Chapter 101 – Hidden Titles

Tom hovered over Corrine. She was both mortally injured and also not in any immediate danger. On earth, not even the greatest team of surgeons could have saved her, but here it was different. She had the choice of using a recovery potion or taking the risk and going back to Existentia to get a human healer to fix her. Most of the competitors here wouldn’t have that option. Healing classes were usually some of the first lost by diminishing species. But humans were part of the competition and had an excess of exotic classes and an embarrassment of individuals with amazing spells outside of their class specialities. Both Michael and Clare, at the end of his life here would have possessed the spells required to fix her wounds easily, and they had got to that level in less than a year. By now there would be hundreds of people with the relevant abilities in town and Dimitri, given his position could probably help as well.   

For now, he just had to wait and monitor her. Multiple casts of Blood Replenish had boosted her blood pressure back into the healthy range and while her oxygen saturation was less than ideal because of her reduced lung capacity according to his calculations it should be more than enough to sustain consciousness.

She did however have to wake up.

He shook her shoulder very slightly. Given the missing organs and material scars the sooner she was able to get help the better. If she remained unconscious for more than an hour, then she would need to be given a recovery potion.

Vturalta caught his intent and splashed water on her face.

Corrine flinched away from it. Her eyes flickered and then they snapped open. It took her a mere moment to assess the situation. “No pain? Did you use a fucking recovery potion on me?”

“No, you’re still very injured. I’ve just suppressed your receptors. Are you okay? How do you feel?”

“I’m fucking fine.” She hesitated, tried to sit up, and stopped very quickly. “No… I’m not. I don’t feel too well.”

Tom had been monitoring her and was relieved to see the small movement hadn’t created any new bleeding. “That’s your body telling you that you’re dying.”

Her eyes widened.

“Not immediately.” He said hurriedly. “I’ve stabilised you, but my magic isn’t good at producing new tissue and you’ve lost too much. I can’t fix you. You’ve got six hours at most.”

Her maturity and experience shone through because she didn’t panic at all. She looked thoughtful. “That’s more than long enough. I can always buy a recovery potion for less than what I just earned. I have to know, are you supporting me in any way at the moment. Like, is the reason I’m conscious, because you’re funnelling mana into me?”

Tom shook his head. “No one is doing that. I mean I haven’t done any healing for over half a minute.”

She nodded slightly. Deliberately keeping the movements small. “Good. How stable am I? I mean how fucking long will I be stable if you continue to do nothing?”

“Hours. But the missing organs are going to cause a deterioration in everything. You’re going to go from mostly functioning to not being able to do anything very quickly.”

She sighed. “You prevented them from giving me a recovery potion didn’t you”

“I figured I could give you the choice and at worse let you buy it direct and get it cheaper.”

“Thank you. I think I’m going to ask Dimitri to heal me.”

“In your state that’s dangerous?” he started and then stopped.

She had touched her neck and a delicate chain he had never noticed before was visible. “This will let me summon him.”

“I’ve got something similar.” Tom admitted.

“I’m not surprised. He got me this when I got into the Divine Champion’s trial. For this exact situation, and I’ve used it twice since.”

“I got mine when a rank two lair almost killed me.”

She laughed at his delivery and immediately regretted it. She knew the history of course, but that didn’t mean the concept of getting in trouble in such a weak lair wasn’t funny.

“Tom, I’m going to go and get fixed up.”

“What happens if he doesn’t come in time?”

“He will. I’ll give him five minutes before returning and updating you on my status.”

“Maybe a recovery potion is worth the investment.”

“No.” she said. “No. I’ll come back and buy one, but only if I have no choice. You’re confident I won’t die immediately if I leave aren’t you.”

He nodded. That was what Touch Heal was conveying to him.

“This fucking pisses me off.” She complained. “I’ve almost certainly got better healing spells than you, and all mine are telling me I’m fucking doomed. But I know they’re wrong. Because if they were right I would have died already during this conversation.”

“It was an interest of mine in the tutorial and some of the solutions I’ve done to stabilise you are kind of unorthodox. I can imagine low level diagnostic spells tripping up because of them.”

