The caravans rolled to a stop, with the sun barely halfway to its apex, only intermittently shining through a heavily overcast sky. Rain was imminent, by the smell of the air. The settlement of Safe Harbor was out of view now, hidden behind a low rise. At a stately speed, they’d traveled almost due north to a tiny little offshoot of what had been Searsport, known as North Searsport. It was a ghost town now, having been consumed completely by the field dungeon, and the riders and mercenaries guarding the wagons took the opportunity to stretch tight muscles, and aching backsides as they dismounted. Armored feet shed their protective covers to liberate cramped toes and insteps.
A casual observer might have mistaken the caravan for being relaxed, but the opposite was true. These were the actions of seasoned travelers translating from a state of relaxed transit through easy country to a band of hardened veterans preparing for war. In a few hours’ time, the caravan was going to be moving at a rapid pace, leaving behind the only major settlement within a week’s travel, the next being almost three times that in good road conditions.
Getsome was doing some last-minute preparation for the side project of their contractor, which was dubbed by the party leader: Operation Clean House.
Alexander had already gone through the plan with Mark earlier, while he recovered from being deliciously used the night before. The leader of his designated field team of monster slayers was making certain that all his members knew the drill. They had four minor field dungeons to clear today, and they were to do the do and be on the move toward Falcon’s Rest, Alexander’s new old home, before midafternoon. It was a tight timeline. Mark was explaining the plan for the third time.
“First dungeon, grassland derived from the realm Nemeta, it’s on the tame side. Direwolves, Porcu-badgers, Grass Vipers, field boss Shieling Ceratops. Direwolves like to flank, remember that. Porcu-badgers can fling spines from the tail, I will be pulling aggro to keep them sending those spines into my shield, do not preempt my pulls or you get to pull spines out of your own meat. Grass Vipers are constrictors, no poison, not a serious threat unless one gets its mouth over your head or manages to throw coils around your neck.”
Each of these statements was accompanied by Hilde using her Mirage Caster abilities to create an image of each creature. The briefing wasn’t for the sake of the entire caravan, but most of them were in attendance when the light show started anyhow. Knowledge was power, and the humans that survived the Pulse coveted power, because those who hadn’t, died for lack of it.
Mark indicated the illusion mage to flip to the next “slide” of the presentation. Cervantes was making a loud t’chick sound when she changed images, mostly for the hell of it. Alexander found himself wishing he could have so few visible fucks to give. Alas, he was not blessed in this manner. His burden to carry was dissecting every single last thing, figuring out which parts he could influence, and then being able to approximate forgetting about the rest. Cervantes, the lucky devil, just skipped to that last part. Maybe it was the confidence. The Latin man with coal black eyes and a ready smile, was confident that he was immortal, so long as Hilde stood at his side. That he hadn’t been proven wrong yet was just more reason to continue as he had.
Alexander’s distraction with the tuning fork sword carrying warrior caused him to miss the discussion about the field boss, but it was irrelevant. He was the one who had gathered the intel on the monster initially for Getsome, using his time with the Guild to its fullest. A profitable arrangement, his gifts for their resources.
Alexander Gerifalte was an Entropic Venator. His chaos magic had the effect that it degraded almost anything it encountered, sort of like an acid, but acting on a more fundamental level than simple oxidation of atoms. Entropy magic eroded the organization of energy, which included the defensive resistance to damage innate to living things since the Pulse, known as Soak.
Soak, typically represented to analysis skills as a percentage, represented a degree of damage nullification. Swing an axe into a log to split it without Soak, it split cleanly in two along the grain. Swing the same axe, with the same stroke, into a log with fifty percent Soak and you only managed to start a split in the log, the axe head biting but not splitting the wood. Swing a third time into a log with seventy percent Soak, and the axe head bounced off the log, leaving only a small cut to mar the surface of the wood.
Many boss monsters were characterized by a high vitality, which gave them a large amount of health, typically observed as rapid healing, multiple hearts, redundant nervous systems, two sets of lungs, self-sealing blood vessels, poison resistance, that kind of thing. They also had Soak values of at least fifty percent. That meant that, unless you had some serious firepower, you had to chew the boss creatures down, giving them time to employ whatever tools they had in their arsenal of post Pulse foreign reality horseshit. Alexander’s magic though, it essentially ignored Soak, and the damage it inflicted was virtually unhealable. His was a mana that was seemingly designed to destroy magical creatures.
It was what he had asked for, all those months ago, when first he made contact with the mind of the planet.
Gaia had rejected his request to turn it all back. Time could not be reversed. But his second demand was to know the rules and to be able to break them. To know the rules, he was granted Greater analyze, the vastly upgraded variant of the skill that permitted a being to view the properties and qualities of things in the world. He could examine the blue scrollwork indices that described monsters, people, beasts, plants, and materials, as long as he was concentrating on one thing in particular. He couldn’t look at a solution of ocean water and get a detailed analysis of salt, for example, because he wasn’t looking directly at the salt crystals. To break those rules, he was given a core resonant with Chaos magic, Entropy. An offensive magic that held no defensive properties, and only had the ability to destroy, especially things that relied upon magic and Soak to defend themselves.
