Infinity Legends

Chapter 28: What Have We Learned Today?

Upon returning to his old rusty ship, DM3 had not said a word. Despite being undoubtedly a player, the little creature seemed unable to communicate verbally without his full war machine outfit. At first, Kramen had thought the loss of the mecha would culminate in another exhausting quest to recover it, like Gurm’s staff had, but he had been pleasantly surprised by seeing another two dozen combat bot suits stored in DM3’s ship’s cargo hold.

As soon as the team’s tank was back in his bulky indestructible gear, Kramen had suggested that Lord and Gurm took the tank outside to get him up to speed on the maneuvers, strategies and plans the Infinity Riders had already devised.

Fighting the Choker had been just as much training as it had been a test, and DM3, as well as Lord, had passed with flying colors. The team had a new tank indeed, and the bard had just been confirmed as a great choice.

As the bard, the mage and the tank went over their tactics and ran short drills, as well as conceiving new plays that factored the newest addition to the team, Kramen had pulled Takol aside, away from earshot of the others. With the two men standing by the edge of the green abyss, Kramen asked his friend:

“What have we learned today?”

“We have…” Takol flinched, then turned to face his friend. “Hold up, you asked that after last time too. After Gurm and Serry fought the thing!”

“I did, didn’t I?” Kramen smirked. “The response was hardly satisfactory then. Perhaps we can be more insightful now.”

“We sure learned a lot tonight,” the reptile conceded. “For starters that our tank has a self-destruct mechanism and a cool ejection module.”

“Hopefully assets we will refrain from using in a competition,” Kramen pointed out. “What else? Anything about the Choker?”

“Well, du’uh! We learned it has a weak spot in its neck, and that it is revealed by either blinding the Choker or throwing dust at his face. One of the two,” Takol scratched his snout, pensive. “It looks to be very weak, too. Lord struck it with his bare hands and it seemed to get the thing pretty pissed off.”

“Which in and of itself merits observation,” Kramen said. “Means the attack was effective, but that it can also have devastating consequences. The acid spit reaction completely obliterated our tank, who so far had proven impervious to most if not all sorts of attacks.”

“In other words,” Takol said, “don’t be near the mouth when someone hits the neck.”

“Is that all?” Kramen asked with a concealed challenge to his tone. “Think about your journal. What would you have written down on it after this demonstration?”

Takol took a moment to reflect, his neurons rewinding the events of the fight one by one trying to find something meaningful, until he did.

“The explosions…” the reptile said.

“What about them?” Kramen smiled, already knowing the answer himself.

“DM3 fired a missile at the Choker before the battle began. It did nothing,” Takol nodded, the ideas coming together. “But when his robot self-detonated at pretty much the same part of the Choker’s body it actually got hurt. It bled!”

“The question is…” Kramen proposed, “are the self-destruct explosives that much stronger than a missile?”

“Or was the Choker weaker?” Takol deduced the other logical possibility.

“Why would it be weaker?”

“Because of its own spit attack,” Takol concluded. “Because it wasn’t an attack to begin with, but a very violent barf! The thing Lord punched was the Choker’s uvula, so it couldn’t help but puke. That’s why it cried out in pain while it was puking!”

“Precisely what I thought,” Kramen nodded, satisfied. “And do remember that the Choker cried out in pain as it retched, not immediately after Lord punched the weak spot. It was not injured by Lord’s strike, but by the vomiting provoked by it. The Choker is not immune to his own corrosive secretions. My theory is that, despite causing pain, the vomit does little more than weaken the Choker’s hide…”

“But that’s enough to hurt the bastard with an exploding mech,” Takol smiled deviously. “Heh, quite the discovery, huh?”

“Are we done, though?” Kramen asked. “Have we not learned anything else?”

Takol squinted, replaying every moment of the fight. The tail swing, the rocky rain, Lord climbing the Choker, the vomit, the explosions, but he failed to see anything else worth mentioning, so he simply shook his head in surrender.

“Are you certain?” Kramen provoked again. “You are thinking of the fight, aren’t you? Try broadening your horizons. Don’t think of what happened, but do reflect on what didn’t.”

“I have no idea what you’re…” Takol stopped, then parted his lips as understanding illuminated his features. “Ah!”

“Go on…”

“Why did the Choker find Gurm and Serry in three minutes, but it took almost half an hour for Lord an DM to run into it?” Takol asked.

“The right question,” Kramen conceded. “But there are more aspects to it. Can you see them?”

“Yeah…” Takol nodded.  “Even after the Choker saw DM, it didn’t attack. It only moved after DM fired at it. But he was aggressive towards Serry and Gurm. Why?”

“Good question…” Kramen’s smile grew wider by the second. “Care to risk an answer?”

“It has to do with dark-matter, doesn’t it?” Takol asked.

Kramen nodded. “I do believe so, even though it’s still just a theory. Do remember that this abyss, like this entire world, is heated and powered by irradiated dark-matter. The creatures here are a product of dark-matter effects over evolution, the Choker included.

“Now think of how Gurm and Serry moved through the abyss. Gurm was constantly freezing time to facilitate their jumps and speed up their journey. That is dark-matter manipulation. Serry, too, was using dark-matter to freeze the mist into bridges, blocks and stairs. I think the Choker sensed that.”

“And it made him angry…” Takol completed. “Or hungry.”

“Indeed,” Kramen nodded. “Think about it. The Choker could have gone around Serry’s icy structures time and again, but instead it chose to chew through them. Why?”

“Because she infuses her ice with dark-matter!” Takol understood. “And that’s why the Choker ate Gurm’s staff, too, it had a diamond of pure dark-matter on top.”

“And after the staff was eaten and Serry, who created dark-matter structures, was dead, the Choker just left,” Kramen concluded. “Now think of today. Neither Lord nor DM3-C4 possess dark-matter abilities, so the Choker did not anticipate their presence, it could not locate them and only ever felt motivated to fight them after they had attacked it! Not only that, it gave up on the fight as soon as it verified that DM3’s robot body, the one responsible for the original attack, was no longer a threat.”

Takol nodded with a wide grin stamped with curiosity and intrigue.

“Okay,” the lizard said. “But what exactly do we do with this information?”

“Hopefully nothing,” Kramen answered with a sarcastic smirk. “I would rather not need to fight a Choker. Ever. But it does teach us a very important lesson.”

“Which is?”

“One Choker is worth two players, but a team is made up of more than just whoever is on the scene. A team is the sum of the experiences of all its members, no matter whether they are present or not. Sharing knowledge and insights is just as important as being a cohesive force in battle, if not more so.”

“And that’s something I can do,” Takol glanced at his friend. “Even if I’m not technically part of the team.”

“True…” Kramen nodded, then clasped his friend’s shoulder. “But don’t fool yourself. You are part of the team.”