angry."

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Still nothing.

  Her eye twitched.

  "Hear that?" she asked me. "It ignores me. This is an insult. I should beat up the System!”

  It did get me curious. Why me, or why just me? Ragna was plenty qualified too.

  The System surely had its reasons. Maybe it needed someone with a foreign soul, or maybe it just wanted the one person who'd already proven impossible to delete. Either way, Ragna's logic was sound in my ears. She'd earned the right to punch gods as much as anyone.

  "This… this… the System hates women! Valtherian culture is better," she muttered. "At least when we want to test someone we punch them in the face, not their soul." She frowned up at the sky again. "Fine. Be that way. I'll just steal your God Quest from under your nose!"

  "That's not how it works," I said.

  She looked at me. "Don't test me, Thorvyn."

  I laughed. The sound bounced off the cliffs and came back morphed, but it helped.

  "Anyway," Ragna said after a moment. "Next time something like that shows up, tell me right away. Makes me mad you didn't."

  "I wasn't sure how to explain it," I said, and it wasn't really a lie. "Also, I was hoping if I ignored it, it would go away."

  "Does it look like it will go away?"

  "Not really."

  "Then you tell me, and I hit things with you," she said. "Simple."

  She made it sound simple. Maybe that was the only way to survive hearing that the world wanted you to be its firewall. The alternative was staring at the quest until my brain broke.

  "Agreed," I said.

  She nodded once, satisfied, and finally looked back at the path ahead.

  "Now. Where are those Red Ridge bandits?" she asked. "I want to hit something that steals instead of these dumb rocks. I'm really angry right n–”

  As if the mountain had been waiting for the line, a deep boom rolled across the pass.

  It came from somewhere ahead and below. It wasn't thunder. More like stone slamming into stone, and maybe something hotter in the middle of it.

  A second, sharper crash followed, then the faint echo of someone screaming.

  Ragna's head snapped toward the sound. My grip tightened on the axe without needing to think about it.

  We looked at each other.

  "Bandits?" she asked.

  "Or a big monster," I said.

  We didn't waste more words. We broke into a run along the narrow path, boots crunching against loose rock, eyes fixed on the bend where the sound had come from.

  Whatever waited there, it would be a better distraction than staring at a quest I couldn't work on just yet.

  ****

  [A Few Minutes Ago]

  The caravan had ringed itself in wagons.

  Four stout carts sat nose to tail in a rough square on a wide shelf of the pass. Their wheels had been chocked with rocks, and their sides faced outward like makeshift walls. Canvas covers fluttered in the thin wind, and crates were stacked high behind them.

  Six knights stood between the wagons and the edge of the path with their shields locked. Cracked stone showed where spells had struck in the night. Black scorch marks chewed up the ground not far from their boots.

  Sir Elayne Thorne rolled her shoulder and felt the bone grind inside the joint.

  Even as her blonde hair swayed in the wind, she felt pain that made her teeth clench. She let it.

  Much better to feel it than the numbness that had tried to crawl in when dawn broke and she barely managed to cut off the last bandit.

  Pain meant she was still moving, and as long as she moved, House Marcellis's banner would not fall here.

  She leaned her weight on her sword for a breath and scanned the slopes.

  An elite team of the Red Ridge bandits had come an hour after moonrise. They'd poured down from two ledges at once, screaming, their blades glinting in the firelight. That first rush had almost broken the line. Three knights down, one wagon half-burned, and her shoulder ruined when she caught a mace meant for her head.

  After she slew the last elite they managed to drive the rest of the raiders back in the end. She had expected them to melt into the rocks and wait for some other caravan.

  Instead, they had lingered on the ridges all night like wolves watching a campfire. More elites gathered. By now, perhaps the entirety of Red Ridge surrounded them.

  Why so persistent? Mountain scum usually wanted one thing and that was coin. You paid the toll, they waved you through their stretch of road and let the next gang handle their business further along. Killing noble-blood and burning banners brought attention, and attention brought patrols.

  Elayne had paid them. Twice the usual rate. It had not been enough.

  The wagon canvas behind her rustled. A merchant in Marcellis blue edged closer, pale face gleaming with sweat.

  "Sir Elayne," he whispered. "Do you think they will–"

  "Get back inside instead of asking stupid question," she said without looking at him. Her voice came out rough, unlike her usual self. "If you can hold a shield, grab one. If you can't, do not come between those who can and the edge."

  He flinched and retreated.

  She did not watch him go. She kept her eyes on the red-streaked ridges.

  The bandits showed themselves when the sun broke fully over the eastern peaks.

