Chapter 4

  My world was suddenly a study in contrasts. Underneath me was a charred mulch of what used to be grass, mixed in with a slurry of mud and warm ash. Meanwhile, fat, icy drops of rain slapped me on the back or pinged off of my metal arm every second or so. The overwhelming presence of ozone was quickly carried away by the wind to be replaced by fresh rain and wet soil.

  I spit the ash/mud soup from my mouth.

  All around me were grassy hilltops covered in lush, green grass. The landscape rolled and swooped in gentle swells like the waves of an ocean frozen in time, and the sluggish wind was cold enough to be just this side of chilly. Above, dark storm clouds were in the middle of unburdening themselves, slowly, in no real hurry but doing their jobs nonetheless. I was currently on one of these countless hilltops or near enough to the top for it to count. Behind me, on the crown of my hill, weathered standing stones, roughly carved but most definitely not natural, formed a rudimentary pyramid.

  *BAMF*

  *BAMF*

  With a puff of displaced air, Belle and Gizelle appeared slightly farther up the hill from me. Both were in combat stances with weapons out. Gizelle had a long punch dagger attached to her wrist, while her partner swept the area with a las-rifle compact enough to be called a pistol in a larger person’s hands. The two of them cast practiced eyes over the area in a wide circle before finally taking time to acknowledge me.

  “Wow. Jumped right into it, didn’t you?” Belle asked with a bemused look, still holding her rifle up and at the ready. “Do you just say Yes to whatever prompt the System gives you?”

  Gizelle was focused on other things. She sniffed curiously at the air. “We just miss a lightning strike or something?”

  “Dunno. Place was like this when I came in,” I said, reaching up to pick some toasted grass out of my teeth.

  Belle shook her head reproachfully as she helped me up. “Just don’t accept the prompt next time we jump. Safer to go together.”

  What prompt? I didn’t get a prompt…

  A quick check of my logs confirmed as much. I was also down 30 HP.

  You take 5 fire damage.

  You take 5 fire damage.

  …

  Crystalized Channels is now level 2.

  HP [279/309]

  Fire damage… Not again.

  The first thing I did was reach up to feel my hair, finding it mercifully intact, followed by a confirmation that my eyebrows were still there too. Then I looked down at my clothes, though they were too soiled with ash to really tell if they were scorched. Dad’s jacket seemed okay at least. It was made of tough stuff.

  The grass around me certainly supported the fireball theory though. I bent down and scooped up a handful of the remains, sniffing it. It didn’t have that stale scent old fire pits did, but that was as far as my knowledge went.

  My gaze slowly drifted to my left, my carefully honed antisocial instincts telling me there were eyes currently on me. Gizelle was there, unabashedly staring, a stern frown on her face as she took in the burned circle I was conspicuously in the center of, my filthy clothes, and the storm overhead. All I could think to do was shrug uncomfortably.

  Meanwhile, Belle busily fiddled with the little holo map on her wrist. “About three clicks that way,” she said, pointing off into the distance where there was nothing but more rolling hills.

  Thunder rumbled overhead.

  Gizelle, finally taking her eyes off me, cast another glance around the hilltop. “Looks clean. Make it official?”

  Her partner nodded, reaching into the hologram above her wrist and touching a few inputs. “Clean jump recorded.”

  The women certainly seemed to know what they were doing, which put me a bit more at ease, even with the rough landing. Something felt wrong here, though. It wasn’t just the fire thing either. I couldn't put my finger on it, but it tickled at the back of my mind, a sort of feeling that I was missing… something

  “You need a second, newbie?” Belle asked, already lower on the hillside. “First jump is always a little wonky.”

  I shook my head. “Uh. I don’t think so.” Then a thought occurred to me. “So, if I wanted to go back home, this is the spot I’d make the jump?”

  Both Pathfinders nodded

  “If you’re wondering why you don’t feel it like you did back on Proxis, it’s normal. You just got a big dose of weird, and your body will have a little tolerance built up for a day or so,” Belle explained, pointing back at the standing stones. “In about an hour you’d probably get a little tingle if you were right on it.”

  I looked back at the standing stones, getting a good mental picture in my head.

  Remember. That’s the way home.

  After the Pathfinders finished adjusting their oversized packs and slinging their weapons for travel, we set off, but we didn’t make it far. In fact, we made it all of a dozen steps before Detect Iron gave me a hit of something moving underground. I stopped, squinted at the spot in the soil where something alive was hiding, something that wriggled. Squinting didn’t actually do anything, since whatever the animal was, it was entirely underground. That was a habit I still hadn’t broken. You’re not using your eyes to see these things, Ryan. Stop it. Focus.

