The Dive: Birth of a Wordsmith (13 page)

I kept that thought to
myself and tried to support her, casting Binding when I got the
chance, and following up with either Earth Spear or Mana Bolt.
Between the densely packed trees, there wasn’t any time for
chants, so I had to go with the basics. The spam was still enough to
level up Binding to Intermediate, even if it didn’t give me any
more minions.

After a particularly nasty
encounter with a large snake, I decided to call it. “Okay,
let’s rest for a minute. This is getting kind of ridiculous.”
Though I said that, we had leveled up several times since starting on
our journey. Part of me wanted to use this as an excuse to spend my
points in peace.

“
Aww, and it was
just getting fun..” Denise complained, but she was as out of
breath as I was. Obediently, she sat down next to me at the base of a
tree and kept a look out while I pulled up my character window.

Damn, five levels
already
. I debated how to spend the points.
In the end, I split them between Agility and Endurance, because I
didn’t have near enough health. Even the wolves could take out
half my health with a good hit, and what we were fighting now put
them to shame.

“
Okay… before
we go any further… Gotta call the wolf back. Like it or not,
we need the backup.”

Denise nodded, accepting
the fact that we couldn’t last long out here alone, and I
summoned the wolf. Given the momentary safety, I included the full
chant to boost the effect.

When the wolf appeared
this time, it felt.. different. I saw his HP bar join mine and
Denise’s at the corner of my vision, where before I had simply
guessed it.

You have called me,
Master.

Okay, that was not my
thought. “Uh.. hello?”

Hello. You did call me,
right?

“
Yeah… just
didn’t expect you to speak.”

Denise glanced to me, and
then the wolf. “What are you talking about? I don’t hear
anything.”

“
Oh. I guess only I
can hear him. Still, that’s convenient. I guess that is the
next step in intelligence, communication.”

The wolf nodded its
confirmation, and Denise gasped briefly as she seemed to realize that
I was in fact not crazy, and that this wolf really was speaking to
me. “So, you’ll be able to talk to anything you summon
now?”

“
Seems so. But let’s
get moving.” I hesitated for a second. “In my eyes, all
things are one. Scan.” My eyes began to glow green and my
vision zoomed in on… everything. It was rather dizzying. I
could see the various animals in the forest, and all the different
plants. At least, any of them in my field of vision, out to about
40m? Even if there was something blocking it, which made it quite a
useful ability. “Okay, there’s an ape over there on the
other side of that big tree. It looks like it’s waiting for
us.”

I looked to my wolf. “You
go circle around and chase it out. Once we have a shot, me and Denise
will take care of it.” The wolf nodded and ran off into the
woods, vanishing into the bush. But I was still aware of him, and
could track him circling the area, like a hazy outline approaching
the ape. And when it saw him, the thing charged out from behind the
tree. I fired my mana bolt as Denise launched an arrow, and that was
enough to make it turn towards us.

“
Okay… here
it comes… Spirit of wind and chaos, eyes which gaze upon the
hearts of man, place the mark upon this soul. Binding! Earth spear!”
Just as the sigil of Binding appeared on the ape’s chest, a
spear of stone rose up beneath it and jammed into its leg. After that
it was just a matter of letting Denise fire on it until the thing
finally gave in.

“
Nice. Okay.. Raging
ghosts of battles past, lend your aid in this time of need. Calling
of the ape!” I was in a hurry to summon the stronger ape to
replace the wolf, but nothing happened at first.

I sighed, and mentally
agreed, and THEN the ape appeared where the wolf had been, looking
just as it had before we had encountered it.

“
Hmm… he’s
not as cute. Do we have to keep him?” Denise asked teasingly.

“
That not nice to
say.” Strangely enough.. it was the ape that answered. “Why
call?”

“
Well… I
guess this one speaks verbally. We need a guide through the forest.”

“
Where going?”

“
We’re looking
for a tribe of elves that might be living in these woods.” My
hopes that the ape knew what an elf was were quickly trampled.

“
What elf?”

“
...Like us, but
with pointy ears?”

The ape thought for a
second. “No elves.”

I sighed, looking to
Denise. “Well, it was worth a shot. We could stay here to train
or move on. Your choice.”

She shook her head. “I
don’t think it’d be a good idea to camp in this forest.
We can find somewhere else to train, right?”

I nodded, and together
with the ape we fought our way out of the forest just in time to make
lunch. “Damn, I was really looking forward to meeting an elf. I
guess it was too much to hope that they would have a tribe so close
to the capital.”

Denise put a hand on my
arm to comfort me. “Hey, it was worth a shot. Besides, it was
kind of fun, and you got a new summon out of it. Not a total loss.”
After we left the forest, I had switched back to the wolf, because he
was actually smarter than the ape and easier to put up with.

“
Yeah. I wonder if
they will get stronger as we do, or if they are stuck at the level
they were when I bound them?”

“
Who knows…
we can’t really test it yet, right? I mean it wasn’t that
long ago that we were struggling with the wolves.”

