Chapter 129—Natural Disaster

Dimitri, with a scowl produced a cloth and wiped down the table in front of him. “Tom, that’s not how the world works. I don’t care what you’ve achieved I just can’t go around giving you people to experiment on.”

Tom tried and failed to contain a smirk.

Abruptly, the larger man stopped talking. “I see. It’s one of those. Tell me your plan.”

“I’m restricted with what I can share.” He answered instantly and then paused. He realised that he should have worked shopped his pitch before coming in here, but he hadn’t, which put him in dangerous territory especially with a resource as valuable as Dimitri. He was going to have to ad lib while being careful not to share too much. “I have an idea that might be valuable to humanity, but to check its validity I need to run some tests. What I’m doing has the potential to screw up someone.”

Dimitri’s eyes narrowed. “This better not be related to your stupid mana body reinforcements.”

“It isn’t,” Tom snapped back. “That project,” he continued moderating his tone, “is personal, and I don’t see any benefit for humanity originating from it. That’s just for me. This other idea, however, is different, its bigger and hopefully scalable.”

Dimitri visibly relaxed at that acknowledgment.

 “And before you ask, I can’t test this by myself.” He said hurriedly to close down that obvious line of inquiry.

“I see. You view this as a valid experiment, so what was with the bit about people I don’t like?”

“That part was a joke. I’m after volunteers who are unnerved, not involved in any long-term crafting and with as smallest fate pool as possible.” That bit, at least Tom had considered and rehearsed in advance.

“That sounds like kids?”

Tom looked at him in surprise. “The unnerved bit is important.”

“There are kids that meet that definition.”

He shook his head rapidly. “Not what I meant. I want the smallest potential fate pool possible … I mean kids can grow their pool over time. I guess I’m talking about the lowest long-term value.”

“You want people about to die of old age.”

Before he could help himself, he recoiled slightly in surprise. The idea that anyone in the competition could be in an aged state shocked him. “Really? Is that really a thing?” he asked in disbelief.

“Of course it is Tom. Everyone who came to Existentia has an effective body age of over seventy. Most of us have advanced enough to keep our bodies young, but some haven’t.”

“But how? Even a rank twenty should have a life span of over a hundred. I don’t get it Dimitri you were only chosen if you excelled in the tutorial. For everyone in the competition, getting to rank forty should have been child’s play. Please enlighten me how someone can stuff up that badly”

“That’s not something I can answer,” Dimitri told him. “I am just reporting facts. If you are curious about failures in the competition selection process, you can take it up with a priest.”

Images of the impact of blasphemy ran through his mind, and what Sven had suffered. His infraction had been minor, and he had nearly died. The sudden flash flood and the misery that had been pushed onto him in order to punish him. That was not something Tom was willing to subject himself to. “Um… No… Nope…I’m definitely passing on that.”

Dimitri laughed. “I have to say you’re wise beyond your apparent years. Assuming I can get volunteers that meet your criteria, what do you need to do with them. Will it be painful?”

“Shouldn’t be any pain and I only need to have them in an isolated room for half an hour and then some weekly follow-up sessions.”

“Special equipment?”

Tom remembered his run in with the trident and how it had started the torture process. “Don’t need much just a tool to remove fingernails.”

Dimitri stared at him not rising to the bait in the slightest.

“No special equipment required,” he corrected hastily.

Dimitri nodded. “I can help. How urgent is it?”

Tom considered that question. How significant an advantage did the knowledge conveyed by his title represent? He asked himself. It was the pertinent question and one he needed to answer.  It robbed recipients of the ability to use fate to influence future events but greatly boosted the overall effectiveness of their fate use. It had pluses and minuses, which made estimating the impact difficult. The main advantage he had found was in the advancement of self-taught skills, but the same technique could be applied to drive sideways evolutions and to push the levels of abilities up.. It was not ground breaking by any stretch, but if he could extend it to the majority of the crafting population. That was twenty thousand people multiplied by twenty years. How many ranking points was that? How many ranking points was bringing that contribution forward a week worth? Or a month? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Not hundreds. That was stupid territory. If it was only ten thousand, that was still impressive. It was not a small contribution even if his recent windfalls made it seem that way. After all, on average, each human was only producing five ranking points per month.

He licked his lips. “I think I would prefer to wait under a week.”

“I can’t do that safely. A month is more realistic.”

“No. This has a good chance of failing, but if it succeeds, it might be worth ten to twenty million ranking points.” Tom knew he was plucking numbers out of the ether.

Dimitri frowned. “Interesting, that unfortunately had the ring of truth to it. Okay, I’ll prioritise this. Give me two weeks. I don’t think I can get it done sooner. If I move people too quickly, it’ll look suspicious and I won’t risk any actions that might identify you as the reincarnator, and I can’t act straight after this meeting, for obvious reasons.”

