The group gathered at Mister I's garage the morning they were going to set out. Wick had picked up a thick canvas jacket and pair of pants. Still olive, but made of a tougher material then her previous one. She handed Corvayne an old pistol and 4 loaded clips as well as a box of ammo. 120 shots total. She also handed him one of those little screens that everyone called their phone. She had put a brown and black cover on it that matched the colors he usually wore, which made him feel a little less queasy about where she stood after a rocky week.
Grunt wore an old painters outfit with heavy leather gloves. Corvayne at least hoped those were red paint stains. Grunt's weapon of choice was a bundle of wood and metal baseball bats he slung over his shoulder in what might be a laundry basket rigged with rope. Grunt also carried the machette on his side. He had a backpack about the same size as Corvayne's but it looked comically tiny looking on his huge frame. Grunt had brought an actual steel mace, painted a dull black with spray paint, and gave it to Corvayne.
Mister I came into the garage and he was dressed in hunter camo, bow strung across his back. He also had a rifle, and a full hikers backpack. “Oh what a coincidence! You and I going hunting on the same day!” He walked with a spring in his step.
Corvayne called a quick huddle.
“It's probably fine as long as he understands it's dangerous and you're in charge, Corvayne.” Wick looked over.
Grunt nodded, three fingers, shrug, four fingers, shrug: The more the merrier!
Corvayne looked at them. “I thought that keeping the tower a secret would mean we can extract it's resources more efficiently to further your... research.”
“Counterpoint: He is the only person we know who can do surgery.” Wick rubbed her ankle as she said that.
Grunt motioned with a finger thrust out in a dramatic pose, then mimed holding a steering wheel: objection or counterpoint: He is also the guy with the car.
“Is he really a doctor?” Corvayne had to admit Mister I did patch them up pretty well before.
Wick had a thoughtful look. “I get the sense that he's a lot of things, and monk is just the current one.”
Corvayne looked up at the man who was, with a peaceful smile, patiently waiting for the group to finish discussing him. “Did you take an oath not to hurt others or something?”
The monk just laughed at that. “I abstain from drinking, gambling, loose women. There is no censure for slaying dragons.” He put a camo cap on his bald head.
Grunt looked at him while pointing at three fingers, then opened his palms up and out, then made a big circle and cupped his chest: Loose women? Not ALL women?
The old man laughed. “If you read the Book of the Shattered Mask, you'd be one of the few people who can tell me I'm doing it wrong!”
Corvayne looked at him and nodded. “Make sure to bring a knife, and a bedroll. Ideally a canteen or water pack too. Time works odd where we are going. It's going to be a long Saturday.”
Grunt hopped in the front seat then fell asleep in literally three seconds. Wick hopped in the back seat with Corvayne and used the drive to show him how to use his phone. She had added her number and Grunt's.
“Does Grunt type messages?” He noted the man didn't seem to write except when filling out forms.
“No. Just emojis. Little faces. If you call him he'll listen, then one grunt for yes. Two for no.”
“Ok. I need to ask him if there's something I can do to help him communicate.”
“I think it's maybe religious? He can highlight or point to words someone else wrote. There was an evening at Dawn's where I got a dictionary and he spelled out it's forbidden for him to make new words. Excuse me, he pointed at 'Dangerous'. Do you think he saw an INFOHAZARD?”
She started to get excited. While she stated that it was only for practical reasons she was into the paranormal, she still was excited when she gave a clearly well put together presentation at the meeting the night before on extra dimensions. Corvayne got stuck up on a detail on one of the early slides: Having fought skin-walkers in the desert, he had trouble paying attention for at least fifteen minutes knowing that somewhere, somehow, someone had tried to ranch them. That was until he asked Wick later and learned that they weren't the 2 foot long bugs that tried to burrow inside of people then pop their babies out, but possibly some sort of energy vampire or shape-shifter that took human and animal forms. He didn't think they would be ranched either but he rolled with it.
Corvayne eventually put a damper on the infohazard thing: “I was told that most people are actually extremely difficult to kill or even damage with memetic agents unless they are extremely rigidly set in their ways. Plasticity of the brain or something. But there are things that can lock someone up for a little bit, so we might practice medusa tactics at a later date.”
He thought back to Whispers-In-Darkness, the gloomy man who taught theoretical tactics. It was an odd set of exercises that dealt with all that, things like how to fight a wizard. How you'd fight a dragon. Breaking out of illusions. He was one of the few Watchers who directed his disdain across the entire group of youths he was teaching, not just Corvayne. Corvayne thought that it was one of the few watcher activities he excelled at, as it seemed the content was pulled from the same books he was reading.
