Chapter 92: The Grass Was Not Greener on the Other Side (Patreon)

More gunshots echoed over the rolling hills, distorting their origin. Despite that, my senses were heightened enough to find the source and follow it.

After coming over to the edge of a canyon, I smiled.

There down below, was Martin being cornered by a pack of Baby Yetis. I counted that six of the creatures were still standing while several others lay dead. Martin’s hand shook as he held his pistol. The same pistol that he’d taken off Earnest. It felt like a lifetime had passed since that happened.

I wasn’t sure what surprised me more. The fact that he’d kept it all this time, that it still had bullets, or that the shots were actually effective against the creatures.

Still, the magazine only held sixteen, and I counted at least ten shots had been fired. If he missed a single shot from this point forward, he was dead. That suited me just fine.

I hunkered down to watch. In a few moments, I’d either be looting his corpse or finishing him off for good. It was ironic. Martin had worked so hard to get here and now this place would likely kill him for it.

The remaining little Yetis got brave and charged him at once. They didn’t seem to understand the danger that the gun posed or if they did; they were hoping that sheer numbers would overwhelm him.

Martin waited for them to get close and fired several times in quick succession. Those he fired at died, but he didn’t see the sixth creature that had been running behind one of its own. It had used its own kin as a shield and caught Martin by surprise.

Martin tried to swing the gun around, but the creature was too fast. It jumped at him and clamped its sharp teeth down on his arm. He screamed and tried to switch the gun to his other hand, but the claws on its feet tore into his belly, and Martin’s last shot went wild.

With no bullets left, Martin hammered the beast with the butt of the gun. Hitting it in the head over and over until finally the yeti fell still. He tried to take a step but his legs failed him and he fell into the snow.

I walked down slowly with a short blood spear in hand, wary incase the sound of his gunshots had alerted more of those creatures or incase Martin had another trick up his sleeve. By the time I got to him, he was trying to hold his intestines together and keep it all inside himself.

“The gun was an odd choice,” I said.

Martin’s eyes snapped to me and he reached for his pistol.

“Stay back!” he warned as he pointed the empty gun at me.

“The thing I don’t get,” I said as I continued walking towards him. “Was why you’d waste the ammunition on these things? Surely, you could’ve used your goblin dog or some other creature to fight them instead.”

Martin ignored my question and repeated his warning. It was an empty bluff since I’d counted the shots, but I decided to stop anyway to see if I could get some answers out of him before he died.

“So where are we?” I asked.

“Part of her domain.”

“Her who?”

“You’ll see,” he grinned.

His hand moved behind his back. He was pulling something out of his inventory. I rushed forward to kill him when he raised his hand. My stomach dropped when I saw what he was holding. Martin was clutching a small shrine.

“Did you summon her?” I asked, almost expecting a lightning bolt to strike me down at any second.

He merely smiled.

I should just kill him and get out of here. If I hurry, maybe I can make it to the portal before it’s too late.

“What is it that you’re expecting of me?” asked Samara.

I whirled around in shock. There had been no sound at all to announce her presence. She’d just silently appeared. Even worse was that I could see that she was talking to Martin.

I groaned. “You’re the goddess of conquest he was talking about?”

She smiled. “Guilty. Though there’s no sense in feeling betrayed. I gave both of you a fighting chance.”

“A fighting chance?” I asked. “What with all the magic and the revenants? You think that’s the same as giving me an amulet?”

Her face turned hard. “First, watch your tone when speaking to me. Second, Martin was more willing to take my advice until recently,” she said with an edge to it.

What does that mean?

“It seems that as one of you came to your senses, the other lost theirs and is now paying the price for it,” she continued.

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s quite simple really…” she began. Martin moaned in pain from his grievous wounds and a flicker of irritation passed over her face. He was barely conscious at this point when she turned to him and said, “shush. the people who are still alive are talking. Now back to your question, Lucas. You see, gods like me use opportunities like the tower climb to gain champions. Some gods wait until near the middle or the end to choose a strong prospect, while others like me prefer to invest early and reap greater rewards later. I made two early investments. One in a young Blood Reaver who can absorb power from the blood of his enemies and the other in a man who can absorb power by having his beasts devour others.”

