Chương 4: Eighteen Percent and a Seat at the Table

The hunters still working over the carcasses nearby caught the commotion and crowded in. The fissure, though, chose that instant to yawn wider.

"Back!" The White Feather priest slammed her bone staff into the ground. A faint warm-white glow welled out from it and seeped downward along the broken strata, as if to steady the restless earth. Gu Zhiwei had barely gotten to her feet when the ground under her slid apart in two directions. Scalding air jetted from the gap, the reek of sulfur scoured her nose and choked her eyes shut. A young hunter lost his footing, and half a leg slid into the crack. The head hunter lunged and caught his arm.

He had just dragged the man clear when a buckling slab of black rock toppled with a crash and pinned his own left leg beneath it. He grunted low, cold sweat sliding from his temple.

"Don't crowd around! Get the carcasses and the wounded out, and don't let the fire basins die!" Matt and Chen Li took the slab from either side and heaved. Gu Zhiwei fisted the hide below the head hunter's shoulders and hauled him out; searing gravel scraped the back of her hand, leaving a fine spray of blisters. By the time he was free, the leg had been burned past any recognizable shape. Maria had probably been a doctor back in the original world. In this world, the system had made her the tribe's herbalist.

She slit the blood-soaked hide open with a short knife, quick and clean, studied the wound, and her face darkened. A priest's attendant beside her passed over herbs wrapped in broad leaves, and she packed them onto the head hunter at once.

"It's no good." Maria looked up, her voice heavy.

"If we don't take it off, he'll get an infection for certain." The tribespeople didn't know what infection meant. Every player there understood exactly what she was saying. The young hunter he'd saved knelt beside them, hands slick with the head hunter's blood, lips shaking too hard for words. The head hunter actually laughed.

"What are you crying for? One leg to the earthfire and my life stays mine. I came out ahead." He said it lightly. But when Matt pressed down on his shoulders, that powerful body was convulsing beyond its owner's control. The blade went red in the fire. Gu Zhiwei looked away and walked to the lip of the fissure. Deep red light rose and fell slowly behind layer on layer of rock shale; the heat pumped at the dust, as though something down below were rolling over.

The small earthcore beast corpses scattered around all pointed mostly one way, away from the crack. Maybe they hadn't come charging up into Cloudperch tonight to hunt. They looked more like they were running. The White Feather priest had clearly seen it too. She had a jar of gray-white powder brought over and scattered it along the fissure, then had wet mud mixed with moss laid over the top. Two priest's attendants left at once for the Sacred Mountain to check the sealing pillars.

Not until the sky bled from pitch black into a damp, cold blue-white were all the wounded finally carried back to the mid-level treehouses.

When the head hunter woke, his left leg ended in a short stump above the knee. Fruit and dried fish sent by the tribe were piled beside his bed, and the air was thick with the bitterness of blood-staunching herbs. Gu Zhiwei looked at the fruit and drifted a moment. Matt stood by the door. The wound on his shoulder had just been bound; half his clothes were still stiff with black-red blood.

"Come here." The head hunter lifted a hand toward him. Matt went to the bedside. A bloodstained bone whistle came flying at his face; he caught it. The identity the system had filled in for him was a hunter in his prime, one of the organization's core men. Before last night, that identity had already run patrol hunts and watch rotations more than once, and could take temporary command of a hunting party whenever the head hunter was away. The head hunter fixed his eyes on him.

"The lower level is yours from now on. So is the hunt division." The room went quiet. Matt didn't put the whistle on right away. He glanced at the emptiness at the foot of the bed.

"Once the wound heals, you can still…"

"Can still what? Lean on a stick and yell at people?" The head hunter cut him off with a wry laugh.

"I'm old, and now I'm short a leg. If I keep sitting in this seat, I'm spending everyone's lives to prop up my own face." Out beyond the door, the hunters standing watch lowered their heads. His voice was still threaded with weakness, and it left no room for refusal.