“I want to test something else too, after we do this. I used to get really tired just jogging a mile. Now I barely feel it after 3.”
“Yeah, it's nice when the exercise kicks in.” Jogging made him think of her workout outfit. He focused on the suburban off-ramps they were driving by. In the day there was a lot more traffic getting on and off the highway.
“No Corvayne! Pay attention!” She poked his arm. Oh Wick you have no idea. “It's harder to sleep. It might be something in that meat is a stimulant, but it's possible that going through the tower made me stronger.”
Corvayne shrugged. “I don't feel any different.”
Wick was thinking.
“Corvayne you said that you were not worried about most of the monsters, and had thick skin. If you took that gun and shot yourself... would you be able to keep fighting?”
“Yeah. It's just a single bullet, I mean, assuming it's not hitting your head at a weak spot. Or your eyes, that would ruin your day. I did okay when they did shoulder wound practice.”
“Wait wait wait... did they SHOOT you at the village?”
He could see she was about to get mad on his behalf and cut her off at the curve. “I didn't count that because they shot everyone. First in the shoulder to give us a healthy respect for guns and to adapt to combat when wounded. Then anywhere else if you were sloppy.”
“How long did it take you get better? From being shot, not at dodging bullets.”
“Oh, most of them didn't get too deep so I'd pull them out and it'd sting for a whole week tops. You know, I think that's probably as close as I got to my peer group when they were complaining about counter-arms training. They even called it 'The Corvayne treatment'.”
“Took me months all three times!” Mister I added from the front seat.
Wick turned to talk to him. “Where did you get shot?”
“I was told it was lodged my sense of humor! They had to take the whole funny bone out! Ha Ha ha!”
“They couldn't make you a prosthetic out of popsicle sticks?” Corvayne asked, proud he had applied know that jokes were printed onto popsicle sticks in Cascadia to make his own joke.
“The hospital would have charged me 100 credits per stick, then 125 to eat the popsicle attached to it!”
Wick rolled her eyes. “Thank you Mister Fun-I.”
Corvayne got back to the point. “It's possible that a diet of monster meat influences durability or strength. Interesting. I did ask my trainers about what makes some monsters or people stronger and was told to not think above my station.”
“And the people at your village you said could clown on you... I mean, they were vastly faster and more skilled then you?”
Corvayne nodded at Wick. “I couldn't land a hit on most of my instructors. If I could get one to break a sweat, it was one of my better efforts.”
“But if a normal person on the street had a gun, and shot you...”
“I'd disarm them.” Corvayne thought most people seemed weak enough he could do so.
“What if they shot you in the gut?” Wick pressed a hand against the seat belt going across her belly.
“I'd disarm them then make sure it didn't hit my heart.” It would be annoying to spill blood everywhere after all.
“If it hits your heart, you'd know because you'd be dead.”
“Not smaller rounds, but it's going to hurt.” Corvayne remembered having to plug up then drag Spears-Like-Water miles across the sand on his bedroll because a Grit-wurm got a heart wound on her. He was pretty sure he saved her by double-timing it to where they could start pumping blood through her again, but she treated him exactly as poorly before as she did after. So much for gratitude.
“If you shot me anywhere, I'd bleed out.”
“I will be careful when aiming.” Corvayne was horrified at the thought of hitting her now with a gun.
“Mister Corvayne, these people that trained you, what say, your spear instructor, how would they deal with someone using an automatic weapon 100 feet away?” Mister I asked, eyes on the road.
Corvayne had seen the gun trainer Coming-In-Hot and his spear instructor Waves-Within have some sort of duel... it was after gun training. Waves-Within had been annoyed at the woman for some reason.
“They would close the distance to force them to drop the weapon. You can't track with a machine gun easily enough.”
Mister I laughed. “I don't mean something dinky. I mean a big gun that punches you back when you fire it.”
“Coming-In-Hot's gun was about the size of Grunt's stack of baseball bats. Waves-Within is very fast. He sort of just stepped around where she was firing until she had to drop it, then they fought.”
Mister I hummed. “Did he get hit?”
“Of course. It's not possible to dodge that many bullets.”
Wick slapped her face. “Oh no. You think you can dodge a bullet.”
