Chapter 9: Luck, Bears, and a Glimmer of Hope

There is a specific type of scream reserved for moments when you realize you are about to be mauled by a very large, very angry, beehive-wearing bear. It's a scream that comes from the deepest, most primal part of your soul. Kenta and I produced a perfect, synchronized duet of this scream.

Then we ran.

We were not fast. We were exhausted, covered in sticky snail slime, and fueled by pure, unadulterated terror. The Dire Bear, on the other hand, was very fast. And very, very mad. The ground trembled with its thundering footsteps.

"This is it!" Kenta shrieked, stumbling over a root. "I'm gonna die in the tutorial area! That's the most pathetic death ever!"

"I've died seventeen times and this is still in the top five for 'most humiliating'!" I screamed back, my lungs burning.

The bear was gaining on us. I could smell its hot, foul breath. I could hear the buzzing of the angry bees still swarming around its head. We were going to be a light snack for a honey-crazed ursine menace. My next reincarnation was probably going to be as a sentient puddle of bear drool.

In a flash of absolute, world-ending panic, I had a stupid idea. It was a bad idea, born of desperation and a fundamental misunderstanding of how Kenta's skill worked. But it was the only idea I had.

I fumbled in my pouch for my flimsy bronze adventurer card and shoved it at Kenta.

"Do something!" I yelled over the roaring. "Synthesize! It's our only chance! Use your skill!"

Kenta, who was busy trying not to trip and die, looked at me like I was insane. "Synthesize what?! Our adventurer cards?! They're not skills! That's not how it works!"

"I don't care! Just do it!" I shrieked. The bear was close enough now that I could see the individual hairs on its snarling muzzle.

With nothing to lose, Kenta grabbed his own card. He held the two pathetic pieces of bronze together in his trembling hands, squeezed his eyes shut, and yelled the first word that came to mind. "SKILL SYNTHESIS!"

He tried to force all of his minuscule mana pool into the activation. The two adventurer cards began to glow with a faint, pitiful light. For a second, I thought it might actually work.

A small, text-box-like notification appeared in Kenta's vision, which I could also see.

[Notice: Invalid targets. Cannot synthesize items. Skill Synthesis requires two (2) 'skills' to be activated. User possesses only one (1) skill. Activation failed.]

My heart sank. It was a failure. We were dead.

But my LUCK stat had other plans.

The failed activation of a Divine-Grade skill, combined with my off-the-charts, reality-bending luck stat, created a cosmic hiccup. It was the metaphysical equivalent of dropping a penny into a supercomputer. A one-in-a-trillion quantum fluctuation occurred.

Far above us, in the upper atmosphere of Mundania, a small meteor was on a stable trajectory to harmlessly burn up on entry. That quantum hiccup, that tiny nudge from my luck stat, altered its path by 0.00001 degrees.

For us, on the ground, the result was far more dramatic. The sky ripped open. A screaming ball of fire descended from the heavens, trailing smoke and ozone. It was heading right for us.

"NOW A METEOR?!" Kenta screamed, shielding his head.

It didn't hit us. It hit the Dire Bear.

The impact was apocalyptic. There was a flash of blinding white light, a deafening BOOM that threw us off our feet, and a shockwave that flattened every tree in a hundred-foot radius.

When the dust settled, we were lying in the dirt, covered in soot, our ears ringing. The Dire Bear was gone. The angry bees were gone. In their place was a massive, smoking crater.

We stared, speechless, at the scene of devastation. We had survived. My stupid plan, filtered through my chaotic luck, had actually worked.

Kenta slowly pushed himself up and pointed a trembling finger towards the center of the crater. "What… is that?"

There, nestled in the cooling rock, was a glowing, crystalline object. It pulsed with a soft blue light. It was the heart of the meteor, miraculously intact. We stumbled over to it, our legs feeling like jelly. As Kenta reached out and touched it, the crystal dissolved into motes of light that flowed into his hand.

A new notification appeared in his vision.

[New Skill Acquired: Tame (Low-Grade)]

We looked at the notification. We looked at each other. The crater. The obliterated bear. The new skill.

Kenta now had two skills.

He could finally, after all this suffering, use his main ability. A slow grin spread across his face. "Akane," he said, his voice filled with a manic glee. "I think our luck is finally turning around."