Awareness came slowly. The dream he had been having seemed more like a nightmare than anything else. Spiders and crystals, blood and fire. One hand reached out, trying to find the warm form of Zoey sleeping next to him. Drew's hand found hair, and he stroked it gently. He loved her curls.
"Normally, I'd ask a guy to at least buy me dinner before letting him paw at me like that." The unfamiliar voice was female, which caused all sorts of alarms to go off in his head. Drew's eyes shot open. Sitting next to him was a moderately tall brunette, she had an oblong face with brilliant light blue eyes. Her hair had been let down, clearly against the military regulation her uniform dictated she should be following. She looked to be in her early thirties or late twenties and was wearing a disheveled dress uniform, the insignia on her collars designating her as a 1st class petty officer with a name tag that read Sabin.
"Ensign, he's awake," the woman before him called out to someone beyond Drew's field of vision. He tried to stand up, but the pounding in his head slammed him back down with a grunt. "Woah, steady there, don't try to move just yet. You took quite the beating out there. I'm glad the Ensign was able to heal you up…but I don't think you're back up to ops normal quite yet." The brunette grabbed his shoulder and helped him back down, moving the pillow behind his head to ensure he didn't bang it on the hard floor.
Drew's eyes closed again, and he realized that it had not been a dream. He turned his attention inward; the pain he remembered was mostly gone, but small aches and pains remained. His clothing was still stuck to him, the blood and sweat not having been washed off. With his eyes closed, he could still see the flashing blue box in the corner of his vision, but he opted not to give it any credence until he was surer of his current situation. "Lights? How?" His voice felt raw and dry. The blanket covered his hands and he began the process of casting major refresh on himself, wanting more clarity for the situation.
"Easy there shipmate, just hold up a minute and you can talk to the Ensign. She's in charge," the brunette said. He could feel a hand on his shoulder trying to comfort him. "Ensign Rothschild?" She made the question, with her voice tilted away from him. Drew was aware of other sounds in the room, cloth shifting, and footsteps sounding as they approached him. Major Refresh went off and he breathed a sigh of relief. His eyes opened, and he moved to sit up again, the headache no longer affecting him.
"Alright, I'm up." The ensign came into view. She was young, early twenties at best, about what Drew would have expected from an Ensign. She looked him over, "So, Petty Officer Michalik," her pronunciation of his name being horrible, with the emphasis on the ch rather than the second i. "You show up at the door, mostly dead, covered in blood and who knows what else. Care to tell me who you are and what's going on?"
Drew laughed, "Ma'am, I have no clue what's going on. I'm IT2 Michalik and I'm…no, I was the Cyber Security Operations Command mission lead. When the lights went out and the blue boxes appeared, I left the watch floor and went looking for my partner, who was on his lunch break." Drew scratched his forehead, flaking pieces of dried blood falling onto his hand. With a grunt, he shook his hands, causing the flakes to fall onto the ground. "I ran into a six-foot spider that almost killed me, and then came here hoping you all were still here and alive." He shrugged and looked around the room for the first time. He was sitting in a corner. The two women standing next to him weren't the only people in the room; he could see the prone shapes of two more people sleeping in the far corner. The room was lit with several small, stone-like, white lights that were scattered around the room.
"Have you had any contact from the outside? All my lines were dead," Drew asked the junior officer
"No, we've…been here for the last couple days. Same situation. All the lines are dead, the power is off, and every time we've ventured outside something has attacked us." The Ensign replied.
"Days?" Drew asked, confused, "How long was I out?" He moved to stand up, the 1st class helping him, and he smiled at her in thanks.
"An hour or so... We haven't had much sleep, and healing you took a lot out of me," the ensign responded and Drew frowned. He hadn't ever really felt tired after casting spells. Then again, after pretty much every fight he had cast major refresh, which would theoretically have removed all the negative effects of the casting.
"That…doesn't make sense, it's only been a couple hours since the voice said 'begin' and all this craziness started."
Sabin shook her head, "No, IT2, it's been a couple days. Why don't you tell us what you remember, and we'll figure out what happened?" She gestured to the polished cherry wood table where the higher-ups of the coast guard had their daily briefings and the very nice seats that surrounded it.
"Alright. So, me and Rob were on night watch together this week, Rob… that is IT2 Omondi was on his lunch break, and suddenly the voice said 'Begin' and the blue boxes appeared. They told me my stats and then gave me some xatherite for being close to a central nexus or something. Then I went through the tutorial, which only lasted a handful of minutes."
"Wait, tutorial?" Ensign Rothschild interrupted him, "What tutorial?"
"Uh, the Aevis lady appeared in front of me and gave me a rundown on the whole Human Protectorate, slotting xatherite, linked skills, and all that stuff. Not a ton of information, to be honest." Drew looked between the two women, taking in their blank glances. "I mean, I guess it said I was selected for it, so I guess it isn't ubiquitous. Guess I got lucky there. But anyway, then I slotted a bunch of xatherites and lost consciousness for a bit, no idea how long."