  The action kicked off when Gizelle, not noticing my sudden intense interest in a particular spot on the ground, stepped almost right over the thing. The thing in the ground tensed, coiled, then…

  I only got out a single syllable warning before a long, snake-like body as thick as my forearm and the color of dried blood shot out of the ground just below Gizelle’s feet.

  The Pathfinder had good reflexes. She rolled to the side before whatever it was could touch her and was already in a combat stance before the monster could even finish its strike. Somehow, she’d already shed her pack too, and her silver punch blade sprang out of its sheath on her wrist.

  The monster’s mouth, a roughly circular opening with rows of hooked teeth lining the inside, lunged at her, but she was quicker than her attacker, leaning to the side then bringing her blade upward to score a quick cut across the monster’s belly.

  I felt something then, a change in the air, a sort of dangerous tang that was there for a millisecond and gone before I could register what it could have been. My eyes shot instinctually to Gizelle’s wrist. Yes, that was it. The dagger was covered in ice, and the creature’s blood was in the process of solidifying on the surface. The metal crackled as its supernaturally cold surface made contact with the moisture in the air, and fog billowed off the flat of the blade.

  She’d just used an Ability. I made a mental note to remember what it had felt like from the outside.

  Dark fluid spilled from the snake creature’s body but never made it to the ground, crystalizing around the wound instead, while the flesh around the area turned a very unhealthy gray. It was then the monster started to register pain. It writhed on the ground, rubbing its injured belly on the grass to try and scrape off whatever substance was hurting it, but it was to no avail. Gizelle, seeing that she’d done some damage, lunged forward in an attempt to grab the creature, but it shied away and wriggled down into the soil before she could get a good hold.

  “Shit. You okay? Is it touched?” Belle asked as she turned around in a quick circle. Her rifle was couched on her shoulder again, ready to rock, and she was fanning the muzzle back and forth looking for additional threats.

  Gizelle backed away from the hole where the creature had emerged then paused, her eyes unfocused but moving as if she were reading something. The taller Pathfinder shook her head. “Not scourge-touched. Might be someday if it keeps hanging around a dirty jump though.”

  “How bad did you get it?” Belle asked.

  “28 points of damage in total. Used some MP to be safe. Hang on.” Gizelle produced her own wrist hologram device and input a couple commands. “There’s only about thirty entries in the Bestiary. Copse Crawlers. Levels range from 3 to 6. Observed HP ranges from 70 to 111.”

  Belle sighed, looking up to the sky in exasperation. “Damnit, this is just what I need.”

  I raised my hand like a kid in a classroom. “So, it’s not dead. Can’t we just leave it?”

  “Can’t leave a dying animal around a dirty jump point,” Belle replied, already dropping her pack and fiddling with one of the buckles on the side. “Animals are already vulnerable to corruption, but a wounded one… scourge will be on that flies on shit. Giz, you have your e-tool? What about you? You have a shovel in your spatial storage?”

  “Uh,” I said, blinking. I did not, in fact, have a shovel. I’d left all my shovels in my other universe.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  So, they were going to dig the thing out and finish it off? That made sense. Maybe they’d burn the body too, like Tiba’s people did.

  Belle seemed to pick up on my hesitation. “Whatever. Just help us dig it out. We’re gonna be at this all day either way. Can’t leave it. Even if it doesn’t live long enough to get touched, the beastie might ambush the next poor Non-Combat that comes through.”

  The next Non- Well, damn.

  The next Exotic to come through here might just be the courier the Marshals were waiting for. Even though they were carrying word that would put me back in prison, I didn’t want to leave the monster here to ambush them. I also wasn’t keen on hanging around for an extended period of time while that particular clock counted down.

  How did multiversal justice work? Would the Marshals send a posse of Exotics after me to get me back, or would I just be taken into custody at the next CA checkpoint? Or was the CA a loose confederation of separate systems with non-extradition policies? I’d never had cause to find out until now. White had made it seem like being in Sabium would help me with all of that, so that’s where I needed to be.

  No time to dig, Ryan. Use your head. You’re a problem solver, right?

  I scratched said head and put my Outers mechanic instincts to work. What tools did I have to hand?

  “How attached are you to this hilltop?” I asked after only a second of consideration.

  The two Exotic women paused, looking up at me from the hole they were just opening.

  I gave the two of them a look that I hoped conveyed trustworthiness. “No, seriously.”

  —---------------------------------------

  *FOOP*

  Igorian Copse Crawler takes 3 damage. (bludgeoning)

  With a firm tug, I removed my arm cannon from the hole and set about brushing the clumpy mud off of the tip.

