Chapter 96: Meeting Allies

Chapter 96: Meeting Allies

You have obtained the Intelligence benefit Index.

I opened my eyes and glanced around the clearing we rested in. I saw the familiar orange glint of some Lava Slugs off in a couple distant bushes, but no assistant.

Erani was staring at me expectantly. “So?”

“Nothing,” I frowned. “Don’t see it anywhere.”

“Maybe you need to activate it somehow. Or it’ll only show up when you have a Choice.”

“Yeah, guess it’s something like that. We’ll have to see what this ‘assistant’ is later.”

“Hey!” A new, high-pitched voice said. “My name is not assistant! It’s Index.”

“What the fuck?!” I exclaimed and looked around for the speaker.

“What? Do you see it? Is it behind me?” Erani turned and looked, too.

“No, no, I don’t see it. But didn’t you hear that?”

“No? Hear what?”

“It’s– wait, you seriously didn’t hear it? Sounded like–”

“She can’t hear me, dummy,” the voice said again. “I’m here to help you, not anyone else.”

“Um, okay,” I said, “so, it’s speaking to me. Said you can’t hear it, though.”

“Uh, hello~?” it said in a singsong voice. “Stop talking about me like I’m not even in the room!”

“It is way more Human than I thought it’d be,” I said. “This is seriously freaky.”

“So, what’s it saying, then?” Erani asked. “Do you think it’ll start repeating lines if you wait long enough? I’m sure it’s just, like, pre-made messages made to come through until you say something.”

“Wh– I’m not saying pre-made messages! I’m way more advanced than that. Arlan, tell that woman that she’s totally wrong.”

“Uhh, doesn’t seem like they’re pre-made. Sounds pretty personalized to me.”

“Stop talking about me like I’m not here! I’m a real person, you know.”

“I mean, objectively, you’re not.”

“What?” Erani asked.

“Uh, sorry, I’m just trying to talk to it.”

“How’s that going?”

“I am a person!” it said. “Sure, I don’t have a ‘physical body’ and I’m ‘just a fragment of the System’ but that doesn’t make me any less real than you are.”

“Okay, so it’s apparently, like, very alive. At least, it sure as hells thinks that it is.”

“Can you see it?” Erani asked.

I glanced around. “Seems like I can’t.”

“That’s just ‘cause you’re dumb,” the voice said.

“Dumb?”

“What?” Erani squinted at me.

“Uh, just give me a second. Trying to talk to it.”

“You’d normally be able to see me,” the voice said, “but your Intelligence is too low. System’s limiting you.”

“Oh. Wait, so you really do have a physical form, but you’re just, like, what? Invisible?”

“I mean, no, I don’t have a physical form – I can’t touch anything – but I have a body. I’m flying right in front of you!”

“Huh...” I absentmindedly waved a hand in front of my face.

“Stop that!’ it said, obviously annoyed. “Your hand’s going through me. It’s rude to do that, you know.”

“So, what, exactly, do you... do?”

“Well, talk, mainly.”

“Right, okay, what do you talk about?”

“I’m an advisor! I stop you from making bad decisions.”

“Sure, you help me choose the right Spells or whatever. But why are you here now? I’m not choosing anything. Is this just, like, an introduction thing? And you’ll go away later?”

“Rude. Why am I here? I just said! I’m here to advise you.”

“On what?”

“Anything! Sure, technically I’m only omniscient about the System, but I can still advise you about whatever.”

“...Okay,” I blinked. “Let’s start with questions about the System. Um, what are the effects of my next Spell options?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Alright. What are my options going to be for Crippling Chill’s Rank 10 Upgrade?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Well, what can you tell me?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

I sighed. “Can you tell me when you’ll be able to do anything useful?”

“It depends. Getting more Intelligence can increase the information I’m allowed to give you, but so can getting more information on your own. So, you could ask me about the technicalities of your current Spells, since you already know a lot about them. You might be able to ask me some questions about the Spells you’re already being shown. Listen, my specialty isn’t in just telling you random stuff like your next Spell Choice. It’s advising you! I can tell you about secret synergies, aspects of your options that you aren’t considering, monsters you’re fighting, anything.”

Due to Ethereal Armor Rank reaching 9, it has undergone the following changes:

Mana Cost: From 182 to 187

Dark Plate Downtime: From 39.9 to 37.9

Light Plate Discount: From 40.4% to 43.4%

Wait, what? Why did–

“Because you Leveled up,” Index’s voice interrupted my thoughts.

“What?” I said, disoriented by her reading my thoughts.

“You forgot your Soft Cap went up,” it said. “When you Leveled up to 16.”

