Chương 95: 93: Not Today, Buddy

We headed to Spruce Gap in two separate cars. Bryce, Megan, and David took Bryce's gleaming Jeep Grand Cherokee. In black, of course. Leaving his mid-life crisis behind was hard on David. I sympathized. I wasn't much of a car person, but if I'd had my choice, I would have taken the 1996 Porsche 911, too. Cars were just cars in my opinion, but it was a thing of beauty. Sadly impractical for apocalyptic road trips, though. Missy drove Jack, me, and the dogs in their far more sedate Toyota Highlander.

Jack took the front seat and the dogs and I squeezed into the back, along with everything that had been deemed essential from the house. Zelda was not pleased. The People had failed to understand that the front seat belonged to her. It was her right as oldest dog, senior member of the pack, and heart-dog to her human to have the seat with the best view. Being stuck in the back with a choice of the floor or my lap was so far beyond inferior that she was sulking like a Siamese cat.

"It's only for a few hours," I told her.

"Please tell me you know that because you're psychic and can see the future," Missy said as she pulled out of the driveway. We'd gotten over the first hurdle: the cars started. We'd all heard that combustion engines became unreliable when exposed to mana, but no one seemed to know what triggered their failures. So far, it seemed relatively rare: people were still driving and stories of failures were all secondhand.

The next hurdle was going to be whether roads were blocked, but according to the local AM radio station, which was still on the air, at least I-40 was open. Getting out of Durham took longer than it should have, but not by an insane amount. Signs of damage were everywhere, including enough abandoned cars to stock a used car lot, but we didn't run into any monsters or roadblocks. When we hit Winston-Salem, traffic slowed to a crawl. Lanes merged until only one lane was moving, and that was at 10 mph.

Finally, after about thirty minutes or so, we passed a rift blocking three lanes of the highway. Two cars were half-out, half... well, gone. Okay, rubber-neckers, I get it. It would have been impossible to drive past at 70 mph. I was tempted to ask Missy to stop so I could hop out and check out the rift. What had happened to the drivers? Why hadn't they just backed their cars out? But maybe the engines died once they were half inside the rift. It was just as well that the police hadn't towed the remains.

Nothing could more explicitly state "Don't drive here!" than the broken remnants of the cars that had. About three hours in, well past Wilkesboro, the dogs started getting antsy. We were on 421, a road less highway than mountain trek. The forests on either side were in full autumn glory, the kind of reds and yellows that Florida never saw. Our trees lost their browned leaves in March, mostly, when the new growth forced them out. I wouldn't say we'd reached wilderness: the road was still paved.

But we'd definitely hit rural territory.

"I think we might need to take a break," I said, when Riley shifted positions for the third time in as many minutes. It wasn't quite the dog version of a kid's pee dance, but it was close.

"You want us to stop here?" Missy sounded appalled.

"Not in the middle of the road, no. But maybe at the next overlook?"

"I don't know," she started, her worry clear. But then we rounded a curve and the choice was taken out of her hands. She slammed on the brakes. Bryce, ahead of us, had done the same thing, but Missy had to swerve into the oncoming traffic lane to avoid hitting him. Fortunately, there was no traffic headed in that direction. Less fortunately, it was because there was a huge… thing… in the road, attacking the blue pickup that had been three vehicles ahead of us.

"Come on, pups, we're up," I said, snapping open my seat belt and scrambling out of the car. I left the door ajar so the dogs could follow me. With a thought, Warden's Edge appeared in my hand as I ran toward the mana-crazed boar. Because that's what that thing had to be. I'd seen wild boars before in Ocala and they're scarily big: easily three feet tall and a couple hundred pounds. Not a creature you mess with, even with dogs. Maybe especially with dogs.

Like the squirrels, this one was three times the size it should be, in all dimensions. Twice my height, five times my weight, maybe six—and yes, I was doing this math in my head as I jogged toward it. It had tusks and they were glowing blue and shooting off sparks in all directions. Could a mana-crazed animal get a lightning attack? Because that was sure going to be fun, if so. By the time I passed Bryce's car, I'd tapped my [Invisible Armor] on.

