November 3, 2022

  Day 14

  The first thing Ivan saw when he woke up was Rahul's face. His vision was blurry, and his ears heard only muffled voices, but Ivan could tell that Rahul was trying to say something to him. Then he felt something being pressed against his palms.

  A healing potion.

  Still in a daze and unsure of what was happening, Ivan instinctively took a few sips.

  He felt his senses slowly return, and saw Inertia appear beside him.

  No, not Inertia. Immutability.

  Ivan corrected himself and got up, taking Rahul's proferred hand.

  The mood was somber in the room, and as he saw the three unmoving bodies, he understood why.

  They don't know about Immutability and must be thinking I'm the only one who survived the dungeon.

  It took Ivan some time to explain the situation, with his presence occasionally chiming in. Once everyone was caught up, they ran into another problem.

  Rahul had assumed Ivan was the only survivor and so he had been generous with the health potions and fed him everything. The half-empty bottle in Ivan's hand was all that was left.

  If they had enough to heal Daniel and bring him to a stable state, he could purchase more to help the other two. But half a bottle of potion was not enough to reliably save even one life.

  Just as the group started arguing about the dangers of using the remaining potion, Maya proposed a plan.

  "There are five of us, right? A majority, enough to challenge Daniel and elect a new representative for the bastion. That representative can then purchase healing potions. Once everyone is healed, we can re-elect Daniel."

  It seemed like a good plan, and so a small discussion followed, with topics ranging from 'how long will the system wait for the three sleeping members to vote before it ends the election' to 'who would be the interim coordinator'.

  3 hours later, Ivan was elected the new representative of Laysan Bastion, and instantly received a strange notification. Deciding that this was not the time to read it, he hurriedly purchased 10 health potions.

  He followed that by shaking his head and purchasing 10 more for good measure.

  That done, he and Rahul got to work, with Ivan making his friends mutable one at a time, and Rahul reviving them with health potions.

  Maya, Matt, and Charlie weren't present, having left 2 hours ago to fight the various beasts that were attacking the Laysan Bastion. They had been doing nothing productive while waiting for the election timer to run out, so Rahul had insisted they go and farm experience instead of letting the beasts die to the sentinels or slaughter each other.

  Rahul had stayed behind. He was pragmatic, not heartless, and watched over his three critically injured friends as he talked to Ivan, who gave him a more unabridged version of the events he had relayed to everyone already. Rahul in turn talked about how things went in his dungeon run, and the two barely felt the passage of time.

  After fifteen minutes of holding their friends down and pouring health potions, Ivan and Rahul finally rescued Daniel, Helena, and Alex. Thankfully, no one had any permanent damage that the potions couldn't fix. They had woken up disoriented and screaming, afraid they were still fighting the crocodiles. They had not felt any passage of time in that Immutable state, though they all reported feeling a bit odd.

  For the third time today, Ivan relayed the events surrounding Inertia's evolution into Immutability, and what followed. Once he was all caught up, Daniel spoke.

  "I think we all need some time to process things. We will talk among ourselves and rest, but Rahul, you should go outside and earn as much XP as you can. We were completely out of our depth in that battle and need to accumulate as many levels as we can before the next dungeon dive and whatever the world congress brings."

  Rahul wanted to protest and stay a bit longer but thought better of it as he saw the unspoken words between his four friends. He gave them privacy and climbed out of the cellar and then onto the roof.

  The sight that greeted Rahul on the roof was pure chaos.

  A set of ducks with massive wings were flying about and attacking the bastion from above, while half a dozen species of disfigured whales, dolphins, and sharks that had turned amphibious crawled, bounced, and slid toward their castle.

  Despite their morbid body structures, many of these beasts seemed quite dangerous, and as Rahul noticed the sharp teeth adorning the jaws of a shark, he felt relief.

  Relief that he was facing them on land rather than their natural habitat. Then a massive whale slid towards the castle and banged against the walls, and Rahul thanked the system for forcing the beasts to attack, vowing never to go swimming in the ocean again.

  Then he threw caution to the wind and jumped right on top of that whale, easily half as tall as the wall it was trying to destroy.

  The whale was massive, but its movements were clumsy, and after fighting the alpha, the whale felt more like an immobile mountain than a mammal.

  But after five minutes of cutting and slicing, Rahul reconsidered his decision to attack such a massive blob of flesh. All that his cuts and stabs had done was agitated the beast and covered him in blood.

  Again.

