PoA The Concept of Death Chapter 5

PoA The Concept of Death 5

Melinda and her team walked back to their suite of rooms lethargically. Their brutal beatdown hadn’t ended with the first duel with Matt. No, they tried for a second bout and had been handled just as easily.

Melinda forced her hands to unclench and wiggled them, letting blood flow freely. Losing to Matt wasn’t the worst thing. Their friend had always been tanky for his Tier. Now that he had rounded out his skills a little, it wasn’t too surprising that he could beat them. He had always been an unrelenting force.

Even their loss to Liz was acceptable. The woman was an elemental manipulator with the ability to carry her element around in a spatial growth item. Her use of skills and the way she helped train Vinnie proved that the woman had invested a lot of time into working on her craft.

No, it was the loss to Aster that ate at Melinda. Aster, in her mind, was still the cute and adorable baby fox who wanted pets and cuddling. She was pretty sure that they would have beaten Aster if they had a second fight, but having most of her team turned into ice sculptures was something she wanted to avoid.

Baxter hadn’t said anything else to her, but he hadn’t needed to. His message was taken and understood. If they thought they were slipping before, they now had hard proof that they were weaker than they should be.

Her musing was interrupted as they entered their suite, and the weight of their recent humiliation became apparent.

No one said anything until Kyle lightly shoved the coffee table with his foot.

“That was horse shit.”

Vinnie sneered at him. “At least you got to fight.”

“Shut up. That’s not what I meant. I…”

Mathew stood and towered over everyone. “No. Stop.”

Her husband was unusually serious, and it caused the bickering to immediately die.

Once he saw that he had everyone’s attention, he spoke with a flat expression on his face.

“What happened, happened. We can’t change the results of that fight. But we can review and learn from it. Let’s start with Matt.”

Tara interrupted, “We got…”

Her husband held up a hand. “No. Stop. One at a time. Why did we lose against Matt?”

They were silent for a minute as each of them pondered the question.

Sam tossed out, “He knows our talents and skills. He was able to counter us.” As if that would absolve them of their failure. Melinda had noticed how mad the woman had been when none of her skills or attacks were able to penetrate their friend’s armor. It had been a blow to her confidence.

Her husband nodded. “Matt knew our Talents. He was able to counter me by getting me off the ground. I know my Talent works less on people, but he was able to negate it by taking me out quickly. But we knew his Talent too, so it should have balanced out. Same with our skills. So what else?”

Kyle threw out, “He’s strong. Stronger than I am. I checked his skills, and I saw that he was using a strength-enhancing skill.” Her teammate grimaced. “It makes him stronger than me. By a lot. It doesn’t help that he’s a better sword fighter either.”

Melinda could see that his admission hurt, but she was proud of Kyle for showing humility. He took pride in his strength and sword skills, so she knew it wasn’t easy for him. She learned over and rubbed his shoulder in a show of support.

Sam had her arms crossed, but Melinda didn’t miss the subtle rubbing of her chest where Matt had stabbed her and Kyle. She made a note to check up on her after this.

“My poisons are great in a rift, but I’m limited against intelligent combatants. Even more so now, with Matt’s armor being impervious to gases. I would have done better against…”

Mathew interrupted Sam as she tried to move on to the other fights. “No, let’s get everyone else before we move on.”

Vinnie repeated himself, “He knew our Talents and realized that Tara and I were the two people who could either trap or hurt him, and he took us both out at the very beginning.” Vinnie clenched his fist, and with white knuckles said, “We got slapped around like kids, but that second shot was bullshit. Tara, how does a crossbow bolt bounce like that?”

Tara looked confused as she responded, “I don’t know what you mean. I was too busy getting drowned by ice to pay attention. Is the arrow special?”

Melinda sent everyone her perspective of the second fight, where a crossbow bolt had bounced off the ground like a rubber ball, slipping around Vinnies flat wall of defensive earth.

Tara whistled and said, “That’s a special bow for sure. Maybe it’s the bolt, but I doubt it. Shit, I want one.” She cracked a wry smile before asking no one in particular, “Think he’d sell me one?”

Mathew redirected the conversation. “What else could you have done better, Vin?”

“I made a flat wall because it was cheaper, and well, yeah. You watched how that went. I should have gone underground or encircled myself fully. It’s not like the stone blocks my vision.”

Everyone looked at Tara, and with a sigh she said, “I was screwed from the outset. I can’t shoot an arrow through that much ice. It’s too dense and too heavy to punch through.”

Kyle shrugged. “Was it that bad? I didn’t really see it.”

Tara withdrew an arrow from her new quiver and smacked Kyle. The sharp tip cut a thin line on his leg through his armor, and she said, “I have armor penetration. I could feel my Talent trying to punch through the ice. There was so much ice, it was counting as armor.” She spoke slowly as she glared at all of them.

“Look at my view of the ice.”

They got another video, and Melinda winced as she saw Tara’s view replaced with blue hail as soon as the fight started. The rain of ice was so dense, she couldn’t even see out of the skill’s area of effect.

“I can’t shoot through that. My arrows get hit on the shaft and knocked down. It’s absurd how much ice he can shit out. Any normal mage would have had to drain their mana pool to sustain that much ice generation. The only reason I could escape the ice field at all was its small size.”

She looked at Kyle and apologized. “Sorry. Hurting you was wrong.”

Kyle just patted her hand. “I’m sorry I doubted you. You were the only one who was able to hurt Matt after all. I should have known you weren’t sitting on your ass.”

Melinda healed Kyle and said, “I was unprepared for how quickly we went down, and failed as both a shot caller and a healer.”