"You know how the parties run. You're strong enough. You did well last night." He paused.

"It's your turn to lead them and keep our people safe." Matt's fist closed around the bone whistle. The blood on it had dried. Last night was the first time he'd fought beside these hunters, and yet he remembered how, every time he charged, someone was there covering his flank. Not one of them had left him to fight alone just because he was stronger than the rest. He had never been inside a feeling like that before. He liked it. He glanced at Gu Zhiwei by the door, then nodded.

"I'll hold the lower level."

"Good." The head hunter closed his eyes briefly.

"Get the broken vine bridges repaired. And keep those little brats away from the crack. Their curiosity was boundless." Matt hung the bone whistle around his neck.

"Understood." He turned and walked to the doorway, and was called back.

"Sound it. Let me hear it." The head hunter watched him with a smile, the way a man looks at the protégé he's proudest of. Matt set the whistle between his lips. Breath drove through the hollow chamber, and the rally call, two short, one long, cut out of the treehouse, low and clean. Outside, the hunters straightened their spines before they knew they were doing it, then turned, all of them, to look at him. The head hunter heard it out and nodded.

"Go on, son." Matt lifted the door curtain. Damp wind poured in. The bone whistle lay against his chest, knocking softly on his vine armor. The hunters went with him.

"You. Wait." The head hunter called Gu Zhiwei back. He looked at the longbow on her back and was silent a while, as if looking through it at someone long gone.

"Good child. Your father was a fine shot too, but you take after your mother in the face. They were the bravest warriors this tribe had." A blurred picture surfaced in Gu Zhiwei's mind. A man sitting on a branch whittling arrows, a woman leaning against him, a blue-green feather band taking shape in her hands, her laughter mixed into the roar of the falls. Too many years in between. She couldn't hear it clearly.

"They didn't live to see your coming-of-age rite." The head hunter coughed twice, his palm pressing down on the stump.

"While I can still move, let's hold you a simple one, late as it is. I'll ask the priest to weave your feather band herself. What you did deserves honoring." For a priest to weave a child's coming-of-age feathers with her own hands was the highest honor a child of the tribe could be given. Gu Zhiwei took out the unfinished feather band instead.

"Can I use this one? My mother made it for me." The head hunter went still, something complicated and wistful crossing his face.

"Of course."

"Of course you can. Finish the weaving and it's ready." She nodded.

"I'll ask my aunt to help." Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. He watched her, then said suddenly, "Child, your strength is a great thing. But don't learn from your mother, throwing yourself forward in a fight with no thought for anything else. Your aunt... you're the only family she has left." Gu Zhiwei's hand settled on the door curtain. Steam from the boiling herbs climbed over her knuckles, leaving a clinging damp behind.

"I understand."

Gu Zhiwei walked to her aunt's treehouse.

"So you remembered the way back?" Face like thunder, the old woman rose and brought out the berries and meat broth she'd made ready.

"Earthcore beasts come, and every other child runs up, and you go charging for the very bottom. A few years training out in the world and you think you're something?" Gu Zhiwei stopped in the doorway. She had never been good with elders, and this was turning out to be tricky.

"I mean... kind of, yeah."

"You…" Her aunt choked on it. She stood, dragged rough, warm hands over Gu Zhiwei's shoulders and arms to be sure there was no obvious wound anywhere, then went to look at the fingertips the bowstring had worn raw. Gu Zhiwei let her. The smell of the broth on the table, threaded with the clean sweetness of the berries, went straight up her nose. After a fight like that, she was genuinely hungry.

"The head hunter says he's holding my coming-of-age rite for me since I never had one." Gu Zhiwei sat down and ate while she pulled out the feather band.

"I want to wear this one."

"Oh, so you do remember you're barely grown." Her aunt took it, grumbling. Then her eyes settled on the unfinished band, and her voice shook without warning.