“No. I cannot do that yet. I doubt I ever will. No, at range you throw up dust or some other visual cover and then close fast. On the flip side, if you have a high powered rifle or automatic you can deal with lesser threats, but rifles are an opening gambit and meant for slower targets. Energy shields completely negate most rifles except for heavy rail slugs. Everything else doesn't have enough mass and momentum.”
Mister I nodded at the windshield ahead of him. “When, Mister Waves-With-In, he ran at a gun, he was shot. It was a large gun. What happened?”
“Oh. He got some nicks.” Corvayne did see a few slashes and one hit that nailed Waves head on, slowing him for a moment.
Wick asked. “Would the bullets go through this truck?”
“Usually with fist sized holes.”
“So he is stronger then this truck.” Wick concluded.
“I explained this to you. I am really weak. It might be because it's not important that this city seems to have a lot of weak people in it.”
“Thanks Corvayne for the compliment. No it's what I thought. I want to figure out where I'm getting stronger. Is it, fighting, killing, eating meat, or clearing floors? Time spent in the tower? I felt weird when I exited... Or something else?”
Mister I added “I only ate the meat, and feel better then I have in years.”
Wick nodded. “We have a couple of days of inside time. I brought food. I want to see if, as we clear, I get stronger. We'll go off pushups.”
“I will test eating meat!” Mister I added.
Grunt just snored.
At the park's parking lot there was a sign across the entrance they used last time. No sign of anyone else parked there or otherwise. “Trail closed until further notice” was on a little wooden stand and there was some yellow tape across the two trees at the entrance to the trail. Corvayne looked at it, then took a deep breath of fresh air. It was better out here then in the city, and it was nice to have clean air that didn't feel so uncomfortably hot like the desert. Also, during the day the park was MUCH prettier. Grunt woke and stretched. He tapped his wrist and tilted his head at Wick.
Wick nodded at Grunt. “10 AM. We can get to that spot in under an hour.”
Walking around the tape, they walked along the trails. Corvayne saw the sun was shining and heard birds singing, and the first Bigfoot they saw two minutes into the walk took one look at him and fled into the woods. Wick snapped a picture. Mister I just stared at it, mouth open. Corvayne felt bad now. He might have to just disable them if they were not suicidally aggressive like the goblins.
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“Do those taste good?” Mister I asked. Grunt just gave him a playful backhand to the shoulder: Cmon!
The two then looked at each other and waited for Corvayne and Wick to pass by. “You two lead!”
“Ok. Please watch our flank.” He scanned the woods, then looked at Wick's hand. Patience.
“It's nicer during the day.”
“Yeah. I like the woods, you know? I'd live out in a cabin but it'd have to be off the grid.”
Corvayne secretly enjoyed a mostly-monster free walk in the park with Wick. They arrived at the clearing on the hill. The stairway stood there, with no signs of the struggle aside from a few smears of blood. He stopped them before walking off the stairs and waited to make sure there wasn't another monster swarm. One bigfoot was out there, deep in the bush. A larger one grabbed it's shoulder and dragged it away. Corvayne gave a wave. Don't bother me, I won't bother you.
“Last time I carried Wick in. Once we go in we are locked in there, so I think we should try holding hands in case it splits us. Be ready for an ambush right when we get in, last time little goblins tried to kill us with spears.”
He offered his hand to Wick, and Grunt took his other hand. Mister I finished the circle. Then he stepped off.
This time he was more aware of a shift, his foot moving from open air onto the blue dirt. Wick, Grunt, and Mister I were all with him, hands still together. There were goblin and human bones, a rough semi-circle where Corvayne had killed a slew of them in one attack.
Mister I laughed as he took in the yellow sky, floating cubes, and more. Grunt scanned for trouble, then looked up at the sky, shrugged, and walked over to a small tree. He squatted then lifted, his face going red, before pulling the entire tree out. He threw it over his shoulder, raining dry blue soil behind him, then started snapping teal branches off it.
Wick shook her head. “Still surprising me after all this time Grunt.”
“We are going to clear cube by cube. Mister I, stick to the bow unless we find something bigger then a goblin. They respond to sound and gather on loud noises. They don't seem... conscious? They just attack until we die or they do.”
They started near the bottom of the cube, checking the valley and stream. Corvayne felt pressure he hadn't noticed leaking out of him. He had everyone's attention as he added another point. “We want to keep our eyes open for small spaces. There was a chest before, and I bet we missed others.”
