Once I was done at the arena, I returned to the labyrinth for an update from Alice. When I got there I found her still sitting at the desk, only now she had several other doppels watching things play out on the floating screens, along with the Gorgon. They made room for me to watch with them.
Since I’d been there last, she had managed to further split up Team Invictus and eliminated another one in a water trap. I was glad I wasn’t there to see that. It was one of the new traps I created. I'd based most of them on the various things that I’m afraid of, and I have always been terrified of being trapped and slowly watching the water rise until there was no air left before drowning in a car that had been driven off a bridge. I’d rather not have to watch that happen to someone else.
Alice told me that after respawning, two of the Invictus Players had returned to the dungeon looking for the rest of their team. I hadn’t given any instructions about what to do if that happened so she made the executive decision to prevent them from using the doors to enter the labyrinth proper and have the statues attack them again. One of the Players had died again — the same one who’d been taken down by them the last time — leaving the other to run away.
After that, nobody had returned to try again after respawning.
I stayed and watched as Alice sent a pair of Stymphalian birds to terrorize two Invictus members as they tried to sneak in a meal break. The birds were horrid things with bronze beaks, metallic feathers, and a taste for human flesh. It had been the sixth of Hercules’ twelve tasks to get rid of them in Ancient Greece, and there was a whole flock of them in the Light Dungeon. By the time the unfortunate Players had managed to defeat them, there were only about one and three-quarters Players left — the birds had managed to consume the rest before being slain.
“With those wounds I give them three, maybe four hours, tops,” the doppel named Maisie said.
“I told you the birds were too much to throw at them,” the one named Portia said. “They’re going to die too quickly.”
“You may be right. I will scale back the lethality of the challenges and focus more on attacking their morale instead,” Alice said.
“How are the invaders doing for food?” I said.
“They are already worried about running out,” Alice said.
“It is too bad they do not know how delicious Stymphalians are,” the Gorgon said, licking her lips. “Those two birds have enough meat on them to last a few days at least.”
“Such a pity,” I said. “Keep up the good work everyone.”
When I returned to the dojo after that it was pretty late, yet I still found a large portion of Team Maple Leaf and the Round Table training in the courtyard, preparing for their impending assault on the Shadow Dungeon. I felt exhausted just watching them and I realized I might have been pushing myself a bit hard in too many directions.
In the past twenty-four hours I had become involved in both prostitution and gambling. Stratos had been right: I really was playing a different game than everyone else.
Starting fresh the next morning, I checked in on the labyrinth. Only half of Team Invictus was still alive and I told Alice to let them regroup together to get their hopes up before separating them again.
I was about to round up some monsters to spar with but the very thought made me want to curl up and sleep. I had been grinding pretty much non-stop since arriving on Crucible and it was starting to wear on me, so I gave myself permission to take it easy for a bit. I was starting to think I wasn’t making the most effective use of my time and efforts so I told myself I could have a reset break until Team Invictus had finally been driven from the labyrinth.
By day two, word had spread pretty much everywhere about how Team Invictus had located the Light Dungeon and what had happened to them in there, and I had the feeling I wouldn’t have to worry about anyone else giving it a go, at least not for some time. In the end, Alice managed to keep tormenting them for five days before there was only one of them left to stagger out of the dungeon, half-starved and half-dead from a score of injuries. Ironically, he’d stumbled across a pair of goblins on the way back and never made it back to town, being too weak to fight off even those beginner-level monsters.
The welcome departure of the final member of Team Invictus from the labyrinth signaled the unwelcome return of some other people. At least I assumed they were people.
An unnamed observer is back!
An unnamed observer has so much to say
System reminds the observers to be careful
An unnamed observer will be more careful from now on
A curious observer hopes so
A curious observer does not wish to be muted again
I didn’t know the full story behind what was going on with the observers, but knowing System I was pretty sure some rules had been broken. I also didn’t know how I could use that information to my advantage, but I was also pretty sure there was a way.
“Welcome back, observers.”
An unnamed observer never went anywhere and has been watching the whole time
An unnamed observer would have given so many rewards if they hadn’t been muted for accidentally revealing that—
A curious observer claps their hand over an unnamed observer’s mouth
An annoyed observer wonders how stupid an unnamed observer can be
An unnamed observer apologizes and will be good
An annoyed observer struggles to believe that
An annoyed observer goes off to observe elsewhere before getting caught up in an unnamed observer’s storm of idiocy again
A curious observer thinks that is a good idea and follows
An unnamed observer chases after them
I held my breath for a minute, wondering if they were truly gone. They seemed to be. I’d been hoping I might be able to snag some more rewards from them, but no luck.