Two weeks passed, and Tom turned seven. The orphanage didn’t care and nor did he beyond the fact it meant there were only eight years until he reached fifteen and could start earning experience.

His friends were a different matter and Eloise roped in her not parents to celebrate. Unfortunately, gift giving was a tradition that had not transitioned into Existentia, so there were no presents or opportunities to turn worthless tier zero items into something stronger.

The food, however, was better than the orphanage served, and he could feel his attributes improving marginally as he ate it.

Eloise’s not-parents were adventurers who had reached rank eighty by being cautious in the battles they chose. They were the archetype of the new breed of human competitors. Ones that didn’t throw their lives away in the pursuit of quick levels. While the power they had gained was impressive from a humanity viewpoint, it wasn’t enough to turn them into a one-person army. On an Existentia scale, they were little more than an annoying gnat. Every civilisation had multiple individuals or teams capable of snuffing them out, and they were well aware of that. Their plan was to reach mid-nineties over the next decade and a half. One they had been working toward for half a century. Once they reached that threshold, because of the experience shop advantage that all humans had, the one which meant they had access to better skills and spells that compounded into superior classes, they would become a threat to most civilisations twenty ranks sooner than most.

After that, they would spend the last fifteen years of the competition doing whatever it took to gain ranking points.

Tom thoroughly approved of their mindset.

The party broke up and the next day while he was sitting at the dinner table while playing with the spell Dust Manipulation in the pocket of his uniform a sudden hush went through the room. 

Dimitri was standing on his speaking platform flanked by two serious looking individuals. They were both male and were decked out in full adventurer gear. One had a traditional spear and shield combination, but the second had a gigantic doubled headed battle axe in his hands. It was massive. Each half was the size of a serving tray, the type that could fit multiple dinner plates side by side on it and still have room for cups and cutlery. Combined together the axe heads were almost as long as Tom was tall and at the centre they were over a hand thick of dense heavy metal that tapered to a razor-sharp edge that was wide enough to slice open giant watermelons in one blow..

Internally, Tom whistled at its likely weight. Only massively inflated attributes allowed him to carry the weapon. Even so, he wondered about the physics involved. There had to be tailored skills at play because otherwise, with the axe weighing more than he did it would be impossible to swing. Something to either make the axe lighter or to bind the man’s feet to the ground at the very minimum. He probably had both and other more exotic options on top of that Tom decided after a moments more thought. It would take a lot of specialisations to make a weapon that large and heavy work.

His study of the fighters was interrupted by Dimitri as he started to speak. “I bring terrible news.” Absolute silence descended. “Beijing, one of our sister towns was just attacked. Details are sketchy, but it appears to be a natural calamity caused by a weakening of the separation layer between the surface and the Underground. The resulting monster eruption occurred a mere twenty kilometres from the walls of Beijing.”

Dimitri abruptly raised his hand to still the sudden babble of noise that had begun as a reaction to his first statement.

“The monster horde has breached the protective walls. Lives have been lost. While the monsters didn’t reach the orphanage, it was simultaneously targeted by outside assassins. To the best of our knowledge they were acting as opportunistic scouts and have not reaped any lives. They hoped to catch reincarnators responding proactively to the crisis. We believe they failed in this aim. If any reincarnators are here, this is a good reminder of how to act in a crisis. Basically, don’t do anything… You’re all too weak to make a difference, so don’t try. Retreat into your system room the moment something like this happens to ensure you act your age.”

He paused and looked around at all of them. “I know this makes you anxious. Whenever a bastion of humanity suffers an attack, it impacts all of us. This natural calamity, what Beijing is suffering is not good, but it appears to be a random event. It was an Underground break. Unpredictable, unlucky, and as devastating as expected. Some of the worm monsters that escaped were above rank a hundred and ten.” There were gasps from multiple kids. “But only just. Thankfully, nothing catastrophic was released, but the combination of quantity and quality was still very dangerous. People will and have died. I don’t want to talk percentage, but it might be above ten. An absolutely devastating loss. This is why when adults talk about the competition, it has real meaning too it. Existentia is not a nice place and the people coming from earth have not grown up with magic. They’re going to be vulnerable and if we, with our fifty years of experience suffer casualties to an event like this, you can imagine what will happen if we get scattered in small groups all over Existentia. It will not go well.”

Dimitri, with his speech finished got off his podium and disappeared.

Everyone lingered at the tables, as they were all hopeful of receiving another update. The dessert course came and went and the numbers of people present had barely reduced.

