Chapter 94

While Michael and Travis were away, people worked hard to keep Site 00 going. One such person was David, who had been asked—kindly, but with not much room to wiggle himself out of the assignment despite being the CEO of the whole company—by the head of Candle Light to oversee the happenings at Redbud Ridge. The town was being swallowed up by mana, the invisible cloud engulfing more and more of the scattered houses and homesteads by the moment.

Travis should have been there in person but instead it had been David who had been sent to oversee the very first official Candle Light operation of a somewhat large scale. The reason was that Travis was otherwise busy with more important matters, but David found the situation amusing nonetheless.

This wasn’t to say he wasn’t qualified for the job. If one discounted Michael, Johanne, and now Travis, David was probably the strongest member of their budding organization. Not for long, sure, already Jennifer and Trevor were talking about a second expedition into the dungeon today, barely the day after the first successful delves. It would be a single team this time, selected among the ones who did not receive the challenge version of the second floor and tasked to clear it and report back. With the focus on powering up rather than just defeating the floor.

Honestly, David couldn’t wait for someone else to take the role of power-enforcer. He did enjoy his power, of course, but surely not the methods necessary to get it. The first time he entered the dungeon had been with Michael, and that had been all sort of nice things. Exhilarating, fun, dangerous, but the sort of danger that gets adrenaline pumping. Then, at Travis’ insistence, he had gone in again. Alone this time, wanting to make use of the time dilation to get some work done in the Misty Valley. Too bad that he had to defeat the first floor to get there, a task the proved much harder to do without Michael watching over him.

It was as if he had gone to a completely different place. Without Michael’s aura shielding him from the dungeon’s effects—or at least this is how Johanne explained it—he faced the full brunt of it. It terrified him to the point where he thought he was hearing voices, and he almost succumbed to the weak goblins of the first room. He had been caught unaware, of course, and recovered quickly, but he had also had never set foot in the dungeon ever since.

On one hand, let someone else deal with that horrible place. He didn’t need to gather power, after all. His was an administrative position: he just needed enough power to not appear weak, but he hardly needed to be a powerhouse. On the other hand…

Old age had been something he had resigned to for a long time. It was the inexorable passage of time, something nobody could avoid no matter how hard they struggled to keep their youth. He had been more fortunate than others, his strong body healthier than most people. His acceptance of his situation quickly waned after Michael healed him, though. All the signs of age which he had come to terms with disappeared, making him realize just how bad the situation had gotten without him even realizing. Little things had stacked up, slowly, until he was a ball of hurt and malfunctioning organs.

Hurt and problems that had been taken away for free by Michael with his healing, but that were now slowly returning. And each healing session was less effective than the previous. What David had come to accept was now unacceptable. And as he grew in power, he noticed after his first and second delve in the dungeon, the process had slowed down—for a while. Now it was going forward full speed again.

What to do? Brave the dungeon or procrastinate? Because being old sucked, but being in the dungeon sucked even more. Sure, he could ask Michael for a boost, but he had seen the look in the young man’s eyes when talking about boosting people, like he was disgusted with even the notion of people asking for free power. David would be one such person because, as his other delves had shown, he was perfectly capable of handling the dungeon’s monsters on his own. If only there wasn’t that fucking sense of dread…

To think we went full circle. Now I’m the one who doesn’t want to look weak in the other person’s eyes. The one who doesn’t want to disappoint. I suppose that’s what happens when your protégé becomes your boss and outgrows you.

“Mister Chestermill, sir,” a voice interrupted his inner monologue, pushing the dilemma to another time.

“Bob,” David greeted, “fancy seeing you here.”

The man nodded with a tight smile. “Got a promotion, sir.”

David laughed and bantered with the man for a moment. Interestingly, it seemed like Bob would miss his old days as a chauffeur, so in response, David offered to talk to Travis and see if he could still be assigned to Michael whenever he moved around, like a bodyguard. Soon, however, the main topic of the conversation came up.

“Unity engineers and Candle Light personnel have been here for three days. Not much time to set a proper foundation according to protocol, but that’s the time we had. We made good use of it, sir.”

“I can see that,” David commented. They could see the whole city center, barely a single road and two rows of houses, from the little hill they stood on. “It all went smoothly, I assume?”

The man shrugged. “Candle Light was there undercover,” he told David, “while the more overt divisions of Unity corporation were doing work to improve the reputation of the company within the city.” This much David knew, of course, being the one who approved the budget and the proposals that had come from Travis—making sure not to include the more dubiously ethical ones, according to Michael’s wishes. Unity had volunteered to fix up the leaky, rusted aqueduct system of the city for free, and they would be the ones to repair it in perpetuity. For a much smaller fee than what the city paid to have leaky pipes, actually, a thing made economically viable only because they were actually using Elemental Stones to supply water and repairing those was much less labor intensive than the norm. There was still the matter of the pipes, of course, but such small things compared to the company’s total net worth were things they could afford to do at a loss if they bought them positive reputation, which they did.

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They also bought and began to fix old homes, took over old failing businesses downtown without kicking the owners out, and started work on some of the less productive fields around the city, close to the woods. There they planned to test some magic for agriculture while letting the farmers keep most of the profit. Again, not like Unity needed the small change that would instead turn a farmer’s life for the better. They would much rather have said farmer’s respect and admiration.

