Chapter 121 – Darkhole Rewards

The blackness that he was in changed as text appeared in his vision.

Congratulations! You have successfully completed the Explosive Growth Trial.

Tom found he didn’t care. “Adam what happened to them?” he yelled out.

Apologies as per agreements that bind me this is an automated presentation and is limited in the answers it may give.

“Don’t give me that bullshit, Adam. I was the one that made that agreement with you.”

This is an automated presentation and may not answer off topic questions.

The text repeated and somehow conveyed a tone of finality that froze the objections in Tom’s throat. Maybe Adam could hear him, or possibly not. It didn’t really matter. He wasn’t going to answer. “Thank you, mate.” He whispered anyway. The trial administrator had helped where he could, and Tom couldn’t fault his efforts.

Warm, happy text appeared in front of him as if to signal that his words had been heard.

For completing the trial, you will receive the following rewards.

·        The current species-specific trait: Explosive Growth Equaliser

·        Explosive Growth Conquerer Title

Additionally, For being the first of your species to complete the trial you will also receive

·        The Attribute Burst trait

·        A tailored title

Would you like to see the description of your rewards?

A small part of him desired the freedom to answer no.

No! he didn’t want to see. He wanted to find out what had happened to the other three, but logic over ruled him. Yes, they had almost certainly been hit by the potentially lethal ranged attack, but there was hope. Fate built up over two months would have been protecting them. Each strike was a cylinder which was only fifteen centimetres thick and, providing they missed vitals they were likely to survive.

But Tom also remembered that last moment when he had seen the tiny patch of grass barely bigger than one of his hands that had been drenched in blood. The only vegetation that had survived for dozens of metres. The barrage of the boss’s magic had almost hit everything and most places multiple times. For fate to have pushed all those attacks aside was a massive ask.

Tom stopped thinking about it.

A couple of hits, even a dozen were fine, providing they were lucky enough to avoid a head, neck or upper chest injury.

Fate could have protected them to that small degree. Left them alive but permanently maimed, excluding of course the fact that upon exiting the trial they were fully restored to their original state. But he couldn’t stop the thoughts and images ricocheting around his head. His brain measured the amount of heavy smoke around them and compared it to elsewhere. It was pretty clear what it signified. That had to be flesh smouldering. So they had been hurt. The question was how much and did anyone take fatal damage?

He hoped not.

Tom licked his lips and internally acknowledged there was nothing he could do and given the nature of the trial time spent here was free and he needed to know the descriptions of what he had earned because there was no guarantee he would be able to extract all of them from the isolation room ritual interface. “Yes, I would like to see. Please show me the details of what I received.”

Trait: Explosive Growth Equaliser.   

When fighting an opponent of a higher rank, you will receive seventy percent of the gap between it and you for each individual attribute.

If you are fighting multiple opponents of a higher rank, each one will give you five percent of the original gap between yours and its attributes up to a hundred and ten percent of the maximum attribute value of any opponent you are currently fighting.

The trait ensures you are fully adapted to use the increase in attributes.

Tom had to read the trait twice to understand what it was saying. Enemies in the divine champion trial would still out attribute him, but the difference at most would be thirty percent of each attribute.

Then he realised that wasn’t quite right. The trait was better than that. If he had ten strength and they had twenty, then the gap was ten. That meant he would be given seven strength to leave him with seventeen verses his enemy’s twenty, a difference of only fifteen percent. Of course, if the gap was massive, it didn’t work so cleanly. Against someone like Dimitri, his attributes would be effectively thirty percent lower.

Then there was the advantage that came into play if he was fighting multiple enemies. If there were ten or more identical opponents attacking him, he would end up with superior attributes to them no matter how large the gap was to start with and the larger the gap the greater his advantage would be.

It was Tom had to admit an amazing trait to have received.

That thought seemed to trigger the presentation because the text changed on cue.

Title: Explosive Growth Conquerer

Base attributes awarded by your class are doubled

If he was drinking water, he would have spat it out in shock.

It was the singular, most overpowered title he had ever seen.

If there were no other titles in play, he would be growing more than twice as fast as everyone who lacked this title. The benefit was more than a doubling in strength. Every additional class level cost more and for him to match others he would only need half the levels. He hadn’t done the mathematics, but it felt like it would take a third of the experience for him to reach the same rank as someone else.

His ability to get stronger had been supercharged.

It made him think.

“Could you give this up?” he asked himself quietly. If Briana or one of the others was dead and he was given the option to turn back time to save them, then could he. If doing so meant he permanently lost these benefits, could he justify forgoing these prizes?

The question was its own answer.

He wanted to scream at the fact that these prizes made it worthwhile, that even if one of them was dead, he wasn’t going to regret being forced into it. He wanted to hit himself for thinking that their potential deaths were less important than these bonuses.