"It's gone old."

"The feathers are still fine."

"It's three long feathers short."

"I'll go find them." Her aunt didn't answer. She picked up a bone needle, hooked the vine thread over its point, and twice failed to get it through. Gu Zhiwei saw that her hands were trembling, very slightly. Her aunt had kept watch over the treehouse her younger sister left behind, and kept a child's belongings carefully for all the years that child didn't come home. Maybe her heart was still trapped in that tragedy of a night, all those years ago.

"I'll be fine." Gu Zhiwei meant it as comfort. It came out dry and flat. The woman's head snapped up.

"Do you have to go fight those monsters? It isn't yours to do. You're still a child!"

"I won't be like my mother." Gu Zhiwei looked at her quietly.

"But there are things I have to do." She couldn't promise anything. When the quest was finished she'd be going back to the original world, and she had no idea what would be taking over this body then. Her aunt turned her face away. The tears came without asking her. Outside, someone was shouting for vine rope to be sent up; the knock of wooden mallets came faster and faster. Her aunt stared at the feather band. After a long moment, she picked up the bone needle again.

"Go find your long feathers," she said, low.

"Good enough is good enough. Don't go far."

"Okay."

Back in her own treehouse, Gu Zhiwei finally had time to look at the panel again. Last night's fighting wasn't done changing things. 【Strength: 15/100. 】 【Spirit: 22/100. (3 points to the C-rank breakthrough threshold.)】 Gu Zhiwei's gaze rested on C-rank a moment. It was the first time the panel had shown a hard tier boundary, which meant that when Spirit reached 25, something new might happen. Further down, the skill entry that had been locked before had changed. 【Skill: Retrocognition. (Unlocked)】 【Records: 1.

Grand Sacred Spirit Shaman (progress 5%)】 She tried touching the record. A cold line of text surfaced. 【Progress insufficient. Cannot be actively invoked. 】 Fine. At least there was a progress bar now. The quest tab had new numbers settled into it too. 【Defend Cloudperch; repel the earthcore beast swarm. 】 【Personal priest trust: 18%. 】 【Shared quest progress: 20%. 】 Good. All roads really did lead to Rome. Gu Zhiwei closed the panel and found a priest's attendant standing outside her door.

The High Priest, the attendant said, was asking her to come to the Sacred Spring. The Sacred Spring lay behind the waterfall. Once she'd passed through the slick stone corridor, the noise of the world outside fell rapidly away, leaving only the echo of drops falling into a deep pool. The water gave off a very faint azure light and breath after breath of warmth, like a hot spring, but not that hot. Following the attendant's directions, Gu Zhiwei lay down on a stone bed in the shallows.

"Empty your thoughts. Try to meditate." The attendant's voice was very gentle.

"Imagine you are part of the water." Then she withdrew past the stone door and left the cave entirely to her. Gu Zhiwei lay in the warm spring and closed her eyes. At first she assumed she'd have trouble reaching a meditative state, but this water seemed to have an effect all its own. Her awareness folded into the hush of the place, and little by little she stopped feeling that her body was there at all. Faintly, she thought she heard surf. Huh? Was there a sea anywhere near here?

The sound of bright, glassy spray breaking on a reef. A damp wind brushed her cheek, carrying a thread of salt and brine; her tongue even caught the bitterness of seawater. The cave was gone. The spring was gone. In their place lay white sand under a clear sky, fine grains working into the gaps between her toes with a strange itch. A barefoot girl with a longbow on her back leapt across the rocks, red shells wound into her braid, laughing as she turned to hurry the companions behind her.

The sea wind scattered her voice; only the bright tail of it survived. She ran fast. Her arrows were fast too. Seabirds skimmed the wave crests, and the girl bent her bow at a dead run. As the string came back, the bone arrow flew a hair above a companion's head. Thuk. The point punched through a scaled beast that had leapt clear of the water. The thing slammed back into the sea; the hot reek of blood broke apart in the waves, and all around came the excited whooping of the young. The scene jumped.

