Divinity Rescue Corps
139- Into The Woods

There are times when the reality you think is, isn’t. The way things are have been misrepresented and you come to realize that the way of the world is dramatically different than the things you’ve been told.

Case in point: I had a friend go to Korea for a year to teach English. He came back and the first thing he said was ‘It ain’t like you see on TV’. Korea was crowded, not nearly as pretty as the scenes you see on your screens. And when you think Asia, you think collective action, the people there fitting together seamlessly into a whole. Teamwork is the Asia you think of, not old ladies shoving you aside or elbowing to get on the crowded subway before people get off. You perhaps didn’t think rudeness was impossible in an Asian country, you just never considered it at all.

Now, my mother and I weren’t in Asia, but we were in an alien world, and it hadn’t been portrayed to me in a single picture or video. It wasn’t in a music video on the internet or a rerun on television with bad dubbing. It had been explained, however, that this new world through the magic portal was free of violence.

That… wasn’t true. Not exactly.

The people here in this world, the thinking and talking beings that made up the many species of Nakamamon, didn’t use violence as a means to solve their problems with one another. That was very different than ‘there’s no violence’.

Earlier today we had passed by a carnivorous plant that was something like a pitcher plant with eyes. I couldn’t say what was inside, but it smelled of rot, so it was definitely digesting something.

It was a good eight feet high, from the top of its big pitcher to the bottom, and that wasn’t taking into account the vines or leaves. Needless to say, I probably could’ve fit my whole body inside the thing.

We also passed by a different carnivorous plant called the Jeepers, a vine that slowly wound around the unwary. It could, and would, encircle a prey animal and sort of form a dome of vines that would constrict like a snake when contact was finally made.

“Jeepers creeper!” My mom joked, slapping a knee and passing by the much slower plant Nakamamon. “I love that!”

“I think you’re really going to enjoy the lady who helped make this place,” I said.

That was a whole ball of wax I wasn’t prepared to get into with present company. I didn’t have a lot of information, and I wasn’t even entirely sure whether the two people who’d made the system in this world had anything to do with the biggest problem in this world: the sick gods.

We hadn’t stopped moving since we’d come through the portal and the portal vanished, some two hours earlier, but we took a rest under a lone boogie tree.

“How do they have gigantic spherical leaves?” My mom asked. “And why aren’t they pointed at the sun?” She giggled. “They almost look like they’re dancing.”

“I think the answer to that is best summed up with the expression: because they can. Why does the lake turn into a gigantic dragon and periodically fly to a different location? Because it can. Why is the town of Glumpdumpkin shaped like a famous brand’s swooshy thing? Because gravity doesn’t matter like it should in some places.”

“M-m-m-mana,” Alan said.

“Okay, it’s magic,” I admitted. “I don’t understand it all yet, but that’s just because I’m not even level 30 in my classes.”

“Classes?” Alan asked.

“Class,” I said, feeling stupid. He and the other two male members of the Divinity Rescue Corps didn’t know about my Pleasure Seeker class. Among all the female members, it was a much more loosely held secret.

The chatter continued, mostly consisting of my mother agog about this or that.

“Let’s get you into the tree, Mrs. Fletcher,” Regina said, flashing me a knowing smile.

“Oh, I couldn’t.”

“You sure could… all you have to do is complete the first phase of character creation and set your stats. I think you’re going to want to sink most of your points into Durability, but if you do Physicality, you can use your Tokens to launch yourself up into the tree here.”

My mother’s eye took on a faraway look. “I’m no expert, but wouldn’t that be Agility?”

I snorted, then stopped. Agility wasn’t an attribute on my character sheet, but my mother had no reason to lie and no prior knowledge of what the system did or meant.

Opening my character sheet, I felt my mouth drop open. “How in the fudging world?”

Christopher Fletcher

Healer - Apprentice Arcane Mender 29

Pleasure Seeker - Initiate Indulgent Consort 28

Attributes:

Affinity 9

Agility 4

Durability 6

Ingenuity 9

Likability 7

Muscularity 6

Free Tokens 7

There, somehow, was an attribute I hadn’t had for the last six months. Two of them actually. As far as I understood, nobody had Agility. And also… Physicality had just transformed into Muscularity? And also also, my Muscularity had fallen from 8 to 6? What the heck was going on here?

The only somewhat similar thing that had happened was a consolidation of my four Treatment skills—salves, elixirs, potions, tinctures and unguents—into a single skill just called Treatments, and another for Diagnostics.

Regina had the same reaction. “What the…”

All that was interrupted when a few feet away a dragon appeared out of the underbrush and straight up killed a large hairy herd animal called a Roughalo. In a flash jaws had taken it at the neck. The Roughalo, which I’d obviously named Mark, barely any time to make a single sound before it was a corpse.