But they are, his logical mind told him.

“No, they’re not,” he stated out loud.

But he didn’t believe it.

He could taste the lie in the words. The point of being reincarnated was getting strong enough to make a difference, and that trait and title did exactly that. The title gave him a way to close the gap between people with a fifty-year head start and the trait meant he was far more likely to survive any stuff ups as he did so. Now, if he was swarmed by stronger opponents, he had an answer. That was particularly important to him because of how Danger Sense functioned.

Unless the odds were overwhelming Danger Sense and any other protective precognition skills that he managed to develop would carry him to victory. That trait effectively mitigated that risk when he was totally outclassed by an opponent, which begged the question. “How does Explosive Growth Equaliser play with Speed Matching?”

They both apply to the base and as you suspected the benefits, do get doubled up.

Tom smiled at that thought. Now when he fought people more powerful than him their perception of time would be slower than his. He would be able to out think and have more time to cast spells than his opponents.

The text changed and the next part of his rewards appeared.

Trait: Attribute Burst

You generate 4 bursts per day up to a maximum of 128.

Bursts can be used as follows.

·        Quadruples all base attributes for 1 second.

·        Triples all base attributes for 3 seconds.

·        Doubles all base attributes for 8 seconds.

·        An increase of all base attributes by 50% for 32 seconds.

Extra bursts can be utilised to extend the duration.

Mana equal to the attribute gain is granted on use. Regeneration is increased for the period for the burst and excess mana at the end of the burst is available for four times the duration of the burst at which point it would be lost.

Your body will be able to use all gained attributes to their maximum extent.

Total attribute benefit is limited to forty ranks.

Ideas flowed through his head, and he grinned. Everlyn had possessed a similar trait that she had used the boosts to incredible effect, particularly to leverage trials to get amazing rewards.

Strategic ideas occurred to him about how to use the new ability. All of his traits worked off base, so it wasn’t like he could rely on Explosive Growth Equaliser to close within thirty percent of an opponent’s attributes and then consume a burst to dominate them. It didn’t work like that.

If they were rank four and he was rank one, then the Equaliser trait would boost him to a little over rank three and then a double burst would add a single extra rank to his attribute, which would only give him parity.  But only parity in attributes. There was still a question of skills, spells and technical abilities that the opponent possessed. For example, even if he matched Corrine in attributes he doubted he would be able to beat her, but any enemies that relied on physical stats to dominate him were going to be in a lot of trouble now.

He would be using bursts in his duels, and they occurred every four days. That meant he would have sixteen seconds in every duel where he could quadruple his attributes. If his coin flipping worked and he only used bursts in the live matches, then it could well be twice that. Thirty seconds during which he had the attribute advantage was definitely something that was going to win him multiple fights.

He wondered how Briana could use this, and then he forced his mind away from that direction. He didn’t want to think of her. He didn’t like the taste of ashes in his mouth.

He would find out that answer soon. But no time was passing in Existentia, so it didn’t hurt him to take his time here.

The last of his prizes appeared before him, and he exhaled reflexively in relief.

Title: Group Conquer of Explosive Growth Trial.

This title is tailored to your needs. Once per day, you may construct a mind space that will last for one minute but have no time pass in the outside world. You may invite any fellow survivors of your specific Explosive Growth Trial run who are within fifty metres of you to enter this space with you. Everything spoken within is completely shielded from outside eyes.   

Tom read it and all he could think was that at least one other person had survived and once he left here, he would find out who.

“Is there anything else you’re willing to share?” he asked instead of giving in to the butterflies in his stomach.

You are free to inform your own species about everything associated with the trial and its setup.

Anyone you talk to can retell the information to others. However, spreading of third-hand information, written form communication or to other species will be blocked.

Tom absorbed that and understood that at the base level it meant that if the trial remained unconquered for a couple of generations, then the knowledge of what it entailed would be lost from history.

“Does that mean someone could shout out the information and have a thousand, ten thousand, a million people hear?”

Yes.

It was a powerful boon even if an invisible one that wouldn’t be on his status. Already he was thinking about how many other children could be trained to go through the trial. If you could push through one or two per year, that would be massive for humanity’s strength and that might even stop it from trapping adults who had no hope of beating it. “What are the rules around the trial wandering?”

It depends on the population the trial serves. This trial wakes once every eight years and is satisfied with eight lives. That is the lowest setting. If the population grows more challengers will be required.

Tom thought about that and then the bigger issue. “What’s the point? Why does such an impossible trial, one that kills such a high proportion of those that enter it even exist? It seems cruel.”

Isn’t life cruel.

“But it doesn’t have to be.”

True, and the reason the Explosive Growth Trial exists is stagnation. The trial is at its base a tribulation to prevent stagnation. Those who rise and defeat it gain a boon to enable them to throw off the shackles placed on them by the fortune or misfortune of their birth.