I was holding my shovel in one hand, while the other, outstretched, was working on [Mana Absorption]. The mana was blue, which somehow felt healthier than the brown mana of the rats or that gray mana the mayor had been spreading around. Whether it was or not, it flowed into me like water finding a new channel just as the boar got his tusks underneath the side of the truck and flipped it onto its side. Ouch. I hoped the people inside still had their seatbelts on. Did pickup trucks have airbags?

The mana absorption was working, but not fast enough. I'd reached the second car, dogs right with me, Bear barking her head off.

"Don't engage," I ordered.

"Circle, try to drive it away from the truck." The mana was fizzing in my veins, an electric current zooming its way around my body. It didn't hurt yet, not like the time I'd exploded with it, but it was still coming and the boar was not getting noticeably smaller. Jack came running up behind me, just as I paused.

"My mom thinks you're insane," he said cheerfully.

"What's the tactic here?" The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Distract, deny, something else that starts with a D?" I said. I put my hand to my chest. My heart was pounding, not from the run, but from the mana. It just kept coming, even though I'd dropped my hand. But I was finally starting to see the difference. The boar was maybe eight feet tall, now, and slowly, incrementally, getting smaller, even as it pulled away from the truck. Zelda darted in, going for a hind leg. Bear, smart girl, circled as ordered, mixing barks with snarls.

Riley, in a move that shocked the hell out of me, took the high ground, leaping onto the side of pickup and standing his ground there, crouching and growling deep in his throat.

"Holy shit. Your dog is terrifying." Jack stopped moving.

"Actually, I think maybe that's literally true. Does he have a fear attack?" The boar shook its head, backing away. The tusks weren't glowing anymore and it was getting smaller by the second. Zelda grabbed the hind leg and pulled, tearing at the skin. Even with [Size Is Just a State of Mind] active, the boar was so much bigger than she was that her attack didn't even shift it. It annoyed it, though, enough to squeal in angry protest. It tried to round on her, head low. My breath stopped in my throat.

Those tusks looked deadly. But a heartbeat later, Bear lunged for the boar's snout, biting hard, dashing away when it jerked its head up. I jumped up and down, shaking out my hands and arms like a kid doing the Hokey-Pokey. The mana was too much. If I was a mage, maybe I'd know what to do with it, but I needed some outlet that I didn't have. I definitely didn't want to use Wild Sanctuary again. Could I stop [Mana Absorption] mid-stream? Did it have an off-switch?

The boar was still huge, still ugly as sin, still angry, but it looked like a normal boar now, although definitely the largest one I'd ever seen. Did North Carolina breed them bigger?

"Call your dogs back," a brisk male voice said from behind us. I glanced over in time to see a guy carrying a rifle stride past us and leap onto the side of the pick-up truck next to Riley. Riley spared him a single assessing sniff, but held his ground. The guy aimed and waited.

"Dogs, to me! Zelda, Riley, Bear! All of you, to me! Now!" I yelled promptly, adding my fiercest whistle and a hand clap. I didn't want a missed shot hitting a dog and I even less wanted an exploding rifle to hurt Riley along with its brave and/or reckless owner. And/or stupid, I guess. Bear was slowest on the recall, but all three dogs obeyed. The guy fired a single shot, and I winced, partly from the sound—always so much louder than television makes it out to be—and partly from the anticipation.

The boar gave one last squeal, but the shot struck true, right between the eyes. It staggered a few steps before falling. I gave a breathless chuckle, still feeling the mana running through me. It was such a buzz. Not like being drunk and not, as far as I knew, like the high from all the drugs I'd never tried, but like energy. Shots of caffeine. Entire gallons of ice cream. Midnight on Halloween when you've been secretly eating your candy under the covers. I was gonna need to run laps before we got back in the car.

I glanced at Jack.

"No XP for you, sorry." I hadn't even used [Analyze] on the boar to see what its level was, so I did that now. And then I did it again, because I didn't like what it was telling me. Jack was telling me something, too, so I pulled my attention away from the body to listen.

"My dagger from the scenario melted in my fight with the fire elemental," he was saying.

"Kitchen knives aren't nearly as good. I'm not sure I could have even broken that thing's skin."

"Yeah." I looked back at the body. The stranger had turned his attention to the truck's occupants and we should go help with that, too. But first—"Oh, wait," I said, competing thoughts fighting for my attention. I stuck my hand in my pouch, thought dagger and pulled out the Void-Touched Dagger.