“I don’t want to know,” she chuckled very weakly. “But the sooner I go the sooner I can stop feeling like death.” She winked at him.

“That’s a terrible joke,” he started to complain, but she was already gone.

There was an itching sensation in him that was almost compelling him to leave, but he couldn’t. He needed to wait for Corrine to return. He had doubts whether it was possible, but he was having mini nightmares about what was happening to her. What would happen if she had massive organ failure the moment she left here. Was she even now unconscious on the floor of an isolation room having failed to trigger her necklace. How would he feel if she was dying? Given the work he had completed to guarantee her short-term stability, he wasn’t sure such a collapse was possible, but that fear clawed at him, so he wasn’t going anywhere.

With a sigh, he looked up and discovered nearly everyone had gathered around him and was staring at him.

“How did you do that?” A six armed, zero legged, ball of muscles asked him, suddenly.

“They’re the same species.” Throm answered for him. “Anyone from the same species can heal another of their type.”

“Are you sure?” The ball of muscles asked. “They look so different. Like I know they have the same number of appendages, but she was so much bigger and had longer hair.”

“Yes, Tom is just younger and I think a different sex.”

Tom ignored them and at a table quickly scribbled down the details of his encounter to distract himself.

“Tom,” he jumped at Throm’s almost shouted voice. “I just got an alert. Did you really fight a trident?”

He glanced up in surprise. “Is that what they’re called?”

“Yes. And you have memories?”

“Well, I went in with a full GOD’s shield.”

“Obviously,” Throm said. “But do you really remember all of it? Is it possible you have fake memories?”

 “No, what I have is very real. It couldn’t get into my mind.”

“Excellent! Record everything no matter how minor.” Throm ordered him. Then all of its arms waved. It was a clinical version of excitement. “Tom, do you think you can develop to beat it?”

He hesitated. That wasn’t a question he had been expecting. He scratched his hair. “Um… I don’t see why not. Once I can break its main abilities, then I don’t think it’ll be able to stop me.”

“And do you think you can do that?”

“It was pushing me into a reality where I couldn’t use magic. I was unable to shatter the shackles, but by the end I felt close. So yes. If I run into it a couple more times, I think I can take it out.”

“You will almost certainly meet it again.” Throm informed with all seriousness. “Maybe not while I’m here, or while you’re in child bucket one but if you both stay in the competition, you’ll cross paths multiple times.”

“Then by the time this finishes it’ll be incapacitated too.”

“Good,” Throm said with bloodlust. “Good. It deserves to die but your focus has to be on the disks, but once you’re producing sellable versions, I’ll help you with gaining the tools to put the trident down permanently.”

Tom understood exactly what was being offered. You could theoretically incapacitate someone by the use of physical torture, but most of the people in the competition would not be scarred by such attempts. The professionals did it with the same method as the bear had started before his GOD’s shield intervened. The solution was to attack the soul. The trident had destroyed at least fourteen people and enjoyed every moment while doing so. There was only one answer. “I’m happy to learn.”

“Now, I know you’ve written a brief report,” the giant centipede continued. “But you’re going to have to expand on it. I’d also like to do a formal interview before the memory fades. By that, I mean right now.”

The itch in him to leave was growing stronger. “I guess I can…”

Corrine took that moment to appear.

“Talk while I wait for…” he trailed off, staring at Corrine and trying to assess her health.

“Stop that,” she complained, happily. “Dimitri’s with me. I’m getting healed. There’s no need to do anything.” Then she stopped and noticed the ring of people who had spread out to have Tom in its centre. “What’s this? Is it about the healing?”

“No,” Throm said quietly. “Your friend fought the trident and has memories of the encounter.”

“Are you okay?” Corrine asked immediately.

Tom waved the concern aside. “I was shielded.”

“But how do you remember anything?”

“That’s what I’m going to find out.” Throm said with a grin.

The desire to leave swelled up a lot like the anger did when he became enraged. He did not want to be interrogated. There was an itch in him to get to somewhere safe and alone that had been growing every second since he had gotten back from the fight. He had been suppressing it for Corrine’s sake, but he couldn’t continue to put it off.