Speaking of farmers, an anomaly had already popped up at the outskirts of the city near a creek.

“Unity bought the land for cheap from an old farmer after a coal mine run-off made the whole field barren,” Bob explained. “The engineers thought it was a good place to test some of the capabilities of [Ghost Market] to clean up the finer contaminants, and if not, Johanne had other things to test to clean up the land. Then, all of a sudden, one of the rocks by the creek started talking.”

“Talking?” David questioned, meeting Bob’s exasperated expression with amusement. “Odd. But hardly worth noting, no?”

“Would be,” Bob stated, “except now Johanne sealed the area until she understands how it happened. She claims it will help project Icarus immensely, whatever that is.”

David frowned. “I swear that woman is everywhere. It’s like she can split herself or something.”

“Oh, she definitely can,” Bob confirmed confidently, although speaking much lower and watching the woods as if expecting the woman to pop out from behind a tree. He leaned in. “I got reports of people seeing her in all sorts of impossible places at the same time. You know what though? It’s not worth the headache. Sometimes I wish I was still just the boss’ driver.”

“I get you,” David sympathized, using his old age and looks to mask his own thoughts and project confidence and calm. “What’s the plan with the field?”

“We are giving it back to the farmer, for free. Minus the creek part, but we promised access to water to make up for the loss. He was… in tears, sir. He was in fucking tears. I never thought—”

It was at that moment that a rather agitated operator burst into view, panting and sweating. At David’s request, he frantically started talking about a rather problematic anomaly that had just popped up in the city proper. From where they stood, David could see the outline of the building in question, a rather tall square of concrete and bricks, but there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it.

“It’s the inside, sir. It got all fucked up. People are trapped in there.”

“Get me there immediately,” David ordered.

In a matter of minutes, they were at the cordoned-off area. People were more confused than anything right now, although some were already demanding explanations as to why a private company dared to block access to a building with red-and-white tape. Others were wondering where the police were, not knowing that David and Travis had already planned for things like this to happen and had instructed the local law enforcement accordingly. Surprisingly easy to do in such remote places, and with an Operator who could alter digital information with his mind, it was trivial, even.

Among the mass of people, there were a few who had been brought out of the building thanks to the rapid intervention of Candle Light operators before the situation turned dire.

“I don’t know, I… I…” a woman was hyperventilating as she cried into another woman’s bosom. “My husband is in there. They couldn’t get him out in time. The man who rescued me… he was… he was… he’s dead.”

Many such conversations were happening all at once around them. From what he could understand, something had happened all of a sudden that turned the building into a death trap, and there were enough witnesses that the supernatural nature of the event couldn’t be kept hidden. The Operators had immediately sprung to action, and protocol drafted for this exact kind of situation was being followed. Instead of trying to hide and mislead, Candle Light would lean into the narrative and paint themselves as the saviors and champions of the people, sent by the benevolent Unity to help.

Candle Light Operators would become, to their eyes, people who knew what was going on, the only people in the world the normal person could really count on when things like this happened. It would take a while for the narrative to stick, according to their communications expert, but this was the first and most crucial step. Better than any communications campaign.

David hated it. He wasn’t as soft as Michael was, but he also wasn’t as jaded as Travis and—apparently—the communication expert guy were. This was a disaster, not an opportunity.

“Twenty minutes before teams Welles and team Locke arrive, sir,” Bob supplied. “Operator uh… Cynic, I think? Fuck, yes, she is already here.”

“Let me take over, thank you, Bob,” Jennifer interjected.

Bob nodded and immediately switched to muscle grunt mode. His job wasn’t to coordinate the ongoing efforts but to keep the situation from blowing up, which he did splendidly.

“I’ll make it quick,” Jennifer stated. “This is a clusterfuck. The building’s insides suddenly turned into a blender. Space makes no sense, there’re monsters and things in there I can’t even explain. A person was attacked by a candelabrum. Get it? We have three dead operators and fifteen people trapped inside, but it could have been much worse.”

David nodded.

“Now,” she continued, “we are waiting for the teams to arrive, and then we’ll start with the rescue operations. You,” she pointed a finger at his chest, “are very welcome to join.”

“What about you?” David inquired. Surprisingly, he found the idea of venturing into a blender of death much less appalling than he’d have thought. The building simply didn’t have the aura of malice the dungeon had.

“It’s all hands on deck, kind sir. I’m going in as soon as I’ve finished instructing the men out here. See you inside?”

David nodded, determination on his face. “You bet.”

Gonna prove you all wrong. I’m not scared of action. I’m scared of the dungeon.

“That’s the spirit, mister CEO. Gonna be good publicity.”

“I’m not doing it for that reason,” David declared, and he meant it. What he didn’t know was why he was throwing himself into it with such zeal. He wasn’t that interested in saving people, was he? He had never much cared for them in the past, after all, but that had all been before Michael. Plus, he knew, there was always the prospect of unforeseen opportunities. Who knew what magic could do? Perhaps, in that building, there was a way to power himself up that didn’t require him to enter the dungeon again.