“So all this time you’ve been pitting us against each other?”

She shook her head. “Not at all. In fact, I’d have seen you both rise to become my champions. Your rivalry was somewhat counter productive for me, as you both wasted time trying to help or lead others instead of getting stronger.”

“But why make me think it was the goddess of conquest that was backing him?”

“I wasn’t trying to trick you. I am expanding my territory. Conquest is a part of who I am and it was the part that motivated Martin to take action, so I leaned into it to help him.”

“And now he’s dying. Doesn’t seem like a worthy exchange to me.”

“That is his own fault. He stopped listening to my advice and became stubborn.”

To illustrate this point, she appeared next to me and grabbed my hand. Before I knew what was happening, she’d forced my hand into Martin’s guts. He weakly squealed in pain. Disgusted, I tried to pull away, but there was nothing I could do against her immense strength. At first, I thought she was making me do this out of petty sadism, but then a System message appeared.

*Player Identified* [Martin Weiss, Class: Blood Reaver, Level: 51]

“It can’t be,” I said.

She let go of my hand. “The damn fool begged me to change his Class which is not an easy thing to do at his level and becomes impossible later on. But he was convinced that your Class was stronger than his and that he needed it to beat you and anyone else who challenged him.”

“So why didn’t he?”

“Because he didn’t know how to use it. He’s never been in fights like you have. Ever since that first encounter in your apartment with the goblin dog, you’ve fought on the brink of death and clawed a bloody path forward to victory. But Martin? He remained back in the distance and chose to let others do the dirty work for him. He doesn’t even know how to activate his blood healing ability.”

Upon hearing this, Martin tried to weakly reach out to one of the Yetis he’d killed. Samara kicked it further away from him. “You had your chance.”

She looked at me. “You know, if you end him now, you’ll probably get the points for it.”

I frowned. “I thought I was out of the tower?”

She laughed. “You don’t get out of the tower unless it wants you to. Even I can only keep up this little diversion for a short time. Eventually, the tower will call you back. The only way to be free of it is to either die or walk out the front door on floor 1.”

“But I didn’t get points for killing one of the Yetis?”

“That’s because I’m still hiding you from the System.”

An orange portal opened behind her that showed a lush garden on a warm summer’s day on the other side. “Come on, I’ve lots to teach you and little time.”

I took a step back, my anger rising. “I’m not going with you. You’ve been lying and manipulating me this whole time. I’ll take my chances on my own.”

I turned and started walking towards the cave portal. Maybe there’s a way for me to reconnect it to the floor by damaging the symbols painted on the walls.

“He’ll know that you’ve drunk the blood,” she said.

I stopped cold.

“If you leave now, then Yakeshi will see what you’ve done and you’ll be marked for death. Even if you avoid him by hiding in the tower, he’ll be waiting for you outside of it with his sword. And as good as the tower is at training people, you will not be his equal even if you complete every floor.”

I clenched my fists. I didn’t want it to be true, but everything she said made sense. Even though I feel completely in control of myself and it was only done in self defense, Yakeshi would likely stick to his vow of killing me. The tower had at times been referred to as a tutorial and it seemed unlikely that it would turn those who passed its tests into gods.

I sighed. Going with Samara didn’t seem like much of a step up if I was still to be hunted. “What do I do then?”

Samara’s eyes sparkled as she sensed that I was coming around to her idea. “I can teach you how to shroud your aura and conceal your memories. You drinking Anders’s blood happened in a tower blind spot. No one knows that it happened except the System and myself. And I only learnt of it from reading your aura when I arrived just now. Give me a few days and you’ll return to the tower stronger and more capable than ever.”

“How can I trust you?”

She extended her hand and blood from Martin and the dead Yetis coalesced around her like floating ribbons before settling back into its original spots.

“Because I’m like you, a Blood Reaver. One who has drank from sapient creatures many times over and yet I’m still here. I won’t force you to take my help, but I hope you will.”

Somewhere during our conversation, Martin had died and I hadn’t even noticed. I wouldn’t forget the danger Samara had put me and my friends in by assisting him, but I saw no other choice. I agreed and took her hand, unsure of what dangers lay ahead as we traveled through into another world.

End of Book One