Ah well, it was probably for the best. I couldn’t keep counting on luck to keep dropping power boosts in my lap anyway. Best to do it the old fashioned way, by working for them.
After that, feeling fully refreshed from my period of rest and inspired to get back to work, I devoted myself to some serious, focused training. Even though I had maxed out my skill proficiency in omni-do, I could still work on honing the way I used it. The smack-down Flint had given me had made me see that I’d been relying on my knives too much.
After watching Alice handle Team Invictus so handily, I asked her if she could play DM for me and she’d leapt at the chance. Learning from Akari’s example, I began practicing when to use certain moves and combos from the different martial arts it encompassed for maximum effect as I played through various dungeons Alice created for me to train in. In particular, I wanted to work on adding the powered effects I’d included along with all the skill in omni-do into my melee attacks.
The three powers I’d rolled in omni-do were: Second Amendment, which let me shoot elemental bullets; Affinity Attack, which allowed me to add elemental effects to any attack; and Who Needs A Weapon, which made my hands able to cut and pierce like they were sword blades. Being able to add the effect of any affinity to my strikes was a nice boost, and it felt pretty sweet being able to slice through things with the edge of my hand, but what I liked most was triggering Second Amendment the instant I hit something with my fist — it was like shooting a gun point blank into anything I punched the moment I hit it, where the bullet fired could be constructed from any affinity.
I developed a routine over the next few days and stuck with it for a while. I didn’t have much contact with my Player friends during this time, save for my regular exercise and gossip sessions with Sigrid which I now made sure to never miss, and which helped me stay on top of what everyone else was doing. We kept using my healing magic the wrong way to make ourselves stronger, too.
If it wasn’t for that daily time with Sigrid I probably wouldn’t have known that the crew had launched a practice raid on the Shadow Dungeon while I’d been holed up in the labyrinth training. She had been very uncomfortable sharing that with me.
We’d had the conversation when she was sitting on my back holding a large boulder over her head while I did pushups, and I was sure she chose that moment so she wouldn’t have to look me in the eye when she told me.
“I wanted to tell you before, but Arthur asked me to keep it a secret,” she said. “So you wouldn’t feel bad.”
Stolen story; please report.
“You do realize that it only makes me feel worse that you wanted to keep it from me,” I said.
“I didn’t want to!" she said, wiggling on my back. "I wanted to tell you, but he was very insistent so I caved. I’m sorry. I’m still not supposed to be telling you about it, but it was eating me up inside.”
“I appreciate that, Sigrid,” I groaned.
“I regret going along with Arthur now. I also think that bit about not wanting you to feel bad was mostly bullshit and I’m so mad at myself for falling for it. And that's one thousand."
“Thank god,” I said, collapsing onto my front on the ground.
She tossed the boulder to the side and climbed off me. I rolled over onto my back and began healing my arms. A thousand pushups isn’t easy, especially not with a whole crap-ton of weight on your back.
“Why do you think he didn’t want me to know then?” I said.
She plucked angrily at some grass. “I think he was afraid you’d change your mind and come with us.”
“I’d never do that,” I said.
“I know that,” she said, tearing a fistful of grass out of the ground. “You know what else?”
“What?”
“I’m not sure the reason why he didn’t want you to come was what he said either.”
“Shouldn’t you also not be telling me this?”
“I’m sorry, but I have to talk to someone about it or I’m going to go crazy.” She tossed the grass up and used her affinity to swirl it around in the air.
"You're getting better at that," I said, watching the blades tumble around in the little vortex she'd made. "Your control is a lot finer now."
"I've been practicing like you told me."
“So what about Jane? I thought you two shared everything.”
“Yeah, well. It really sucks but this is something I can’t really talk about with her, you know?”
I didn’t know, not immediately. But then I remembered how he’d put his hand on her back when he told me that I was not invited to raid with them, and how they’d scrunched together on the loveseat at the Gentlemen’s Club, and how smugly happy he’d been when she’d put her hand on his leg there.
“Ah,” I said, pulling myself up to sit cross-legged facing her. “I get it. That does suck.”
