Chapter 220 - Loss, Gain, and Reward

Zeke stood over what was left of Carlos, unsure of how he was supposed to react. Of the former assassin, there was only a half-melted skull that, if Zeke hadn’t known what he was looking for, he never would have recognized as human. But he did know, and so, there was no mistaking the blackened and charred lump of bone for what it was.

He hadn’t really liked Carlos all that much. Certainly, they were companions, but he’d never formed a bond with the man. Not like he had with Abby, Pudge, or Talia. Or even Tucker. To him, Carlos was a representative of everything that had made his life difficult, and for that, there was a good deal of resentment. But on the other hand, Zeke had committed to protecting him the moment he’d let Carlos join the group.

And now he was dead, and Zeke found it difficult not to take the blame for that fact. Certainly, Carlos should have been capable of protecting himself. He was a trained assassin, and one who had, for years, stood near the pinnacle of his organization. If he couldn’t protect himself, then few in the Radiant Isles could. Even so, Zeke parsed the encounter in his mind, trying to find something he could have done differently. He couldn’t think of anything, but that didn’t stop the guilt.

“It wasn’t your fault,” came Abby’s voice. After the fight, she had remained in the tower, watching for any other threats, for almost an hour while Zeke went back down into the caves and harvested a few wyrm hearts for Talia to consume. They wouldn’t be as effective as the hearts of sapients, but the creatures had been on the edge of sentience. As such, Zeke hoped that they would prove sufficient to the task of healing the undead girl. If they weren’t, he was unsure what he would do.

“This was a disaster,” he said, glancing at his partner. “Everything just went so wrong.”

“It was one of the most powerful monsters in the world,” Abby said. “We were never going to get out of it unscathed.”

Zeke didn’t respond, mostly because he didn’t want to argue. The fact was that he had been overconfident. Arrogant. And his hubris had gotten a man dead. It didn’t matter that Carlos should have been capable of taking care of himself. All that mattered was that Zeke had led him into that ravine, picked a fight with a powerful creature they could only barely handle, and failed to take proper precautions.

He'd thought himself so clever when he’d created those traps. They were incredibly powerful and only possible at all because of some of Zeke’s unique encounters. And they had, indeed, made the difference. Without them, the wyrm queen would have made quick work of him and his friends. Zeke was under no illusions otherwise. However, he had never considered that the monster would be able to withstand the weight of the traps along with the force of his and his friends’ attacks.

But it had, and because of Zeke’s miscalculation, Carlos was dead. It was minor miracle the assassin was the only casualty.

But Zeke’s overconfidence, whether he wanted to admit it or not, had been warranted. His every experience had led him to overvalue his own strength. After all, it hadn’t been that long ago that he’d slain another monarch-tier creature. He hadn’t been unwise to expect that he could kill another, given his track record of overcoming any adversary foolish enough to oppose him.

Zeke knew that he’d had every reason to be confident. But that didn’t help with the guilt strangling his mind.

“How is Talia?” he asked, more in an effort to take his mind off of his failure.

Abby answered, “Recovering. She ate seven hearts before her legs started to regrow. I think it’ll take at least a few more before she’s back to normal.”

“I’m just glad it worked,” was Zeke’s retort. When he had first seen the stumps where Talia’s legs had been, he’d been overcome by despair. However, in the Radiant Isles, a severed – or in this case, melted – limb wasn’t the problem it had been back on Earth. With enough vital energy, arms and legs could be regrown, albeit not easily. Talia’s unique constitution as well as the huge influxes of life energy she got from using [Focused Reformation] in conjunction with her consumption of enough hearts rendered it trivial, though; the only limiter was the time it took to heal, which seemed like it would be measured in hours, rather than days.

“Did you complete the quest, yet?” Abby asked.

Zeke shook his head. “I haven’t looked at any of my notifications,” he answered. “I’m just…it feels wrong to do it before…you know, we deal with Carlos. Like we’re profiting off of his death.”

Abby reached up to grip his shoulder. Zeke still wore his armor, which was still melted onto his skin. Without his tolerance, he would have been in agony, and that was saying nothing for what he’d feel when he removed it. But before he did that, he would need to deactivate [Heart of the Berserker] and deal with the bout of weakness that would come with it. Until then, he was stuck, largely because he wasn’t comfortable fighting with his reduced endurance without his armor; and in order to heal from ripping the armor away, he would have to fight something.