Before us sat a dragon some thirty feet long, sinuous and emerald scaled, lazily tearing strips out of its brand new carcass. It occurred to me that I might be next. Then the whole plan would be out the fracking window if I was inside a Dragon stomach.

“That is fascinating,” my mother said. “Look at the size of it. There are wings on that creature… does it fly? How could it possibly get aloft with its body being that size?”

Terry Pratchett had a few things to say about that concept.

“It collects mana and channels it through the membranes of its wings,” Vellenia said.

“I think we need to go back to the topic of the brand new and never-before-seen attribute none of us had two weeks ago when we went back to earth,” Regina said.

“I’d actually prefer to deal with the jaws of death only forty or fifty feet away,” I replied.

“Oh stop, he’s happily munching on that ball-shaped buffalo,” My mother said.

“I think we should be a little more concerned with it swallowing us whole,” I said. It wasn’t logical, I know, but I had brought my mother through a pretty dangerous situation in order to just get her here, and I wasn’t about to sacrifice her safety before I could deal with the gol-darned cancer.

“Don’t be silly,” my mom said. “We stay away from its food and it will ignore us.”

“Your mother is correct,” Vellenia said.

“Oh, I got an achievement!” My mom gushed. “How wonderful!”

That must have been her tenth Nakamamon spotted.

I conceded she had a point, and let her admire it like the scientists geeking out over the gigantic dinosaurs in the dinosaur park, a day or so before they nearly got eaten a zillion times in a row. I had been kept safe—mostly safe—throughout my first months in this place. Regina was here, and was an accomplished Ranger. She presently had a whole menagerie with us: an owl that created cyclones, fire bugs that looked like candle flames buzzing through the air, a wolf made of purple liquid that had several tentacles growing out of its face for tasting things. And of course, she had all the Nakamamon from the Divinity Rescue Corps, starting with Tweedle Dee, her Vulpetunia. The cute fox had flowers growing out of its ears and its several tails. When needed, Dee could grow vines to help us climb, or grow specific flowers, which was crazy useful considering my special abilities.

Regina herself was a redhead of average height and unsurpassed cuteness, with a thick rash of freckles over most of her face, shoulders, and chest. She turned adorable green eyes on me and an inquisitive expression, but when I didn’t respond she just winked at me.

We also had Alan, who was really growing into his role as a capable Wizard. The beautiful thing about being a Wizard in a non-combat world was the sheer breadth of utility powers he had. He had all kinds of spells to help in a myriad of situations. Where Trent did one thing and did it spectacularly, Alan did everything but just a tiny bit.

I gazed at the dragon and regretted that Trent was no longer here.

Ferndrake

Second Stage Transformation

These enormous dragon-like Nakamamon use clever camouflage and remain completely still in order to ambush their prey. They spend most of their time at the edges of the forest, or in small clearings, waiting for their food to walk right into their mouths.

Typical length: 30-50 feet (large)

Typical weight: 10-50 tons

Gender: unknown

Aspect: dragon/plant

Transformations: unknown -> Ferndrake -> unknown

I noted a huge stone creature that looked something like an echidna off to one side, snuffling at the ground. Wound around the spikes coming out of Muppin’s back, just above the mobile herb garden on the rochidna’s back, was a snake made of air. It too had a name, Airaconda, and it appeared as despondent as Muppin. Garnet, the basketball-sized orange gem with no face, somehow seemed as sluggish as the others. The first of those who didn’t appear put out that their bond mates weren’t here were Fairy Poppins, the tiny fairy. She zipped this way and that, flitting by my head every so often. I had good reason to believe she was actually ecstatic, but I didn’t want to think about it. I liked Cinzy, her bond mate, and Cinzy had confessed to some pretty deep feelings herself.

The other was McCauley Skulkins, and I couldn’t be sure he wasn’t upset without proof. After all, he was invisible. A sort of Schrödinger’s Nakamamon, if you will.

I convened with Chrysta, Larelle, Regina and Alan, and quickly confirmed that they also had Agility as an attribute. Chrysta and Larelle explained that their Agility had been raised slightly but Muscularity lowered slightly, while Regina said her Agility had been raised a lot, and Muscularity lowered almost down to nothing. Alan didn’t have much of either. Being a Wizard meant he was almost completely focused on Affinity and Durability.

“That’s not normal, right?” I asked.

“No,” Chrysta confirmed. “This has never happened before. On the other hand, a fighting aspect Nakamamon had never existed before your human Guardian Blake transformed into one.” She created additional hands as she went. “On the other other hand, no human that I was aware of had ever transformed into a Nakamamon before.” I was glad she was speaking out a bit more.

On the other other other hand, Larelle told me psychically, none of this had ever existed before the system appeared, so take all this with salt.