There was a stir and, sure enough, when he looked up, Dimitri was back on his speaking platform. “There’s still a fog of war in place, but I thought I would give an update before you all head off to bed. I can report that the orphanage has survived and has not been evacuated as the shields are still intact and it was deemed the safest place for kids. Furthermore, the major threats, three worms ranging from a hundred and ten to a hundred and seventeen and a magma wolf elemental of similar rank have been either slain or driven away. Two of the worms escaped but given their species and that they were bloodied they won’t return. With them taken care of, the main crisis has bene dealt with and they believe the breach to the Underground has self-sealed already like they usually do. Beijing remains under assault by lesser creatures with ranks between seventy and ninety-five, but the defenders are repelling them easily enough. At this point, they can’t see a scenario where the town will need to be abandoned.”

“How many dead?” A brave teenager yelled out.

“Around five hundred fighters and twice that in civilians.” Dimitri answered quietly. “Casualty rates are estimated to be at about seven percent, which is much better than first thought. I don’t have anything else to share, and this is the last update for today.” With a firm nod, he departed the stage.

Everyone looked shocked, but Briana embracing her new role led them to one of the smaller training rooms so they could lock it and train in peace with just the four of them. It was immediately obvious that everyone but Kang fought distractedly. All Tom could think about was the number of ranking points they had just lost. Five hundred combatants were not a small number and humans were already struggling.

Kang Quick Stepped forward and his fist connected with Tom’s solar plexus before he could defend himself.

He grunted as the air was blown out of him and instinctively used Spark and then danced forward, landing two quick blows to the side of Kang’s head and then chin. It was mostly just instinct, but it was effective. The other reincarnator collapsed like a sack of potatoes his eyes rolling to show their whites.

Instinctively, Tom healed him and was relieved to see his blows had done no serious damage.

“Tom loses because he cheated by using lightning.” Eloise proclaimed instantly.

“I don’t care.” He snapped. The silly duels were all bullshit, and they weren’t even an effective distraction. He had better things to do.. “I’m out of here.” He declared and then with a quick detour through the cleaning loop, he left. He knew he could have gone into the divine champions’ trial, but he didn’t want to see them either. His mind was spinning too much to do ritual work or tame sparring and he wished he could go to a lair and kill stuff properly. He struggled to understand what had just happened. Humans had just lost one or two percent of their future points purely to bad luck.

It was insane.

Despite their community prayers, they had in old earth terms been hit by the equivalent of a magnitude nine earthquake and it had done devastating damage. It beggared belief, but the attack had definitely occurred. He guessed that was life. No matter how much you prepared shit happened.

The next day at breakfast Dimitri gave an update, but it contained no news and then instead of subjecting himself to his lessons he retreated to the divine champion trial. Mr. Cricket was again in charge and Tom just waited long enough for him to arrive and then threw himself into the soothing routine. He sped through the familiar twists and curves, taking the pattern from his massive wire framework and creating it in a minimised form in the wood.

As always, he failed, but he persisted. The entire effort was almost hypnotic and engrossed in the beauty of the crafting he didn’t have to think about the disaster that had happened to Beijing.

“Underground breaks?” he asked finally. “How common are they?”

Mr Cricket pointed multiple hairy arms at him. “They happen. A larger nation would be expected to have one or two occur each year in their territory, but they are usually minor and well away from civilisation. It’s just a probability thing. Even major nations are mostly empty space.”

“What sort of rank of monsters usually escape.”

The arms did a circular motion that he interpreted thanks to the translation magic as the equivalent of the shrug. “It’s generally related to the rank at the surface, but fifty percent higher is common.”

“So if it happens within twenty kilometres of a city.”

“Death and destruction. In practice, only borderland cities are built to survive against monsters so much higher than them in rank. Why do you ask?”

He explained what happened to Beijing.

Mr. Cricket’s arms all pointed at him. “They were very unlucky and lucky at the same time that they could counter what they faced. The reasons cities fail usually isn’t the rank difference but the fact they don’t have counters for the monster’s ability.”

Tom didn’t correct the lucky assumption. Humans as a competition species had full access to the experience shop, that gave them a diversity of builds and he expected that they would have been able to directly counter any enemy. A native city lacked the same advantages, and he could see that a species that specialised in lightning being overwhelmed if they went against something immune to the element.

The unlucky bit did stick in his mind. How with community prayers providing an extra layer of protection did something like that happen? He didn’t want to think it, but it felt like a more nefarious plot was in play.

This had to be deliberate. A random event wouldn’t have been able to occur so close to the city.

The question was who? Natives wouldn’t be able to act like that. The MO modius operandi also wasn’t that of the dragons or the insects. They didn’t do subtle, so weren’t to blame. Who then? There were only so many options, but just like Tom was too weak to help in the crisis this too was not something he could engage with. If he was having these thoughts, he could guarantee that hundreds of others had come to the same conclusion.

It would have to be their problem, not his. He decided, and then he forcefully pushed the Beijing issue out of his mind so he could train effectively.