Part 3: True Monsters
Brian is the litRPG expert. I call him on the flight to Afghanistan.
“Brian, hey, what's up, it's Jun.” I talk in a very casual way despite being on a CIA aerial transport that will get us to our destination in 10 hours.
“Jun, hey man. I haven't seen you in forever. I know you guys got new jobs but we should still game. I'm itching to get back to the table.” Brian seemed a bit sleepy but not annoyed at the early call. It was around 7 AM his time.
“Yeah, totally! I actually set up a gaming room in my new house but we haven't used it yet.”
“You got a house? Damn, dude, you've been busy.”
“Yeah, yeah, so anyway, I wanted to ask you about the litRPG stuff.”
“You mean reality, or the fictional variety?”
“Fictional. I wanted to ask about the uh, motivations of those characters. Like, what do they do once they're in system land?”
He pauses a few seconds before answering. “They mostly just get stronger. There's variations, of course. You've got stories that are about being in charge of people or organizations, stories about getting money and magic items, stories about getting a harem of boys and or girls, but really, all of them come down to power.”
The next part he says almost uncomfortably. “The protagonists usually have some existential threat that the system, or a multiverse, provides. But that's just an excuse. Those stories are power fantasies, straight up. The characters don't need more motivation than just I wanna be strong. And if I'm honest, a lot of the protagonists don't have goals or dreams beyond that.”
I think about that for what seems like several minutes. I was really hoping he'd have some magic answer to what I'm doing with my life.
I reluctantly say, “hey, sorry to bother you so early, I'll let you go.”
Before I hang up I hear, “Jun, you okay man?” and it stops me.
I breathe deeply before I respond. “Not really, even though everything is going well? I kinda walked into running a mercenary group and we have an office and we're making a crap load of money-”
“Dude, can you please hire me to do anything that isn't cake decoration?”
“Uh, maybe? I think we have an opening or two. Just look up the Pathbreakers website.”
He's silent for a minute and then says “your site looks like shit. I'll do your website stuff from now on. Us gays are great at websites.”
“What does being gay have to do with web-”
“But, anyways, to what you were saying, I feel you man. I know you've had mental health issues for a long time now, at least as long as I've known you.”
“You... Know about that?”
“Dude, us depressed people can pick each other out of a line up. Why do you think I asked you to game with me? Tabletop games are the best non-medical mental health treatment available. A steady, reliable reason to pretend to be someone else and also goof off with friends? It's like the perfect salve for anxiety and depression.”
I let that sink in. Brian was a much better friend than I'd ever given him credit for. He... Cares about me. He cared about me even before we became friends at the gaming table. What a guy.
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Alicia gave me a “wrap it up” motion, so I say, “thanks, man, I really mean it. I'm heading into a tunnel but I'll probably call you tomorrow or the next day, if that's alright.”
“No problem, Jun. Stay safe in your tunnel.” And with that he clicked off.
The inside of the transport was astonishingly quiet. I'd had to go off in a corner, behind a big black storage container, to get some privacy for the call. I come back to the seating area where the team is.
“We're almost there,” Alicia says. She's changed into a skintight, grey, neoprene-ish sneaking suit. Her narrow shoulders and small frame take to it well. She's got black harness/rigging looping around her back, waist, thighs and armpits. In that rigging are four handguns and about a dozen pouches of various sizes. Her blonde bob haircut is swept into a light helmet. Her blue eyes dart over to me as she attaches a face mask around her neck, ready to be slid on.
“That armor or something?” I ask her, trying not to look at her provocative “combat gear.”
“It's probably tougher than what you've got,” she says, looking at my outfit in particular.
“And a hundred times more expensive,” Jose adds.
“How much this costs is a matter of national security,” she says confidently. She taps a button on her wrist and most of her outfit turns tan like the Afghan cave we're headed into. “But it's a lot.”
The rest of the team are already in our Pathbreakers gear. We grab guns and make last second checks. Bennet then gathers the six of us around a waist high container that has some documents and tablets on it.
“Ya finally givin’ us yer intel?” Quinns asks Alicia Bennet. “Or ya gonna hold out until af'er the dust is settled?”
She nods, then clicks a few times on a tablet. She shows it to us. “We used ground penetrating radar to get an idea of the dungeon layout, and... It's big.” The diagram shows a massive interconnected complex underground. “The first three levels down look like caves. After that the radar just shows a series of large boxes. Our experts tell me that they're probably metal.”
“So Cthulhu wanted to deflect radar?” Mercy asks, with a tone of sarcasm. “I guess he's been keeping up with technology.”
Alicia just scowls at Mercy. “The Dracosys is the problem. It often lets us have glimpses of the lower, or in this case upper, floors of a dungeon, only for the later areas to be completely impregnable.”
“All lending more credence to the theory that it's of human make,” I say.
Dominic Franco says, “I don't care who made it. We just gotta crush that son of a bitch dungeon and take a shit on its remains.”
We all turn and look at him after that disgusting statement. “Too much?” he asks.
We all nod and agree that he needs to tone it down.
Alicia goes through the rest of her data and documents. It's not a lot. There's a temple being built outside of the dungeon. Humans have been seen going into the dungeon but not coming out. The dungeon is 15 floors. The floors are grouped in sets of three.
The monsters that come out during a dungeon break don't mindlessly attack like most do. Instead, they seem to talk to the locals and are open to deals. And in at least one case, that trade was for a goddamn nuclear bomb.
Also, everyone who's gone inside is probably still alive. Dungeons spit out corpses (as long as the people came in through the front door). So we know there's around a hundred humans inside doing... Something.
“We expect radioactive material inside, based on the Uranium mined there previously.” Alicia hands out a small tin to each of us. She opens her own and shows us six white pills. “Each one of these will protect you from radiation for six hours. It's okay to overlap a bit on the timing.” She motions to us to each take a pill and we do. I have to grab my bottle of water to take mine. “I'll time them and remind everyone when it's time for another.”
“So how much does the Rad-X cost?” Jose asks. I smile at his use of the term for an equivalent item in the Fallout series.
“Each rad sponge pill is around 30,000 dollars,” Alicia says with nonchalance.
Franco and I both do spit takes with our water. Mercy speaks for all of us when she asks, “So we just swallowed 180,000 dollars?”
“I'll tell you a secret,” Alicia fake whispers. “The CIA doesn't have a budget.”
Jose asks, “what's the timing on the dungeon reset?”
Alicia checks her watch. “I timed our trip so it just happened now. We'll have about 24 hours because we should arrive in-”
The pilot comes over the PA system. “Hitting target zone in 5, landing in 7.” We all suddenly get serious.
I head over to a window and take in the dark desert. The desert at night is wonderful. No city lights to outshine the stars. Moonlight slides over rock formations, painting them soft and cool. I take in the sky because it might be a while before I see it again. Up to about 36 hours. So, just as long as last time.
But things are different now. I'm different now. I'm not fighting to scrape out a narrow escape. This time I'm fighting to shut down a terrorist organization's nuke factory. And that immediate goal is all I need to think about right now.
Then, 2 minutes from landing, the aircraft begins to take fire.