We sat there in silence for a while.
“So, how’d the practice raid go? Or are you not allowed to tell me?”
She winced at that. I’d probably said it a bit more bitterly than I’d meant to and immediately felt guilty. The last thing I wanted to do was make Sigrid feel bad.
“We learned that we still have a long way to go. We didn’t make it very far before we decided to abort.”
“That tough, huh?”
“It wasn’t like the labyrinth, you know? There’s no direct path to follow. It’s a full on castle siege with any number of ways to approach it, and a colossal number of enemies to fight. Most are, what did those guys call them again? Oh yeah, cannon fodder.”
“But what they lack in strength they make up for in numbers,” I said, and she nodded. “That’s common.”
“We did okay against them, but they were coming at us from all sides and starting to whittle us down. Then this big black shadow snake slithers up and it was not at all a weakling like the others, not by a longshot.”
“And that’s when you called a tactical retreat.”
She sighed. “Yup.”
“Can I make a suggestion? You might want to send Kenji in by himself to scout and gather intel.”
“Little Kenji all alone?”
“He’s a lot more capable than people give him credit for. Remember what he did in the labyrinth?”
“Oh yeah.”
“He’s smart, he’s sneaky, he’s a good fighter, and his affinity is Shadow. Having a better idea of what you might face as you go deeper into the dungeon will help you prepare for next time.”
Sigrid sat there looking at me. “You’re something else, you know that?”
“What do you mean?”
“I just told you that we hid our raid from you and, you know, all that. And the first thing you do is try to help us.”
I laughed. “Anybody would do that.”
“Actually, no. Not everybody would.”
I’m pretty sure it’s safe to say that by this point Sigrid had become the best friend I’d ever had. I was closer to her than any of my past girlfriends, even Siobhan, and even without the added benefits. I was coming to understand Sigrid’s approach to friendship and sex. Sex would only get in the way of the intimacy we’d formed.
Speaking of intimacy, during this time I was also treated to more visits from my succubus friend.
The first time she came back to call it was a surprise. The little cube I’d found sitting on my table when I came home the day after her first visit had been crushed under Flint Vivier’s boot, so I never got the warning that I should expect a guest to drop in that night. It was a happy surprise to see her at the door holding a large box. As promised, she’d brought a game for us to play.
It was a world conquest strategy game played on a large map using miniatures to represent various forces, strongholds, and leaders, and it was eerily familiar.
Each space on the map could be conquered and occupied, sometimes through force and sometimes through other means such as economic or political influence. Controlling a location gave you access to the resources it contained, which in turn allowed you to grow and improve and expand in various ways. The individual leaders had different specializations that could be used in different ways, and could level up and grow more powerful as they gained experience. Full games could last a long time, so it took several visits going late into the night to finish just one. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she chose this particular game as an excuse to come more often.
She told me it was a very popular game among high-ranking demons, and it all but confirmed my suspicions about the meta-game that dungeon ownership here represented.
The next day I found another cube waiting for me. Over time, I developed a Pavlovian response to its vibration in my pocket announcing a visit that night and the hit of dopamine it always brought. I enjoyed those nights playing games with Ruka very much. We mutually agreed there’d be no shop-talk, and quickly fell into a comfortable groove together. It was a lot like my platonic friendship with Sigrid. Sometimes I even forgot she was a demon.
There was always an underlying hint of danger at the risk of being discovered fraternizing with the enemy, not to mention a fair bit of sexual tension — unavoidable given that she was, after all, a succubus — but that only added to the pleasure I drew from her company. I could tell she enjoyed our time together as much as I did, and I began to wonder if she might’ve preferred living a different kind of life than the one she had being a demon lord.
When I finally figured out why I felt so comfortable with her it only made me enjoy those visits more: it was easy to be my real self with her. More than easy, it was effortless. I had spent my life putting on masks and being who I thought other people wanted me to be. But with Ruka, I felt no need to be anyone else, just me. I suppose it was the same with her. Her job was to become the woman that men wanted her to be, but she didn’t do that with me. As she kept visiting me more and more often, each time another of her masks would slip away until all that remained when she was with me was my friend. She was just herself. The real Ruka. So what if she happened to be a demon.
And there was one other thing that made us even more compatible: she loved games just as much as I did. I suppose, when you think about it, she became the woman I would’ve wanted her to be after all, ironically by not even trying to.
