Fell Champions

Il-Su’s face was smarting. Why did people keep punching him in the face? Why did no one ever go for a gutshot, or some hits to the ribs? Get some body work in, wear him down, and not just hit him in the part he needed for thinking.

His nose was most definitely broken. But worse, his arm was completely ruined. He’d seen ground beef more put together than the mess that was left of his bicep. 

He just stared at it, mouth agape. He was in shock, he knew. His brain was disassociating, trying to keep him going when he should’ve been in too much pain to function properly. 

He forced himself to look away from the wound, swallowing down vomit that wanted to rise and empty itself out for all to see. His soul power should keep him going for a bit, where a regular man would collapse from blood loss in seconds. Or so he hoped.

He couldn’t afford a protracted battle. He needed to retreat, regroup, and recuperate, Sami’s Three R’s of Survival. The rules to follow when the shit hit the fan. 

Il-Su tried to shake off the stunned mindset, grabbed his wounded arm and clenched down. Blood oozed between his fingers, and he wanted to scream, to fall to the ground and weep, but it wasn’t the time for that. He needed to staunch the blood flow, try to slow it down however he could.

Someone was talking. No. Shouting. It was difficult to tell over the pathetic whimpers coming out of him and through the haze of agony, but he managed to focus. He looked for the source of the noise and saw a Silayan woman, screaming at a slowly gathering mob. 

She looked familiar. Why did she look familiar? 

I killed her, some confused part of his mind said, and he wasn’t sure what that meant. 

He hadn’t killed anyone. He hadn’t hurt a single player, not like Otter. All he’d done was kill some NPCs, and those weren’t people. It didn’t matter what Mayumi said. Or what Holt said. 

But he had killed this woman. He was sure. He didn’t remember the exact details of how he ended her – he wasn’t a psychopath – but he was sure he’d put enough knives into her to put her down. That she’d bled out while he’d been fighting Juala and Vex. 

But now she was here. How? She must’ve respawned. Just proof that this was actually a video game, and not real. He wasn’t dumb enough to fall for Holt’s mind games, his promises of salvation. Even if that one lead of his had panned out. 

Still, she was really yelling. It was kind of giving him a headache. What was that even doing? It wasn’t like the crowd of NPCs would…

Oh. That was a problem.

He could probably just kill her again, but that’d just incite the crowd even quicker. He was good, but there were dozens of people gathering. He just didn’t have that many knives.

He glanced at Mayumi. Even with the new face, she was heart-stoppingly beautiful. Indescribably gorgeous beyond words. The pink hair was a bit much, though. He’d have to get her to change it back to its lustrous black once he got her away from all these hostile NPCs. 

He hesitated, and realized he’d have to leave her behind for now. He wouldn’t be able to get her safely away from these mobs. It was probably for the best. She needed time to think, to stop being so emotional and just calm down. He loved her, but she was just so crazy sometimes.

Il-Su activated his Voidcloak, which emptied out the last of his Will pool entirely. He only had the two skills, and they both had large resource requirements, likely as some kind of balancing mechanic. But the price was worth it.

He vanished from view, disappearing from the eyes of others, and as he did, it was like a great weight settled onto his shoulders. It made it difficult to move about quickly, and eliminated a lot of the more agile manoeuvers in his arsenal. 

It was difficult to fight while like this. It was why he only used it in extreme circumstances. Even now, as day became night to his vision, light inverting in an otherworldly way, it took so much effort just to move a few brief steps. 

Those around him looked about confused. To them, he would’ve just disappeared. He could take advantage of it. Grab Mayumi, pull her into his Voidcloak. She was even more out of it than he was. Blood loss was bound to be hitting her hard. She wouldn’t even be able to fight back.

He reassessed his plans. Yes. He could take her now. He didn’t need to wait. He’d just have to–

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that hateful little ginger, the one with the fox-like ears and weird eyes. The Fleshcrafter Vexurian. Vex. 

She was amongst the crowd, still bound in chains, but staring directly at him, and before he could draw a knife to throw at her and shut her up, she pointed a finger right at his location and shouted.

“Over there! He went invisible! He’s right there!”

His movements were sluggish, but he threw a blade at her. The motion was difficult under the Voidcloak, but he’d practiced some. The knife went tumbling end over end, but his aim wasn’t as true as he’d have liked. 

In the middle of the growing crowd as she was, she got jostled a bit to the side under the press of bodies. Some bystander NPC took the hit for her and there was a scream of pain, followed by a panicked movement from the crowd. Everyone was moving every which way, startled by the agonized noise and the sudden scent of blood in the air.

He expected people to scatter, but instead they converged in a weird way, people reaching for others they knew in a reassuring way, checking to make sure the person who’d cried out in pain wasn’t someone they knew. 

And then they converged into one crashing wave of bodies. It was chaos. One woman spotted someone with white hair in the crowd, and a cry of, “Mikovian!” could be heard, and then it was pandemonium and violence. 

