Erani, Sylvie, Ainash, and I stood outside the city walls, gazing out into the desert. Our job was to find and retrieve one desert crystal of each primary color they appeared in—red, yellow, and blue. And, of course, each of us needed to accomplish that task, meaning we’d actually need four of each of those colors—one for each of us. So, we’d have to come out here to grab them.
Only, there was an issue.
“Do you even see one crystal out there?” I asked, hand over my eyes as I searched the empty dunes.
“It hasn’t even been an hour since the announcement was posted!” Sylvie complained. “How have people already gone and taken everything?”
“You were the one who delayed us,” Erani commented.
“By maybe two minutes. Just had to get out of bed.”
“Well, we’re still right by the wall,” Erani said. “Maybe we’ll start to find more as we venture further out.”
“Outta the way!” a voice shouted from behind us. I glanced back to see a couple of people sprint by, armor clanking with each step. They quickly disappeared over a dune and left us behind.
“Seems like we should get moving, then,” I said.
Sylvie nodded. “We should probably split up. If the crystals are really gonna be this scarce, there’s no way we’ll find enough for all of us traveling as one big group.”“Yeah, and as long as we stay away from Sand Hive territory, being low on manpower shouldn’t actually be much of a problem.”
“When we were with that merchant lady yesterday, she said they’d only attack if they saw you taking crystals that were located inside of their territory, right?” Erani asked. “If that’s the case, then yes, I don’t think we’d face any issues.”
“Great! Let’s go!” And with that, Sylvie ran off.
I nodded to Erani and Ainash. “I’ll go off to the left. Let’s meet back here in a few hours? If you find enough for yourself sooner than that, just keep looking for others to fill everyone else’s requirements. Hopefully, at least one of us will find an unlooted area.”
“That sounds like a good plan.”
“Okay!”
It took a while, but eventually I ended up spotting a crystal or two embedded in the ground. The specific requirements for the challenge needed the crystals to be “full-grown” and relatively undamaged, though, and the ones I saw clearly didn’t fit those criteria. We’d asked around and found out that a full-grown crystal didn’t need to be as big as those occasional ones I’d seen that were as massive as buildings—or even the ones that were as tall as me. Instead, “full-grown” just meant grown to the point where they’d completely developed their coloring, which apparently happened later in their lifecycle. So, effectively, as long as I could see a color, it would work.
So, with that said, pretty much none of the crystals around me had any color at all. They were all clear as glass, little outcrops in the sand. Well, either that, or they were smashed to pieces—all completely unusable. But hey, considering that there wasn’t even this much closer to the city, I was making progress. I hadn’t yet run into any Sand Hive territory, and I hoped I wouldn’t. The challenge’s description itself mentioned to watch out for them, and I’d had first-hand experience on how much trouble they’d give me if I angered them. That is, it’d basically end up being a guaranteed Time Loop usage if they attacked.
At this point, though, I was beginning to wonder if I’d end up needing to try taking something from their ownership. I certainly wasn’t having much luck trying to find safe crystals to harvest. I supposed that was the entire point of the challenge; the easy ones would be grabbed up quickly by the people high enough Level to move faster than anyone else, and then it’d be down to who was willing enough to fight the Sand Hive to get the difficult ones—and who was strong enough to survive.
I’d been boosting myself periodically with Expedite—both for the speed and to keep my Stamina high in this hot, difficult-to-maneuver-in environment—but clearly I was no match for people who’d dedicated their entire builts for getting far out and grabbing the crystals quickly. Or, maybe it was the people with divination abilities that let them detect objects or see through familiars they could send out to scout for them? I had no idea; all I knew was that I was built for combat, not recon.
It was as I wandered through the desert that I finally saw it. A small, deep red crystal sticking out from the sand in a small valley. The first wave of adventurers must’ve missed it!
I rushed forward to grab the crystal. It was around half as tall as my forearm, so pretty small compared to the gigantic ones I’d seen elsewhere, but as long as it had its coloring, it counted. Once my hands were around it, I pulled.
It didn’t budge.
…I pulled harder. Nothing. I squatted down, pushing with my legs to yank as hard as I could. The crystal didn’t seem to care.
Gods damn this shit. I knew these things grew out of the ground, but I didn’t expect them to be rooted in like trees. The challenge had asked for them to be undamaged—did that mean I could just break it off at its base? Or would that count as damaging it? Maybe I needed to dig it out, or something.