He glanced at Pudge, who sat nearby, licking his blistered hide. Every time his rough tongue scraped across the wounded skin, he let out a little whimper. With his constant whining, as well as his mostly hairless hide, he was a sorry sight indeed. Like Zeke, Pudge would have to fight if he wanted to completely recover.

“We should do something for Carlos,” Zeke said, glancing at the skull. “A funeral or something.”

“I can take care of it,” Abby said. “For now, you need to go back into the tower and rest. We can take care of everything when you’re back to normal.”

Zeke knew she was right. But there was a part of him that was still far too worked up to rest. That would change the moment he deactivated his skill, but for now, it was almost like that strange feeling when you’ve gone without sleep for a considerable amount of time. You know you’re tired, but your body has moved past it and convinced itself that it had plenty of energy.

Zeke sighed, and after exchanging a few more words with Abby, headed back to the tower. Once again, it had grown. Though its height remained the same, its footprint had expanded by at least half. Once Zeke was inside, he saw that the interior décor was mostly unchanged, though the scale reflected the increased size. He didn’t bother studying it, though. Instead, he quickly mounted the steps and climbed to his quarters. After he collapsed onto the bed, he finally deactivated his skill, and a moment later, exhaustion overwhelmed him. Thankfully, unconsciousness took him a second after that.

When he awoke a day later, he still felt bone-deep fatigue, but he was recovered enough to set about accomplishing the tasks before him. So, he descended to the base of the tower, mentally calling to Pudge along the way. Then, the pair of them – looking much the worse for wear, with Zeke’s melted armor and Pudge’s hairless and blistered body – set off to find something to hunt. An hour later, they encountered an elite-tier ostrich-looking creature that identified as:

Longstrider – Level 25 (E)

It would have to do. So, Zeke began the arduous task of peeling his armor off. Without the pain tolerance that had come with his racial transformation, he never would’ve remained conscious. Even with it, the process was nearly too much to bear. And when he finally finished, most of his skin had come off with the armor. Fortunately, there was a bundle of vitality nearby; he only had to steal it.

So, harnessing his willpower, Zeke and Pudge attacked the monster. Though it was an elite-tier creature, the longstrider was a weak example, and it soon fell before them. The vital energy Zeke stole was enough to take the edge off of his injuries, but it was far from sufficient to heal them completely. It was only the beginning, and for the rest of the day, the two hunted monsters until, at last, when the sun had long since dipped below the horizon, they were largely whole.

Pudge was still missing a few patches of fur, and Zeke’s skin was still pink and tender, but they had long since tired of the process.  More, they’d hunted most of the monsters in the area, exhausting the ready supply of vital energy. So, they began the trek back to the tower.  When they arrived, Zeke was unsurprised to see Talia sitting on the steps leading to the huge set of double doors that led inside.

Zeke hesitated for a few seconds before sitting next to her. Then, after a few more moments of silence, he said, “I’m sorry.”

At first, she didn’t answer. Instead, she merely stared ahead, her face even more expressionless than usual. There wasn’t a hint of emotion there. Finally, after a while, she turned to him and asked, “Why?”

“It was my fault,” he said. “Everything. We should have been more prepared. We should have done more research. I don’t know. Maybe we could have gone to Salvation first and gotten some potions like the ones Tucker made before we fought the fire ants. But I was impatient and overconfident. Because of that, Carlos died.”

“Those things are true,” she said. “But it is also true that Carlos died because of his own mistakes.”

“What do you mean?” Zeke asked.

“Growing up in Beacon, I was exposed to quite a few theories on how to develop,” she said. “Some people, like my mother, espouse the specialization route. If you are a healer, then you should neglect all else in pursuit of that role. If you are a damage dealer or protector, the same. But there are others, usually the most powerful elites, who choose a less specialized approach. What good is maximizing damage if you can not take a single blow? Carlos was specialized to a high degree, and that was his undoing. He relied on his skills for survivability. And skills fail.”

“So, you’re saying that if he’d chosen to invest more heavily in endurance, he might have lived?” Zeke asked.