I wish I could have told Sigrid that I couldn’t be upset with her for not telling me about the team’s raid on the Shadow Dungeon. Considering all the things I was keeping from her — Ruka being the most glaring example — Sigrid had far more reason not to trust me. Against my better judgment and fueled by punishing guilt, I started thinking about how to introduce the two of them to each other.
One thing that had become clear to me as I got closer to Ruka was how ignorant I was of the goings on around me. She seemed much better informed about what was happening among the Players than I was, disturbingly well informed, to be honest. I hadn’t even known that people had been making attempts on dungeons this whole time until Arthur told me, and who knew what else people were doing about which I had no clue, so I set to work fixing that. Or, more accurately, I set my elves to work on it. I asked Petal to build a special force of the stealthiest elves tasked with creating an intelligence gathering network, and in no time I had spies all over keeping tabs on what was happening in both the Player and NPC worlds.
Meanwhile, it didn’t take long for the arena’s new PvP element to get introduced. Soon after I made my arrangement with Annabelle, a couple of bozos got into a drunken fight one night (who does that, honestly?) and both received System notices asking if they wanted to take this into the arena for an official duel. Both agreed, and System scheduled it for the following day. I’m not entirely sure what it said about the Players involved that even once they’d sobered up they still wanted to go through with it, but they did. Perhaps the way the news of the duel had spread like wildfire around the city made it too shameful to back out.
I discovered the drawback of my bookie plan when I was forced to spend the better part of half a day tracking down the Players involved so I could use All Can Be Revealed on them to suss out their abilities. I had already evaluated them at least once before and with that handy-dandy eidetic memory I knew what abilities they had, but I only knew what they’d had the last time I’d done it. They would have improved since then, so I still had to find them to see their current Status.
By then I knew where most of the teams hung out, but neither of the Players in this match was on a team so it was tricky to find them. Not so easy money. Once I did find and evaluate them I discovered that neither was very hot stuff: mediocre abilities, below average mastery of them, and barely any improvement since the last time I’d seen them.
What had these Players been doing with their time? Getting drunk and picking fights, apparently.
It wasn’t hard to predict who’d win and assign odds. I made sure that the 3 to 1 odds I gave wouldn’t make either one feel bad, nor discourage people from betting on the underdog, nor bankrupt me if I was wrong.
I wasn’t wrong.
The novelty of it being the first one meant a lot of people showed up to watch the duel, and when System asked them if they wanted to place a wager on the result, a lot of people did.
Between my 10% juice on the vig and the number of people who bet on the underdog and lost, I made quite a bit of easy money that day. After that, PvP arena fights started happening fairly often. People didn’t just use them to settle disputes, they also used them in a friendly let’s see who’s stronger way.
After one such duel, I was with Annabelle in her office discussing an idea I had about taking our arrangement up a notch or two through scheduled gladiatorial-style contests. Like the Player’s Tournament Chika had won, only held regularly. With divisions. And champions. And prizes. And gambling, of course. She liked the idea, and speculated into future possibilities of creating a cadre of professional gladiators. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go the whole bread and circuses route. The Romans had used such entertainment as a way to pacify the citizens through distraction, and look how that had turned out for them.
When we were done hashing out some details, she stood up abruptly and went over to a cabinet, removed something from it, then came back over to me.
“Here,” she said, holding out something silver. It looked like a piece of jewelry.
“What is it?” I said.
She scowled at me. “Just take it, will you?”
“Right. Sorry.” I reached out and took the object, then turned it over in my hands, studying it. It was diamond-shaped, or what Daedalus would have called a rhombus, about three inches across the widest span, with a rounded depression in one of the obtuse-angled corners and raised bas-relief image of the arena’s pagoda tower on one side. It looked like a medallion of some kind. I wanted to ask her why she was giving it to me, but after her reaction just now when I simply asked what it was I was afraid to, so all I said was a simple “Thank you.”
I was just about to place it into my inventory when an explosion outside shook the entire place, throwing me off balance and causing me to drop it on the floor. There were no ongoing tremors like you’d feel with an earthquake, more like one single, powerful jolt that made my teeth rattle. Like someone was blasting with TNT nearby.
“What was that?” Annabelle said, her fingers clutching the edge of a table for support.
“No idea. But it was close,” I said.
We looked at each other for a moment, waiting for it to happen again, but it didn’t.
Then we heard the screams.