Wick moved next to him. She had bought a boar hunting spear, a better choice then the fishing one. It was okay to practice jabbing with, but she needed something that was designed to stop something she stabbed. They moved through the valley instead of heading up the first path to the top of the cube. They found a cave but there was nothing inside besides a camp fire. The first goblin pack was on top of the ridge, a group of 4. Some of them we wearing blood-stained fleece. Grunt put his free hand on Corvayne's shoulder. Can I try?
Corvayne nodded. The big man grinned, then started running, tree gripped with both hands, then as the first goblin shouted he got into range and swung. The 8 foot length of wood took three of the four and send them flying, landing limply twenty feet away from the last goblin with a spear, who yelled and charged at Grunt. The big man just brought the bottom of the tree down, smashing root and goblin onto the ground. He picked the tree up and hefted it over his shoulder again not paying any mind to blood on it.
Wick looked at Corvayne. “Yes... this might be easier with him here.”
The first cube did have a few small caves and another tribe of goblins, but with Wick having a larger spear then they did, she was able to stand next to Corvayne and Grunt. He seemed to have practiced with trees before: He hit every swing over his head, connected with more then one green monster every grand slam, and even with a goblin trying to dodge he faked it out then took another swing faster then Corvayne would have expected.
They found a pair of neck pouches on the broken goblins, once more mostly iron coins but a few rough gems. The first cube secure, they followed Corvayne to the next area they had previously been to. Seeing the next pack Mister I wanted to try greeting the monsters. They just started screaming and charging him with weapons when he waved and called out hello. He shrugged then brought his bow around in a well practiced motion and plugged one with an arrow before everyone else stepped past him to kill the other four.
“We can now rest easy, they don't wish to speak to us.” He yanked the arrow out and wiped it clean on the teal grass. Corvayne's nose wrinkled. The smell of goblins and blood ruined the sort of minty scent the brush atop the cube had.
Wick spoke from behind where Corvayne was looking. “They killed a bunch of hikers who wandered in here.”
The second cube and third were connected by vines. This was where they had exited to the second floor the week before. Some goblin bones and crude weapons remained on the ground, proof they had been there before. They pointed out the stairway hidden up the vine in the wall of a third surface. “I want to see if there are other stairs up. But that's the way we went before.”
They didn't run into any large packs on the second cube. It made sense: they had taken out a large number of monsters before. The hilly grass, with it's odd rises and drops, had more caves tucked away. Corvayne lead the way into a tunnel that had goblin and human remains in it, carefully checking for places a little green monster could hide. He need not have worried: the few in the cave made sure to start screaming as they charged bare-handed. There were three branches to the place, one ending in a pit that emptied out to the side of the cube and yellow sky. Another was an empty chamber full of armadillo parts. The last branch had a small chest.
Corvayne told the new members how he would check for traps. First, sweeping the area around the chest. The goblins might have rigged it to drop a spear on them or put it on a pit trap. Then, a jab to make sure it wasn't a mimic. Corvayne was sort of happy that the chest screeched, revealed tiny serrated teeth and a tounge as it opened it's mouth all the way, then grew little legs, then died when he activated [Thrust]. Well worth missing some treasure.
At least, that's what he thought, but Mister I opened the chest all the way up and took out a knife and started carving out chunks of mimic meat. He found a blueish steel dagger. “Neat!” Like everyone else, he just grabbed it and swung it. Corvayne requested to see it a moment, balancing it, then handing it back. It seemed like a normal weapon. He had brought a few rags this time for wiping his hands of gross stuff, and used it. Mister I had brought a lot of bags and ziplocked up the purple looking meat.
Grunt looked at him like he was crazy, but they went back out of the cave and found a stony suspended path to a new cube. Corvayne took out the trio of goblins blocking the end of the path with an aggressive charge, skewering the first with his spear then throwing the body off of the tip into the other two goblin's feet. Two thrusts into their stumbling figures and the way was clear.
“Don't want to ask you guys to practice on these walkways.” He gestured with his eyes over the edge. Mister I nods. “I suppose I should save arrows here too. Might I have a baseball bat, Grunt?”
Grunt gave him a light aluminum one from his bundle, then tightened the rope holding it together. Corvayne wasn't sure the large man could carry nearly 150 pounds of gear all day, but he could also just drop the tree whenever he was done with it. Same with the bats he supposed: There was no lack other trees to clobber things with.