There was a price for this. Alexander had nearly zero Soak himself. Five percent, a measly, almost insignificant quantity. Brigitte had described him, in her own indelicate way, as “playing on hard mode”, which was not altogether a wrong way to think of it. Alexander had nearly no buffer for things that tried to kill him. He fought against them as a more or less entirely mundane human, where most Matriculated had somewhere between twenty and thirty percent, with the particularly defensive classes raising that substantially, some into the sixties. Hard mode indeed.
It was amusing to him at the moment, the upside, the detail that made him sought after by the Guilds, was that Alexander could kill boss monsters effectively solo. His skills made boss hunting relatively painless, the bigger, the better. That was his long-term value. The short term was that he built a working steam engine, based on designs in his father’s library, which he then used to retrofit an industrial power hammer and a few other machine shop tools. That got him on board quickly, but once they had their craftsmen working with industrial equipment his usefulness was his chaos magic. A usefulness outweighed by one stupid, untended, unguarded, maybe trying to kill people dungeon heart.
A disappointed shake of his head cleared the bitter thought.
His attitude brightened with the reminder that, even though he’d lost an incredible opportunity to work with the settlement big wigs for a chunk of the similarly big monies, the boss here wasn’t going to be a problem.
This dungeon’s crystal guardian was a creature that looked like a triceratops made of woven grass. It could disassemble itself and hide amongst the tall grass of the dungeon, becoming nearly indistinguishable from the surrounding environment. A fire could force it to assume its shape so a Molotov was required equipment, if you didn’t have a class that could start fires. When it wasn’t hidden, it was a big target, not that fast, and, as long as you didn’t let it ensnare you with woven grass vines to pull you inside it, where it would digest you in some gnarly acid, it wasn’t a threat. Guilds harvested the monster once every three days, when the Phoenix sun restored the field bosses from dungeons whose cores were not destroyed.
“And that should about cover it.” Mark finished his debriefing, examining the faces of the attending adventurers to be sure they were attentive.
The barely twenty-year old leader of Getsome launched immediately into the next item on the agenda.
“The second dungeon is a nice little volcanic island about a quarter mile off the coast, Muspelheim, of course, and it’s mostly imps. A few salamanders when you get closer to the central cone. Every now and then the cone spits up lava elementals that can be dicey if you have to get close to them. Dame Sanchez, can your grace handle these, if you would be so good?” He asked, handling their water mage’s eccentric demands of propriety with ease.
A hand to the lace at her throat, as if offended that any would think her shirking, Dame Sanchez, purred, “But of course! Noblesse oblige, my fair peasants.”
If she hadn’t been so violently frustrating to deal with, Dame Sanchez would have been one of the most sought-after members of any Guild around. She was, however, completely out of her gourd, cosplaying a Victorian era duchess of Cornwall or something similar.
Mark Ross of Getsome was virtually the only person in Safe Harbor who could communicate effectively with her, courtesy of his background in classical theater. A well-read guy was Mark, with Shakespear’s complete works, along with dozens of others packed away in his noodle. He could speak the lingo required to get the Dame on board. His status as an Anchor tank was well deserved, and Alexander brought up the information on the young party leader.
Mark Ross
Class:
Burning Legionnaire
Status:
Fresh, active
Soak: 50%
LifeForce/Armor
Head
Mana: 100%
Might
16(+5)
Height
5’6”
LifeForce/Armor
Left Arm
23/25 slash/impact resistance
LifeForce/Armor
Right Arm
Grace
15(+5)
Weight
168lbs
18/45 slash/pierce resistance
Steel Corinthian Crested Helm
18/30 slash/pierce resistance
Impetus
11(+5)
Age
20
Aluminum Plate Vambrace
LifeForce/Armor
Chest
Aluminum Plate Manica
Cogitation
15
Core
Ruby, ceylon
Carbon Steel/Oak Kite Shield
30/35 slash/pierce/flame resistance
Spring Steel Knight’s Broadsword
Wisdom
18
Origin
Gaia
LifeForce/Armor
Left Leg
Tool Steel Lorica
LifeForce/Armor
Right Leg
Ingenuity
13
Sapient Race:
Human-2rd Tier (Jann)
24/30
LifeForce/Armor
Abdomen
24/30
Durability
25(+10)
Tool Steel Plate Armor
30/35 slash/pierce/flame resistance
Tool Steel Plate Armor
Valor
25(+10)
Tool Steel Lorica
Traits
Centurion, Solid build, Unwavering, Gaia’s child
Skills
Lesser firebrand, Bolster, Lesser Shield rush
Arcana
Incendiary counter stance, Minor Heatsink
“Alright, that handles the main types of nasties. It’s hot, there’s sulfur fumes and a few toxic gas pools that’ll kill you if you bend down and breathe in them, but, really, the terrain is the biggest danger related to the boss. It’s a dragon, but a small one, barely a juvenile. Even so, the flame breath melted an anchor tanks’ great shield a few months back, so don’t let it corner you. Ben and Brig should be able to get through its hide and into its vitals. Alexander, you’re good for softening it up, right?” the Burning Legionnaire inquired.