“That doesn’t make sense. The boon I got isn’t enough to break stagnation. It will just let you get stronger in whatever existing culture you live in.”

When a species’ circumstances changes so will its boon. Some receive access to the experience shop or if the race is being oppressed a bloodline form to change the balance of power or possibly an entry to a powerful challenge trial or even on one occasion a skill to create light and eyes to see. That was a boon that changed the fortune of a species that previously had been living in absolute darkness.

Stagnation can be broken in many ways and the reward changes to meet the need of those who complete the explosive growth trial.

Tom considered what he had just been told. His reward was particularly simple, but that was because humans already had a path out of stagnation. The experience shop would let them be anything, so it had given them strength instead of a more interesting reward like natives were likely to receive.  If Baptiste did this trial, then the experience shop would have been all the prize he needed. That would have been enough to save his species.

The words changed again.

And the oppressive, continual nature of the trials means that the worse a species is suffering the more likely someone who can change the species fate is to challenge me.  

It all made a certain amount of perverse sense. “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

The darkness of the void greeted him as it answered by not responding.

“Then I guess I will take my leave. Thank you, Adam. Humanity owes you.” Then, without further word he tugged on the thread that had been there from the start and the emptiness dissolved.

Instantly, he was in the corridor.

No time had passed.

Briana was ahead of him, but the perfect sphere of the trial which had been hovering next to her was gone.

He went to call out to her, but time froze once more.

Momentarily, dread filled him as he feared a rank hundred assassin had locked onto him before he realised that was not the case. A familiar message appeared in his vision.

Kang has invited you to a mind space.

Do you wish to accept.

Instantly, he was in a room that must have been Kang’s system room. Frames filled with pictures covered the walls. They were happy holiday snaps. Kang, with wife, two sons and three daughters. Sometimes with a single one of them displaying a fish and other times with all of them lined up like a dutiful family. There was about forty years of history up on the wall including grand kids.

“What the hell happened, Tom?” Kang was yelling and throwing his hands up in the air. “Eighty percent? Did you lose control of the boss, and have it trample me?”

Tom stared at him blankly as he tried to understand why he was being yelled at. “How’s Briana and Eloise?” he asked instead of responding to his friend’s gibberish.

“They’re both safe.” Kang snapped brusquely. “But I was asking you what happened. You won obviously, but…” Abruptly Kang’s face twisted in alarm.

There was something in the other boy’s expression that cut through the explosion of joy that was in Tom’s chest at having confirmed their survival. The specific nature of the questions that Kang had asked in conjunction with that look of guilt evaporated some of his bliss. How he knew about the damage let alone enough to put a percent on it, told Tom a lot. He massaged his temple as he put together what was happening. “Kang, why would you say that?”

The boy went as red as he was physically capable of, bit his lip in frustration and slapped his own thigh hard. “I’m sorry man, I just. It was the adrenaline, and it just slipped out.”

“Damn it.” Tom cursed. “I can parse what you said. You got a title for having more than eighty percent of your body destroyed.”

Kang said nothing.

“You don’t talk about shit like that.”

“I know, but it’s not like it’s one you can get, anyway.”

Tom considered that and agreed. Outside these specific circumstances, it was not something that any other human was likely to get. Maybe by accident while being over healed, but it would be rare and no tank would want to be put in the situation where that much of them was vaporised. “Was the reward any good?”

The other boy frowned. “For what you have to do to get it no. But the other ones, the trial rewards, they change everything. Did you get the same as me?”

He waved his hands, and the wall of picture frames vanished replaced with a whiteboard and a text like from a PowerPoint projector. The details of Kang’s two traits and the names of his titles appeared on the wall.

They were identical to Tom’s own. “I got them too.” He confirmed.

“We all survived and all four of us got that. Can you even imagine what we’re going to be able to do in thirty years?”

Their time was up.

But that was something Tom had to answer. The combination of power and survivability they had just been given was extraordinary. “We’re going to rock the boat, and the dragons aren’t going to see us coming.” He promised. “Together we’re going to win this.

AG. So I've worked over seven hours straight this morning with a couple of small breaks (3:40am to 11am) to get these out. There will definitely not be a chapter tomorrow. I'm not sure about Tuesday as it will depend on how I feel tomorrow. Hard to plan currently as my brain is kind of dead at the moment.

I do have lots of administration stuff to do... Accept edits on Fate Points Book 2, edit Fate Points Book 3 and plan book 4 of unhinged fury out, all of which might or might not get in the way.

Anyway I hope you enjoyed the chapters they took more words than I expected but were fun to write and flowed really well, probably because I had been playing bits and pieces of these scenes around in my head for the last couple of months.