Just as I’d put my hands to the ground, ready to start scooping sand out of the way to see how deep down the crystal went, I heard a voice.
“Hey! Get away from that! It’s mine!”
I turned around to see a man cresting a hill and running down at me. He was wearing chainmail armor with a…was that a halberd on his back? Some sort of polearm.
“I said get back!” he shouted, slowing to a walk as he got to the bottom of the valley with me.
I stood. “Not sure if you noticed, but I was here first. Sorry dude, go get your own.”
He barked out a laugh. “Not sure if you noticed, but it don’t matter who was here first. It matters who’s gonna take it. And that’s me. So get.”
Now it was my turn to laugh. “Really? Listen, buddy, but your little plan to intimidate newbies isn’t gonna work on me. So unless you’re prepared to die for this crystal, I suggest you head out.”
“It’s obvious you’re new here; you don’t know what you’re doing. So let me lay down the law: I say you leave, you leave. You don’t want to mess with me.”
I sighed. “Okay. You’re clearly not backing off. I’m not going either. So then, how are we doing this? Are you coming at me? Waiting for me to come at you? Do you wanna tell me the names of your family members so I can let them know what happened once this is done?”
He wavered slightly, then grit his teeth. “Confidence don’t look good on a weakling like you. If you really got a death wish, then—”
“Good gods, can you just get to the part where you attack me already? You’re wasting my time that I could use to find some more crystals once I’m done with you.”
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With a grunt, he gripped the halberd on his back, then drew it and pointed it at me. “This is your death warrant you’re signing, you know.”
I stared at him, face unmoving. Not that he could see my face, with Dark Plate covering it.
And then, he disappeared in a flash of movement. I had just enough time to think oh shit before the bladed head of the halberd was swinging at my face, and I could just barely duck underneath to avoid getting hit. He twisted around and threw a stab my way, which I turned to the side to avoid, raising my arm to deflect the blade away from me.
The moment the metal touched me, I could almost feel it moving, like it had turned into a living liquid, trying to do…something. Immediately, I activated Expedite three times over and used the newfound boost in Dexterity to leap back, away from the mysterious weapon.
As I fell back on one foot, watching my opponent recover from the follow-through of his attack—almost certainly some sort of Martial Art, for him to move that quickly—I raised my hand and shot off a series of Rays of Frost. The first two hit dead on, but as I fired the third, he raised his weapon to block it with his blade.
For a moment, my attention was caught by his Level. The Ray of Frost notifications read You have struck Level 23 Cavalryman—he was higher Level than me, and he had a pretty uncommon Class, to boot. Not that I saw any sort of steed around here for him to ride; he seemed to be without his Class’s specialty, in that case. Still, the way he was fighting, I felt pretty lucky to get away from him unscathed. And with some sort of Enchanted weapon, I wasn’t sure I wanted to get close to him again.
He was also standing there, gazing at me cautiously. I was sure he was thinking the same thing about me that I was thinking about him—damn, this guy isn’t a pushover, after all.
“Magic, eh?” he called out to me. “I had you pinned as a Melee-type, with that armor. What’s your Class?”
“I wasn’t expecting to see your Class, either. I’ll tell you mine if you tell me what a Cavalryman is doing out here fighting without his mount.”
“If you’re thinking I’m gonna let you go just because you avoided an attack or two, you’ve got another thing coming.”
I smiled. “Wouldn’t have it any other way. Could always let off some steam, y’know.”
He scowled. “Arrogant little…”
His sentence trailed off, and he charged ahead again. This time, I could see his weapon really beginning to shift and mold into something else, an otherworldly glow surrounding it. I prepared to throw my full suite of Curses at him and let him know just who he was dealing with, waiting to hit him with everything at the perfect time to throw him off his balance. Five paces away from me, then four, then three, and—
“Hey!” A voice came from beside us, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a group of people running down the dunes straight at us.
My opponent slowed his charge to a walk, then stopped, looking over at them with a look of extreme dissatisfaction. His blade stopped moving, shaping itself back into the typical shape of a halberd.
I looked over, too. A portly man—seemed like a Magic-Type, maybe a Cleric—was jogging over to us, trailed by a lanky Melee-Type with a sword and a short bowman.
The larger Cleric stopped at the bottom of the valley, taking a few breaths as he looked between us.
“What are you two thinking?!” he shouted. “Fighting with each other during the Tourney elimination round is strictly forbidden! Are you two trying to get yourselves disqualified? Arrested?”
