Mantle of the Gods

My legs were burning.

The theory that I was testing was twofold. I already more or less knew that the faster we moved through the dungeon, the more monsters we ran into. When the Yellow team leader had said that Bramble Skeletons spawned every fifteen minutes, I knew that spawns had to happen at a distance, not time. Because we had managed to beat more than four an hour while we had been farming. This meant that the monsters had to spawn either more often than that, or at specific places, then wander around. I was leaning more toward both than one or the other.

What I was hoping was that I could either get a better idea of how quickly the snakes were spawning or where they were spawning from. With the Bramble Skeletons, we hadn’t been able to find any type of spawn point, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one.

None of the farming groups I’d worked with had ever stayed in one place, but some had used a runner to gather multiple monsters into a kill zone for an AoE nuke, but that had been on the event floors where more monsters spawned and they did so in packs. I knew that once it hit her, Aelin had been restrained pretty fast, but she had also been walking. I was curious if I’d be able to stay ahead of it if I was already running.

I didn’t have to wait long to find out. I’d been running for about three minutes when I heard rustling behind me. I turned towards camp as I heard the noise getting louder.

“I got one!” I yelled as I tried to book it faster.

The group got out their weapons and all four started coming towards me. Edward and Aelin had stakes, which I’d already established hadn’t worked well, but better than not having anything.

“Stay there!” I yelled. I could hear it right behind me, but I had no idea if there was another one in between us and I didn’t want to have to fight two of these things at once. At least not until we learned how to kill them faster.

I made it to the camp and ran right across the road instead of trying to stop. The snake shot after me, but it had been so focused on me that it stretched itself out over the trail.

I slashed with the sword as it hit me, but it wasn’t able to coil around me. Justia hadn’t been able to cut it in half, but she had managed to pin it to the road.

I wasn’t able to make a clean strike, but I also wounded it as it turned to see what had hurt it. Ether was frantically stabbing it with the knife and Edward drove a stake through it, securing it to the ground.

The snake coiled to launch itself, but that meant it had forgotten about me. I gripped the broken blade with both hands and swung as it struck, taking its head off and spraying snake dust all over the rest of my party.

“I got some in my mouth!” Aelin exclaimed as she stuck out her tongue and began wiping it on the inside of her clothes.

“It’s in my eyes!” Edward was wiping his face with his sleeves.

Ether got up, ran over to me, and wrapped me in a hug. "Are you okay?”

I nodded as my entire body screamed. I had way too little sleep to do that again for a little bit. I was breathing hard and every muscle was burning, but I’d found a way to fight the snakes faster than one every ten minutes.

Justia picked up the crystal and offered it to Aelin. The blonde stopped trying to clean her mouth and put it in the bag.

“How fast do you think those things are?” Aelin’s voice was a little more full of confidence than I would have liked.

I looked at Justia. In the woods, we hadn’t been able to really run, so none of us had been able to see either Aelin or Rix at full speed. I had felt confident that I wouldn’t give my secret away, since there wouldn’t be anything to compare to. But that all changed if Aelin decided that she could be bait again.

If I told her that they were probably a nine, then my secret was going to be out. If I told her an eight, then I’d have announced my stats to be eight Power, eight Speed, ten Magic, and Ether knew I had ten Recovery. I already had to worry that the Yellow team knew I had ten Defense, which I wasn’t sure if Aelin had paid attention to or not.

My hesitation must have clued Justia in on my internal turmoil.

“I thought you didn’t want to be the bait anymore?”

“If he can outrun them, then I should be able to.” Aelin pulled off the sling bag and dropped it in the middle of the road. “He’s beat, just look at him.” Aelin started to stretch. "I just have to run in a circle around the camp until one starts chasing me.”

Justia turned to me. She knew that I’d barely been faster than the snake, so there was no way Aelin wasn’t going to get caught.

“My speed is an eight and that thing almost caught me.” I announced, betting on dissuading her. “One wrong step and you’ll get caught again.”

Aelin blanched at the thought of being constricted again.

Ether looked confused. “But I thought…”

I pulled Ether into me and silenced her with a long kiss. I could feel her ears heating up at the PDA, but it was the only way I could stop her from outing me.

“Please don’t tell them I’m an Abnormal. We’ll talk about it tonight.” I whispered in her ear before I pulled back.

She was dazed, but nodded and buried her head in my chest.

The sudden display of affection was enough to make the other three want to change the subject.

“I’ll be good to go once I have a chance to catch my breath.”

Justia mouthed, Is she going to be okay?

I wished my Priestess had been talking about Ether’s embarrassment, but I knew she was checking to see if Ether was going to keep our secret. I just nodded as I stroked my fingers through the Tank’s white hair. I had a feeling the conversation tonight was going to be interesting.