Nick woke up early and went straight out into the kitchen. He asked around and found Doyle in a meeting with someone. Nick anxiously waited around and rushed up to the man as soon as he was free. He pressed the man as to whether or not a Scout had come by looking for him. Doyle said none had and Nick’s shoulders slumped. What had happened? Why was the Scout taking so long, had something gone wrong?
Nick’s thoughts were starting to spiral, all of the positivity from last night was meaningless in the face of the worry he was now dealing with. Nick’s thoughts took a turn for the worse and he began to fear the worst had happened. Did something happen to Benny and the Scout didn’t want to have to break the bad news to him?
Nick shook his head and focused on the energy inside himself for a moment, letting its gentle floating calm his mind. Nick took a deep breath and calmed himself. He couldn’t let his thoughts get the better of him, he had no solid information to work off right now. Nick would focus on what he actually had to work with until his lack of information changed. He went and bought some breakfast for everyone and went back to the room.
He found everyone groggily starting off their days and they were grateful for some hot food to get them going. As soon as Lily was ready she headed over to Maddy’s room, Abigail had promised to get her started on the basics of ritual creation. Lily had been glued to her crystal device for most of the morning, explaining that it gave her insane access to information. She was deep into her search for knowledge and Nick was excited to see what she could find. Whatever it was, Nick knew that the family was going to be in a much better place.
Henry had his own plans for the day. Last night he’d entered his own zone and just focused on creating his dish, today he was actually going to get to know the kitchen staff down here and work out what sort of place he could fit into. Nick looked at the time and realised that his own plans were coming up. He had to get going, he had a day of roaming ahead of him. Everyone in the family was going to be keeping busy, each of them dealing with the anxiety of a missing Benny in their own ways.
Nick got geared up and headed out to the dining room, he didn’t struggle to find the team he was looking for. A giant muscular man was a pretty easy marker in a crowd. Nick noticed that there was a much larger amount of people in the dining room this morning. What Frank had mentioned about other teams flooding down to the 71st seemed to be pretty accurate. Nick made his way over to the group and found them eating a breakfast of their own.
“How’s the food?” He asked.
Hardly scrunched his eyebrows at him. “Garbage, I can’t wait to be back home.”
The rest of the team grunted in agreement with the man’s statement. Frank looked the most disgruntled of the group. The four empty plates in front of him begrudgingly cleared. He watched as the man swallowed a couple of pills.
“Is it more efficient to use your pills to buy food, rather than having to clear out the build up of the taint stuff?” Nick asked, genuinely curious.
“Some people get away with it, yeah. Though it’s about a pill every couple of meals if you’re eating hotel food, whereas a meal costs between three and five. If you’ve got to eat as much as I do, the maths never adds up.” The man answered, disappointment thick in his voice.
The group then got to talking about their game plan for the day. They acknowledged that they’d probably have to head deeper into the floor to try and avoid the sudden influx of new teams on the floor. Other teams were a genuine concern, one that Nick hadn’t fully considered before. He knew that banditry was a risk, he knew that one well, he had never considered that there were other threats though. The largest concern was apparently getting ganked, another team coming into the room as you were clearing and stealing the loot from you.
Nick had never been put into a situation like that yet, other than the fake situation the Trickster room had put him through. Nick asked about how the situations were generally handled and found out about a general code that roamers followed. It was a pretty basic code of honour, basically it boiled down to a few key principles. Don’t commit banditry; if you can afford to spare some heals for a team in need, you did; don’t gank a room in progress.
It was pretty bare bones but Nick liked it, though he did ask why he’d managed to encounter two groups of bandits over two days if these groups were meant to be following a code.
“That’s because a lot of groups don’t follow the code unless there are other groups around. There aren’t any consequences if you’re not caught breaking the code.” Frank answered.
“What are the consequences of breaking the code?” Nick asked.
This time Betts answered. “Depends on how badly it’s broken. You could be barred from trading with others, you could have all of your gear taken and given to the team you transgressed against. Being killed for it isn’t uncommon. Some groups take the code very seriously and religiously enforce it. Most people just casually follow it though.”
The group then got up and made their way out to start roaming. The group didn’t have a map or anything and just went out in whatever direction they felt that day. When he asked how the group found their way back each day they all pointed to Kitty, the group's Scout. He found that while none of the Scout’s first three skills were navigational in nature, the level two skill was usually something related. Kitty’s skill allowed her to have a vague sense of direction. She would work out the vague direction she’d have to head to get back to the dining room.
Nick felt like the skill lined up pretty similarly with his treasure sense, so he broke off from the group to have a chat with her about it. She wasn’t very willing to give out a lot of information about her skill though, and Hardy had to come over and pull Nick to the front of the group with him.
Hardy talked to him in a hushed tone. “Look man, I know you’re a Latecomer, so the group’s giving you some leeway here. You can’t be asking about people’s skills though dude. That’s kinda pretty rude.”
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Nick’s eyes widened in panic, he felt rather embarrassed. He hadn’t stopped to consider his actions, he’d just wanted to get a better understanding of his own skills relative to others. He made a pretty open apology to everyone in the group and it was laughed off. Frank gave him a slap on the back.
“I guess there is a lot that you’ve got to learn lad.”
The group continued walking for a bit until they came to a rather crowded room, where they stopped. Nick was confused, this was the kind of room that Nick just pushed on past as he made his own way out to roam. Nick would have walked for at least another ten minutes before he would have even considered looking for a room to take on. The group walked from door to door, checking handles. Most of the doors were locked, which meant that they were challenge rooms that were undergoing a reset. The couple of doors that were unlocked had groups inside of them, fighting whatever monster the room threw at them.
