"Ughhhh. I'm sorry, Damien, I just can't go over these formations anymore."
Naomi flopped backwards into the grass, arms spread and feet exaggeratedly flying up as her back hit the ground, which made her resemble a petulant toddler throwing a tantrum more than anything. Across from her, Sean was far less demonstrative in his misery, but when I gave him a questioning look he nodded gravely in agreement.
I sighed. "Fine, we can take a break for a few. I brought some food, but we shouldn't eat too much before we go in."
"Sure, mom," Naomi called without moving from her horizontal repose. After a moment's consideration, she picked her head up and added, "Wait, what kind of food did you bring?"
It wasn't their fault, I reminded myself. Neither of the duo had ever been big on preparation – that duty had always fallen on me, even prior to our awakenings. Really, I ought to have known by now that I couldn't expect them to match my passion for carefully going over the minute details, planning how we would tackle the Dungeon's known Monsters and defenses.
I was the leader of this little group, a commitment I took very seriously given the potentially-lethal nature of our endeavors. With that came the responsibility to account for the strengths and weaknesses of the other members.
Anyway, it wasn't a big deal.
I'd intended this as more of a refresher right before we started, all of us theoretically having spent the past two weeks looking over the information on our own. Between notes I'd taken on our previous runs, stories I swapped with other tech-savvy Heroes over IRC, and some material gleaned from magazines aimed at a Hero audience, I'd managed to amass a ton of data on the Dungeon we were hoping to full-clear today. In fact, I'd gone a step further and taken it on myself to handle all the tedious compiling, sorting and organizing, turning it into a perfectly clear and concise twenty-five-page printed document.
Even if they'd been slacking off without me around to supervise them, they probably still managed to read it two or three times. That wasn't too much to ask. At the very least, I was sure they'd both read it once.
Right?
Given the pair had been looking at the formations like something they'd never seen until now, I decided I probably didn't want to know the answer to that question.
Resisting the urge to sigh again, I walked back to my car. Today is going to be a good day, I reminded myself as I dug around in the trunk of my car. Today is going to be a good day. It would all work out.
By the time I'd found the plastic picnic cooler, I think I might have managed to convince myself, and my earlier upbeat mood had mostly recovered.
I passed the food around – nothing fancy, just lunchmeat sandwiches I'd made the night before and cold sports drinks – and as we sat eating, I decided to try taking a different tack.
"Okay," I began, speaking between mouthfuls, "let's say that a pair of Monsters pop out of the Dungeon Portal over there."
They both glanced in the direction I had gestured with my half-eaten sandwich, towards the surreal-looking glowing red oval that stood floating in midair on the other side of the park we sat in.
The trees of the forest had been cleared back around it for at least a hundred paces in every direction, and even though it was full daylight, the surrounding field of bare stumps were bathed in the Portal's angry crimson illumination. Encircling it was a maze of barbed wire fencing and portable bollards, patrolled by armed soldiers in camouflage fatigues – not that any of these preparations would really make much difference in the hypothetical scenario I'd just proposed. Against the kind of Monsters you'd see in a Level 5 Dungeon, the guards would be lucky to hold out for longer than a minute or two.
"A Dungeon Break?" Sean asked incredulously. "How? The Portal is locked."
"Well, pretend it opens," I replied after a pause to swallow my mouthful of turkey and cheese and bread. "I don't know, maybe the scientists who calculate lockout times messed up or something. Anyway, a pair of Monsters pop out. Big green gorilla-crocodile looking things, the size of a horse, and they seem pretty angry. What do you do?"
"I'd ask you what the plan was," Naomi said without even a moment's hesitation. Sean shot her a disgruntled frown, but didn't disagree.
"When you ask me, I throw up my hands and say 'Oh no, I didn't expect this situation and am too scared to think of anything! Hopefully you two have been studying this Dungeon's Monsters and can come up with a plan to save us!'"
Naomi rolled her gray eyes and snorted adorably. "Yeah, right. Like that would ever happen."
I gave her an unamused look in response, although it took some effort. She was cute, but this was important.
"Fine, fine," she grumped, "we'll play along." She turned to Sean expectantly. "So, uh... what would we do?"
"I would protect you," he rumbled.
I believed it. Or at least, I believed he would try.
