Bacon Macleod
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B3 Chapter 383: Tales, pt. 2
🕑 Added 2025-08-22 21:30:01 +0000 UTCKaius sat at the edge of the blanket they'd laid over the grass, enjoying the warmth of the midsummer sun that was high in the sky. His cloak was wrapped tightly around him. A thick, warm thing, more for comfort than for any need to keep the weather off.
When a divinity said to rest, you listened. And so they did. Sitting and doing as they always did when they traveled: enjoying each other's company and swapping stories.
As he was wont to do, Kaius took on the role of cook. Largely, it was to keep his hands busy — he wasn’t particularly hungry after what he had recently experienced, but a cup of mint and ginger tea did much to settle the lingering nausea that pulled at his belly. Judging by the tight grips his companions held on their own cups, they felt similarly.
For a while they just sat there — relished in a moment of peace and quiet that Xenanra had confirmed would last until they were ready. While Kaius was fairly certain that, subjectively, he had spent the most time apart from his friends, that didn't mean it had been easy for any of them. Considering what he’d heard of Porkchop’s trials, he doubted Ianmus and Kenva had been graced with something relaxing.
There was a tension there, lying beneath the surface in all of them. A new thread of steel that had been woven through their cores. None of them had been broken from their experiences — far from it.
It had been a renewal, and a refinement, of their dedication.
In the end, due to the interwoven nature of their stories, he and Porkchop had decided to go first. Kaius spoke of his Corporus trial where he had fought challengers unending, and of Mentis, where he had thrown himself into endless death. Porkchop spoke of his own, where he was defender of the weak and the innocent, and a leader of men.
They finished with their shared trial of Animus, where they stubbornly supported each other until they realized the secret lay in finding their own paths.
Kaius sat back and looked at the rest of their teammates' expressions. They were gripped by the tale, leaning forward with focused eyes. He grinned at their shock-widened eyes — staring at him incredulously. Though Ianmus kept flicking back to Porkchop, cleary interested in his experience.
"You were really the commander of a siege?" he asked. "Frankly, that's a fair bit to take in. I mean, the part about you running around and refusing to sit back and bark orders when you could fight the battle on your own makes sense. But to organise an entire siege defence? It's not what I expected of you — or I suppose what I expected would drive you."
Porkchop shrugged in a decidedly unbeastly way, chuffing as he settled down to steal a nib of ginger from Kaius's cup. Kaius swatted his brother away, but only got a chuckle in return — Porkchop retreating with his prize before he turned his attention back to their mage.
"It was different, that’s for sure — and a challenge, but I suppose that was the point. From what Xenanra told me, these trials truly were personalized, even when it wasn’t obvious at first glance. Leading those men, keeping that battle in mind even as I fought individual skirmishes of my own? It forced me to consider the bigger picture, even as I handled the immediacy of the events that unfolded before me. It would not surprise me — whether it was the System itself or Xenanra that designed the trial — that they knew I couldn’t only focus on one or the other. It was exactly what I needed."
"I think you may be right — that the challenges were only what we could bear, right at our very limits. Just think about that one." Kenva nodded her head towards Kaius, an incredulous look on her face. "Bloody fool dived headfirst into a meat grinder, and here he is, swapping campfire tales about an experience that would leave most quivering under their blankets. How can you be so calm? About touching death so often and so casually?"
Kaius shrugged fruitlessly. He didn't know what to say.
It wasn't that it hadn't been terrifying. It was more… that it quickly became mundane. Once he realized the whole thing was effectively illusory, it was hard to see it as anything other than a wound — one that healed quickly and vanished without a trace, as they all did.
"In the end, it was only pain," he replied with a shrug.
He wasn't quite prepared for the confusing blend of resignation and disbelief that was painted across Ianmus and Kenva’s faces.
"Only pain," Kenva snorted before she shook her head. "Listen to yourself. You're ridiculous. You'd think you were straight out of a bloody ballad."
Kaius furrowed his brow. He didn't quite get what she meant. He was one of their frontline fighters. It wasn't as if injury was foreign to him. Hells, it wasn't foreign to any of them.
"Kaius, you realize that the pain in and of itself is enough for most people, right?" Ianmus signed. "It certainly doesn't sound like you died easy — not even one of those times. How many attempts did it take you? Hundreds? Thousands?"
"I stopped counting by the end. Got a bit maddening trying to keep track."
Porkchop snorted to his left, shoving him over into the blanket. "Now you're just teasing them."
Kaius grinned. That wasn’t entirely incorrect — but there was a thread of truth in what he had said. Even if he could recognize that his ability to push himself was a bit beyond the norm, surely what he had experienced wasn’t so surprising. He did, after all, have Pain Resistance and Fear Resistance, among a number of others.
Besides, like they’d said, the trial had been designed for him and him alone. He suspected that it would never have been this challenge if it was too much for him to rise to.
Kenva shook her head and took a long sip of her drink. “See? That’s what I mean. Bloody ridiculous. You barely even get it. Blockheads, the two of you. Always have been, always will.”
“Hey! My trials were normal!”
Ianmus snorted. “Normaler, and besides, you haven’t even blinked.”
Kenva nodded in agreement, before her attention returned to Kaius. “Regardless. What was it like? Dying? It’s not really something many people get to experience twice, let alone so frequently.”
