The thing was fast but I was faster.

  I smacked it with a Force empowered fist, blood erupting from the body as it was sent flying. I heard bones crack and more as it landed in the grass, disappearing. The tall grass was going to make it very hard to fight in, especially with such small things.

  Another one jumped out and got smacked as a third got kicked. I felt the temperature drop around me as Sunie’s chill field spread out. It was like a fog, with him at the center, that he was able to manipulate to not affect allies. I loved that aspect of the System. Friendly fire was pretty damn rare. It happened, but most people could avoid it by the time they reached Level Seventy-Five or so.

  If someone didn’t have enough control over their area of effect Abilities to choose friend or foe, they weren’t someone to adventure with.

  The field spread out, slowing the charging creatures. I kicked another, punched one and grabbed one by the antlers, managing to get a good look at it.

  ENDLESS PLAINS BOUNDER

  Why couldn’t the System just call it a rabbit because that’s what it was. A three foot tall rabbit with antlers. Back on Earth, we called them Jackalopes and they tended to be bigger. Usually four or five feet tall. This was the baby cousin.

  It wasn’t that strong, but there were a lot of them.

  I was punching and kicking constantly, always connecting. It took one or two hits to kill each Bounder. And I was fast enough that they barely connected, but a couple did and the ends of those antlers hurt. The things were very stabby.

  The Bounders kicked pretty hard too. One of them managed a solid hit on my leg, and might have broken it if it hadn’t been me it hit. I tried not to hit them hard enough to send the things flying too far. It was going to be a pain to hunt the bodies down.

  After a couple minutes, the onslaught was over.

  I looked back to make sure Sunie was okay. He was wiping his sword off on the body of a Bounder he was holding by the antlers. The thing was still alive and kicking. He gave it a shake and snapped the neck. There was some blood splashed on his face, a hole or two in his cloak, but otherwise he looked fine. The ground around us was piled with Bounder bodies.

  “You good?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “There were a lot of them. Not strong, but with swarm beasts they don’t need to be individually strong.”

  I pulled up my Climber’s Log, wanting to know exactly how many of the stupid things we’d killed. The quest said twenty-seven, it seemed like there had been a lot more, but maybe some took three or four hits and in the swarm I didn’t realize I was punching the same one twice. Doing some quick math I got them worth only Ten Multiversal Credits and Tower Points each.

  “Only worth ten each,” I said.

  “And we need a lot of them,” Sunie muttered, touching one of the corpses.

  It disappeared.

  “One antler and a small piece of hide,” he said.

  I started looting the ones around me. I got an antler from every third Bounder and hides from all of them. The hides were very small and would take a lot to make just a leather bracer. I wondered what the stat boosts or enhancements it would give were. Ability to jump higher? I got a couple of Bounder’s Feet. No idea what those were going to be good for.

  We’d worked out how we were going to divide up the loot earlier. At the end of each run, we’d combine what we got and split in half. It just made things easier to not worry about it during a run. Things like Essences, we’d get dibs on the ones we needed and could trade for others that we knew any of the 3 Fs could use. The 3 Fs being friends, family and factions. Level Up Shards would be harder to deal with but we’d cross that one when we got to it.

  It was a pretty standard loot distribution on Earth and turned out was similar across the Multiverse. It relied on trusting your teammates, but if I couldn’t trust my teammates with loot, could they really be trusted with my life?

  I pulled up my Climber’s Log again to see that I had credit for the amount of antlers I had on me, but that would change after the run was over.

  “Did we get them all?” Sunie asked, looking over the battlefield?

  I walked to my left, searching the grass stalks for any broken pieces or evidence of a body crashing through. I found two more. I’d really kicked them pretty far.

  “I think that’s all.”

  “We have similar creatures on Cryim but they’re called Unigilo,” Sunie said.

  “Jackalopes on Earth. Funny thing was that before the System came, jackalopes were a mythological creature. Not even considered real. Then we get the System and the things start appearing. Now find out they’re all over the multiverse. That’s kind of weird.”

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  “That happened with some of the mythological creatures of Cryim,” Sunie said. “Or so the history books tell us. From what the scholars have learned, talking with others in the Nexus, is that the Celestial Challenge System seeds the planets it’s going to someday integrate. A way of preparing the people to be Awakened.”

  “That makes a scary kind of sense,” I said.

