Slumrat Rising

The dawn was rising, and with it, a rock. Specifically, the earth demon he had sent out.

“Fuck you, pay me.”

“Everyone’s so cynical these days.” Truth sighed, and activated the punishment runes built into the summoning. Then added on a few more of his own. Then just stomped the rock for a while. The Blessing of the Brass Sea really did a number there, but he was pulling his shots and not letting the demon get banished.

“You want to rephrase that?”

“No, that was agonizing. You are definitely going on my list of top forty million bosses. High praise.”

“I’m honored. What results did you turn up?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?!”

“Yep. Zero magical voids in the city of the size you specified.”

“None smaller, a few bigger. Like. Much bigger.”

“How big is ‘much bigger’?”

“Dunno. Bigger than you?”

“Building sized?”

“I mean, how big is a ‘building’ you know? Like, that really doesn’t say much.”

Truth sighed. He was being played by at least three unknowably powerful beings, plus Manda. This was insane. But until he could change it, he would have to endure it. So. Time to get the Hell out of Confen.

“Alright Rocky, you did a good job, so I’m dismissing you the hard way.”

“Beating me to death?” The lump sounded hopeful.

“Exactly. Clench your metaphorical teeth.” Truth nodded. Technically this wasn’t the weirdest thing he had ever done. It just felt that way. No matter. Rocky was an imp, so the whole process just came down to a few forceful stamps. He could have done it in one shot, but Rocky really had done his best.

Right. Time to be on to… where the hell was it? Truth thought about it for a moment. It was a small city on the east coast of the peninsula… he drew a finger down the coastline on his mental map. Runchon. Because of how the mountains were laid out, the road ran just a couple of degrees north of due west, then you had to turn south and drive down the coast a short way to reach the city.

So much traveling. Did he travel around Jeon this much when he was working for Starbrite?

Yes, now that he thought about it. Once he got on bodyguarding duty, he was up and down the southern part of Jeon all the time. Huh. No wonder he was drawn towards Earth Folding Step.

He nodded decisively, and sat down on the curb. Time to go fast. He pulled off his shoes. It was the damnedest thing. The shoes were more comfortable to walk on than his bare feet, but they just could not hold up to a real run. These were particularly comfy. He would not have them exploded for no reason.

Suitably prepared for his trip, he set out at a brisk jog. Then stopped. Then started again. Then stopped. He found a kilometer marker by the roadside and set off at his usual ground eating pace and started counting breaths. It took no time at all to reach the next kilometer marker.

“One hundred kilometers an hour? Jogging? That can’t be right, can it?”

It was the damndest thing. Truth had exquisite control over every facet of his body. He would certainly be aware of any change in his gait or the biomechanics of his movement. And yet, he was clearly moving much faster. There was no change in his balance, his every step landed as firmly as any other in his life. He still had the same instinctive knowledge of where his foot would touch when he put it down.

He had never jogged so fast in his life.

Not that he hadn’t been running quickly before. He certainly had! In fact, his burst movement speed would put swallows to shame. It just hadn’t quite clicked. The compounding effects of his level and the Meditations had reached a terrifying threshold.

He crouched down into a sprinter’s stance, fingers splayed on the rough asphalt, bare toes planted, sole of the foot arched and ready to spring him forward. A carriage passed, strictly keeping to the speed limit on the highway. Truth gave it a ten second head start.

He exploded forward, his foot shattering the asphalt as he rocketed forward. Each step swift as thunder and decisive as lightning. He had overtaken the carriage before he reached top speed. There was a curve ahead. He turned his body to go around-

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His foot couldn’t keep traction. He slammed into the side of a hill, pinwheeled up the hill, and finally came to a stop wrapped around a tree.

He didn’t untangle himself for a few minutes. He wasn’t hurt, he was just feeling very sorry for himself. Eventually it did occur to him that he slammed into a tree with his spine at speeds considerably more than a hundred kilometers per hour and he wasn’t even really sore. Which was… interesting, to put it very mildly.

Level Five was, definitionally, the middle of the mid-levels. Seven and up was when you really got into the comically powerful, terrain altering magic, or at least that had been his understanding. He certainly couldn’t open valleys with a chop of his hand or anything like that. But this level of physical resistance to damage was, in his experience, more or less unprecedented. With spell armor, sure. Throw enough enchanted gear at something, anything becomes survivable. In theory. Bare skin, though?

It had to be down to body cultivation. The constant practice of the Meditations of Valentinian, the constant refinement of his body, then the use and testing of those refinements, it all added up. He pulled himself to his feet. He didn’t need to groan, but he sort of felt like he ought to. If you get wrapped around a tree, you groan about it. Right? Right.