Stirred from his own thoughts by his name, he back tracked the conversation happening in the background of his brain for a second before nodding.
“The little red dragon? Yeah, not a problem.” He confirmed, “I was with a hunt team that took it down when it was discovered, while the Guild was testing my abilities. One, two Chaos strikes and your spears go right through the scales, they’re not much tougher than alligator hide without the magic that infuses them.”
The adventurers were visibly relieved at that. Dungeon intel was one thing, they had plenty of information about what to expect. What they lacked was first hand experience, given that these dungeons were sole property of the Guilds. Alexander decided to go ahead and poke that particular bear.
“Guilds are going to have guards posted to keep non Guildies off the premises. What’s the plan for making sure they don’t cause trouble?” the young hunter pumped the leader of the party.
Mark indicated Hilde Mirage Caster and Cervantes Reverberation Highlander and they gave a mock salute as he outlined his plan, “These two. You got them for their ability to confuse and distract the nasties, yeah? Well, Hilde is going to mask us and Cervantes is going to muffle us, and we’re going to have Shiv knock them out. He says he can stop the blood flow in their carotids temporarily, should have them unconscious within a few seconds. Right Shiv?”
“Da.” Shiv answered simply, looking a little nervous, but not so bad for a guy who’d never been out in the Green.
From there, there was one last recap of the next two dungeons, but Alexander was checked out fully now, contemplating the response of the Guilds to having the most lucrative of their operations yanked out from under them.
Short answer: They would be pissed.
A lot of the Matriculated who had done real adventuring outside the city would be quietly relieved, so many active field dungeons meant there was always a chance, no matter how well patrolled the lands, that something nasty your way would come. Not as much anymore, not since the adventurer teams and Guilds had gotten organized this summer past, but there were always kinks to iron out, and kinks involving denizens of the contested zones, frequently, involved people being put in the ground, if you could find enough of them after the fact.
That wouldn’t matter not one damn to the men and women at the top ranks of the Guilds. They would be out for blood. If not for the Contract, Alexander had no doubt that they’d draft immediate orders to have everyone in this convoy whacked. Even with the contract, they would probably quietly make arrangements for “accidents” to befall anyone who came back around.
The caravan was fully intending to be, if not a one-way trip, then to be making wide detours on its next journey south. Just as well, nobody wanted to risk the Belfast hyper dungeon hawking up some fresh horror. New Hampshire and Vermont overland routes were slower than sticking to the coast, but less riddled with monsters. Foreign ones, anyway. Gaia had plenty of tricks up her own sleeves.
Ten minutes of wagon rattling later, the party made it to their first destination of the journey, the site of the Nemata Field dungeon, property of number three Guild, Harbor’s Pillars, in what remained of the one stop sign “town” of North Searsport. Not a town so much as a subdivision for the locals who lived on the East side of Swan Lake. Nothing of the intersection of roads and houses was left except for a large plain of chest high grass, rolling across the terrain between the small lake and a large pond called Halfmoon. Alexander had never even seen the area that had been erased by the contested zone, it was one of those types of places that Maine seemed to generate from nothing.
Two Guildies, looking initially quite bored in their armor, watched with deceptive focus the wagon train that was passing by, headed for distant lands. They knew the score with these wagons, who rode them, and where they were headed. Darkening expressions and a few shifts almost seemed to indicate that they wanted to make trouble, except that they were outnumbered some three to one by seasoned adventurers that owed allegiance to no Guild.
Mercenaries followed the Contract, and that was all they were obliged to follow. Making trouble was a good way to get your pretty face all dinged up.
What these two didn’t know was that the convoy of wagons had actually stopped a hundred feet ago, and that they were watching an illusion of the wagon train, while a small party crept up on them unnoticed. Hilde could only maintain the optical cloak and the image of the wagon train rolling, copied from riding ahead and watching from the same perspective that the dungeon’s guards would have, for a short span. It was difficult work, and drained her mana. Cervantes was gently tapping his tuning fork sword against his armor, faint ringing tones magically deadening the sound the party created while they closed in.
Ben had one in a full nelson strangle hold that locked in so tightly the man was unconscious before he knew what was happening. The second dropped as if clubbed, with Shiv applying the magical equivalent of a Vulcan nerve pinch with his long, delicate fingers. Both of the Guildies were then treated with a sleeping tonic that would have them out for a solid hour and a half and in no condition to chase thereafter. Benadryl, in high doses, was a sonofabitch.
With that, Getsome was ready to begin their play.
Alexander had Singer at the ready, an arrow already nocked, and tension on the string to be ready to draw. He was off to the left, about fifty feet apart from the cluster that was a triangle with Mark in the apex, Ben on one corner and Brig on the other, their long weapons ready to intercept whatever rushed to meet their Anchor tank and give it indigestion. Behind them, at a five-foot dispersion from the triangular vanguard, stood Shiv and Dame Sanchez. Shiv was trembling a little. The Dame looked lost, as if she’d stepped off her carriage and taken a wrong turn. That was fine. Normal stuff for a fledgling on his first run of the Green, and a lady who’d probably had a psychotic break from the stress of the Pulse.
