Eighteen
 
“Uhhh…well. I fought a monster.” Alice shrugged and had the decency to blush as Kon picked himself up from the ground and stared her in the eye. He was always reminded of the closeness in their ages when she acted like this.
“You just told me not to pick fights you can’t win,” Kon said slowly. Alice straightened up and looked indignant.
“Yes. And I won my fight. It was only a low D-Grade and I absolutely obliterated it. Had a tasty core too. Then I killed its friends. And then I realized they were keeping a peak E-Grade bug rift under control. Now the bugs are eating the forest and we have to go,” Alice finished in a rush.
“You can’t kill the bugs?” Kon asked, confused. They were a grade below her and she didn’t seem to be in a panicked rush, more of a, we should leave nowish rush.
“Of course I could kill one of them. Or a hundred. But tens of thousands? Bug rifts are best sorted out from orbit with thermonuclear fire.” Alice shuddered as she started to lead them through the forest back towards the cave. Kon didn’t even complain about leaving the octopus monster’s cores behind.
It took less than an hour to get back to the cave and then they were faced with the small mountain of E-Grade cores Alice had been collecting. Too weak for her to use and much too strong for Kon to use without facing severe long term health problems. Alice growled but then flashed away in a blur of violet flames while Kon sat down on the cave floor to wait for her.
He reviewed the fight and tried to figure what he could have done differently to win the fight. For the better part of an hour he reviewed what happened and realized there was no victory he could have claimed with the gear or strength he currently had. The monsters themselves hadn’t been strong, it had been the terrain and environmental challenge of it that had prevented him from having success.
The only way he was going to walk out of that rift without backup was to never enter it to begin with. He sighed and leaned back against the wall, keeping one eye on the forest, and kicked himself. Strength had never been something he’d ever really had. He’d been strong enough, fairly average, as a child on the colony. Then afterwards he had been near the back end of the cadets for physical strength. He’d done well with logic puzzles and Alice seemed genuinely impressed with his ability to absorb energy and craft runes. But, being strong was new to him.
And he’d let it go to his head.
“One week of training and I was acting like I was a Praetorian or a Red Diver,” Kon scoffed out loud to himself. He worked on the breathing techniques Alice had taught him, breathing in and holding then releasing slowly until his own shame and guilt was nothing more than a memory and a sense of calmness had imposed its will upon him.
Alice arrived not long after that with the still damp skin of something furry. She had done something similar to what she had done to make his leathers, but in the simple shape of a large bag. She didn’t say a word as she knelt down and started to shovel them in and then quickly she tied the skin together before she stood up. Her single hand presented a problem as she couldn't decide whether to hold on to the bulging bag or her axe.
“Strength and endurance training time,” Alice said with a smile and then shoved the bag into his chest. Kon grunted but threw it over his shoulder and followed after Alice as she started off in a brisk jog. The pelting rain hadn’t let up and each time one struck it stung, even through his leathers. When a drop hit his bare skin it left a small welt.
“I’ve been running out further and further. There is a slight problem with finding the rest of the group,” Alice started. Her voice was flat and unaffected by their jogging pace. Kon just gasped out loud in acknowledgment.
“We’re not alone out here. Or there are multiple groups of survivors. I can feel a big group that way,” Alice jerked her chin about thirty degrees to the right as they ran.
“They’re faint but I can feel them, so it’s a lot. Then there’s the second group who I don’t think are Knights but might be cultivators.” Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“We’re…running…toward…”
“Please don’t speak and run. You can’t do it. And yes, we’re heading toward the mystery. If we go back to the main group we won’t have time to train. You’ll be stuck doing stuff like digging latrines or standing watch or scrubbing dishes. And they’ll have paperwork for me. So, we’re staying out here and seeing if we can find out who these strange cultivators are,” Alice said. She increased the pace slightly and Kon bit out a series of curses as he struggled to keep her in sight.
Alice didn’t slow down for over an hour. The terrain changed little, multi-hued metallic trees, rain, and the screams and challenging calls of rift monsters. She led them around the edges, keeping them away from any fights that could slow them down.
Kon was praying for a fight to slow down. His spear had become an iron bar that burned to carry and the bag across his shoulder was an albatross that threatened to drag him down with every step. He kept pushing as hard as he could until Alice finally slowed down.
“Alright. This should be far enough away from the bugs. We’ll stash our shit, catch our breath, and go say hi to the neighbors.” Kon fell to the ground in a boneless heap and just lay there in a shuddering ball as he tried to recover.
“You did decent. Need to work on your stamina more though.” Alice walked over and buried her axe in a tree then plucked the bag of cores off of his back and hummed to herself as she went looking for a place for them to sleep. Kon only let himself lay in the soft, muddy, ground for a minute before pushing himself up to his feet.
It really did all look alike. They had traveled for hours at a pace that he would have only described as brutal before he started training. He still called it brutal, but now it only left him wishing for death rather than actually dying on the trail. Even with the distance apart, the trees could have easily just been the same ones that had grown outside of their cave.
He followed after where Alice had gone and saw she was staring at a massive corpse. How Kon hadn’t seen it, even in the gloomy forest, was a mystery. It was nearly twenty feet tall, exposed ribs as thick as his thigh yellowed with age. Only the ribcage was visible, trees having sprouted out through the skull and leaving nothing but shattered bone laying around.
More trees had attempted to grow up and into the ribs, but the bones were stronger here. Instead there was a canopy inside of the ribs and Alice had her lips pursed as she looked on and into the artificial cave.
“That must be an A-Grade, right?” Kon asked. He didn’t think anything could be that big. He had to crane his head back to see the top of the body.
“What? Size doesn’t matter. I mean it kinda does, but not really. If this had been an A-Grade this entire site would be fought over by every cultivator in three damn systems. They’d spend fortunes in money and blood to hold this site so they could sit and bask in the power still radiating off of it. This was likely a peak D-Grade. I can feel some power still in its bones, but not enough to make it a problem.”
Alice walked into their new home and set down the bag as Kon got his wobbly legs to totter inside. A half dozen trees grew up and outward, their branches sticking out through the gaps of the ribs and created a metal roof above him. The entire thing should have collapsed in a heap of age but for the plant life that had grown in and amongst it to support it.
“Nothing living in here. At least not for a while. The aura this thing has likely keeps the smaller beasts away. Settle down and I’ll go find us dinner,” Alice rushed back out into the rain and disappeared as Kon found a quiet corner he could sink into. Metal leaves weren’t the best at absorbing rain, but the droplets ran off the vegetation and down the sides of the ribs to from a shimmering wall of water. It felt exposed, sitting there with both sides open to be seen.
Kon kept his spear clutched tightly until Alice arrived back with a deer like monster than had spider legs from its back. She seemed contemplative as they settled down for dinner, more quiet than she normally was.
“What’s the matter with you?” Kon finally said, no longer able to withstand the quiet tension.
“Hmmm? Oh, it’s just as we were traveling. There’s plenty of F and E grade rifts around, but few D-Grades. I need D-Grade cores to reliably heal myself beyond the normal scrapes and bruises. That or spend a lot more time gathering energy and meditating.”
“But there’s some. You already fought them.”
“Yeah, but not as many as there should be.”
“Why’s that?”
“Likely something else is hunting them and consuming them.”
“The other cultivators?” Kon asked, slightly nervous at the thought of someone as strong as Alice who wasn’t injured.
“No, cultivators don’t use cores directly like we do. They use ambient energy. Our node and core work is designed to help filter the negative aspects out. Without a few cleansing nodes per web you’ll end up an abomination. No, I think there’s a big nasty D-Grade beast out here with us.”