"Two questions; What is the Human Protectorate? And exactly how many xatherite did you slot? Caballos is the only one that lost consciousness after he slotted all five of his at once, and even then, that was only for a few minutes."
"All five? I did six that first time--three intermediates, and a couple of commons and basics. Wait, you guys only got five? That means you have like…50 nodes? The tutorial said I had more than average, but I didn't think it would be that much higher." Drew looked between the two women as they stared at him with slightly agape mouths.
"Three intermediates? The first time? I have 37 slots, Katie and Mitch are in the mid 40's, and Juan has 55. How many did you get?" Ensign Rothschild asked him.
"Uh, 73," Drew said a little embarrassed.
"Holy shit-dogs!" Sabin exclaimed. Rothschild shot her a glare for her language as she considered the ramifications of his words.
"And the Human Protectorate?" Rothschild prodded.
"Oh uh, they own Earth and like 8,000 more planets, and they installed the mana accumulators and, uh, humans here. Earth has been split dimensionally--is that a word?--a couple times, this is Earth-3 but all the Earths are a military training facility and we're effectively shanghaied into their Navy," Drew answered, just now realizing how crazy that all sounded as he watched Rothschild and Sabin's faces.
"I'm sorry, what? I already signed one dotted line to join the military. I'm not okay with being force conscripted into another." Sabin's voice had a hard edge.
"Hey, my contract is up in a year; so, I get that, but I don't really see it affecting us much. They want us trained first, and unless they have a way to modify the collective memory of humankind and created a massive fake human history, I get the feeling that this whole thing has taken thousands of years. I don't imagine those of us here now will have to go out to space."
"Did you say food?" Rothschild asked, clearly changing the subject.
"Yeah, I guess I left it at the top of the stairs when I began to follow the blood trail."
Rothschild asked, "Blood trail? You didn't mention a blood trail."
"Sorry, hadn't gotten to it yet. Where was I? Oh yeah, it was super dark." Drew looked around the room, "Where did you guys get all the light by the way? I had to make a torch out of a mop and shoe polish."
"Ahh, one of my xatherite is major glowrock. I've been casting it as soon as the cooldown comes off." Sabin seemed somewhat mollified by Drew's words and the more pressing matters at hand. She picked up one of the rocks off the table and tossed it to Drew, who caught it and turned it over in his hands, amazed at how simple their solution was.
"Well, dam-ng, that's handy." Drew responded and seeing Rothschild beginning to wince he managed to say what he was going to say before offending the officer, "Ahh, sorry ma'am, I'm a little out of sorts with this whole…" He trailed off, his hand gesturing towards the metal door that denoted the entrance. He shrugged again and then continued, "Anyway, as I was saying, I left the watch floor and scavenged a few more things, made a cart that I could pull along, and a torch so I could actually see what was going on. Oh, and I killed about a dozen of the little spiders." He snorted, "Well, little compared to the queen. They were about soccer ball sized. Anyway, I got to the stairs and I found a trail of blood leading down. I left the cart there and followed the trail, hoping I could find Rob or one of the security guards."
He then described the fight with the spider queen and the strange furred creature, and how he ended up at their door.
"That's amazing," Sabin said, and Rothschild nodded her head in agreement. "We had a little food, same situation as you, just a snack bar, but we finished it off a while ago. We tried to go scavenge from the break room outside, but we got attacked by weird little green guys, goblins I guess, and the knight got destroyed. Mitch is the only one with any red xatherite, and they always came in larger numbers than he could handle."
"I'm sorry, did you say the knight was destroyed?" Drew asked.
"Oh yeah, I've got mostly blue slots, so one of my intermediates was summon knight. It's just a suit of armor that protects me, doesn't even have weapons." Sabin answered his question.
"Well, I think we need to wake up Windsor and Caballos and send a couple of you out to grab those supplies," Rothschild said with a bit of a frown.
"We need to kill those spider eggs too. Don't want to think about what would happen if they hatch. I should be able to do it quick, just need someone to watch my back while I set off the big guns," Drew answered while standing up and wincing as more dried blood and ichor flaked off his body. "Also, it might be helpful to know what xatherite we're working with here." As he said that he realized that he hadn't looked at the blue boxes that appeared after the fight with the spider queen. "How about you wake up the other two and we can talk strategy?" Both women outranked Drew, but that didn't seem to bother them as they deferred to his experience on this.
Drew willed the waiting blue boxes to show their contents.
Congratulations, citizen. Your Minor Acid Dart has reached level 4. Damage has increased.
Congratulations, citizen. Your Minor Acid Dart has reached level 5. Damage has increased.