Chrysta manifested yet another hand. I’d seen the ice ghost Nakamamon manifest something like ten arms before. I wondered how far that went.

Regina was taking my mother through assigning her points. She’d said ‘character creation’ and was assigning stat points on top of her plain old stats. She would start with everything between level 0 and 3, though my mom was pretty smart. Smarter than me. It might give her an Ingenuity of 4 to start. She was also tough as old shoe leather, so she might get 4 in Durability too. I couldn’t see her stats unless she shared them.

“You can share your UI if you want,” Regina said. “I’m sure your son would like to see how much better you are than he is.”

She shot me a sly look.

“Har de har,” I said, and smiled right back.

My mom’s stats appeared in a window hovering in front of her face. I had to head over to where she was, to make sure the words weren’t backwards.

Affinity 0

Agility 1

Durability 2

Ingenuity 5

Likability 3

Muscularity 1

Yep, I was right.

“Good news,” I told her, “you’re definitely set to start as a Wizard or Sorcerer.”

“Wow,” Regina said, “You’re higher on all your stats than your son started.”

“Har de har,” I repeated.

“I have five points to distribute? And Affinity is for magic, right? I recall Christopher saying it was for magic.”

“Only if you want to end up casting spells,” Regina said. “It is pretty cool though. Once you get it high enough you can see and smell and hear magic all over the place.”

“I do want to hallucinate like crazy,” my mom said, considering.

“In order to handle the strain on your body from the cancer, I’d recommend putting it into Durability and Muscularity,” I said.

“Which will put you in a Guardian role,” Regina said, rolling her eyes.

“We get her a bunch of achievements,” I shot back. Near death experiences though… that was where I’d gotten my best rewards. I wasn’t thrilled with that being the future for my mother, since I’d be responsible for saving her life.

“Nonsense,” she said. “I’ll be a Healer.”

“Mom,” I warned, but her attribute levels were already increasing: one to Affinity, one to Muscularity, another to Affinity, one to Durability, and the last one to Affinity again. And before I could say another word, she locked these results in.

The screen hovering in front of us now read:

Affinity 3

Agility 1

Durability 3

Ingenuity 5

Likability 3

Muscularity 2

“She is your mother. It is not your place to tell her what to do,” Chrysta chided. “Quite the opposite, in fact.”

“Oh ho, is it pile on Fletcher day?” I scoffed. “She’s about to choose the most dangerous job class this world has to offer.”

“You chose the same job,” my mother said quietly.

I pursed my lips in frustration and gestured over to the dragon, still munching on my best friend Mark Roughalo. “And what happens when the dragon gets sick? Do you think you can march up to it and take its temperature, then get back out of the way to apply a poultice?”

“Of course not. Don’t be silly. That’s your job. I’m your apprentice.”

“Ugh! Mom!”

I couldn’t see a way out of this, since I had no power to make her decisions for her. I couldn’t reach into her user interface and make alterations, or stop her from pressing ‘Confirm’ when she chose the Healer class.

“There are all kinds of things we need,” I pleaded. “Regina is going to help us survive in the wilderness, and Chrysta and Larelle will help keep us safe.”

“In case the dragon tries to eat us,” she said.

“Right. And Alan is going to be useful in a million different ways.”

“You’re saying I ought to take over your friend Cinzia’s job? Or the invisible one who never shows any emotions because he’s afraid of being hurt?”

I blinked at her. “I mean… yes? I don’t see how you being a Bard would be a bad thing, or a Rogue for that matter, but you only have an Agility of 1 and you just spent all your free levels toward becoming a magic wielder.”

“Oh dear,” she said, sounding not at all upset. “I suppose the only thing to do is choose Healer.”

“Listen, Mom, what’s going to happen the moment you choose Healer, is that if we’re ever discovered by Agency people, they’re going to put you on a team and take you out into the wilderness to heal up broken gods, which you’re not at all ready for. I did it and I wasn’t ready for it. I nearly died.

“If you choose any of the other classes, they’ll just let you live in the HQ, totally safe—”

“And cut off from you.”

“You did hear me say safe, right?” I asked. I peered around at Regina, Alan, Larelle and Chrysta, to find them chuckling. I turned back on my mom. “You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?”

“It is adorable of you to try to keep me out of danger,” she said, “but that isn’t necessary. If that dragon were sick, I’d march right over and use my rectal thermometer to check and see if it had a fever. And it would be grateful after being healed, and at the end I’d give it a lollipop.”

“Look, I brought you into this world,” I said, and froze with one finger raised.

“What were you about to say, son who I pushed out of my womb?” she asked, grinning.

With that, she selected Healer from the series of options, and pressed the Confirm button.

This is Christopher on the verge of killing the woman I’d brought to this world in order to save, who had brought him into the world—earth to be precise—in the first place.

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