Four hours later, still hurting like crazy but with seventeen of twenty-five Health, Noah was woken from a dead sleep by banging. He rolled over in his bed, wincing, and noted that he now had an injury penalty of two to all non-health stats, as well as a negative eight max Health penalty for a week.

He swung his feet over the solid metal bedframe and glanced blearily around the room. It took him a moment to remember where he was—in a room inside the apartment complex of his new card. At the moment, the small, ten-by-twelve room had a desk and a computer—that was lacking power—on one wall, and a bed on each of two other walls. The beds were metal boxes with a mattress and a single blanket. Noah had been sleeping in one, and Lika and Mok in the other.

As if his thought summoned her, Lika poked her head up. “What in the mud is going on?”

“I’ll handle it,” Noah said, climbing from the metal bed. It retracted into the wall behind him with a hydraulic hiss.

Noah caught a whiff of himself as he briefly stood. He smelled like stale blood, from his pants, and fear b.o. from everything else. I hope whoever is banging on my door isn’t anyone that cares about appearances.

Despite the insistent banging, Noah moved slowly, groggy and trying not to hurt himself both. Noah guessed that Health was more like ‘current ability to sustain blood loss and take a beating,’ while an injury meant damage that had settled in. Like he had fixed ongoing loss, but things weren’t working right.

It felt like his whole body wasn’t working right.

Noah reached the door and reached out to touch his hand to the pad next to the door. It irised open with a hiss that sounded almost exactly like the bed had.

Kevin St. Claire, leader of the ‘Remnants of Emporia,’ stared him in the face. He still had the bearing of a military man, and was six-foot-four of muscle. But his beard had grown in, his eyes were tired, and the police uniform he wore was ripped. He no longer looked quite like a recruiting poster. Beside him was Trevor.

“You called for me, Noah?” Kevin asked, his face set in an irritated scowl. “Now that you’ve won the realm, you think you can order me around?”

Noah blinked. “What?”

“We all saw the announcement, that you won the realm,” Kevin said.

“Oh… um, no, I wasn’t looking to order anyone around,” Noah responded, still groggy. “Sorry. I sent Trevor to beg aid, not demand anything. Sorry. The method by which I won put a ton of goblins here without home or food.”

“We have almost nothing ourselves,” Kevin said, but he was already deflating from his anger.

Noah was pretty sure Kevin was a hard-ass with the heart of a softie, although he once again mused on how long anyone would remain soft.

He just needed to give Kevin something to allow him to make the generous decision.

Noah smiled. “Don’t worry about that too much. The goblins have got a card Building, a magic fishery that will help them eat, but they need immediate food and shelter till they get set up. I was hoping your people could help with the immediate stuff. But the goblins will recover, and then they can help us through the winter. Again, sorry about all this.”

Kevin stared at Noah—his bare chest, his blood-soaked pants, the still bad wound on his side.

Kevin’s face cleared a bit. “I see you paid the price to win the Realm card, at least.”

The statement was a bit of a non-sequitur, and Noah wasn’t sure why Kevin had brought it up. But he nodded to Kevin’s words, trying to keep on the ex-policeman’s good side.

Kevin returned to the original question, his voice more business-like. “Alright, fine. You win. I’ll see what I can do, although we’re going to be desperate for food ourselves soon. But, I’ll not deny, we have a lot of vegetables that, without proper preservation or canning, are going to rot soon. I’ll have people harvest those and send them over as soon as possible.”

Then Kevin shook his head. “Although that’ll be nearly our entire boat capacity used up as well.”

Noah nodded, trying desperately to get his brain moving and take advantage of the moment when Kevin had been swayed to generosity. “Perhaps you can also gather any fishing stuff you guys have? Plus guys that can cut trees down. Lumberjacks I mean? If we can get even a few boats or fishing poles to the goblins, they’ll be able to fish, and they’ll be able to salt some of that for the winter.”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Kevin frowned, an expression that sat easily on his chiseled face. “Like I just said, we have almost no boat capacity. And stuff lives in the river that will eat people, in case you didn’t know. That half mile of river is going to be nearly as difficult to traverse as hundreds of miles from before… everything. But I’ll see what I can do.”

Noah nodded. “Thanks. Truly.”

“What are you going to do?” Kevin asked.

“Sleep a tiny bit more, try and heal, and then run the dungeon. Assuming I live, I’ll head out to try and rescue Hope later today.”

Lika yelled, “Guys, be quiet or talk elsewhere, I’m trying to sleep!”

