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1134 Words
Tselha went down in a spray of blood, but they never sensed what hit him or how it punctured his armor.
Sajan and Yon Seung-Hee simply ran. Ran with everything they had to get away from the horror they were experiencing.
When Yon Seung-Hee veered off, Sajan followed him, but was a few steps behind and, therefore, slower.
Yon Seung-Hee had forgotten the number one rule of Minkalla, and it cost him his life.
He had found a person. Another cultivator sent in from one of the other Great Powers.
Before Yon Seung-Hee could get closer than twenty feet, the man in what Sajan now recognized as a sect-like spirit moved.
Sajan was able to turn and flee, but with his spiritual sense, still had to watch as his last friend ran directly into a spray of needles.
The Sect cultivator didn’t bother to chase Sajan down, seeming content to rob Yon Seung-Hee’s body.
Sajan knew his time was almost up but refused to just sit there.
So, he took a step. He looked around, trying to see if anything moved.
Then he took a second step.
Over and over, he slowly moved through the tunnel he found himself in, hoping he could find a ruin with a boss that someone else had already cleared. If he found it before any monsters respawned, he could get to the third level, get to the safe area, and leave this pit of nightmares.
Sajan took another step forward and checked his surroundings.
He was desperate to save himself from death and was extra careful as he inspected what was all around him.
Sajan only noticed the boulder next to him changing in his spiritual perception the instant before the turtle’s mouth snapped over his head.
Claude walked through the pitch-black halls of Minkalla as if there was nothing wrong.
And to him, there was nothing different from this floor and the rest of the realm.
He had been born blind due to a genetic defect, and while the local healers did their best, his condition wasn’t life-threatening, so he was relegated to a lower priority list that the Tier 35 or higher healers would get to eventually.
Genetic defects were hard to heal and needed both specialized training and high Tier skills.
Claude never blamed anyone for his condition. It was just a string of bad luck that struck him, and he never knew anything else, so he missed nothing.
His parents and teachers always ensured that he was able to live a fun and fulfilling life, despite his lack of vision.
He would have gone on to live an ordinary life, but during an assembly held by the local guild when he was just six years old, he was sitting off to the side, not able to play the more physical games they had set up. Suddenly, one of the organizers came over to ask why he wasn’t participating.
He tried to explain to the man that he was blind, and the games were too fast paced for someone unable to see.
The man, he later learned, was named Sufyan, and was the vice leader of the Tier 22 guild that used the planet as a feeder location. He refused to accept Claude’s blindness as a reason to sit out from the games.
Abandoning his other duties, Sufyan spent the rest of the time with Claude, walking him through the various games and explaining how they worked. He watched over as Claude practiced them over and over, until he got a feel for how they worked and how to use his hearing and touch to overcome his lack of sight.
Others had done the same thing, making sure he was taken care of and able to participate, but somehow, Sufyan was different in both methods and execution. He expected Claude to push himself and settled for nothing less than Claude’s best.
When he managed to beat the high score of the ski ball table, Sufyan gave him an offer that changed his life.
Entrance into the guild’s Future Heroes program.
He took that opportunity, despite his parents’ worry.
There they trained in both body and mind, and Claude was pushed.
While the trainers made sure he understood how to defend himself and advance, giving him the chance to walk through things like obstacle courses before he was expected to run them, he was ultimately held to the same standards as everyone else.
From three hundred kids, they whittled the numbers down by ten percent every year, until the small group of remaining Hero candidates underwent Awakening together.
Claude struggled, but through effort and perseverance, he managed to stay far enough ahead of the curve to keep his place and earn one of the five sidekick positions the guild had. They didn’t get to Awaken earlier than the general population or anything, and there was no ceremony or fanfare, but it was one of his most treasured memories. He had earned his Awakening through sweat and blood.
His new Power changed everything.
It allowed him to swap the perceptions of anyone he touched, himself included.
It didn’t allow him to control their body, but he could see what they saw, feel what they felt, smell what they smelled.
And they would have to deal with being blind.
Even better, it worked on rift monsters.
Claude abused that ability and shot through the Tiers, reaching Tier 3 with his grappling melee style.
The next facet of his Power turned him from mere sidekick material to proper Hero quality.
His sense of touch was expanded to a degree relative to his Tier, as an extra sense he and he alone experienced at all times. As a Tier 3, he had been limited to only a few inches away from his skin, but at Tier 12, his range was measured in hundreds of feet.
And even Minkalla couldn’t change that.
The floor of ever-present darkness was home to him. Every step he took allowed him to see from the monsters’ perspectives and blinded them.
Not that most of them needed their sight, but it allowed him to see their position through long training, practice, and triangulation.
A monster in the tree above him fell, trying to land on him, but its perception was switched with a monster three trees over, and its timing was all wrong.
A chopping motion with his hand sent out a spell that bisected the monkey-like monster midair.
He was long used to seeing through others’ viewpoints, but for those without training, it was debilitating.
His Power touched someone creeping through the same forest as him, but he pulled back, seeing that they were human and seemingly in no danger.
Claude was a Hero. He wouldn’t hunt down those weaker than himself in cold blood.
- Writer