Mark and the rest would see them through.
His job was to keep anything from sneaking up on them, and to bait any ambushers toward his position. A lone straggler always looked more tempting than the armed cluster to the hostile entities of the contested zones. The moment they crossed into the contested zone, he felt it, like mouthwash applied to your skin, even through the clothes. Once inside, he saw the flash of warning from the strange blue scrolls that communicated with his mind.
Nemeta Contested Space Entered!
And, just like that, they were in a parallel slice of reality. Part their own native world of Gaia. Part wherever or whatever Nemeta was. The alien landscape was lush, the grass underfoot, interspersed with leafy ferns, bouncy sphagnum, and, in the distance, not to be seen from the outside, a vast forest that spread from horizon to horizon. No one had yet ventured into the boughs of that forest, not anyone that had lived to get word back to Safe Harbor. The thought of doing so sent instinctive shivers of dread down even a brave man. The dim wood distant terrified Alexander.
Instantly, the postures of the veteran members became that odd catlike combination of tense and fluid. Ready to move, but not rigid. While not allowed to take part in the spoils of the Guilds, Getsome, the two newbies aside, was a team of professionals. Kite shield forward, Mark led the group, eyes scanning beneath his Corinthian helmet, its mohawk crest of iridescent blue monster feathers marking him for all to see.
Onward marched the vanguard formation, and Alexander turned his attention to the surroundings, moving slightly ahead of the rest of the party, fulfilling his role as scout. Stalk, a skill to smooth his motions and produce a more low-profile movement through terrain, was well developed and Alexander cruised ahead of the group, mostly silently, and seeming to blur into the surrounding grass shadows a bit to outside observers. So long as he kept to a fast, sliding sort of sub jog, he would be difficult to notice for things with roughly human level vision. Against a potent sense of smell, heat sensitivity, or some alternate kind of sensory, the skill did nothing that good situational awareness and experience hunting wouldn’t.
The dense layers of grass and foliage, green on green, in different shades, made seeing too far ahead of the party impossible. Even for his eyes, the wall of layered grass blades was nearly solid. Without a rise in terrain from which to view the surroundings, he’d have to work his way significantly ahead of the party to scout the presence of threats. In this aspect, Melinda’s Luminous pathfinder class was more specifically tailored to be effective. The trade off for this deficiency was offense, which Alexander had in spades.
Sound ahead stopped him; he’d learned true caution with savage panthers jumping from the trees as his teachers. He raised a fist in the classical squad sign language for halt, before freezing completely. Soft whispers of rustled grass, scuffling of footfalls on the soft earth became louder for the lack of his party members’ noise. Whatever it was, it was either large, or not particularly concerned with being heard.
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Alexander listened for a count of ten, chewing his lip the entire time while he considered whether increasing the distance between himself and the vanguard was worth the additional information. If it was the Direwolf, which hunted anywhere between alone or up to groups of six or seven, then staying close to the group was better, less chance of his being isolated by a flanking canine monster. If it was the other most likely option, a Porcui-badger, then going ahead was advantageous, the better to direct any spines the little buggers might throw away from the party.
Decisions, decisions, Little Falcon, he mused. Forward.
Confirming the enemy was a scout’s job, and he would not shirk his duty to the party.
Careful, padding steps took him ahead, and he disappeared into the grass with a final finger raised to track a circle to let the rest of the team know he was making a loop to check the area out.
Within fifty feet, he had his answer. Soft snuffling and a menacing growl said a Direwolf had picked up his scent against the foliage.
Now for the fun part, the hunter remarked to himself, drily.
Singer rose to ready and Alexander pulled the string back to his cheek, taking small comfort from the hum of the stave. One last adjustment to drift toward the sound of a growling wolf about three hundred pounds and as big as a black bear. Release.
“Doomph” sang the bowstring, a bass note that sent the arrow streaking into the grass ahead.
A sound like meat being punched was superseded by angry yowls of monster dog pain that, blessedly, cut off briefly. Alexander’s arrow had done its job. The chorus of three more canine voices rising up from his one, three, and five o’clock said that he had done his as well. Mission accomplished; he’d found the monsters.
The youth turned on his heel and sprinted back toward the waiting party, with a clear call of “Three Direwolves, bearing one and three and five! Hot pursuit!” as he ran.
Rustling grass gave warning that the monstrous hounds were closing faster than he could sprint. With his vision blocked against longer shots against moving foes, he shouldered his bow and withdrew a scalpel bladed spear with a sword point, called a naginata, from his back harness. Steam poured off the instrument as the ice enchantment on it condensed the air that touched the naked metal of the blade.
Alexander flushed with adrenaline at the sound of sudden steps behind and juked, chest low. A sailing lupine form flew overhead, jaws sweeping for where his neck had been, coming from his eight o’clock. The bastard hadn’t made a sound, cunningly letting its packmates distract the prey. Alexander’s feet planted in the soft turf and he thrust the spear at the second wolf, the one he’d known about, using the power of his rotation to lend momentum to the blade.