Truth pulled out a needler from his ring. “This is dumb. This is really, really dumb.” He lined up a grazing shot across the top of his forearm. “I mean, first thing they teach you in the Army… okay not literally the first thing, but ‘Don’t point your needler at anything you don’t intend to kill,’ was on day one of range training, for sure.”

It was hard to pull the trigger. He took a deep breath, and squeezed one off. There was a soft thwip sound. He kept waiting for something more, but that was it. Just thwip, and nothing. Not even a faint white line on his skin. At a guess, the angle was so flat, the needle just deflected off without doing any damage.

Truth wasn’t sure what expression he was making, but he lined up a shot flat with the top of his bicep. Thwip. He felt it this time, about as much as he noticed the ricochet bouncing off his ruined shirt. Nothing. Not even a mark. No pain whatsoever.

“I am… officially unkillable by Level Zeros. Which, I guess I have been that for a long time in practice, but…” He had a hard time articulating what he was feeling. He was now so far above “ordinary folk” that he could just stand there, let them shoot him, and be in absolutely no danger. In fact, it would be better if he was naked while they were doing it, so there was no risk to his clothes.

He’d bet Level One shooters wouldn’t do much more damage either. He certainly wouldn’t worry about something who’s damage was primarily magical, like Flame Bolt. He could just about imagine Graeme’s Arrow doing some work, but… really, no. Ninety percent or more of the world’s population had lost the qualifications to fight him.

Which was good! A powerful thing. But somehow it felt… not right. Standing there on the side of the highway in his ragged clothes, covered in the dirt and dust. Unseen, unheard, his existence was something that had to be inferred from the lives of those he touched.

“OH SHIT! PERKS!”

A few seconds of high speed scrambling later, he found the snake. Pissed off, but seemingly no worse for wear. Truth could only hope that his body absorbed all the impact for Perks, and that snakes didn’t get TBI from sudden deceleration. He ran Cup and Knife over him anyway. Some strains, and there was actually some internal damage. Damn, damn, damn. Bad, bad pet owner. Truth got Perks healed up, but still felt like an ass.

A fool. A fool of a god. Well. At least he had conscience enough to feel bad about it.

Truth ripped off the remains of his shirt and formed it into a sling, binding Perks tight to his chest. The snake seemed annoyed by all this, but eventually settled down again. He jogged off, not bothering to replace his ragged trousers. They were still on him. He was not, as of this moment, naked. Therefore, this run was already off to a better start than many of his previous marathons. He set off again, this time at rather less than maximum speed.

The stumpy mountains in the middle part of the Jeon peninsula remained their usual dull self. Compounding the tedium was the fact that, as the Jeon peninsula wasn’t very big and most of the arable land was in the middle and south, the middle and south were densely populated. Sprawl. It was all suburban and exurban sprawl. Clusters of rest stops owned by the same four conglomerates, selling food and drink made by the same two conglomerates. Staffed by retail clerks who, somehow, managed to give even less of a damn than the convenience store hostages in town.

At least the mountains up north were dramatic. You got some great views up there. This was just browns and grays of the most tedious sort. Even the summer-green trees managed to look like they were half-assing it. He could practically hear the pines shrug and mutter “whatever” as they refused to play along with the season.

To keep from blacking out with boredom, he started trying to incorporate Earth Folding Step as he moved. The first time he tried, he nearly flung himself off an embankment. It wasn’t the speed of movement, it was the disorientation. Even when he was moving at absurd speeds, his body knew where he was in space. The biomechanics were literally bone deep. Throwing in a sudden change of ten meters had him bouncing off guardrails and dragging his knees across the asphalt.

Truth tried to experiment with shorter steps, shorter moves, and it seemed to help somewhat. Smaller move, smaller disorientation. Which was fine and all, but it actually netted out to him moving slower than if he just ran. There was something there he was just not getting. The other pain in the ass was, of course, roadblocks.

At this point, Truth was quite proficient at avoiding or sneaking through the roadblocks. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was completely doable. He opted for just crossing the mountain around the roadblock, but quickly ran into… a roadblock. Namely, Earth Folding Step just jammed up and refused to work.

It had been inconsistently difficult as he was moving along the highway, ranging from tricky to actually-very-difficult-but-just-doable. Now it was utterly locked down. The spellform collapsed before he really got it set.

“Do you really have to be more than two hundred years old to get the really good swears? Because I feel like I could use them.” He looked hard at the sky. He could just about spot birds circling far overhead, but the surveillance talismans would be effectively invisible that high up. Just like when he was trying to break out of the Sung residence, but this time, there was no gap in coverage.

“I would really, really, like to know the connection between birds and my not being able to fold up reality and casually stroll around.” Truth grumbled. Then he got to hiking around the mountain. It was a mortal certainty that there would be loads of those watcher creatures in the roadblock, and he still didn’t know what they were. He’d get ‘em. One day.

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