  If Detect Iron wasn’t keeping me apprised of the monster’s whereabouts, the damage notification would have. My little metal ball had been a direct hit. Sure, it did almost no damage, but that wasn’t what I was going for anyway. My ‘arm cannon’ was only an arm cannon in name, not function. If anything it was a glorified potato gun, air propelled and fairly weak as far as ballistic power went, more a launcher than an actual firearm. What was important was that the payload had reached the juicy center of our problem. I could see it there, resting just atop the bulk of the Copse Crawler’s body.

  That done, I stepped away from the hole and made my way further down the hill where I’d asked my guides to wait. As I approached, I could see Belle running her eyes over my arm cannon curiously. She’d been doing so since I’d made the thing appear, not even bothering to hide her interest.

  “So, the crafting type, and a fellow ranged enthusiast,” she purred exaggeratedly. “Here I thought you were just a pretty face.”

  I cleared my throat. “Uh. Yeah. I mean, I make stuff, but the stuff I make are tools to fit the job, you know? Some jobs have a ballistic solution” I said, walking past and waving for the both of them to follow, chuckling nervously. “We should probably get some distance, though.”

  With Detect Iron, I led the three of us down the hill, dodging several of the other holes where the Copse Crawler had its gross tentacles. Yes, it was all one creature, which was both a blessing and a curse.

  Apparently, this particular monster was not a snake or a worm or anything with that vague shape. That was simply how it fed. The real monster was way down in the dirt, a mass of bristling fur and shovel-like digging claws attached to long, muscular arms. Unfortunately, this thing was dug in like a tick, entirely buried in its lair with no entrance other than the tubes it used to feed.

  The main mass was easy enough to find after a couple sweeps with Detect Iron. All the tentacles (and yes, there were at least 4 more) led to the same place, about twelve feet down to a burrow that just fit the bulk of the monster itself.

  My ability to spot the holes and where the tentacles were hidden earned me some trust with my guides, which was nice. They seemed to appreciate the heads up and not having to do all the survivalist work. However, they still insisted on walking in front of me in case there was something out there that would snatch me up and negate their contract. They were quick to spot the Copse Crawler holes too, after they knew what to look for. We reached the bottom of the hill without further incident and set about to wait.

  And wait we did.

  “So. Is there a reason we’re just standing here?” Belle asked after ten minutes. She’d been growing progressively more impatient as time went on, unreasonably so. She tended to fidget with her gun, her pack, the pockets on her armor… anything within reach, really. I half considered reaching into my spatial storage and handing her something weird just to get her to stand still for a moment.

  “It takes a minute,” was all I could say. This wasn’t exactly what my landmines were made to do. They were meant to target scourge. I’d been very specific in their programming as a safety feature. At the time I’d designed them, scourge-touched made up almost 100% of my problems.

  Belle sighed impatiently. “Seriously, we have places to be. We don’t make any money standing still. If this isn’t going to work let’s just go up there and dig it out.”

  It had been a rather long time. Fifteen minutes or so. My experience told me my constructs only took a minute to charge to a lethal degree, but the explosive Trigger I’d built into them didn’t seem to consider the Copse Crawler a valid target.

  I also didn’t program a cutoff for the charging process… I imagined that, by now, my little metal ball was a very angry shade of purple and getting angrier by the second.

  “Any minute now,” I said, wincing internally as Belle flopped down on the grass and groaned like she was in physical pain. Gizelle just rolled her eyes and shook her head.

  “I feel myself getting fatter and lazier,” she groaned.

  After thirty minutes, even I was starting to doubt myself. Maybe the design was more stable than I thought. Maybe it would only work on scourge. What if the Copse Crawler could go for days without moving at all, and the construct would just sit there.

  After this long, the thing should be positively packed with explosive-

  *FOOM*

  The entire side of the hilltop erupted like a volcano. Dirt, rocks, and plant matter were blasted outward in a tidal wave, a temporarily airborne landslide. The angry cloud of loose dirt billowed out of the hillside and went skyward until gravity dictated it should come down, most of it directly on top of us.

  We all hunkered down, arms folded over our heads to protect our skulls from falling rocks.

  And it wasn’t just dirt and rocks. Whatever a Copse Crawler was, apparently, it was also full of sticky goo. We didn’t get a whole lot of it, just enough for it to be gross and disturbingly warm after undergoing explosive disassembly.

  You have defeated Igorian Copse Crawler.

  You have been awarded 115 experience points. (200 base, +25 level, -160 non combat class, +50 camp)

  Experience rate 115/min.

  Level up!

  You are now level 1.

  Max HP +5

  Max MP +5

  +1 attribute point.

  Ability: Spatial Storage unlocked. [ERROR]

  Resolving…

  Resolved. Advanced Spatial Storage: A storage dimension attached to your being that only you can access. Size and quantity varies.

  Advanced Spatial Storage is now level 1.

