JESSIE : LEVEL 13+4
DAY 281 : A-DAY, FOURTHWEEK, AGNI, YEAR 2
FULGORA 5 : FULGORA184D5 1 : SMUGGLING
After I got kicked from that team the week before last, I stopped being in nearly so helpful of a mood.
But I still wanted to stick it to the Royals. And it wouldn’t hurt to help these people either…
So I’m security. A bouncer of sorts. My only job at this party is to keep Fulgora from crashing it.
To that effect, the one thing I can’t do is the one thing I want to. Namely, going back to the dungeon to have my gambling addiction satiated by endless minor loot boxes. I tried once. And after about a hundred panicked messages in the space of a second, I had to kill myself so Fulgora wouldn’t crush the town and everyone in it while I took my sweet time getting there. The spawnpoint prevents destruction while I’m anywhere even remotely in the area. But that apparently goes out the window if I’m on the other side of a purple dungeon barrier.
So I’m just sitting in the station to pass the time. I’d be laying instead, but getting into bed seems to have the same effect as being in a dungeon.
Meanwhile, Travis has been doing all the real work, getting people up here seven at a time. It’s not that complicated of a job with them forming the team and then inviting him. But Team Teleport is a Legendary Skill. The MP cost alone… And he’s been absolutely guzzling the potions we’re charging each group for the trip. This would take literal years with his passive regen, so it’s a good thing almost everyone seems to keep at least one MP potion squirreled away.
As for why, and what inspired me to get kicked in the first place, there’s a peculiarity with how the Path Quest completes in Fulgora. Namely, it happens the instant you get on a train. In every kingdom, there are entire garrisons of Royal Guards to keep people from passing money back and forth. Instead, they get banned from the city. Or, in the Surge Kingdom, thrown into Downpour. In fact, it’s only from overhearing a former smuggler during my wanderings that I even knew to think of the loophole.
Which it absolutely is. There are no guards here. No one to ban anyone. No one with the authority to either. I think you need a mayor for that? I dunno. But no one’s stopping us apart from the few fleas that Fulgora obliterated practically the instant they jumped from her back. I suspect we’d be in trouble if the Royals had a prophet to send after me. But I don’t know how they would keep that status with how much the wolf truly seems to hate them.
But she’d kill everybody here just as fast without me in her way. Together, along with my Diamapede winnings, we’ve amassed just over $5,000,000 of everyone’s money.
Eight of the most trusted ‘livestalk’ community members at a time are passing $600,000 back and forth between people in line and people on the train with their quests complete.
Every ten seconds or so, a new group of eight receives the money, enters the station, boards the train, and then…
We can all see when their Quest completes. There’s a little System-generated light show and everything.
When that happens, they have a window to pass the money back to one of sixteen volunteers.
The real heroes of it all. They work in shifts, taking all the debt onto themselves. Determined as I am to screw over the Royals, they each walk out, pass the money back, and go more and more into the negative on their Path Quest. They’d have no hope of ever completing it now. Not that they’d want to.
Even considering their intent to bail on my new best friend the instant this is over, they’re still heroes in my book. More so than I ever was, or likely ever will be. To sacrifice their very Attunement… I don’t think I could make that sacrifice. Maybe for James… MAYBE. But I’d still rather just keep it and use it to beat this whole thing.
But most of what makes the setup work are the peculiarities of Heaven itself. Teleportation doesn’t function on trains. Neither coming nor going. The same goes for Blessings and Combat Skills. Basically the same as pre-match Tournament rules, except these are actually enforced. Not to mention a slew of other restrictions, the most important of which is that if someone onboard has a trade window open, the train won’t depart. A System-wide rule, apparently.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Other than my Fulgora bouncing duties, I spend the time making sure the doors don’t start to close before everyone passes their money back. Or if they deploy a bed. Or start to move away from the door. Or anything else at all. Because if the first thing that happens isn’t the heroes getting refunded, I make it a point to spend a few minutes figuring out who the offender is.
Then I instantly skewer them through their target point with an extended Blade of Longinus and drag them out of the train like so much barbecue. “You wanna try that again?”
They never do. And they’re always perfectly prompt with each proceeding step to get on the next train, and the fuck away from me.
Except for one guy. I killed that guy. He was blue. Everyone stopped trying shit after that. Or speaking to me at all. They just kept on keeping on with maybe slightly wider eyes. Even the NPC pretended not to notice me as he was ushered onto the train eight hours later.
All that has left me with little to do but silently loom over the ‘livestock’ for most of a week. Of which there’s little enough stimulation to be had when they’re all cringing away from me, doing whatever they can not to piss me off. I could leave at any moment, after all. And I have a flighty reputation, deserved as it admittedly is.
At least it’s not all the residents of Downpour. Just the ones that agreed to join a random team and teleport to wherever Travis wanted to smuggle them. It took a leap of faith understandably hard to come by after that was more or less how they got trapped there in the first place. Were the circumstances reversed, I don’t know that I’d trust it either.
But after a good chunk of the population departs, the eight volunteers on shift silently gather and give me all $5,000,000 they’ve been passing back and forth for over a week. They want no part of Fulgora anymore. Or the Surge Kingdom. Or its shitty currency. That’s why they volunteered to take on all of everyone’s debt, after all.
They all plan to leave and go get attuned to literally any other element. Half of them look to be eyeing Agni. The other half seem traumatized away from ever so much as striking a match. To the point where I’d be surprised if they could exist in the same room as a fireplace without running away. Once they get rid of any trace of their experience here, most of that crowd is understandably off to a resort for the foreseeable future.
Anyway, I accept their trade.
[ PATH QUEST COMPLETED: WEALTH OF FULGORA ]
And just like that, I have more money than I’ve ever seen in one place.
Travis doesn’t say goodbye.
Neither do the rest as they board the last train out.
Once it departs, my shoulders finally relax. “Oh thank god.”
[ RARE BED DEPLOYED: BED OF SAND ]
Having stayed up for a week overseeing all those people getting voluntarily smuggled, I fall almost immediately asleep.
Sometime later, I get out of bed, glance at the moon, and whisper a single word. “Go.”
[ MOVEMENT BLESSING: SURGE ]
As I make a beeline for the border, I can’t help but cringe at the destruction of the town and dungeon I basically created by simply existing in their vicinity.
But now, Fulgora is jumping up and down on both of them at once like they owe her money. Which, if you think about it, they kind of do.
When I pass through the border, there’s no barrier to break through. No fanfare of any kind. Just a couple notifications to confirm exactly what I was afraid of from the moment I took that money.
[ PATH QUEST COMPLETE: FIRST STEP ]
[ NEW PATH QUEST: POWER OF THE JOULELANDS — DESCRIPTION: OBTAIN 1,048,576 XP WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THE JOULELANDS — FAILURE: COMPLETE WEALTH OF THE JOULELANDS ]
[ NEW PATH QUEST: WEALTH OF THE JOULELANDS — DESCRIPTION: OBTAIN 1,048,576 FSD WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THE JOULELANDS — FAILURE: COMPLETE POWER OF THE JOULELANDS ]
[ NEW PATH QUEST: SECOND STEP — DESCRIPTION: COMPLETE POWER OF THE JOULELANDS OR WEALTH OF THE JOULELANDS — REWARD 1: ADVANCE TO THIRD STEP — REWARD 2: COULOMBERG ACCESS ]
Despite adding a zero on the end of the funds required to cross, none of the spillover, NONE OF IT, counted towards Step Two.
God. Fucking. Damn it.