Sean and Naomi were childhood friends going way back, long before I'd met either of them, and he had always been incredibly overprotective of her, like the big brother she'd never had. Our subsequent awakening as Heroes hadn't changed his attitude in that regard one bit.
Sean was also – and I meant this in the nicest way possible – kind of an idiot. I shook my head in resignation. Usually, I found it endearing, but today...
"Pull up your Statuses," I flatly instructed.
Sean glowered at my tone for a second before looking away, focusing his gaze off into the middle distance. A translucent blue rectangle appeared, floating in the air at arm's length before his eyes and following the movements of his head to maintain its position.
Tapping one corner and dragging the intangible object, he pulled it down to float between us and anchored it there with another motion. With a bit of concentration on his part, he gave the mental command that made its contents legible to others, causing the text on the panel to change from garbled nonsense to a table of words and numbers.
Hero: Sean Lemaire
Level: 4
Experience: 71 / 100
Power: +5
Speed: 0
Agility: 0
Vitality: +1
Resilience: +1
Core Slot 1: Human (Rank C)
Core Slot 2: [Locked]
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
[…]
A moment later, Naomi had followed suit with hers.
Hero: Naomi Voss
Level: 4
Experience: 68 / 100
Power: 0
Speed: +4
Agility: +2
Vitality: +1
Resilience: 0
Core Slot 1: Human (Rank C)
Core Slot 2: [Locked]
[…]
I glanced over the two windows, unnecessarily verifying they remained unchanged from the last time I'd seen and memorized their contents. Yes, I could have just Inspected the pair myself if I'd needed to read their Status, instead of asking; we were all at the same Level, and of course Inspecting other Heroes in the same party always worked in any case. The reason I wanted all of us to be able to see them was to ensure the point I was making here would be indelibly clear.
Maybe eventually one of these discussions would actually stick.
"Alright, so you go stand in front of these lizard things to protect Naomi. That's your plan?" I asked, looking to him for clarification, and then continuing when he nodded confidently. "What's your Speed?"
It was a rhetorical question – we both knew the answer already, even if it wasn't hovering in front of us. I waited patiently for Sean to answer, regardless.
"Zero."
"Right. And these Monsters – which, incidentally, are described in detail in the material I gave you two weeks ago – how fast are they?"
Silence. Sean rubbed forefinger and thumb across his stubbled chin in an approximation of thoughtfulness.
"Um, I'm going to guess the answer is probably 'more than zero' since you're asking this way," Naomi hazarded when the silence started to stretch awkwardly between us. Her pensive expression was cute, too.
"Yeah." I gave her a smile, one that got a little wider when she blushed and turned away. "A lot more."
"So..." she continued, then hesitated.
"So?" I prompted.
"So... I should be the one to distract them, because I have more Speed and Agility? And while I keep them from moving around too much, Sean hits them?" She still sounded uncertain.
"Exactly!" Embarrassed that my exclamation came out a little louder and more enthusiastic than I'd consciously intended, I cleared my throat and tried again, aiming for a more normal conversational tone. "Ahem. Exactly."
I spread my hands, gesturing towards the still-open Status displays.
"Look," I began, careful to keep my tone reasonable, "Sean. Naomi. I know you don't like studying this stuff. It's boring. I get it. But when we're in the Dungeon, you could have to make a decision like this – and I might not be right there to tell you the answer.
"We still have another two hours, give or take, before the Portal is scheduled to open. Let's finish eating... then, please, do yourselves a favor and at least try to skim through the paperwork I gave you."
I concluded my harangue with what I hoped was a sympathetic smile. "We've been at this for a year now and we haven't had any of us get seriously hurt. I just want to keep it that way."
A weird expression briefly flashed across Naomi's face. It cleared as quickly as it had come, replaced by a lopsided grin much more fitting on her.
"Right!" she said, then after waiting a moment, prompted Sean with an elbow to the ribs. "Right?"
"Right." he echoed, stonefaced.
I figured that was about the best I was going to get.
Gathering up the trash, I made my way over to the can to dispose of it, intending to give the other party members some room to (hopefully) do some quick last-minute cramming without me breathing down their necks.
The park wastebin appeared oddly out of place, sitting as it was at the boundary between the neatly-trimmed grass on one side of the walking path and the flattened forest on the other.