  Achievements awarded this level:

  Victorious: You have defeated your first foe. [+1 body]

  Ambitious: You have defeated a foe above your level. [+1 to lowest level ability]

  All Natural: You have spent 80% of this level with full mana. [+1 body]

  Near Death Experience: You fell below 10% of your HP this level. [50% bonus experience gain for next level]

  Spirit of the Warrior: You gained 51% of your experience this level from defeated foes as a non-combat class. [+3 spirit]

  Dedicated: You spent most of your time dedicated to your craft this level. [+1 Spirit]

  Soulful: You have almost exclusively focused on Mind and Spirit centric skills this level. [+1 Mind, +1 Spirit]

  Completionist: You have completed a quest this level. [+1 free attribute point]

  One-shot: 100% of your experience this level came from one foe defeated in one blow. [+1 to most relevant ability: +1 to Automate]

  Intensive Training: A significant portion of this level was spent honing your mind and body in a high intensity setting. [Points spent on most relevant Attribute (Mind) are worth x2 this level]

  That strange sense of euphoria passed through me from the tips of my toes all the way up to my scalp. In fact, it was so intense, my head swam, and my vision darkened momentarily until I caught myself on Gizelle and allowed the dizzy spell to pass. By then, the manmade landslide was pretty much wrapping up. The taller Pathfinder looked down at my hand that was still resting on her shoulder like it was a venomous snake, one she was thinking about decapitating.

  “Sorry,” I said, awkwardly removing the offending appendage before she cut me.

  My first Level Up as an Automator. What did I learn?

  So, the “Class Restrictions” Automator came with. It didn’t let me get XP from Shaping things anymore, but I did get it from killing things.

  That can’t be it. That would make Automator a combat class in everything but name. Shape gave me a “hand crafting” restriction when I did it. That would imply there was another way to craft things… an automated way.

  Okay. So let’s assume that my class doesn’t want me to craft things by hand. That one’s pretty easy. What about combat? I just killed the Copse Crawler and got experience just fine…

  But I didn’t kill it myself did I? I used one of my constructs.

  It fit. My new class wanted me to… Automate things. The name probably should have been a dead giveaway.

  As for the weird Experience rate messages…

  I opened up my logs and skipped back to the beginning.

  Yep. approximately 100 XP got me my first level on Ralqir too.

  The realization hit me like a slap to the face.

  Oh, come on.

  My inner monologue was dripping with bitterness at the realization. I had to reach a certain threshold of experience over time… per minute to level up. How the hell was I supposed to do something like that? I would probably be fine for the first few levels if I put myself in the right situations and made some good choices, but after that… I’d have to spike my XP/min into the hundreds of thousands to get levels… millions later. The scale of it was absolutely silly.

  The enormity of even getting to Level 5 this way felt daunting.

  I certainly wasn’t going to be leveling through combat unless I went out and did something supremely stupid like piss off an entire planet of scourge. Or like the wretchwyrm. The giant vine monster too. Those had been special circumstances, though, entirely out of my control.

  Well, maybe not entirely…

  It was uncomfortable to think about how many dumb fights I’d picked in my short time as an Exotic. How the hell was I alive? Trix was probably writing a book about that right now.

  While I was lamenting the absolute shit show my life choices had put on for me, Belle, on the other hand, was pleased as punch. As soon as she shook the dirt and monster goo out of hair, she whooped and did a little jig as the dirt continued to flow down the hill, the displaced earth settling into its new position.

  “That was fantastic! It was all BOOM WOOSH! Worth the wait! Oh my God, yes!”

  So, she was a bit of a thrill seeker. I wasn’t one to judge, so I smiled back at her, happy she was happy.

  My smile disappeared, though, when the shape of the hill, once again, started to change. It was slow at first, barely noticeable, but it picked up speed quickly. The entire side of the hill started to collapse in on itself like a flower wilting or a balloon with a tiny hole in the stem. The whole thing just… imploded… in slow motion, all of its mass being sucked into the center. It wasn’t long before the standing stones that used to be at the peak also sank down into the soil until they were entirely gone.

  All the three of us could do was just stand there and gawk.

  A tipping point was reached, and the rest of the hill just disappeared in an anticlimactic *WHUFF.*

  It left behind nothing but a cloud of falling dust and a conical crater with a hole in the center.

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true. There wasn’t just a hole.

  The ancient stone ruins that had apparently been under our feet the entire time, were a notable standout.

  Hey. Thanks for giving In my Defense a chance. New chapters will be posted Tuesdays and Thursdays, eventually ramping up depending on the amount of interest we can generate here.

  As of right now, Patreon is about 30k words ahead of Royal Road. Additionally, patrons have the dubious honor of access to my audio tracks where I do silly voices and pretend to know what I’m doing.