  They rose from behind rock outcrops and stepped onto the ledges above the road. Two dozen at least. Some had bows. Others rested long cleavers on their shoulders. All wore bits of mismatched armor painted with crude red stripes.

  They moved with too much confidence for simple cutthroats.

  Elayne knew the man who walked at their head.

  Garrun of the Ridge was thick through the shoulders, with a braided beard that reached his belt and a coat of scale that someone had once hammered into shape by a proper forge. His right hand rested casually on the hilt of a notched greatsword. His left held nothing, but the air around his fingers shimmered with residual heat.

  He stood on a rocky shelf opposite the caravans, high enough to look down on everyone.

  "Elayne Thorne," he called. His voice carried well in the mountains. "You look smaller than last time we parted ways."

  She raised her chin. "You came down from your hole yourself, Garrun. That is new."

  "Business calls. New times. New prices," he said. "I hoped my elites would have eliminated you, but here we are."

  He grinned, and the smile told her what the words did not.

  This would not end at coin.

  At her side, Sir Dolan shifted his grip on his shield. "There are two with his weight," he muttered. "On the left and the right."

  She saw them.

  One stood to the left of Garrun. A tall woman with ash-grey hair and a chain of bone charms around her neck. The fire in the air bent subtly toward her. A mage, and not a low one.

  The way the mountain seemed to lean away from her said Sixth Ascension. Although Elayne had no way to know for sure.

  The other leaned against a boulder to Garrun's right, a bow half as tall as he was resting in his hand. His presence pressed on her senses like a dropped stone in still water. Another Sixth.

  That's not good at all. Including Garrun, the bandits had three Sixth Ascensions. Among her people, she was the only one.

  They were outnumbered and out matched.

  Her stomach knotted. She made herself breathe. The math was simple and ugly. Even if she could hold Garrun for a time, the mage would burn them from the flank while they did it.

  "At least the danger is over now," Dolan murmured, trying for a joke and failing.

  She did not answer.

  "Red Ridge," she called up. "You had your toll last night, and more. Men died on both sides. House Marcellis will not be so generous with blood when the reports reach Erelas. Take the loss and go home."

  She offered them the reasonable way out. She did not mention how thin their line had grown or how much her shoulder shook.

  Garrun laughed.

  "Home?" he said. "You think the Ridge feeds us? No, you high born knight who doesn't know how the world works. This mountain belongs to bigger throats now." He lifted his chin toward the wagons. "We came for one thing. You hand it over, and perhaps the rest of you walk out of here with faces still attached."

  Her grip tightened.

  "What thing," she asked, though she already knew.

  "Don't play dumb." His eyes slid toward the third wagon, the one with the reinforced sides and the Marcellis crest embroidered twice as large as the others. "You lot roll up here with three food carts thrown together and one nice sealed box, and you think word doesn't get up the slope?"

  Someone in the House had talked.

  The Lady's item sat in that box. Wrapped in velvet and ritual, marked by three different priests and one old witch.

  It was a relic pulled from some Ethenian tomb, the family archivist had notified then. Perfect for Lady Ilyra's final step.

  She was Level 99. Her Ascension Quest was bound to that object. Once she touched it and fulfilled the terms, she would step into Seventh Ascension and carry that enhanced strength through the Stellar Trials.

  Timing meant everything in the trials. The trial was separated into two groups.

  Firstly, participants under Level 100, and secondly participants over Level 100.

  Level 100, 7th Ascension, was a special slice. Besides granting a slower aging, it also gave a ton of boost in power. But if Lady Ilyara entered the tournament as a fresh Level 100, her opponents would be experienced powerhouses.

  Whereas, if she entered as a Level 99, her opponents would be everyone below Level 100. And if she then used the item to reach Level 100 mid-competition, which was allowed, she'd easily storm through the fights!

  This item was a game changer for the future of their declining household. The sort of thing that carved futures.

  Garrun should not have known any of that. And yet he did.

  Her mouth went dry. A spy? Or plain old betrayal? Someone with access to House secrets had sold them to mountain scum. Maybe it's one of the rival Houses?

  The implications crawled up her spine like cold fingers.

  "Who hired you," she asked. "Velkor? Or one of the river lords? Or did one of our own decide the Lady looks too close to the seat?"

  His smile thinned.

  "Coins don't talk to blades, knight girl," he said. "I don't care whose mark was on them. I care that they paid enough to make me leave bodies instead of bruises."

  There it was. Confirmation where she hadn't wanted it. Elayne's mind ran quickly, even with the pain.