“Oh,” I blinked. “Yeah, I guess it slipped my mind.”

“Ah, I feel so important,” Index joked. “I even made you forget about the rest of your Level-up benefits.”

“That’s not–”

“Arlan?” Erani asked, looking at me. “You good?”

“Oh, right,” I said, “forgot you can’t hear Index. I just Ranked up Ethereal Armor, forgot about my Soft Cap going up.”

“Oh, good!”

“Yeah, got an extra 3% discount on Spells with Light Plate, which is really solid. I should probably Rank the rest of my Spells that are still at 8.”

She nodded. “Go ahead.”

My other two Spells to Rank up were Expedite and Gravity Well, so I just cast both on myself until I got a notification for them.

Threshold reached. Expedite XP has reached 130.

Expedite Rank has increased to 9.

Due to Expedite Rank reaching 9, it has undergone the following changes:

Mana Cost: From 67 to 68.7

Dexterity Buff: From 29.6 to 31.1

Buff Duration: From 44.3 to 46.5

Threshold reached. Gravity Well XP has reached 130.

Gravity Well Rank has increased to 9.

Due to Gravity Well Rank reaching 9, it has undergone the following changes:

Mana Cost: From 12.4 to 12.7

Gravity Increase: From 55% to 61%

I smiled at the numerical increases. With Ethereal Armor’s increased discount and Expedite’s increased duration, the ratio of Mana spent to seconds active for Expedite went way up.

“Approximately 0.8362 Mana spent per second of Expedite now,” Index said.

I blinked, startled by its sudden words. “Gods, you’ve got to stop just randomly butting into my thoughts.”

“I’m here to help you! If I don’t say anything, I won’t be helping.”

“So there’s no way for me to get you to stop talking? What if talking harms me by startling me when I’m trying to hide, or something?”

“If you actually think me talking will hurt you, I won’t do it. Right now, though, you just think it’s annoying for me to say stuff unexpectedly, but recognize its usefulness. So it’s not harmful, therefore I’ll keep doing it. I can see into your mind, remember?”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine.”

“Anyway, as I was saying, you’re now spending approximately 0.8362 Mana per second you keep Expedite active, compared to what it was before, at 0.9014.”

“You can seriously do all that math in your head that quickly?”

“Yep! I’ve got a whole lot of power from the System dedicated to me, so I can do all kinds of stuff!”

“Yeah, I’ve been noticing that more and more.”

We walked like that for a couple hours, with me continuing to get to know Index as we went, until finally we came across something.

“Hey, be careful rounding this next corner,” Index said. “I think it’s what you’re looking for. Far off, so I can’t see real well. But there’s a lot of people.”

I relayed that information to Erani and the Dryad, and we slowly crept up to the edge of a rock face. Once we got there, we peered around, and...

“Good gods...”

It was massive. When I heard ‘fort’, I imagined a building made of stone on the edge of the road housing some soldiers – maybe some wall that covered the road and had people manning the ramparts. Not this.

The massive structure was built between the two steep rock faces, connecting them so that I couldn’t even see the sky on the other side of their blockade. It was a stone wall built so tall and so thick, I couldn’t imagine anything short of an army’s-worth siege equipment getting through.

The wall itself wasn’t flat. It was covered in stone rooms that jutted out from the face, square boxes that had windows to shoot out from, or cannons pointed out the walls, or holes in the floors to dump boiling oil out of. Stringing these rooms in the wall together were dozens – hundreds – of rope bridges, all teeming with soldiers walking back and forth.

The wall itself was constructed at the end of a long, straight section of road between two tall cliff faces. There’d be no way to get close without walking down this multi-hundred-pace stretch of cleared-out road – under which the ground was supposedly teeming with hellions – and there was no way to get around short of going all the way back to the beginning of the path, and climbing up the mountains the wall was situated between. We’d have to climb for days – weeks – just to get to this point from the beginning, and this wall was probably just part of the way through Kingdom’s Edge. We’d have to go for even longer to actually arrive at the Barinruth Empire.

There was one weird part of the fort, though.

It was covered in scorch marks.

I could see, lying at the bottom of the wall were the burnt remains of ropes and planks used to make their bridges. The stone bricks making up the wall had blackened areas – massive burn spots that dotted the entire thing.

And when I thought back to when I’d seen the Dragon attacking something in this very valley, I suspected I knew exactly where those burn marks came from.

“How are we supposed to get through that alone?” Erani asked.

“I don’t think we can get through alone,” I said, glancing up at the mountain. “But I suspect we may have an ally to turn to.”