A slavering form caught mid pounce pushed hard on the young man, and he lowered the butt end of the spear to the dirt, where it grounded to absorb the Direwolf’s momentum without his being tackled. It was one of the fundamentals of spear fighting, receiving a charge with the ground, and Alexander was a devout believer in fundamentals. The impaled wolf clawed and gnawed at the haft of the polearm. Golem High steel held easily, barely scuffing from the predator’s weapons.
Behind him, Getsome arrived in time to take on the remaining beasts, Ben and Brig’s long bladed weapons leading. A low rumbling of threat turned into a yelp when the Steel Heavy Knight plowed into the thicket ahead, surging in front of Mark’s planted feet, his shielded position setting the fallback point. Only a second later, and the big man returned, quick stepping backward to keep his poleaxe at ready, his helmet and armor splashed with wolf blood, including the brown skin of his face. The man was smiling because killing monsters was his life’s purpose.
Brig took a bounding leap, boosted by a lift of the earth beneath her feet that spring boarded her upward. The remaining wolf that surged forward to hit Alexander’s flank was met by Mark’s shield, brought to a halt against the immovable kite shield. Futile biting and clawing abruptly ended as it was harpooned from above, the full weight of the lancer woman pinning it to the earth through its chest. Angry red flames rose like a torch as Mark lifted his sword and decapitated the immobile wolf, its thick neck cauterized by searing hot metal. Brig lowered herself to the ground and the triangular formation was fully reset to receive enemies.
The dispatch of both Direwolves took only a handful of seconds.
The first leaping wolf had barely had time to set its paws and turn, its packmates dispatched by the practiced warriors, before a beam of pressurized water hit it between the eyes and pulverized its brains, along with most of its skull.
“Oh, joy!” Cheered Dame Sanchez, “How long has it been since my last fox hunt?! You peasants do have the loveliest jaunts for a lady.”
She was batty, but Alexander couldn’t doubt her raw firepower. As long as she was directing it at the monsters instead of “keeping the peasants in line” he was grateful.
With that, the first test of Getsome + 1’s goal of cleansing the field dungeon was over. No injuries, ten seconds of combat, at most, and five dead Direwolves. Not bad.
“Do we harvest, or are we skipping?” Alexander called out his question to Mark.
From his days before meeting any human soul for almost a year, Alexander was almost compulsive about cleaning kills and collecting anything that might be useful. Direwolves weren’t particularly valued, but wolf pelts could be tanned, and the sturdy fur was warm. Their cores added a small bit of penetrating power to a blade point. Most wouldn’t waste the effort of enchanting for a minor improvement to their main weapon, but Alexander didn’t put them on his main arms. Since he could do the work himself, he used the wolf cores brought out of the dungeons, gotten for relatively cheap where he didn’t harvest them himself, to give his arrows extra punch. His fingers inched toward his belt knife.
“Skipping, you hoarder,” Mark replied, sheathing his cooling sword as he did, “Grab the cores, I know you put them into your arrows, but leave the rest. We’re on a timetable, which you helped make, I might add.”
A nod of acknowledgement was all he wasted before diving in to carve the cores free from the corpses. Five more arrows with deceivingly high penetration, coming up, he remarked to himself.
They moved on swiftly from that point. A group of the spine bearing badgers, rushing out from a hidden den, met a similar fate as did the lupine monsters. For his enthusiasm applying a finishing thrust from his long fighting dagger, Shiv got four quills to the stomach from a tail he failed to secure under his boot.
“Augh! Stinging little bitch!” He cursed, staggering back, his hands grasping at his midsection.
Brig and Mark took the cursing Slavic man by the arms and Ben drew the brown, black, and white whirled, boney spines, barbed like crochet needles, which produced more high-pitched screaming as each was pulled. At the end of it, the hard quills, three inches of them reddened by his blood, were out of nasty looking wounds in the guts of their new healer. Alexander and the Dame kept watch for hostiles that might be drawn by the sound or smell of human blood.
Shiv, trembling from the pain and adrenaline, cupped his hands over the wounds and concentrated. From a distance, Alexander watched the meat below the hands shiver and writhe as the surgeon magically repaired the internal damage and stemmed the bleeding. In a few seconds, he was moving on to the next puckered hole, and then to the next, hands steadier with each application of his healing skills.
“At least we know our healer can.” Ben chirped, a criticism and praise wrapped up together in his sarcasm, and they released the man, who stood slightly pale, but no longer shaking so much.
“Da, and is not feeling so pleasant, so do not make habit of needing it.” Shiv responded with a grimace, his accent being a little thicker for discomfort.
That byplay aside, the group moved smoothly through the dungeon. It was a bunny. Almost anticlimactic, all the way to the field boss. The boss itself fell with almost no trouble at all, Alexander chucked a volley of chaos strikes into the rhino sized bundle of grass tentacles and Mark, employing his class to its fullest, set the creature ablaze. Green though its body was, the Burning Legionnaire was its nemesis.