She swallowed and continued after a minute of reflection. “We should have changed our entire strategy after the first loss. Whether it worked or not, we should have tried.”

Mathew took charge and redirected them. “What about Liz? I’d say it was pretty fucking terrifying when she just washed over me and slit my throat. I can’t stop a wave, whether it’s blood or water.”

Melinda saw her husband and Vinnie both shudder at that.

Vinnie shook his head. “I don’t think there was anything we could have done.”

Sam interrupted, “I could have poisoned her. And Tara could have shot her.”

Vinnie shook his head. “No, while those are both possible, I don’t think they’re practical. We talked. We both have manipulation skills. I’d rather fight Matt than her. At Tier 5, she was killing Tier 7 monsters with defensive fighting styles. If she wanted, she could have cut us to shreds with one of her multiple ranged blood spells. You saw the one she used, but she has more.”

Mathew nodded and asked, “Anyone else?”

Kyle shrugged slightly and said, “She’s strong. We only sparred once, but it was enough to see that she’s stronger than any normal Tier 6 mage should be. Either she’s heavy in physical cultivation, or doing something else. It could be a skill… maybe [Mana Strength].”

Sam tossed out, “The golem thing didn’t seem like a skill. And she kept her head out of the blood, so she needs to breathe. That’s a weakness that Tara and I can exploit. It’s just a hard one to hit.”

They talked for another ten minutes about how to handle Liz, and the conversation eventually shifted to water mages. Technically, you could put Liz in that sort of category as well. It would be a challenge, but taking them out early would be their best chance. The biggest issue is how [Water Manipulation] could increase a water mage’s versatility to insane levels. Liz’s own version with blood made her a terror in a group fight. The more people bled, the stronger she got.

They repeated the exercise with Aster, though it was easier for her, as she had blindsided them. That wouldn’t work twice.

After they recapped everything they had done wrong and what they could have done better, they broke apart. Melinda decided to take a shower when she noticed that there wasn’t anyone already making a beeline for it. Standing under the hot water, she was able to relax a bit as it beat down on her shoulders and back. Deep in thought, she watched a few beads drip from her hair onto her chest and roll down.

So many things that she had always taken as certain were now up in the air.

The excitement from the new items and skills they were given last night was replaced by the realization of how far they had fallen. Melinda corrected herself. They hadn’t fallen, they just hadn’t advanced. Even if she’d been able to count on her Talent in the fight, it wouldn’t have made much difference.

She wouldn’t have been able to get to everyone fast enough to reverse the brain damage that would have occurred from Matt and his party’s attacks. Even if it worked once on someone, the fact that she was perfectly healing her teammates would have been instantly identified. After that, she would have been quickly taken down. She could only heal while she had mana, after all.

She walked out of the shower and started to brush out her hair, still considering the road ahead of them.

Her team needed to grow. She knew that they could just leave the path, buy a nice house somewhere, and slowly advance. Even if they took their sweet time, they could hit Tier 14 by fourteen hundred years old. It wouldn’t be impossible, or even hard for them. With her Talent, they could carefully delve every few days while being perfectly safe.

In a thousand years, they could be immortal, and they wouldn’t have to worry about anything taking their lives. At that point, they wouldn’t even have to delve very often. She was pretty sure that they could delve a Tier 15 rift once every few months and earn enough to live on.

As of a week ago, that would have been perfectly acceptable. Her family’s lives were the most important thing to her. While that hadn’t changed, Melinda was no longer content to sit around and let life push her along.

They had worked so hard at the orphanage while they waited for awakening, and even harder at the PlayPen. Her past self would have never believed the mere idea of her team slipping.

When they had nothing to distinguish themselves from the masses, they had dutifully strived to improve. When they had become unique, their sense of urgency had all but vanished.

Melinda stood up, and while still in her slippers, walked out after leaving a message for her team.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

She had only gotten to the front step before Baxter was suddenly next to her.

She was sure that they looked ridiculous standing next to each other, one in sloppy healer robes, and the other with wet hair and in a bathrobe.

Melinda didn’t bother to look at her mentor and just watched the people passing by. They were being flown off on transports in large groups. Laughter and smiles prevalent on people’s faces.

“What’s the point?” It wasn’t what she really wanted to ask, but it slipped out before she noticed.

“There isn’t one.”

That jived her out of her crowd gazing. She expected some smartass answer, or being one upped from an angle she hadn’t considered.

Seeing her look, he grinned at her. “No, really. There is no point to anything. If everyone died right now, the planet would be fine. If the planet was sterilized right now, it would mean nothing. A rift break would occur, and animals would come out. If they couldn’t survive, they would die out. Eventually, a rift would invert into a ruin, and an ecosystem would be created and slowly start to terraform the planet. Then in a few hundred thousand years, this planet would be perfectly fine.”

The older healer waved around. “It’s the same for the entire multiverse. We don’t mean anything. Gaining power? Becoming immortal? Ascending? It all means nothing. We do it because we fear weakness and death.”

He shrugged and said, “Some do it because they enjoy the fighting. Others, because they want power.”

He met her eyes and finished, “It all means nothing, though. The only value is what we assign to it personally. There’s really no point. Only what we make of life for ourselves.”

“I don’t want to believe that.” She didn’t want to agree, but a deeper part of her felt that he was right.

He looked away. “Why do so many people refuse to Tier up to Tier 15? Nearly anyone can hit that Tier. Concepts limit some people, yes. But from the general population, only about five percent of people hit Tier 14. Seventy percent of those break into Tier 15. Why don’t more people strive to at least live a thousand years?”