“Yes. A vote…” The Zarrie shakes his head. “We are not interested. What was taken, we will have back. And the blood debt will be repaid.”
His final words are the signal and his friends open fire. I throw myself forward—not at him, but sideways past him, then change directions again, putting myself behind the speaker’s back. The movement isn’t fast enough to dodge all the shots of course, but Soul Shield provides enough protection when combined with Ali’s twisting of their attacks.
Even as I move, I trigger Judgment of All. One good thing about working for the Erethrans is they’ve been blocking purchases of their Class Skills since forever. And while the Zarrie’s main government probably has details, this is but a branch of a branch. Their budget has nothing on what the Erethrans have paid to keep Skills like Judgment for All hidden.
And while they might be able to buy my Status Sheet, if they even bothered, it wouldn’t necessarily tell them what the Skill does. Not until I use it. Like now.
Light flares as Ali and I spin around in opposite circles. We use my Skill, both of us, pouring damage onto our attackers. With Penetration’s ability in play, they don’t stand a chance.
I watch damage pile on, the support Classers falling first. One of them has a retributive Aura Skill, reflecting a portion of their attacks onto me. Another attacker drops a cloying plasma attack that refuses to stop burning. A series of beacon darts dig into my body and draw fire from other attacks while overlapping fields of debuffs slow me down and drain Mana.
There’s more, a lot more.
The very air around me burns. The poor Speaker’s ability to avoid the attacks—similar to Harry’s—is subverted by the sheer volume of fire. He dies as collateral damage, rather than my Skill, which he manages to avoid triggering.
My dodging works at shedding some of the damage, but my attackers shift to area effect attacks that combine with the defenses implanted in the building. Then things get a lot more difficult to avoid. I leave my sword uncalled, instead smashing apart the emplaced weaponry with spells and well-placed body slams, my Soul Shield replenished continuously by Ali.
A short and hectic minute later, as Judgment of All finishes its job, the Spirit is buzzing through open windows, looting bodies and dumping them in my Altered Space. I do the same with the Speaker’s body, both of us more than cognizant that we have to be gone within minutes.
“Up here. Teleport circle. It’s locked to the users here but…”
“Got it.” I bounce upward, using my hoverboots to slide through the balcony and into the room. A hand on the console and I’m accessing the System-controlled lock-outs.
System Edit flashes, and I feel another tiny tick of experience slide into the Administrator Class as I adjust the settings. I slip in a small program that’ll delete my access, the logs, and itself after a set amount of time after I finish editing access levels, then we get on the platform.
The encompassing Dimension Lock disappears as I stand on the teleport circle and grin. Then we’re gone, leaving behind nothing but a burnt and shattered building.
Moments later, the gravity bomb I left in the center of the building implodes, taking the building and what evidence there might be with it.
***
I push against the bottom of the pool, shooting out of the water and breaking into fresh air. My breathing is slightly ragged, more than it should be considering how little I truly need oxygen these days, but following the selkie through the water has been quite the workout. I swim until we reach the small island in the middle of the giant water playground—large enough to be a lake—they consider a swimming pool and rest against the warm sand.
The selkie shivers and twists, bones popping and cracking as it transforms before it climbs onto the sandy beach. It turns around, the smooth, slightly dimpled nature of its lower body a weird sight even as the transformation completes, hiding its fur… somewhere.
“Satisfied?” I say.
The selkie tilts its head from side to side, the whiskers of its seal body one of the features not having disappeared. They twitch in the breeze as it spies on its own people, before it turns back to me. “Yes.”
“Good. So do we have a deal?” I say.
“No.”
I frown, but the selkie doesn’t elaborate, forcing me to ask why.
“Details,” it says.
“Well, yes. I guess.” I bite my lip, remembering what I’ve been warned about. “Details are required. But we can work that out in someplace drier, no?”
“Sample.”
“You want a sample? A demonstration?” I consider. “That can be arranged.”
“Good.” Then the selkie walks away, leaving me slack-jawed.
“What the hell?”
“They don’t like talking much to dry-landers,” Ali supplies. “By the way, make sure that sample is sufficiently sized.”
“Sufficient for what?”
“Both of you to consume.”
“Both of us!?!” I frown and sense Ali’s amusement. “Why?”
“Don’t you guys have a food culture too? It’s the same thing. You can’t trust people you don’t eat beside. It’s why Rob hasn’t managed to make a deal.”
“But Katherine’s here. As was her trade representative.”
“Politics. They only work with those with sufficient influence. And that’s Rob. Or, well, you.”
I frown, triggering my Flight spell as I head back to dry land now that I’m certain the Selkie won’t speak further.
“Don’t send that disapproval. You wouldn’t even count if you hadn’t gotten your Heroic Class. It’s why I had you alter that for him.”
I shake my head, shedding water as I fly and getting a few shouted imprecations from those below my flight path. I ignore them as I land at the entrance, already conjuring a Cleansing spell.
There’s more work to do and even more people to meet. Thus far, we’ve been tackling the easy jobs. It’s just going to get harder as we go down the list.
I expect I’ll trigger Extra Hands after today. I’d have done it today, but I wanted an idea of the kind of thing we were going to be dealing with, the kind of people and problems. I won’t send them—myself—into this blind.
But as I’m finding out, the more people we contact, the more we meet, the higher the chance there is that we’ll be located. The fight with the Zarrie was bad enough, but at least they’re assholes who have a long, long list of enemies. Eventually though, we’ll be found out.
Which is another reason to consider how to contact the damn Galactic Council before things go to hell in a handcart.
Chapter 12
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Ali says.
He hovers over my outstretched hand, making me pause as I reach for the Shop orb. We’re not in Irvina anymore, having made the trip in the early hours of the morning to a sleepy holiday town to use their Shop orb. The population is high enough they’ve got multiple such orbs in play, each linked to the main settlement orb but rarely used. Especially at this time of the night.
“No. But we don’t seem to be getting anywhere, do we?” I say.
Ali gives me a half-hearted shrug, the pair of us alone in the sealed-off room that offers the orb and its users privacy.
We’ve been running around for the last week and a half, doing the best we can to get votes against or abstentations. At first, it was easy. Or it seemed that way at least.
But soon enough, the low-hanging fruit of votes are gone, leaving us to deal with people who want things that are harder to source, harder to convince we can fulfill when no one else can.
I’ve been beaten black and blue three times, and still the System has yet to register the Heroic “duel win.” The kid who does it to me packs one heck of a wallop, since they’ve geared his entire build to single-hit knockouts, and still, the System doesn’t consider it a win. We’ve tried multiple ways now—from direct fights to a registered dueling ring—and nothing. I keep holding back too much, such that the poor fellow can’t convince the System he’s winning properly.