Ben hacked away the stilled woven material that made up the whicker dinosaur and pulled free the glittering green core. It was a prize, available once every three days, and could be used to passively grow thick, lush grass. That might not sound like much, but flax was a type of grass, and linen was becoming the most common type of clothing, now that access to raw cotton, silk, and basically any textile manufacturing was off the table.
As it turned out, Alexander wasn’t the only nerd with a library. Some big brain folk in Safe Harbor realized the implications of the boss cores, when most deemed them useless, and set up their own linen mill. A cultivation class was hired on to further enhance the growth of strong flax, at a rapid turnover. Monster bone, ground fine, acted to supplement the soil under those uber farmer’s traits, skills, and arcana, increasing the odds of the seeded plant itself adopting post Pulse properties. Around the time Alexander was being escorted back to civilization, they managed to create a super flax, which the weaver classed linen gurus used to corner the enhanced clothing market with an amazingly durable, breathable, die taking, and slightly armored fabric.
It warmed the cockles of the young man’s heart to see that principles of market economy were encouraging specialization and entrepreneurship in these troubled days.
A heavy bribe of a warehouse guard may have permitted Alexander to acquire some of the enhanced grass seed for his own uses. He didn’t have the skilled labor to raise that seed with the speed of the agricultural specialist classes, but he was confident that Entling blood enriched soil would do some heavy lifting on that front. Stalwart linen, processed under the machines that he and Victor would design, was going to become a staple of Falcon’s rest.
Mark, as party leader and field boss shit kicker for this dungeon, was granted the honor of putting his sword into the green, vine woven heart of this slice of perverted reality.
Immediately, the world around Alexander faded and his mind was filled by a familiar voice.
WORTHY! RETURNED! WALK THE PATH!
No more did the resonant voice say, no questions did it answer. Notably, the voice did not ask his desire. Maybe it already knew his desires by this point. Or maybe, worthy he might be, but this feat did not merit a boon of choice.
Surrounding sights returned to relevance, and he took in the glazed over expressions of his fellow dungeon conquerors. There was no pattern that he was aware of for what Gaia’s voice said to those who struck down the crystal hearts of the dungeons. Touching them seemed to only barely unlock the transformation of being that distinguished classed, Matriculated humans, from the Normals. It was the difference between Tier I and Tier II humanity, each of whom acquired an aspect or lineage to go with their humanity. These, as well as personal inclinations, experiences, and talents, also played a major role in what class would emerge from the person. Killing a dungeon though, granted a much more significant enhancement.
For Getsome, this was their first slaying of a crystal heart, the first victory over a contested zone.
No doubt, they were experiencing some kind of major shift. That was another reason for rotating out members and slaying the cores. Going Upta meant being outside the frontier of humanity, limited as even that was. They would need all the strength they could muster if they wanted to survive it. Still more to prosper.
He turned his enhanced perception of the nature of things, his little window into the truth of Gaia, on himself, bringing up the blue scrollwork that defined him.
AlexanderGerifalte
Class:
Entropic Venator
Status:
active
Soak: 5%
Head
Mana: 60%
Might
15(+5)
Height
6’4”
LifeForce/Armor
Left Arm
15/25 slash/impact resistance
LifeForce/Armor
Right Arm
Grace
15(+5)
Weight
182lbs
13/28 slash resistance
Highsteel combat helmet
13/28 slash resistance
Impetus
18(+5)
Age
18
Highsteel Splint mail
LifeForce/Armor
Chest
Highsteel Splint mail
Cogitation
17(+5)
Core
Black Fire Opal, brilliant
Winter’s Breath (re-forged)
17/32 slash/pierce resistance
Winter’s Breath (re-forged)
Wisdom
13
Origin
Gaia
LifeForce/Armor
Left Leg
Highsteel Splint mail
LifeForce/Armor
Right Leg
Ingenuity
18(+5)
Sapient Race:
Human-2rd Tier (Shoggoth)
14/22 slash resistance
LifeForce/Armor
Abdomen
14/22 slash resistance
Durability
14(+5)
Highsteel Splinted Leg Armor
14/30 slash/pierce resistance
Highsteel Splinted Leg Armor
Valor
27(+15)
Highsteel Splint mail
Traits
Raptor gaze, Spatial adept, Back from the brink, Gaia’s child, Lethal, Warforger, Scholarship, Singular prominence
Skills
Baleful smite, Ruthless, Greater focus, Greater analyze, Stalk
Arcana
Greater entropic aura, Chaos strike
His abilities had plateaued since the end of summer. Time spent rehashing the same inventions and techniques he employed before arriving in Safe Harbor had increased his familiarity, his polish, but had not led to true growth. Yet another reason to be well away from that place, it was stifling his potential.
Here now, the first advancement since arriving in Safe Harbor, and one that was incredibly useful. His entropic field was enhanced, had risen to its next stage. The youth concentrated on this alteration to his scroll and received a description of the arcana.
Greater entropic aura: intensify the dispersal of ongoing magical effects and disrupts the casting of new instances of magic. Mage burn added to aura in which manipulation of mana depletes health as the body experiences a back lash of organizing its mana forcefully.