The Cavalryman took a step forward, placing a hand on his chest and speaking in a much different tone than the one he used with me. “Sir, I was just defending myself! You have to believe me, this foreigner came at me with his savage Spells and began threatening my life! Look, you can still see the frost biting my skin from his attempt on my life.”
I looked at him. “Oh, you fucker. Seriously?”
“I’m in no position to make judgements on who was in the right and who was in the wrong here,” the man said. “But you two ought to stop your scuffling unless you’re prepared to face the consequences.”
“Look,” I said, “he was trying to take one of my crystals, I said no, he attacked, and I retaliated. It’s nothing more than that. If you—”
“This one?” the man walked over to the red crystal protruding from the ground.
“Oh, don’t tell me you’re about to try and fight me for it, too.”
“No, I think not. In fact, if the two of you can’t agree on who should get it, then…” He lifted up a food, and before I could stop him, he stomped down, crushing the fragile thing beneath his heel. “Nobody will. There. Now that there’s no more reason to fight, you two can—”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” I demanded. “That was mine!”
“Yeah, what in flames are you doing?!” my opponent shouted. “That was the last one I needed!”
“You two aren’t responsible enough to have something between you, clearly!” the man responded in a stern voice, like a parent trying to discipline his unruly children. Only, he wasn’t our dad, just some fucking loser meddling in business that wasn’t his.
The Cavalryman took a step forward. “Since when were you the one who decides when people are acting ‘responsible’ or not? I’d say I was handling the issue of an arrogant kid not knowing his place perfectly well.”
“Yeah,” I said, “and I’d say I was being perfectly mature in my response to some dickweed who can’t tell when he’s trying to rob someone who could kill him at a moment’s notice.”
The Cleric’s scowl grew tighter and tighter. “Y-you two…!”
His companion, the lanky one, walked up and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, let’s just go. I told you not to try and break up fights anymore.”
“But don’t you see what—”
“Yeah,” the Archer said, “we got more crystals to find. Let’s head out.”
After a moment of hesitation, the lanky guy pulled the Cleric away, leaving me and my opponent alone in the valley once again, minus one red crystal.
“What a fucking asshole,” I muttered.
“I know, right?” the Cavalryman said.
I turned to him. “Are you stupid, or something? You’re the one who caused all of this; obviously, if he’s an asshole, you’re an even bigger one.”
His hands tightened around his halberd. “Do you want me to kill you that badly, that you’re still trying to provoke me despite having no reason to fight?”
“No, actually, I’m not trying to start a fight with you, because I don’t attack people for no fucking reason.”
“I clearly had perfectly good reason to attack you, considering you were trying to take something that was rightfully mine.”
“I was standing right fucking next to it! Under what definition of ‘rightfully’ is that yours?!”
He huffed out a breath. “You people are always like this. What a stubborn, stupid country.”
I stared at him for a moment, taking a second to control my breathing. This jackass… “Hey. What’s your name?”
“Hm?”
“Tell me your name.”
“And why would you want to know that?”
“Just tell me.”
“...I’m Godo Tucker, if you gotta know.”
“Alright then, Godo. I don’t have any reason to fight you, as long as you don’t wanna fight me. So how about you go off that way, and I’ll go the opposite direction, and we don’t have to see any more of each other again.”
“Sounds perfect, actually.”
“Yeah. But I want you to promise me one thing.”
He scoffed. “And why do I owe you a promise?”
“Because you tried to fucking kill—you know what? I’m not even gonna argue. You’ll want to fulfill the promise, anyway, so it shouldn’t be a problem for you to make it. I just want to formally ask you, is all.”
“Spit it out.”
“You better try as hard as you possibly can during this tournament. Because I want to face you in the pit, and I want to fucking destroy you in front of everyone.”
He grinned a toothy grin. “I’ll only promise you that if you promise the same.”
“Deal.”
“Deal.”
“See you, Godo. Try not to die stealing from any other adventurers before you find me again.”
“And you try not to die challenging people to duels that you have no right to challenge.”
We each walked away, heading in opposite directions.
Right. So, then, the issue with sticking to areas that are safe from the Sand Hive is that I have to deal with people. Honestly, I’d rather chance it with the monsters than have to meet another asshole like that.
Arriving at the top of a hill, I gazed off in every direction, looking for them. Off in the distance, I just barely caught the glimpse of movement through the dusty air.
Perfect. Monster territory. Let’s go that way.