Unwilling Eldritch Horror of Fortune

I slapped on the rather cumbersome helmet and allowed Jordan to make the final adjustments. Having her work with a device that directly interfaced with my head might seem like a bad idea, but I was fairly confident that Central still wanted to get me on their side, at least for now. That meant that they wouldn’t choose to willingly harm me unless I did something really antagonistic towards the Overseer, although I had my Luck Skill active just to be on the safe side. I still had to remember that I had that available to me after having been deprived of Noe's ability for so long.

“Things are set up on my end, Lord W,” Jordan’s voice said over the muffling of the equipment, “Let me know when you are reading to start.”

“Give me a second,” I muttered.

Noe, can you send me over to where the Regressor and the rest of the Abyss guild are?

“I can, my Host,” she answered, “but there is a problem if I do so.”

I frowned again, glad that Jordan couldn’t see my expression under the heavy helmet, “What do you mean?”

“Unit Noe needs your baseline consciousness to act as a reference point for when I operate your secondary bodies in the training.”

And you can’t do that if I’m with the Regressor’s group?

“I can,” she answered again, “But Unit Noe calculates that such an interaction with Jae-Hyun’s party will result in a significant deviation from how the Host will interact with other groups. There is only a 73.45% chance that no errors will occur, whereas absolutely no error will occur if you utilize the Absolute Luck Skill to choose which group your main consciousness helps.”

So I got more than 25% chance that something will go wrong is what you’re saying, right?

“Correct, my Host,” she said with the hint of a sigh, “Unit Noe is not complete enough to take complete autonomous actions at the moment, and has to rely on the Host’s behaviors as a guideline. I apologize for the inconvenience and for my inability to assist you further.”

Which made my choice relatively straightforward. 73% might seem like pretty good odds, and I’ve been known to indulge in some gambling in my spare time before, but was I willing to bet the survival of Pandora’s Aspirants and my life over those odds? Guess I’ll have to rely on Noe and the stupid doppelganger to hold the fort while I was away. I didn’t have high hopes.

“Would my Host still wish to assist the Regressor and his guild?”

No, you’re right. We’ve too much at stake; use the Luck skill to choose where I end up.

“Acknowledged, dear Walter.”

“I’m good to go, Jordan,” I said as well, “Sorry for the wait.”

“Not a problem, Lord Arbiter,” she replied, “Initiating start-up now.”

I heard a horrible buzzing sound in my ears and my vision darkened before I found myself inside the city that I had been staring at for the past few hours. The whole experience was remarkably similar to being teleported now that I thought about it.

Once again, my instincts took over and I surveyed my surroundings. Noe, or was it Jordan in this case, dropped me off on an abandoned rooftop. As always, it was dark out - at this point, I wasn’t sure if Central even knew what the sun was since every Trial I’d ever been in had been dark - but my title made that point moot. If anything, all these dark Trails and environments just meant that I was 25% stronger.

Off to my left was the only movement that was visible. I saw four figures running away from what seemed like a huge mob of those mutated villagers. They were coming toward my direction. One of the four, a woman if her long hair was any indication, was taking potshots at the group with what looked like one of those sci-fi guns, while the other three in her party were just booking it as fast as they could out of there.

They were still too far to see what they looked like in any detail, but one of them was limping, and it didn’t take a genius to know that this one wasn’t going to make it much longer. The crimson stain that covered half his left side meant that he was likely to die of blood loss even if he somehow survived the chase. A few of his friends tried to drag the wounded member up, but a hail of thrown weapons from the chasing mob stopped any attempts to do so. The man became separated from the rest of the group shortly after. His fate was clear.

I still had a few minutes before the group arrived at my position, so I checked out my new body. I felt the same, all things considered, and a familiar tentacle even sprouted out of my palms when I willed it, although it looked different from the normal Xollon appendage. This one looked metallic in nature, but as far as I could tell, it operated the same as the one I had. I’m guessing Jordan didn’t want anyone to make the connection between Aspirant Walter and Arbiter W, but at least she was thoughtful enough to do that even if her intentions weren't to help me out. There was just one last thing to check before I got things going.

Hey Noe, can you still hear me?

“Yes, my Host,” she replied, but her voice sounded oddly distant... like I was hearing an echo of an echo instead of the real thing.

Everything good on your side?

“I am performing at optimal parameters,” she answered, “Please rest assured and focus your attention on the current group of Aspirants. I shall ensure that the other parties are taken care of.”

Thanks, Noe, good to know that I always have someone to count on, even if everything else is going to shit.

“I endeavor to serve you well, my Host, but please keep in mind that my abilities will be limited.”

Limited or not, you’re still providing me with more than enough help, you are the best system in existence.

“I know.”

I refocused my attention on the task at hand. Alright, the group of Aspirants was about to move right past the roof I was standing on, it was about time for me to make my entrance. I needed to ensure that I made the best first impression - even if it was technically the second time they had seen my current form.

Noe, use the Lucky Blind Strike skill the second I touch the ground.

“Acknowledged.”

 

Luck Charges: 75/100

 

With only 100 charges to work with, the skill wasn’t quite so horrible. In fact, it was a little underwhelming all things considered, but at least I could actually comprehend what was going on this time.