Horizontal power gain was good. Instead of something new, which he had to learn to implement and train to employ in combat, under duress, or make into muscle memory, the qualitative improvement of his ability to create a field of disruption was far more immediately useful. Unfortunately, this ability held not a little bit of anti-synergy in group tactics. The aura did not permit targeting; thus, he could not use it while close to his teammates. Even so, Alexander Gerifalte welcomed the arcana. It would accelerate his role as an anti-mage and big game hunter, breaking down monsters’ active magical defenses and Soak with even more rapidity. Mage burn would now also punish their attempts to employ the resonant magic of their core, hurting them directly for wielding their strange powers.
A solid improvement.
Not but a few seconds later, the far away stares of his companions faded. Trained senses heard the approach of wagons, as the disappearance of the dungeon cleared a shortcut from the roads leading around its influence.
Granny was approaching at a steady jog, deceptively light on her feet for all that huge pack wobbling around as she ran. She outpaced the wagons easily and came to the former center of the contested zone.
“Heeyyooo!!” She called, waving unnecessarily on account of she was standing right in front of him.
“How’d it go? No problems?” The woman asked, panting slightly from the long run.
Her speed and dexterity were good, and her strength more than adequate, but she gassed out quickly. Gathering classes weren’t made to exert themselves at full go for long periods of time. Slow and steady was their bent.
Alexander answered, seeing that his fellows were still somewhat stupefied. Having the planet speak into your think meats directly was a little much to get used to. No doubt their classes had shifted significantly and the changes were absorbing their attention.
“We’re all good, Granny. Minor wounds, but Shiv healed himself, so no problem. It went just like Mark said it would, like clockwork. I even got a set of hair needles for you!” He said, offering a cluster of a couple dozen Porcui-badger spines to the small, brown woman.
She instantly shoved a pair of them into the complex rat nest of hair that she claimed was a bun, winking at him roguishly and exclaiming, “Nice! Hypodermic Hairpins!”
The spines were, in fact, hollow. Since the monsters that bore them did not have venom, that was an oddity. Whatever, apparently Granny had plans. Alexander saw the Asian woman grow thoughtful. Uh oh.
“I know that look!” He accused, pointing an accusing finger at the gatherer, he could feel it, she was about to make him do work for free.
“What?!” Granny Nguyen, lied, knowing her con was up before it started, “I was just thinking that-”
“And here it is, more pro bono work!” Alexander complained, cutting her off and covering his face with a gloved hand, before looking at the relentless scrounger of free shit.
Last time, it was the titanium kukri, because “It’s dangerous to go alone, your wingman needs to able to protect herself.” And he’d spent three days melting down titanium cook ware from a tourist trap hiking shop and wearing out his machining tools to make it.
“But it’s for a good cause! If I had a blow gun or something I could have poison darts, and your gatherer would be safe from all the mean whittle nasties, that want to feast on her sumptuous whittle-” the normally reserved and dignified woman started to writhe in an approximation of sexy, for the benefit of creatures related to Cthulhu, perhaps.
“Stop that wiggling, and never do it again, and I’ll think about it.” Alexander bargained, eager to never witness such a sight in his life.
Granny flashed a two fingered victory pose and cried “Done! Fool! Granny Nguyen wins again!”
The fact that that rhymed just aggravated him further, and he turned to escape, the distraction of the rest of Getsome coming out of their meet the planet funk covering for him. Now he had a damned blow gun to make. Phooey! The con artist resumed the guise of a world weary and wise sage, and he was certain that no one would believe him when he tried to reveal her true nature.
“Holy shit balls!” Brig exclaimed, pearly whites displayed in a childlike grin, “What a rush!”
“You ain’t lying.” Ben confirmed, shaking his head at the experience.
Mark was quiet, considering. Probably worrying about what, if any, adjustments would have to be made to their tactics due to their upgrades.
The wagons rolled on, their wheels crushing down tall grass as the caravan closed in. They’d arrive in another four or five minutes. Some of the cargo was fragile, and the suspensions weren’t ideal, best not to take chances all had agreed.
Granny shamelessly pried, “Sharing is caring, what have you learned from the song of Gaia.”
She is so full of shit, Alexander commented internally, noting the subtle wink directed his way from the harvester classed woman.
Their party leader led the conversation.
“Now we know why Gerifalte has such a filled out set of abilities.” Mark said, eyebrows raised toward Alexander.
What? It wasn’t his choice to be left alone sandwiched between two dungeons. Both had spat up monsters to murder him, he hadn’t gone looking for trouble until it had already found him. Trouble had his GPS coordinates on weekly refresh it seemed like sometimes.
“I got an upgrade in tier of my flame brand skill from lesser to the real deal,” The Burning Legionnaire reported with suppressed excitement, “Same with a couple of skills. Nothing new, but a serious increase in efficiency. I want a status update from everybody unless you want Alexander to give you the MRI treatment and he can do the honors.”