Congratulations, citizen. Your Major Mana Guard has reached level 1. Amount of damage absorbed has increased.
Congratulations, citizen. Your Major Refresh has reached level 1. Recharge time has been reduced.
Congratulations, citizen. Your Major Spark has reached level 1. Damage has increased.
Congratulations, citizen. Minor Dancing Blade has been attuned.
Congratulations, citizen. Fireball has been attuned.
Congratulations, citizen. Cone of Frost has been attuned.
Congratulations, citizen. Storm has been attuned.
Congratulations, citizen. Linked skill: "Frostfire Ball" has been obtained.
Congratulations, citizen. Linked skill: "Cone of Frostfire" has been obtained.
Congratulations, citizen. Linked skill: "Firestorm" has been obtained.
Congratulations, citizen. Linked skill: "Icestorm" has been obtained.
Congratulations, citizen. Linked skill: "Frostfire Storm" has been obtained.
Congratulations, citizen. Linked skill: "Minor Refreshing Rain" has been obtained.
Congratulations, citizen. Linked skill: "Minor Bladeshield" has been obtained.
Congratulations, citizen. Your Minor Acid Dart xatherite is ready to upgrade.
Congratulations, citizen. You have found your first wild xatherite.
Rare grade Major Blink Step acquired.
"Holy shit," Drew whispered under his breath. Before calling up the information on each of the new skills.
Linked Skill Name: Frostfire Ball
Xatherite Color(s): Red
Linked Skill Grade: Intermediate
Type: Magic
Effect: Convert mana into a high energy blast of frostfire that will travel in a straight line until exploding, causing major frostfire damage in a 1m radius around the blast.
Mana recharge time: 13.1 seconds
Linked Skill Name: Cone of Frostfire
Xatherite Color(s): Red
Linked Skill Grade: Intermediate
Type: Magic
Effect: Creates a cone of frostfire, which causes significant frostfire damage, originating from any part of your body. Has a chance to partially enclose the target in burning ice, slowing them down considerably. Cone will extend 4 meters and has an arc of pi/4.
Mana recharge time: 21 seconds
Linked Skill Name: Firestorm
Xatherite Color(s): Red
Linked Skill Grade: Intermediate
Type: Magic
Effect: Create a localized storm around a target. The storm will have a radius of 10m and will cause significant fire, wind, water, and lightning damage within its radius.
Mana recharge time: 1 minute 45 seconds
Linked Skill Name: Icestorm
Xatherite Color(s): Red
Linked Skill Grade: Intermediate
Type: Magic
Effect: Create a localized storm around a target. The storm will have a radius of 10m and will cause significant ice, wind, water, and lightning damage within its radius.
Mana recharge time: 1 minute 45 seconds
Linked Skill Name: Frostfire Storm
Xatherite Color(s): Red
Linked Skill Grade: Intermediate
Type: Magic
Effect: Create a localized storm around a target. The storm will have a radius of 10m and will cause significant frostfire, wind, water, and lightning damage within its radius.
Mana recharge time: 1 minute 45 seconds
Linked Skill Name: Minor Refreshing Rain
Xatherite Color(s): Red, Orange
Linked Skill Grade: Common
Type: Magic
Effect: Create a localized storm around a target. The storm will have a radius of 10m and will infuse mana into all creatures within its radius, reducing fatigue and lactic acid buildup.
Mana recharge time: 1 minute 45 seconds
Linked Skill Name: Minor Bladeshield
Xatherite Color(s): Red, Yellow
Linked Skill Grade: Common
Type: Magic
Effect: Creates a barrier of blades around the caster. This barrier will parry 3 melee attacks before disappearing.
Mana recharge time: 5 minutes 41 seconds
Xatherite Crystal Name: Major Blink Step
Xatherite Color: Green
Xatherite Grade: Rare
Type: Magic
Effect: Move up to 12m without traversing the intervening area. Leaves behind a mental afterimage that lasts 2 seconds.
Mana recharge time: 31.5 seconds
Drew was stunned. There was nothing in here saying that the cooldowns were shared with their linked xatherite. Did that mean he could chain cast five storm spells? Unfortunately, this didn't seem like the place to try it out, but if he could cast fireball and frostfire ball back to back, then his damage output had increased exponentially.
He glanced at the last message; acid dart was able to be upgraded. He pulled the spell up and clicked yes. Then looked at the new spell.
Xatherite Crystal Name: Acid Dart
Xatherite Color: Red
Xatherite Grade: Undeveloped
Type: Magic
Effect: Creates a small globule of acid from a finger that travels in a straight line until it impacts a target, dealing minor acid damage.
Mana recharge time: 16.1 seconds
"Well, that was anticlimactic." The name and grade changed, but the damage upgrade, if any, wasn't enough to even register. Cabellos and Windsor were getting up.