Every time Frank opened one of these doors, the surrounding groups would all turn their attention towards them, looking ready to step in if the group tried to gank. It made Nick feel a bit better about the general morality amongst the teams here, maybe he really had just gotten rather unlucky with bandits. Nick also quickly realised what these crowded rooms were, they were challenge room hubs. Larger rooms that had a couple of challenge rooms all connected to them. That explained why there were always so many teams constantly in these rooms then.
Once Frank had checked all of the doors in the room the group found some seats and sat down, confusing Nick.
“Why are we sitting?” He asked.
“Well, we have to wait for a room to open up, then we can try and secure a spot.” Frank answered.
“Why don’t we just head out deeper? There are plenty of challenge rooms if we just keep walking.”
“That attitude is why we had to save you from getting killed lad. It’s a bit harder to secure rooms here, but when there’s always groups around it’s much safer. The deeper you head out, the less teams there are, the less accountability, and the more likely you are to encounter bad actors.” Frank answered.
“So, this is what most teams do? Sit around and wait to clear the same couple of rooms?” Nick asked.
The members of the group shrugged and nodded. Nick began to understand why these groups might not be the highest earning. If this was what most groups did with their time then it wasn’t a surprise that people didn’t have as many pills as he was expecting. He could understand the safety part of the notion, but was it really worth just sitting around for most of the day? Challenging the same couple of rooms and having to compete with a boat load of other teams just to do that. Nick felt pretty disappointed, this isn’t how he wanted to spend his time.
He sat around for a while with the team until there was a clicking sound, like that of something unlocking. Suddenly most of the teams bolted up from their seats and towards the challenge room doors. Frank’s team did the same and Nick was dragged along by Betts, rightly confused. Frank pushed his way through other teams and cleared a pathway for the rest of the group. The giant of a man shoved entire groups out of his way and secured his position in front one of the doors, he checked the handle and found it unlocked. He then turned back to the rest of the teams in the room.
“We claim this room. Who disputes our claim?” He called out.
Nick watched the entire team posture defensively around the doorway. He also heard other teams call similar things out from the other doors. Groups began to filter back towards the seats, though some stuck around, looking like they were weighing up their chances. Some of the groups holding doorways were approached by these groups and fights began to break out. Nick watched but saw that there were no potentially lethal attacks being used, it was merely a contest of strength.
No groups approached Frank’s though. Nick looked at the large man, with his giant sword now sitting across his shoulder. Nick had to admit he wouldn’t have challenged the man to a fight either. The group then headed inside the room and Nick’s blood started pumping, finally it was time for a fight. Nick eyed up his enemy and found that the room was a Brute challenge. Nick realised that he wasn’t given the opportunity to use his usual method of evaluating a room before he entered, though he guessed that all of the teams here had run these rooms before.
Nick watched the team spread out in formation. Hardy and Frank took the front line positions, Kitty in the back. Betts took a more unique position, instead of sitting in the backline like he’d seen other Healers do, she was positioned between Kitty and the frontline. She was brandishing her staff like a club and Nick’s prior suspicions felt confirmed, it seemed that Betts might have some sort of melee class alongside Healer.
The Brute in this room looked like an armoured bear. The armour being the same black, scab-like material that seemed to coat most of the Brutes. The beast let out a roar and charged into the group, Hardy took a step forward and met the creature with his shield. As they collided Hardy braced himself then swung his wooden stick down into the creature. The bear seemed to freeze for a moment as the weapon struck it, Frank seized on the opening and swung his giant sword down into the creature. The giant weapon literally cleaved right through the monster.
With that, the fight was over. Not even ten seconds. A fight that would have taken him a good ten or twenty minutes was just breezed through by the team. They didn’t even break a sweat. The group gathered up as the chest formed, a palpable excitement in the air. Hardy opened up the chest excitedly and pulled out the loot. It was a leather chestpiece, one Nick would be pretty chuffed in having. He awkwardly chuckled as he realised that it was his skill, Luck, at play.
“Wow, an item from our first chest? Looks like today is going to be a lucky day guys!” Hardy called out.
The group cheered and were in high spirits, Nick having to remember the fact getting items was apparently not a common occurrence for people. Nick really began to understand how skewed his perspective was as he saw how genuinely happy the team was made by the drop. While roaming with the Exe recruits it had been pointed out to him how good his drops had been, but it hadn’t really dawned on him. The recruits literally couldn’t express their opinion, being unable to talk and were wearing masks that hid their expression. Paige and Rina had brought it up, but they weren’t super engaged in the process and seemed detached from it all.
The loot was handed over to Frank and he pulled out a burlap sack, throwing the chestpiece into it before slinging the bag over his shoulder.
“I’ve got a magic bag guys, we can store the loot in that.” Nick offered.
That raised some attention from the group.
“Goddamn, you really are geared up to the teeth. Sure lad, makes things easier for us.” Frank said as he handed the sack over. “Keep everything in the sack though, we split the loot at the end of the day.”
That was reasonable to Nick, so he just awkwardly jammed the sack into his own bag. He really wished his bag had the cool space-warping ability that Abigails did, that would make his life so much easier. Nick had to laugh to himself, he was complaining about getting a better bag while the group he was with were using a burlap sack to carry all their gear.
Nick looked at the group and noticed they had a bit of jealousy in their eyes as they stared at his bag. Nick began to realise that he was in a very different position than the average roaming team seemed to be.