Their party leader got some eye rolls for that last jab, which, unfairly, included Alexander. He couldn’t help it that Greater analyze made you feel like you were getting strip searched. It had an almost physical pressure. He avoided using it on people without asking, doing so won you no friends. He had inspected everybody here at one point or another though, so he was familiar with them. Getsome had used him to interview for members, as he was the only one they’d known with the ability that they’d trusted enough to do it and tell them everything truthfully. Yet another reason that Alexander had put them at the top of his list for hired help. He knew what they could do, and what they couldn’t. Better yet, they knew what they could do, and what they couldn’t, which meant they wouldn’t bite off more than they could chew and get everyone killed.
Ben spoke up, deep voice rough from hurry to not be subjected to another deep scan, “Got a new thing, can levitate metal objects. Don’t know how strongly, don’t know if I can use it to hold a shield or swing a weapon, or how much mana and attention it takes, and it won’t be something to experiment with in the field. Probably holds potential for later though.”
Brig, always open to new chances to indulge her crass sense of humor, turned to Alexander, and declared, “Our contractor has already abused his authority to delve all my deeps, if you know what I mean. Go ahead, Alexander, get with the probing.”
He sighed a little and inspected the japing lancer, cursing again his failure to resist her admittedly extensive charms.
Brigitte O’Conner
Class:
Lithic Lancer
Status:
Fresh, cautious
Soak: 20%
LifeForce/Armor
Head
Mana: 90%
Might
15(+5)
Height
6’6”
LifeForce/Armor
Left Arm
18/30 impact/crush resistance
LifeForce/Armor
Right Arm
Grace
12(+5)
Weight
166lbs
14/24 slash/stab resistance
Carbon Steel Illyrian Helm
14/24 slash/stab resistance
Impetus
13(+5)
Age
25
Aluminum Brigandine Harness and Spalder
LifeForce/Armor
Chest
Aluminum Brigandine Harness and Spalder
Cogitation
13(+5)
Core
Boulder Opal, half rose
21/35 slash/stab resistance
Winged Spear
Wisdom
16
Origin
Gaia
LifeForce/Armor
Left Leg
Carbon Steel Scale Mail
LifeForce/Armor
Right Leg
Ingenuity
14(+5)
Sapient Race:
Human-2rd Tier (Oread)
16/20 slash/stab resistance
LifeForce/Armor
Abdomen
16/20 slash/stab resistance
Durability
17(+5)
Hybrid Aluminum Leather Cuisses
18/30 slash/stab resistance
Hybrid Aluminum/Leather Cuisses
Valor
16(+15)
Carbon Steel Scale Mail
Traits
Earthen bulwark, Rage, Greater stamina, Gaia’s child
Skills
Full thrust, Leap, Lesser pole vault, Harden blade
Arcana
Lesser stone spear, Lesser shape stone
Compared to before her abilities had matured significantly, especially the ability that let her harden her weapons, imbuing them temporarily with the sturdiness of a matrix of earth magic. That one had jumped twice! Unlike a metal-based class, lithic magic couldn’t rearrange the material of a weapon itself, but, instead, wrapped around the entire object, like a netting that made it more solid. Her ability to move stone and main attacking skill that amplified the momentum of her spear thrusts had also improved.
He couldn’t prevent the joke that was coming as a result of this. He could see the mischief in Brig’s blue eyes, the eagerness to sully the air with her immaturity. So he beat her to it.
“It’s not so much, but Brig gets hard and thrusts better.” He said, with a clinical tone.
The ginger warrior put her armored hands on her armored hips and announced, “You bet I do!” to the amusement of the party. Most were already used to her locker room humor and disregard for the vaguely puritan notions for women's sexuality that sometimes pervaded folk's attitudes. Some were not.
Dame Sanchez sniffed and mumbled, “Brazen harlot.” which no one disputed.
Alexander worried that the sometimes-prissy attitude of the delusional Hydraulic mage and the free spirit that was their Lithic lancer would clash, but Brig took no offense. To nearly anything. She grinned smugly at the stuffy Duchess of Neverland and held her peace, unimpeachable in her confidence. Alexander hoped he some day learned her secrets to giving no fucks at all. While he was at it, he'd figure out the trick to Ben's unflappable always readiness, Mark's ability to pull people in under his umbrella, and Melinda's effortless insight into people that bordered mind reading. They each had their quirks, but they were the best, and they stood taller than most amongst the surviving humanity, in his opinion. He had some work to do to catch up to that.
“I guess that’s that.” Alexander summarized, moving things along.
“Hold on a second, what did our resident Chaos hunter get from that?” Melinda asked, and he forgot that he’d not revealed his gain.
A shrug, and he answered, “Greater Entropic Field.” And received disgusted looks from the rest of the party.
There was an exponential jump between the tier of abilities from their regular counterpart to the greater version. Simply killing monsters or going about your normal use of the ability or magic didn’t cut it. There had to be a significant change to the application or understanding of the skill to provide the oomph to clear that hurdle. Or. You had to kill a dungeon and drink of its power. Not many adventurers had done so, which put Getsome, and himself if he were being honest, ahead of most of their peers. And they would only widen that gap this week.
“Time’s a wasting,” Ben decreed, “Now that we know we’re getting our money’s worth, let’s go clean the coast.”
The party agreed, vehemently, and they moved on with a bounce in their step as soon as the wagons caught up.