The cube they came up to didn't have a path around the outside, so the rock trail lead to a ramp switchbacking up the side. Corvayne could see as they rose the crest that there was a small lake on the cube, with a few goblin camps. He held a hand and crouched. The group came up to his back as he stalked up to a small rise in the direction of the village and looked over it. The little monsters had captured some... other goblins. For food. The sight of a goblin literally butchering another eliminated the last worries he had about the incoming slaughter. There were six captured monsters left, mostly in a pair of wood cages, and about twenty five or thirty ones milling about a wrecked camp, looking for stuff or chewing on meat or fighting over stuff.
“Big fight coming up. Me and Grunt will go out front. Wick and Mister I cover our sides. Now's a good time to try your disrupt magic. Thin them out then use your spear once we are fighting.”
“Way to give away I'm a wizard.”
Mister I laughed. “Wizard, healer... which one of you two is the thief?”
Grunt crouched stealthily, and started sneaking around while dragging his feet loudly.
Wick stood up, letting her spear rest in the crook of her arm as she drew her plastic wand. She had taped a laser pointer to it, and flicked it on. She then pointed it at a goblin about two hundred feet away that was eating a smaller goblin.
The disrupt that came out was a softball size, clearly better formed as it flew out and blasted the goblin. It seemed that it didn't hit it, like a thrown rock would, but just tore into the monster, killing it but not knocking it over despite savaging it. Another goblin saw this and started yelling and looking about. Wick threw another spell, the same sort of hazy jade orb flying out to hit the screamer in the shoulder, dropping it's arm to the ground and causing it to gush blood until it flopped over twitching. The others had heard it's call, then blown a horn. She stepped off to the side so that Grunt and Corvayne could step up, and fired another shot, this one at the horn blower standing on a stump. It might be the leader, it might not: they would all charge mindlessly in a moment.
Grunt took his tree, reared up, then tossed it like a javelin into the first three goblins leading the charge up to the rise they were on. It clobbered those first three, sending them flying as the tree rolled and snapped, hitting two more. Corvayne saw Grunt pull two bats off his back and look at him. No gestures, because Corvayne got it: Beat that, hotshot.
Corvayne used [Flows-Like-Water] into the next three running at them, moving up and through them, spear finding it's way into two goblin's hearts and the third's head, dropping them as Corvayne turned and used it again, this time taking four steps and killing three more in a second, his black spear stabbing and hacking goblins down as he ended before five, knives and axes held overhead. He put hand over fist on the back of his spear, emulating a double-handed sword grip on his spear. Doing so he found helped some of the extra strain of using a Cross-Skill.
[Cross-Skill: Circle of death] guided his legs and arms, pushing a swing into a spin, spear forming a perfect black arc around him as he came out of it, snapping back to a standard grip as he took his normal ready stance. Even where just the haft of the spear touched, goblin flesh split. He jogged back to Grunt, half the goblins charging them dead in no more then five seconds. On the run over, he made sure to bash a lone goblin trying to intercept him with his spear's butt, sending the crazed little monster screaming to the ground but still clawing to keep going at them even when injured.
There were about ten left. Wick had stepped over and aimed another spell, blasting a goblin off it's feet. Or it's feet off, it looked like. Grunt was perfectly happy to wade into three goblins coming at him with spears, using baseball bats like drums to break skulls. Corvayne could tell the man had spent time training: he killed the first two with a brutal but controlled one-two pair of swings, then sidestepped the third's spear attack and brought his second swing into a backhand, catching the goblin's head and almost certainly killing it as it was battered away. Mister I had an arrow nocked but had taken to heart not to waste them and decided, correctly, that they had this. Corvayne advanced with Grunt and met the last clump of goblins and started to jab at them while stepping backwards. Grunt didn't care, he just waded into the back of the pack swinging, shrugging off a single spear jab as he sent bodies flying. One straggler from the group got blasted with Wick's magic, another Corvayne picked off. As always, Corvayne was shocked when after so much chaos a battle ended and everything was suddenly overly calm.
Grunt was hardly bleeding, the crappy edge barely breaking his pants leg and skin. He took out a bottle of vodka, splashed some on the wound, then started looking for loot. Wick didn't seem to like the gore and so went to the first cage. Inside were five goblins waiting for her to get close then hissing and trying to get to her, biting at the wood and reaching and scratching air as she stepped back. One of the goblins fell over and the others stepped on it, trying to push against the wood and knocking the cage on a different side, fighting with each other for a moment then returning to hissing at and trying to claw at Wick. Even from a distance, Corvayne could smell them.
“I wanted to meet other intelligent creatures... I'm going to just say these things don't count.” She said with disgust dripping from her voice.
Corvayne heard a tired voice came from the other cage holding a lone goblin. “You and me, lady.”