“I have to go.” He said curtly and then before anyone could object, he was back in his private system room for a second and then he was elsewhere. 

The area he found himself in was wrong.

Not wrong as in incorrect or evil, but more impossibly different from anything he had experienced. There was nothing specific he could put his finger on. It looked normal; the ground felt the same, but it wasn’t. There was just an aura of greatness. He wasn’t a religious man, but he wanted to get on his knees and prey to the walls, the floor and the ceiling, everything.

Yet when he really looked at anything, when he examined it Danger Sense screamed at him. A threat of something so powerful that studying it too closely would cause him to spontaneously explode.

An alternative issue presented itself. It was like something was peeling off a scab, but one in his mind not on his skin. His presence in the strange room caused locked memories to stir.

Terrifying ones. Flashes of him secretly observing a dragon and inadvertently spying on a GOD only to have it notice him. And then… he didn’t want to think about then. Then was a moment to be buried in a black hole. A period of such terror that only an active intervention of DEUS had saved his soul from collapsing.

But this was not a clinical discussion of historical events. It had been him spying, and it had been his soul that had been at risk.

How? He thought his heartbeat racing.

How had he done that?

Then other memories began to shift and emerge.

GODS talking about him…

He shuddered.

And his brain nearly shut down as he considered those implications. Not a singular GOD, but them in plural form. It was surreal that BEINGS with the power to make and shape thousands of universes had talked about him.

What he was feeling now was a less intense version of that first memory when his soul had almost collapsed. He could feel the weakness and was experiencing that overwhelming terror that transcended all boundaries. Then an inner strength from other locked memories buoyed him up. Restored him and allowed him to regain his equilibrium. Something from amongst his missing memories made the pressure of that knowledge bearable.

In the past, he had overcome this so the reflection of history could not find purchase on him. 

Then there was another flash of memory.

This time it was GODS arguing over him.

He collapsed at the knees unable to do anything else.

Once more, the tidal wave of terror transfixed him, but his distant self made him stand up to face it. Blood was running from his nostrils, but he would not bend. He allowed the tsunami to crash over him and he refused to let it wash him away.

This had already occurred, so why should he let fear control him.

Then the knowledge that a GOD, not a proxy like what he suspected happened with the coins but an actual GOD had actively targeted him.

This time, he blacked out and returned to consciousness lying on the floor.

Darkness filled him and that loving presence from earlier came in and restored key bits of him. He was still himself; the memories remained blocked, but he knew more now. Terrifying stuff he didn’t want to think about for sure, but it caused some of his problems to no longer seem so all-encompassing.

It had happened.

He had survived…

Well, kind of survived. The fact he was in a six-year-old body implied differently. But he was pretty sure the plotting of GODs had not directed the wador to do what it had. That had been a purely personal attack.

His previous life had been far more impactful than he had imagined. What the others had written about him in the name memorial, being a member of the Heroes of Humanity. They had shown his importance. These new memories implied a lot more.

How? He asked again.

The idea of any mortal catching their attention did not make sense.

What had he done? How had he managed it?

And maybe there was a reason, after all, for his memories to have been blocked. Could his four-year-old body in a ritual circle have coped with that pressure?

There was no simple answer to be had. Slowly, he picked himself off the ground. The space he was in now made a lot more sense. The walls they were not a construct created by a trial or the far extremities of the system. They were… It didn’t matter, Tom decided quickly in response to his mounting panic. The nature of his surroundings were irrelevant. Some secrets were best left undiscovered.

April suddenly appeared across from him.

She glanced around frantically, and then her eyes rested on him. They were wide, wider than he had ever seen. “Tom, what have you done?”

Her eyes were flicking from side to side, and he saw panic on her perfect features and then a moment later reality warped and they were sitting at the café in the normal spots. April’s cup of coffee as she raised it to her lips, visibly trembled. A drop even sloshed over the side to strike the table.

He had never seen her do that before.

“Are you okay?” He asked.