“I’m not sure,” Kaius said. “For one, it was a trial and a challenge, and there was some level of trickery at play. For all I know, it was only a facsimile of the real thing rather than something happening in truth. Regardless, it felt no different than falling unconscious. There wasn’t a transition, or a slow fade into somewhere else. I just passed out, and then I was back right at the start with everything reset. As if it had never even happened.”
“I don’t know if that’s reassuring or bloody terrifying,” Ianmus replied. “It’s certainly fascinating, though.”
After that, the conversation died down for a spell, and they just sat and drank. The wind rustled through the grass, spilling pollen and seeds into the air. Visible gusts, but almost silent.
Another oddity.They jumped out to him in that moment of silence; he found them difficult to ignore. He knew Xenanra had said she would answer his questions later, but it was hard to avoid picking at the mystery.
For one thing, the grass beneath their blanket felt almost springy, desperately fighting to stand back up. The ground underneath was hard too. Too hard, as he'd found when he recklessly landed in free fall after he’d found Kenva.
Wherever they were, the world itself was tough and iron-hard, as if it had lived through the kinds of battles that he and Porkchop had forged their way to survive. It wasn't completely alien. In general, things grew strong in regions of high mana density — that included the very ground and the air, not just the life that lived on the world.
There was one main problem, of course. There wasn't enough mana. Nowhere near enough to explain the level of effect he was seeing.
That wasn't to say it wasn't thick. It still burned strong in his true sight — something that he could see everywhere he looked. Thick fog that permeated the air, sank into the ground, and coiled around. The meadow was carpeted in it. Hues of nature and life; light and solar; earth and stone, and more. Core elements.
It was hard to believe they had missed the strange dampening of sound. If he closed his eyes, it was almost as if the wind only blew within a couple dozen long strides of them.
There were very few other sounds of life. The odd rustle of a bug or chirp of a cricket, but he could hear no rustle of the far-off leaves swaying in the wind, nor the cries of the many flying creatures he could see flitting from bough to bough in the treeline.
They studiously avoided their last and most recent trial. None of them seemed to feel ready for it — much like Xenanra had said, his memories of the experience were fading fast. He’d lived a fragment of a life of a being so far beyond him the memory was almost blinding. What little of it remained at least. Of the darkness and temptation he had felt? The specifics of what it was, what it meant, how it came to be — and why, above all, the System cared? That, he could only feel the edges of.
The rest had been sealed tight within them: kept in place so that they might remember at some point in the far future. When it might save them from a mistake they could never walk back from.
But today was not that day, so he put it out of mind. It was far too fresh and immediate in his mind — the corruptive dread of slimy black — to do anything but spark a stream of cold that ran down the back of his neck.
He knew Porkchop felt similarly. Though he assumed that they had all experienced different memories, he knew that, at its core, the meaning behind it was the same. He could feel it lying there: a raw and ragged wound, and a staunchness of conviction that had settled itself deep within Porkchop’s soul.
The weight of that memory hung heavy on them. Heavier even than the strange weight of the air around them.
But they had company, and the crisp bite of ginger in his tea was cleansing. Slowly the weight was lifting from all off them — freeing them up their stifled discussion.
It was Porkchop who made the first move, ever as headstrong and boisterous as he was.
“What of your own trials?” he said. “Ours was certainly eventful but i’m sure the two of you have stories to tell.”
“You could certainly say that,” Kenva replied, before she looked to Ianmus. “Do you want to go first? Some of mine feel a little... mundane. In comparison to noble acts of heroism and a run through a reckless slaughterhouse like our ever-brutish front line endured.”
Ianmus raised an eyebrow. “You make it sound like yours were easy. I wasn’t sure that was possible for a place like this.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say easy — less…maniacal, perhaps?”
Ianmus chuckled. “I can go first if you don’t want to. I certainly had a time with mine.”
Kaius leaned in, ready to find out just what his friend had gotten up to in the time they had been apart.
Comments
Joshua Little
Thanks for the chapter.
DeadicatedReader
tftc! cleary interested in his experience. -> clearly Another oddity.They jumped -> oddity. They
Ali
Nice wholesome chapter, feels better than I expected for the 4 of them to be together again, but this cliffhanger really wasn’t necessary man 💀
Thomas V.
I mean, sure - if you view this chapter in isolation. Too many do, and it’s one of the main problems with serialised fiction: people entirely ignore what would be better for the flow of the story as a whole, in favour of looking exclusively at what did and didn’t happen in any specific chapter. Taken on its own, you’re right: not much happened this chapter. But this is one chapter in a book, and it should *never* be taken on its own. In the context of the book as a whole this kind of stuff is absolutely essential. I’d advise you to wait a few weeks, read the dozen chapters before and after this, and then see if you still think it’s extraneous. It might change your perspective.
Quentin Cozzi
Thanks for the chapter!
TooOldForThisShit
This may come off rude, so I apologize in advance. But, you know those episodes in long running TV series where there's practically zero new content and it's just a clipshow of what already happened? Or like a recap episode after a long break? That's what this chapter feels like. Sure, the group are back together sharing stories, but what we read here today is stuff readers already know. The other characters are hearing it for the first time, but for us, we're going through a re-run.