Noe took over my body and lashed out with my hand feelers. They moved with a mind of their own, skewering mutants wherever they passed, while simultaneously catching all of the various melee weapons being thrown my way. That was the good thing about having tentacles versus hands, I could grasp a whole lot more objects at once with feelers. An ax was deflected with my left appendage and it ricocheted off and smashed into another mutant who was about to swing a crude sword in my direction.

While that was happening, my right feeler was acting like a horrible blender; the limb was moving so quickly in a spiraling motion that anything that even got close to that appendage was lacerated into tiny chunks of meat. The mutants were not idiots, some of them tried to move away, but my left feeler erupted from the ground below them to shove the fleeing individuals into the makeshift tentacle blender. There was only a handful of the foe left by the time I was finished, and they all hurriedly fled as fast as they could away from me.

All of this took less than 15 seconds to accomplish. Okay, maybe it was a little impressive all things considered.

The three Aspirants looked at me dumbfounded.

“I can’t believe that the Aspirants of Earth are so weak!” I shouted; I still needed to play a role here, and I think Pandora needed some tough love in this situation, “This is only the third day of training, and I had to step in personally! Pathetic!”

“But-” the woman with the weird gun began to say.

“But nothing!” I swung one of my feelers and made a huge gash on the ground just inches away from the woman’s feet. She flinched back and wisely decided not to argue with me any further. The others looked on with nervous expressions.

“Now I am here to ensure that you three succeed in this mini-trial!” I stared into each of their eyes, “You three have survived the first few stages, so you show promise, not like that sorry excuse for an Aspirant from earlier.”

The woman, it was clear that she was in charge of this particular group, frowned at that remark, but didn’t speak up further. I guess this group still cared about their colleagues. I had begun to assume that all humans were selfish creatures at this point, having seen little besides betrayal and envy between them so far, but that was evidently not the case. Had I become more cynical as time went on?

Finally, the leader of the group composed herself enough to speak up, “We are not pathetic! It’s your damn training that’s too difficult, we can’t eliminate an entire army of those mutated freaks like you can.”

I shook my head and sighed, “And once again you blame others when the fault lies with you. Instead of assessing your foes, you chose to blindly act, so yes, I can safely say that you are pathetic.”

The woman looked like she would argue back but one of her surviving party members quickly went over to stop her. The other two were a lot more frightened of me than she was.

I gestured to the still feeling group of mutants, “Look at them run. These creatures are not predators, they represent the bottom of the food chain in this trial. Showing them even a modicum of strength will break their wills to fight, yet what did your group choose to do? You chose to flee.”

As if to cement my point, I picked up a rock and with the help of a single Luck Charge, I threw it as hard as I could towards the nearest fleeing mutant. The stone struck it right in the back of the head, killing it on impact.

“They are pathetically weak individually,” I continued, “no better than you were before the Lord’s Ascension process even began. They are the prey here, and if you understood that at the beginning and established yourselves as the predators in this stage, then they would be fleeing from you. But you chose to run because they had numbers.”

“But…” the woman said, her uncertainty growing evident, “Fine, you’re right about that. We, no, I did not lead my party correctly to access the situation. That is my fault, I will readily admit that.”

Wow, I was actually surprised by her response. Here was a leader that was willing to admit their faults instead of blinding pushing on to their wrong points of view. Maybe this woman was worth having around.

“However,” she continued, “Those mutants weren’t the only monsters here. We’d still be fine if those shadow beasts didn’t kill our only healer.”

“And how was your healer picked off?” I asked.

The woman glanced at one of her two subordinates, this one a gruff-looking man who looked to be in his mid-thirties.

He nodded and answered, “Daniel got sucked in that damned shadow when he went up to scout our position when we first came here. It almost got me as well when I went up to check on him, the bastards only seemed to attack us on the rooftops. It’s why we’ve been running blind for the past few hours.”

“That’s not true,” the last member of the party added, this one was a lean girl who looked almost as young as Yoona, “We lost Chris when he had to go use the restroom.”

The older man grunted, “But we don’t know if it was those shadow things that got him.”

“Well it certainly wasn’t the mutants,” the young girl added, “and there’s nothing else around here that’d make him disappear like that.”

I cut in before these two could bicker again, I could tell that tensions were high after losing more than a few party members.

“In other words,” I said, “You’re not sure why the Shadow Demons attacked, and are only going on assumptions.”

The three of them frowned but didn’t say anything.

After a few moments of hesitation, the leader spoke up once again, “It’s not like we can just use our lives to test all the things you’ve said!”

“No,” I agreed, “But you can look at the patterns. I was told that you humans were an intelligent species, but clearly, those reports were an exaggeration.”

The man cursed me under his breath, but I pretended that I didn’t hear him.

I shook my head and continued, “You know that the demons attacked when this Daniel person went up to survey the environment, and when you went up to check on him, yes?”

The man nodded.

“And you also know that this Chris individual was most likely taken away when he left the group to relieve himself. There were no other times that you were attacked, correct?”

Their leader thought for a moment before agreeing.

“So what do all of these occurrences have in common?” I asked again, looking hard at each of them in turn.

The younger girl frowned and answered, “They were alone…”

“Exactly,” I replied, “You will find that although my training is challenging, it is not impossible if you Aspirants just used your heads. Yet you three seem unable to do even that much, and you need some help in that regard."

I sighed dramatically, "Which is why I am here. Now, before we continue, you three best introduce yourselves and tell me what abilities the Lord has bestowed upon you.”

 

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