I nodded to her, and sat
down next to her so that we could eat our lunch together. Denise even
set out a piece of meat for the wolf, though I wasn’t sure that
he’d need to eat it given he was already dead once. Oddly
enough, the wolf did eat the meat without reservation.
Wouldn’t
it be funny if that meat came from the wolf before it was killed?

“
Okay. Onto the next
area. How far is it to the nearest big city?”

“
Well.. there are a
few villages within a day’s walk, but we’ll have to walk
for at least a week at our pace to reach Coatin. It’s a trade
city to the southwest.” I figured when she said ‘our’
pace, she meant with me having to log out for a day at a time for
class.

“
Alright. We’ll
start heading that way then, and stop at the first village to do some
work and grab a horse. That should speed things up.”

“
Heheh, if we’re
lucky, we can find a wild horse that you can bind. Would save on the
expenses.”

“
That.. is true.
Don’t suppose you know where around here one can find a wild
ride?”

The innuendo was not lost
on her, and got me a playful grin. “Well, you can usually find
some feral horses roaming the grasslands. If we search a while we
might get lucky. Of course, we’d still need to buy a saddle…
maybe we can just grab a horse from Rosenheim?”

“
Yeah.. either way
we’re going to have to go back into the city. Well, let’s
get started, we should be back there sometime tomorrow..” I
gazed off towards the south, not able to even see the city at this
distance.

Making our way back was a
lot easier than it had been coming to the forest. With the help of
the wolf, we managed to either avoid or eliminate any of the enemies
that were in our way, and made it a little over halfway back before
we had to make camp.
If it weren’t for
me needing to go back to make supper for my real body, we might have
been able to make it all the way..

During the walk, I had
spent most of the time spamming my Scan spell to increase its level,
and focusing on mana bolt in battle. Since we already had a wolf, I
didn’t need to worry about binding. But I was able to get a few
levels from the repetitive spellcasting, which was a help.

After eating a hearty
meal--sometimes I think Denise makes dinner especially good to remind
me that the food is better here--I said my usual ‘I’ll be
back’s, and closed my eyes to send the command to log out.

My world was engulfed in
darkness, but something was odd. Or, not odd, but flat out
wrong
.
I couldn’t feel the Link capsule around my head, or the bed
under me. In fact, I could still feel the soft ground that my
character Jin was sitting on. I tried sending the command with more
force behind the thought, but still nothing happened.

“
Denise..”

“
Yeah?” She
asked, sensing the near-panic in my voice.

“
We have a problem.”

“
What, did you
forget something?”

“
No… I mean a
big
problem. It’s
not working.” I opened my eyes, and was indeed still sitting on
the open grassland with Denise.

“
What isn’t?”
She asked, though the look on her face told me that she was figuring
it out.

“
I can’t go
back..”

She shifted a little,
nervously. “Uhm… is that really such a bad thing…?”
Her tone was innocent, like she honestly didn’t understand the
problem.

“
Yeah… if I
can’t go back… I can’t take care of my body on the
other side. And if something happens there… I don’t
know, I might disappear for good..”

Well, if she wasn’t
worried before, she was now. “No! That can’t happen!
We’ll fix it..” Though it was clear neither of us knew
how we were going to manage that. I lowered my head and thought about
what I could do. My call function wasn’t working, so it looked
like I couldn’t access any features outside of the working of
the game. “I’ve.. got an idea. It won’t get me
home, but it might be enough to get someone to take care of my body
for me. I just hope he picks up the damn phone.”

Denise didn’t even
bother asking what a phone was, and just nodded her head quickly at a
possible solution, especially one that also let me stay here.

“
Message.” I
lifted a hand to my ear to indicate I was calling someone. I didn’t
know Kevin’s character in this game, so I couldn’t send
it to him. But there was one other player I knew.

“
Rusty, please tell
me you’re there.”

“
Eh?! Wha-who’s
there?” I heard a loud, startled voice on the other end.

“
Oh, thank god.
Look, there’s an emergency, and I need you to contact someone
for me on the other side. I can’t tell you why I can’t do
it myself, I just need you to work with me here, please.” There
was only one logical reason why I would be stuck in this game, and I
couldn’t risk anyone else being caught in it.

“
Uh.. sure. I can do
that. What’s the number?” I proceeded to give him Kevin’s
cell number.

“
Tell him it’s
a medical emergency and he has to go to Chris’s house
immediately. If that doesn’t work… well, I’m
screwed.” I said, in no uncertain terms.

“
This really is
serious, isn’t it son?”

“
Life or death.”

“
...Alright, I
understand. No, I don’t understand! Not one bit! But I’ll
do it. You seemed like a good kid when we met.”

“
Thank you, sir. If
I can pay you back later I will.”

“
I’ll hold you
to that.” And with that, I dropped the spell.

“
Okay.. if Kevin
gets the message, it should be alright.” I looked up at the
sky, sighing and just letting myself fall back against the grass.

“
Do you.. do you
know why this happened?” Denise had apparently caught on that I
purposely withheld any information about my condition.

“
There are only two
choices, really. But both have the same cause. It’s got to be
that job I took… Either someone overheard my conversation
there, or they heard me tell you about it here when I got back. No,
don’t worry, I don’t think you’re involved with
this at all.”