“I did. You did. He had many of the same opportunities with which you were presented,” she said. “He was one of the Chosen, the same as you. And yet, he took an entirely different route to power. It worked, too. For a while. He was always going to run into something like that wyrm. It was inevitable. And without a well-structured team to protect him, the result was equally unavoidable.”

Zeke could understand her point. Carlos had approached his development like it was a video game from Earth. Instead of investing his stat points and skills in his own survivability, he had chosen to maximize his damage. And while he had been capable of truly impressive feats of destruction, it had come at a high cost. The wyrm hadn’t even been attacking him; rather, Carlos had been caught by a stray skill. Still, it had ended him without difficulty. There was nothing Zeke could have done to protect him.

But true or not, the knowledge didn’t ease Zeke’s conscience.

They pair sat there for a while, the silence stretching between them. Finally, after an hour or so, during which Zeke continued to dig for ways Carlos’s death could have been avoided, Abby approached.

“Now is as good a time as any,” Abby said. “I’ve already buried Carlos’s remains, but I thought we should do some kind of memorial.”

Neither Talia nor Zeke had any problem with that, so they rose and followed Abby around the tower. Pudge padded behind them, his head hanging low. He had been melancholy since the battle, and it didn’t seem he would soon recover his good spirits. Zeke could sympathize, because, at that moment, happiness or contentment seemed so far away.

The small group reached their destination a few minutes later. In the shadow of the tower, Zeke studied Carlos’s grave. At first glance, it was a simple mound of freshly turned earth, with a sizable, black stone at its head. The inscription that had been inexpertly carved on the stone was just as simple, and was comprised of only one line: Carlos Alfaro. There was nothing else. No context for the man’s life. Just a name, because, despite being their traveling companion, none of them had really known him that well.

“Should we say something?” Zeke asked.

“If you want,” was Abby’s reply.

Zeke too a deep breath, and then he spoke. “Carlos and I didn’t always get along,” he began. Then, a second later, he continued, “If things had been different, we might have even been enemies. Or friends. I don’t know. Things weren’t supposed to end like this. But one thing I do know is that I respected him because he was always trying to help people. He spent his life trying to save the lives of people who couldn’t save themselves. And I think the world is worse off now that he’s gone. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect him better.”

Abby added, “Me, too.”

Talia remained predictably silent as she clearly processed the man’s death. Her relationship with him had been little more than a crush, but, given Talia’s delicate mental state, it wouldn’t have been a surprise if she had inflated its meaning in her mind.

“We should have done something like this for Tucker, too,” Zeke said. “But after getting back from Mal’araxis…”

He didn’t need to explain anything more. In the wake of those events, it had been weeks before Zeke had regained consciousness. And when he had, he’d been too wrapped up in leaving Jariq as quickly as possible to stop and hold a memorial service for the slain alchemist. Now, months later, it felt as if the time to act had passed.

“It’s okay,” Abby said.

“Two companions down,” Zeke muttered, looking away from the gravestone. Left unsaid was the natural question: who would be next? Abby? Talia? Pudge? Or Zeke himself? Any of them could have been killed by the wyrm; aside from Abby, they had all come close, even if they had ultimately survived.

After that, the brief memorial service came to an unceremonious end, and Zeke let Abby guide him back to the tower. Pudge padded along behind them, but Talia remained at the grave, where she stood like a statue.

When Zeke reached the tower, he and Abby wasted no time before retreating to their quarters. Once there, Zeke took the opportunity to shower and clean the discarded skin from his armor. With that done, he climbed into bed and settled down to rest. Before he did, though, he looked at his first notification:

Quest: The Favor of Aja (complete)

Objective: Gather the following materials: Frost Giant’s Toe, Soul of a Warlock, Moss of Immolation, Heart of a Wyrm

Choose Reward: Racial Evolution (three choices) – Path of the Demon, Path of Humanity, Path of the Cambion

For a moment, Zeke considered exploring those choices. However, his fatigue had reasserted itself, and he chose to rest before examining his options and making a decision. Even as Abby settled in beside him, though, he suspected that he was the only one who’d been given options. He fell asleep wondering if that was a good thing or a bad thing.