“May I join you in the dungeon?” Kevin asked quietly.

Noah hesitated—he didn’t really think of Kevin as ‘his people,’ he admitted to himself. But the guy had been helping, and he would be a very important friend to have. Very important.

“Yeah, I’d be delighted to have you. In about four hours, though. Like Lika, I still need to do the sleep thing. I’m on an interesting level of empty here.”

Kevin again stared at Noah’s wounds. “I’m not sure sleep is what’ll fix you.”

“It’ll have to do,” Noah responded.

***

Emily was even worse off than Noah, but despite being at eleven of twenty Health, and one arm of two, she had insisted on joining them. The whole group—Noah, Kevin, and Lika—were giving her the side eye as she limped up to the gate.

“A real group of cripples we are,” Lika said, slapping her broken leg and smiling wide at Emily.

“None of that,” Emily said harshly. “I’m a deckbearer, now, and I have power. The arm was a low price to pay.”

Noah almost asked, And your brother? Was he a small price to pay? But he refrained from being a complete jackass.

Emily had been extremely insistent that she join the dungeon run. She seemed to feel that she owed Noah, especially after he had let Emily go through the new deck he had taken from the slain elf prince. The cards were more of the Mortal and Nature ones the first prince had possessed. Noah had thought it the least he could do after her brother Matt had died.

But Emily seemed to feel that she owed him.

She had gone through the deck and taken slightly over half of it. A few cards had gone to merging some existing cards to tier them up. Others had expanded her deck, and she had replaced a card or two as well.

Lastly, Emily had leveled up and picked new abilities. She had almost mirrored Noah, increasing her power twice, deck size once, and card size once. She currently had two each of Nature and Mortal power.

Noah was level nine, nearly ten. His companions ranged down from there. Lika was level eight, Emily was level seven, and Kevin broke the number string by being merely four.

They had four decks between them. In addition to Noah’s deck, Emily had a decently strong ranger deck, which had a lot of fast damage and ranged abilities. Lika had a weak Golem deck with high abilities to turn material tokens into useful things, including healing. And Kevin St. Clair had a pure Divine deck with a focus on battle angels.

Since they were heading into a “Lost Temple of Mechos” dungeon, which had no cards useful to Emily, she had traded her portion of the cards from the dungeon to Noah for what he had given her, saying it was only fair.

Noah had given his leftover ten rattletail cards and the leftover cards from the dead elf prince to Kevin to secure his portion of the cards from the dungeon as well as more assistance over the coming weeks while Noah was gone.

So Noah would be splitting the cards from the Lost Temple of Mechos dungeon a fourth to Lika, and three-fourths to himself.

Noah touched his hand to his chest and drew his deck. Then he brought RED Seven forth. His new, more deadly-looking companion manifested with a glint of gray light. Kevin copied Noah’s movements, bringing out Roidae.

“We ready for this?” Noah asked.

Everyone nodded, their expressions grim but determined, and Noah touched the door pad.

The metal grating in front of the dungeon retracted into the floor, and Noah walked forward, onto the massive metal stairs. As his second foot touched the stairs, they surged into motion, and Noah braced himself, arms windmilling painfully.

Despite his injuries, he kept standing as the stairs took him down, into the dark. He glanced back and saw that the others, after a brief pause, had stepped onto the newly revealed escalator.

Noah reached the bottom of the stairs. A massive cavern wall, and a few boulders, greeted him. But in the center, behind some boulders, was a huge door. It was about ten degrees off level, and the metal door was broken open by the rockfall.

Roidae, the angel with the fiery sword, landed behind him in a swoosh of wings. A moment later, the rest of his team stepped from the elevator.

Noah examined the door. It was obviously busted, the keypad shorted, but the broken portion was big enough for someone to crawl through.

Really pushing the Lost Temple vibe, Noah thought as he painfully got onto hands and knees and crawled through the door.

He stood inside, brushing himself off, and stared around. The front was a massive foyer with broken screens on the walls, a huge, three-part desk that was half-shattered, and multiple computers lying around broken. The floor was a mosaic tile in vaguely futuristic patterns, and the ceiling was mostly shattered LED lighting, with switches on the walls.

It looked like the inside of a shattered cyberpunk store, but for two details—the whole thing was still tilted ten degrees, and dust covered it all.

As Lika easily crouch-walked through behind him, Noah saw broken pieces of computers and lighting start to roll across the floor and fly through the air, assembling in front of him.

“Hurry up, everyone!” he called, reaching out to touch his first card.