  For all its seemingly big size, the multiverse really wasn’t that big. There was a lot in common from world to world. And the way life evolved to sentient beings that could be Awakened? There were only so many of those. As a kid, I’d imagined space as filled with endless races. Each planet that had life would be unique. That just wasn’t the case. Life evolved in some pretty narrow ways.

  There were still a lot of different beings, species, races, whatever the correct term to use was. But not as infinite as I’d thought as a kid.

  It was surprising how much similar creatures appeared across worlds.

  “Ready to keep going?”

  “Yep,” I replied, looking back at Sunie to provide a direction.

  I’d gotten turned around in the fighting and looting. We were far enough from the portal hill that I couldn’t see it, and in all directions was just an endless seas of grass.

  “This place could use more landmarks,” I muttered.

  Sunie laughed, checked the compass and pointed.

  I started walking that direction.

  ***

  I kicked the stupid Bounder, knocking it into another. The two fell in a heap and I sent a Force Lance at them both. The invisible energy pierced the two, ending both lives. I looked around for more and saw there were none left.

  Two more leapt at me. I twisted to the side, letting one fly past and catching the other by its foot. I gave it a jerk, the neck snapping and threw the body at a third. The things just kept coming. I didn’t bother with the one that had leapt past me. Sunie would deal with that one. After the third wave of over a dozen Bounders, we were getting pretty good at dealing with the annoying things.

  And that’s what they were. Annoying.

  They were easy to kill, for us at least. Not really a problem, for us at least. And their loot drops were horrible. No Essences, a small bit of hide, and really low drop rates on the antlers. The things we cared about. Which meant, that when divided between the two of us, we weren’t making a dent in that quest.

  I kicked one more Bounder, not seeing anymore.

  “I hate these things,” I muttered.

  “Same,” Sunie said, his sword swing cutting the head off the last Bounder.

  We went around collecting the loot. Another twenty-one Bounders for the quest. With all the others, it was only ninety of the Bugs Bunnys for the kill quest. Not even halfway there. So far, they were the only things we’d encountered so far.

  “Do these things really give other teams an issue?” I asked as we kept walking in the same general direction across the unchanging landscape.

  “From what I’ve heard, surprisingly yes,” Sunie replied. “I guess not that surprising since most teams are fairly immobile when fighting.”

  “That makes some sense. A tank could easily get swarmed, and they’re small and fast enough they’d have a hard time hitting the things.”

  “Yeah, most teams don’t have our speed and mobility.”

  “That’s something to keep in mind when we go for a third,” I said. “We can’t have someone immobile. Even most archers and casters tend to stand still.”

  We kept talking about what we’d need in a third teammate as we walked. I was glad to learn that Sunie was under no restrictions on which Faction for that third teammate. I’d been worried that the Sunrise Formation would have an approved list they’d want Sunie to draw from, to help strengthen some of their existing connections. That didn’t seem the case. I was sure they’d have some input, understandable, but like hooking Sunie up with me, they wanted to use this team to broaden their own alliances with potential new factions.

  With me as the frontliner and Sunie as the controller, the third would either be a ranged DPS of some kind or a healer. Preferably a healer as ranged DPS wouldn’t really work with how mobile both Sunie and I were.

  He wasn’t as jumpy and leapy as I was, but Sunie ran around the battlefield, darting in and out, never really stopping. He could spread his control Abilities while on the move.

  With a normal team setup, the ranged DPS could be stationary, acting like a rotating turret. Just find a spot and shoot the baddies. The tank kept the baddies localized, not letting them spread out and the other melee DPS could move around as needed, taking out the enemies from behind, off tanking or protecting the ranged and healer as needed.

  A turret wouldn’t work for us as we didn’t localize the baddies. We kept them moving as we moved.

  Finding a third and potentially a fourth was going to be hard. I’d always known that going into this, but hoped it wouldn’t be as hard as I’d feared. I didn’t want to add a fourth member of the team on the lower Floors, but knew it would be needed higher up. We were going to be running with lower members, most teams were five or six from the beginning, and I wanted to take advantage of that as long as we could. It’d be inevitable that we’d need that extra person and finding just a single person of our Levels in the higher floors would be tough. It was best to figure that role out now.

  “I think that’s it,” Sunie said, pointing ahead of us.

  His eyes were better than mine, letting him see further. One day I’d let the joke slip, but today is not that day.

  I couldn’t see anything but took his word for it.

  “At last,” I said.