Il-Su didn’t bother watching. He could hear the ring of steel on steel, sounds of shouted anger and fear. Someone was getting lynched, and mercifully, it wasn’t him. 

He stumbled away. His legs shook with the effort from the Voidcloak. He tightened his grip on his arm, and his hand grew slippery with blood. 

Why did Holt have to make this game so realistic? Why did it have to feel like how he actually expected it to, instead of the false sensations of pain and exhaustion from other games? Why couldn’t there be healing potions, or something to just magically wipe away wounds? 

Well, he’d just have to ask Holt that. Right before he killed him.

But no. First… first he had to deal with another problem. He turned back the way he came.

*-*-*

Otter could barely keep track of what was happening. She was on the ground, looking up at the sky, but she couldn’t see anything. Not the blue above, or the clouds that inhabited it, or the crowd all around her. People shouted, and someone screamed, and feet stomped all around her. She was afraid of getting crushed, trampled, or otherwise obliterated by stinky Silayan feet, but Leilynn hunched over her, warding away the crowd with her own body.

She felt embarrassed, needing this kind of help. She was always the first to admit she was kind of an idiot and overly impulsive, but she’d always prided herself on the fact that when she did lock the fuck in, she won. And now here she was, on the ground, bleeding out, tits bare to the world, and Il-Su was getting away to do who knew what kind of damage in the future. 

And then she felt it. Like tar on a newborn baby, like an oil spill in an oasis, like a Big Mac spoiling in the sun in a Walmart parking lot, something slid into place along with Otter’s link with Rua. Something touched on it, not directly interfering with it in any way, but inserting itself in a way that didn’t belong. It just felt wrong.

“You have to make a choice,” Leilynn said, staring down at her. Otter could barely make out her features. Her vision was clouding over. “You are a divergence, a crossroads. You must pick.”

“Pick what?”

“Il-Su. Rua. Try to stop. Try to save.”

Otter’s head felt woozy. Her fingers tightened around the pouch in her hands. She fumbled with the drawstring keeping it closed.

“Stop? Stop what?” she asked, her words coming out a little weak.

“He’s going to kill my wife,” Leilynn said, her voice angry. “Before she ever gets a chance to become mine. You have a choice. You choose correctly half the time. I beg you to choose right this time.”

Otter jammed a pair of clumsy fingers into the pouch, managed to barely grip onto a soul crystal, and pulled it out. She had no idea which one it was, but popped it into her mouth and swallowed.

Choose Stat to Enhance

Agility / Allure / Fortune

She’d whiffed. She didn’t need any of those three right this second. Still, she needed a bit more luck in her life. It was a risky stat, but she needed the opportunity. 

One more point to her Fortune stat. Not a lot, but she hadn’t exactly expected a random goblin to be lucky. 

She pulled the next crystal, and swallowed that as well.

Choose Stat to Enhance

Strength / Tenacity / Awareness

Had the goblins had any Tenacity? She didn’t remember breaking any shields in the fight. But Fitzkim had been at it for a while before she’d intervened. Odds were good he’d broken any they’d had. And Holt had said that once you had any kind of soul power, all stats started off as a base of 10, unless something was lowering them somehow. 

But Strength could also be what she needed. Holt had said Strength covered a lot of what made a body capable of functioning at peak performance. That included healing. 

“Rip this fucking thing out of me,” Otter growled.

Leilynn already had her hands on the grappling hook lodged in her shoulder.

“This is going to hurt,” she said.

“Don’t give a–” she cut off with a scream as Leilynn shoved, pushing the grappling hook the rest of the way through her shoulder.

Everything in Otter’s vision went white, and as it did, she tried to maintain her focus, tried to stay conscious. She couldn’t pass out now. She shoved her own forearm into her mouth and bit down. 

It didn’t just end with the piece of metal going the rest of the way through her. Next was the rope. Most of it had been cut away, and it wasn’t exactly pleasant to have to be pulled through Otter’s flesh.

As soon as it was done, Otter focused her mind on the Tenacity choice. She didn’t see it, but felt the shield flicker to life around her. It was weak, barely good enough for one hit. But with it up and running, both her Strength and Tenacity should be working together to repair her body. It wouldn’t be instantaneous. It’d take hours, at best. Maybe days. She just didn’t have enough experience with the system to be able to accurately judge. 

Otter could feel Rua getting further away from her. She was injured, and emotionally in distress. She felt like how Otter expected a cat stuck in a wet bag to feel. Panicked, angry, and liable to bite someone. Otter tried to send feelings of reassurance through it, but she just didn’t have it in her.

She wasn’t going to be able to help Rua. Not now, at least. Whatever was going on with Rua, it’d have to be tomorrow’s problem.

But Il-Su… Il-Su was very much today’s.

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