A gray-black rip tore open in the clear sky, its edges curling like scorched flesh. Unfamiliar aberrants dropped out of it. They had no fixed skeletons; once they landed they crawled along the rock, and where they passed the grass and trees withered and the sea took on an eerie black shine. The cheering turned to screaming. The girl looked older now, grown by years. She stood at the highest point of the reef, warriors gripping spears and bows crowded at her back.

Sea wind lifted her braid; the familiar red shells knocked together with a light, crisp sound. The string came back, inch by inch, to full draw. Gu Zhiwei's breath was drawn tight along with it. Fletching brushed her cheek, wind poured past her ear, and far off the wet, sticky sound of aberrant bodies opening and closing came through so clearly it crawled across her scalp. She released. The arrow's light ran the black cloud through. The next moment, as though she'd felt eyes on her, she turned her head.

The waves stopped in midair, flung spray freezing into countless transparent shards. The aberrants, the reef, the running figures, all of them retreated into the distance in a single instant. Her gaze crossed who knew how many years and landed, precisely, on Gu Zhiwei. For that breath, Gu Zhiwei couldn't tell who was holding the bow and who was lying in the warm spring. The girl's lips parted. Before the sound could arrive, the water swept over her mouth and nose.

Gu Zhiwei jerked upright in a fit of violent coughing, warm drops sliding down the hair plastered to her forehead. The stone cave still held only her, and the still, secluded dripping of water. The panel snapped open. 【Fluctuation in player Spirit detected. Calculating... 】 【Spirit: 22 → 24. 】 【1. Grand Sacred Spirit Shaman: regression progress: 15%. 】 What was going on with that jump? One session of meditating and her Spirit was almost ready to advance? It didn't feel entirely real.

Who was the girl in those images? Was the skill's unlock progress bound to her? Gu Zhiwei thought about the inexplicably practiced archery in last night's fight, and the 5% unlock the panel showed afterward, and felt like she'd caught hold of one thread of the answer. Before she could untangle it, the priest's attendant pushed open the stone door.

"The High Priest has called the elders and the head hunter to council." She looked at Gu Zhiwei.

"She wants you there as well."

The council hall was already full. The White Feather High Priest's face was worse than it had been last night at the fissure. On the low stand beside her lay a shard of black stone just brought back from the Sacred Mountain, its surface pitted all over with melt hollows, its edges still glowing dull red. Matt, as the new head hunter, sat at her right hand. Su Ye, as the first candidate priest to succeed at the Choosing this year, stood behind the High Priest.

Several elders sat in order around the low table in the center, and Chen Li had come in at the side of one of them. When Gu Zhiwei stepped through the door, the room went quiet for a beat. The High Priest raised her bone staff and pointed at the empty rush mat beside the last elder's place.

"Sit." Eighteen percent High Priest trust, and the perks were pretty easy to see. An attendant set the black shard in the middle of the low table. It was hot enough to make the hide mat hiss, a ring of scorch spreading swiftly outward. The High Priest pinned it with her bone staff and laid warm-white light over it, and still, from inside the stone, came a fine, close crackling. Crack. A new fracture ran clean through the shard.

"This came off the easternmost sealing pillar." The High Priest's voice sank.

"By the time my attendants reached it, the pillar had melted through at the middle. The magma nearby is rising. Of the other two pillars, only the bases are left." An elder's head jerked up.

"All three in the east are gone?"

"At least three. The north and the west are buried under volcanic ash. They couldn't get in." Outside, the wind tightened all at once. Inside, the silence sat heavy. The High Priest's grip closed on her bone staff. She looked toward the Sacred Mountain.

"The Rite has to be moved up." She spoke slowly, then turned to Matt.

"Tomorrow at the latest, send a party. Go and check the earthcore beasts' nest."