Mantle of the Gods

I felt sick.

I’m sure getting knocked out might have something to do with it, but I didn’t like the idea that he could just strong-arm me into taking a deal that would affect the entire party.

Rix strained against her bonds, but her muffled words were falling on deaf ears.

“You really think you’re going to get away with this?” I growled.

“You just don’t get it.” He shook his head. "But maybe that’s because you’re not nobility. This is the way the world works. Nobody is going to care if a few mundane-born wash out because they couldn’t hack it.”

“How do you know I’m not a Noble?”

He pulled back the collar of his armor. "You see these three dots? It means I’m a Tribble. Flaer here has a red one and two black ones to mark her as a Hoyt.” He raised an eyebrow. "You don’t have any nobility marks.” He gestured at Aelin. "Neither does she.” He looked at Rix. "Or her.”

“So you see?” He spread his arms. "No one is going to miss you. But if you don’t want to play, then we can settle this another way. We’ll track down the rest of your team and throw you all in the boss room. It’ll just be some tragic case of Mundanes who didn’t know their limits.”

The thought that he was going to go capture the rest of the team hit me like a brick.

“You can’t expect us to just walk into a boss fight without being able to prepare.” I realized that the chance of us winning was just a formality. He really did plan on us not being able to prepare before going into the boss fight.

“If you’re more worthy of our teacher than we are. Yes, yes I do.” Wrye sighed and sat down in front of me. “Do you know why Mister Vowler locks his classes in here on their first week?”

“Because he doesn’t like teaching?”

Wrye punched me. The blow knocked me face down into the dirt. I felt hands grab my arms and set me back up while my jaw throbbed.

The black-haired man sat back down in front of me, then called over his shoulder. “Flaer! Can you fix him? I’m not done talking and I don’t want to listen to him butchering his words because his jaw is swollen.”

Relief flooded into me and in a few seconds the pain and swelling was gone.

I wiggled my jaw, testing the effectiveness of the healing.

“First time getting healed?” Wrye chuckled.

“No, I got a Healer to cure me during the plague…” I let my words drift off. That had wiped out my savings, but back then I’d been too sick to care and too out of it to remember much.

“Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah.” He snapped his fingers. “There was once this Adventurer who fell down a trap that went all the way from floor fifty-eight to floor sixty-four.” He waved the knife in my face. “This Adventurer was the only one of his party to survive the fall and it destroyed all of his gear and broke his CB.” He tapped the crystal on his wrist.

“This lone Adventurer had to crawl back from a floor so deep, no Adventurer had ever reached by himself without a stitch of gear.” Wrye motioned out at the darkness. “Hard for even a Mundane to die on the first floor.” He took a deep breath. “That’s why Mister Vowler locks the first years in here.”

He waved the knife in my face. “Don’t you ever let me hear you insult Mister Vowler like that again.” There was reverence in his voice as he spoke. “Now, where were we? Oh, yeah, the challenge.”

“So we just have to beat the first-floor boss in five days and we win?”

“Five days?” The black-haired man looked offended. "No, no, no. You have four days. You have to beat it before Mister Vowler shows up.”

With five of us, we were going to need to defeat over a hundred monsters a day in order to reach that number. Even more, considering that Edward had sat out all of today. If we could keep up the increased completion speed, that would take us more than twenty-five hours per day, not counting that we would have to start the fight before the end of the fourth day. Logistically, there was no way we could do it.

“It can’t be done.” I shook my head. "If we had five days, maybe. With only four, there is no way that we can hit level two. The Bramble Skeletons don’t spawn fast enough.”

“Then don’t fight Bramble Skeletons.” He pointed out at the grass. "There are Giant Snakes out there. The wood bones are on fifteen-minute spawns, but the snakes are on ten-minute spawns.”

That upped it to a possible six per hour, to hit the eighty-two experience we’d need, it’d take about seventy-two hours, which would give us about six hours to sleep, plus a small cushion. So it was doable in theory, though we wouldn’t be able to spend our stats and we wouldn’t have much time to learn how to use any spells or skills we received if we even got any. It wasn’t going to be easy, but it was at least theoretically possible.

“Promise you won’t throw her in the boss room.”

He eyed me. "No. You have to have a reason to not chicken out.”

Justia was going to kill me if I took this deal. Maybe not until after this stupid challenge, but I couldn’t see a way out of this without her refusing to work with me afterward.

“Hey!” Rix blew stray hair out of her face. “Take me instead."