  Two Sixth Ascensions on his side. And six knights and a handful of caravan guards on hers.

  She could maybe hold Garrun for a time, if she was willing to let the shoulder tear fully. But the mage would burn through them. There was also the archer.

  This was a losing stone-board. No good move, only less-bad.

  "Then take more coin," she tried. "Triple the toll, paid in gold when we reach the capital. You know Marcellis honor. We won't run from a debt."

  "Marcellis honor?" Garrun's lip curled. "Ask your men up the slope if they saw honor when the first flames fell."

  Before she could answer, something snapped.

  An arrow hissed down from the left ridge.

  Dolan's shield jerked as the shaft punched through the upper rim and buried itself in his pauldron. He grunted and staggered a step back.

  The ash-haired mage lifted her hand without waiting for a signal.

  Fire ballooned between her palms. It grew from a fist-sized spark to a roaring globe in a breath. Heat washed across the shelf, and the nearest wagon canvas curled at the edge.

  "Loose!" Garrun barked.

  The mage snapped her hand forward.

  The fireball hurtled toward the wagons in a straight line. It left a trail of steam in the cold air.

  "Shields!" Elayne shouted.

  The knights snapped their formation. Shields overlapped and lifted. Elayne stepped in front of Dolan and braced.

  The world turned red.

  The fireball smashed into the line and burst. Flame washed around the metal, searing across the ground. Wood smoked. The nearest wagon rocked on its wheels and slammed back into the one behind it. Men shouted. Horses screamed inside their traces.

  Elayne felt the heat try to crawl under her armor, but the old enchantments on her breastplate hissed and held.

  "Forward!" she rasped. "Close ranks! Do not give them–"

  Two figures came in from the side, where the spell had not yet finished licking at the stone.

  They slipped out of a fold in the terrain like they had always been there, just waiting for someone to look.

  For a strange heartbeat, Elayne thought someone had sent giants.

  The woman stood a head taller than most men she'd fought beside, and the man was taller still. Broad shoulders, thick arms, sun-dark skin and raw presence. The man's hair was white and tied back. The woman's was a wild red that the firelight loved.

  They both carried weapons that looked far too big to be sane.

  The woman threw her head back and laughed.

  "Ah-ha!" she said, taking in the wagons and the bandits on the ledges. "So this is why we didn't meet any bandits. They were busy hunting caravans."

  Her accent was wrong for these mountains. Rougher, with sea in it.

  Elayne stared at them.

  Not Ethenian by dress, not Erebian by face. The heavy build and the red hair made something in the back of her mind whisper Valtherian, of all things, but that was ridiculous.

  Those barbarians stayed on their islands and sometimes their coastal rafts. They didn't walk into mountain ambushes with grins.

  "Who in all peaks are they," Dolan muttered under his breath.

  Garrun scowled down at the newcomers.

  "More idiots," he said. "Kill them first."

  He jabbed a finger, and the ash-haired mage was already moving.

  Another fireball bloomed, bigger this time. She spun it in her hands and flung it in a shallow arc straight at the two intruders.

  The heat hit Elayne's face even before the spell completed. She squinted through the glare, half-expecting to see the strangers vanish under a tide of flame.

  The red-haired woman stepped forward and opened her mouth.

  The fireball hit her face.

  It did not explode.

  The roaring globe of flame stretched, thinned, and funneled inward as if the mountain air itself had decided to change direction. Liquid fire poured into her throat. Her cheeks glowed from the inside for a heartbeat. The light painted her teeth from behind.

  Then it was just gone.

  The stone under her boots smoked, but she remained upright. A thin wisp of steam escaped her nose.

  "What the fuck?" the white-haired man said, giving her a stunned look of honest confusion. "Since when can you do that?"

  The red-haired woman rubbed the back of her head.

  "Hehe," she said.

  Silence rushed in around the word. The bandits on the ridge stared. The mage's hand hung frozen in midair, fingers still crooked in the last gesture of her spell.

  Garrun's mouth had parted in what might have been the start of a shout, or a curse, or both.

  Elayne looked between the girl's calm face and the fading smoke, and for the first time since the night attack, the tight knot of fear in her chest loosened by a fraction.

  If the world wanted to throw monsters at her, at least this time they were on her side.

  …She hoped.

  A little risky to start the 2nd Book’s very first chapter with another person’s POV, but I hope you guys liked it.

  If you want to read the next 10 chapters of Book 2 immediately, the Patreon awaits! Don’t forget to check out our Discord too, where you can hang out with us.

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