There's a metaphor in there somewhere, I thought to myself as I dumped the bottles and napkins into the can. But I had no idea what it would be. At risk of sounding immodest, I think I could say that I'm a man of many talents. But poetry is not one of them.
"...a kiss from a rose – damn it, I thought I got that out of my head." I grumbled to myself.
When I caught myself pacing from my parked car to the trash can for the third time, I realized that I honestly had no idea what to do with myself while I waited. All that careful advance planning, and here I was – a few hours out from what was going to be the greatest moment of my life, walking around in circles with my hands in my pockets, involuntarily humming some inane pop song.
My first Core.
Well, my second Core, technically.
Every Hero already had a Core when they awakened, always one an Inspection would invariably identify as «Core (Human)», although they varied in Rank from person to person, and boy did those little facts set off a doozy of a philosophical debate when they reached the general public.
Especially once it became known – following a few disastrous early attempts – that if a Hero accidentally destroyed the Core in their first Slot, it apparently made you just... cease to exist. Or that was the best guess at what happened, anyway. It wasn't like we could ask the people it had happened to.
Most Heroes, myself included, liked to believe that your starting Core was a representation of you. Or your soul, or something like that. It was impossible to prove one way or the other. But I personally thought it was reflecting some aspect of my true self... and I wasn't just saying that because I'd had the exceptional good fortune to awaken with a B-Ranked Core, only one Rank below the highest you could get.
Every 5 Levels, another Core Slot would unlock. If you accept the premise that your starting Core was the thing that made you, you, it could be said that every subsequent Core made you into something more than just you.
Attributes would let a Hero perform incredible athletic feats. My little +1 Speed might not sound like a lot on paper, but a +2 in an Attribute was generally considered enough to put an average untrained adult Hero on par with an Olympic contender, and at +3 or above it started getting into genuinely superhuman territory.
Heroes with higher Attributes were able to move faster than the eye could track or dodge through a rain shower without getting wet. They could shrug off a bullet, fight for hours without tiring, or punch straight through a reinforced concrete wall. I'd seen this sort of stunt at least a hundred times on television, and I never got tired of it.
Cores, though? Cores were something else entirely.
Sure, a Core would increase your Attributes. Assuming it wasn't Rank F, you'd get at least a single Attribute point from it. An A-Ranked Core would give you a whopping total of +5. More Attribute points were always welcome.
But that wasn't why I was so excited to unlock a Core Slot.
No, the reason I was bouncing off the walls with impatience to unlock a Core Slot was because a Core let you do magic.
Magic! Real life magic, some Dungeons & Dragons, video game, science-can't-explain-this type shit. Even though they'd been around for more than half a decade at this point, I still couldn't get over how amazing it was.
By now everyone has seen the clips that were making the nightly news rounds a few months ago, even if you live under a rock. The ones with that Hero from... I think Cambodia, or somewhere around there? You know, the guy who got the A-Ranked «Core (Void)» as a Quest reward.
Talk about lucky. He gets an offensive Ability that he can use at range – the dude can throw tiny little black holes around, how cool is that? And when he summoned the Core Spirit for the reporters to ooh and ahh at, it looked pretty freaking mean itself. I could definitely live without the creepy pure-black eyes it gave him, though.
Well, you didn't pick your Cores for their cosmetic appeal, not if you wanted to make it as a Hero.
Which wasn't to say that Heroes typically had all that much choice in the matter. Cores were pretty hard to come by, compared to the other types of Items that you could get from killing Dungeon Monsters or completing Quests. And the market for them was tight, the big-name international Hero guilds and clans snapping them up for absurd sums as fast as they could be listed for sale.
So Heroes mostly used whatever was available when they unlocked their next Slot. A less-than-ideal Core could always be fused with another or replaced if you found a better one down the line. Locking in an additional Core made such a big difference in your combat capabilities that it was even worth using an F-Ranked one, at least temporarily, if that was all you had.
Usually, a Hero that unlocked another Core Slot would have to take what they could get.
Usually.
I fidgeted, resisting the increasing desire to open my Inventory and look at the amazing Core I knew was in there waiting for me. Despite the months I'd had the thing in my possession, I still felt compelled to check on it from time to time, just to prove to myself it was real.
I supposed that when it came to lucky breaks, I couldn't complain too much.
Today was absolutely going to be a good day.