  So, Rahul found his way back to the cellar and asked Daniel if it was possible to purchase weapons using settlement points, and if there was a extra large harpoon available.

  Daniel pointed to Ivan, and Rahul apologized.

  Two minutes later, Rahul walked out, not with a harpoon, but with a 15 feet long pike. He had much better luck with that weapon, and two minutes later, the whale died, blood streaming from dozens of deep holes in its body.

  Fuck my life! Only 170 experience!

  Rahul cursed as he saw the notification. Then he saw the massive carcass and consoled himself. Even among the whales, this one was abnormally large, and all other beasts had given it a wide berth. Given enough time, it could have breached the castle walls and had to be dealt with. The other whales were relatively smaller and were busy fighting the sharks. Rahul decided to let them be and instead prioritize the small fry that he could kill by the dozens.

  He saw a massive cluster of sharks that Maya, Matt, and Charlie were fighting, and killing with ease. They had sharp teeth but little by the way of defense. Great for farming.

  Then he saw a pod of dolphins bouncing toward the castle, still looking cute except for their tail which had coiled into a weird spring-like shape and was helping them jump forward.

  Rahul looked at Maya and then at the dolphins.

  Better I deal with it than her.

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  Rahul thought and jumped to action. He was dancing in their midst within seconds, and with his 15 feet pike, they were all dying in a single stab. Soon, Rahul was able to time and angle his stabs so he could pierce through two or three dolphins at once, and the battle hum of momentum was in his ears again.

  Hundreds of such notifications followed, and dolphins kept dying around Rahul, until the inevitable happened.

  Rahul felt his stamina start to give out.

  Rahul had considered going into the cold trance but decided against it. He hadn't had a full night of sleep since the last trance and had been fighting all day yesterday and then again today. He had also considered allocating his 30 unused stat points, but decided it'd be best to hold that off until he could talk to Martin.

  So, Rahul ran back to the cellar one more time, cursing at his lack of foresight and preparation as he felt his accumulated momentum dissipate slowly. The melodies of war were still playing, but every second away from the fighting made them shriller.

  Rahul had accumulated 3 intent points during the earlier fight. He instinctively knew that he could now speed up his movement to the point where he would appear to teleport when he moved, and his strikes would cut across tens of dolphins before stopping. He should be able to do it half a dozen times and kill a hundred dolphins if they were in a tight cluster. But he was waiting to accumulate 4 intent points, and running into and then out of the cellar was not helping.

  Five minutes later, Rahul was fighting again, leaving a path of dead bodies behind him, all the way from the gate of the castle to where he danced among the dolphins. This time, he had 10 stamina potions in his belt pouch. He wouldn't be going back inside until the tutorial ended. On that thought, Rahul brought up the system notification he had received yesterday to see how much time he had.

  Just over an hour.

  Rahul wondered if Daniel and the others would come up to fight before the tutorial ended. He hoped they would, but left the decision to them.

  Fifteen minutes and about 500 dolphins later, Rahul had to drink another stamina potion. As he did, he checked his progress.

  He was at the precipice of level 18, and also close to accumulating 4 intent points. Rahul could feel it.

  The level-up came first.

  A dozen dolphins later, Rahul felt and heard the accumulation of intent points reach that invisible threshold. He checked his character stats, and sure enough, he had 4 intent points.

  He looked to his left and saw his three friends still fighting the sharks. They were on the other side of the island. Rahul aimed away from them, and right before he was about to swing his pike in a kinetic cleave, he had a thought.

  The willblade is my intent turned tangible, but does it depend simply on my intent or do my physical stats affect it too?

  He did not know the answer, and could honestly argue for both the possibilities. Intent is intent, and the effect of an intent-attack shouldn't depend on whether the person who wielded it has 10 strength or 100. On the other hand, if intent attacks didn't scale with levels and stats, the attacks powered by 3 or 4 intent points would eventually become obsolete.

  Eventually, Rahul decided to risk it and allocated 15 of his 35 free stat points to endurance. He had no doubts his strength was enough, and none of the other stats seemed relevant to his goal.

  Rahul wanted his kinetic cleave to travel for longer before it evaporated to nothing.

  Rahul checked his stats one last time as he held his massive pike in an outstretched hand. He intended to cover half the island in his arc of carnage and upgrade his Weapon of Mass Destruction Title.

  Time to see if my gamble paid off.

  That was the last thought Rahul had before his hands started to move in an arc.

  Earth's Chosen!