“Do you know what’s happening?” she shot back rather than responding to his question. “Do you?

The walls he couldn’t help but notice had the same feeling of greatness as they had in the empty space room. Extras had been added, but they were still in the same spot. “Yes, I do.” He didn’t want to address it consciously, but he knew. “Yes, I know where we are.”

The reproduction of the angel across from him swallowed heavily and took another shaky sip. Coffee splashed to the side and ran down her chin. “I was asked to brief you for later. De… De…” she stopped talking for a moment. “Something’s coming after this and our discussion now will give you context.” She looked down at the clipboard in her hands.

Whatever was written did not help settle anything.

“I…I … I.” She laughed at herself and her involuntary stutter. “I guess some of the things you’ve told me in passing make a lot more sense now. This is a title you received in your past life. I have a note that the bolded stuff is extras that triggered at, or after your death.”

She handed him the clipboard.

Title: Known Heretic (2): The regard of GODs is a heavy burden especially when you are aware of it and it must be balanced by positives.

Reward: All who know you, even in passing, will be affected by a passive influence. Those stronger than you will think more highly of you and will be reluctant to act against your interests and more likely to gift you a valuable item tailored to your needs. Those weaker will perceive you to have more strength than you actually possess and treat you accordingly. They will occasionally be compelled to give you tribute that will also be shaped to benefit you as much as possible.

The title makes it almost impossible for anyone but yourself to recognise the effects of it. Any gifts received will be dismissed as normal and not noteworthy.

Awarded for: Being aware that you are known by name and reputation by all eight GODs. And have had at least two GODs actively plot to affect your life.

·        Legendary Title. Title is hidden from all but you and your patron GODDESS so no ranking points or experience may be awarded until this status is revoked.

Tom read through the title and focused first on why it had been both awarded and then upgraded. The wording, despite how threatening it was did not hold a candle to the impressions of those meetings in his mind.

Something printed on a page could not match the memory of meeting a god especially an angry one.

He wished he had neither.

He licked his lips as he read the new bits. At least two GODs had actively plotted against him. Theoretically, that did not mean they had wanted him dead or even that they were trying to do something bad to him, but from his memories he knew better.

GODs had tried to destroy him, but he was still here and in the game. There was evidence that a massive fate ritual had been dedicated, over presumably thousands if not hundreds of thousands of miles, for the sole purpose of killing him. The resources that must have taken were immense, but with this knowledge the effort now made sense.

That was a GOD hunting for him and whichever species had done it, they had been acting on a divine request. It was no wonder they had invested so much. The very concept chilled him to the bone. He had speculated about that exact reason, but there was a difference between wondering and knowing. He shut his eyes. A god was… Fuck. He didn’t want to think about it and so he refused to and he forced himself to focus on the benefits.  

Those lines also answered his open questions about why Maurice had gifted him the trait stone, or his luck in getting the special crystal to boost his affinity and/ or the training ring he had been given. The cause of all those events were now obvious. It had been this title, working silently in the background.

There were other abilities that remained a mystery to him. He looked up at April. “I have more hidden titles don’t I.”

She nodded. “Yes. Yes, you almost certainly do.”

“Can you?”

“I can’t,” she interrupted. “I can’t show them to you because I can’t see them, but if they become visible to me, I will share.”

“Is that possible? Can their status suddenly change?”

“Tom, look where.” She suddenly stopped talking as her own words reminded her of where they were. She swallowed heavily and her eyes agitatedly surveyed the room. They were jumping from spot to spot like a bandicoot crossing a space where it knew a predator might lie in wait. Both her fists were clenched so tightly he could see veins popping out. She drew in a shuddering breath and shut her eyes. “Tom, what I meant to say is you’re not normal. What I see is whatever a GOD wants. Everything is possible.”

“True.”

“Now I know you’re a bit rattled, but you’re needed elsewhere.”

“Where?”

She shuddered again. “To be honest, I’d prefer not to think about it. I like my life such as it is.”

Slowly, she faded away, and he felt himself being picked up and accelerated. Not up and down, but rather moving to a new location within… within the space he found himself.