Their explanation, which they reluctantly gave while I made sure their wounds were treated to the point that they wouldn’t cripple them while we made our way down the mountain and back to the farm, was fairly simple. It all boiled down to being in the wrong place at the wrong time and unable to cope with a fairly large landslide. Granted, for the bad luck they had to be in that place when the hillside decided to make for the valley, they got out of the situation remarkably intact, something I attributed to a mixture of luck, their superhuman attributes and some athletic skill. Without any of those three, at least one of their group would have been killed outright, likely by getting pulled into the avalanche of mud, rocks and wood, or maybe in some other manner. Landslides, especially those covering as much ground as the one here, which I had seen from above, were no joke. Sure, they might not break any land speed records unless one was thinking of the speed with which the land moved, but when talking about hundreds of tons of material on the move, any speed was dangerous.
At the same time, I was once again curious about the system and its mechanics. How did quests get created, and which prerequisites had to be met to allow a person to give another a task and have it turned into a system-administrated quest? I vaguely remembered Sigmir telling me about certain people having some sort of authority over their community, allowing them to promise the resources of that community as a reward for a quest, something I was fairly confident that something similar applied here, at least that was indicated by a conversation I had with Mrs Wu a while back. However, just how the system decided which tasks were worthy of becoming one? That, I had no idea about.
Maybe I would have to become a local authority for some time, so I would be able to create quests of my own and have people do them so I could research this a little more. Or a lot more, this was an aspect of the system I could actually see myself actively interacting with, meaning I could perform actual tests and not just draw conclusions from reactions of the system, as I could with the skill system and such. Sadly, to become a local authority meant I needed permanent subjects of some sort; otherwise, the people around Jademoon Tower should have given me such authority. Or maybe I had that authority at that time and simply never used it; that was a distinct possibility, too.
Still, as interesting as that all was, I had other fish to fry at the moment, fish that might get swept up by a wave at any moment. The system and its timers certainly indicated that the area we were in wasn’t as safe and secure as I would have liked it to be; it still gave a timer of thirteen hours to complete the quest, which could mean that this area would be destroyed in twelve hours or it might mean that the farm these people lived at would be destroyed at that time.
“Your wounds shouldn’t worsen if we start making our way back to your village; I don’t trust the weather not to throw another mess in our general direction. And if the mountain decides to head for the valley, I’ll only be able to save myself; I don’t think I’d be able to do you any good,” I admitted, just a little bit annoyed at my impotence. Intellectually, I knew that the full force of nature was beyond my ability to withstand, but that didn’t mean I enjoyed being reminded of it twice in as many days.
“You want us to go back out there?” Jacob asked, his unwillingness mixing with his dislike for me to form something fairly unpleasant.
“Want to?” I let out a derisive snort at the idea, “Hel no! I don’t want to go out into that mess. But given what I feel from the ground below us, I don’t think this position will be here for all that long. And if these rocks start their journey into the valley alongside a chunk of the mountain, I don’t want to experience it with my body. Watching from a safe place, maybe, but being caught up in the mess? Hel no!” I shook my head while stretching my Earth Magic sense out a bit to confirm whether my spontaneous argument was actually the truth or just a lie.
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To my slight surprise, I could feel some instability in the ground, especially uphill from our position. A lot of water was moving through one of the deeper layers, loosening the soil a little and removing its cohesion. While I couldn’t readily tell how long it would take for things to move, I was fairly confident that they would, lending credence to the timers displayed in my quest.
For a moment, I wondered if there was a way for me to prevent such a landslide, but given the amount of force involved on the side of the mountain and the mass of material, I doubted it was possible. Similarly, trying to evade the mess by digging down would only destabilise the area further, meaning we would have to move or we would be caught in it, something I doubted anyone would enjoy.
“Shit,” Ned muttered, carefully moving to stand and test his recently healed leg. “You sure about that?” he asked, apparently more to confirm his own thoughts than to have me repeat myself. When I nodded, he swore again and started testing his leg before looking over to the downed Geralt. “Can you get him up?”
“Probably,” I nodded, placing a hand on Geralt’s arm and ensuring there were no further wounds to cause trouble later. When I found nothing, I decided to test an idea I had earlier, when working on Lars. With a small exertion of Blood and Mind Magic, his body was teeming with adrenaline, his heart beating fast and his blood pressure shooting up, while an impulse to move shot through his unconscious mind, jolting him awake. He quite literally shot up as if stung by something unpleasant, looking around with wide, frantic eyes. Maybe I had overdone it a little, it was possible that the physical effect would have been enough, though it could have triggered a nightmare instead. Similarly, the impulse to move could have caused purely mental effects, making it not perfectly suited either.
“What the hell happened?!” he demanded, trying to make sense of his situation.
“Not the most pleasant way to wake somebody; I’ll make a note of that,” I calmly muttered while the rest of his party tried to calm him and explain what had happened. Truly, more research was required on this, especially the combination of Blood Magic to cause a physiological effect to reinforce the psychological effects caused by Mind Magic. Or vice-versa, the interplay between body and mind was quite fascinating. Maybe I could even tie some sort of Soul Magic into this to drive the effects deeply into a person, altering their entire existence. This had… potential.
Luckily, without the continued stimulation and cognitive dissonance Lars had experienced earlier, the fight-or-flight state quickly abated, leaving a wholly awake but quite confused Geralt in its wake.
“Don’t think I should wake Lars the same way as I did Geralt,” I admitted, remembering how Lars had almost killed himself in a panic earlier. It might be best if I wasn’t in the shelter with them at all when they woke him up, just in case. “I’ll be outside.”
Once outside, I quickly moulded some stone to give me a secure place to stand and some more to block out the rain while waiting. While I couldn’t be sure, I was fairly certain that the storm had gotten even worse than it had been, with some additional rain. I had a feeling the wind was a little calmer, though that had helped us only so far.
I would have to keep an eye on the timers; maybe we could find a secure shelter or a place I could make secure for us. Otherwise, our only option was to get back to the farm, an idea I favoured, if only to get rid of the fairly annoying four, especially Jacob.
Within the shelter, I could hear Lars moaning and groaning. He seemed to have had a bit of a blackout about the events right before he went nuts, meaning he was completely confused. Maybe that was for the best, though I could hear Jacob tell him what happened. Annoyingly, he was even quite truthful, making it difficult to refute his words, especially as Jacob was a trusted friend and I was just somebody who had come out here to help them.
Regardless, Ned was quite convinced by my words, or maybe he was simply scared of what might happen if I decided to leave them to hang here and things got worse. Whatever his reasons, they served me quite well, so I was determined to accept them and escort them back into the valley, which might just be the most challenging part of this entire quest.