"Here. You can have this. My shovel's good for me."

"Wow, this is a nice dagger. Is this—where did you—""Jack," I interrupted him. I didn't care about the dagger right now.

"That boar was Level 11. 11, Jack. Do you think that's…" I didn't finish my statement, letting the words trail off, my mouth dry. Alternative Integration Enhancement. Those were the words I wasn't saying. But the System couldn't just arbitrarily make shit tougher, could it? Sure, it could spew more monsters out from rifts and they could be higher level, but the mana-crazed creatures were Earth native. They were absorbing mana and turning into monsters and so... Maybe the boar had just leveled up a lot?

The mana didn't feel like a sugar high anymore. It felt like adrenaline, fight or flight, time to punch things. (Note: I have never actually punched anything in my life. Like, never.) Jack's eyes met mine, his appreciation of the dagger gone.

"Eleven?" He looked back at his mom and dad in the cars behind us.

"They would've…" I wanted to tell him that his parents would've been fine. Yesterday, I would have. They were Level 9 now, with 10 available, almost as high as his own level. They should be kicking ass and taking names. But against a nine-foot tall Level 11 mana-crazed wild boar? I dropped my hand to Riley's neck, stroking the soft fur, then opened my Companions pane and looked at his level. 12. Yesterday's rift running had been good gains for the dogs, too. He'd picked up a new trait, too, for Spirit (20).

Not Today, Buddy: You are the line. When you stand between danger and someone under your protection, hostile creatures feel the weight of your refusal. Enemies targeting your pack may discover a sudden, bone-deep understanding that this is not going to go the way they intended. Effect strength and range scale with Spirit. He might have been okay taking a hit from a Level 11 Mana-Crazed Boar. I was glad we hadn't found out the hard way.

The stranger with the rifle was helping the passenger in the pickup truck climb out. Everyone else was getting out of their cars, too, now that the danger was past.

"We should go help," I said. Jack nodded. He looked as troubled by the boar's level as I was but there was nothing either one of us could do about it. Pickup trucks do have airbags, it turns out, which was one of those good news/bad news things. The occupants could have been much worse off, but they were still bruised and banged up, and the cab of the truck was filled with the airbag debris. The driver, an older man with gray hair and a bit of a pot belly, seemed especially shaken.

The woman with him was younger and more worried about him than herself. Daughter, I'd guess. I spent about five seconds calculating the odds of more trouble before I could get back to a rift, then knelt down next to them where they sat on the side of the road. Missy was with them, too, offering water and consulting over bruises and scrapes. She'd used her healing spell, [Spring Fed], on both of them, but it was regenerative, and not speedy.

They'd recover faster than they otherwise would, but she was going to need to get her Resilience a lot higher before it did much.

"How much do you hurt?" I asked the man. His gaze flickered up at me, and then dropped, back to staring at the ground. He looked gray with pain or maybe exhaustion. I'd been carrying the healing potions I thought of as belonging to Jules and Toby for a couple days now.

"Enough," I answered for him. I pulled a healing potion out of my bag and held it out to him.

"Try this." He took it, moving cautiously.

"What is it?"

"Healing potion," I said.

"Should fix you right up." He tried to hand it to the woman.

"You should take it, Kara. You need to make it home. The kids are waiting." He looked at his truck and winced.

"I don't know what we're going to do now."

"No, Dad, I'm fine." She pushed it right back at him.

"We'll figure it out. We can call—" She rubbed a tired hand over her face.

"Someone. We'll call someone." I looked at the truck, too. Even System-empowered, there was no way I was turning it upright. I was up to 13 in Strength, which might make me stronger than the strongest human being who had ever lived. Woo-hoo. It was not strong enough to lift a truck. David, though, had that "soak up the damage" class. I knew it came with plenty of Endurance, but I was pretty sure it came with a solid boost to Strength, too. And he was Level 9 or maybe even 10 now.

With a class focus on Strength, he could easily have 20 points of it, maybe more. He, Bryce, Jack, Megan and the stranger with the rifle were standing around the boar's body. I stood.

"Hey, David," I called out.

"How do you feel about showing off a little?"